8.08.2011
Fortune's Favorites
by Colleen McCullough, 940pgs, paperback
Series: Masters of Rome book 3
Overall Grade: B+
This books starts with the victorious Sulla strong-arming the senators into making him dictator. Sulla then proceeds to make extensive reforms to just about every aspect of Roman government, and to persecute his political enemies via proscription. Finally, Sulla retires to a seaside villa where he lives out the last few months of his life. The rest of the book deals with the aftermath of Sulla's dictatorship. Pompey running around generalling everywhere. The war in Spain against Sertorius. The Spartacus uprising. And Caesar finally coming into his own, flexing his military leadership, and generally stunning everyone around him.
Labels: genre: fiction, genre: historical, media: book, series: Masters of Rome
5.05.2011
The Grass Crown
by Colleen McCullough, 815 pgs, hardcover
Overall Grade: B+
Series: Masters of Rome book 2
2nd book in the series. Which, again, focuses mainly on Marius & Sulla. As Marius declines in health, still striving for his prophesied 7th term as consul, Sulla is anxiously setting up his own political career, finally being elected consul. Both spend time in the Near East, gaining an understanding of King Mithridates, and his aims to wipe Rome from the map. But the majority of the book covers the Italian Wars, and their aftermath. Bloody? Very. By the end Sulla has marched on Rome, Marius has marched on Rome, and it seems like the rostra is decorated with the heads of half the Senate. Egads!
Labels: genre: fiction, genre: historical, media: book, series: Masters of Rome
3.28.2011
The First Man in Rome
by Colleen McCullough, 978pgs, paperback
Overall Grade: A
Series: Masters of Rome book 1
Fantabulous! This monstrous novel begin the generation before Julius Caesar the Dictator is born, so his parents are coming of age and getting married. But that's really a side-story because the protagonists of this tome are Marius and Sulla. Marius and Sulla are constantly being referenced by later Romans so this book greatly helped whet my desire to find out what made them so important. Protagonist #1: Gaius Marius, a rich military man, he wants to get into politics, but has no clout because he's from Puteoli (read: a citizen but not a Roman). So he marries into the well-respected, but poor patrician Julians. Spends most of the rest of the novel, being a general first in Numidia then in Northern Italy.
Protagonist #2: Lucius Cornelius Sulla, from a patrician family, has unsavory (to a Roman) sexual inclinations. As the story begins he's under the thumb of his step-mother and Greek mistress, but once Sulla gets ambitous that situation soon changes and Sulla ends up the recipient of both their wills. Now flush with money, he belatedly sets about building a political career (the ONLY career worth having for a well off Roman man). He also marries into the Julian family, and follows Marius on his military campaigns, eventually becoming his second-in-command.
Labels: genre: fiction, genre: historical, media: book, series: Masters of Rome
