A comparative essay of I Cladius by Robert Graves and Augustus by Alan Massie

"Autobiography is now almost as common as adultery, and almost as reprehensible," wrote Lord Altrincham. Whether writing an autobiography is as reprenhensible is open to debate, but Lord Altrincham did get one thing right: that many people, even the most obscure citizen, are writing autobiographies. Some authors are even taking to writing fictional ones for historical figures who have been dead for millenia. In these books a modern author assumes the role of a historical …

… that Claudius admits when he writes, "I became another Augustus," (681) they are both thoroughly characterized by their respective authors making the two novels excellent examples of how effective and entertaining the fictional autobiographical genre is. It is certain that if Lord Altrincham had read Augustus and Claudius the God he would have exempted fictional autobiography from his poignant generalized slander of the genre, and he would surely consider it about as reprehensible as monogamy.