The stories of these real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and crimes are all interleaved to form this epic novel.

Cicero Trilogy Robert Harris Collection 3 Books Collection box Set includes titles in this collection :- Imperium: (Cicero Trilogy 1), Lustrum: (Cicero Trilogy 2), Dictator: (Cicero Trilogy 3). The second round of the aedile elections takes place on the Field of Mars Marcus Cicero is victorious against all the odds. Enter Tiro, first a slave, then a freedman of Cicero, his relentless secretary, who lived to be 99 years old and wrote numerous books after Cicero’s demise, including his 4 volume biography, all lost. The Roman republic descending into civil war and ultimately dictatorship sounds like fertile ground for a stonking read but Robert Harris fails to make any of it gripping.Imperium is a backstage view of Ancient Rome at its most bloody and brutal, told through the eyes of Tiro, Cicero’s loyal secretary. Here is its grandeur, ambition and corruption; and here is its tumultuous collapse into dictatorship and anarchy - a story of the fragility of democratic institutions that holds a warning for our own time. Robert Harris brings these people and events to life with an immediacy and richness that is rare in historical novels.

From what I read in other sources, Harris tries to be as true to actual historical events as possible. I know it’s fiction, but the facts are there: the pillaging of Sicily by Verres, the attempted coup by Cataline, the manoeuvrings of Crassus, Pompey and Caesar, and then finally (for Cicero) the short lived Antony and Octavian pact. It is a fictional biography of Cicero, told through the first-person narrator of his secretary Tiro, beginning with the prosecution of Gaius Verres.At one level it certainly does bowl along, and I did find myself turning the pages avidly to see what happened next. The occasional scene perked up my interest: mostly anything with Caesar, and Harris did surprise me in that regard. Set in the dying days of the Roman Republic, Marcus Cicero begins his ascent through the ranks of the senate to become one of the most powerful men in Rome. Granted, I wanted to get back to Cicero too, but you'd think Harris could have come up with a better side plot than "Tiro saw a pretty girl once and thinks about her every couple of years until they reunite and get married.

Cicero emerges as a multi-dimensional, and very human figure: a great intellect, an acid wit, highly ambitious, but also vulnerable to nerves and mood slumps. Desalniettemin legt Robert Harris het grote verhaal duidelijk uit en is het leven van Cicero en Tiro mooi ingevuld en verteld in deze trilogie. Harris describes Cicero, Caesar and Octavian (among others) in the same high level of detail as the world building. The last book of the trilogy paints a negative and therefore interesting picture of Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony and Octavian (the later emperor Augustus). Stories of Rome, particularly that era , just prior to the time of the great Emperors (and subsequently - think "I, Claudius", etc.This series is jam-packed with details about everyday life in ancient Rome, to the backstabbing joy of being a politician in the ancient world. Today, when liberal democracy is in retreat all over the world, and frightened citizens voluntarily cede their liberties to demagogues in the name of security, the drama of the last days of the Roman republic could not be more relevant.