Dictator

November 30, 2015
The closing volume of British bestseller Harris’s Ancient Rome trilogy, following Imperium and Conspirata, is as skillful as it is sobering. In 58 B.C.E., Cicero, the brilliant 49-year-old author and orator who was Rome’s undisputed leader only five years before, is punished with exile for his principled resistance to the triumvirate that now controls Rome. Making a reluctant peace with the trio—most notably Julius Caesar—allows him to return to Rome and his family, but even his political genius cannot return the republic to stability. The triumvirate collapses, civil war ensues, and Caesar seizes power, declaring himself dictator and god. Cicero lauds Caesar’s assassination as an act of liberation; though he is swept back into power afterward, he can neither restore the Roman government he views as “mankind’s noblest creation” nor save himself from betrayal. The perfect foil to the passionate and sometimes paradoxical protagonist, Cicero’s quietly capable secretary Tiro (a slave Cicero frees in one of the book’s most poignant scenes) remains an appealing narrator, offering readers a shrewd and stable perspective on the tumult Cicero embraces. With its complex historical context and searing scenes of violence, Dictator is not easy reading. Yet its gripping dramas and powerful themes—the fragility of democracy and the fallibility of human beings among them—richly illuminate the conflicts of its era and our own. 100,000-copy first printing.

The intrigue of the politics of Ancient Rome has provided listeners with a brilliant trilogy of Harris's historical fiction, which features the orator Cicero through the narrative of his scribe, Tiro. David Rintoul fits easily into the role of the observant Tiro as he notes the lineage and backstory for ongoing sparring among the powerbrokers of Rome. Listeners need to pay attention, as the snarl of allegiances can be hard to follow, but Rintoul keeps listeners engaged. Even the change of narrator from Simon Jones, who narrated the previous IMPERIUM and CONSPIRATA--which can sometimes disrupt a series--works out, although it seems to take Rintoul some time to be fully believable as Tiro. Perhaps it's just that a listener needs to cross the gulf of time--but soon realizes that politics don't really change much! R.F.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine