Lustrum

Five quick things you didn't know:
1- In Classical Latin (the language of the time), Cicero was pronounced "Ki-kay-ro." 

2- Similarly, Caesar was pronounced "Kay-sar," similar to the German "Kaiser," which makes sense...it means the same thing.

3- Shorthand was invented by Cicero's slave and secretary Tiro.  Much of it survives to this day, including the ampersand (&) and common abbreviations such as etc. (et cetera) , n.b. (nota bene), i.e. (id est), and e.g. (exempli gratia.)

4- Tiro reputedly not only survived Cicero, but lived to the age of 100.  He wrote a widely-read biography of his former master, which sadly has not survived. 

5- Cicero was such a powerful speaker (think Winston Churchill or Martin Luther King) that when his enemies finally had him killed, Mark Antony's wife Fulvia repeatedly stabbed his tongue with her hairpin.  It was the only way to get the last word.

 

Cicero, the unrivaled speaker...

Few books are so comprehensively described by their title alone.

In Latin, Lustrum was apparently a marvelously useful word.  It meant a den or lair of wild beasts, can refer to brothels, was a particular sacrifice offered by Roman censors, or more simply, a period of five years. 


The five-year period Robert Harris writes about, 63 to 58 BC, offered all that and more in the very last days of Republican Rome.  The Senate had never been weaker, having only shortly recovered from a disastrous dictatorship and civil war, the Spartacan slave revolt, and the uncomfortable rise of Pompey Magnus (literally, Pompey the Great) to levels of power, wealth and influence that literally threatened the republic.  Oh, yeah - and the steady rise of an unlikely power broker; a young Senator from a venerable and respected family that had fallen on hard times, Julius Caesar. 

Lustrum is the second of a trilogy centering on Marcus Tullius Cicero, one of Republican Rome's greatest products.  In many respects, Cicero was the Thomas Jefferson of his age, an intellectual giant who just happened to end up in politics.  Cicero is a good choice, because from the start of his rise to prominence as a lawyer (described in Imperium) until his murder in 43 BC, Cicero was a pivotal figure.  Interestingly, both Imperium and Lustrum are presented as memoirs of Cicero's slave and trusted secretary, Tiro. 

...and Cicero, the spineless politician

Being a fan of HBO's Rome, where Cicero was played by David Bamber, (right) it's very hard to picture anyone else.  But Bamber's Cicero is more of a conniving, craven, almost effete political creature, who has none of the real figure's spine.  (Tiro, briefly glimpsed as a blubbering simpleton, fares even worse.) 

This is unfair. Cicero famously averted a coup d'etat, having stared down the Catiline Conspiracy (which he may or may not have "nudged" along to entrap those involved), possibly saving the lives of a quarter of the Senate, including his own. 

For this, Cicero was named Father of the Country, a purely honorific title that probably didn't win him any friends among the later power brokers: Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Octavian, Agrippa, et al.  (See?  Tiro's legacy lives on.)

Rome has been fertile ground for historical fiction, and for good reason. It's relatable yet also alien; recognizable Europeans acting completely outside the now-normal Judeo-Christian ethics, more or less for the very last time.  That's not necessarily a criticism, but is is different and even exotic, particularly where sex and violence are concerned.

While there's no lack of sex and violence in Lustrum, they never occupy the spotlight.  They take place offstage; things other people do, while Tiro and Cicero maneuver around their wreckage.  Or, attempt to.  

Harris' Cicero is a wonderfully realized character. He's noble and motivated by the idea of preserving the Republic, but also vain, which occasionally causes him to wander into obvious traps.  He's also completely incapable of figuring out Caesar until far, far too late - a mistake whose repercussions we feel even today.

Cicero failed to stop this from happening

Is that hyperbole? I don't think so.  If anyone was going to stop Caesar before his civil wars, it probably needed to be Cicero, when Caesar was still chiefly just a politician.  Once he became general and imperator, there was nothing a "mere" politician, no matter how eloquent, could do. 

That's perhaps the real brilliance of Lustrum; a portrait of a lost world and culture, a pivotal moment in history, a fleshing out of familiar names from history - but also a tantalizing glimpse at a missed opportunity.