Claudius

The 1976 BBC serial, thirteen episodes, made on a budget that shows and with a cast that does not care. Derek Jacobi's Claudius is the performance every later screen Roman is measured against. The history is Robert Graves', which is to say Tacitus at his most gossipy, but nothing has bettered it as drama.

Part of Roman Emperors: Totalus Rankium

Eighty-four minutes on the emperor everyone underestimated, and the show refuses to settle whether the stammer was a disability, an act, or both. Britain, the harbour at Ostia and four wives all count toward the score.

Part of Life of Caesar

Messalina, the bigamous wedding she held while he was at Ostia, and the execution that followed. Seventy-eight minutes on the scandal that cost him a wife and his dignity at once.

Part of Life of Caesar

Seventy-six minutes on the death of Claudius, the poisoned mushrooms and the feather that may have finished the job. The sources disagree on almost every detail, and the episode lays out which ones and why.

Part of Life of Caesar

The marriage to his brother's daughter, the senate vote that made it legal, and the adoption of her son over his own. Seventy-six minutes on the four years that ended the dynasty's luck.

Part of The Rest Is History

Part four, sixty-six minutes on the vacuum after Caligula was killed at twenty- eight, the brief talk of restoring the Republic, and the uncle the guard found and made emperor.

Part of Life of Caesar

Sixty-six minutes on the day Caligula was killed and Claudius was found behind a curtain and made emperor by the praetorians. The accident of that accession shaped everything he did to prove he belonged.

Part of Life of Caesar

The building programme: the Ostia harbour, the Claudian aqueducts, and the draining of the Fucine Lake that took eleven years and thirty thousand men. An hour on public works as legitimacy.

Part of Life of Caesar

The triumph and the years after it, when a government of freedmen ran the empire and the senate hated every one of them. Just over an hour.

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on the court after Messalina, with four freedmen competing to choose the next empress and the winner installing his own candidate.

Part of Life of Caesar

An hour on the British campaign: why Claudius needed it, how the army nearly refused to sail, and what sixteen days of imperial presence bought him.

Part of Life of Caesar

The first years: courts reformed, citizenship extended, and an emperor who heard cases himself. Fifty-nine minutes on a reign that worked before the household ruined it.

Part of Life of Caesar

The Fucine Lake drainage, eleven years and thirty thousand men, and the naval battle staged on it before the plug was pulled. Fifty-eight minutes on Rome's largest civil engineering project.

Part of Life of Caesar

Claudius wrote histories of Carthage and Etruria, twenty books each, and both are lost. Fifty-eight minutes on the scholar inside the emperor.

Part of Life of Caesar

Messalina at fifteen, married to a man of fifty, and the court that grew around her. Fifty-seven minutes on a marriage that was policy before it was scandal.

Part of Life of Caesar

The series opens on the family's view of him: an embarrassment kept out of sight for forty years. Fifty-seven minutes on the disability and what Rome made of it.

Part of The Partial Historians

Fifty-three minutes on the end of the decemvir, and on the sources disagreeing about whether it was prison, poison or his own hand. The two doctors lay out who says what and decline to pick.

Part of The Partial Historians

Appius Claudius the decemvir, four centuries earlier, whose abuse of a citizen's daughter brought down the whole commission. Forty-eight minutes on the Republic's own Claudian scandal.

Part of Life of Caesar

The rising of Scribonianus in Dalmatia, which collapsed in five days when the legions changed their minds. Forty-eight minutes on how close the new emperor came to being a footnote.

Part of Ancient Warfare Podcast

Forty-seven minutes on why an emperor with no military record needed Britain: a conquest Caesar had left unfinished was the cheapest available triumph.

Part of Life of Caesar

Forty-seven minutes on the annexation of Mauretania after Caligula murdered its client king, which took four years of fighting.

Part of Emperors of Rome

With Emma Southon

His niece, married after a change in the law, and the last four years of the reign run largely by her. Forty-six minutes ending with a plate of mushrooms.

Part of The History of Rome

The end of the reign and the succession that passed over his own son for Agrippina's. Twenty-five minutes on a death that suited everybody except him.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

With Sam Moorhead

Part of The Pax Romana Podcast

Twenty-two minutes on the paradox: an emperor mocked in every source who annexed Britain, reformed the courts and left the treasury fuller than he found it.

Part of The History of Rome

Duncan on the accession: a family that had kept him out of public life, and a guard that discovered it could choose an emperor and be paid for it. Twenty-one minutes.

Part of Emperors of Rome

The administrator behind the jokes: new provinces, a working harbour at Ostia, citizenship extended to Gauls over senatorial objections. Eighteen minutes on a reign that left a harbour and two aqueducts behind.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Emperors of Rome

Found behind a curtain by the praetorians and made emperor because he was there. Thirteen minutes on the limp, the stammer and the fifty years of being underestimated that kept him alive.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of Emperors of Rome

Eleven minutes on the invasion of 43: four legions, elephants at Colchester, and a triumph that an emperor with no military record badly needed.

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

Part of The Classics Podcast · The Classical Association: revision, myth and interviews; only the Roman episodes are indexed

With Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

Part of Life of Caesar

The Graves novel and the BBC serial read against Tacitus, who supplied most of the poison in both. A long conversation about where the fiction starts.