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Lustrum

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I was so anxious to read Robert Harris' continuation of his trilogy on Marcus Tullius Cicero (the first book was IMPERIUM) that I ordered it from Amazon in England. This novel does not disappoint, but then, how could it? Romanophiles know that the year 63 BC was one when the stars shook in their courses; not only perhaps the most famous conspiracy in Roman history, that of Cataline, but the characters of Caesar, Cicero, Pompey, Catalina, Crassus, and Clodius, among others - all men who, in their various ways, watched the breakup of the 600-year-long Roman Republic in their own lifetimes. In fact, in a few lustra ("Lustrum" can, among many other meanings, cover a five-year stretch), they would all die violently.

The first half of Lustrum covers this extraordinarily difficult, dangerous year with all its implications for the future: I know the story well and I was still chewing my nails. For newcomers, this is a great way to get your history, neat, with a dose of political danger and certain scary parallels for democracies in our own day. For the rest, you see what the events of 63 BC do to our hero, and where Rome is going. The end, in particular, is very poignant as Cicero goes one direction, literally, and Caesar goes another. All Will Be Explained in the final volume of the trilogy, due in 2011.

For millennia these two titans have been written about, and my sympathies always tended to be with Caesar over the oligarchy which Cicero supported. Yet Harris has the ability to paint Cicero as a flawed, irritating, fascinating protagonist, and by the end, my affections left Rome with Cicero, not Caesar. This, like all his Roman novels, is excellent history and fiction at the same time and almost all true; therefore, skip the next Hollywood pastiche and see how thrilling "what really happened" can be.

Lustrum is the deserving sequel to Harris's Imperium - though it is also readable on its own. It picks up where the first book of the trilogy-in-progress left off: Cicero has just been elected consul. The year 63BC begins. Cicero is faced with the same hostility from corrupt senatorial peers, oblivious to threats from the immensely wealthy Crassus and the rising stars of popular Rome that are Caesar and Pompey. But Cicero also makes mistakes. He turns down a land law amid rural distress, debt, and a grain shortage. The demagogues soon seize upon this to launch the murkiest and most desperate conspiracy the Republic has seen. This is led by none other than Catiline, the debauched patrician playboy whom Cicero had to defeat at the consular stakes. And Catiline has friends, he is unafraid of violence, and is bent on vengeance.

Cicero's life was eventful in itself, but it also took place within the most tumultuous of Roman times. And Cicero's own writings were profuse. So Harris's trilogy can afford to rely on, at times becoming almost a palimpsest of, the original documents, and the Imperium series are that rare thing: a historically faithful work that is at the same time a great yarn. Though I'd read and enjoyed some Harris before, I heard of the Ciceronian trilogy through an eminent professor of classics. She said she found no historical mistake in it, and that it captures the spirit of the times as she imagines it. This is isn't to belittle Harris as a storyteller. He knows when to build anticipation and what to insist on for drama. The idea was brilliant of having the story told by Tiro, Cicero's slave secretary, who actually existed and wrote a lost biography of his master. If anything, Lustrum offers more action and tension than Imperium. It is also darker, beginning with the murder of a child, and more lurid, answering our fantasies of Roman decadence.

Lustrum became the term for the five-year period between each taking of the census, when the censors purged the morally unfit from the body politic, especially from the senate. As the late Republic's conflicts became increasingly acrimonious, one after the other of the censuses failed to be performed - and Cicero became ever more anxious at what he saw as a double tale of moral and constitutional decay. We will eagerly be awaiting the final episode of Harris's trilogy: into the Civil War.

I couldn't wait to read the book, Lustrum, but I couldn't obtain it through U.S. vendors. Apparently, this second book in the Cicero triligy is being sold now as Conspirata for us in the USA. That was annoying.

Other than that...LOVING IT!!! Hail Tiro!

I too bought this from Amazon UK while in England last month, and it says something in favor of the author that I carried this doorstop hardback around and carted it onto the plane.
This volume of Robert Harris's Roman-a-clef [I should have but couldn't restrain myself there] follows on from *Imperium* [with a detour to write his scathing attack on a thinly-disguised Tony Blair in *The Ghost*]. Both are 'written by' Tiro, Cicero's slave and the inventor of shorthand.
Imperium had a 'Rocky' quality as its central character Cicero battles to become Rome's consul about a century before the millennium. This second volume takes up as Cicero confronts the many challenges to the Roman polity and personal attacks that ultimately become extremely dangerous.
This book is as well written as the first but suffers from lacking the sheer novelty of *Imperium* and from just too many plots and too much political action, if such a thing is possible. Catalina, Crassus, Clodius, Clodia, Caesar--the list of malefactors goes on and on, right through the alphabet. And it ends on a down beat as Cicero is driven from Rome at the dead of night.
Even the reader who is only marginally informed about Roman history, via Shakepeare, knows that there must be a third part as Julius Ceasar becomes more powerful and is then destroyed. I am confident that when the trilogy is complete it will make a wonderful, albeit very large, single novel. At present, the reader is though, inevitably, left hanging.

