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"Winner of the 1973 National Book Award. In Augustus, the third of his great novels, John Williams took on an entirely new challenge, a[n] historical novel set in classical Rome, exploring the life of the founder of the Roman Empire, whose greatness was matched by his brutality. To tell the story, Williams also turned to a genre, the epistolary novel, that was new to him, transforming and transcending it just as he did the western in Butcher's Crossing and the campus novel in Stoner. Augustus is the final triumph of a writer who has come to be recognized around the world as an American master. "[In Augustus,] John Williams re-creates the Roman Empire from the death of Julius Caesar to the last days of Augustus, the machinations of the court, the Senate, and the people, from the sickly boy to the sickly man who almost dies during expeditions[;] to what would seem to be the ruthless ruler. Read it in conjunction with Robert Graves's more flamboyant I, Claudius and Claudius the God, Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil, and Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian." --Harold Augenbraum, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation"--… (more)
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Somehow John William’s “Augustus” flew under the radar of my historical fiction passion until I was recently prepping for a family vacation to Italy. During my first visit to Italy three years ago, I dutiful read Graves’ “I, Claudius”, and thoroughly enjoyed the vividly detailed Roman Empire replete with the larger than life soap opera-like affairs of it’s colorful characters. For me personally, Graves set a standard with his seamless blend of history and fiction.
The narrative is comprised of letters exchanged among a number of the nobility of Augustus’ world, with focus on his friends Marcus Agrippa and Maecenas, a smattering of other well-known personalities from this early period of the Empire, like the poet/philosophers, Horace, Virgil, Nicolaus of Damascus, foes like Marcus Antonius, his wife Livia, and his daughter Julia whom he was forced to banish from Rome towards the end of his reign.
Through their pens and correspondence, we learn about the life of Augustus, who actually never accepted his role as Emperor, but history defines as the first Emperor nonetheless. His closest, and lifelong friends discuss Augustus as a teen – when he was still known as Octavian; Maecenas recalls, “I thought that he might become a scholar of leisure, or a man of letters; I did not think he had the energy to become even a senator, to which his name and wealth entitled him.”
In a particularly poignant scene, Augustus’ friends describe his emotional reaction to the news of his beloved uncle Julius Caesar’s murder, but only later do we read his first-hand account of the world-changing event. In fact, Williams quite deftly builds his narrative around Augustus without incorporating him immediately into the flow of the correspondence. It’s not until the last 50 pages or so that we read directly from the Emperor’s own pen, as he reflects upon his life and legacy. He, in fact, constructs his own eulogy: an ode to Rome and its people. He sees his 40+ years as ruler of the Roman world through clear eyes as he openly and honestly discusses what it means to be Emperor and what it means to be Roman.
Williams captures the strong spirit of both Augustus and his daughter Julia. He conveys the equally painful elements of their existence that are not about living a life, but living a life as dictated by culture, by honor, and by a quiet acceptance of a fate imposed on their lives, rather than a life chosen to live.
The heart of the novel resides within Augustus’ only blood child – Julia. We read through the eyes of a daughter, her unique perspective on arguably the world’s most important person at the time. Her innocent view is first warped during a Triumph held in the streets of Rome honoring Augustus’ triple victories over Dalmatia, Actium, and Egypt. When she sees her father approaching the city, the people of Rome cheering wildly by the side of the parade route, she writes, “…when he came near enough to recognize us, he spurred his horse ahead of the soldiers he was leading, and caught me in his arms, laughing…and he was my father. It was, perhaps, the last time that I was able to think of him as if he were a father like any other.” She writes later, “…during his speeches and the sacrifices and the presentations, I felt him drawn away from me in the world that I was beginning to see for the first time.”
We learn through friends and foe alike, of the unique love the Emperor had for his daughter, and we learn of the singular spirit and sharpness embodied within Julia, rare it seems for women of the time. She decorously serves her role as a political pawn in her father’s machinations, marrying a cousin while still in her teens intended to seal Augustus’ succession. Widowed only a few years later, she’s then asked to marry her father’s closest friend, Agrippa, a full generation older than she, bears several children, and again finds herself widowed when Agrippa suddenly dies. When forced to marry Augustus’ stepson Tiberius, Julia finds it too much to bear, and while Tiberius protects the empires most extreme borders, she discovers her inner woman, and finally allows herself enjoyment in a newfound sexual freedom.
