Présentation de l'éditeur :
The year is 63 BC. In an age of political titans, Cicero stands supreme: the senior consul of the Roman republic. But jealous rivals are determined to destroy him and seize control of the state. To thwart them will take all his guile - and will lead him, and Rome, to the brink of destruction.
Robert Harris's Lustrum is a page-turning thriller that pitches the reader into the power struggles and vicious factionalism of the Roman Republic at one of its most tumultuous moments, as Cicero is alerted to a plot to overthrow the government and take over the state. The conspiracy is led by the aristocratic politician Catalina, backed by other, shadowy factions; even Julius Caesar is implicated. Undeterred, Cicero devotes himself to exposing the treachery, and after a bloody struggle emerges triumphant.
But the gods are pitiless - and the most talented men over-reach themselves. When the sexually voracious senator and nobleman Clodius is put on trial, accused of entering a sacred women-only religious ritual in pursuit of Caesar's wife, Cicero finds himself embroiled in the case as the reluctant star witness for the prosecution. He has made many enemies, and as Caesar, Crassus and Pompey grasp political power, he discovers that he has sown the seeds of his own downfall...
Meticulously researched and brilliantly written, Lustrum is an entirely self-contained novel, but it is also a continuation of Cicero's story as told in Robert Harris's bestselling Imperium. A third Roman volume will complete the trilogy in 2011.
Quatrième de couverture :
'No one delivers thrilling yet timeless games of power, sex, fame and Rome like Robert Harris' Semon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Telegraph
Rome, 63 BC. Seven men are struggling for power: Cicero the consul, Caesar his ruthless rival, Pompey the republic's greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath, Clodius an ambitious playboy.
The stories of these real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and crimes - are all interleaved to form this epic novel. Its narrator is Tiro, confidential secretary to the wily, humane, complex Cicero. He knows all his master's secrets - a dangerous position to be in.
From the discovery of a child's mutilated body, through judicial execution and a scandalous trial, to the brutal unleashing of the Roman mob, Lustrum is a study in the timeless enticements and horrors of power.
'The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller' Sunday Times
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