Lustrum: A Novel [Hardcover]

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!