Customer Reviews

October Horse (Masters of Rome 6)

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

In this, the final book of McCullogh's series on the last decades of the Roman Republic, the last days of Julius Caesar are chronicled along with the first days of his successor, Octavian. For fans of historical fiction, this is a must read, a six volume epic that is part history and part political soap opera.

For those unfamiliar with the series, the hero is definitely Julius Caesar. The first two books - The First Man In Rome and The Grass Crown - serve as an extended prologue, with Caesar born in the first book and in pre-adolesence in the second; nonetheless, the intrigues of Gaius Marius and Sulla keep those books quite interesting. Caesar's rise to power is described in the next three books, and at the beginning of the October Horse, he is at the peak of his power.

For those familiar at all with Roman history, how Caesar dies and even the exact date are well-known. McCullough describes the growing conspiracy and how the various figures are drawn in. The assassination is not the conclusion of the story, however. Instead, we see Caesar's adopted son take over and hunt down the conspirators, a good epilogue to this saga.

The fun part of this story is the intrigues among the various characters: the utopian Caesar, the brutish Antony, the deceptively ruthless Octavian, the weak but idealistic Brutus and many others. McCullough fills in the gaps in the historical record with great drama and makes this novel as great as her previous ones.

This book might be good on its own, but to do it justice, you must read the five predecessors; besides the two mentioned above, there is Fortune's Favorites, Caesar's Women and Caesar. That may seem like a lot of reading, but it's all good. In addition, if you enjoy this book, you can go on to read Robert Graves's books on the early days of the Empire: I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Reading all eight books in sequence would not only give you a great grasp of Roman history, it would also be a blast to read.

This is the culminating sixth volume of one of the most important historical novels of our generation. Beginning with "The First Man in Rome" and continuing through "The Grass Crown," "Fortune's Favorites," "Caesar's Women," "Caesar: Let The Dice Fly" and finally "The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra", McCullough has carried us from just before Julius Caesar's birth on through the civil war following his death.

In this extraordinary series it is possible to see the crisis a hegemonic power faces whose political system is incapable of coping with the opportunities and threats which unparalleled power have brought to it.

The corruption and decay of the Roman Senate, the rise of outside interests seeking to bribe and corrupt Rome, the growing crisis for Italians as reactionary elements in Rome refuse to extend citizenship and the reversion of violence both in the street and with the Army all serve as sobering examples for modern citizens to contemplate as they watch the kaleidoscopic changes in our world and our times.

McCullough has the natural story teller's ability to surround big ideas with living, breathing, plotting, conniving, loving and hating people who remind us that politics and history are made by humans, not by anonymous trend lines.

In "The October Horse," Caesar is finishing the civil war against Pompey's forces (especially against Cato the Younger), developing a liaison and an alliance with Cleopatra in Egypt and returning to Rome to begin to reform the system until his enemies assassinate him in the Senate. The book ends with his nephew Octavius and Mark Antony taking on the assassins in a victorious second civil war followed by the initial murmurings of competition between Octavius (Caesar Augustus to be) and Antony.

This novel is a rich feast of people, scenes and maneuvering that is well worth reading in its own right.

While I like "The October Horse" very much, I strongly recommend that anyone interested in seeing our own time in the context of historic developments first go back and read "The First Man in Rome" (Caesar's uncle Marius) and work their way through all six volumes.

This is a work of genius and it deserves to be very, very widely read.

Colleen McCullough has entertained and educated millions to the intricacies of politics in the late Roman Republic, and her touch hasn't failed in this last and perhaps most difficult of her books. Caesar has illumined the series from its first book, although Marius, Sulla, and the robust characters of the early books rightly took center stage. Caesar is McCullough's conduit character through whose eyes and actions much of the collapse of the Republic occurs. Now she must deal with his murder. How to do this and yet keep the flow of the book going?

