Reading Those Classics #3

Classic Epistolary Novel: Before this novel written as series of letters, I’d not read one since You Know Me Al: A Busher’s Letters by Ring Lardner in 2019 and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett in 2020.

Augustus – John Williams

An American author from a messy democracy circa 1972 examines the remote monarchal spirit of Ancient Rome. 

He makes this examination via this fine epistolary novel about the reign of the Emperor Octavian Augustus. The first part of the novel describes his rise to become the successor of Julius Caesar, of whom he is the adopted son. The Republican Rome that Octavian, a somewhat naïve twenty-year-old, inherits is a pitiless world, filled with ambitious enemies and double-crossing friends. 

Octavian and his wise-guys see Rome as bleeding in the wolfish jaws of factions. They believe - or rather, they say they believe - that the monarch will subdue the subversive Republican wolf and its bribery, extortion, influence-peddling, fraud, embezzlement, and favoritism. A tyrant will make Rome whole again. The macho Roman pats himself on the back for not being a niminy-piminy Greek, as worldly-wise pragmatism trumps vaporous moralizing every time. For the Roman in the late Republic, argues one of Octavian’s henchmen, principles and virtue must be subservient to policy and necessity if Rome is to be saved. The hard-guys always argue they must do what they do, since the times call for hard measures, against an enemy intractable, etc. etc.

And granted, the Emperor Augustus presented to Rome two centuries of pax romana in which there was no civil war, no barbarian incursions, no famine, and even short periods of peace when Augustus tried to get across to power-brokers in Rome who benefitted from fighting wars that long-term stability for the country came from avoiding risky wars.

In the novel, many voices alternate, some fictional but others historical such as failed politician Cicero, henchman Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, the poets Ovid and Virgil, troubled daughter Julia and a prime example of an impetuous man being his own worst enemy, Marcus Antonius aka Mark Antony. This variety of voices recounts the strategies and deeds of the players in way that is totally plausible and riveting. The Emperor himself remains silent until the last section of the book so we have to infer his thoughts and motivations in the words of others.

The use of letters in various voices stating various points of view in letters, memoirs, orders, dictated anecdotes, etc. has the merit of infusing the narrative with plausibility even when it is not easy to distinguish where the truth stops and where the fiction starts. Calling to mind Russell Banks’ caution about Cloudsplitter (paraphrasing: “a work of the imagination that should be read solely as a work of fiction”), Williams says in the introduction if truths are present in this novel, they are the truths of fiction rather than of history.