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Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire Illustrated Edition

by Josiah Osgood (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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The story of Claudius has been often told before. Ancient writers saw the emperor as the dupe of his wives and palace insiders; Robert Graves tried to rehabilitate him as a far shrewder, if still frustrated, politician. Josiah Osgood shifts the focus off the personality of Claudius and on to what his tumultuous years in power reveal about the developing political culture of the early Roman Empire. What precedents set by Augustus were followed? What had to be abandoned? How could a new emperor win the support of key elements of Roman society? This richly illustrated discussion draws on a range of newly discovered documents, exploring events that move far beyond the city of Rome and Italy to Egypt and Judea, Morocco and Britain. Claudius Caesar opens up a new perspective not just on Claudius himself, but all Roman emperors, the Roman Empire, and the nature of empires more generally.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0521708257
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0521708258
  3. Edition
    Illustrated
  4. Publisher
    Cambridge University Press
  5. Publication date
    December 13, 2010
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.99 x 0.85 x 9.02 inches
  8. Print length
    374 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Claudius Caesar is an altogether exemplary biography." --BMCR

"...the book reads well, perhaps because of the character that Osgood puts into his writing. ...Osgood creates what might be termed a political biography and, as a result, has made a very useful contribution to our understanding of both Claudius and the early principate." --Ancient History Bulletin Online Review

Book Description

A study of the reign of Claudius (AD 41–54), exploring what it can tell us about the developing Roman Empire.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; Illustrated edition (December 13, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 374 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0521708257
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521708258
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.99 x 0.85 x 9.02 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

About the author

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Josiah Osgood

Josiah Osgood

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Josiah Osgood is a professor of Classics at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He began learning Latin as a high school student in Ithaca, New York and went on to major in Classics at Yale University. He is fascinated by the Greeks and Romans themselves and the way their government, architecture, theatrical entertainments, and so much more permeate modern culture. The author of many scholarly works on Roman history, he has also written a more general survey, Rome and the Making of a World State. For Princeton's series Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers he has produced translations of Suetonius and Sallust.

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4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
7 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

A. A. Nofi
5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Emperor Behind "I, Claudius"
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2012
An excerpt from the review on StrategyPaGE:

"Author of the notable Caesar's Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire (2006), Prof. Osgood (Classics, Georgetown), views the received image from the histories of Suetonius and Tacitus, and the fiction of Robert Graves, with more than a grain of salt. While not suggesting that Claudius was some sort of brilliant ruler, he concludes that Claudius was a reasonably able man trying to survive in a very dangerous place. Each of the chapters, which draw upon a wealth of sources, including not only ancient histories, but also literature, archaeology, coinage, and more, is devoted to a different aspect of Claudius' principate. So we get a picture of his imperial propaganda, his surprising conquest of Britain, and his public works, as well as the structure of government, the quest to secure the succession, and more.

"Although this may seem to present snap shots, rather than a continuous narrative, on the whole, the work remains surprisingly coherent in chronological terms, as Osgood shows how these interrelated to promote the emperor's image and tenure."

For more, see the review on StrategyPage.
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Jared Branch
4.0 out of 5 stars Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2012
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Biographies on Claudius are lacking. At one end you have Robert Graves's historical fiction, on the other those that take ancient sources' contention of mental deficiency at its face. Because the only contemporary source existing intact is Suetonius, renowned for being unreliable, Josiah Osgood maintains that any biography, in the modern sense, would be "infeasible," and uses his life instead as "a window for the historian" into the "image and power in the early Roman Empire."

Claudius came to power following Caligula's assassination, in which, Osgood argues, Claudius himself may have played a role. Since he had no claim to the position, he came to power only by bribing the Praetorian Guard and the 25 some odd legions within the whole of Rome. That he would be involved in the assassination seems, to me, unlikely for several reasons. First, there is no way he would have known if his plan was achievable. Second, there were others in Rome who could easily lay claim to the princeps, men much stronger, in every sense, than Claudius. And finally, unlike Tiberius or Caligula, nobody believed Claudius had any chance of obtaining the position and, as such, he had no grooming at all for the throne.

I googled Osgood and, apparently, he is a handsome, humorous man who enjoys wearing interesting socks. Unfortunately none of his personality comes through in this rather dry work and throughout large swaths of the book I resorted to skimming. I realize this is "academic" in every sense of the word, down to the binding and publisher, but that doesn't mean you can't enliven the text to some degree. Furthermore, the book's title, "Claudius Caesar," is almost unnecessary since he spends much more time discussing "image and power in the early Roman Empire."

One of Osgood's more interesting discussions, however, concerns how Claudius attempted to portray his power to the people by controlling his image. He built roads and temples and attempted to conquer nature with a massive work that Augustus himself was unable to complete (as, unfortunately, was Claudius) in order to portray himself as a god and the August House as immortal. Also, unlike the "Kassel type" portraiture that depicted Augustus as an eternal youth, Claudius's statues portrayed him with wrinkles and bags under his eyes. Lying aside earlier interpretations that this was a concerted effort for viewers to recall Republican sympathies (who was alive left to do that?), Osgood argues it was an intentional break with the erratic past of his predecessor, Caligula. Possibly, but this does not take into account two things: first, that Caligula was not any crazier than Tiberius or Augustus (Osgood cites Winterling's work so he is obviously aware of this and the fact that the people of Rome actually mourned, not celebrated, his death). Second, Caligula did not feel the need to update his portraiture given the widespread hatred of Tiberius. Regardless, there appears to be a somewhat interesting conundrum with Claudius attempting to portray himself as both an immortal god on the one hand and, on the other, as an old man.

Claudius, Tiberius, and Caligula are remembered poorly. All of these men had to toe the line between monarchy and republic established by Augustus. Seneca calls Claudius's attempts a "monstrous combination of two contrasted traits - hypocritical reverence for tradition (the Senate) and autocratic license (the monarchy)." The Senatorial class, who wrote the biographies of the various princeps would, of course, be hostile to the men who disenfranchised them. Osgood maintains that Claudius's reign was, in fact, very successful in a number of regards but, like his forebears, not with the Senate. Because their hostility could affect him beyond the grave, the historical record is distorted.

The principate of Claudius, Osgood maintains, is important not for what it reveals of Claudius but for what it reveals of the emerging institution of the principate. His 14 years of rule helped to strengthen it but, in order merely to achieve power, Claudius had to kill Caligula, pay off Rome's standing army, and squelch conspiracies, from Senate and army, to the throne. For better or worse, he established precedence for when there was no chosen successor. Because Augustus had established a military monarchy, the soldiers would step in and select whomever they saw fit. Rome's reverence for tradition made any ordered succession impossible and, with constant struggles for power, it is no small wonder that Rome maintained its empire for so long. Osgood argues that the principate was such a strong institution that it was able to overpower the res publica but it arose in a military usurpation in which the seeds of its downfall were planted. As one of my professors in college never tired of saying, the question isn't `why Rome fell' but rather `what took it so long.'
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5.0 out of 5 stars Uno de los estudios más completos sobre la imagen del emperador Claudio
Reviewed in Spain on April 18, 2021
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La obra de Osgoos es el estudio más completo hasta la fecha dedicado a la imagen del emperador Claudio y, en general, a la conformación de la imagen del príncipe en época julio-claudia. Sigue en cierta medida lo presentado anteriormente por Zanker en su obra dedicada a Augusto y aborda las distintas facetas de la vida del emperador a través de las imágenes asociadas o producidas por este.
Cuenta además con fotos y mapas muy ilustrativos, así como con una gran cantidad de referencias bibliográficas para el estudio de Claudio y de su época.
Muy recomendable
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