Review: "Imperium," Robert Harris

 

 By Paul Carrier 

Some 15 years ago (better late than never on my part), British author Robert Harris released a novel entitled Imperium. It was the first book in a trilogy that fictionalizes the life of the lawyer, statesman, philosopher and prolific writer who may well have been ancient Rome’s greatest orator: Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Imperium covers Cicero’s rise in the final years of the Roman Republic, culminating in his election as consul, the pinnacle of power in republican Rome. Harris has said he did extensive research before writing his trilogy, and it certainly shows in this first volume. But this is fiction, after all, and liberties had to be taken.

Imperium is narrated by Tiro, Cicero’s real-life slave, secretary and, eventually, freedman. Tiro developed a form of shorthand and he actually wrote a biography of Cicero, but it was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire. Most of the events in Imperium happened, Harris writes in an author’s note, and the rest “at least could have . . . .”