285: I, CLAUDIUS vs THE CROWN
The Title merely implies the mixtures of fact and fiction that characterise so many biographies, ancient and modern, in whatever medium.
I do not intend to read about Harry going Spare. Nor shall I open the companion ravings threatened by his Missus.
I am simply taking a cue to compare and contrast some ancient princes: Cyrus ‘The Great’, founder of the Persian Empire, and Germanicus, most glittering young Roman royal of the Julio-Claudia dynasty – Augustus to Nero. Two primary sources for the first: Herodotus’s Book One and the Cyropædia of Xenophon.
At first blush, a Greek writing the biography of a non-Greek comes as a surprise. If biography it is. Many see the work more as an historical novel. If so, it would predate by some centuries what are commonly regarded
