The Cluvii came from Campania, the most hellenised area of Italy, and by the first century bc were well known in commerce and finance in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. They were also of long-standing senatorial rank. Cluvii had been praetors in 178(?), 173 and 172 bc; two generations later a Cluvius, praetor or proconsul, was honoured by the business-men of Delos in or about 103 bc; two generations later again, a Cluvius who had been elected consul but prevented from holding office was granted consular rank by the young Caesar in 29 bc.

Cluvius Rufus the historian was therefore a nobilis, and if Josephus is right to call him an ex-consul in January 41, he could have been born as late as ad 8. That would put him in his late fifties when he acted as the announcer for Nero's public stage performances at the Neronia of ad 65 (and again on the emperor's tour of Greece in 66–67). Since Nero had the two Praetorian Prefects to carry his lyre, a senior ex-consul as the herald would not be inappropriate. Cluvius was a noted orator who did not use his eloquence to prosecute his rivals. Given his family's philhellene tradition, we may guess that he excelled in the display performances of epideictic oratory; such skills would find an ideal outlet in the context of Nero's games.

Appointed by Galba to govern northern Spain (Tarraconensis), he manoeuvred diplomatically in the civil war of 69, transferring his allegiance first to Otho and then to Vitellius. As a man whose expertise was with words, not armies, what else could he do? It evidently did him no harm with Vespasian, the eventual victor, and when peace returned Cluvius Rufus settled down to write history. He was well qualified: consul under Gaius, a conspicuous member of the court of Nero, a prominent, if reluctant, participant in the civil war—and a man who knew what to do with language. For according to Hellenistic theory, historiography was closely related to epideictic oratory, if not actually a subdivision of it.