Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome (Throndike Press Large Print Historical Fiction)

272 Pages·2007·1.34 MB·English

by  Robert Harris

Imperium
Robert Harris
From the bestselling author of Pompeii comes the first volume in an exciting new trilogy set in ancient
Rome – an imaginary biography of Cicero, Rome 's first and greatest politician. Of all the great figures of
Roman times, none was more fascinating or attractive than Marcus Cicero. A brilliant lawyer and orator, a
famous wit and philosopher, he launched himself at the age of twenty-seven into the violent, treacherous
world of Roman politics. Cicero was determined to attain imperium, the supreme power in the state. Beside
him at all times in his struggle to reach the top – the office of Consul – was his confidential secretary, Tiro.
An accomplished man, Tiro was the inventor of shorthand and the author of numerous books, including a
famous life of Cicero, unfortunately lost in the Dark Ages. In Imperium, Robert Harris recreates Tiro's
vanished masterpiece, recounting in vivid detail the story of Cicero 's rise to power, from radical young
lawyer to first citizen of Rome, competing with men such as Pompey, Caesar, Crassus and Cato. Harris's
Cicero is an immensely sympathetic figure. In his introduction to this imaginary memoir, Tato states:
“Cicero was unique in the history of the Roman republic in that he pursued supreme power with no
resources to help him apart from his own talent… All he had was his voice, and by sheer effort of will, he
turned it into the most famous voice in the world.”
Ever since Walter Scott wrote Waverley, the dominant tradition of the historical novel has been one of
obsessive realism. Why this should be so is no great mystery. By and large, only novelists who take drug
culture as their theme, or perhaps a poverty-stricken upbringing in Ireland, feel under greater pressure to
demonstrate the authenticity of their material. This, for historical novelists who do not push their settings
too far back in time, can often prove a positive inspiration. Robert Harris, writing about Bletchley Park in
his thriller Enigma, was evoking a period when the fashion in English fiction had itself been broadly realist.
Not only did this provide him with a ready supply of juicy period detail, it also justified the recycling of it. A
genre, after all, is as much a product of its time as anything else. A novel set in 1940s England has every
right to be as realist as it likes.
But what about fiction set in the more distant past? We have plenty of literature from the pre-modern
era, but it is often of limited value to writers working in the realist tradition. Indeed, in most periods of
ancient history, there isn't much of a reality to be realist about. The most surefire solution to this problem,
because also the most brutal, is simply to embrace anachronism – what might be termed the Up Pompeii
approach. The modern exemplar of this is Lindsey Davis, and her hugely entertaining Falco novels. Flavian
Rome may provide the backdrop, but there is never any doubt that Falco himself, for all his togas, is a
thoroughly modern private eye. Indeed, since the genre of the detective novel is a modern one, it is hard to
imagine what a credibly ancient private eye might be like.
Harris, whose first three novels were set in the 20th century, played things similarly safe when he too
moved back in time to Flavian Rome. Pompeii, a thriller about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, was
essentially a blending of Chinatown and any number of disaster movies. As a page-turner, it was
predictably gripping; but as a recreation of the 1st century AD it had inevitable limitations. How, after all,
was a contemporary genre supposed to offer an authentic vision of a period to which it was profoundly
alien? This is a question to which Harris has evidently been giving much thought; and in his new novel,
Imperium, he presents us with his solution.
The setting, like that of Pompeii, is classical. A century and a half before the eruption of Vesuvius, the
Roman world was administered not by an emperor but as a republic. Rival players competed for the fruits of
power: the "imperium" of the title. Since Rome was by this stage the undisputed mistress of the
Mediterranean, the potential pickings were mouth-watering. As ambitions turned ever more carnivorous, so
politics took on an increasingly lurid and epic hue. Two thousand years on, those who emerged from the
power struggle still cast a lengthy shadow over the imagination: Pompey, Crassus, Caesar, Cicero.
Rich material for any writer – but there is a further reason, I suspect, why Harris has chosen the mid-
1st century BC as his setting. It is, by a wide margin, the best documented period in ancient history, with
what is, for the classicist, a whole wealth of evidence: orations, memoirs, even personal correspondence.
Harris, like an excavator restoring a shattered mosaic, uses material native to the Romans whenever he
can, fitting the fragments of real speeches and letters into the patterns of his own reconstruction. The result
is an experiment as bold as it is unexpected: a novel that draws so scrupulously on the Roman source
material that it forgoes much of what are traditionally regarded as the prime features of the thriller.
Although there is detective work, there is no detective; although there are twists and turns, there is rarely
any artificial ratcheting up of suspense. Instead, Harris trusts to the rhythm of the republic's politics to
generate his trademark readability, a rhythm that the Romans themselves enshrined in their literature as
something relentlessly exciting: in short, a thriller. Genres ancient and modern have rarely been so skilfully
synthesised.
Like I Claudius, a novel that similarly exploited the resources of classical literature, Imperium takes the
form of a memoir. Tiro, the shy and bookish slave who writes it, was celebrated in ancient times as the
inventor of shorthand: Harris has him transcribing key conversations and speeches with a flawless
accuracy, and even, on one occasion, when he is secreted into a conference, serving as a human bug. But
that is not the limit of Tiro's value as a literary device, for he was also the slave of the most prolific author
in ancient history, the Roman who more than any other reveals himself to us in all his manifold
contradictions, his brilliance and his blindness, his ambition and his vulnerability: Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Tiro's master, unlike the aristocrats who customarily secured power in the republic, was a parvenu, with
no family tradition of imperium to draw upon, and few other resources save for the spell-binding power of
his oratory. It was this that made his rise to the consulship, the supreme office in Rome, all the more
extraordinary; and it is the story of this rise that Harris uses to structure his narrative. Cicero, who was as
vain as he was insecure, would have been delighted by the result. Once, in a letter to a friend, he anxiously
wondered what people would be saying about him in a thousand years' time. To know, more than two
millennia after his death, that he is the hero of such a gripping and accomplished novel must be giving his
shade the most exquisite delight.
Robert Harris

