This page is for tropes that have appeared in I, Claudius (the novels, not the series).
For the rest:
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: While Claudius is perfectly aware of his three predecessors' crimes and mistakes, he decides not to mention them in his official autobiography. He also declines to take any action against Caligula's memory, such as declaring the day of his death a national holiday.
- Never Suicide: Piso's death is staged as a suicide by his wife, Plancina, who in fact murdered him.
- No Hero to His Valet: Silas has this type of relationship with Herod Agrippa. It's Played for Laughs at first, but when Herod becomes king and Silas disrespects him in public, he ends up imprisioned and murdered.
- No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Claudius' dinner with Livia has shades of this, although Claudius isn't Livia's prisoner.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Claudius' former lover and longtime friend Calpurnia, dies, he writes an epitaph for her. This is the only poem he ever wrote in his life, apart from school assigments. He explains that he wanted to do something exceptional to show the depth of his grief.
- Obfuscating Disability/Obfuscating Stupidity:Pollio: Do you want to live a long and busy life, with honor at the end of it?
Claudius: Yes.
Pollio: Then exaggerate your limp, stammer deliberately, sham sickness frequently, let your wits wander, jerk your head and twitch with your hands on all public or semi-public occasions. If you could see as much as I see, you would know that this was your only hope of eventual glory. - Odd Friendship:
- Antonia, who is a very traditional and virtuous Roman matron, is fond of Lovable Rogue Herod Agrippa, and greatly enjoys listening to his stories. She even lends him money from time to time.
- Up to a certain point, Herod's friendship with Claudius is this.
- Offing the Offspring:
- Livia poisoned her husband, grandson, and everyone else who got in her way. She also arranged the death of her son Drusus, who was politically opposed to her (although she claims in the end he actually died of natural causes).
- Antonia is forced to have her own daughter Livilla killed. She chooses to lock her in a room and starve her to death. The room is next to hers, so she could hear Livilla's cries and curses for days. Claudius explains that Antonia didn't do this out of sadism, "for it was inexpressibly painful to her, but as a punishment to herself for having brought up so abominable a daughter."
- One-Steve Limit: Defied. Claudius, in his role as narrator, writes at some length about his useless teacher Marcus Porcius Cato, only to point out that the great Romans called Marcus Porcius Cato were his ancestors, and this one is just a particularly useless teacher. He then muses that he'll have to be very careful to keep his own family members apart since their names are very similar and he is well aware how confusing that can be.
- Claudius has the same name as his paternal uncle— they're both Tiberius Claudius Nero. Later, Claudius' adopted son takes the same name. As in historical texts, Tiberius is nominally referred to by his first name, Claudius his surname, and Nero his nickname (cognomen). Also see "Only Known by Their Nickname" for the number of Drususes that pop up.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Many of the characters are only known by their nicknames (for example, "Caligula" and "Castor"). Roman naming customs were very unimaginative, so several people might have identical or almost-identical names; nicknames made it much easier than trying to figure out which of the eight or nine "Drusus"es someone might be talking about. The narrator will usually mention the real name before telling you that that guy will just be known as "Castor" from then on.
- Outliving One's Offspring: It happens to several characters, but the one who takes it hardest is Antonia, Claudius' mother, whose elder son Germanicus and only daughter Livilla both die before her (in Livilla's case, starved to death by Antonia herself as punishment for her crimes). Several of Antonia's grandchildren are also dead by the time she passes away.
- Out with a Bang: Apparently, this is how Pompey, Claudius' son-in-law and his male lover die, being killed while having sex.
- Overlord Jr.: Caligula is this to Tiberius, although he's only Tiberius' adoptive son (and biological grandnephew).
- The Pardon: Caligula pardons Herod Agrippa, who had been imprisoned for treason by Tiberius. Later Claudius pardons his nieces Agrippinilla and Lesbia, allowing them to return from exile. Seneca is pardoned by Claudius not once but twice: first, when he becomes emperor, and recalls several people sentenced to exile by Caligula. Shortly after, Claudius discovers Seneca is committing adultery with his niece Lesbia and exiles him again. Years later, he decides to recall him from exile to make him Nero's tutor.
- Parental Favoritism:
- Antonia favors Germanicus and Livilla over Claudius. Later she comes to regret it, and considers their deaths a divine punishment for her mistreatment of Claudius.
- Antonia (Claudius' eldest daughter) thinks he loves Britannicus and Octavia more than her, because she's the daughter of Claudius' second, loveless marriage, and they are the children of Messalina, who Claudius is very much in love with. Claudius manages to convince her she's wrong.
- Parental Incest: Caligula claims his mother Agrippina was the result of an incestuous affair between Augustus and his daughter Julia. This is almost certainly a lie: Caligula dislikes the fact that his maternal grandfather Agrippa was a man of low birth (despite the fact he went on to become a great war hero), so he wants to erase him from his family tree, and would rather believe himself the product of incest than the grandson of a "lowly" admiral.
- Parental Neglect: Agrippinilla acts this way toward her son Nero, allowing him to be raised by his aunt and her lovers. Claudius forces her to finish raising him herself.
- Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: Antonia discovers her pre-adolescent grandchildren Caligula and Drusilla committing incest, and threatens to report this to Tiberius, but Claudius manages to convince her to keep their secret.
- Pass Fail: In Claudius the God, a lawyer who has pled cases in front of Claudius and his predecessors for decades is unmasked as a slave by one of Claudius's friends, who pulls aside the lawyer's toga to expose his brand.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage:
- Drusus and Antonia's, Tiberius and Vipsania's, Germanicus and Agrippina's and Cypros and Herod Agrippa's arranged marriages are very happy. However, they are the exception to the rule.
