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 Adam Davidson 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 2021-08-29 00:00:00 Eloy Lopez This was, after Stoner and Butcher's Crossing, my 3rd John Williams! I have started reading Augustus on the 99th birth anniversary of John Williams (this was a perfect time to read the next Williams' masterpiece). [John Edward Williams, August 29, 1922 - March 3, 1994.] 💐🌺🏵️🌱☘️ 💐 •|• From the Introduction: "John Williams's four novels are so different from one another in subject matter, setting and time that it has been said that they could pass for the work of four different writers." "Williams held to the belief that to read anything without joy or pleasure was stupid, that a novel or poem was there to be experienced rather than to be understood or explicated." •|• The Book: Augustus is written in the epistolary form [*Epistolary: in the form of letters, journal entries, clippings or other documents]. Hence, this book is 'different' and was a wee bit difficult at the start. But, after the first few chapters, it became very interesting. It was like being among the waves of the ocean - ‘waves with feelings’ that were mostly harsh, rude, gentle, selfish, soothing, funny, intimate, upset and few of them were inspiring and hopeful. It also felt as if being in the front row of a theatre and watching a stage play with many characters who kept coming one at a time and pouring their heart out. [Statue of Augustus, wikipedia.org.] Augustus is, primarily, the life story of Augustus Caesar [born September 23, 63 BC - died August 19, 14 AD], the first Roman emperor, whose original name was Gaius Octavius. However, this book has the voices of many people who are directly and indirectly connected to Augustus Caesar. It can be said that Caesar is the central character of this book, he is the Sun with many of the other characters such as Caesar's family, friends, rivals and subjects revolving around him like the planets. This book is about the need to choose courage, sacrifice, honour by realising your destiny and finding the desire for greatness. It is about being an individual who is ready to test himself over and over for a lifetime - it is about life. -Are you ready to embrace greatness by changing yourself, preparing yourself, subjecting yourself? -Do you believe in the destiny of greatness or a fate of mediocrity? -Are you willing to pay the price and make the sacrifices? John Williams masterfully delivers answers to these questions in Augustus. In 44 BC, on a particular day in March, four friends were resting on a hill in a place called Apollonia. A horseman comes over with an important message for one of the friends, Octavius, a message from his mother that says about his adopted father and uncle, Julius Caesar, being murdered by the Senators of Rome. All the four friends were shocked, however, it is to be noted how Octavius displays calmness and also realises his destiny in this moment of grief. Thus, begins the momentous and extraordinary journey of a 19-year-old kid who will become an emperor! •|• Of Augustus: "I thought him a pleasant stripling, no more, with a face too delicate to receive the blows of fate, with a manner too diffident to achieve purpose, and with a voice too gentle to utter the ruthless words that a leader of men must utter. I thought that he might become a scholar of leisure, or a man of letters; I did not think that he had the energy to become even a senator, to which his name and wealth entitled him." “Late into the night the only sound that could be heard was the lap and hiss of water against the burning hulls and the low moans of the wounded; a glow of burning hung over the harbor, and Caesar Augustus, his face stark and reddened in that glow, stood at the prow of his ship and looked upon the sea that held the bodies of those brave men, both comrade and foe, as if there were no difference between them.” “For Octavius Caesar is Rome; and that, perhaps, is the tragedy of his life. Oh, Strabo, if the truth were known, I feel that his life is over; in these past few years he has endured more than any man ought to endure.” “Almost like a philosopher, he is without faith in the old gods of his countrymen; yet almost like a peasant, he is extraordinarily superstitious.” •|• Thus spake Augustus!:: "It was more nearly an instinct than knowledge, however, that made me understand that if it is one's destiny to change the world, it is his necessity first to change himself." ”Though I probably could not have articulated it then, I knew that my destiny was simply this: to change the world.” ”And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; in the crudest of men flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men moments of simplicity and grace.” “The soldier who has chosen war for his profession in the midst of battle longs for peace, and in the security of peace hungers for the clash of sword and the chaos of the bloody field; the slave who sets himself against his unchosen servitude and by his industry purchases his freedom, then binds himself to a patron more cruel and demanding than his master was; the lover who abandons his mistress lives thereafter in his dream of her imagined perfection.” “The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.” “...and for a while, convinced of the brotherhood of man and beast, I refused to eat any flesh, and felt for my horse a kinship that I had not dreamed possible.” ”I have come to believe that in the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond whatever else he might understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be no other than the poor thing that is himself.” •|• From the notes: "It is the world of 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." ========== It is odd to wait in a powerless world, where nothing matters. In the world from which I came, all was power; and everything mattered. One even loved for power; and the end of love became not its own joy, but the myriad joys of power. ========== The conceit that the gods had separated land from land by the unimaginable depths of ocean so that the peoples in those lands might be distinct, and man in his foolhardiness launches his frail bark upon an element that ought not to be touched. ========== The poet contemplates the chaos of experience, the confusion of accident, and the incomprehensible realms of possibility —which is to say the world in which we all so intimately live that few of us take the trouble to examine it. •|• And finally:: The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel — John Williams:: [Source: ft.com] Dear John Williams, thank you kindly, for Stoner, Butcher`s Crossing and Augustus. You have provided a memorable, outstanding and masterful literary experience and this shall be cherished and valued until the end of time. You are requested to accept the heartfelt and sincere apologies and pardon us for not appreciating your writings and literature whilst you were still here. It is a promise that you shall be dearly and profoundly missed. -truly and sincerely, your loving reader. I make the soldier's vow - you lead, and we shall go together, both ready to slog the road that ends all roads.