Customer Reviews

Gods And Legions: A Novel of the Roman Empire

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Emperor Julian is one of the most controversial figures of the late Roman / early Christian period. He stands alone in that he tried to reverse the Empire's adoption of Christianity as a state religion. For this he is loathed by the Church (which named him the Apostate) and worshiped by the most romantic admirers of the Classical Period.

Michael Curtis Ford has attempted to unravel Julian's complex personality and interpret his actions by delving deep into his early childhood and experiences as the military leader of the armies of Gaul. He then follows him through his ascention to the throne and his agressive slide into increasingly erratic and controversial behaviour towards the end of his life.

The journey is very enjoyable. Ford writes the political intrigue, the fight to defend Gaul and the young commander's development very well indeed. The Empire's progressive stagnation can be felt, the conflicts between the old and new ideals are quickly outlined. So, the first two thirds of the book, or so, are really quite good.

Unfortunatelly, towards the end, where the novel reaches the most controversial aspects of the story, Ford seems to run out of steam. Or perhaps, he is reluctant to offend mainstream sensibilities. The narrative becomes rather one-sided, using mostly the viewpoints of Christian clerics to describe Julian's actions and interpret his motives. He quite innexplicably turns from a tolerant, cultured "philosopher king" to a bloodthirsty pagan ruler, bent on continuous sacrifices, and fanatical worshiping of forgotten deities, under the influence of a malicious dwarf!

In this the book fails to convince. For example, a bit of background on the religious upheaval and continuous state-sponsored prosecutions of the preceding 50 years or so would have shed some light on the situation and help the reader understand Julian's transformation - yet none is given. Instead, the Emperor's behaviour is simply attributed to a deseased mind, poisoned from having harboured feelings of vengeanace for years (his family was murdered) and the story quickly rushes to an end.

If your interest lies in Julian and his story, this novel is going to dissapoint you. However, if you are simply a fan of the period and love reading about Rome and the Romans, you will certainly enjoy it.

The mid-Fourth Century Emperor Julian is definitely one of the more fascinating characters in the later Roman Empire. In a time of growing Christianity and crumbling power, Julian was a strong leader and a devout Hellenistic Pagan. He brought decisive victories against the barbarians invading Gaul (modern-day France) and the Persians - the eternal thorn in the side of Rome, but died in a catastrophic overshooting of his resources in the midst of attacking the Persians at the heart of their Empire.

Ford's treatment of Julian and the times in which he lived is both strong and disappointing at the same time. The sense of military tension and the increasing Orientalism of the Imperial Court come through strongly, and Julian's campaigns in Gaul and Persia are well-researched. Nonetheless, there's a very "Middle Ages" sense to the Christian church of timelessness and doctrine - when it should be in the midst of faction purges and self-definition - as well as a close-knit feel of Roman politics that never existed.

Admittedly, there's little reason to make "Gods and Legions" another "I, Claudius", but the political life of the novel is boiled down to half a dozen or so memorable characters. To write a novel about the Roman Empire that glosses over politics is like writing a novel of Eighteenth Century America that glosses over the British.

It's obvious from his postscript that Ford has done his research - he's thoroughly combed the best sources of the times including Julian's own writings for the sense of power and contradiction that the man's legacy carries even today. However, the contradictions he focuses on loan themselves more to Julian's character than his history. He uses Ammianus Marcellinus (a fourth-century solider who wrote a great deal about Julian from a first-hand perspective) very hazardously, practically quoting directly at some points and totally ignoring him when he wants to give Julian a more mystical, fantastic presence (which can be somewhat odd considering that Ammianus was one of his chief supporters in the historical record).

In all, Ford's book makes for a decent novel and a decent military grounding in Julian's accomplishments, but fails in numerous accounts to give as accurate an impression of the time as Ford would have you believe. If you have a casual interest in Roman history, it's a decent way to kill a plane ride, but I'd caution the serious student to take this book with a grain of salt.

Gore Vidal's "Julian" is one of my favorite all-time books, so I thought I might enjoy another on the subject. All-in-all I was disappointed and only managed to make it about 3/4 of the way through with much effort. Though the author's writing style is quite readable, writing a story from the viewpoint of someone who diliked Julian and is supposed to be his friend just didn't cut it with me. The self-righteous Christian got old real fast. And the secondary characters like Oribasius and Maximus were so vividly done by Vidal as to make them a jarring, discordant note in this work. The only way it was in any way better than Vidal's work is the battle descriptions, which are well done.

