" I, CLAUDIUS "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Mr. Graham Greene reviewing my novel, I, Claudius, in your issue of May 4th has two complaints to make : the first that in writing an autobiography of the Emperor Claudius I stick too closely to the unemphatic conversational style in which this " rather whimsical old man " might really have written, and is indeed known to have writtin—Mr. Greene calls this " artistic suicide "—and the second that I have accepted unreservedly the " highly coloured version of the Emperor Tiberius given by Suetonius and Tacitus "—here Mr. Greene recommends his readers to " go straight to the sources or to a modern historian."
As for the first complaint, yes, I took Claudius as I found him and I like him for not having been " artistic " in the style of his uncle Tiberius, his nephew Caligula, or his step-son Nero. He was just a plain old man with a nice sense of humour. As for the second complaint, that's all very well, but precisely to what sources must we go if not to Tacitus and Suetonius ? There is Dio Cassius, but he bears these other two out ; and there is Velleius Paterculus, but he wrote as one of Tiberius's subordinates and would have been either a fool or a hero if, unwarned by the fate of Cremutius Cordus the historian, recently prosecuted for high treason, he had done other than he did, for he heaped most fulsome and incredible flatteries on the old Emperor. To what other reputable source is Mr. Greene private As for the modern historian, he can collect and collate passing references to Tiberius's character or private life in other classical works, but they amount to little, and he will find it very difficult to explain away Suetonius and Dio and Tacitus altogether. Suetonius and Dio seem to me reasonably impartial writers and Suetonius at least used Tiberius's own autobiography as one of his sources—an advantage with which the modern historian cannot compete.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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