Dictator

How do you rate a book that is, in matters of prose and pacing and theme, excellent, but utterly fails what you, personally, want it to do? This is a problem I've wrestled with in the entirety of Robert Harris' Cicero trilogy, and at its closing, I am left unable to answer.

The book itself is entirely concerned with Cicero. Cicero's life, and Cicero's dreams, and Cicero's death. Cicero as a man, and Cicero's ambitions. It is barely interested in Rome as a polity, largely letting any commentary on the state of Rome serve as a metaphor for the state of either Germany before and during Hitler's rise to power, or a sort of warning for England– pick your least favorite PM, and Caesar is him, just as Caesar is occasionally Hitler.

I am not interested in this metaphor. I am barely interested in Cicero as a man. Cicero has received an amount of attention, since his death and during his life, that was controlled expertly from beyond the grave. The book plays with this theme a little, but it's afraid to castigate Cicero, who it places in a role of most atheistic martyrdom. Cicero's reputation is sacrosanct within the book and outside it– people love Cicero today, piling him with praise and adulation, writing fiction about him, studying his words two millennium after his death. That's the world we live in, and it's the world of the book.

And that's the scope of the book. The book doesn't want to talk about Cicero's flaws– the big flaws, the human failings, not the political missteps and gaffes– and that's usually fine for me. I try to pay attention to what a book actually wants to do, so I'm not disappointed by it failing to live up to an impossible standard that I've created in my head.

So why am I so disappointed with this book and the series in general, even though it expertly does everything it sets out to do?

The books are narrated by Tiro, an enslaved man. Tiro is possibly one of, if not the most, famous enslaved people to have lived in ancient Rome. Tiro tells this story, but it's not Tiro's story. Tiro talks about Cicero, a man who owned him, with rapturous praise. Cicero never mistreats Tiro, because Cicero is a good master. Indeed, there is almost no mistreatment of slaves throughout the entire trilogy, because then the writing would have to focus on the lives of slaves and question whether a state that allowed, endorsed, and arguably ran on slavery was moral or immoral. Harris doesn't care about that, so he skips it, but I care about it, and its total absence from this trilogy, written from the perspective of an enslaved man, feels like a yawning chasm at the heart of the story.

After really enjoying the first two of these books, this conclusion felt a little soulless. The writing is still good, and there are some great quotes. I really liked how the last chapter was written. But a lot of what is enjoyable in the first two is not really present here. Cicero doesn't have a lot of rousing speeches or petty barbs, he's not out there ruining his own life, there are no trials so he doesn't get any chances to really LWYRUP. The political machinations were happening so fast that they might as well have not been happening at all, insofar as Cicero, Tiro, and the reader have to do with it.

So much of this book was just narrating things that happen- things which I already know- that it became almost indistinguishable from narrative nonfiction at times. They went here, they did that, then this happened. At times, Tiro even uses Cicero's personal accounts after the fact because Tiro isn't present, increasing just how much this felt more like a biography and less like a novel. The previous villains of the series - Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Clodius - are spending so much time dealing with each other that they don't even realize Cicero's there.

There are times when this isn't the case. Tiro himself gets more space to have his own life here, which I appreciate. In fact, this is probably Tiro's best book in terms of being a three dimensional character, but it is in exchange for him having practically zero impact on the proceedings of the novel, so it's a suspect trade off. Cicero also has some really nice moments with Tullia and Attacus. But it never felt like I was reading a conclusion to a trilogy. It felt like real life, where sometimes people's most important events are earlier and then they spend their old age watching the warring young boys and yelling at clouds. I wonder, was Cicero a real person?

And therein lies the problem. A lot of this is not Harris's fault. The things that happen during this time period happen. Cicero is only involved tangentially. He spends his time cursing the people who led the Republic to its doom and his life is largely in the hands of others. Tiro even more so. Cicero's previous team - Attacus, Quintus, Hortensius, Terrentia, were not around him during this time. Meanwhile, there are SO many things happening that you have to work in somehow. Brutus is barely mentioned! His relationship with Caesar is never really mentioned. You can't change who dies when and how, lest you get the history nerds on your case. I get it.

However, Harris elected to write these books, and he decided to make it a trilogy, and so I am allowed to think it was a big task and he didn't land it well enough. Making this four books and letting it feel more like a personal narrative with Cicero etc would have given breathing time and more life to this whiplash of events. I actually even think that sticking to real history so closely became a bit of a negative in telling this particular story, which I'm sure many people will disagree with. I don't suddenly want Cicero to challenge Caesar to a duel. But I do think in telling a life in three parts, it is condonable to make some changes in order to tell a more cohesive, finished story. I don't know where the balance lies. Some will think sticking to reality is 100% the right course. Some will have wanted that duel with Caesar, I'm sure. But whatever the answer is, I don't think I was satisfied here.

As a final positive, the last two pages of this book are excellent, and a fitting send off.