To me it was like someone trying to re-write Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird or A Confederacy of Dunces. It can't be improved upon, so why put forth the effort?

The emperor Julian, known as the Apostate, is one of the most interesting characters from the history of imperial Rome. In succeeding Constantius, he was regarded as a vigorous and capable leader whose administration was overshadowed by his attempts to return Rome to the pre-Christian gods of tradition. He was, therefore, reviled by early Christians and Christian historians who saw his ultimate defeat in Persia as the inevitable result of his impiety. In this novel, Julian's rise and fall are recounted by his personal physician Caesarius, a staunch Christian and scientific modernist. Caesarius is a real life individual who was brother to the more famous Bishop Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.

Julian himself rose from an insecure position as a distant relative of the emperor through banishment in various outposts of the empire to a position in Gaul in which he was able to distinguish himself as a leader and, also therefore, a potential threat. Threatened with an ultimatum, he resolved to put himself and his faithful Gallic army to the test and marches to seize Constantinople itself. Throughout his journey, he is accompanied by Caesarius who acts not just as his doctor but also his friend and, in part, his conscience. The two ultimately clash over the issue of religion as Julian's views are revealed to be other than he had professed during the reign of the previous Christian emperor. The tension between the two represents an important dynamic in the developing plot.

This is competent historical fiction. It tells the tale it has to tell well enough and there are plenty of thrills and spills along the way, with set-piece battles, gladiatorial fights and mystical visits. However, there is a lack of depth to the characters and, perhaps just as important, something of a lack of numbers. Too few characters are developed nearly well enough - after all, the life of a soldier and emperor meant dealing with a very wide range of people and experiences. Those who are described seem to have little hinterland - they are simply the Apostate (Julian), the Christian (Caesarius), the old-fashioned doctor (Oribasius), the faithful old soldier (Sallustius) and so on. There is little real change here and little recourse to poetry, philosophy or popular culture. Indeed, it is difficult to tell what the characters eat, drink, or feel. Julian is described as an ascetic and, while this may be true, it seems that the author grasped at this fact with relief to avoid dealing with the world of senses. People go for years not only abstaining from sex but neither thinking about it or seeing other people who inspire such thoughts in them. Foreign people have few if any interesting customs or habits. Well. I could continue but the point is made.

Having a physician as a narrator is a useful device of which much has been made in other works. It enables a scientifically-trained mind to be given access to a great leader and, hence, offers the opportunity to provide detailed analysis of the central figure. This opportunity is not fully taken here: Julian remains an enigma and, given the low level of awareness that Caesarius has of himself, this is not very surprising. Nevertheless, this is a nicely written work of historical fiction that will be of interest to those who enjoy works in this field.

Although I am far from being a Scholar of the Classics and I do not have a large appetite for historical fiction set in ancient Rome, Gods and Legions, the second novel by Michael Curtis Ford, has an uncanny ability to draw in modern readers with its vivid imagery, fascinating characters, and well written dialogue that would appeal to even those who lack any prior background to the era. Although the story of Emperor Julian is well chronicled in history, it is not necessarily well known. The tale of the unlikely heir, banished to await his execution, and rising unexpectedly to the throne would be fascinating enough. Yet the story that Ford tells progresses towards even more surprising and compelling twists beyond the ascension of the young Emperor. Ford exhibits a fantastic ability to paint a picture of ancient warfare, and adeptly contrasts different armies' strategies, techniques, and dispositions, creating a graphic description of ancient times. Just as easily, Ford shifts gears to provide wonderful dialogue between the protagonists, influenced by classical authors and philosophers. The complex character that is Julian will confuse and dumbfound readers as his bizarre behavior leads to his demise. What motivates his actions? That is left for the reader to interpret. Although it would be easy to summarize the plot, the true art is found in Ford's writing. Overall, Ford's second book is a must read for those who enjoy a well-told story lush with action, imagery, and intellect. One need not be a classical scholar to enjoy this fine tale.

Ford's second novel is on the ascension and fall of Julian the Apostate, Constantine the Great's nephew and emperor of Rome: the last pagan emperor of the Roman Empire. Although an improvement to his previous novel "The Ten Thousand" in terms of theme, plot, and character development, the novel is but a pale comparison to "Julian" by Gore Vidal. Unfortunately, unlike Vidal's novel where Julian is presented as a tragic hero, Ford presents him as an Anti-Christ who's out to destroy Christianity and he does it badly.

