Masters of Rome
Simon & Schuster
December 2002
On Sale: November 26, 2002
Featuring: Julius Cesar
800 pages ISBN: 0684853310 EAN: 9780684853314 Hardcover Add to Wish List
In her new book about the men who were instrumental in
establishing the Rome of the Emperors, Colleen McCullough
tells the story of a famous love affair and a man whose
sheer ability could lead to only one end -- assassination.
As The October Horse begins, Gaius Julius Caesar
is at the height of his stupendous career. When he becomes
embroiled in a civil war between Egypt's King Ptolemy and
Queen Cleopatra, he finds himself torn between the
fascinations of a remarkable woman and his duty as a Roman.
Though he must leave Cleopatra, she remains a force in his
life as a lover and as the mother of his only son, who can
never inherit Caesar's Roman mantle, and therefore cannot
solve his father's greatest dilemma -- who will be Caesar's
Roman heir?
A hero to all of Rome except to those among
his colleagues who see his dictatorial powers as threats to
the democratic system they prize so highly, Caesar is
determined not to be worshiped as a god or crowned king, but
his unique situation conspires to make it seem otherwise.
Swearing to bring him down, Caesar's enemies masquerade as
friends and loyal supporters while they plot to destroy him.
Among them are his cousin and Master of the Horse, Mark
Antony, feral and avaricious, priapic and impulsive; Gaius
Trebonius, the nobody, who owes him everything; Gaius
Cassius, eaten by jealousy; and the two Brutuses, his cousin
Decimus, and Marcus, the son of his mistress Servilia, sad
victim of his mother and of his uncle Cato, whose daughter
he marries. All are in Caesar's debt, all have been raised
to high positions, all are outraged by Caesar's autocracy.
Caesar must die, they decide, for only when he is dead
will Rome return to her old ways, her old republican self.
With her extraordinary knowledge of Roman history,
Colleen McCullough brings Caesar to life as no one has ever
done before and surrounds him with an enormous and vivid
cast of historical characters, characters like Cleopatra who
call to us from beyond the centuries, for McCullough's
genius is to make them live again without losing any of the
grandeur that was Rome.
Packed with battles on land and
sea, with intrigue, love affairs, and murders, the novel
moves with amazing speed toward the assassination itself,
and then into the ever more complex and dangerous
consequences of that act, in which the very fate of Rome is
at stake.
The October Horse is about one of the
world's pivotal eras, relating as it does events that have
continued to echo even into our own times.
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