The Last Days of the Republic

Plutarch’s “Lives” sits unread on many shelves, even in this era when talk of empire is not so rare. The disappearance of the general context of Rome from modern memory makes it hard for the average reader to pick up Plutarch and start reading–which is a loss, for the portraits are compelling. “Being naturally valiant and warlike,” Plutarch writes of the general-turned-statesman Gaius Marius, “and more acquainted with the discipline of camp than of the city, he could not moderate his passion when in authority,” and wrecked himself in “an old age of cruelty and vindictiveness.” About Pompey: “Never had any Roman the people’s good will and devotion throughout all the changes of fortune, more early in its springing up, or more steadily rising with his prosperity, or more constant in his adversity than Pompey had.”

The types do not change much over the centuries, but the memories of these giants and their deeds are fading, which is why Colleen McCullough’s six novels on the last eight decades of the Roman Republic are so welcome. Aimed at a popular audience, McCullough’s series moves from the emergence of Marius around 115 B.C. through the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C., when the armies of Octavian and Anthony defeated those of Brutus and Cassius. Her initial offering, “The First Man in Rome,” was published in 1990. The last installment appeared this past November as “The October Horse.” Each is riveting, and though not the blockbusters of her earlier “The Thorn Birds,” the series has won for McCullough admiration, even from professional scholars.

The reason, I think, is that these novels lure us into the Roman world and capture a sense of what it was like to be among the leaders of a vast empire constantly threatened on many borders and continually beset by political intrigue at home. At the center of her series are four men: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar. Conventional biographies have to struggle to convey the greatness of the first three, in the face of the enormous reputation of Caesar. McCullough simply puts Caesar into the story at his birth around 100 B.C. and then follows his life as it unfolds, first in the shadow of Marius, then as a subject of Sulla’s total power, as a partner of Crassus and Pompey and the enemy of Cato, Cicero, and others, and finally, as the giant of Roman history.

The supporting cast numbers in the hundreds, and the complaint about these books is that you need a scorecard to keep Scaurus separate from Sertorius and a map to separate the Long-haired Gauls from the Italian Gauls. In “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Gibbon’s historical analysis is a warning against the overextention of imperial borders. Any reader of McCullough will know exactly what the problem is. The novels are detailed accounts of imperial ambitions, imperial politics, and imperial pitfalls.

WHEN THE PBS SERIES “I, Claudius” hit America in 1976, the serialization of Robert Graves’s novels gave viewers a crisp and chilling account of the intrigues that surrounded Augustus and his heirs. The poisons and the purges, the slaughter of subject peoples, and the ever-present intrigue leave an impression of the early Caesars and their empire that is powerful because the account is mostly true.

McCullough’s novels, however, remind us of the time just before the Caesars. It was full of blood and carnage, but it was also full of individual excellence, when government by an aristocracy was often inspiring in the choices it made. There were near-constant threats in the far reaches of the empire, and Rome’s best men were dispatched to seal off and, if necessary, extinguish the trouble. Men of ambition could not rise unless they had commanded legions in battle, and those who were its greatest commanders rose highest.

This is probably one unease Americans have with the idea of empire. If our country is obliged by events to be as active at the borders of its influence as Rome’s Republic was at its edge, we will watch a series of conflicts unfold and heroes rise in response to those conflicts.

Small-beer politicians do not much care for Caesars, even scaled-down and civilian-controlled Caesars. That’s what McCullough drives home and home again: Free people freely appreciate valor and discount cowardice, even at a peril to their freedom. Most of the electors of Rome loved Caesar–without reserve, in a way that would overwhelm modern politics–because he was the perfect warrior. Even the steadiest of democrats closes the books understanding how the collapse of a Republic could occur under the weight of such charisma.

McCullough also provides a very useful understanding of the physics of empire: how, for instance, the failure of the Nile to rise above eighteen Roman feet and thus remain in the “Cubits of Death” could lead to revolution in Alexandria, a coup in Jerusalem, an invasion by the Parthians, and thus a stripping of the defenses in Spain. The books are a remedial course for those who believe in isolationism.

At the end of “The October Horse,” in the last of a series of illuminating and gossipy “Author’s Afterwards,” McCullough writes, “I think it is appropriate to call a halt to what has been an enormously enjoyable creative exercise: breathing life into history without distorting it more than the limitations of any scholarship made inevitable.” Other readers must share my disappointment that she is calling it quits just as Octavian is becoming Augustus.

Perhaps she will reconsider. “Tim” and “The Thorn Birds” will not be flying off the shelves in a few decades, but her Roman cycle surely will still be there and still selling, especially if the empire-minded among us see their predictions come to pass. The American empire may not look like the Roman version, but the lessons of that enterprise will surely shape our coming history.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio talk show and a contributor to The Daily Standard.

[img nocaption float=”right” width=”99″ height=”147″ render=”<%photoRenderType%>”]1064[/img]

Click here to order Colleen McCullough’s “The October Horse.”