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Review by Robert C. Jones
In "Caesar," volume five of her "Masters of Rome" series, as in the first four novels, Colleen McCullough is at her best in presenting character vignettes. Vercingetorix, Cato, Cicero, Marcus Antonius, Pompey, Cassius, Calpurnia, Servilia -- those who loved Caesar and those who hated him -- all emerge from the fog of the past in vivid colors and with enormous vitality.
But it is the character and personality of Caesar that dominate this novel. Seasoned and tempered by his experience as Governor of Further Spain, the seeming womanizer and aristocratic spendthrift now begins to reveal his iron will, his astonishing intellect and his infinite capacity for taking pains. He wins renown for the series of brilliant campaigns that ends in the complete capitulation of Gaul; and, at the same time, he manipulates and outwits his enemies in the Senate with consummate skill.
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Masters of Rome Series:
"The First Man In Rome" |
McCullough, in her recreation of history, both enlarges and enriches our sense of the past.
History, for example, informs us that Caesar had an "amazing ability to assess a situation rapidly and thoroughly . . . , to perceive the reality that others ignore, to discern possibilities that normally go unremarked, and to be cautiously prepared for almost any eventuality."
The novel pauses, rather than ends, with the death of Pompey in 48 B.C. Still in the future are Caesar's Egyptian interlude with Cleopatra, the wars in Syria and Asia Minor, the death of Cato, the revolt by Pompey's sons, and the initiation of an innovative legislative program that will result in far-reaching changes not only for Rome but, ultimately, for the course of Western Civilization. Caesar has only four more years of life remaining before the Ides of March, 44 B.C. -- years that the sixth Masters of Rome novel (tentatively titled "The October Horse"), will chronicle. A new McCullough novel is always worth waiting for. One hopes, however, that the wait for the sequel to "Caesar" will not be too long.
Robert C. Jones is a writer in Warrensburg, Missouri.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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