Le promesse del primo libro vengono tutte mantenute in questo seguito, la cui prima parte - devo ammetterlo - scorre molto più velocemente della seconda non perché quest'ultima sia meno interessante ma piuttosto per la grande maggioranza di dettagli contenuti in ogni riga: saltarne una significherebbe perdere qualche informazione preziosa e bisogna stare attenti ad ogni riga. Opera notevole per una scrittrice e una sfida decisamente ardua per un lettore la cui passione non viene mai meno anche perché stuzzicata da ogni parola. Il libro termina in un punto critico della storia romana: un astro tramonta, uno sta per arrivare alla sua maggior gloria e un altro è a malapena nascente - pur consapevole del suo futuro pieno di ambizioni. Non vedo l'ora di metter mano al prossimo che è parecchio più sottile (almeno di duecento/trecento pagine ad occhio) e penso proprio che tutta l'estate sarà dominata da Cesare e Silla.

The book itself fell apart. Had to tape and glue this old paperback together.
Ancient Rome and 2020 America power class struggle the senate all strike me as similar themes.

This 1991 novel is the second in McCullough’s wonderful series of seven novels dealing the later Republican and early Imperial years of Rome. This novel focuses on the ofttimes strained relations between two very powerful men: Gaius Marcus and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. While Rome is threatened from the east by two rival powers, it faces even more perilous threats to stability at home in the form of the their supposed Italian allies from just outside Rome who had contributed men, arms and tribute to help Rome defeat the Carthaginians and the Macedonians but who were still denied the privileges of Roman citizenship. This resulted in the so called Social War of 91 to 88 B.C.

Both Marius and Sulla contribute to holding the hegemony of Roman rule in place, but disagreements arising from their difference in ages (Sulla is much younger), health (Marius has suffered strokes) and military prowess (although Marius has won many wars previously, it was Sulla who was granted the honour referred to in the novel’s title when he saved an entire legion from destruction) lead to a severe falling out over the issue of who will lead Roman forces against the insurgents from the east.

Throughout the quite complex story, McCullough never loses her deft touch in making the intricate seem simple and the issues at hand quite understandable. She does so principally through her vivid characterization of her two leading protagonists. The austere, reticent, elder statesman is contrasted vividly with the bisexual, scheming, sly and ambitious upstart.

As a testament to the author’s skill in engaging her readers, I remember finishing this quite lengthy tome with the pleasant thought that there were five more of them to come.

Highly recommended.

Brilliant! Such an amazing period of history. I don’t know of any other ancient history fiction which has this depth and detail, along with such pace and readability. It’s an incredible piece of writing. Five volumes to go!

The first 200 pages of this is so boooring, then it picks up and becomes a very good book with intermittent boring parts. The story of the rivalry between Sulla & Gaius Marius is exciting and leads to horrendous acts of cruelty. McCullough is a very good writer. Another problem is the plethora of Roman names with a cast of thousands that makes it very difficult to keep track of the characters. Recommended to history buffs.

Прекрасная часть саги про то, как Рим скатился в полную жопу из-за обидок и жажды власти.

This is the second book in the Masters of Rome series begun in The First Man in Rome. That first man was unmistakenly Gaius Marius, a flawed but still admirable figure who married Julia, an aunt of Julius Caesar, making him a brother-in-law to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. A secondary character in the first book, he's on the rise in this one, as Marius is in decline.

It makes for a sad book, seeing that decline of a character I grew fond of in the first book. Sulla, as in the first book, is shown as both incredibly able, more than a little creepy and definitely scary. The character in this book that most gained my sympathy was Marcus Livius Drusus. As a tribune, he tried to reform the law and his failure is a turning point both in the book and for the republic. McCullough really made me feel for him and the lost opportunity to avert war.

The young Julius Ceasar is also appealing here, just coming of age, he's around 14 years old at the end of the book, and it was fascinating to see the makings of the man in the boy of this book--the way his life in his mother's cosmopolitan insula in a rough neighborhood may have shaped him.

I've seen reviewers who complain the books in the series, including this one, are ponderous, even tedious. I wasn't particularly taken with McCullough's prose style and it's not for the style for which I recommend these books. But although the books are long, I feel it's the rare long book that earns its length--even demands it. What makes this book and the series special to me is how vividly it recreates the early Roman republic. In that regard I think it's a more impressive achievement than Robert Graves's Claudius novels. I got a real sense of the Roman mindset and way of life in these books, both of the ways it parallels--and helped form--modern political systems and the ways it's in no way modern in outlook. I have a friend who is a classics scholar, and when she once told me all she cared about gaining in her own writing was dignitas, because of these books, I knew exactly what she meant.

4.5 stars.

*exhales slowly*

.... wow. The last 300 pages were the very definition of intense.


‘The Grass Crown’ picks up basically where ‘The First Man in Rome’ left off, and covers the period up to the point of Marius’ seventh and final consulship and, also, his death a few days into this consulship. However, this is not his story. While he does get quite a bit of page-time, it’s here that the character of Sulla really starts to shine and come into his own in terms of political power. This is the point where he steps out of Marius’ military shadow and starts to hold his own, and McCullogh has created such a fascinating and complicated character with him.