The voice in the story is that of Caesarius, Julian's friend and personal physician reflecting on dialogue and experiences with Julian. Caesarius is a religious zealot who is distrought at Julian's conversion to paganism and his attempts at reducing the political influence of the Christian Church. Although Caesarius being a devout Christian provides a good counterpoint to looking at Julian's paganism, it turns the narrative into an overly biased religious sermon that is tedious at best with a "Good vs. Ultra-Evil" theme, plot structure, and character development that begins to make the reader feel like he's dragging some kind of penitance. Ford's straw-man Julian is so villified that he inadvertently turns his Caesarius into a very unsympathetic prudish and narrow-minded character sermonizing about how saintly he is and how evil the pagan world is. In the end though, despite his sermons, Caesarius turns to be nothing more than a pitiful coward and overzealous traitor at best: hardly the kind of personnage you would want as a hero in a story.

Ford's theme of vindication in this novel is completely undermined by his own choice of plot and voice. A third person narrative or much greater development is required for what Ford intended here. Plot, voice, and theme have been recurrent problems in all of Ford's novels so far demonstrating his limitations as a writer of fiction. The plot runs along in a rather mechanical and predictable way and the ambitious theme chosen by Ford couldn't be filled by his poor character development or his choice of voice. A good part of Ford's dillema is his desire for historical accuracy which comes into conflict with the theme he's trying to present. Ford follows history in showing how Julian sought only to diminish the Christian Church's involvement in the Empire's political institutions that Constantine The Great had allowed: he didn't want the Church to continue receiving gratuities from the government or it to be part of the imperial bureaucracy in any way. Julian wanted to supplant Christianity with Mithraism as the official state religion. Julian never persecuted individual Christians because of their faith such as Nero or other previous emperors did which is what Ford would have needed to justify his narrator's views and actions. Ford being unable to villify Julian enough to make him the demonic character he seeks to develop leaves the reader following the voice of an obtuse zealot who is proud of his betrayals despite his claims of personal integrity: this only means the certainty of a very anti-climactic ending.

If you're a born-again or devout Christian who is more concerned with a divine vindication theme instead of the traditional martyrdom ones in Henryk Sienkiewicz' "Quo Vadis" or Wallace's "Ben Hur", then this poorly developed narrative might appeal to you. If you want a narrative of the same subject handled by a talented writer who accurately reflects the events and prevailing attitudes of those times, I recommend Gore Vidal's "Julian" or reading the works of Julian himself for an entertaining read. For vastly superior historical fiction involving only pagan antiquity, I would recommend Robert Graves' 'I, Claudius', or Stephen Pressfield's 'Gates of Fire' and 'Tides of War' instead of this novel. I don't recommend any of Ford's novels as they're all more or less plagued by similar problems.

This book is rife with problems, most importantly the narrator. Ford admits in his intro that Julian is one of history's most fascinating characters yet saddles Julian and the readers with a vitriolic, unsympathetic narrator which makes much of the book, especially the latter half, an unpleasant read.

Perhaps that was Ford's intention; by making the narrator, his cause and his viewpoint so vile that the reader would naturally feel empathy for Julian and his cause. If that is his intention it doesn`t work well as the narrator becomes tedious and the reader is left wondering why Julian bothers keeping him alive, let alone in his presence. The narrator is more than a foil, he is annoying. If Ford's intention was to vilify Julian, and that is possible, he again fell flat because of the weak device of the narrator. He makes the Christian position a caricature. It reads like a shallow polemic from the 19th century.

All the characters ended up being painted with a cartoonist's touch: Christian zealot narrator; a tortured Julian in first half of book, insane Julian in second half simply because he reverts to the religious beliefs of the majority of his subjects and ancestors. They are stock characters all of them. Maximus especially comes across as a caricature; he is depicted as an evil little dwarf, simply because he opposes the Christian position.

The world Ford creates does not feel like the 4th century, it feels like the 9th or 10th. He does not understand the ancient world-he might have a better go at the Middle Ages in future fiction because this isn`t his forte. The Christianity of the 4th century was divided and turbulent and did not have the "Church is eternal" aura of the Middle Ages but that is the canvas Ford paints. Christianity was still a new, novel belief system to most Romans in East and West. It had only been in power 30 or 40 years and it was not evident to most people of the time whether it would remain in power. One doesn`t get that sense from Ford, rather it seems as if Julian has disrupted the longstanding natural order of things, which in fact it was not.

