We become better acquainted with Livia Drusa, whose brother Marcus Livius Drusus married her off in the last book to his friend Quintus Servilius Caepio (son of he who stole the Gold of Tolosa). The first half of the book also spends some time on domestic matters in Rome. So though Marius and Sulla finagle some negotiations to keep him behind his borders for a while, he’s still lurking, waiting for the first opportunity to strike out. Mithridates dreams of ruling an empire that stretches far further than his little Black-Sea-bordering Pontus he wants to take Rome’s provinces, and then take Rome. We get some background on the labyrinthine genealogy that dictates the succession of eastern kings, we see Mithridates grow to power and eliminate his rivals - and we see him tuck tail and wait for better times when faced with the Romans. First Gaius Marius and then Lucius Cornelius Sulla travel through the nations that border Rome’s province of Asia Minor: Bithynia, Pontus, Armenia, and even into the westernmost part of Parthia. Much of the first half of the book focuses on events in the east. The reader gets to see it all through the eyes of some of the most fantastic characters who’ve ever lived, men and women who are at once larger-than-life and all too real. The scope of the world expands, Rome faces new crises, and the Republic continues to crumble inevitably towards its own destruction.

The second book of Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series follows up admirably on the first. Title: The Grass Crown (Masters of Rome #2)

The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough