The First Man in Rome (In the Masters of Rome)

“For I heard in later years that there were many portents at his birth.”- Hirtia (Slave to Atia, stepmother of Augusts) in a letter to her son Quintus – 2 B.C.For readers of historical fiction, there are few periods so rich with fascination and mystery than ancient Rome, and the greatest appeal of this period is most surely the Romans themselves. As men and women of history, they were more influential and perhaps just as powerful as the Roman gods they worshipped, and they outlived their deities in the heart and memory of western culture. When fact and imagination are placed into the right hands, these larger-than-life personages can live again, as vividly as characters standing before us. “Augustus” is one such work.Those of us who were thoroughly swept away by Colleen McCullough’s “Masters of Rome” series have long been waiting for a sequel as rich in the details of private life and as exciting in its recounting of the very real, historical events surrounding the characters. (You can view the first book of McCullough's series here: https://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Rome-Masters/dp/0061582417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524174835&sr=8-1&keywords=First+man+in+rome ) Williams’s book requites that long-forgotten desire, and then some. For that’s where the similarity with McCullough pretty much ends.Williams chooses to recount his history in epistolary, using fictitious letters excerpted from equally fictitious documents purportedly written by the very real people of the time. These documents include the journals of Marcus Agrippa and Julia, Octavius’ daughter, a modern, intelligent woman living in a time when being such, for a woman, was unpardonable; letters between the poets Vergil, Maecenas, and Horace; and exchanges of correspondence both with Octavius and about him. Indeed, it is from these latter correspondences that we learn most of what we come to know of Augustus. Williams builds the aura of mystery around Octavius – an aura that apparently surrounded him in life as well – so that the reader is aching to know him better by the time we get to the third subsection of the novel, which is written almost entirely by Augusts himself.Perhaps the greatest of the mysteries about Octavius Caesar is how a man who was capable of such good and wise and magnanimous gestures could likewise be indifferent to ordering acts of abject cruelty, wanton destruction, and bloodless calculation for the sake of personal gain (though it was always “for the empire”). Octavius himself never quite finds the answer to this mystery as he observes it in others. He contemplates this in the hours before his death:“Mankind is an aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant, and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant or the white and purple toga of a senator. And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; in the cruelest of men flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men moments of simplicity and grace.” (p. 273)Augusts, of all people, is mystified by what he sees as the “unconsummated lust” in the eyes of the arena crowd on those occasions when he has spared the life of a contestant. “It was as if they took some strange sustenance into their lives by observing another less fortunate than they relinquish his own.” He goes on:“We tell ourselves that we have become a civilized race, and with a pious horror we speak of those times when a god of the crops demanded the body of a human being for his obscure function. But is not the god that so many Romans have served, in our memory and even in our time, as dark and fearsome as that ancient one? … Yet I have not destroyed him, or weakened his power. He sleeps restlessly in the hearts of men, waiting to rouse himself or to be aroused. Between the brutality that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear without a name, and the enlightenment that would sacrifice thousands of lives toa fear that we have named, I have found little to choose.” (p. 276)As Williams portrays him, the dying Augustus is a man whose indifference to the world hides a perspicacious and shrewd observer of humankind and human folly. In the book’s third division, Octavius delivers from his deathbed the fruits of this life, a life spent being both a prime mover and an acute observer of the events of his time, and to delve into a full sampling would take this review too far afield, as worthwhile a journey as it might be. The best advice I can give you is to make the journey yourself by reading this book and savoring the quiet, final moments you will share with one of history’s most influential men.In Book Two, the second subdivision of the book, the reader also encounters Julia, the very beloved daughter of Augustus. Hers is a tale that, sadly, repeats itself throughout the history of women, but with a particular poignancy. For Julia was guilty of being nothing more or less than the woman her father insisted she become: intelligent, educated, purposeful, and devoted, and sharing her father’s passionate fondness for the poetry and the arts. Julia was her father’s dearest companion, and her eventual banishment to the island of Pandateria is perhaps the only act of cruelty that Augustus could bring himself to regret, albeit that it was to save her from a trial for treason and almost certain execution. It was a severe mercy for them both.Readers must judge for themselves whether Julia was a woman cheated out of life just when she had discovered the true powers of her womanhood, or whether she was a spoiled, privileged woman who let it all go to her head and went too far. Whichever you choose, the notes of gender oppression and unfulfilled ambition and potential in Julia’s story resonate to the stories of woman today. I think that’s probably one of the saddest observations I’ve ever had to share, but there it is. That’s how far we have *not* come with the issue of a woman’s right to be all the wonderful things she can be, and even a few of the un-wonderful things, if it comes to that. In recognizing for himself Julia’s plight – one of his own creating – Augustus manages to transcend both his gender and his time in his understanding.This book joins the McCullough series as one of my most treasured reading memories. Highly recommended. Lectio Felix! (Happy Reading.)