In a stirring scene, Julia remembers the meeting with her father, as he calls her out for adultery and explains to his daughter that almost every one of her lovers was found to be plotting against Tiberius, and Augustus himself. Her banishment was intended to protect her from the political forces that would implicate her as part of the conspiracy and ultimately doom her to execution. I couldn’t help but feel the fatherly pain, strong and bitter as one’s child absorbs the shock of such a severe punishment.
This is an absolutely wonderful book and would serve as a terrific way to expose a reader to this amazing period of history. I highly recommend “Augustus” which reads as a singularly successful work of literature.
Choosing the form of an epistolary novel makes the book much more interesting to read as we are able to choose among a multitude of perspectives of the same event to make out what really happened. Further, having different parties voice their opinion in letters helps to show certain motives in the struggle for power in Rome. This is what I liked a lot about the novel. However, it did not really grip me. I am not really sure why this is, but I think that the subject matter, while interesting, was somewhat removed from what I usually read. Hence, I would describe the novel as a fine read and the the 3.5 stars I assigned can be attributed to my personal tastes rather than to Williams' writing.
The introduction to the novel states that Williams was inspired to write the novel after he heard the story of Julia, Augustus's daughter. Augustus exiled and imprisoned her after she broke the laws against adultery that he had enacted. (In the novel, Williams attributes to Augustus a noble cause for these actions). The introduction goes on to state:
"This fascinated Williams and he started to read about it. Discovering that Julia had been effectively written out of the histories, the more he read, the more he was engaged by what he describes as 'ambivalence between the public necessity and the private want or need' which is at the novel's core."
I found the epistolary style to be somewhat distancing from the character of Augustus. However, I can understand Williams's choice. In the introduction to the novel he is quoted as saying:
"I didn't think I could handle it in a straight narrative style without making it sound like a Cecil B. DeMille movie or a historical romance. And I didn't want it to sound historical. Those people were very real and contemporaneous to me. I wanted a kind of immediacy to it...."
And I think he succeeded.
Recommended
3 1/2 stars
Williams chooses to use the technique of letters and journals to tell this story. Octavius Caesar (Augustus) is revealed through the experiences of his friends, enemies, wives, and daughter. His daughter, Julia, is explored particularly well. It was nice to have an active female voice in this world of men. In a last, brief section, Augustus finally gets his own voice, summing up his life in a succinct letter.
Much of Williams's view of Augustus seems to be that history happened to him. Yes, he made decisions over his time as Emperor and greatly influenced the empire and life of Rome, but "fate" and "destiny" is also an important concept here. As Augustus says at the end of his life "It was destiny that seized me that afternoon at Apollonia nearly sixty years ago, and I chose not to avoid its embrace."
Williams also explores the rise to power and loss/changing of friendships, dutiful marriage vs. love, and the drama of choosing a successor - a problem for most long-lived emperor/kings.
I really enjoyed this work and recommend it highly to anyone with a grounding in Roman history. I can't say how it would work for someone who didn't know a bit of the history first. It paired very well with [SPQR].
The first surprise of this book was John Williams ratcheting up the difficulty from his earlier works; while Butcher's Crossing and Stoner describe a single person's point-of-view, explaining the life of the first Roman emperor is too much for that approach. So Williams goes with an epistolary structure, all the better to stay closest to his characters and remain their vivid qualities. We see Augustus struggle to gain and maintain power, but with a burden (a debt?) that only becomes clear in the waning pages.
It's kind of frustrating to review Williams stuff, because it's so fully-formed and cohesive that it seems a crime to pick it apart and analyze what works and why it does. I just want to buy a bunch of copies of his stuff and run around shoving it into people's hands instead. I will say, though, that John Williams's amazing strength comes from an amazing grasp of reflective intimacy. It's really unlike any other author I've read, and he'll flip into that mode for the last 20-25 pages of each novel and absolutely nail it. It makes for the best endings, and some of the best writing I've read.
I'd advise starting with Stoner if you're going to tackle Williams, but it's hard not to recommend this book wholeheartedly too.
