Review: Caesar’s Women

Colleen McCullough, Caesar’s Women (Avon Books 1997)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3417.Caesar_s_Women?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=adqswMJf95&rank=1

The first of Caesar’s women on the scene is Servilia, fussing over teenaged Brutus on the way to visit Aurelia, mother of Julius Caesar and Julia. Julia, only eight years old, is pretty and charming, and Brutus begs his mother to petition for her hand in marriage. Brutus has a liking for Uncle Cato, who is too low-born for Servilia’s liking. Into their company strides Caesar, fresh from Spain.
Servilia proposes a betrothal between Brutus and little Julia, while the parents begin an affair. 100 pirate war galleys attack Rome’s port of Ostia, steal the grain ships and capture two praetors. To great acclaim, the Plebs commission Pompey with imperium to tackle piracy in all the oceans, which he accomplishes admirably.
The plot moves through the Catiline Conspiracy, the Vettius Affair, a campaign against King Tigranes of Armenia. As well as Julius Caesar and his family, Pompey Magnus and Publius Clodius feature heavily. Caesar’s enmity with Marcus Porcius Cato continues.
I can’t possibly summarise the plot. The plot is ten years of Roman history (68BCE-58BCE), told from up close and personal. The detail is amazing. The precise method the Vestal Virgins used for storing wills. The ‘ripe and shady’ ladies Sempronia Tuditani and Palla ‘gave the best fellatio in Rome’. Lucullus ‘experimented with soporific and ecstatic substances’. Julius Caesar drank no wine’. Did Brutus really have bad acne? Was Pompeia Sulla really terrible in bed? Was Cato really afraid of spiders and his sister Porcia of beetles? McCullough either has a rich imagination, or she was there herself, reading the wall graffiti. Either way, Roman history really comes to life. The rendering of the ins and outs, ups and down of Roman politics reveals a deep understanding not just of Roman history but of human character.
It is Julius Caesar’s Voice we hear, a lot of the time, a difficult proposition for a character whom everyone knows was such a tough cookie.
The cast of characters, each with a complex name, genealogy and familial and political affiliation, would be as daunting as in the first two books, if it were not that this Book 3 of the series largely zooms in on the stories of Caesar’s women.
There is excellent weaving of backstory into the dialogue and details of history into intimate and sometimes wittily chatty letters from one person to another.
It is TOO long—964 pages! but if you love Roman history, it’s a must read, though after about page 600, it becomes a bit long.