With the exception of the Caesars, no ancient Roman political figure is as famous as Marcus Tullius Cicero. Like the Caesars, the myth of Cicero has taken on a life of its own: the philosopher-statesman who, until his final breath, withstood the forces of totalitarianism in defense of the republic. Certainly, there is a great deal of truth to this story. Cicero’s literary output is prodigious, and his defense of the Roman republic against Caesarism should remain an example to us all. However, as with most myths, the truth of the man is far richer and far more complicated.

　　It is exactly this truth that Robert Harris’s fantastic trilogy of novels lays bare in a fashion more gripping and also more revealing than any biography. Starting with the novelImperium, continuing withConspirata, and concluding withDictator, the series follows the life and career of Cicero from grasping new man to the last great defender of a dying republic. This riveting political thriller is told entirely through the lens of Cicero’s loyal and half-sardonic slave-secretary, Tiro. The genius of Harris’s work is to expose Cicero as he really lived—a man of high ideals and deep reflections who nonetheless found himself equally driven (and sometimes more driven) by vain ambition; a politician committed to an honest democratic system of government who finds himself frequently forced to achieve his goals through corruption.

　　In short, Harris shows us Cicero as a living, breathing politician. In the process, the Roman orator becomes all the more remarkable due to his imperfections. For as none of us is truly perfect, a flawless example of human behavior is of limited utility. The story of Cicero offers us both greatness to aspire to and mistakes to learn from. All of which is the greatest gift any work of history (fictional or scholarly) can offer. After all, what is the point of history if not to serve as a moral guide to future generations?

　　Cicero as Politician

　　The modern image of Cicero is a pretty clear one: as the greatest orator in Rome, he moved both the patrician senate and the urban masses to follow his philosophic insights. Through frequently noble, sometimes biting, and always brilliant speeches, he managed to climb the political ladder and destroy some of the late republic’s greatest villains: Verres, Catiline, and Clodius. All of this is partially true, and as such, Harris pays a great deal of attention to Cicero’s oratorical skill. He makes clear that this talent is not some innate gift, but rather a skill cultivated over many years and maintained with real effort.

　　The ultimate goal of any human life should be to leave the world better than we found it. This means more than a concern for posterity, but also a concern for personal virtue.

　　However, Harris also shows that the vision of Cicero as some purely oratorical statesman who somehow stands above the grime of regular politics is not terribly accurate. Time and time again, the series shows Cicero to be more than a mere wordsmith. He is a canny operator capable of combining his passionate, powerful speeches with impressive and sometimes ruthless political manipulations.

　　To borrow one example among many, Cicero’s election to the consulship at the end of the first book provides a good idea of the typical Ciceronian approach to politics. Cicero spends much of the election making the case for his political principles to the people of Rome. He travels up and down the countryside delivering a series of vigorous speeches that attack the corruption of the patricians. Meanwhile, though, Cicero and his various election agents work assiduously behind the scenes both to destroy his opponents’ reputations and to cut a deal with the patricians that would secure their support for his election.

　　Cicero’s political acumen is again on display while serving as consul of Rome, when the orator faces his greatest enemy: the populist Catiline. This conflict involved a great many of Cicero’s most famous speeches in which he defended, in the most eloquent terms possible, the principles of the republic. However powerful these speeches may have been, Harris makes clear that they are not what finally permits Cicero to defeat Catiline. Instead, it is a series of political tricks—such as forging letters that frame Catiline for the treason he is admittedly guilty of—or tacitly sanctioning mass bribery to ensure Catiline is not himself elected consul.

　　Some might say that showing Cicero for the true politician that he was—the power-hungry schemer as much as the noble orator—may diminish him. But Harris’s goal seems to be entirely the opposite. Too often we like to imagine political figures of the past as somehow more principled and honorable than present-day politicians. Yet, Harris shows that it is possible for a figure to achieve something like greatness, even in the role of the professional politician.

　　Harris’s Cicero feels thoroughly modern. Not in a vulgar or diminished way, but in a way that exposes just how brilliantly he would fit into the modern political world. After reading Harris, Cicero suddenly does not feel so far removed from the politicians of today, and it is entirely possible to imagine him sitting in the contemporary American Senate: exchanging witty remarks with opponents on X, giving fiery floor speeches that quickly go viral, tearing apart political enemies in committee hearings, publishing a constant stream of thoughtful essays in high-brow intellectual publications, and attending a great many swanky DC symposiums.

　　More than this, the Harris narrative shows that as maddening and corrupt as politics may be, it is the only avenue through which meaningful political change is likely to be effected. For every evil, scheming, would-be tyrant, the book introduces us to at least one well-meaning but naïve individual with little to no ability to navigate the choppy waters of political reality. One of Cicero’s closest friends in the first two books is the skilled jurist Servius Sulpicius. Yet, Cicero is forced to abandon their political alliance as a result of Servius’s simple inability to understand that elections require campaigning and winning over the urban poor (which essentially amounts to bribery, either in the form of direct payment or entertaining spectacles).

　　One of the consistent themes of Harris’s literary output is this abiding respect for the pragmatic over the idealistic. His best characters—both in the Cicero trilogy and in his other works—are those with hard principles who nonetheless understand that the heart of politics is compromise. If no other lesson existed in the pages of the Cicero trilogy, it would still be a stupendous work. Its defense of principled compromise and political pragmatism, both superior to ideological extremism and cynical self-interest, is inferior to none. However, the series also contains within its pages a moral journey that is, if possible, even more instructive to the average reader.

