The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The First Man in Rome
Book Review: brimming with life
Summary: 5 Stars
Rarely has a work outside the usual scientific scope of the author demonstrated such perfection!
Colleen McCullough shows her love for ancient Rome with an attention to details that makes it almost a guidebook for the time traveller. You learn about Rome's constitution and jurisdiction, family trees of important houses, dining habits and the wars of the period. What I liked best was her portrayal of characters: straightforward intelligent Marius (much more so than most historian credit him with), homicidal but also tormented Sulla, choleric Metellus Numidicus, wise Gaius Caesar and his equally decent son, strong rational Aurelia (future mother of the most famous Caesar), and witty old Scaurus, to name but a few. In fact, some of them almost become like good friends.
I strongly recommend this work to any history scholar or frustrated Latin student. It brings Rome to life like no other book I have read. Continue with "The Grass Crown".
Book Review: An Unsurpassed Series on Ancient Rome
Summary: 5 Stars
Colleen McCullough was born in Australia. A neurophysicist, she established the department of neurophysiology at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney She then worked as a researcher and teacher at Yale Medical School for ten years. She is the author of the record-breaking international bestseller The Thorn Birds and her series of books on Rome have also been bestsellers. Colleen lives on Norfolk Island in the Pacific with her husband.
Colleen McCullough has been one of my favourite authors ever since I read this book many years ago. Her research on the subject and her feel for the period of history she is writing about is second to none. The only slight criticism that I have with the books on Rome and it is probably outside the author's control is that the books are so detailed that the number of characters that become part of the story is so large that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of them all, but this is a small price to pay for the enjoyment the books give the reader.
The First Man in Rome begins the series and the reader is introduced to Gaius Marius, one of Rome's greatest and most successful generals. Wealthy but from a low born family. A man who has pulled himself up by his boot straps and on the other side of the coin, Cornelius Sulla, a man from well bred stock. Both men have a driving ambition, both want to be the `The First Man in Rome'. There ambition drives them forward and will lay the foundations for the greatest empire known to mankind.
This is a book of human frailties and also burning ambition. It has a cast of some of the most famous names to grace Roman history. The start of one of the greatest fictional sagas written in modern times and a most for all lovers of ancient history.
Book Review: First in a towering series
Summary: 5 Stars
Colleen McCullough is a first-rate storyteller, and her historical novels are particularly good. "The First Man in Rome" is the first in a series of large, readable, well-researched and satisfying novels chronicling the downfall of the Roman Republic. This is fascinating period in history and one well covered by writers weaving stories round the larger-than-life protagonists and the events they drive and are driven by. Recent examples include the detective stories of Stephen Saylor and John Maddox Roberts, and Robert Harris's "Imperium": one of the joys for the reader interested in this time is to compare and contrast the way the historical figures and events are treated by the different authors. McCullough's books are larger and more detailed than those of the other writers noted here, of course, their size and scope reminiscent of the novels of the late and much-missed James Clavell. Like Clavell's they have one big risk attached to them - that if you start reading you will quickly be hooked and find that you have no choice but to devote a large chunk of your life to reading as many of them as you can lay your hands on! In the McCullough "Masters of Rome" series, of course, it is important to do this in the right sequence - you will also be impressed that an author can maintain such a high standard of writing and reader-involvement over quite so many thousands of pages.Book Review: addictive
Summary: 5 Stars
The whole series of the Masters of Rome is highly addictive, this is the first, the amazing thing is that these characters actually existed ! Marius WAS a famous general, as was Sulla. What Collen McCullough was not able to glean from the ancient writers Sutonious etc, she has fleshed out from her colosul imagination, The series of books are complulsive reading, it definatly is a job to put them down. There is a glossary at the back of the books, which will explain all the latin terms...brilliant.
I make the whole set my summer reading every 2 years...and never get tired of reading them. I highly reccomend them to anyone who loves history and a thoroughly good read.
Book Review: Ghastly amateurish rubbish
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this after reading the same glowing reviews that you are now reading on Amazon. Warning bells sounded as soon as I saw the Art GCSE grade C level drawings of the main characters in the opening pages (why??). It is clumsily and unengagingly written, with countless childish references to sex and awkward, psuedo-poetic clichés, it comes across as a Godawful potboiler written by a Rome-obsessed adolescent girl. To end on a positive note, if you want to read historical fiction about Rome, I can thoroughly recommend any book from the 'Eagle' series by Simon Scarrrow or if it's a factual account you're after, 'Ancient Rome: the rise and fall of an empire' by Simon Baker is utterly gripping.