LEVICK, B., — Claudius.

Routledge, London / New York, 2008. Digital printing ed.2001. XVI,256p. ills.(B&W photographs and line drawings). Paperback. Paper to fore edge cover a bit wrinkled. 'Biographies of the ancients tend to have a bad name. Unless it be Cicero, Julian the Apostate or certain bishops, we cannot know enough about the person to be able to do more than make guesses about character and motivation. The concentration on a single character can also lead an author away from important general issues to lengthy discussion of trivial details, or to unlikely propositions about the importance of this character or that in the history of ancient civilizations. Barbara Levick’s volume on Claudius is not this kind of book. It is a study of the evolution of the principate through the career of one of the emperors, it avoids the trivial, and it must rank as one of the best studies of the Julio-Claudians. (...) this is a very good book. It gets away from the old questions that have bedevilled the study of this period in the past, many of L.’s observations are new, and many of them are important. This book will probably remain the best treatment of Julio-Claudian government for a long time to come.' (DAVID POTTER in BMCR 1990.02.12).