　　The Virtue and Sin of Compromise

　　Perhaps Cicero’s greatest foil in the whole series is not Julius Caesar, nor Catiline, but the stoic statesman Marcus Porcius Cato—a man entirely driven by his inflexible commitment to principles. There is something both deranged and undeniably admirable about Harris’s Cato. On one hand, his Stoic fanaticism is so strong that he is pathologically incapable of compromise. Time and time again, this trait hinders Cato’s ability to defend the republic against the populist forces he so opposes. For instance, Cato refuses to make friends with the populist but broadly republican General Pompey, a move which drives the military hero straight into the arms of the far more radical Caesar. If Cicero is the archetype of a thoughtful and pragmatic politician, Harris presents Cato as an ideologue. Repeatedly, Cicero’s measured and prudent advice is ignored by Cato and the other hardline patricians, much to the detriment of the republic.

　　Yet Cato, more than any other character, reveals Cicero’s besetting sin: personal ambition. Midway through the series, Cicero admits to Tiro that since he was a child, he has dreamed of being as great as Alexander. That in and of itself is perhaps no serious flaw, but the lengths Cicero goes to achieve his ambitions tend to seriously undermine his overarching goal—the safety of the republic.

　　In a frank exchange with Cato, Cicero admits that above all else he aims for political survival. For if his career is cut short, then how can he work to improve the republic? This, at least, is Cicero’s explanation for a long string of decisions throughout the first novel that help make him consul but also undermine the delicate institutional balance of the Roman Constitution he so loves. For example, Pompey requests Cicero’s help in achieving a military command of unprecedented power and length, and since he required Pompey’s political support, Cicero steers the bill through the Senate and the Popular Assembly. Likewise, to help elevate himself above his snooty patrician enemies, Cicero helps to restore the power of the rabble-rousing tribunes. It is clear from the narrative that in normal circumstances Cicero would not support these decisions. Moreover, both acts help unleash the wild mobocratic forces that Cicero will come to spend the rest of his career attempting to stop. In short, though a noble and well-meaning man, Cicero—like too many of us—sometimes struggles to separate self-interest from principle.

　　The moral example Harris gives us throughout his books is not a glittering paragon, but instead a flawed human desperately seeking a good life.

　　This tendency of Cicero’s is compounded, and perhaps caused, by his greatest talent: his ability, as Tiro puts it, to convince anyone of anything. This is certainly a useful skill in a politician, and it is founded not on wordplay or intimidation, but instead on the fact that Cicero can convince himself of anything. As Tiro described the secret to his persuasive abilities: “Just one thing to believe was all he needed and then he could latch on to it, build out from it, embellish it, and transform it just for the space of an hour or two into the most important issue in the world—and deliver it with a passion that would obliterate the flimsy rationality of his opponents. Afterwards he would usually forget it entirely.” As a sign of the dangers that lay within this skill, the first book in the trilogy ends with a dire warning about Cicero’s oratorical skill, quoting his estranged cousin Lucius’s parting condemnation: “Words, words, words. Is there no end to the tricks you can make them perform?”

　　Inherent in this aspect of the series narrative is more than a simple warning about the dangers of sophistry or blindambition. There is the teaching that nothing in our nature is ever purely good or bad. Cicero’s commitment to persuading himself of the less-than-honest acts he must commit exposes his inability to behave in a way that is truly cynical. He will never compromise his morals willingly, but instead must convince himself of the rightness of his actions. There is a certain nobility to this. Similarly, Cicero’s scheming and compromising nature is, in many respects, the best hope the republic had to resolve its manifold tensions and disharmonies.

　　However, the greatest moral lesson of the book lies in following the life of Cicero and seeing the ways in which his virtues ultimately triumph over his vices. The ultimate goal of any human life should be to leave the world better than we found it. This means more than a concern for posterity, but also a concern for personal virtue. We should quite literally improve as people—striving, haltingly, always failingly, towards perfection.

　　Precisely because of his many flaws, we can witness Cicero achieve this exact kind of improvement. More than this, the improvement is believable. Cicero never becomes perfect or unflawed. Throughout the series he remains vain, venal, and verbally abusive. Yet he also becomes braver, kinder, and more selfless. In the early stages of the trilogy, Cicero is consumed with himself—his political ambitions, his family honor, the desire for fame. These longings never quite go away, but in the way of a life well lived, we see them find their locus in things outside of Cicero himself: the republic, his family, and ultimately the moral law itself.

　　By the time the republic falls and Cicero is murdered on the road to the ocean, he is drastically changed from the grasping young man we encountered in Harris’sImperium. Through his rigorous study of philosophy and through the turmoil of simply living, he no longer fears death, and in the final chapter of his life is able to stand on pure principle and bear the costs—whatever they may be. It doesn’t appear that Cicero achieved this moral progress through rigorous dialectical philosophy or religious conversion; instead, his study of philosophy in his old age sheds further light on the very best part of him that always existed. Cicero becomes more virtuous because he finds himself—the honorable part of himself who loves the republic and the universal symbol of human liberation it represents.

　　Such is the moral example Harris gives us throughout his books—not a glittering paragon, but instead a flawed human desperately seeking a good life. This is someone each of us can relate to and learn from in our own fashion. There is no greater purpose for history or literature. As such, twenty years since it first launched, the Cicero trilogy remains as important a read as ever.