Historical fiction is a favorite genre of mine. A good HF could become a vehicle for time travel in which you are transported to a different place and period where it is sometimes exotic other times erotic it could be frightening and it could be exhilarating but it is a Joyce experience. In Lustrum I have experienced all this and it was exceptionally great. I have not read a captivating and intriguing HF for some time. The characters are in full dimension you can nearly see them and interact with them. the setting is grand that being Rome of the ancient world while I am immersed in this novel I have felt myself experiencing the ruff and tangle in standing among the multitude of masses in the forum finding myself cheering and sometimes booing at the spectacles displayed with the repulsive stink of the mob overwhelming and the chanting haunting. The period is volatile and the consequences of the actions taken have become a watershed that influenced the course of history. The level of intrigue and political maneuvering in Lustrum is so intense how not with such larger than life characters Cicero, Caesar, Pompey, Cato the lot. It reflects the on goings in state and government affairs in any period and in particular our time. Imperium was great but Lustrum was superlative. Robert Harris's plot lines and themes are uncanny, at times I felt myself being swept in the vortex of political alliances and senatorial debates. This is a historical political thriller of the first order and from my experience you don't find them in abundance. It is in a class with Archer's First Among Equalsand Ejii Yoshikawa's Taiko.I would advice reading Tom Holland Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic before getting in to Lustrum it will provide the perspective that will make Lustrum a fascinating and informative read.

Robert don't make us wait long for the third installment of this trilogy.

Coincidentally or not, in the January 2010 issue of First Things, Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon pens a piece called "Cicero Superstar." In her overview of the Roman's life she notes that among his many preserved missives are some laments about a lack of confidants: " 'I go down to the Forum surrounded by droves of friends, but in the whole crowd I can find no one to whim I can make an unguarded joke or let out a friendly sigh.' " This comment can be used to highlight the exaggerated importance that Robert Harris attributes to Cicero's scribe Tiro. Oh, one does not deny Harris' note that Cicero did write to his slave stenographer, " 'Your services to me are beyond count.' " But first Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome and now Lustrum: A Novel (to be entitled Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome in the American edition) are narrated by a Tiro who serves as confident and advisor to a point that stretches credibility as he sometimes paints himself with a hero's mantle and implies he is smarter than his master.

However, LUSTRUM does not really suffer despite this affectation. Here is a novel covering 63-59 B.C., the five years (one of the meanings of "lustrum") that began with Cicero's momentous one-year term as consul and then continued into the aftermath during which he was celebrated as "pater patriae" (father of his country) but then suffered a drastic downturn in political and economic fortunes as Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus seized power. IMPERIUM developed its plot at a relatively leisurely pace in order to build a character portrait; LUSTRUM hastens -- sometimes summing up little things like wars in a few paragraphs -- to focus on actions in Cicero's life. This novel introduces a gruesome murder mystery in the first pages that leads to an internecine conspiracy against the republic. The book convincingly traces the path that Cicero might in reality have followed in order to finally reach the defining decision of his consulship, namely that several high-ranking Romans should be executed without formal trial.

Cicero himself, through Tiro's eyes, is a man whose vanity sometimes gets the better of him, who isn't above a bit of graft, and who is occasionally politically tone deaf. But one never loses sight of this statesman's intrinsic desire to serve his republic with integrity and honor.

Presumably, at least one more volume will be forthcoming to finish this story of Cicero's struggle with Rome's more dictatorial power-that-be. In that final novel, perhaps we will read more about Cicero as philosopher since after this lustrum he wrote his celebrated dialogues DE REPUBLICA and DE LEGIBUS (found herein: M. Tullius Ciceronis De Re Publica, De Legibus, Cato Maior de Senectute, Laelius de Amicitia (Oxford Classical Texts)) -- and many of his approximately eight hundred surviving letters. Glendon aligns Cicero's worries about "whether, when, and how far to compromise for the sake of advancing his most cherished cause -- the preservation of the traditional system he called republican" with current relevancies about government strength and form. As with IMPERIUM, Harris uses LUSTRUM to do precisely the same thing: he depicts Cicero's Rome as a decaying republic being pulled into tyranny, and in the political chicanery and intrigue of ancient times, one sees the indubitable reflections of modern problems with aging "democracies" that are leaning too far toward bread, circuses and central authority.

