DICTATOR
Robert Harris
Penguin Random House
452 pages; Rs 699
With Dictator Robert Harris concludes the trilogy that tells the story of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman scholar, statesman, lawyer and orator who was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, and who courageously but vainly sought to uphold republican principles through the civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic in the first century BC. It is a fictional biography, narrated by Cicero's slave-cum-secretary Tiro, who is emancipated mid-way through the book. The first novel, Imperium, describes Cicero's rise to power, the second, Lustrum, his years in power, and Dictator the 15 years between Cicero's exile in 58 BC (master-minded by Caesar) and his brutal killing in 43 BC, the year following Caesar's assassination.
There was actually a man named Tiro, who did write a multi-volume biography of Cicero (which is lost to posterity), and is additionally known for having invented a form of shorthand from which the symbol "&" and the abbreviations "etc", "NB", "i.e.", and "e.g." survive to this day. Mr Harris has relied extensively on historical texts for his source material, painting a vivid portrait of his hero, chosen for his extraordinary life. Mr Harris - a former print and television journalist and now a newspaper columnist - writes in an introductory note: "From relatively lowly origins compared to his aristocratic rivals, and despite his lack of interest in military matters, deploying his skills as an orator and the brilliance of his intellect he rose at meteoric speed through the Roman political system, until, against all the odds, he finally was elected consul at the youngest-permitted age of forty-two."
Mr Harris enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a writer of historical fiction, and the Cicero trilogy, written over a period of more than a dozen years, is an extraordinary achievement and labour of love. But why write a novel - or novels - about people who lived two millennia ago? Once asked how he had turned the prominent historical figures of Cicero's era into the living, breathing characters of his books, Mr Harris answered: "I look at what these men did, and then try to work backwards, imagining what it was in their personalities that led them to behave as they did. I also work on the basis that 2,000 years is the blink of an eye in terms of the scale of evolution, and they weren't that dissimilar to us."
In the introduction, Mr Harris explains the choice of setting - Rome in the middle of the first century BC - on the ground that "Dictator encompasses what was arguably - at least until the convulsions of 1933-45 - the most tumultuous era in human history". (It is also believed to be the best documented period in ancient history.) In a newspaper article written when Dictator was released late last year, the author had also explained that a biography spanning 36 years had to be a trilogy, each novel covering a distinct phase of Cicero's life and so capable of being read as a standalone story.
Dictator is a political novel, and most of the dramatis personae - Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, Marcus Crassus (the richest Roman of the time) - are portrayed as power-hungry and manipulative. The vaulting ambitions of one man (Caesar) send Rome hurtling towards despotism and civil war, and the narrative skillfully demonstrates how power corrupts, creating parallels with current realities. The Roman polity is controlled by a few political dynasties - as in contemporary India - and the charge of sedition is hurled at those uttering inconvenient truths as freely as it has been in India in recent days.
Nor, for all his high-mindedness, is the book's central character free of weaknesses. Cicero is never happier than when exercising power or brokering deals, and frequently enters into compromises with the other main characters in the book, if only in the interests of survival. However, he is firm in his commitment to republican ideals, and as the story progresses, he becomes an increasingly disillusioned man. He sees off one Caesar, only to see another - Octavian, grand nephew and adopted son of the first, who goes on to become the first Roman Emperor Augustus in 27 BC - pose an equally potent threat to his cherished ideals.
Tiro himself is not immune to the adrenaline rush provided by proximity to a figure like Cicero. At one point, weary of being "a mere appendage" to his master's brain, and having said farewell, he sets up home in a villa gifted to him by Cicero - only to realise that by doing so he has cut himself off from the political action. He soon resumes life as Cicero's secretary.
Mr Harris's Tiro is a skilled narrator and paints a fascinating picture - in telling detail - of life in that tumultuous era, and Cicero's role in it. A few days before his death, Cicero has Tiro make copies of all his correspondence, describing it as "the most complete record of an historical era ever assembled by a leading statesman". Tiro retorts that the letters (of which over 900 survive) "will be of immense interest a thousand years from now". Twice that length of time later, they have provided Mr Harris with material for a spell-binding tale.
