Augustus

It's not easy to make this material dull. Does the assassination of the leader of the free world by some of his best friends sound like a snooze to you? How about the defection of your leading general to a foreign county, WITH your armies? If General Petraeus developed a passionate friendship with Vladimir Putin and moved our Afghanistan troops to Moscow tomorrow, should your field dispatches about it be read as if they were reports on grain futures? Robin Field recounts the murder of Julius Caesar, the sensational undoing of Antony and Cleopatra, the beheading of Cicero in a languorous dozy singsong as if retelling stale gossip at an octogenarian tea party. Of all these fascinating characters, only Maecenas is given a personality. Why? B.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine