Claudius

Heribomius himself is more open and more honest.

his face his walk betray his distemper and i charge destiny with his failings such men excite your pity by their frankness the very fury of their passions wins them pardon far worse are those who denounce evil ways in the language of the hercules and after discoursing upon virtue prepare to practise vice am i to respect you sextus quoth the ill-feigned beryllus when you do as i do how am i worse than yourself let the straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed the white man at the black but who could endure the gracchi railing at sedition who will not confound heaven with earth and sea with sky if vervus denounce thieves or milo cutthroats if claudius condemn adulterers or catiline abrade or if salas three disciples inveigh against proscriptions If Claudius condemn adulterers, or Catiline apparate catechists, or if Sulla's three disciples inveigh against proscriptions? Such a man was that adulterer who, after lately defiling himself by a union of the tragic style, revived the stern laws that were to be a terror to all men, aye, even to Mars and Venus.

at the moment when Julia was relieving her fertile womb and giving birth to abortions that displayed the similitude of her uncle.

Is it not then right and proper that the very worst of sinners should despise your pretended scurvy and bite back when bitten? Leronia could not contain herself when one of these soft-faced worthies cried out, What of your Julian law? Has it gone to sleep? To which she answered smilingly, Oh, happy times to have you for a censor of our morals.

Unlike Julius Caesar before him, Augustus did not have an heir.

Sure, he'd spent the last few years grooming both Livius' son Tiberius and his own nephew Marcus Claudius Marcellus for the role, but they were both still too young.

Certain he was dying, desperate to place the empire in the hands of someone he could trust, Augustus did the only logical thing.

He made Marcus Agrippa his heir.

Honestly, all these family tree digressions are one of the most fascinating aspects of Augustus' later life.

At the same time he was laying the foundations for the Empire, he was also laying the foundations for the family that would shape its early fortunes.

Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero… these are names etched into history, recognizable even 2,000 years later.

And it's all thanks to Augustus' dynastic games.

This isn't the one we meet in the Gospels, the insecure weakling that we meet in the Gospels, the one who's currently on TV in The Chosen.

This one, arguably, he is the second most powerful man in the world at this point because he has a deep, deep friendship with Claudius, who is the most powerful man in the world.

Certainly Herod, he is the most impressive man for 2,000 miles.

He represents the Jerusalem temple authorities who hate Jesus.

And that is why he is so frightening.

when he is your opponent.

So he was educated in the palace in Rome with Caligula and Claudius.

He's been accepted as king of the Jews and savior of the temple in Jerusalem.

Priscilla and Aquila were tentmakers, and were thus of the same trade with the Apostle, who for this reason lodged with them at Corinth.

They had lived in Rome at one time, but had been obliged to leave owing to a decree of Claudius, which banished the Jews from the imperial city.

When that decree was no longer carried out, they seemed to have gone back to Rome, which from the vast awnings used in the great public buildings must have afforded a fine sphere for the tentmaker's craft.

It is very likely that their occupation of tent-making necessitated their having a large room in which to carry on their work, and therefore they allowed the Christians to meet in it.

They thought it was just a land of barbarism and lack of civilization and wasn't worth bothering with.

So it wasn't for, oh, what, 70 years or so before they came back again when Claudius was emperor and tried to make more of a go of it.

I felt perhaps that they might look at Ireland and think, we will have no luck there.

The Irish people will not tolerate this.

And I wanted to find a voice for him.

I've decided early on I would tell the story as a memoir, which has obviously quite often been done about ancient Rome.

I Claudius, a fictional memoir, the memoirs of Hadrian by Margaret Yorsner, It's a very good way, I mean for a start the Romans did actually write autobiographies, which is helpful of them, but also it enables you to get rid of a lot of extraneous matter and just focus on them and their lives.

And from the moment you begin a book like that, you have a character.