The Clarity Trap

Abstract

Whatever strategic ambiguity is, it’s been around for an awfully long time.We were strolling through Trastevere in Rome of an evening last September when I spotted an English bookshop, something I can never resist in a foreign city. We went in and after a few minutes of idle browsing, my fingers fell on First Man in Rome, thefirst of Australian author Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome, a seven-volume series of historical novels of the last seventy years of the Republic. I had not heard of the series and had no great expectations; the cover looked a little Jackie Collins, but I applied my standard test. Flip to page 69 and if it holds the attention, buy it. I bought it. And have lived, utterly gripped, in ancient Rome, enthralled by McCullough’s portraits of power, for eight months. The period is incredibly volatile; until reading McCullough, I had no idea how much so. Rome’s aristocratic senatorial class is struggling to retain its grip on Rome in the face of a series of populist challenges to the power of the Senate that originate within the elite, as aristo demagogues exploit the grievances of the knightly merchant and plebeian classes in order to wrest power for themselves. It starts with the Gracchi brothers and proceeds through the likes of Saturninus and Catilina, whose conspiracy is famously blown by Cicero in the Senate. All meet violent deaths.