Republican reading: "Dictator" by Robert Harris

I am not alone in having waited inordinately long for the third part of Robert Harris' Cicero trilogy. The first two books, Imperium and Lustrum, were wonderful reads (though I read them in the wrong order) and left me eager to finish the story. In the event, I had to wait well over four years (see Imperium review), a period in which Harris published two other novels, both excellent, but seemed frustratingly disinclined to return to ancient Rome. (The intervening two were, The Fear Index and An Officer and a Spy, by the way.)

Dictator continues the story of the Roman Republic's last bulwark, Cicero, as related by his slave - and later freed friend - Tiro.  The book opens with Cicero in exile, having been ousted from his consulship by his bitter opponent, Clodius. However, as Cicero frequently remarks, nothing in politics lasts indefinitely, the wheel turns and Cicero is able to return to Rome and join in the daily political fight. One has a sense throughout - of course, we know how the story ends - that Cicero is engaged in an uphill struggle, his successes contingent and the forces against him ever stronger. While the daily machinations of Roman politics may offer alternations of triumph and disaster, the long-term trend is for the collapse of Cicero's beloved Republic. It is Julius Caesar, who Harris portrays beautifully as a high-functioning psychopath, who fatally wounds the Republic, and whose post-assassination aftermath turns decisively onto the road which will lead Rome to the dictatorship of emperors. 

The strength of Harris' work, which is extraordinarily well-researched, is to take us thoroughly inside the world of Roman politics, seen through the (acknowledgedly imperfect) eyes of one of its great practitioners. We live the vicissitudes of ancient Rome as Cicero lives them, albeit through the occasionally interpretative lens of Tiro, feeling the setbacks and flashes of hope as he feels them. Nor does Harris forget Cicero is a human being. Perhaps more in this novel than in its predecessors do we see the dimension of Cicero as a husband, father and brother, buffeted by storms personal as well as political. As a result, we care very much for both Cicero, and the man who is ultimately his best friend, Tiro.


There isn't really a great deal more to say. If you like Harris' work, and in particular if you enjoyed the first two parts of the trilogy, then you'll like this. Harris surely joins an elite club of writers (alongside Robert Graves, for example) who have successfully brought ancient Rome to life in fiction. 

Robert Harris