I wanted to read this book to break my reading pattern and experience something new. I was expecting a long story (the paperback edition has over 1,000 pages) and I was prepared to hang in there until I finish the book.The start is slow. You have to look at maps, endure a winding introduction of the main characters by observing the complicated ceremony blessing the new consuls which takes place at the start of the year. But once you go through this, the pace of the story picks up gradually and it grabs you. Colleen McCullough is amazingly skilled at bringing the old world back to life. And what a world that is!The surprise I had with this book is that it is not only a great story, but it is a great history. I learned so much about Rome in a way that it would not be possible by just reading history books. Colleen is fantastic at reviving the atmosphere in Rome more than two thousand years ago. You walk on the streets of this great capital of the world and discover that what we think as modern was invented and lived long time ago in Rome. This city, this realm of great people was probably the first true democracy in the sense that it functioned not only as a political system, but as an economic system and a way of life that it is strikingly similar to our world today. It was by far so much better and more advanced than anything in the world in that day.The complex web of negotiations of the lobbying system that we find in Washington, the Capitol, the White House was alive and well in Rome. Great men achieved power and immortality by the means of communication, brilliance and influence rather than by the user of raw military power. You get flashes political tricks that will be perfected in the last two centuries, of attempts of dictatorship, use of masses through promises that remind you of era of Lenin and communism and of fascism. You get to see that an incredibly sophisticated financial system was invented long time ago: banking, transfers, safe deposits, cheques, trade, and manipulation of commodities market through political means, etc. It is all there. You have also real estate investment, and more. The life in Rome was so, how should I say, cosmopolitan. People were renting in Rome like we do today. Yes, there were slaves then, but there were free people trying to do business moving to Rome seeking success in the same way people come to the big cities drawn by dreams of riches and fame and lucrative jobs. For instance, in a large apartment, that is "insula" in Roman terms, owned by Aurelia, you find people from Egypt, Greece, Macedonia, Israel, Italy, Numidia, etc.When I read this I just had a realisation of how much value was lost by humanity when barbarians brought Rome to ruin (or maybe Rome brought itself to ruin). Maybe it was a way of God saying: "this experiment is not working, let me start all over again". Another thought that occurred to me was that most of us take anything for granted and believe it is always going to be a constant advance in the standard of living. We think WWII was the last disaster, but it may well not be that. We could end up in ruin and Earth has to wait another few thousand years until the next world can achieve greater heights. People with power in Washington and other capitals of the world would better read more about Rome. It could happen all over again.The story is backed by research and true facts. Maybe people who have different historical opinion would argue around some details. But overall everything has roots in facts recorded by historical documents accepted as reliable sources of information. Colleen McCullough took these artefacts and blew a magic star dust over them and brought the old world back to life.Wonderful book, if you commit yourself to read it, you will be rewarded with action, excellent story and a lesson of history about what is probably the greatest civilisations of all times: Rome.

I long delayed reading this series for contemplated pleasures are (I find) the best. McCullough has her own voice, perhaps nicer than Graves or Duggan, but just as immersed in detail and in narrative drive. Modern politicians will recognise the mixture of hard law and established practice, the importance of principle and of servicing one's own network. For those of us who read historical fiction of the non-Junior-chap-on-secret-mission-to-vindicate- his-father type this is delicious fun, not only because it is a rattling read firmly set in context, but because we can then voyage out to the histories to see how McCullough weaves her tale into the data that we have (for example her interpretation of both Sulla and Marius being allies) . The story concerns the post-Gracchi era with the arrival in politics of both Gaius Marius and L Cornellius Sulla both of who were to be the First Man In Rome. Being set in Rome in an era with a host of famous characters leading us ever upwards towards C Julius Caesar this is a novelist's (and reader's) dream.

I have never read anything by this author and it took me a little while to get used to her style. The story unfolds through the eyes of various characters, often each with a very different view of the same events. Sometimes this is in letter form from one to the other explaining this and that. She uses their full Roman names which gets a bit complicated and long winded but you get an very, very detailed impression of life, politics and religion of Rome at that time. I have read many books based in the Roman era by Scarrow and co and this is different enough to stand out from the crowd in that it’s not all death and gory glory. It is a very long book (1000 pages +) which I failed to notice when I bought it until I noticed my Kindle said I had 24 hrs of reading to go. Once I got into it I thoroughly enjoyed it, so much so that I am now about 8hrs into the next one – buy it!

OK, this is just a novel, but oh brother, what a novel!I must here kowtow to the talent of Colleen McCullough - this is the best novel about ancient Rome which I read since "Quo Vadis" by Henryk Sienkiewicz and "The secret of the Kingdom" by Mika Waltari. Every chapter, every page are a pure delight. And mostly it is very accurate historically - at least as much as a novel can be. I think that the only place in which the author took really some liberties with history are the early years of Sulla, but this is really a minor thing.One of my all times favourite books! Go and get it!

This book is a work of genius. I took this book along on holiday as I thought it might be light reading but found myself utterly engrossed. The late Republic has never been more brilliantly described. Sulla, Marius and others are brought vividly to life. I so looked forward to what she would make of Caesar in the later books and wasn't disappointed. This author is a mighty researcher, a mighty storyteller, with a mighty intuitive imagination.This book should be more well known! I wish I had known about it earlier!

I read the first forty pages or so with mixed feelings, not sure if the whole book would centre on characters I didn't really like, but once I got past the opening pages I was hooked. Stunned by the research that goes into writing a book like this. MacCullough's knowledge of Roman Republic is vast! Writer explains stuff as the story unfolds. Can't wait to get my hands on the next book in the series.