We all know what will happen on the Ides of March, but it's how to do it that presents the challenge. I thoroughly enjoyed how McCullough deals with every aspect of Caesar's last years. She handles his achievements and disappointments fairly and, interestingly, comes up with arguable explanations for many of Caesar's last actions which argue that he never intended, indeed, to become king, and does wonderfully drawing the various sordid and idealistic motives (more of the former than latter) which motivated the assassins. As usual, the plot is action-packed, the characters vivid and varied, and based upon substantial research into original historical sources. Caesar's murder is so well done that you almost forget how the action will end.

McCullough takes risks in her portrayal of several characters, but has enough understanding of the sources to back herself up. Cleopatra's character and her love affair with Caesar - which, during the Egyptian war, essentially takes up the first third of the book - is the antithesis of conventional Hollywood casting, but the Queen is far more compelling than any mere sex kitten. Caesar's motivations are similarly not romanticized. Brutus, Cassius, Decimus Brutus, Antony . . . all but the latter follow patterns discernable in earlier books, but McCullough takes major risks with her reading of Antony's character and - while I don't quite agree - it makes a great deal of sense in terms of the known history. Finally, Cato - whom I've always loathed - becomes almost a sympathetic character in his final great days and much relatively obscure history is made fresh and vivid while doing so. And even clucking, insecure Cicero will find his finest hour in this book.

One by one we watch the beloved familiar characters exit the stage. One by one, McCullough sketches the new world that will soon control Rome now that Caesar is gone. Of these, her triumph is her portrayal of young Octavius Caesar, soon to become Octavian, later Augustus. She makes him as fascinating a character as the young Caesar, although very different. Her insights into his character, courage, and weaknesses strikes me as remarkably perceptive. You find yourself wishing she'd write another six books to carry us through the long Augustan age, and yet she finds a natural FINIS to her saga following the Battle of Phillippi, when Caesar's death is avenged and the obvious struggle between Antony and Octavian is prefigured.

Altogether a fine book, and a fitting farewell to her remarkable six-volume portrayal of the dying Republic.

Suzanne Cross
Web Author, Julius Caesar: The Last Dictator

I forget how many years it has been since I picked up "The First Man in Rome" and found myself immersed into a romantic, classical world. Rome had always been a very tedious place, full of dry-as-dust old people, all with odd names, and all more or less running into each other. Cicero and Caesar, Cato and Pompey, Brutus and Cassius, all just names to me.

Colleen McCullough brought them all alive again, made Rome into a living, breathing, bustling, smelly city, where real people lived, had real concerns, real conflicts and real desires. I couldn't get enough and as each year brought another big thick square volume in the series I brought myself up to date and found the story engrossing, utterly engrossing. The first books merely cleared the way for Caesar, laying the foundations for him, introducing the people and places that would shape his character, but soon enough he was there - a baby, a boy, a young man, a leader, a general, a politician.

It has been a wonderful journey, but the final years remained untold. I watched as Colleen wrote other books on other subjects and I worried that the grand series might remain forever unfinished.

But, O! the joy last week when I saw The October Horse, fresh and new and just begging to be picked up. I snatched it up and hugged it with glee.

It has been well worth the wait. We join Caesar in Alexandria, where he conquers Cleopatra, and it is a fascinating tale of politics, strategy, war, and love. Colourful doesn't begin to describe this episode. It is Julius Caesar at the height of his powers and making the most of it in a romantic setting.

Forget Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. This is the real deal, and the first meeting of the two is nothing like the movie.

Caesar is all too soon gone, to quell revolts, to settle Rome, and to crush the final Republicans. McCullough's Mark Antony is nothing like Shakespeare's, and the conspirators are torn in their motivations and ambitions.

All too soon the tragic end is upon us and the story closes.

And you know what? I can't wait to start again and read the whole saga through, one after the other, this time without those intervening gaps of years.

Unlike Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire", Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series avoids moral or philosophical themes. McCullough takes all known historical facts about republican Rome and turns out a novel. Where there are gaps in what we know, she imposes her own interpretations and extrapolations, which all serve to develop her characterization of historical figures. All this makes for a rollicking good read.

