Masters of Rome

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Masters of Rome is a series of historical fiction novels by author Colleen McCullough (b. 1937) set in ancient Rome during the last days of the old Roman Republic; it primarily chronicles the lives and careers of Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, and the early career of Caesar Augustus.

Other major historical figures who appear and play prominent parts in the series include Mithridates VI of Pontus, Quintus Sertorius, Marcus Livius Drusus, Jugurtha of Numidia, Spartacus, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Marcus Porcius Cato, Vercingetorix, Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Each book in the series features a detailed glossary, hand-drawn illustrations of the major characters, and notes by McCullough detailing her reasoning for portraying certain events in certain ways.

The series has a thesis: as Rome became more powerful within the Mediterranean world, the old ways of doing things -- through the deliberation of various interests, mainly aristocratic and mercantile -- became impossibly cumbersome. It became more and more difficult to govern an empire with institutions originally designed to administer a city-state. Certain powerful leaders (especially the dictators Sulla and Caesar) tried to reform the old ways -- and to do so in a manner that would be consistent with Rome's basic character as a republic. But the conservatives (called the optimates by classical historians, though they themselves preferred the title boni or "good men") opposed reform so fiercely that they made inevitable the death of the Republic they claimed to cherish. The result was the birth of an imperial monarchy, and a radically different organization of power.

The novels of the series are

• The First Man in Rome;
• The Grass Crown;
• Fortune's Favourites;
• Caesar's Women;
• Caesar; and
• The October Horse

McCullough had decided to end the series with The October Horse because in her opinion the ultimate fall of the Roman Republic took place after the Battle of Philippi, with the death of Caesar's assassins. However, most historians place the end of the Republic a decade later, after the final showdown between Augustus and Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium, in 31 BC.

Due to much lobbying from fans McCullough has undertaken to write one more volume concerned mainly with Antony and Cleopatra.

Indeed, Bob Carr, former Premier of New South Wales, Australia has very publicly campaigned for McCullough to write further Roman novels. Surprisingly, he argues that she should not continue in chronological order through the Second Triumvirate and the Julio-Claudian and Flavian Dynasties but instead skip ahead to write about the Five Good Emperors. This is unlikely because her eye-sight is rapidly failing due to macular degeneration.

[edit] External links

On Colleen McCullough's conversation with Bob Carr at the Sydney Writer's Festival, 2004: [1]