Imperium: From the Sunday Times bestselling author (Cicero Trilogy, 4)

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Cicero takes calculated risks to obtain his objectives but he is also a pragmatist and, like most politicians, must form and break alliances as opportunities present themselves. The more you are acquainted with life in Ancient Rome and its legal system, the easier the book will be to follow. It’s gripping stuff and, to me, it felt like a mix of a Grisham courtroom drama combined with the political double-dealing of an episode of House of Cards.

Cicero dispatches Tiro to the National Archive, Catulus's domain, to check Verres's quaestorian records as governor and finds no accounts submitted. There certainly is a load of Latin sites, characters and terms, but one does not feel that Antiquity circulates through Harris’s veins. Robert Harris, with his Cicero Trilogy - "Imperium," "Lustrum" (published as "Conspirata" in the US), and "Dictator" - has achieved something remarkable in historical fiction. This manages to remove any hint of the dryness you can sometimes get from lists of facts interspersed with the erudite views of whichever learned historian’s book you happen to have picked up. I thought the descriptions of Rome and the background of Roman life, while expectedly sparse, were still interesting and kept my attention.The writing is good, but not lyrical; after reading John Williams’ excellent “Augustus” ( https://www. Harris's portrayal of Cicero is not just that of a political figure, but of a man driven by ambition, yet bound by moral integrity. Terentia gives birth to a baby boy named Marcus, much to the household's delight, and Cicero goes to Catilina's house once more and says he is so guilty he cannot be his advocate.

Pompey himself does not want to be caught in the middle of a civil war between the people and the senate. The best parts of this book were when Cicero was outmaneuvering his rivals either with clever planning, or clever speeches. Para lograr convertirse en el gran abogado del pueblo de Roma es capaz de llevar a juicio a un gobernador por corrupción en uno de los casos más importantes de su tiempo, que es lo que ocupa el primer tercio de la novela. They are suspicious of the veracity of the meeting's notes but Tiro convinces them by recording their own conversation using his shorthand script and in the early hours of the morning a deal is struck between the 'new man' and the aristocrats. The senator is Marcus Cicero—an ambitious young lawyer and spellbinding orator, who at the age of twenty-seven is determined to attain imperium—supreme power in the state.

He, Lucius, his cousin, and Tiro gather a lot of incriminating evidence, particularly after a raid on the office of the tax collectors in Syracuse where they find out about the extent of Verres's extortion from a set of duplicate records (the originals have been removed) kept by Vibius, the financial director during Verres's term of office.

As a student, Cicero studied under Appolonius Molon, learning Greek philosophy and poetry, the importance of a healthy diet and exercise, and the art of speaking eloquently and forcefully, the art of making one’s self heard and remembered.

Corruption is rife throughout the mechanics of the election, and there is a conspiracy to consolidate power. But the path to becoming the famous orator we now know is strewn with dangerous men who would see a high-minded lawyer dead in a ditch to get what they want. Knowing that the aristocrats will baulk at this concentration of power, Cicero persuades Pompey not to put his name anywhere on the bill setting up the supreme command and to leave it to the people to vote for him. While those scrolls no longer exist they are referenced by Plutarch and others and so this is as close as we will get to actual historical detail.

Cicero decides to defend him and raises the matter in the Roman senate, but his motion is talked out by Catulus and finally Hortensius, an aristocrat, Cicero's arch rival and the leading lawyer in Rome. La historia nos la cuenta su fiel secretario -y esclavo- Tiro, inventor de la taquigrafía con que conseguía transcribir con precisión las largas peroratas de su señor y de los senadores romanos. Por suerte, hay un breve momento de integridad en el que Cicerón se mantiene firme en sus principios gracias al nacimiento de su primer hijo varón.Not sure though if I'll ever go to read the rest, but then I've read just enough Roman history to know how it pans out in the end. I was reading a biography of Julius Caesar after having watched some episodes of “Rome,” a rather bawdy but interesting version of the rise of Octavian in which Cicero plays a prominent, if cheesey role, so I knowing Harris through some other books, I grabbed this one. Catulus tries to intervene and Roscius tries to propose splitting the joint command but is ignored by Gabinus and the lex Gabinia is passed. The lex Manilia is proposed, granting command of the war against Mithradates to Pompey, along with the government of the provinces of Asia, Cilicia and Bithynia, the latter two held by Lucullus, which is opposed by Catulus and Hortensius. Harris is attempting something far broader than Graves' intimate portrait of everyday Roman family life, and my feeling was that he was pretty good at introducing period detail but without stinking out every page with the odour of Garum factories as in the ancient Mediterranean fish sauce.