Review: The Grass Crown

Colleen McCullough, The Grass Crown (Avon 1992)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3424.The_Grass_Crown?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=kWftwdXP4c&rank=1

This Book Two of the Masters of Rome series follows the political and personal lives of the famous men and women of ancient Rome.
Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Rutilius Rufus dine together. Marius announces his intention to go on pilgrimage to Pessinus, but his friends know he wants to check out what’s going on in Cappadocia.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus (Piggle-wiggle) is out for blood, and Marius’ man Manius Aquillius is on trial. Sulla is about to leave for Spain on campaign. Marius takes his family to Patrae, then Athens, then Helicarnassus and in the spring, on to Pessinus. Young Gaius Julius Caesar is a precocious lad, and Aurelia hires a pedagogue. The rivalry between Sulla and Piggle-wiggle escalates.
In Sinope, King Mithridates of Pontus reads a letter—Gaius Marius wants to meet. Mithridates travels incognito. He is out for conquest.
Marius and family make it to Bithynia, where he becomes involved in politics with Mithridates and Nicomedia.
Marcus Livius Drusus dreams of ‘a general enfranchisement for the whole of Italy’; Quintus Poppaedius Silo, an Italian, dreams of Italian ‘secession from Rome’.
Drusus is determined to get his law passed emancipating the Italians. Their spokesperson thwarted and murdered, leaders of 14 Italian peoples decide to use threat of war. The early victories in the Social War go to the Italians, giving Rome a fright. Though Rome eventually wins, the Italians win their citizenship.
The story follows the lives of Young Caesar and Young Marius. Young Caesar attends upon Marius after his second stroke. Caesar pulls Marius back into politics, and Marius begins to train him. Young Marius kills Lucius Cato the Consul in a mutiny, which saves a battle. Sulla is awarded by his men a Grass Crown. Sulla massacres Aeclanum.
Despite his infirmity, Rome wants Marius at the helm against Mithridates, and Sulla is told to hand over his legions. Instead, he invades Rome. But the troops rebel. On the run from Sulla, Marius flees and takes shelter at Cercina.
At the ludi Romanii, Lucius Cornelius Cinna makes his move to introduce laws regarding the distribution of new citizens and for the recall of 19 fugitives—including Gaius Marius. The controversy leads to the Massacre of Octavius’s Day.
The story finishes with the tale of the battle between Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius Ruso and the deadly rivalry between Marius’s faction and Sulla’s.
The scope of this novel, encompassing the gamut of Roman history, both political and personal, during the 1st century BCE, means learning a lot of complicated Roman names, more so than Book One, which was mostly Marius and Sulla. It takes you through the Senate meetings, the patricians’ dinners, the war strategy and the battlefields as if you were there yourself.