LUSTRUM is a worthy successor to IMPERIUM, although it is more concerned with plot than its predecessor and gives the impression of being a more hastily written novel. But it is entertaining, enriches understanding of Cicero and his compatriots, and it unquestionably reminds us that if we do not keep the lessons of history uppermost in our minds, we will repeat the patterns of previous mighty civilizations.

Robert Harris opens the sequel to "Imperium" with a shocking event that casts a shadow over Cicero's reputation well into the last pages of the novel. It's the eve of his consulship, a full six months since his election and Gaius Octavius (Octavius later Augustus' father who is born during Cicero's consulship) finds a slave of Cicero's consular colleague Antonius Hybrida that has been dressed and gutted in the way of a human sacrifice. It is later, when we learn the very reason for this that sets the tone of the novel: the slave was killed by Catilina with his allies (including Hybrida) swearing an oath to end Cicero's life. In "Imperium" Cicero realised that as a new man (novus homo) he could be shut out of politics by the patricians (optimates) and populists (populares), now as a serious threat to his enemies, Cicero spends most of this novel in fear for his life.

Once again, the story is told by Cicero's faithful secretary Tiro, who pens a convincing and unbiased narrative of the "lustrum" the period of five years that included Cicero's consulship and the four years afterwards. Cicero starts out at the top of his career, the consul who topped the poll and known for his willingness to be moderate and compromise the warring factions of the optimates and the populares. But, as Tiro reminds us early in the story, problems do not queue up for a person to deal with them one by one by come enmasse to a person. To say that Cicero's year as consul is tumultuous would be an understatement.

A lot of the same characters from Imperium return in Lustrum, such as Hortensius, Atticus, Servius, Catullus, Quintus, Terentia, Pompey, Caelius Rufus and Julius Caesar, but there roles are not static. We see some, like Servius and to some extent Hortensius, take a backseat to events in this story where as others emerge from the shadows as main players. And the best example of this is with Julius Caesar.

Caesar plays but a minor role in Imperium, given that he is young, not yet held the power of imperium himself and is treated as a junior partner by Crassus and Pompey. The only mark of office that he has is his membership to the college of priests secured by his mother Aurelia. Caesar not only comes into the power and influence that we later know him for in this novel, most of the story could be seen as a constant duel between Caesar and Cicero, both at opposite ends of fortune's wheel as it turns out of Cicero's favour and well into Caesar's. Cicero's consulship is spent constantly battling the measures that Caesar throws at him, his land-grab bill, the prosecution of Rabirus and finally Catlina's heavyweights. And then, when Cicero's consulship is over and Caesar all but walks into the senate building to grab the supreme power he wants, (and gets!), he give Cicero's greatest enemy the means to destroy him: Clodius. Finally, he joins forces with Pompey and Crassus and together, as Cicero predicts, the three of them are unstoppable.

If Imperium is a novel on how political power is attained, Lustrum demonstrates how power changes people, particularly when it shifts in or out of favour. And not only Caesar, but we see this evident in Cicero himself. Though his intentions are noble, Cicero has to constantly dirty his hands in order to get things done and resorts to measures that are all but treasonous to block the actions of the populares. Cicero is also shown to play every card in his hand in order to get this way, and sometimes to the expense of others such as his wife the indomitable Terentia and his much in shadow brother Quintus. I think it is through this that Harris makes Cicero such a believable and compelling character, he has faults and weaknesses but we cannot help but like him, warts and all. And then, at the conclusion of the novel, Cicero is at his darkest hour and we cannot help but feel sad. It's the nature of politics though, and the fickleness of the mob.

I would have to put Lustrum up on the shelf beside Graves' works in terms of quality of writing and believability. To say that Harris "brings Rome to life" is rather cliche but very, very true. The strangest thing though is that I don't recall Harris ever depicting the baths, since it's a well known place for polticking it's unusual that Harris never shows Cicero going there or even mentioned going there by Tiro. Perhaps Tiro did not accompany Cicero to the baths, which seems strange given that Cicero would likely be dictating to him mid-massage.