Imperium

IN MEMORY OF
Audrey Harris
1920-2005
and for
Sam

TIRO, M. Tullius, the secretary of Cicero. He was not only the amanuensis
of the orator, and his assistant in literary labor, but was himself an author of no
mean reputation, and the inventor of the art of shorthand, which made it possible
to take down fully and correctly the words of public speakers, however rapid
their enunciation. After the death of Cicero, Tiro purchased a farm in the
neighborhood of Puteoli, to which he retired and lived, according to
Hieronymous, until he reached his hundredth year. Asconius Pedianus (in Pro
Milone 38) refers to the fourth book of a life of Cicero by Tiro.
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Vol. III, edited
by William L. Smith, London, 1851 [extracted]

Innumerabilia tua sunt in me officia, domestica, forensia, urbana,
provincialia, in re privata, in publica, in studiis, in litteris nostris.
“Your services to me are beyond count-in my home and out of it, in Rome
and abroad, in private affairs and public, in my studies and literary work.”
CICERO, LETTER TO TIRO, 7 NOVEMBER 50 B.C.
Part One. Senator
79 B.C.-70 B.C.
Urbem, urbem, mi Rufe, cole et in ista luce viva!
“Rome! Stick to Rome, my dear fellow, and live in the limelight!”
CICERO, LETTER TO CAELIUS, 26 JUNE 50 B.C.
Roll I
MY NAME IS TIRO. For thirty-six years I was the confidential secretary of
the Roman statesman Cicero. At first this was exciting, then astonishing, then
arduous, and finally extremely dangerous. During those years I believe he spent
more hours with me than with any other person, including his own family. I
witnessed his private meetings and carried his secret messages. I took down his
speeches, his letters, and his literary works, even his poetry-such an outpouring
of words that I had to invent what is commonly called shorthand to cope with the
flow, a system still used to record the deliberations of the Senate, and for which I
was recently awarded a modest pension. This, along with a few legacies and the
kindness of friends, is sufficient to keep me in my retirement. I do not require
much. The elderly live on air, and I am very old-almost a hundred, or so they tell
me.
In the decades after his death, I was often asked, usually in whispers, what
Cicero was really like, but always I held my silence. How was I to know who
was a government spy and who was not? At any moment I expected to be
purged. But since my life is now almost over, and since I have no fear of
anything anymore-not even torture, for I would not last an instant at the hands of
the carnifex or his assistants-I have decided to offer this work as my answer. I
shall base it on my memory, and on the documents entrusted to my care. But
because the time left to me inevitably must be short, I propose to write it quickly,
using my shorthand system, on a few dozen small rolls of the finest paper-
Hieratica, no less-which I have long hoarded for the purpose. I pray forgiveness
in advance for all my errors and infelicities of style. I also pray to the gods that I
may reach the end before my own end overtakes me. Cicero ’s final words to me
were a request to tell the truth about him, and this I shall endeavor to do. If he
does not always emerge as a paragon of virtue, well, so be it. Power brings a
man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.
And it is of power and the man that I shall sing. By power I mean official,
political power-what we know in Latin as imperium-the power of life and death,
as vested by the state in an individual. Many hundreds of men have sought this
power, but Cicero was unique in the history of the republic in that he pursued it
with no resources to help him apart from his own talent. He was not, unlike
Metellus or Hortensius, from one of the great aristocratic families, with
generations of political favors to draw on at election time. He had no mighty
army to back up his candidacy, as did Pompey or Caesar. He did not have