IMPERIUM Review

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IMPERIUM ReviewI give this novel my highest personal rating: it performs the extremely difficult task of making Cicero, a rather stuffy icon for 2 millennia, as accessible and as politically understandable as the national news in your local paper and to paint his turbulent times in a way anyone can identify with and understand. It is simply the best novel I've ever read, in terms of historical accuracy and intelligent reading of complex personalities, about the failing Roman Republic.
I have always had problems with Cicero. You have the "lawyer's briefs," his speeches and trials; you have the wonderful intimate, flawed, and somehow endearing correspondence in which Cicero proves he was far from able to navigate the complex political currents of his remarkable day; then you have his alliance with the Optimates, the rich nobles whose refusal to reform the Roman Republic made it, in part, possible for military strong-men like Pompey and Caesar to threaten and finally help destroy it.
Harris is simply superb. He uses Cicero's actual slave, Tiro (famous as his closest assistant) as the narrator of the remarkable and tragic events of those final years. I've read enough of Cicero to feel that Harris has somehow internalized and channeled both his speeches and correspondence; the context is effortlessly painted. Harris' comprehensive knowledge of Rome in the period roughly 70 BC is so meticulous that he makes it seem as easy to paint as an artist in a modern Chinatown. I've read enough of Harris' earlier novels to know that he's a fine plotter and draws clear characters. But I did not expect how he would recreate living men and women in a vanished time with such comfort and authenticity.
One of the great early trials that "made" Cicero's name was his prosecution of the politically-connected noble, Verres, who had pillaged his Sicilian province. In reading of the preparation for and prosecution of this trial (which took real political courage, in view of the vested interests ranged against conviction), I can honestly say it reads like a thriller and its culmination is extraordinarily moving - all while following history meticulously. But Harris isn't out to make Cicero a saint - we see (perhaps all too clearly, as parallels with modern politics spring easily to mind) just what it takes to claw your way up the Roman political tree, the kinds of compromises it requires, the kind of damage it can do to the man.
First in, I understand, a remarkable trilogy in which Cicero's career is impacted by other giants - Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, Clodius, all unforgettably drawn - this book is unput-downable, remarkably effective in conveying us to an ancient world, thrillingly able to make the connections between ancient and modern times through the medium of a remarkable politician who would be equally at home, now, in Washington or Baghdad. You will not feel the same about Cicero, or ancient Rome, again.
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