Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris | Book review🏛
⛰ What It's About
a man who lived in the roman era and came to became one of the most famous people in the whole of Rome, living alongside (and sometimes against) the likes of Julius Caesar. The book plots Cicero and Tiro's rise from lawyer and secretary, from a low class background, to placing themselves against some of Rome’s most notorious figures ever.
The story begins with Cicero (from a fairly humble background) as the 'second best lawyer in Rome'. Over the course of the true story Cicero rubs shoulders with incredibly influential individuals. Hearing about them in a normal everyday context is fascinating.
The book is from the perspective of Cicero's lifelong servant and friend, who, after a monumental moment in his life, is eventually freed by Cicero.
The book details the ever present conflict between reality and always being morally correct. Cicero, an Athens educated philosopher, always deeply wants to be the later but, as you will see, politics is a difficult game. Which only makes Cicero's desire to always want to be on the right side of history all the more impressive.
🔍 How I Discovered It
Gifted the book for Christmas
What I Liked About It
- the scale the book eventually reaches is crazy
- starting from fairly humble beginnings it was cool to plot such a long journey
- the main character is inspiring and real
- the style of writing wasn’t the constantly switching narratives of the Millenium triology and Dan Brown popularised, but was still gripping.
What I Didn't Like About It
- it is fairly long, however there are plenty of things to keep you entertained throughout
- sometimes i get the impression the events are not presented entirely accurately. Although it is based on truth, the ease with which some things happen - Cicero just spends the night working on something and wham! the best speech Rome had ever seen - is cool and impressive sometimes but hard to relate to or believe occasionally.
📚 Related Books
Nelson Mandela’s autobiography is a book i read that i would put in a fairly similar category to this