Sunday Book Review: Conspirata

Conspirata is the second of Robert Harris’ trilogy of novels on the career of Marcus Tullius Cicero, as narrated by Cicero’s slave and clerk Tiro.  Conspirata begins on the eve of Cicero’s ascension to the consulship, and ends with his exile from Rome at the hands of Clodius Pulcher.  Along the way, Cicero saves Rome from the depredations of Catalina, while unwittingly allowing the city to fall into the hands of Julius Caesar.

The biggest problem with the structure of the novel is that (spoiler alert!!!) Catalina dies two-thirds of the way through.  After the end of the conspiracy the novel slows to a crawl as Cicero goes about his life, and Clodius Pulcher builds a following.  Indeed, the last 120 pages or so have the feeling of epilogue, although there’s some payoff during the buildup to Cicero’s exile.  The history posed some obvious problems form Harris; destruction of the Catiline Conspiracy is rightly seen as a highpoint of Cicero’s career (Cicero himself thought it such), but it’s difficult to depict Cicero in heroic terms for destroying the conspiracy, then mention as a brief aside that Catilina’s allies had Cicero exiled just a few years later.  Cicero’s return from exile will presumably form the beginning of the third novel in the series, although the long lull in his post-return career may present Harris with some other narrative difficulties.

It is difficult to depict Julius Caesar.  I’ve long felt that Shakespeare’s Caesar is a failed character; we understand why people would want to kill him, but not why they’d love him.  Film depictions of Caesar have been at their best depicting only small portions of Caesar’s career.  I very much like John Gavin’s brief portrayal of Caesar in Spartacus, and I think that Cilian Hinds did a solid job with the late Caesar in the Rome series.  The mid-career Caesar is perhaps most difficult, because it calls for almost supernatural dynamism; a character capable of simultaneously dominating and living outside the Roman social structure.  Harris solves the Caesar problem by painting a picture of Caesar as political force rather than as personality.  We get a few brief conversations between Cicero and Caesar, but very little extended treatment.  Most of Harris’ picture comes from other people talking about Caesar.  This works fairly well, as it avoids the challenge of creating Caesar the man by instead concentrating on Caesar the phenomenon.

Pompey gets more detailed but less satisfying treatment.  For a variety of reasons, Pompey can also be difficult to portray as political force.  Pompey suffers from being considerably more conventional and less dynamic than Caesar or some of the other major players in first century Roman politics.  It’s not quite right to suggest that he was merely Caesar’s competitor, as there’s evidence enough to suggest that he held Roman tradition and law at somewhat higher esteem than his triumvarate partners.  On the other hand, he’s hardly a blameless defender of the Roman constitution.  One solution is to treat him, a bit like Cicero, as a man who is just slightly overtaken by his times.  This is how the producers of the Rome series decided to deal with Pompey, and I think it was relatively successful, although it obviously shortchanged Pompey’s earlier accomplishments.  Harris, unfortunately, decides to treat Pompey as a bit of a doofus, an object which Caesar and Cicero manipulate to their advantage.  Pompey doesn’t understand (or even try to understand) the threat of Caesar, the machinations of Cicero, or the nature of the changes to the Republic, instead seeking only another triumph and a situation of high esteem.

A more generous appraisal of Pompey might suggest that he understood something that Cicero came to appreciate too late; the forms of the Roman constitution that existed prior to the first century BCE could not survive the winning of the empire.  If we were to try to understand Pompey as trying to navigate a course between the entrenched patrician Senate and the revolutionary populists, then we might have a more nuanced appreciation of his politics.  I don’t want to suggest that this is the only way of understanding Pompey, but I do think that we should at least hold out the possibility that he both understood the threat that Caesar posed, and recognized that the existing forms of government could not be saved.  It’s clear enough that Cicero’s views eventually underwent this evolution, although too late to have significant political effect.

Harris’ Crassus is similarly unsatisfying, lacking significant depth.  That said, Harris does an excellent job of showing how the First Triumvirate dominated Rome, with an eye both to the private purchase and intimidation of Senators and to the mobilization of the “mob” to defeat political opposition.  This is to say that dry renditions of Roman history that proceed “and then Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus established the First Triumvirate” often fail to depict the violence by which that coalition operated.  All political systems internalize violence, of course, and we should heartily resist nostalgia for the old Republic.  Nevertheless, in contingent revolutionary situations the violence becomes explicit; the First Triumvirate worked not simply because of Caesar’s dynamism, Crassus’ wealth, and Pompey’s esteem, but also because they put men in the streets who were willing to crack heads.  The long shift from broken Republic to new Empire should be understood as an interregnum between two systems of regularized, internalized violence, rather than as a sudden outbreak of disorderly behavior.  Indeed, it’s best to understand Cicero’s willingness to undertake extra-judicial executions in precisely these terms.

Harris’ position on the confrontation between the populists and the Senate is uncertain.  Catalina, Clodius Pulcher, and the rest of the populists are depicted in deeply unflattering terms, but as the novel is written from the point of view of Tiro, Cicero’s clerk, this is largely appropriate.  No matter how we might re-evaluate the actions of the populists, or how what skepticism we might have about Cicero’s patrician worldview, it surely is true that Cicero and those around him viewed the populists as a dire moral and economic threat.  Harris is careful to depict the Roman civil wars as an elite conflict with popular overtones; he never credits Caesar, Catalina, or any of the other populists as having any genuine interest in the well-being of the people.  The patrician Senate also has little care for the people, with only Cicero himself having a very paternal affection for the people and interest in their well-being.  On the one hand, this perspective is defensible; it’s hard to credit the political coalitions that led to the first Triumvirate with much serious appreciation for the plight of Rome’s proletariat, rather than an interest in mobilizing the mob for short-term political gain.  On the other hand, there’s been some work recently that’s taken the populist politics of Catalina and Clodius Pulcher more seriously, putting them in the same class as the Gracchi.  A key point to remember is that defense of the Senate and of the laws of Rome was NOT about “freedom” for anything but a tiny slice of the Roman landed elite; the dictatorships and the Empire were almost certainly boons for the greater portion of the population of Rome, as they allowed the funneling of private fortunes into state works.  It should also be added that the most eloquent chronicler of this period is Cicero himself, who obviously had a deep and abiding interest in arguing for his own importance.

As for Cicero, Harris is hardly oblivious to his faults.  Tiro, our narrator, obviously has deep affection for Cicero, and Harris consciously has Tiro interpret Cicero’s behavior in the best possible light.  Nevertheless, we see the self-appointed defender of the principles of Roman government regularly descend into corruption and expediency when it best serves his interests.  Harris handles these episodes very cleverly; Tiro allows Cicero to construct such elaborate self-justifications that we barely notice as Cicero acquiesces to the looting of a province, or rolls over in the face of a populist land bill, or sells out the people in defense of a few wealthy senators.  Wealthy, powerful individuals do not typically think of themselves as violating the great principles upon which they have built their careers.  Rather, they think of their own activities as temporary, necessary expedients to the greater good.  Harris does a fantastic job of depicting this phenomenon, while maintaining a deep affection for his subject.

Conspirata is a good read.  I don’t want to downplay the structural problem; I actually set the book aside for quite some time because I found the chapters following Catalina’s death quite boring.  Harris throws us into the conspiracy itself with such energy and enthusiasm that it dominates the narrative at the expense of the larger trends in Roman political life.  That’s fine as far as it goes, but two-thirds of the way through we find that Conspirata isn’t really about the Catiline Conspiracy, but rather about these longer term trends.  The transition is awkward.  Nevertheless, I recommend the book, and I’m looking forward to the final volume of the trilogy.