This book is wonderfully researched and written. For a book based in the Caesarian times of the Roman Republic Robert Harris portrayed every detail exquisitely. Harris develops the characters, such as Cicero, particularly well, going through each step of their lives to make the reader understand how such larger-than-life characteristics were made. Harris has the great quality of being able to shove his reader right into his story, and applies this trait well for this book.

Imperium
Robert Harris
Simon & Schuster, Sep 2006, $26.00
ISBN 074326603X

As he nears death, Tiro writes a biography of his master, the late great Roman statesman, orator, and politician Marcus Cicero, who he served as confidential secretary for thirty six years. As Tiro explains he spent more time with Cicero than anyone else including the man's family, political followers, and dangerous rivals. Thus he provides a first hand account of the rise from obscure province outsider to the center of power, the consulship. Tiro, who invented shorthand, states that Cicero risked all including his life when he exposed a deadly military plot headed by Crassus and Caesar to steal elections by the military and to ultimately take away the citizen's right to free speech. This allowed the great orator to achieve his life's goal, but made the dangerous equally ambitious Julius Caesar his enemy for life.

This is a terrific biographical fiction that enables the reader to see deeply into the Roman Empire political power and struggle as much as the novel enables the reader to learn who the "author" Tiro and his employer Cicero were. Robert Harris references a nineteenth century work that claims Tiro (real secretary to Cicero) wrote a biography on his boss that was lost over time. Well written, perhaps the only quibble is that the tale ends at the point that Cicero ascends to the top government seat, leaving readers thirsting for the second act.

Harriet Klausner