This character's first love is killed on their intended wedding day, when she is stabbed in the arm with a poisoned needle.
After this character unexpectedly survives being pushed off of the bridge at Lyons and into the Rhone river, he quotes aloud the passage about Hephaestus's plummet to earth from Homer's Iliad to charm the man who pushed him into sparing his life. This character's first love is killed on their intended wedding day, when she is stabbed in the arm with a poisoned needle. As a young boy, this character catches a wolf cub that falls out of the sky during a fight between eagles. When asked by two (*) historians which of their styles he prefers, he chooses the factually accurate one over the stylistically beautiful one. The former of those historians, Pollio, advises this character to play the fool, which allows him to survive the assassination attempts that befall his relatives at the order of his grandmother Livia. For 10 points, this stammering Roman emperor, the protagonist of two novels by Robert Graves.
After this character unexpectedly survives being pushed off of the bridge at Lyons and into the Rhone river, he quotes aloud the passage about Hephaestus's plummet to earth from Homer's Iliad to charm the man who pushed him into sparing his life.
(Tiberius) Claudius (Caesar Augustus Germanicus)