The Rome series spanned the life of Julius Caesar whose time to die has finally arrived; McCullough could not stretch him out for another novel. She gets the death scene right, presenting Caesar's fall with understated elegance, in spite the gore.

Besides Caesar, we are treated to a legion of other characters: Cleopatra, Brutus, Mark Antony, Cato, to name a few, and also interesting completely fictional characters such as Caesar's Egyptian doctor Hap'fadne. But my favourite of all is Octavius. Octavius closes the series the end of the book, we are left with just a twenty five year gap before he reappears as Augustus in Robert Graves's "I, Claudius".

It's interesting to note that McCullough wrote two non-Roman books between Caesar and October Horse. I suspect she was putting off killing Caesar because she had grown too fond of him. There is precedent: Alexandre Dumas went into a deep depression after killing Porthos in the last book of the Three Musketeers series.

I'm a huge fan of McCullough's Rome series. I've been entranced since "The First Man in Rome", which was quite a while ago. I honestly wish this wasn't the end.
Having said that, I found this one a little hard to get through. The dozen principle characters are well drawn and three dimensional, but the 752 other people who populate every corner of the novel kinda muddy the waters. Many seem superfluous, although those with a better classical education than I will no doubt enjoy their presence. There are passages which read so fast, I was left breathless. But there are also several passages where I literally had to back up, get some momentum, re-read a few pages, and hammer my way through.
Caesar, Cato, Octavian, Brutus, Cicero...these portrayals are so vivid they will affect every non-fiction account about this time period I'll ever read.
The worst thing I can say about this book is that now I have the urge to go back to Book One and start over. I hope she'll change her mind and take us through Octavian's life...I've got to go get some history books so I can find out what happens with him, Antony, Cleopatra, Caesarion...

After the bombast of "Caesar," which irritated me on several levels, I didn't expect to like "The October Horse." My first reading didn't give me hope; the book felt rushed, stiff, and crammed full of Colleen McCullough's infamous expositions. I put the book away and decided to try later.

Well, over a year has passed and "later" came this week, when I sat down to re-read "The October Horse" and discovered I liked it better than I thought.

"The October Horse" refers to a ceremonial horse race in Rome, whereby the winning horse was sacrificed to Mars and his head made the prize for either the Subura or Via Sacra to gain. The symbol of the October Horse for the Great Man who comes out of nowhere has been used by McCullough to mark Sulla and Caesar. Never has it been more appropriate in Caesar's case than in this book.

Having crossed the Rubicon, beaten Pompey at Pharsalus, and made plans to deal with the remaining "Republicans," Caesar goes to Egypt and there finds that Pompey has been murdered and the Ptolemaic succession is in danger. The young royals are at each other's throats and the Queen, 21-year-old Cleopatra, is desperate to save herself and her country. To do so, she must conceive a child by another God-Monarch. She and Caesar meet for this purpose, and it is curiously charming--hardly the scene of grand seduction out of movies, but sweet in its depiction of the political reality of the event.

Caesar brings stability to Egypt and impregnates Cleopatra, but matters at home in Rome, Africa and the East all require his attention. Cato has decamped to Utica; the "Republicans", led by Labienus and Metellus Scipio, are marshalling their forces for battle; and Rome has sunk into chaos thanks in part to Mark Antony, Caesar's nephew, assumed heir, and bully-at-heart with plenty of scores to settle.

Of course Caesar puts Antony in his place, restores order to Rome, and defeats the Republicans. And in doing so, he ignites the fuse of jealousy and resentment among the men he's pardoned or helped in their careers, men who owe all to him. Out of this comes the conspiracy to take his life, led by poor Brutus and abetted by Antony. But nothing transpires as they plan, and this is where the story picks up and takes off.

