BOOK OF THE DAY: RONAN SHEEHANreviews LustrumBy Robert Harris Hutchinson 454pp. £12.99
THE HERO of the second novel in Robert Harris’s Roman trilogy is Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), statesman, orator, lawyer, poet, philosopher, jurist, teacher, master-of-slaves, husband and father. Born at Arpinum in Latium, he was educated in Rome and Greece and died at Formiae in Latium. His country house at Frascati lent its name to many suburban Irish homes of a certain era. Lustrum means variously the den of a wild beast, a brothel, an expiatory sacrifice offered by the censors every five years – and hence a five-year period. The story begins with Cicero’s election as consul in 63 BC and runs to 58 BC when the election of Publius Clodius Pulcher as tribune prompts Cicero to flee Rome.
The action of the novel is Cicero’s defence of the state, the Republic – firstly against Catiline, demented thug and would-be autocrat, and secondly against the growing menace of Crassus, Pompey and Caesar, all would-be oligarchs.
Any writer must approach this subject with trepidation, because Cicero’s achievement as a writer is unequalled. For clarity, for rhythm, for balancing clauses, for grace in syntax, for moral authority, the Ciceronian style epitomises Roman civilisation and it has forever echoed in the psyche of European writers. Robert Harris does not try to imitate it. Cicero’s main if not only rival for the garland in Latin prose is Tacitus (AD 55-117). Historian, lawyer and republican, he believed in senatorial government above the bureaucracy of empire. Tacitus was destined to pursue a career in the days of the odious emperor Domitian. The times were out of joint, and so was Tacitus’s prose. One clause seems to declare war upon another. Archaic words add to the pain. Innuendo, irony and sarcasm pile it on. Rapid transitions are his hallmark. If in a novel every chapter moves the story on, in Tacitus this phenomenon occurs in every sentence, sometimes two or three times, not necessarily in the same direction. Robert Harris imitates the style of Tacitus. And rightly so. Tacitus is appalled by the corruption of the society he describes.
Tiro, Cicero’s slave-secretary, narrator of Lustrum, is sickened by the characters he portrays. He is sickened by the psychotic Catiline; the haughty, self-obsessed aristocrat Catulus; Clodius, the defiler of women’s sacred rites and his sister Clodia, lover of Catullus, the poet and defiler of everyone else’s marriage; Pompey the Great, looter of endless countries with whom the Romans had no quarrel – and Crassus, the capitalist monster. It is a world of moral torture and impending political chaos as the constitution of the Republic reels from one blow to the next.
Why retell the story of Cicero? Robert Harris has something to say to his fellow British countrymen and women – and Lustrum is dedicated to Peter Mandelson. The language of the book, with great craft, echoes the language of contemporary British politics. Purists may cry foul at this but Harris has, in my view, got it right.
Just as Solamh O’Droma shaped his 14th-century version of The Aeneid for his Irish audience, so too Harris shapes his version of Sallust’s Catiline for a contemporary English audience. He is not putting on a literary costume drama for the heck of it. There is a sense of real urgency. He is warning his country that it is in danger from military might through Pompey and from vast wealth through Crassus.
The thrilling pace of the narrative does not let up from start to finish. Lustrum is an utterly engrossing, suspense-filled read.
It is a Roman page-turner, complete with Cicero’s constitutional manoeuvres, Caesar’s Machiavellian ploys – and Clodia’s see-through toga.
Ronan Sheehan is writer-in-residence at UCD and founder of the Dublin Branch (Punto Robert Emmet) of The European Centre For Latin (Centrum Latinitatis Europae).
Robert Harris reads from Lustrum tonight at 7.30 in The Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire