John Williams
John Williams did it, again. His last novel, Augustus, is another brilliant novel that attests to his remarkable, wide-ranging talent as an author. The novel earned him the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
The novel is a compelling re-telling of the life of Octavius Caesar Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. When his uncle, Julius Caesar, is murdered, eighteen-year-old Octavius finds himself the ruler of the Roman Republic. The next sixty years of his life consists of consolidating his rule, fighting enemies, establishing and stabilizing the Roman empire.
The novel unfolds through a series of letters, journal entries, excerpts from memoirs, dispatches, and senate dictates. These are presented in non-chronological order and delivered in the first-person voices of a multitude of historical and fictional figures vividly brought to life through their own words. They provide nuanced perspectives on the same event by describing it through different sets of lenses. Included in the voices are Caesar’s loyal friends, those who betrayed him, his enemies, his wives, his daughter, his nephews, his nieces, his step-children, his military leaders, and the prominent poets and philosophers of his court.
Woven throughout are stories of betrayal, lust, greed, intrigue, murder, suicide, and political jockeying for power. The Octavius Caesar who emerges through the voices of others is a complex individual. On the one hand, he is a gentle loving father who values the loyalty and friendship of others. On the other hand, he is a ruthless politician desperately trying to hold the empire together at whatever cost while fighting civil wars and fending off political challenges.
It is not until the final section of the book, with Octavius Caesar Augustus now in his seventies and close to death, that we hear his voice for the first time. In a poignant letter to his old friend Nicolaus, Caesar recalls his life, assesses his successes and failures, remembers his friends and enemies, evaluates his legacy, and muses on the qualities that give life meaning. In this, the most compelling section of the book, an aging Octavius Caesar speaks with wisdom, insight, and pathos. The man, addressed as a god during his lifetime, emerges as a conflicted, flawed, ambitious, disciplined, and devastating real human being. In his last days, he confronts himself. He lists his accomplishments and acknowledges their temporary nature. The only force that can endure the onslaught of time, he argues, is love. And his love for his daughter and his love for Rome was never in short supply. It guided his every move.
Although he conducted extensive research on his subject, John Williams acknowledges this is primarily a work of fiction with invented characters and invented records. But the historical inaccuracies don’t matter. What does matter is Williams has given us a work of historical fiction, epic in scope, with a nuanced, humanized, and compelling portrait of the first Roman emperor. And he has done it in a prose style recognizably his—subtle, understated, unsentimental, attentive to detail, quiet, effortless, immersive. And magical.
Very highly recommended.