The First Man in Rome
- 1076 pages
- 38 hours of reading
On New Year's Day of 110 B.C., two men whom "Fortune" favors stand with a vision and courage that will force change upon the Roman Empire.
This sprawling saga immerses you in the heart of ancient Rome, where political intrigue intertwines with the personal dramas of its powerful figures. The series masterfully depicts pivotal moments and the lives of those who shaped the empire's destiny. Explore a world filled with power struggles, unexpected turns, and human desires. It's an epic tale of the rise and fall of empires and individuals alike.






On New Year's Day of 110 B.C., two men whom "Fortune" favors stand with a vision and courage that will force change upon the Roman Empire.
An aging, ailing Gaius Marius, heralded conqueror of Germany and Numidia, longs for that which was prophesied many years before: an unprecedented seventh consulship of Rome. It is a prize to be won only through treachery and with blood, pitting Marius against a new generation of assassins, powerseekers and Senate intriguers.
In the midst of a disintegrating Republic, the dictator of ancient Rome, Sulla, retires, the brutally ambitious Pompey appoints himself Magnus, and a young Caesar emerges as a towering figure to his people, with his wife, Cimilla, by his side. Reprint.
New York Times bestselling author Colleen McCullough re-creates an extraordinary epoch before the mighty Republic belonged to Julius Caesar—when Rome's noblewomen were his greatest conquest. His victories were legend—in battle and bedchamber alike. Love was a political weapon he wielded cunningly and ruthlessly in his private war against enemies in the forum. Genius, general, patrician, Gaius Julius Caesar was history. His wives bought him influence. He sacrificed his beloved daughter on the altar of ambition. He burned for the cold-hearted mistress he could never dare trust. Caesar's women all knew—and feared—his power. He adored them, used them, destroyed them on his irresistible rise to prominence. And one of them would seal his fate.
The "New York Times" bestselling author brilliantly reconstructs the mighty republic that once ruled the ancient world and celebrates the genius, passion, ruthlessness, and magnificence of the noblest Roman of all: Gaius Julius Caesar.
With the possible exception of the crucifixion of Christ no moment of history is more universally familiar and more often depicted than the assassination of Julius Caesar. Caesar is in the prime of his life and the height of his powers as the novel opens. A man of contradictions, Caesar is happily married yet at the same time the lover of the enigmatic and subtle Egyptian ruler, Cleopatra. He is at once a great general who commands the instinctive loyalty of Rome's legions, and a man who wishes to bring to an end Rome's endless civil and external wars, a man not only conscious of his own power, and contemptuous of lesser men, but respectful of the republic, and determined not to be worshipped as a living god or crowned as an emperor, a man whose very greatness attracts envy and jealousy to a dangerous degree. With her extraordinary knowledge of Roman history, Colleen McCullough brings Caesar to life as nobody has ever done before, and surrounds him with an enormous and vivid cast of historical characters, portrayed here not as literary figures, but as real, living people, trying to control and master enormous political events and survive.
Passion, politics, love and death combine in a novel of the legendary love triangle between the three leaders of Rome: Cleopatra, Mark Antony and Octavian.