Fortune's Favorites (Mass Market Paperback)

Fortune's Favorites begins with Sulla's return to Italy from the East, and ends with Pompey's and Crassus' first "retirement" in 69 B.C. In between, we're presented with Sulla's dictatorship and debauched death, Sertorius' guerrilla warfare in Spain, the Spartacus revolt, and lots of minor incidents too many to mention. The focus constantly jumps around from Sulla, to Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Spartacus, and a dozen lesser lights.

As usual, McCullough gives us her own spins on history, spins that are entirely her own yet pleasingly plausible. Here, McCullough takes advantage of the lack of information about Caesar's early career to team him up with Crassus years before the Cataline conspiracy. She has Crassus select Caesar as an aid against Spartacus - and why wouldn't Caesar have been involved in the putting down of the revolt? From Caesar's association with Crassus comes his role as go-between between Crassus and Pompey. Again, we know historically that Crassus and Pompey, bitter rivals, reached a rapprochement in 70 B.C. - why wouldn't have been Caesar who arranged it? A simple, yet brilliant conceit that beautifully sets the stage for the First Triumvirate.

Those who are on the fence about reading this one, be warned that at times McCullough tries to write a history book. There are endless pages of Sulla expostulating about his reforms, and still more endless pages about efforts to destroy them. The prose is, as always, dry and uninspired. But the overall concept is brilliant, and McCullough beautifully fleshes out Caesar's youth, Pompey's rise, and the rapidly growing decay of the Senate. Those who enjoyed the first two books in the series should absolutely continue on.

This is a transitional novel, covering the end of the Marius-Sulla conflict and the first stirrings of the rivalry between Pompey and Caesar. The "problem" with such books is aggravated because McCullough is hewing so close to history rather than inventing characters and episodes that will lead to some great climax after 900 pages. While McCullough's prose is skillful it does not soar, and the reader does need to work hard to keep track of the parallel stories taking place on a jiggered timeline in Italy, Spain, or Anatolia.

This volume begins with a 21 pp synopsis of the preceding two books, vital to understanding the long list of characters who pop in and out (many of whom bear very similar names due to Roman naming customs; geneological charts might have been a useful addition to keep them straight). McCullough's steadfast focus is elite politics and strategy: no vignettes of life in the legions, among the urban plebs, or on Latin farms. On the other hand, her 80 pp Glossary is a frank mine of information entertainingly supplied that supplements her earlier glossaries. Drawings of the main characters enliven the text. Have a magnifying glass handy if you read the paperback, for the many maps are microscopic.

McCullough uses "Fortune's Favorites" as something of an entr'acte in her series, inking in the outlines of Caesar and Pompey as young men on the rise. And by and large, it works. Though Pompey comes off as an incorrigible upstart and Caesar as an unbending aristocrat, each is drawn sympathetically in his own way. The detail of everyday Roman life is as always excellent, and the military history well-written and researched.

That said, "Fortune's Favorites" bogs down a bit where its predecessors "The First Man in Rome" and "The Grass Crown" did not. A touch of the romance novel creeps in here; sexual dalliances, for which Caesar was certainly known, are dwelt on at greater length and in more detail than before. But these parts of the story are inconsequential and easily skipped.

It's already easy to see in this novel the partisanship for Caesar that becomes central to McCullough's later novels in this series. However, she paints him as such an upstanding and infinitely correct character that it's hard not to agree with her. The absolute historical accuracy of the story cannot be ascertained 2,100 years after it happened- but it does make for a read that is pleasurable, even if slightly guiltily so.