The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra [Abridged] [Audiobook] (Audio CD)

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.

McCullough's subject is obstensibly Rome, but her Caesar worship crowds the rest of Rome off the stage. In an interesting way, maybe this is what the "Liberators" felt--that Caesar had become so powerful, and so fed up with the good old ways, that he was going to transform Rome completely out of recognition. The inheritors of the Famous Families knew that their ancient names wouldn't entitle them to inherit anything at all. A Rome with one man standing above all, that they could tolerate (Marius, Sulla, Pompey). But a Rome with one man changing the very fundamentals of the society--that was too much of a threat. And, in the end, they were right. Octavian's ascendency and the Empire would take power away from the Senate, the Knights, and everyone else who'd considered themselves the traditional masters of Rome.

Caesar's a burnout in this book. His contemporaries are dead (Pompey), exiled (Cato), or avoiding him (Cicero). Unlike Sulla, he has no intention of laying down his dictatorship and partying himself to death. He grimly hangs on, working, working, working. And essentially behaving like a tyrant. This leads to endless plotting among those who simply want to tear him down to salvage their own traditional positions (the Boni) and those who want to tear him down so they can be the Next Caesar (a thorougly nasty Marc Antony). A sense of gloom pervades the first part of the book. We know where this is going. And so does McCullough, who, as another poster said, was in love with Caesar. Unfortunately, the pre-ordained fall of the Perfect Roman lands with a thud. Even the title of the chapter is a cliche--"Fall of a Titan."

Fortunately, McCullough plows on and gives us Octavian, a far more complex figure. I don't even think she herself quite figured out how an 18yr old managed to not only survive, but eventually eclipse his rivals. A cold, icy calculator, sure. But Rome had no shortage of those. It's fascinating to watch as she tries to unravel this guy, to figure out just who and what the young Octavian was. And why Caesar made him his heir. Was Caesar simply thinking like a King (detested word in Rome) and grooming a successor? Or did he see a vision of Rome's future in a very young, very not-Caesar-like Gaius Octavius? It's interesting that we see none of the other Masters of Rome (Marius, Sulla, Pompey) doing the same thing in the other books. A lot of questions here, none very well answered, although the book is the better for that, just as McCullough is at her strongest when presenting those parts of Roman History that are not so well known.

And then...she stops. Octavian's on his way up, the Republic is just barely hanging on, and McCullough just runs out of gas. Why we had to get page after page of Cato trudging across Northern Africa instead of more about Octavian, I don't know. Yes, the Caesar's story has been told many times before. That's because it's a good story. If McCullough had chosen to tell more of it, this would have been a better book.

Oh, yeah, Cleopatra. What a waste. I can only imagine this was to sell more books, since Cleo is really something of a sidelight to Caesar's career. She, and Caesar's downfall could have easily been put into the previous book, leaving more room to focus on Octavian here, just as I wish she'd chosen to give us more Sulla in Fortune's Favorites, rather than the far less interesting Pompey and his dreary Spanish campaign. If Masters of Rome has a glaring weakness, this is it--a tendency to go on at length about people (Aurelia, Mithridates, Spartacus, Cleopatra) who played only minor roles in the history of Rome.

So, in summary, a good book that could have been better. One day, I hope McCullough finally sits down and finishes Octavian's story, and that she take a good, long time doing it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I *like* long books. Provided they're good long books, which Masters of Rome very definitely has provided for so many years.