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

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Still regarded as the greatest of all orators, Cicero was ambitious to climb to the heights of Rome from his base as a famous defence lawyer. The senator is Cicero, a brilliant young lawyer and spellbinding orator, determined to attain imperium - supreme power in the state.

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. Y todo ello, contado por un Robert Harris que aquí SÍ se nos presenta como un gran escritor, porque este autor da una de cal y una de arena. Harris does not really change that perception of Cicero so much as provide the context for his opposition to Caesar and his fated alliance with the optimates, the group of aristocrats who formed the core of the faction that opposed Caesar in the senate and eventually, the civil war. The more you are acquainted with life in Ancient Rome and its legal system, the easier the book will be to follow. His energies renewed, Cicero brings all this Sicilian witnesses to the extortion court, on 5 August in the consulship of Gnaeus Pompey Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, and the trial of Gaius Verres begins.The confrontations in the courtroom, the senate and the frenzied voting pens of the Campus Martius provide as much tension as a Roman battlefield and Harris does a masterful job of peopling these scenes with memorable characters. After much begging, cajoling and persuading, the merchant eventually secures Cicero’s agreement to represent him in prosecuting the powerful governor. In "Imperium" however, Harris makes a plausible case for the aristocrats' fear of absolute power that Caesar would gain through the patron-client relationships that would result from land redistribution. A theatrical adaptation of the trilogy by Mike Poulton was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon in 2017, and transferred to the Gielgud Theatre in London in 2018.

e. consuls had imperium and so did an army commander but he only held it outside the city and laid it down before crossing into the city of Rome.

What is to follow is an intriguing and wonderful reconstruction of Cicero as a clever and devious individual, lawyer and orator, and this all told through the voice of Tiro, but it will show us also that the Roman world in this period of history is full with men longing for power and they will do everything they can to obtain it, be it by force, treachery, revenge and/or ultimately death.

The tale comprises the recollections of a first person narrator: Tiro was a slave and acted as secretary to Cicero. Imperium tells the story of Marcus Tullius Cicero, advocate, politician and orator; his rise to power as well as the slow decline of the Roman Republic. If you've ever got your hands on Cicero's letters or the Loeb compilation of his entire output that's survived to out days, you know what I am alluding to.

This book won't be for everyone, but for those who relish historical fiction in all its intricate detail will love this book. Prueba de ello es que voy a continuar con la saga, aunque desafortunadamente ya sepa que esto va a acabar como el rosario de la aurora. En estas memorias, un Tiro muy anciano relata la trayectoria de Cicerón desde su labor como abogado hasta su ascenso como cónsul, en las que presenciamos como el retórico va escalando dentro del senado valiéndose únicamente de su elocuencia. I’m not sure whether I would read any more of this trilogy, perhaps after I get my NetGalley percentage up!