All in all, I am looking forward to the next installment, though given the fact that there's still so much to cover like Julius Caesar's civil war, the conspiracy against his life and the emergence of Octavius, I wonder if Harris will give us a series of four novels and not a trilogy. I would not mind a trilogy creep in this stage, and hope to see the next novel, perhaps called Libertias, on shelves in the next year or so.

Robert Harris is a master of the historical thriller and his second book in the Cicero Trilogy, "Lustrum," is up to the high standard set by preceding novels. "Lustrum" focuses on a five-year period when Marcus Tullius Cicero was at the height of his political power and influence. Throwing in his lot with the patrician oligarchs of Rome, he was elected Consul and immediately faced powerful enemies in the ranks of his patrician supporters and those of the emerging populists.

The Catilene Conspiracy was uncovered and stopped by Cicero during his Consularship and much of the first part of this story focuses on that plot and its implications for the Roman Republic. Author Harris presents this as an over reach by the most privileged of the time, who resented Cicero's rise to power as an upstart "New Man" with no prominent family history. Cicero outsmarts and outmaneuvers the opposition and blocks the Catilene conspirators from returning Rome to a monarchy.

Cicero's victory for the Republic is temporary as the second half of the book portrays the larger battle with the populists led by the relentlessly ambitious and ultra-clever Julius Caesar. The treachery and betrayal of the first half of the book is considerably bested by the saga of Cicero's see-saw struggle with Caesar.

Kudos for author Harris for his great skill at bringing a degree of tension and emotion to a story told many times over the past 2,000 years, with an outcome well-known to most. He succeeds in making his characters living/breathing people who are highly credible to the reader.

This is a fine book that respects the facts of history and the reader's intelligence in their presentation. Recommended.

Like its predecessor "Imperium", Conspirata/Lustrum (same book) is a very gripping book. If this book could be summed up in one line it would be "Cicero Plays Political Chess with Caesar".

This book begins just prior to the Cataline conspiracies and ends on the day Cicero is exiled by his 'one time friend' Clodius. The 5 year period the book covers focuses on Cicero's Consulship, the Cataline conspiracies (there were to some degree two conspiracies) and the First Triumvirate. While Cicero isn't completely unscrupulous he does manage to uphold some moral standard to protect the Republic (he wasn't called the 'righteous pagan' by the Catholic Church for nothing).

Two things I warn the reader about:

1. If you are a Caesarphile and believe that Julius Caesar was a nice guy killed by an evil Senate then you may not like this book. Shakespeare impressed upon me that Caesar was rather innocent and did not deserve his fate. This book shows Caesar in another light and makes one literally yell out loud for Cicero to execute Caesar while he had the chance.

2. The book starts a little slow at the beginning of his consulship. Don't worry it doesn't take long to pick up speed.

While you don't need to read the first Robert Harris book about Cicero 'Imperium' I recommend that you do. Imperium is a quick read and it really sets the stage for Lustrum; explaining more about Cicero the 'human' than the 'oratory machine'.

If you like historical fiction you cannot go wrong with this book. I am looking forward to the next book Harris writes about Cicero.

Lustrum is the second in Robert Harris' planned trilogy about Cicero, Imperium being the first. In Lustrum, Cicero has finally become consul, which was the culmination of Imperium, but must immediately manage numerous plots against himself and the republic proper.

Harris's craftsmanship and polish have slipped a bit since Imperium. The vocabulary and the sentences are slightly less interesting. There was less effort made in pruning down the large character list (the end of the book has a dramatis personae, but I only realized it was there after I had finished the book, so it did me no good). There was too much expository dialogue and too few scenes, like when Cicero is snubbed returning from Sicily, that let the reader infer emotions for himself. Overall, Lustrum gives an impression of being a second draft, whereas Imperium was a fourth or fifth draft. But the book, despite not being one of Harris's most polished, is still far better than what's typically published.

What Harris still does particularly well, even better than in Imperium I thought, was to link the politics of ancient Rome to modern politics, to show how universal are human foibles. Harris does this brilliantly in his treatment of the Clodius scandal and of Cicero's amazement that what he thought was of fairly minor import could entirely derail affairs of state for months at least. Yet Harris' treatment of the reactions of the various characters is a bet more deft and subtle than was his link between the Roman reaction to pirates (in Imperium) and modern day reaction to terrorism.

I should mention throughout that the character of Cato was extremely interesting, as in " 'Marcus Porcius Cato,' said Cicero uneasily, for one could never be sure which way Cato's logic would lead him." (p. 238)

In the following I will mention a few particular lines and plot points.

