Published by Penguin for more than sixty years, the author and scholar Robert Graves wrote two of the greatest historical novels of the twentieth century: I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Written as Claudius's autobiography, they follow his progress from a stammering figure of fun to the ruler of the Roman Empire. Here, he describes the glory and decadence of the mad Emperor Caligula's reign - an age of wild debauchery and whimsical cruelty.

Caligula was now publicly Jove. He was not only Latin Jove but Olympian Jove, and not only that but all the other Gods and Goddesses, too, whom he had decapitated and re-headed. Sometimes he was Apollo and sometimes Mercury and sometimes Pluto, in each case wearing the appropriate dress and demanding the appropriate sacrifices. I have seen him go about as Venus in a long gauzy silk robe with face painted, a red wig, padded bosom, and high-heeled slippers. He was present as the Good Goddess at her December festival: that was a scandal. Mars was a favourite character with him, too. But most of the time he was Jove: he wore an olive-wreath, a beard of fine gold wires, and a bright blue silk cloak, and carried a jagged piece of electrum in his hand to represent lightning. One day he was on the Oration Platform in the Market Place dressed as Jove and making a speech. 'I intend shortly,' he said, 'to build a city for my occupation on the top of the Alps. We Gods prefer mountain-tops to unhealthy river-valleys. From the Alps I shall have a wide view of my Empire - France, Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Germany. If I see any treason hatching anywhere below me, I shall give a warning growl of thunder so! [He growled in his throat.] If the warning is disregarded I shall blast the traitor with this lightning of mine, so!' [He hurled his piece of lightning at the crowd. It hit a statue and bounced off harmlessly.] A stranger in the crowd, a shoemaker from Marseilles on a sight-seeing visit to Rome, burst out laughing. Caligula had the fellow arrested and brought nearer to the platform, then bending down he asked, frowning: 'Who do I seem to you to be?' 'A big humbug,' said the shoemaker. Caligula was puzzled. 'Humbug?' he repeated. 'I a humbug!' 'Yes,' said the Frenchman. 'I'm only a poor French shoemaker and this is my first visit to Rome. And I don't know any better. If anyone at home did what you're doing he'd be a big humbug.'

Caligula began to laugh too. 'You poor half-wit,' he said. 'Of course he would be. That's just the difference.'

The whole crowd laughed like mad, but whether at Caligula or at the shoemaker was not clear.

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