I Am a Barbarian
By Edgar Rice Burroughs (Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., 1967)
[I wrote this review a few years ago and it appeared on a website,
but it seems to have vanished into the ether of time on the Internet. Considering
my recent run on ERB material, and that I’m currently reading and preparing
a review for the “companion” novel to this one, Tarzan and “The Foreign
Legion”, I felt I needed to revive this overview.]
Edgar Rice Burroughs, inventor of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars—and by
extension the pulp magazines as we know them—wrote I Am a Barbarian in
1941, when his creative forces appeared spent. He had started his final
series, the disappointing and creatively stagnant Venus/Amtor novels, in
1932. The Tarzan adventures limped along, and the once superb Martian series
had sputtered out. He wrote only one more complete novel after this one,
Tarzan
and “The Foreign Legion.” The entry of the United States into World
War II prompted Burroughs to take a job as a war correspondent, reducing
the time he devoted to writing (or, more accurately, dictating) fiction.
I
Am a Barbarian did not see print until 1967, nineteen years after the
author’s death, when the company he created, ERB Inc., released it in a
limited edition of two hundred hardcover books. It soon appeared in a mass-market
paperback edition with a gorgeous Boris Vallejo illustration adorning the
front (seen here). But it remains one of Burroughs’s least-known works,
and even with the recent publication of quality editions of his books,
I Am a Barbarian still languishes out of print.
This is an unfortunate situation, because I Am a Barbarian rates as
one of the author’s best-written works, and it differs substantially from
the standard adventure fare that made him famous but eventually turned
stale. Perhaps Burroughs’s had simply tired of the chase-and-escape formula
that he had relied on with so many other novels and wanted try something
different. The virile title immediately suggests Burroughs business-as-usual,
but this isn’t a “barbarian” adventure like a Tarzan novel or The Eternal
Savage. It’s a fictionalized historical biography, essentially Burroughs’s
version of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius. (Naming it I, Barbarian, would
have been a touch too obvious, but I Am a Barbarian certainly comes close.)
Graves’s immensely popular historical novel, published seven years earlier
to great acclaim, told the first-person account of the early Julio-Claudian
Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Caius. I Am a Barbarian uses the
identical concept and time period, while slanting it more toward its author’s
talents. Instead of viewing ancient Rome through the eyes of a future emperor,
Burroughs describes it through the view of a hardened Briton slave. He
also narrows the focus to that of one emperor: Caius Caesar, the mad despot
better known by his childhood nickname “Caligula” (“Little Boot”).
As he did in many of his works, Burroughs uses a preface to create the
illusion of veracity. The Foreword claims that the book is a “free translation
of the memoirs of Britannicus, for twenty-five years the slave of Caius
Caesar Caligula, emperor of Rome from A.D. 37 to 41,” and lists real sources
used to authentic the “facts.” Burroughs does a fine job of maintaining
the illusion of Britannicus’s historic voice and presents a realistic look
at ancient Rome. The dialogue sometimes slips into Americanized slang,
like “nuts!” and “fat chance,” but otherwise Burroughs’s prose stays faithful
to its narrator and period.
Most of the novel occurs during the rule of Tiberius Caesar (14–37 C.E.)
and concludes with Caligula’s brief but gory reign (37–41 C.E.). The narrator
is Britannicus, a slave from Briton whom the young Caligula demanded as
his personal servant. Britannicus lives at the whim of this petulant Caesar
and his hateful mother, Agrippina, granddaughter of the beloved first emperor,
Caesar Augustus. Britannicus has an amicable relationship with Caligula—one
of strangest male relationships in the Burroughs canon—but one immersed
in tension. Because of the cruel murders of his parents after the Romans
captured them, Britannicus swears that one day he will “kill a Caesar.”
Readers should have no trouble deducing which Caesar he has in mind.
Black comic satire of the decadence of Rome—or more specifically the
decadence of the Julio-Claudians—dominates the book, and Burroughs shows
a knack for the brand of biting humor that he rarely got to practice in
his other works. Britannicus spares no opportunity to criticize his masters:
“From birth, apparently, all the male children in both lines had that idea
impressed upon them—to grow up and become an emperor and be poisoned and
stabbed in the back. It always seemed to me a ridiculous ambition.” He
describes the hateful Agrippina:
Her pride in the Julian blood stemmed from the fact that the family
was supposed to have descended directly from a goddess: Venus. But why
that should have been anything to boast of, I do not know. Had I been descended
from Venus, I should have kept the matter very quiet. She had been a notoriously
loose woman, appallingly promiscuous.
Although Britannicus is a barbarian slave among the aristocracy of
Rome, he has his own trace of snobbery. He takes pride in his heritage
from Cingetorix, the King of Kent (mentioning it innumerable times), and
disdains the plebs of Rome as much as he hates the tainted aristocracy.
Like Robert E. Howard, Burroughs shows an appreciation of the moral clarity
of the barbarian, but he also had a streak of elitism that percolates through
his writing, and this book is no exception.
During the twenty-five years that I Am a Barbarian covers, the story
switches between the political jockeying, murdering, and general vileness
of the Julio-Claudians and the personal life of Britannicus. Britannicus
forms important friendships and develops into an excellent charioteer,
while the family that owns him tries to maneuver their children onto the
Emperor’s throne when the aged Tiberius finally dies. The emphasis is on
character and style instead of action, which might disappoint fans of Burroughs’s
early fast-paced adventures. The action passages, which include a deadly
chariot race, a battle in the Coliseum with a tiger, and a tense near-crucifixion,
are very exciting. But the book’s effectiveness stems from Burroughs’s
readable style and the fun he has with the sarcastic commentary on Roman
decadence.
Burroughs still stumbles over some of his favorite overused devices.
He hauls out a chestnut that originates back in his first novel, A Princess
of Mars: the frustrated but idealized romantic pursuit. The love that Britannicus
has for the slave girl Attica, who spurns him frequently just because she
can, feels too similar to the frustrated romantic chases in Tarzan of the
Apes, At the Earth’s Core, Thuvia, Maid of Mars, and many others. A love
triangle between Brittannicus, Attica, and charioteer Numerius has no genuine
tension because Britannicus and Numerius remain friendly with each other
in their rivalry.
Burroughs sometimes relies too heavily on his sources, especially I,
Claudius. He enumerates the terrors of the Caligula’s reign in a rote fashion,
as if he simply had I, Claudius and Suetonius’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars
open in front of him and copied off the mad emperor’s “greatest hits.”
All of Caligula’s famed sayings and atrocities—”Off comes this head whenever
I give the word,” “Let them hate provided they are afraid,” random slayings
of men with more hair than he, nominating his favorite horse to the Senate—get
ticked off the list one-by-one. As interesting as Caligula’s madness is,
in these passages the book gets too distanced from Britannicus and too
imbedded in the blood-red splashes of history. Burroughs does finally weave
the romance with Attica into Caligula’s story with a thrilling chariot
race and the passionate, bloody conclusion.
Fans and admirers of Edgar Rice Burroughs who have yet to experience
I Am a Barbarian should seek it out. Despite the novel’s flaws (and what
Burroughs’s novel isn’t flawed?) it will remind readers that the man from
Tarzana was a far more talented and varied writer than his critics—and
some of his fans—ever imagined.