- Messalina's marriage to Claudius seems to be this, until she shows her true colors.
- Perspective Flip: A version of Jesus Christ's life is told by Herod Agrippa in a letter to Claudius. Herod considers Jesus to have been a fraud and persecutes his followers, so his view of Jesus's story is somewhat unreliable.
- Please Shoot the Messenger: Caligula, in a non-fatal version, punishes someone who's annoyed him by sending him with a letter to the King of Morocco. The letter says, "Kindly send bearer back to Rome."
- Please Spare Him, My Liege!: Messalina convinces Claudius to spare the life of a defeated German gladiator. Later, Claudius comes to suspect she wanted to take him as her lover, and that he's the real father of his youngest daughter Octavia.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Julius Caesar's is this, since his murder brings his nephew and adoptive son Octavian/Augustus to the center of the political stage.
- Politically Correct History: This is what Claudius is forced to write during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. His 3 works of the time are a history of Augustus' religious reforms, in which he carefully avoids to point out some mistaked made by the emperor's advisors on the matter, and two books about the history of Carthage and Etruria, both of them being uncontroversial topics by the time he wrote them. Nevertheless, he is quite proud of his works. He also claims his official autobiography, written after he becomes emperor, is this. He can't legally criticize Augustus and Livia because they have been deified, and he considers it would be unfair to criticize Tiberius and Caligula while not pointing out the faults of their predecessors.
- Posthumous Character: Julius Caesar, Octavia, Mark Antony, Claudius' paternal grandfather, and many others have a lot of bearing in the plot but are dead by the time the protagonist is born. His father Drusus also counts as this, since he dies when Claudius is only a baby.
- Prematurely Bald: Caligula loses his hair in his 20s. His grandmother Julia, Augustus' daughter, also goes bald when she's only a teenager, although Claudius speculates it might have been Livia's doing.
- Promotion to Parent: After his father's death, Germanicus becomes the head of his family (pater familias), and acts as a sort of father figure to his younger brother Claudius.
- Prophecies Are Always Right:
- In Claudius the God, Claudius is told by Messalina that a prophecy says that her husband is going to die in a month. She uses this to convince him to divorce her (strictly pro forma!) and marry her off to another man. When Claudius realises that it was a plot against him, he sentences that man to death.
- When a wounded wolf-cub falls into the boy Claudius's hands, his mother sends the children away to consult an augur. Claudius's sister eavesdrops, though, and hears the meaning: that Rome (the wolf) will be in desperate straits, and Claudius will protect it. She sneers "I hope I'll be long dead before then!", and her mother angrily punishes her, "You're going to be locked up in a room with nothing to eat"—both inadvertent prophecies, as the mother ends up starving her adult daughter to death years later.
- Tiberius has an astrologer who successfully predicts his rise to power, then warns him to "beware when your own lizard sends him a message". When Tiberius sees his pet giant lizard suddenly dead and being torn apart by ants, his own death follows shortly after.
- Repeatedly in both books, there are prophecies of a new god arising—saying such things as that he will die alone and his friends will drink his blood, but that no temple in the Roman Empire will be dedicated to any god but him. Both Livia and Caligula believe that the prophecies are about them, but they're mistaken; rather, these seem to be prophecies of Christianity displacing the Roman religion.
- Prophecies Rhyme All the Time: Early on, we see two Sibylline prophecies that hint of Claudius's rule. Both prophecies rhyme, though that wasn't a typical feature of Greek or Latin poetry (or prophecy). Arguably it's Translation Convention, translating Greek verse (which was based on patterns of long and short syllables) into an equivalent English poetic form (based on stressed syllables and rhyme).
- Prophecy Twist:
- Claudius reveals early on that he had learned of a prophecy that describes his predecessors and himself, and speaks of his successor as horrible, and the last. Claudius interprets this to mean that his successor will be Rome's last Emperor, and that after him, the Republic will be restored, which is why he allows the horrible Nero to be his successor. However, the prophecy actually means (as the audience knows but Claudius doesn't) that Nero will be the last Julio-Claudian Emperor (but will of course have numerous successors).
- Caligula is told to beware of "Cassius". He interprets this as a warning againts his brother-in-law Cassius Longinus. In the end, he's killed by Cassius Chaerea.
- Tiberius is told that in ten years, "Tiberius Caesar" will still be emperor. He interprets it as a reassurance that he has ten more years to live and reign. He dies not long after that, and the prophecy is fulfilled by his nephew Claudius, whose first name is also Tiberius and who takes the surname Caesar when he becomes emperor.
- Public Execution: Subverted. People are executed in private, but their bodies are desecrated in public.
- Puppet King: Claudius chooses to become this after the fall of Messalina.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Several cases.
- Livia manages to put her son Tiberius on the throne, but he loathes her, and eventually strips her of almost all political influence.
- Sejanus and Livilla achieve their goal of getting rid of Agrippina and her children, but after years of fueling Tiberius' paranoia, the emperor is quick to realise Sejanus has grown too powerful (and therefore, dangerous), and after a timely warning from Antonia, has him killed.
- Macro helps Caligula get the throne by murdering Tiberius. Not long after he becomes emperor, Caligula goes mad and puts Macro to death.
- Agripinilla gets to see her son Nero become emperor. A few years later, Nero orders her death.
