Second act of Rome trilogy a triumph

Robert Harris

Lustrum, by Robert Harris, Hutchinson, $40.

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REVIEWERS AND interviewers have fallen over themselves pointing out the contemporary relevance of Robert Harris's latest novel about ancient Roman politics.

Ah, the intrigue, the hypocrisy, the chicanery, the ambition, et cetera (to be properly Latin). All true, up to a point, but for sheer bloody ruthlessness the old Forum left today's democratic institutions for dead. Literally. In 63 BC, backstabbing was more than just a metaphor.

Lustrum is the second in a planned trilogy based on the life of the great Roman orator and senator Cicero. Like its predecessor, the marvellous Imperium, it is narrated by the great man's secretary Tiro, inventor of the first form of shorthand and author of a biography of his master, sadly long lost to history. He provides Harris with the perfect voice – ironic, clever – to tell this eyewitness account of the dying days of the republic.

As ever, the research behind the story telling is assiduous but never overbearing. Harris is the ace historical thriller writer precisely because his books burn with the authenticity of their settings and periods. Anyone familiar with his previous blockbusters Fatherland, Archangel, Enigma or Pompeii will know how well he can build a compelling fictional narrative around already exciting real events.

In Imperium we followed the rise of Cicero, a commoner, to early political power among the patrician elite of first century BC Rome. What he lacks in material wealth he makes up in dazzling skill as a speech maker, along with the tactical advantage Tiro gives him when it comes to recording verbatim (and using against them) what others have said. And what others – Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Catulus, Catalina, Hybrida, Hortensius, ...all genuine figures from history, and all vain, venal, brilliant and determined in various measures.

Now, in Lustrum, Cicero has won the consulship, only to find himself fighting for the very existence of the republic. Rome itself is a hotbed of corruption, poverty and shifting loyalties; in the background the inscrutable Caesar, manoeuvring himself slowly onto the front page of history.

Therein lies Harris's particular skill. From the vantage point of the present we know at least a little of what happens next. Yet this is no impediment to the plot's energy or excitement, mainly because Roman history from this period is so incredibly volatile and visceral. As Cicero says at one point, as if to explain what drives this story, "We have so much – our arts and learning, laws, treasure, slaves, the beauty of Italy, dominion over the entire earth – and yet why is it that some ineradicable impulse of the human mind always impels us to foul our own nest?"

That conflict – between ego and greed on the one hand and idealism on the other – informs all politics, now as much as then. To fashion from it a literary thriller that informs as much as it entertains, as Harris has, is the mark of a popular writer at the height of his powers.

Finlay Macdonald is a Sunday Star-Times columnist.