Claudius, whom none of his bloody-minded relatives considered worth the trouble of executing, poisoning, forcing to suicide, banishing to a desert island or starving to death-which was how they one by one got rid of each other-was one day unexpectedly proclaimed Emperor.

Claudius picks up the remarkable story he began in I, Claudius with his sudden promotion and his burgeoning infatuation for the beautiful and dangerous courtesan, Messalina. Capturing the vitality, splendor and decadence of Rome, Claudius the God is, in the words of the New York Times, "amusing and illuminating to a high degree, with or without its predecessor." Its greatest appeal may be the character of Claudius himself, candid, humble, wry and endearing.

With disciplined imagination, Robert Graves recreates the Roman scene at the point of its decline. At the center of this colorful point in history is the bemused and perspicacious character of Claudius, the emperor-in-spite-of-himself. Claudius the God is the final part of this unique reconstructed "autobiography" based securely on Graves' scholarship.