Rating: 
Summary: A Masterfully Woven Story
Review: This is the culminating sixth volume of one of the most important historical novels of our generation. Beginning with "The First Man in Rome" and continuing through "The Grass Crown," "Fortune's Favorites," "Caesar's Women," "Caesar: Let The Dice Fly" and finally "The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra", McCullough has carried us from just before Julius Caesar's birth on through the civil war following his death.
In this extraordinary series it is possible to see the crisis a hegemonic power faces whose political system is incapable of coping with the opportunities and threats which unparalleled power have brought to it.
The corruption and decay of the Roman Senate, the rise of outside interests seeking to bribe and corrupt Rome, the growing crisis for Italians as reactionary elements in Rome refuse to extend citizenship and the reversion of violence both in the street and with the Army all serve as sobering examples for modern citizens to contemplate as they watch the kaleidoscopic changes in our world and our times.
McCullough has the natural story teller's ability to surround big ideas with living, breathing, plotting, conniving, loving and hating people who remind us that politics and history are made by humans, not by anonymous trend lines.
In "The October Horse," Caesar is finishing the civil war against Pompey's forces (especially against Cato the Younger), developing a liaison and an alliance with Cleopatra in Egypt and returning to Rome to begin to reform the system until his enemies assassinate him in the Senate. The book ends with his nephew Octavius and Mark Antony taking on the assassins in a victorious second civil war followed by the initial murmurings of competition between Octavius (Caesar Augustus to be) and Antony.
This novel is a rich feast of people, scenes and maneuvering that is well worth reading in its own right.
While I like "The October Horse" very much, I strongly recommend that anyone interested in seeing our own time in the context of historic developments first go back and read "The First Man in Rome" (Caesar's uncle Marius) and work their way through all six volumes.
This is a work of genius and it deserves to be very, very widely read.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterfully Woven Story
Review: This is the culminating sixth volume of one of the most important historical novels of our generation. Beginning with "The First Man in Rome" and continuing through "The Grass Crown," "Fortune's Favorites," "Caesar's Women," "Caesar: Let The Dice Fly" and finally "The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra", McCullough has carried us from just before Julius Caesar's birth on through the civil war following his death.
In this extraordinary series it is possible to see the crisis a hegemonic power faces whose political system is incapable of coping with the opportunities and threats which unparalleled power have brought to it.
The corruption and decay of the Roman Senate, the rise of outside interests seeking to bribe and corrupt Rome, the growing crisis for Italians as reactionary elements in Rome refuse to extend citizenship and the reversion of violence both in the street and with the Army all serve as sobering examples for modern citizens to contemplate as they watch the kaleidoscopic changes in our world and our times.
McCullough has the natural story teller's ability to surround big ideas with living, breathing, plotting, conniving, loving and hating people who remind us that politics and history are made by humans, not by anonymous trend lines.
In "The October Horse," Caesar is finishing the civil war against Pompey's forces (especially against Cato the Younger), developing a liaison and an alliance with Cleopatra in Egypt and returning to Rome to begin to reform the system until his enemies assassinate him in the Senate. The book ends with his nephew Octavius and Mark Antony taking on the assassins in a victorious second civil war followed by the initial murmurings of competition between Octavius (Caesar Augustus to be) and Antony.
This novel is a rich feast of people, scenes and maneuvering that is well worth reading in its own right.
While I like "The October Horse" very much, I strongly recommend that anyone interested in seeing our own time in the context of historic developments first go back and read "The First Man in Rome" (Caesar's uncle Marius) and work their way through all six volumes.
This is a work of genius and it deserves to be very, very widely read.
Rating:
Summary: High-quality Literature
Review: This is the sixth and last book in a great series by Colleen McCullough on the Republican era of the Roman Empire. Every one of them maintained the same standard of high-quality literature. The dialog is crisp and highly intellectual. The historical facts painstakingly researched so that the history lesson alone is worth the purchase price.
She has done an outstanding job of research throughout the series. With numerous major characters and dozens of minor ones, she has breathed life into these people with remarkable depth and clarity. You'll get a much better understanding of historical characters. You might be particularly interested in meeting the real Cleopatra and Mark Antony-quite different from the Hollywood image these names usually conjure up.
The primary focus of The October Horse is the political intrigue leading up to the Ides of March, 44 B.C. Caesar is murdered two-thirds of the way through the book. After Caesar is killed McCullough seems to race through the next few years ending with the Second Battle of Phillipi in December, 42 B.C., where Cassius and Brutus were defeated by Antony and Octavian. As the author herself says in the Afterword, the Republican era ended with Julius Caesar. The reign of Augustus Caesar marked the beginning of the Imperium. This six-part series by Colleen McCullough, along with the works of Edward Gibbon and Robert Graves, will give you a good understanding of the Roman Empire.
This book, like all the others, is not an easy read. The Latin names and Roman titles can be very confusing. And the Roman numbering and calendar systems are not easy to figure out either. If you haven't read any of the previous books in the series and have little or no knowledge of the Romans you might be in for a hard time. But Americans should have a particular affinity for studying the Romans since, in so many ways, America is the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire. The Romans didn't care that much about the arts and sciences. They left that to the Greeks. The Romans valued military and political power, land and money. Sound familiar?
Rating:
Summary: My Review-Short and Sweet
Review: This was a fantastic series. Once you get past trying to learn all the latin names, the books capture you. I waited anxiously for each installment and soaked each book up on my vacations over the years. I am sad to see the series end but it was a good place to stop, especially since "I, Claudius" takes up the mantel from this series. Thanks Colleen...it was a great ride.
Rating: 
Summary: Good historical fiction
Review: Unlike Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire", Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series avoids moral or philosophical themes. McCullough takes all known historical facts about republican Rome and turns out a novel. Where there are gaps in what we know, she imposes her own interpretations and extrapolations, which all serve to develop her characterization of historical figures. All this makes for a rollicking good read.The Rome series spanned the life of Julius Caesar whose time to die has finally arrived; McCullough could not stretch him out for another novel. She gets the death scene right, presenting Caesar's fall with understated elegance, in spite the gore. Besides Caesar, we are treated to a legion of other characters: Cleopatra, Brutus, Mark Antony, Cato, to name a few, and also interesting completely fictional characters such as Caesar's Egyptian doctor Hap'fadne. But my favourite of all is Octavius. Octavius closes the series the end of the book, we are left with just a twenty five year gap before he reappears as Augustus in Robert Graves's "I, Claudius". It's interesting to note that McCullough wrote two non-Roman books between Caesar and October Horse. I suspect she was putting off killing Caesar because she had grown too fond of him. There is precedent: Alexandre Dumas went into a deep depression after killing Porthos in the last book of the Three Musketeers series.
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