I, Claudius And The Cost Of Insanity

In the course of putting things into my parents' master closet for later transport to The Barn for storage and packing up four boxes of books (I did try and streamline the collection), I came across the books I, Claudius and Claudius The God.  I, Claudius was familiar to me as a title as it was a rather famous BBC dramatic adaptation in the 1970's (interestingly, still considered to be one of the best of all time).

The book itself by Robert Graves was published in 1935 (I had no idea it was so old) and was actually written by him not because of an abiding interest in Claudius (although he held a degree in Classical Studies) but that he needed to generate income after a failed land deal. He did generate that income, so much so that it is still considered a classic.  It takes the form of an autobiography written by Tiberius Claudius Germanicus (10 B.C. to 54 A.D.), a grandson by adoption of Octavian (Augustus) Caesar and a member of the Julian-Claudian dynasty - a not impossible theory as it turns out (historically) that Claudius was quite a prolific historical author, although we currently have almost none of his works remaining.  The period of time covers the end of Augustus' reign (27 B.C. - 14 A.D.) through the reign of Tiberius (14 A.D. - 37 A.D.) and Caligula (37 A.D. - 41 A.D.).  It includes not only these men, but the larger family - wives, brothers, sisters, grandchildren - of the Julian-Claudian dynasty.  Graves based his work largely on the works of Tacitus and Suetonius (which I have read).  Cassisus Dio may not have been used as much, although his writings also contribute a great deal to our understanding of the period (Almost all of Tacitus' sections on Caligula have disappeared through time, for example).

Claudius was born with a series of physical issues:  he had weak knees, stammered, and his noise ran when he became excited.  Considered almost sub-human by his grandparents and parents, he eventually came to use this to his advantage, learning to conceal his intelligence (which appears to have been not impacted at all) behind a potentially played up facade of a physically weak and confused man.  It worked in that it helped to preserve his life through the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula until in 41 A.D. he is virtually the last member of the Julian-Claudian dynasty and is thus proclaimed Emperor.

The story is very well written and plausibly fills in the gaps that history has left us - with a little imagination, of course.  What is does in a sort of living color is paint the picture of insanity.

Not the insanity of Claudius; in the book he remains a sort of beacon of reason. No, it is the rest of what came to be the royal family of the Julian-Claudians. Power needs to be clung to and once achieved, is not easily let go.  The fact that the Caesars had power meant that over time, they came to see every whim as something that could be acted on, every potential threat to their power as someone that needed to be shaken down for cash, exiled (rarely), or murdered (more frequently).  It even reached the point that Caligula saw himself as divine and thus, above human law.

Graves, through Claudius, notes that at the start of the issues, the problems were invisible to the public.  The proscriptions and intrigues (and murders) occupied a very small and narrow segment of Roman society.  To the average Roman citizen the bureaucracy still functioned, the Games still went on, and the corn arrive from Egypt.  It was only over time as Tiberius and Caligula became more and more reckless in their behavior and their spending that the common citizen felt the pinch of taxes and hunger.  By then, to show any sort of disagreement or discontent with the current policies was to invite death.

You might assume that I am speaking about a particular modern subject. That is not the intent (everyone is quite good about what we do and do not discuss h here). My point - the point that Graves makes so eloquently - is that insanity in any sort of societal, political, religious, philosophical or economic arena unchecked comes to create insanity in all of those categories.  

One might say that if the pinch has not yet come in an insane society, it is only because things have not worked themselves out sufficiently yet.  The pinch will come, inevitably - because insanity always seeks to pay today's accounts with tomorrow's income, leading to an inevitable bankruptcy of the whole thing.