McCullough had introduced Caesar's grandnephew Octavius before, in "Caesar's Women," and here she reveals him as a walking enigma. Calm, controlled, sweet and even-tempered, but with a core of iron, Octavius is the last person that anyone--including Antony--would expect to inherit Caesar's wealth and mantle of power. Yet he does, and his transformation from delicate youth to natural political animal is startling as well as convincing. McCullough succeeds because she doesn't make him naive; Octavian is naturally intelligent, observant, ambitious, and burning to push himself to the edge. Used to being overlooked, Octavian learns to use his frail image as a shield, lowering it by degrees to the dismay of those who take the boy for granted.

Brutus is, and remains, a pitiful character in this story. A businessman unwillingly thrust into the military and political arena, Brutus is pushed into the assassination plot against Caesar by Porcia, his true love, whom he finally marries. His brother-in-law Cassius, whose jealousy of Caesar fills his life with bitterness, is a one-track counterpoint to him, a man who only wants glory and a world without anyone who can steal it from him. And Antony comes off as a lout, a bully, and a fool, one who comes to realize that he is in over his head when it comes to power, but who can't bear to let go of it.

The lesser characters are enthralling. Chief among the portrayals is McCullough's depiction of Cato. Easy to despise, Cato's final months reveal the contradictions within the man, the struggle between his true self and the persona he erected for his own protection and edification. I found myself mourning Cato, something I didn't think possible. Porcia, Cato's daughter, gets her one desire--Brutus--and then slowly goes mad from the stress and grief. Then again, if I had Servilia for a mother-in-law, I'd go insane too. Servilia is the most malign female character I've encountered in historical fiction, and her reaction when she discovers that her son and Porcia are wed is a hair-raiser. Likewise, her letter to Brutus detailing Porcia's suicide will have the reader on edge, deciphering along with Brutus the truth of what Servilia has truly done.

There are chunks of exposition in this book, still, and it slows down the last third until the Battle of Philippi. Then it ends in a rush, with an aftermath between Antony and Octavian that leaves no doubt in whose favor the balance has tipped. This scene is tight and powerful; unfortunately, the conclusion of the book is rather melodramatic. It works, but some tightening of the prose would have really given the reader a chill.

So yes, I liked "The October Horse," and I hope McCullough tries her hand at writing more historical fiction. The "Masters of Rome" series is a good one, and surely she'd be able to find more worthies in Roman history to write about.

I have loved this series passionately, however this send off was extremely disappointing for me. The detail of nuance, variance view of the world was superficial in comparison to all the previous works and it felt as though all she could think about was ending the series one way or another. This book if written as she had the previous ones would have been a book and a half and allowed her to actually show the end of the Republic.

I can understand her exhaustion I suppose, but this final book was not up to the standard of the rest of the series and left the series feeling incomplete and tarnished for this fan.

Caesar said he wanted neither to be a King nor a God. In her new book, _The October Horse_, Colleen McCullough makes him both. Since the earlier books in the series, Caesar has become ever more perfect and ever more remote. He even thinks of himself almost entirely in the third person. By this last book, Caesar is so stripped of even the dignity of his flaws, that it is hard to mourn his death. The reader feels instead that he was never really mortal--he never really belonged to us at all. (Which may be the author's point.)

Consequently, this book is not about Julius Caesar the human being. It's not even about Caesar and Cleopatra. It is, however, a very good read and a fantastic Augustan manifesto. Wherever Octavian is, he's reading this book and clicking his high-heeled shoes together with glee.

For the villain of the novel, the author chooses Marc Antony. It has sometimes been advanced that Antony was in league with Caesar's assassins, but that idea usually gives way under the weight of contradictory evidence. The author makes a valiant attempt to support the theory, but the result is tortured logic that relies upon an oath to Fulvia and Hercules. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Even Cicero gets confused. On one page Cicero declares Caesar's death as an act of patriotism, and by the next page he is labeling it murder at Antony's hands.

