Claudius the God

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THE `gold piece', here used as the regular monetary standard, is the Latin aureus, a coin worth 100 sestertii, or twenty-five silver denarli ('silver pieces') : it may be thought of as worth one pound sterling; or five (pre-war) American dollars. The `mile' is the 'Roman mile, some thirty paces shorter than the English mile. The. marginal dates have for convenience been given according to Christian reckoning: the Greek reckoning, used by Claudius, counted the years from the First Olympiad, which took place in 776 B.C. For convenience also; the most familiar geographical names have been used: thus `France', not `Transalpine Gaul', because France covers roughly the same territorial area and it would be inconsistent to call towns like Nimes and Boulogne and Lyons by their modem names - their classical ones would not be popularly recognized - while placing them in Gallic Transalpine or, as the Greeks called it, Galicia. (Greek geographical terms are most confusing: Germany was called `the country of the Celts'.) Similarly the most familiar forms of proper names have been used - 'Livy' for Titus Livius, 'Cymbeline' for Cunobelinus, `Mark Antony' for Marcus Antonius. Claudius is writing in Greek, the scholarly language of his day, which accounts for his careful explanation of Latin jokes and for his translation of a passage from Ennius quoted by him in the original.

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