Thus the following does contain SPOILERS so do not read until you have read the book:

- Caesar's proposal for commutation of death to life for the conspirators because "Life will mean life" (p. 235) I am not sure whether the modern "Life means life" movement derived from that or not.

- Cicero's hypothetical "Answer me this: if the head of a household were to find his children killed by a slave, his wife murdered and his house burned, and did not inflict the supreme penalty in return, would he be thought kindly and compassionate"? (p. 237). No doubt Governor Dukakis should have quoted Cicero when he was famously asked during a debate if he would support the death penalty for someone who had attacked his family.

- the entire debate on whether the death penalty is appropriate for crimes planned but never executed.

- "Cicero always took the view that income should adjust to meet expenditure rather than the other way round" (p. 256)

- "[Clodius] had learned well from Cicero the tricks of political campaigning: keep your speeches short, remember names, tell jokes, put on a show; above all, render and issue, however complex, into a story anyone can grasp." (p. 294)

- In the Clodius affair, Harris carefully alludes to certain modern political scandals: "[Lucullus] just wants a trial [of Clodius] on any terms. You know he's been preparing for this day for years. He has all manner of witnesses lined up ready to testify to Clodius's immorality - even the slave girls who changed the sheets on his bed in Misenum" (p. 301). And the reply here is similarly topical "Is it wise to have that kind of detail aired in public?" and "the people of Rome licked their lips and prepared for what promised to be the most scandalous trial in the republic's history." (p. 302). (Actually the whole passage around here, where Cicero first scents danger in the Clodius situation, is extremely well done). Harris later notes how such a scandal "involving the ruling classes is titillating beyond measure" and that a larger venue than usual to hold the trial had to be found because of its great interest. (p. 304)

- Harris's translations are quite powerful. For example, in Cicero's defense of Murena, a soldier, he compared him to Servius, a lawyer: "You are up before dawn to rally your clients; he to rally his army. You are woken by the call of cocks, he by the call of trumpets. You draw up a form of proceedings, he a line of battle. He understands how to keep off the enemy's forces, you rainwater. He has been engaged in extending boundaries, you in defining them." (p. 199). Of course, Cicero would have done well to remember this later when he himself tried to fight against military leaders like Pompey and Caesar. And his later terrible assessment of Cato as one who had taken a harsh stoic philosophy: "Unfortunately Cato has seized on this doctrine not just as a topic for discussion but as a way of life."

- Likewise, Harris' translation of Against Cataline is more powerful than the usual stilted versions: "How much longer must we put up with your madness? Is there no end to your arrogance? Don't you understand that we know what you're up to? Don't you appreciate that your conspiracy is uncovered? ... Oh what times are these, and oh what morals! The senate knows everything, the consul knows everything, and yet this man is still alive." (p. 184).

Finally, one question the book raises is whether what happened to Cicero is really his fault. The author seems entirely sympathetic to Cicero, and carefully tries to find excuses for all his mistakes. Certainly in Imperium, Cicero is an entirely sympathetic character.

Here, I am not so sure. Cicero's fierce opposition to the land bill, although showing he was a product of his times, is less sympathetic from a modern perspective. His treatment of Tiro, and his political position on slavery, was improper by modern standards, and indeed he did not even treat Tiro honestly (saying he would be freed earlier than he was). Cicero's authoring his own books about his own heroism seemed reckless. Finally, I have less sympathy than the author for Cicero's role in the prosecution of Clodius, which led directly to his own exile. Harris or Tiro justify Cicero's behavior in two ways: (a) Cicero tried not to get involved, only being drawn in to testify by his accidental revelation of the alibi; and (b) Cicero was trying to appease Terentia, his wife. Neither of these really justify his actions. As to (a), Cicero could, and should after Clodia's appeal at least, have helped Clodius more forcefully; Cicero could still have simply refused to testify; and the "accidental statement" about the alibi seems implausible. As to (b), it was Cicero's role to assess the politics, not Terentia's. By acting as he did, Cicero did not help Terentia, he ended up destroying his own family. He cannot, as he tried to do to Clodia (Clodius's sister), pass the blame to Terentia.

So Cicero comes across finally as somewhat less sympathetic either than in Imperium or for that matter how Harris seems to consider him. Obviously, if a politician orders the affairs of state not in accordance with political aims but in order to avoid offending his wife's religious views, he should not be surprised when those decisions turn out to be politically unwise.