Dictator

After tracing the decay of the 500-year-old Roman Republic through the life of statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero in the first two books of his trilogy (Imperium; Conspirata), Harris devotes the final volume to the Republic's fatal collapse. The large cast of characters includes Cicero's bitter enemy Clodius, who caused his exile from Rome in the second book; Julius Caesar, who despite ambivalent feelings toward Cicero allowed him to return to Rome; and Octavian, who was fond of the elderly politician but had no problem signing his death warrant. At the center stands Cicero, the golden-tongued orator popular with the masses but unable find his way among the new breed of sharks infesting Roman waters. Written in the measured prose of a classicist, this account by the great man's amanuensis, Tiro, is all the more chilling because for Tiro, in the Republic's waning days, politics was nothing but violence: it's whatever the players can get away with.