The first half of this book is its real strength and flies along as a real page-turner. While it suffers from many of the problems already mentioned, they are more in the background. The battle scenes are the strongest, most well written parts of the book. They really come to life, as do many of the scenes in Gaul. That first half of the book is what earns this work its two stars rather than one. Overall this is poor history and weaker fiction with some exciting moments in the first half.

The cover was not very impressive when I found it at the store but I was simply blown away by this book after reading it. Maybe it was the low expectations. Maybe it was the recent suffering through Tides of War. Anyway, the book is about Julian the Apostate. Another reviewer said that he wasn't depicted as a tragic character yet that is exactly what I thought of Julian. Julian for the most memorable portion of the story is an intelligent hardworking administrator. He stabilized and secured Gaul under extreme pressure and with little help. Throughout the whole story Julian's ability as a general is impressive. His descent into superstition was tragic. Even with all his faults I was disappointed that he lost to the Persians and that he died. Perhaps had things been slightly different Julian could have led Rome back from the brink and secured her eastern territories against the Persians and western territories against the barbarians. Instead, Rome continued the infighting and ultimately was overrun and civilization was dragged back a thousand years into the muck. Too bad.

"Gods and Legions" is an excellent follow-up to Ford's other historical novel "The Ten Thousand" (2001). This powerful novel brings us into Julian's world and presents us with the colorful events and personal beliefs that shaped him into the Emperor that men called "Julian the Apostate". Julian's uncle, Constantine the Great, the first Roman Emperor to be an openly devout Christian, had the men in Julian's family killed in a bloody political purge. Julian was an avid student of philosophy in Athens as a young man. While raised by devout Christian guardians, Julian himself was a pagan who believed in restoring Hellenistic religions. At the behest of the Emperor Constantine, Julian joins the battle to reclaim Roman territory in Gaul. In an unexpected victory that astounds everyone, he crushes the barbaric tribes of Gaul and proves himself to be a brilliant commander. He goes on to defy the Emperor and seizes the Empire for himself, becoming the most powerful man in the world.

The story is narrated by Caesarius, Julian's personal physician and supposed friend. After Julian's sudden death, we are left wondering where and how far he may have taken the Roman Empire had he continued his rule.

It takes skill to breathe new life, as Ford has done, into this fascinating yet enigmatic historical figure, a man of conviction and many contradictions, a man who is at once admired and vilified. The dangerous co-existence of burgeoning Christianity and deeply rooted paganism in 4th Century A.D. is also well-crafted.

Ford makes reading ancient Roman history a true pleasure. He is meticulous about historical facts and period detail, and his artful descriptions of butchery with javelins, arrows, swords and elephant tusks are nothing if not convincing. His superior research into the physical places and the religious, cultural and political environment of the time has the feel and sense of painstaking accuracy. Another of Ford's strengths as a historical novelist is his insistence on keeping it real, employing Julian's own words in the dialogues whenever possible. Historical fiction fans will eat this up. But even if you are not a fan of historical fiction, for the sheer pleasure of encountering excellence in writing and losing yourself in another place and time, "Gods and Legions" is a must read.

Michael Curtis Ford is fast proving himself to being one of the great historical fiction writers of our time.

Historical fiction writers often have a difficult task in melding real history with fiction. Too little factual data and you offend purists; too much and you offend fiction readers. In 'God and Legions', Michael Ford has found a good compromise and has created a very readable historical fiction based on real events. There is a lot of resource material on Julian of varying accuracy. Early Christian writers didn't like him very much because he attempted to return Roman society to paganism. Michael Ford's major theme in 'Gods and Legions' is to explore this conflict between paganism and Christianity and to speculate on who really killed Julian. Unproven but remarked on in historical documents is the claim that he was killed by a Christian angry over his paganism. Michael Ford speculates that this was done by a close associate and real historical person. I am not revealing much here about the book by the way. The author reveals this in the opening section.

In order to tell his story, Michael Ford uses a well known literary device: the manuscript left by the killer Caesarius which is read to us, with commentary, by his brother. This means that right from the start, if you are familiar with this literary device, you need to suspect the telling of the tale. Michael Ford leaves enough clues in the book to make it obvious that the reader cannot trust Caesarius' version of the story. This is part of the fun of a well written novel and demonstrates the author's skill in writing. This is the kind of novel that literature teachers like to use as an example of a superior writing style. Highly recommended.