Ancient History

The details of the matter must be reconstructed,  the dates anyway, though the facts are clear enough, and scored fairly deeply in my memory. Records would indicate that the year was 1978. I would have turned 15 in the summer of that year, which fell between middle school and high school for me. What drew our consideration to it, God knows. It had first aired in 1977, on Masterpiece Theater, and I remember we caught the last episode or two.

Masterpiece Theater was considered a little above our heads, high-falutin’, as it were, not for our age or even social class, snooty, pretentious, airing on PBS and introduced by Alistair Cooke. Who can say how many good shows I missed because of that prejudice? It aired just before the Sunday comedy shows, so perhaps we had the TV set to Channel 9 in anticipation of them; my memory is that we saw Messalina’s bare bosom, and that of course had our attention; after that, the story telling, characters, and acting gripped us in their clutches.

When I, Claudius was repeated in 1978, we of course had to watch it from the beginning. What season it was, summer or fall, vacation or school, I couldn’t say, but my impression is that it was over the long summer, thirteen episodes over three months, maybe into the fall. It was an occasion.

It was on Sunday evenings. Pop would have already left for work. We would have spaghetti for supper, a good inexpensive meal; Pop didn’t like spaghetti, so now was a good time to have it (I don’t think he would have enjoyed watching I, Claudius either, not without an enormous amount of cajoling in the beginning. It just wasn’t his style). For some reason the ‘Italian’ setting of the show seemed to make spaghetti and sometimes garlic toast fitting.

The show would start with the Masterpiece Theater theme, a French “Fanfare-Rondeau” from 1729, and Alistair Cooke would introduce the episode with facts about Roman history (‘Sway-tonious’) or Robert Graves, the author of the Claudius books, who was still alive at the time. There might be a short summation of what has gone before, and then the soap opera would unfold.

For it was much in the nature of a soap opera, or a family saga, and the family was the Imperial family of Rome, the first six Caesars seen through the eyes of the fifth. The Godfather (1972) was already big at the time, and Jack Pulman had been told to write the scripts with a Mafia crime family in mind to help him get a handle on the ruthless ambition and indulgences of power in the story.

What a colorful array of characters (and actors) were we introduced to! There was the first Emperor Augustus (played by the bombastic Brian Blessed) and his poisonous wife Livia (Sian Phillips) who in her cold nature and ruthless ambition (ready to sacrifice husband and family to get what she wants) we saw a strange foreshadowing of our own grandmother.

I saw my brother Mike’s gloomy nature in Tiberias (George Baker), the second Emperor, and my own socially awkward self in Claudius (Derek Jacobi). Fortunately, there was no one to compare to Caligula (John Hurt) in his insane antics as the third Emperor.

Tiberias was served first by Sejanus (Patrick Stewart in a curly wig)

and later Macro (John Rhys Davies, sans beard),

who in the end would kill him for Caligula. After Caligula’s assassination, Claudius is proclaimed Emperor, almost as a joke, as one of the few remaining members of the Imperial Family.

Once he ascends into ‘the golden dilemma,’ as he puts it, Claudius is aided by his friend King Herod (yes, that Herod) and a couple of Greek freedmen, Narcissus and Pallas, who make an interesting Mutt-and-Jeff team, almost as good and bad angels at his side, as one seeks to keep him alive at all costs and the other plots with Agrippina, his niece, to put her detestable son Nero on the throne.

Unknown to either of them, Claudius wants Nero on the throne. He has been too benevolent; by making Nero Emperor, he hopes to bring the institution into such disrepute Rome will have no choice but to restore the old Republic. In the end Claudius, now a tired old man, eats the poisoned mushroom Agrippina slips into his meal. His plan fails, of course, but the secret history of his family that he has written survives hidden away, to become I, Claudius.

As Claudius predicts in his last speech to the Senate, “The man who dwells by the pool (Jack Pulman) shall open (Robert) Graves, and we shall live again.”

I cannot tell you what an impact it had on us. It was a shared experience, a metaphor, almost a myth to help explain life. We quoted it often, even in British accents. We saw that culture and history, far from excluding us country bumpkins, could be a tool and a refuge, even a weapon if need be. I walked away from it feeling that I had grown up some and my knowledge of life broadened. It certainly expanded our horizons at the time.

And it has continued to be a cultural influence. Shows like The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Dynasty, and of course Rome are all claimed to have Claudius DNA in their inspiration. Although these days occasionally mocked for its low production values (you can sometimes see the seams of the prosthetic makeup, especially on high-definition TV, and the background sets become very familiar over the 13-episode span) it has seldom if ever been equaled in the quality of the acting and staging, and once the story gets rolling belief is easily suspended, even now.

Well, today is Sunday. What I wouldn't give to be gathered around the table back at Loop Drive tonight, eating spaghetti with the family again, especially those that are gone, looking forward to another epic jaunt into Imperial Rome. But fragments of that dream are still available, and the memory is very sweet.