02 Dec 2011
Conspirata

Conspiratais my latest read. And a good read it is, too. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in republican Rome and the transition to empire.

Harris tells the story of Cicero's presidency of the Roman Senate in 63 BC from the point of view of his personal secretary, Tiro.

It's seemingly pretty accurate - haven't run across any really egregious errors (yet). It's fiction, of course, and I'll allow his conjectures, especially when they're as philosophically dead-on as this:

Surely the greatest mercy granted us by Providence is our ignorance of the future. Imagine if we knew the outcome of our hopes and plans, or could see the manner in which we are doomed to die - how ruined our lives would be! Instead we live on dumbly from day to day as happily as animals. But all things must come to dust eventually. No human being, no system, no age is impervious to this law; everything beneath the stars will perish; the hardest rock will be worn away. Nothing endures but words.

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