The Grass Crown [Mass Market Paperback]

This book has good points, and not-so-good points. The good first.
Mrs. McCullough has definately done her research on the late Roman Republic. Her cast is huge, within Rome and without; senators, knights, slaves, rebels, and foreign despots. Keeping this all straight while reading should have been difficult, but Colleen succeeds in giving each character a voice and an opinion. The result is that each historical character comes to life. She puts a face on men and women who have been dead for over 2000 years (literally in some cases, thanks to occassional illustrations). Not only that, she sifts the complex events of the time and gives plausable reasons and reactions. This in itself is a hugely daunting task, and I believe Mrs. McCullough has acquitted herself admirably on this field.
Now for the not-so-good. With such a profusion of characters, the author just does not seem to be able to shape a believeable dialogue. It Is not simply an attempt to "Romanize" her language. Indeed, her inclusion of technical Latin would cover this attempt by itself. Rather, her characters are always transparent and seem shallow while they describe their reasons and reactions to events as they unfold. And there are some gaps in her narrative as well. None are too big so as to totally ruin her credibility, but big enough to set off a reader who is paying attention and who wonders why and how her main characters justify the attrocities they commit or causes they take up. While her characterizations are always clear, which defends against getting characters mixed up, they are also pretty flat and single faceted; this character is greedy, that one is power-hungry, another is noble-minded, another is ruthless. When the rare epiphany occurs, it usually means a total reversal of personality. Mrs. McCullough does not persuade us that her characters are conflicted, or even wrong. They simply act out the part appointed to them historical fact.
Overall, Mrs. McCullough has done well in lending color and motion to the struggles of Marius, Sulla, and the Social War in Italy. However, her writing style did not satisfy me and I found myself disinterested in her text at many points. I do not recommend this, or any of its fellow novels, as an easy or enjoyable read to a novice of Roman history; however, I would recommend it to someone who is interested in seeing how this author chooses to portray the faces and events of a challenging and fascinating era.

It's difficult to categorize "The Grass Crown" as a sequel to Colleen McCullough's first novel of ancient Rome, "The First Man in Rome." It's more of a continuation of an epic, which is the collapse of the Roman Republic, due in no small part by the great weight of the titans striding across Italia in those days.

Where "The First Man in Rome" left off with Gaius Marius ascendant, thanks in large part due to the savage cunning and brilliant audacity of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, his right-hand man, "The Grass Crown" starts with these two friends growing apart. Their closest friend, Publius Rutilius Rufus, whose letters offer some of the most entertaining passages in the first two books, notes the growing rift between the two even at a pleasant dinner party. This gap is a sad foreshadowing of the chasm that will soon develop between these two.

Neither Marius nor Sulla is equipped to be second best at anything, and even though they share many traits, these two are too different to remain friends for long. Marius, even though he has suffered a stroke, remains convinced that he is the best general in Rome and is just insecure enough to need to prove it. Sulla, chafing at Marius's position as the First Man in Rome, is desperate to prove his place and to restore the patrician class (which Marius has undermined with his New Man successes and radical ideas).

Tragedy ensues as Sulla loses his beloved son and Marius suffers an even more debilitating stroke -- although this does bring the young prodigy Julius Caesar to Marius's side as an aide. Marius's insecurity becomes palpable when he grows resentful of the staggering potential demonstrated by Young Caesar.

Marcus Drusus, another hold-over from "The First Man in Rome," gets caught up advocating for the Roman citizenship for all Italians . . . this sounds odd to folks who aren't familiar with Roman history, but "Italy" as we now understand it is a modern invention. By advocating the extension of citizenship to all Italians, Drusus creates a firestorm among the Roman political class (the Romans were a remarkably arrogant people, and looked down with disdain even on those Italians who fought side-by-side with them against the dreaded Germans). This conflict drives much of the book, and its fall-out creates the military conflict that drives the book to its conclusion.

Both Marius and Sulla get involved in the Roman military campaign against the Italians, and Sulla manages to win the coveted Grass Crown, one of the highest awards in the Roman world. But still, Sulla feels eclipsed by Marius, and soon these two giants are at war. Sulla, violating centuries of precedent, leads his armies against Rome, and the bloody fall-out of Roman fighting Roman is almost too much to bear.

Through it all, McCullough writes with her usual straightforward brilliance. Rather than dazzle the reader with literary flourishes, McCullough paints an exhilirating world through precise descriptions and vivid characterizations. Her grasp of the scope of the Roman world is staggering, and her glossary and maps are invaluable.

Fortunately, McCullough pays as much attention to the female world of Rome as the male -- we get a fully realized Rome that reveals the political clout of the Roman woman even in a world that officially denied her so much power.

All in all, a heck of a read. However, this book really must be read after "The First Man in Rome," or you'll miss too much of the back story.

With The First Man In Rome Colleen McCullough bought Republican Rome to life brilliantly. She continues this in the even better Grass Crown. The characters are much richer in this second novel and more fully drawn. The tension is much more real and there are some characters that the reader really feels for (Drusses and his wife, for example). McCullough draws the reader much further into the lives of the characters in the Grass Crown than in The First Man in Rome, and the experience is much richer for it. My only complaint is that she seems to have a bias towards young Ceaser in the way he is portraied, but then who is to say that that is what the young version of the man was like?
If you have an interest in Ancient Rome and the people who made it, or even just the history of this time, this is a fantastic read.