I Claudius

[a:Robert Graves|3012988|Robert Graves|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1487096604p2/3012988.jpg]'s [b:I, Claudius|18765|I, Claudius (Claudius, #1)|Robert Graves|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388185810l/18765.SY75.jpg|4232388] was made into a successful BBC series in 1976 and the book was on several lists of top one hundred books of the twentieth century.
The July 10, 1934 review in the New York Times begins:

THE deified Claudius, by all accounts the oddest of Roman Emperors, wrote an autobiography which has been lost to us. It is a happy thought of Robert Graves to invent the book for us, supposedly addressed to posterity so that the whole truth may be set down -- the suspicions of poison and incest that Suetonius hints at may be circumstantially verified; the imaginative task of completing and making plausible the records is amply justified.

The review continues in a positive way. Me? I found it to be a 468-page sleeping pill. A zillion characters, page-long paragraphs, confusing time jumps. It does seep into you after awhile, though, and I noticed that during the three weeks it took for me to read it I began using longer sentences when emailing friends. (My usual email: Yo. Sup?) I have no writing style of my own and tend to adopt a poor version of whatever writer I'm reading at a given time.
I'd strongly recommend reading [b:Augustus|89231|Augustus|John Williams|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320557188l/89231.SY75.jpg|86120] by [a:John Williams|51229|John Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1519832171p2/51229.jpg] instead of I, Claudius if you're interested in Ancient Rome.
Significant: I'm writing this on January 22, 2020, during the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. The trial is being aired online and on the radio (I don't get TV signals or have cable). Going from reading the book for an hour to listening to the trial then back again, you read then hear about powerful leaders making capricious, unethical decisions and having his toadies fawn over him so they can hold on to what power they have; the rich exploiting the poor; men in control abusing women; great social and financial inequality; people ruled by religion and superstition. You realize that the only thing that's changed during the two thousand years since I, Claudius took place is the technology we use.

The year before I came of age and married had been a bad year for Rome. There was a series of earthquakes in the South of Italy which destroyed several cities. Little rain fell in the Spring and the crops looked miserable all over the country: then just before harvest time there were torrential storms which beat down and spoilt what little corn had come to ear. The downpour was so violent that the Tiber carried away the bridge and made the lower part of the City navigable by boat for seven days. A famine seemed threatening and Augustus sent commissioners to Egypt and other parts to buy huge quantities of corn. The pubic granaries had been depleted because of a bad harvest the year before—though not so bad as this. The commissioners succeeded in buying a certain amount of corn, but at a high price and not really enough. There was great distress that winter, the more so because Rome was overcrowded—its population had doubled in the last twenty years; and Ostia, the port, was unsafe for shipping in the winter, so that grain-convoys from the East were unable to discharge their cargoes for weeks on end.

Published in 1934, this is still seen as one of the great works of historical fiction ever written. Written from the point of view of Tiberius Claudius, who would become the Roman emperor after the death of Caligula, it paints a picture of the politics, intrigues, and corruption of the late Roman empire through the reign of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula until the crowning of Claudius himself. The author has clearly done a ton of research into the period, but ultimately most of the details are probably almost entirely fiction since very few actual accounts remain. Still, the author creates a great narrator in the lame, stuttering Claudius who is mocked and ignored and thus remains alive to eventually be crowned emperor while the rest of his family fight and kill each other for political power. In Claudius, the author creates a sympathetic, intelligent, and interesting protagonist with the ability to portray the Roman empire as it might have been at the time - powerful, deeply corrupt, and sinking into self-destruction. A very interesting read and beautifully written, not sure why I had never read this before as I remember seeing it on my parents' bookshelves since I was a child.