johnrickardjr's Full Review: Colleen McCullough - Caesar's Women
This is the fourth book in a series of novels chronicling the fall of the Roman Republic, and the rise of the Emperors. In the first three we have followed Marius and Sulla, people best known only to classical scholars, but now we reach Caeser, whose childhood appeared in the first books, but who now moves to centre stage.
The stage he now moves into is the political life of Rome, just recovering from the dictatorship of Sulla, a period of political violence. Here Caeser faces stubborn enemies, who see in him a danger to the Republic and it's traditions, and go out of their way to block him at every turn. Despite them, Caeser rises to the highest post in Rome, Consul, and even overcomes the hatred of his co-consul.
Beyond this, we also have Caeser's personal life, which includes a series of affairs with the wives of his enemies, well attested too by the ancient historians. This is one of the most impressive features of this novel, and the others in this series - they are fantastically well researched, and getting better researched as the series goes on. A classical historian will probably be able to pick holes, but then this is a novel, not a history.
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