Conspirata

A Novel of Ancient Rome

By: Robert Harris

Narrated by: Oliver Ford Davies

Conspirata is “a portrait of ancient politics as a blood sport,” raves The New York Times. As he did with Imperium, Robert Harris again turns Roman history into a gripping thriller as Cicero faces a new power struggle in a world filled with treachery, violence, and vengeance.

On the eve of Cicero’s inauguration as consul of Rome, a grisly discovery sends fear rippling through a city already racked by unrest. A young slave boy has been felled by a hammer, his throat slit and his organs removed, apparently as a human sacrifice. For Cicero, the ill omens of this hideous murder only increase his dangerous situation: elected leader by the people but despised by the heads of the two rival political camps. Caught in a shell game that leaves him forever putting out fires only to have them ignite elsewhere, Cicero plays for the future of the republic…and his life. There is a plot to assassinate him, abetted by a rising young star of the Roman senate named Gaius Julius Caesar—and it will take all the embattled consul’s wit, strength, and force of will to stop the plot and keep Rome from becoming a dictatorship.

Critic reviews

"Republican Rome, with all its grandeur and corruption, has rarely been made as vivid." -- Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times (London)

Interesting listening

I just love Robert Harris and his books. His first book about ancient Rome and Cicero, Imperium, was just excellent. It gives you so much information about Rome in the first century BC, about the politics and politicians. Conspirata is a good follow up, although it does not give you the same big picture about that ancient time. But still it is extremely interesting to read about the characters like Caesar, Cicero, Pompey, Catalina, Crassus, and Clodius. And the narrator did a very good job presenting different personages.