McCullough's Antony isn't just treacherous; he's a bungling, impulsive, sociopath. He's so lacking in redeeming features that the reader cannot help but wonder how he did not accidentally fall on his sword in a drooling stupor instead of almost ruling the world. By the time McCullough finally grudgingly admits to Antony's innate sense of honor at the very end of the book, it's too late. By then, it's completely out of character. The author might have taken better instruction from Octavian, who knew enough not to diminish his own heroism by failing to give the devil his due.

But it isn't just Antony that she does this to. When characters fail in their attempts, it's never because of bad fortune or undeserved betrayals. It's because they were stupid, venal, evil, or cowardly. The only exceptions to this are Caesar and Octavian whose failures the author attributes to someone else's incompetence or ingratitude.

Octavian is presented as our new deity. But even the author seems to sense that she's gone too far in using asthma to excuse Octavian's battlefield cowardice, for she discusses it in her end notes. It remains disappointing in spite of the explanation. Every Roman would have thought asthma was a pansy ass excuse, and since the author steeps the reader in Roman values from page one, so do we.

You won't learn much about Cleopatra and her relationship to Caesar in this book, and what you do learn is a bit suspect. It's not the author's scholarship that is the problem (that is impeccable, deep, and awe inspiring), it's her interpretation. First, we have Cleopatra obsessed with incest. Historically, Ptolemy incest was more pragmatic than religious, and Cleopatra herself was not of pure blood. Moreover, Cleopatra set her own rules. She rid herself of both brothers at her earliest opportunity, married two Romans, and betrothed her son to a foreign princess. Consequently, the author's incest subplot is unlikely. Moreover, it spawns a somewhat nonsensical explanation of why Cleopatra took Antony as a lover when more conventional explanations will do.

As presented, the relationship between Caesar and Cleopatra boils down to 'Hideously Ugly and Foolish Egyptian Queen is Madly in Love with Caesar who is Somewhat Fond of Her'. To support this theory the author has to resort to some eye-roll inducing tactics including withheld ejaculations. To explain away the highly symbolic act of having placed a statue of Cleopatra portrayed as a Goddess within the temple of Venus Genetrix, the author has Caesar give a flippant answer. He says that the statue was a gift from Cleopatra made of solid gold, and Caesar wouldn't have wanted some passerby to try to shave gold off of it. (Stuff it in your closet next time, Gaius!)

Cleopatra almost disappears entirely from the book after Caesar's death, which occurs halfway through. This is somewhat of a relief, because it is in the portrayal of Cleopatra that the author most clearly skirts the line between Historical Fiction and Historical Fantasy.

The book is really about Octavian anyhow. We remain in Rome, watching it disintegrate into turf wars between warlords pretending there is still some kind of Constitution (and that, in itself, is something rather interesting from a political point of view).

Of the series, the author's prose is best in this last book. The pacing is good, the shifts in point of view are done in a much more elegant fashion, and she is more careful with name dropping. The history is fascinating, and even if you don't agree with her interpretations, the sheer amount of data she presents is staggering. In this book, she finally shines as someone who can bring history into living detail for the layperson; in spite of my complaints, it gripped me from start to finish. It's a book that everyone should read, because it helps to explain the underpinnings of Western Society, and it does it better than any history book might.

Read it. Love it. Take it with a grain of salt.

Just not quite up to the standard of the earlier books in the series. I got the distinct feeling that Colleen was in somewhat of a hurry to get the series over and done with and move on. Still as good, though, as many other author's best works. Up until the death of Caesar it was quite enthralling, but after that seemed to lose a bit of pace and direction - perhaps that might have a been a better finishing point. Although Octavian comes across as a fascinating character, we are always conscious that we are not going to see him through to the end of his career, hence he always seems just a bit unfinished. Nor is Cleopatra ever fully developed, and she appears as a fairly one- dimensional bit player. However, nit-picking aside, it is still a great book and well worth a read or two. I still think, though, that there was at least one more book in the series, since the Republican era didn't truly end until after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and Octavian/Augustus became undisputed ruler of the Roman world. Still, c'est la vie. Good stuff, from go to woe.