Reviews for Augustus

The average rating for Augustus based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-02-03 00:00:00 Stephen Willies How to describe this painstakingly detailed, compellingly readable, simply complex, fictionalised biography, that explores the high price of duty, and is set in ancient times but is painfully relevant in 2017? Not like that. There are myriad perspectives: it's like viewing the ancient world through a kaleidoscope or the facets of a gemstone. Or maybe it's more like a hall of mirrors and windows, where you're barely sure which is which and what distortions there may be. Versailles, perhaps: another palace of opulence and intrigue. It is non-linear: like a narrative tapestry, sewn with backstitch. It's a scrapbook of documents and fragments in different styles, and for different purposes (a little like the Bible). There's a woman's sexual awakening: her acknowledgement and embracing of it, regardless of taboos and risks. An adoring father ensures his daughter has the education usually denied to girls. There is an agonising sacrifice, a cruel example of being hoist by one's own petard. The storytelling is like Charon's gently rocking boat, like Augustus' final journey: the shimmering reflections are disorienting, and the direction is unpredictable, but the destination is sure. Content and Structure The story starts just before the murder of Julius Caesar, leaving his great nephew and adopted son, Gaius Octavius, as heir. He is young (18), academic rather than martial, with slightly poor health, quietly spoken, inscrutable, loyal to friends, but is shrewd. The story ends when Octavius, now Emperor Augustus, dies aged 76. In between there are complex machinations: rumours, political plots, wars, marriages and divorces of convenience, births, deaths, assassinations, friendships forged and broken, rituals, parties, and journeys - literal and metaphorical. It is told via letters, memoirs, poems, military orders, doctor's orders, journals, memos, senatorial proceedings, consular orders, petitions, and poems. They are from a wide variety of protagonists, some written at the time, and others with the benefit of hindsight: all the key events, and many apparently trivial ones, are described by friend and foe, as they happened, and immediately contrasted by another view, written decades later. No one is objective. (I have not investigated where it departs from or adds to authenticated history.) There are three parts. The first is mostly political scheming and battle tactics, told and spun by men. The second gives voice to many of the women, especially Augustus' adult daughter, Julia. There's still political and domestic intrigue, and some male narrative, but there's a more human and intensely personal face as well. In the short third part, we finally hear from the eponymous emperor as he evaluates his long life and anticipates his imminent death and the consequences for his empire and people. Julia "I had been a wife, a goddess, and the second woman of Rome. If I felt anything [about being widowed]… it was relief." This book could just as easily have borne the name of Augustus' daughter. It's almost as much about her, and we read far more of her words than his. She sometimes wields influence and lies to her own advantage (as well as being a victim of such), but because we hear her through her private journal, she seems the most honest of anyone. We understand her motives and her desires. Especially her desires. I came to love Julia. "This body… began its service late, for it was told that it had no rights, and must by the nature of things be subservient to dictates other than its own." "A breeze… I could hear it rustle among the cypresses and plane trees as it touched my silken tunic like a caress." "This body… has served me, while seeming to serve others… and the lover to whom I gave pleasure was a victim of my own desire." Duty, Destiny, and Personal Pain Power and wealth come with a price. The plot is full of manipulation, sometimes selfish and sometimes altruistic, but the deeper theme is the huge personal cost of submitting to fate and duty. Augustus' sister Octavia, married and remarried at her brother's dictat, says "I sometimes think that the meanest slave has more freedom than we women have known." But another woman, closer to the emperor's heart suffers more. And Augustus himself, nearing death, believes his life "accommodated to… public necessity" and thus, "I have been more nearly ruled than ruler." I'm not sure if he makes final peace with his role in the fate of his beloved daughter. Truth and Lies: Then and in 2017 "How do you oppose a foe who is wholly irrational and unpredictable - and yet who, out of animal energy and the accident of circumstance, has attained the most frightening power?" (Maecenas of Marcus Antonius) I read this as Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States and when the news was full of discussion and fear about temperament, power, and truth versus "alternative facts" Sometimes people knowingly defend and spread outright lies for their own benefit. Here, that's Augustus accepting Marcus Antonius's description of his Parthian disaster as a triumph. The hope was that he would desert Egypt (and Cleopatra) to become a true Roman again, and the need was to inspire citizens ground down