Lustrum
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409021315
Published by Arrow Books
2010 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Robert Harris 2009
Robert Harris has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN 9780099406327
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To Peter
Praise for
Lustrum
'A historical thriller of rare ambition'
Boyd Tonkin, Books of the Year,
Independent
'Not since Robert Graves has a novelist of equal power set to fictionalising ancient Rome'
Tom Holland,
Daily Telegraph
'Wry, clever, thoughtful, with a terrific sense of timing and eye for character'
Dominic Sandbrook,
Observer
'Deeply satisfying, impeccably researched and spectacularly topical … a thriller to die for … Harris brilliantly evokes Rome on the edge of political chaos through the eyes of Cicero's slave Tiro, who acts as his master's secretary … The pace never falters, and the politics are sharply relevant for today'
Geoffrey Wansell,
Daily Mail
'Magnificent … Better than Robert Graves's Claudius novels'
Allan Massie,
Standpoint
'Republican Rome, with all its grandeur and corruption, has rarely been made as vivid as it appears in Harris's book. The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller'
Nick Rennison,
Sunday Times
'Harris has taken the DNA of Cicero's great speeches and animated them with utterly believable dialogue … Harris's greatest triumph is perhaps in the evocation of Roman politics, the constant bending of ancient principles before the realities of power, and in his depiction of what it was like to live in the city: the mud, the guttering lamps, the smell of the blood from the temples … I would take my hat off to Harris, if I hadn't already dashed it to the ground in jealous awe'
Boris Johnson,
Mail on Sunday
* * * * *
'Gripping … A compelling narrative, full of plots, murder, lust, fear, greed and corruption … No writer is better at creating excitement over political theatre'
Leo McKinstry,
Daily Express
'Harris is the master. With
Lustrum
, [he] has surpassed himself. It is one of the most exciting thrillers I have ever read'
Peter Jones,
Evening Standard
'Vivid, so beguiling … it conjures a trick often missed by historical novels: flavoursome facts give a sense not just of a place and time but of developing lives. Harris remembers that we all exist in our own past and in visions of our future as well as in the present … It is this concertinaing of history into a series of cogent, life-changing memories that gives
Lustrum
its concentrated excellence'
Bettany Hughes,
The Times
'Dripping in detail it brings ancient Rome to vivid life, yet the political intrigue has echoes in today's ruling classes. And while the pace gallops along, the action is reined in just enough to crank the tension up'
News of the World
* * * * *
'The thrilling pace of the narrative does not let up from start to finish.
Lustrum
is an utterly engrossing, suspense-filled read'
Ronan Sheehan,
Irish Times
'A fascinating world, a world of subtle political machinations and fine oratory and nuanced debate, and complex legislation, and intrigue … Extremely absorbing'
Christina Patterson,
Independent
'Robert Harris brings the cut-throat republic to life … He understands politics and how to dramatise them'
Richard T Kelly,
Financial Times
'Harris has replaced John le Carré … stupendous plots, good characters and lightly applied erudition'
Sarah Sands, Books of the Year,
New Statesman
'
Lustrum
is a serious piece of storytelling, enormously enjoyable to read, with an insider's political tone which makes the dedication much more than a matter of convention or duty'
Peter Stothard,
Times Literary Supplement
'A fine achievement: a hefty, politically serious thriller that effortlessly reanimates the dusty quarrels of Roman government while casting ironic and instructive sidelight on those of our own'
Literary Review
About the Author
Robert Harris is the author of
Fatherland
,
Enigma
,
Archangel
,
Pompeii
,
Imperium
and
The Ghost
, all of which were international bestsellers. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film of
The Ghost
, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He is married to Gill Hornby and they live with their four children in a village near Hungerford.
Also by Robert Harris
FICTION
Fatherland Enigma Archangel
Pompeii Imperium The Ghost
NON-FICTION
A Higher Form of Killing (
with Jeremy Paxman
)
Gotcha! The Making of Neil Kinnock
Selling Hitler Good and Faithful Servant
A few years before the birth of Christ, a biography of the Roman orator and statesman Cicero was produced by his former secretary, Tiro.
That there was such a man as Tiro, and that he wrote such a work, is well-attested. 'Your services to me are beyond count,' Cicero once wrote to him, 'in my home and out of it, in Rome and abroad, in my studies and literary work …' He was three years younger than his master, born a slave, but long outlived him, surviving – according to Saint Jerome – until he reached his hundredth year. Tiro was the first man to record a speech in the senate verbatim, and his shorthand system, known as
Notae Tironianae
, was still in use in the Church in the sixth century; indeed some traces of it (the symbol '&', the abbreviations etc, NB, i.e., e.g.) survive to this day. He also wrote several treatises on the development of Latin. His multi-volume life of Cicero is referred to as a source by the first-century historian Asconius Pedianus in his commentary on Cicero's speeches; Plutarch cites it twice. But, like the rest of Tiro's literary output, the book disappeared amid the collapse of the Roman Empire.
What kind of work it might have been still occasionally intrigues scholars. In 1985, Elizabeth Rawson, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, speculated that it would probably have been in the Hellenistic tradition of biography – a literary form 'written in an unpretentious, unrhetorical style; it might quote
documents, but it liked apophthegms by its subject, and it could be gossipy and irresponsible … It delighted in a subject's idiosyncrasies … Such biography was written not for statesmen and generals, but for what the Romans called
curiosi
.'
*
That is the spirit in which I have approached the recreation of Tiro's vanished work. Although an earlier volume,
Imperium
, described Cicero's rise to power, it is not necessary, I hope, to read one in order to follow the other. This is a novel not a work of history: wherever the demands of the two have clashed, I have unhesitatingly given in to the former. Still, I have tried as far as possible to make the fiction accord with the facts, and also to use Cicero's actual words – of which, thanks in large part to Tiro, we have so many. I would like to thank Mr Fergus Fleming for generously giving me the title
Lustrum
. Readers wishing to clarify the political terminology of the Roman republic, or who would like to refer to a list of characters mentioned in the text, will find a glossary and
dramatis personae
at the end of the book.