Amazon Book Description
- There was a time when Cicero held Caesar's life in the palm of his hand. But now Caesar is the dominant figure and Cicero's life is in ruins. Cicero's comeback requires wit, skill and courage. And for a brief and glorious period, the legendary orator is once more the supreme senator in Rome. But politics is never static. And no statesman, however cunning, can safeguard against the ambition and corruption of others.
- Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.
- Robert Harris is the author of Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for the London Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. His novels have sold more than ten million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and four children.
- Customers say1: Customers find this book to be an enthralling conclusion to the trilogy, with brilliant writing that brings history to life through a wonderful mix of fiction and fact. Moreover, they appreciate its engaging pace and readability, with one customer noting it's a fascinating viewpoint of Roman history. The book receives positive feedback for its historical accuracy, with one review highlighting its meticulous research of the period.
Amazon Customer Review
- This book is the last of the Cicero trilogy. It covers the last fifteen years or so of his life, from 58 BC to 43 BC and it is largely dominated by the rise and fall of Caius Julius Caesar (hence the book’s title). It ends with the beginning of a new struggle from which the new Caesar - and future Augustus - would emerge victorious and – almost literally - the “last man standing.” I can also confirm that this book can reads perfectly well on its own. It is not necessary to have read the two previous episodes (Lustrum and Imperium), respectively on the rise of Cicero as Rome’s prominent lawyer, with the case against Verres in particular, and his consulship and the Catiline conspiracy. This is exactly what I have done. It may help, however, to know a bit of the last years of the Roman Republic, although even this is not absolutely indispensable.
- This is because – to put things bluntly –Robert Harris had done a wonderful job and come up with a rather superb novel which is extremely well-researched and contains excellent characterisation. The result is a superbly entertaining novel told in the first person by Cicero’s secretary (Tiro) who really existed, who really was Cicero’s slave (and then his freedman), confident and friend and who really wrote a biography (now lost but mentioned in various primary sources) of his master and published Cicero’s letters after his death. Also, he did invent a kind of shorthand and we do owe him a number of abbreviations such as e.g. or etc…
- Interestingly, Tiro is perhaps the most sympathetic character of the whole book. All other characters, including Cicero himself, are presented “warts and all”, with their qualities but also their shortcomings. Cicero himself is a complex mixture of selfishness, lucidity and puffed up self-importance, with a level pf arrogance that is at times borderline stupidity, but also capable of streaks of remarkable generosity, although the latest feature may have been somewhat “enhanced” by the novelist in order to make Cicero more sympathetic. He cannot resist a “bon mot” that may make others laugh at someone else’s expense and therefore mortally offend some powerful Roman who will never forgive him and treat him as a potential threat for ever after. He is also both aware of his extraordinary oratory talent, and rather vain about it. He is also aware of his major shortcomings compared to the other Senators, his competitors. Essentially, he is a “parvenu”, and upstart in the eyes of the “old money”. He was not an aristocrat from one of the old families, such as Caesar, Crassus, Cato or Brutus. He did not have the fortune to make up for this, such as Pompey, neither did he acquire such a fortune during his career, as Caesar (and Pompey) managed to do thanks to their conquests. Finally, he had no military skills whatsoever, contrary to both Caesar and Pompey (and even Crassus, to a lesser extent) and seems to have been somewhat of a physical coward, even if perhaps not always a moral coward.
- The portraits of the other characters are also quite remarkable. This is particularly the case of the skilful and utterly ruthless Caesar, with his winning charm hiding his cold mind. Also good are the portraits of the young Octavius/Augustus whom Cicero did both mortally offend and grossly underestimate, and that of the ageing Pompey whose military talent was largely in his qualities as a first class organiser and expert in logistics. Even Mark Antony is rather good, with the author having shown him as no mean orator himself and quite capable of hitting back and hurting Cicero through a public speech of his own.
- The presentation and description of the historical events through the eyes of Cicero’s secretary are also excellent although, at times, the author may have provided Cicero – his hero – with a bit too much clairvoyance that only hindsight could have provided. It is for instance a bit doubtful that Cicero would have been in a position to identify Caesar as the most dangerous threat to the Republic of the three (the other two being Pompey and Crassus) in 59 BC. However, apart from this and perhaps one or two similar exceptions, the rest is excellent, including the details, such as Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars which were publicly read in the Senate but also in the street. They were very skilfully and very much used as a media for self-promotion. Another interesting feature is the change in Caesar’s attitude after his final victory at Munda in Spain, against Pompey’s sons. His “mercifulness” towards his ex-foes allowed him to assert his primacy and superiority, as Cato very well understood. The impression here is that his autocratic tendencies came to the fore. He was less and less careful in hiding them and he increasingly appeared as a tyrant, as opposed to the somewhat anachronistic use by the author of the term Dictator, with its modern sense.
- Another handful of superb features are the description of life in Rome and the life of a Senator, with their peregrinations from their houses on the Palatin hill (a few had also suburban palaces) and of the increasingly deleterious atmosphere in Rome during the 50s BC. Also excellent are the depictions of everyday life at the time, more generally, including the huge mortality rates that affected women during childbirth across all social classes and the marriage/divorce behaviours within the members of the Senate in particular.
- To achieve this, the author has not only done his research thoroughly, he has also used extensively Cicero’s correspondence with quotations and extracts of letters abundantly used throughout the book. The end result is one of the best novels I have read this year, and also one that is so well done that just about everything “feels and look” authentic. Five stars, easily.
- PS: those who may want to check the historical record and see to what extent Robert Harris has stayed extremely close to what we happen to know, may also want to read Mary Beard’s also superb and very accessible SPQR, for instance.
In-Page Footnotes ("Harris (Robert) - Dictator")
Footnote 1:
- This is the AI summary of Amazon customer reviews.
- I noted that a significant number found this the least enthralling of the trilogy, thinking the author had run out of steam.
Book Comment
Cicero Trilogy, Vol. 3. Penguin, 2022. New Paperback
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)