As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Home / Series / Cicero Trilogy

Series

Cicero Trilogy

Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy reconstructs the final decades of the Roman Republic through Tiro, Cicero’s enslaved secretary and eventual freedman. Imperium follows the advocate’s prosecution of Verres and campaign for the consulship; Lustrum places his consulship inside the Catilinarian crisis; and Dictator carries him through exile, Caesar’s civil war and dictatorship, the assassination, and the struggle with Mark Antony.

The sequence treats politics as suspense. Trials, speeches, patronage, bribery, intelligence and personal loyalty reveal how republican institutions are hollowed out by wealth, violence and military command.

Reading order

Books in this series (3 books)

Imperium cover

#1 – Imperium

Robert Harris

Rome, 70 BCE. Tiro serves Marcus Tullius Cicero, an ambitious advocate without an aristocratic name or private army. Cicero’s decision to prosecute the corrupt former governor Gaius Verres brings him against the most powerful legal establishment in Rome and turns a courtroom case into the foundation…

Lustrum cover

#2 – Lustrum

Robert Harris

Rome, 63 BCE. Cicero has reached the consulship, but the office places him at the centre of a republic divided by debt, ambition and the threat of violence. Catiline’s conspiracy forces him to choose between constitutional restraint and emergency action while Caesar, Crassus, Pompey and their…

Dictator cover

#3 – Dictator

Robert Harris

Cicero returns from exile to a republic increasingly governed by military power. He attempts to preserve influence as Pompey and Caesar move towards civil war, then must survive Caesar’s victory, dictatorship and assassination while judging when compromise becomes complicity. After the Ides of March, Cicero sees…