We also get a lot of important secondary characters come to the forefront of the novel, particularly as a good chunk of it deals with the so-called ‘Social War’ – a civil war between Rome and Italian allies who were sick of hiding in Rome’s shadow and wanted the rights to Roman citizenship. Marcus Livius Drusus really stands out as a strong character, and I loved reading about him and his family.

It’s also within this novel that, for those who know their Roman history (unlike me, whoops >.<), McCullough introduces the very-young characters of Cicero, Young Cato, Young Pompey and Crassus, and it’s interesting to see how these men start to find their own way in the world and navigate Roman politics.

We also get to take a few trips to the East, seeing the rise of Mithridates VI, king of Pontus. For many years, he was a significant thorn in the side of the Romans, posing a significant threat to their strength in the East. Both Marius and Sulla take separate trips to Mithridates’ court – in Sulla’s case, accompanied by a Roman army as well – and it offers up a brief respite from suburban Rome, too, providing a perspective in the novel that isn’t Roman.

Like ‘The First Man in Rome’ before it, ‘The Grass Crown’ is a significantly long novel – both being over 1,100 pages. My interest did wane slightly at various times, picking up at others, but the last 300 pages (long enough to be a novel in itself) were probably the best part of the novel. Even if there wasn’t always action in the form of battles or wars occurring on the page, there was always some kind of political action – and it was just as riveting and intense as reading a full-blown battle. I’m not going to spoil it for those few people who, like me before reading, have no idea of the course of Roman history at this particular time. There’s a whoooooole lot of shit that goes down, and the point at which the novel ends is a significant precipice – one that I’m eagerly waiting to jump off in the next book, ‘Fortune's Favorites’. All that you do need to know is that you’re in for a hell of a ride.

The second in the series about the life and death of the Roman Republic. I have undertaken to read the complete series but wonder if I have the commitment to do this; I am unconvinced by the author's style and the detail she includes. I am considering substituting a non-fiction account of the events covered in the rest of the Masters of Rome series and devoting the time saved to more contemporary fiction.

This is volume 2 of McCullough's massive 7 book series, and follows the decline of Marius into illness and madness, and the ruthless rise of Sulla. The two men, once friends and mentor/apprentice, become enemies, and draw the Roman world into their bloody conflict.

McCullough is excellent at sticking to the sources and yet bringing the characters and events to real life. No-one is a single-dimensional hero or villain, and the moral complexities of the age are delineated marvellously.

This is a little-known period of history, and McCullough is excellent at conveying the unease and political turbulence that was to eventually bring down the Republic.

Okay, I’m starting to get the vibe. Perhaps McCullough’s most unique achievement is in differentiating the Roman religion from the Greek religion, which, in all likelihood, we are more familiar with. She understood that Roman religion was more ephemeral, more based on superstition and precedent; that the gods, rather than being human figures imbued with divine energy, as the Greeks thought, are more divine energy itself, personified only as a form of simplification and shorthand. Still, the writing style is not for everyone. McCullough is the ideal form of the history part of historical fiction, at the opposite pole of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. She is a compelling writer, and the world she draws you into is equally compelling. However, the characters are not always as multifaceted as the Rome she portrays. No better example is there than Caesar—and I say this as somewhat of a Caesar apologist myself. Oh, he’s not without his flaws, arrogance being the main one, but the praise she heaps upon him (polyglot by twelve, ladykiller by fourteen, master of the sword and the horse and tongue by eighteen) is a little much. Not that McCullough doesn’t show nuance in her characters, but she does pick a central concept that must always shine through: Caesar is a genius, even when he fails due to his arrogance; Sulla is a psychopath, a “naked, clawed thing howling at the moon”, even at his moments of magnanimity or glory. But there are worse crimes in literature.

n  ... he was an inveterate Marius-hater, and proud of it.n

me by the end of this book. (not really, I'm gonna miss that man, but boy did he make some CHOICES in this one).

In honor of old man Marius leaving me after 2000 pages, I'm going to share my favorite Gaius Marius memes I found on the internet (under the spoiler tag because they're not actually great memes, I just think they're mildly amusing and need to save them somewhere):

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I don't think this was as good as the first book in the series. There are just too many names to keep track of and it lost me at times. But while it's slow going at times, when shit finally hits the fan in this one the book hits higher peaks than the previous book. Everything goes to hell and when you think it can't get worse, it does.

I'm still absolutely blown away by the impressive work Colleen McCullough has done here. This series is clearly so meticulously researched, and the attention to detail in every little part of it is amazing.

This book (and series in general) just proves to me that when it comes to my interest in ancient history, I would much rather read a straight up historical fiction book set in that time period than yet another retelling of some ancient myth. The retellings can be good too, and I know the lines between myth and history thousands of years ago are blurry at best, but I love diving into a masterpiece like this and then spending hours on wikipedia and old history books looking up what's (supposedly) real and what Colleen McCullough made up, and following those rabbit holes wherever they lead me.

(I mean I literally bought an ebook of The Civil Wars by Appian today because I read a footnote on wikipedia about Young Marius this one time being referred to as Gaius Marius' nephew instead of his son, and I knew I had to go straight to the 2000 year old source so I could see it for myself and analyze it.)

I need a break from ancient Rome now, because the last 200 pages really traumatized me in many ways, but hopefully in 2023 I can get through both Fortune's Favorites and Caesar's Women!