Book review: Conspirata by Robert Harris

The forty-seventh book I read in 2016 was Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome, the second in Robert Harris's Cicero trilogy.  It picks up where Imperium left off, with what should have been Cicero's greatest triumph, his election as consul. 

This volume deals with the Catiline conspiracy.  Steven Saylor addresses the same events, in what he admits is a revisionist manner, in his Gordianus the Finder novel Catilina's Riddle.  Harris takes the traditionalist view: that Catiline was both guilty and dangerous.  The emphasis here, however, is less on Catilina's plot and more on Julius Caesar's political manipulations, the eventual outcome of which will doom both Cicero's political career and, ultimately, his beloved Republic.