For sometimes in my sleep there parade before me the tens of thousands of bodies that will not walk again upon the earth, men no less innocent than those ancient victims whose deaths propitiated an earlier god; and it seems to me then, in the obscurity or clarity of the dream, that I am that priest who has emerged from the dark past of our race to speak the rite that causes the knife to fall. We tell ourselves that we have become a civilized race, and with a pious horror we speak of those times when a god of the crops demanded the body of a human being for his obscure function. But is not the god that so many Romans have served, in our memory and even in our time, as dark and fearsome as that ancient one? Even if to destroy him, I have been his priest; and even if to weaken his power, I have done his bidding. Yet I have not destroyed him, or weakened his power. He sleeps restlessly in the hearts of men, waiting to rouse himself or to be aroused. Between the brutality that would sacrifice a single innocent life to a fear without a name, and the enlightenment that would sacrifice thousands of lives to a fear that we have named, I have found little to choose."
I am in awe of this author. An author of only four novels, the first of which he repudiated. Whenever I complete one of his works, I’m immediately abuzz with ideas and instantly aflush with a sublime hum from an iron rod caught in the teeth from ancient history; that connection is the human experience ringing across millennia. I’m also immediately saddened, for I know I’m only hastening the end of this great artist’s oeuvre with each reading. It’s hard for me to reckon the fact that I’ve no one with whom to talk about this great contribution to literature.
I’ve never been interested in writing an epistolary novel. 𝘈𝘶𝘨𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘴 couldn’t have been written any other way. Since I’ve seen how Williams can reinvent a form three different times now (the Western, the campus novel, the historical novel), I feel a deep affinity for a man who must’ve had as much glee deconstructing and reconstituting fiction as I have with my own literary experiments. I’ve read 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢 and enjoyed it, but never wanted to write an epistolary novel. I can say the same for 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘸𝘵𝘢𝘱𝘦 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴. But after closing the final pages to 𝘈𝘶𝘨𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘴? I don’t know . . . I’m mightily inspired to try.
Williams tells
The historical record for Augustus's life has gaps that challenge an author and Williams grasps the challenge deftly, just as Augustus grasped power. We see Augustus as an aloof, cold and calculating politician whose assiduous pursuit and cautious exercise of power allows him to hold that power for over four decades, but always using that power for Rome, always for Rome, his Rome.
Yet many people suffer from their close contact with this man - his equally calculating wife Livia, for one, his dear friends Maecenas and Salvidienus, to name two more, but none more so than his daughter Julia. The last third or so of the book focuses on the break between Augustus and Julia. Williams presents an interesting and shocking explanation for Julia's exile - at least an explanation that Augustus believes or claims to.
The penultimate chapter draws Augustus's life to a close with a lengthy letter to Nicolaus of Damascus in which a dying Augustus bemoans his fate and the weight of authority he has had to bear - it is really most unattractive for one of the most powerful men in history to indulge in such self-centered despair, but it also rings true because Augustus spent his life denying himself so many pleasures in order to hold on to power for the good of Rome, as he convinced himself. In the end, Augustus saw himself as the embodiment of Rome - anything that threatened his power, threatened Rome. This is so well done that one finds oneself becoming angry with Augustus, who is after all just a character in this brilliant work of historical fiction.
'Augustus' is not an easy read. Prior knowledge of the historical era certainly aids the enjoyment and comprehension of the book. Ultimately, however, this remarkable work of historical fiction and literature deserves the highest recommendation.
John Williams is one of my favorite writers. His three mature novels, "Stoner," "Butcher's Crossing," and "Augustus" are all strikingly different in form and subject; still, themes of ambition, competition, the fleetingness of romantic love, the pain of parental love, and the enduring love of literature, permeate all. The writing is impeccable, and the wisdom is profound. He should be read and taught more often.
Personally, I think that the author misunderstood Augustus' character. To indicate that Augustus died with some feelings of regret isn't factually supportable. Augustus was an interesting, intelligent, driven and ruthless autocrat. Unlikely he would have waxed poetic about whether all of his efforts were worthwhile while on his deathbed.
On the other side, I found his portrayal of Augustus' daughter Julia absolutely fantastic.
A recommended read even for those who don't normally prefer historical fiction.