“Antony and Cleopatra”, by Colleen McCullough

567 pages, William Morrow & Company, ISBN-13: 978-1416552949

Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough is the seventh and last book in her “Masters of Rome” series and spans the years 41 to 27 BC. The series has a thesis (first introduced in 1939 by Sir Ronald Syme in his epic historical treatise “The Roman Revolution”): 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 Marius, Sulla, and Caesar) tried to create a state in which they had autocratic power but also preserved the externals of the old ways. They were opposed by the conservatives (called the optimates by classical historians, though they themselves preferred the title boni or “good men”). The obtuse or simply ignorant resistance of these reactionaries, who are all (except for Cato) presented as degenerate or self-serving, made the creation of an autocracy necessary. The result was the birth of an imperial monarchy, and a radically different organization of power. 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 novel spans the years from the aftermath of the Battle of Philippi and the suicide of Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus until the downfall of the second triumvirate, the final war of the Roman Republic and the renaming of Octavian to Augustus in 27 BC. The novel, which was McCullough’s last in the series, focuses mainly on the famous love story between Mark Antony, victor at Philippi, and Cleopatra, earlier the lover of Julius Caesar. This book differs greatly from Shakespeare’s treatment of these events; Cleopatra is portrayed as no great beauty, but rather an inept politician who helps ruin Antony’s cause by publicly meddling in affairs of state, and Antony is, for much of the book, far more in love with Cleopatra’s wealth than her person. Caesarion is portrayed as a gifted, idealistic youth who would be far happier had he never been a king, and who is not happy with his mother’s ambitious plans to make him ruler of all the East. Octavian and his wife Livia are depicted as pragmatic to the point of total ruthlessness but not needlessly cruel.

The rest is all here, though: battles, conspiracies, romance, conniving and some outrageous puns, all dished up in McCullough’s artful style. This novel fits in very neatly with the rest of the series, and it’s a grand, eye-opening adventure for the reader. While some of the action in the book is rather compressed, the psychological base and giving a new spin on history is top notch. This is what I really like about this series by McCullough: the subtlety and the engagement, for while she’s not adverse about putting a bit of creativity in the story, she also knows her facts. And it’s here that makes her storytelling so good: she creates characters (that just happen to be real people) that the reader can feel deeply about, and while you might not like them personally, they are compelling all the same. Along the way, there’s plenty of details about daily life, the way that the ancients looked at the world around them and some deeply moving prose. For those who have managed to stay with the series from the very beginning, this one provides an adequate tying up of a lot of the loose strings from the previous work, The October Horse. While this book, as with all of the others, can stand well on its own, it really does help to know some of the previous action of the story. If the reader is already fond of novels set in Ancient Rome, this is simply one of the best.