by years of war and civil war. Everyone has an agenda, whether it be mere survival or something more selfish and acquisitive, and motives change with circumstances. How can one know what is true and who to trust? No surprise that in old age, Augustus thinks all histories "are lies… There are no untruths… few errors of fact; but they are lies". Reading of himself, he sees "a man who bore my name but a man I hardly know." Thus, "All lives are mysterious, I suppose, even my own." "He discovered in all others those vices he would not recognise in himself." Julia, on Livia's son, Tiberius. Or possibly contemporary political commentary. Stoner and Butcher's Crossing - and his fourth/first book John Williams wrote three brilliant, but very different novels (plus a youthful novella he later disowned). They're ostensibly about complex relationships between men, but in utterly different settings. This is about politics and war in ancient Rome. Women's power is mostly covert. Butcher's Crossing is a bildungsroman about a privileged 19 century young man on a long and perilous buffalo hunt. Women barely feature. Stoner is about a quiet man who loves and lives for literature in academia. The few women in it are seen from the perspective of and in relation to men. That makes the strong female narrative in Augustus all the more surprising. But here, as in Stoner, the intense and devoted father-daughter relationship of childhood is tragically sacrificed: the lesser of several evils, for the greater good. See the end of my review of his first (disowned) novel, Nothing But The Night, HERE, for a comparison of all four. Philosophical Quotes • "If it is one's destiny to change the world, it is his necessity first to change himself." • "A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day." • "The death of an old enemy is curiously like the death of an old friend." • "To care not for oneself is of little moment, but to care not for those whom one has loved is another matter. All has become a matter of indifferent curiosity, and nothing is of consequence." • "Erotic love is the most unselfish… it seeks to become one with another, and hence to escape the self." • "A people may endure an almost incredible series of darkest failures without breaking; but give them respite and some hope for the future, and they may not endure an unexpected denial of that hope." • "Those [anti-adultery] laws… were not intended so much to be obeyed as to be followed; I believed that there was no possibility of virtue without the idea of virtue." • Perspective changes with maturity: "The young man... sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey... where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality... The man of middle years... sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail… and has learned that he is mortal... But the man of age... must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and failures merge." Quotes about Rome • "Rome, where no man knows his enemy or his friend, where license is more admired than virtue, and where principle has become servant to self." • "The appearance of tradition and order cloaked the reality of corruption and chaos." • "Even their gods serve the state, rather than the other way round." • "Copulation has become an act designed to obtain power, either social or political; an adulterer may be more dangerous than a conspirator, both to your person and his country." • "I have conquered the world, and none of it is secure." (Julius Caesar) Other Quotes • "We shall do the boy honor, we shall do him praise, and we shall do him in." • "History will not know the truth, if history ever can." • "I could trust the poets because I was unable to give them what they wanted." • "Thinking that allusive loquacity is subtlety." • "She was cold, and thus could feign warmth with utter success." There Could Have Been More Apparently, the only writing advice his wife ever gave him was "You have gone on too long. You need to stop sooner." - about this book, and he took her advice! See this interview with Nancy Gardner Williams: HERE.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-04-16 00:00:00 David Lell Augustus is written in lucid and colourful style. Inventing all those fictional letters and documents John Williams vividly caught the spirit of the whole historical era. Perhaps we are wiser when we are young, though the philosopher would dispute with me. But I swear to you, we were friends from that moment onward; and that moment of foolish laughter was a bond stronger than anything that came between us later - victories or defeats, loyalties or betrayals, griefs or joys. But the days of youth go, and part of us goes with them, not to return. On arriving to power very young, Gaius Octavius Caesar hit the road lying across the endless battlefield… Down through the ages the history of political power is a history of perfidy and treason… "Father," I asked, "has it been worth it? Your authority, this Rome that you have saved, this Rome that you have built? Has it been worth all that you have had to do?" My father looked at me for a long time, and then he looked away. "I must believe that it has," he said. "We both must believe that it has." Supreme power doesn't make one happy but it offers an unrestricted ability to bring unhappiness to the others…