“‘Shut up,’ he explained.”

Surely that one-liner from Ring Lardner’s short story “The Young Immigrunts” — and no, that’s not a misspelling — constitutes one of the most humorous short sentences in all of literature. You don’t need to know a single detail about the story’s plot for “‘Shut up,’ he explained” to bring a chuckle.  

In “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome” (Gallery Books, 2007, 305 pages), author Robert Harris laces his account of the rise of young Marcus Tullius Cicero to power with humor as well. One line in particular, like Lardner’s, made me laugh aloud. “Lucius might have been a philosopher, but he was not a complete idiot.” 

This comedic bit comes from Tiro, Cicero’s slave, confidant, and scribe, and the narrator of “Imperium.” Harris draws Tiro from the historical figure who was indeed Cicero’s slave and constant companion. Just like the real-life Tiro, Harris’s character invents a system of shorthand that enables him to quickly record the conversations and speeches of Cicero as well as those of others when the need arises. Later, it was the real-life Tiro who collected and recorded many of Cicero’s speeches and letters, along with some jokes. He wrote several books of his own and is believed to have written a biography of the Roman statesman, a book now lost to time and circumstance.

Consequently, Harris’s Tiro is the man perfectly positioned to tell us about Cicero, his personal habits, his wife Terentia and their ongoing marital battles, his yearning and quest for power as a novus homo, or new man, among Rome’s ancient families, and his powerful oratory.

Harris’s choice of narrator is only one of the reasons why “Imperium” serves as an excellent example of historical fiction at its best. First, there is the panoply of details Harris brings to every page. He knows and names the streets, temples, courts, meeting places, and homes of the rich and powerful of the ancient city. He gives us the celebrations and holidays — there were many — as well as the customs of the time. He describes everything from clothing to food to furniture as if they were an intimate part of his own daily life.

Harris also demonstrates again and again the importance placed by the Romans on history and tradition. In describing how the eight men elected as praetors, second in the government only to the consuls, were assigned their duties by drawing lots, he writes, “The lots were placed in an ancient urn which had been used for this purpose for centuries.” A temple, a statue, the name of an illustrious family, past events: all are seamlessly woven into this tapestry of history.

Finally, there is the word portrait of Cicero. Through Tiro Harris gives us the man himself, Rome’s most famous orator and his idealism, his pragmatism and his cynicism especially in regard to politics and power. He gives us examples of the enemies made by Cicero’s sharp tongue and wit while at the same time depicting him as a loving father and a loyal friend. In “Imperium,” we find the man in full.

To recreate this long-ago world in such impressive detail, and again in the two other novels that complete Harris’s trilogy of Cicero’s Rome, clearly involved a tremendous labor of research. Rome was built of wood, brick, mortar, and marble. In “Imperium,” Harris builds it from words.

And like the best of historical fiction, “Imperium” invites comparisons between past and present. Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome, and Pompey, its greatest military commander of the time, struggle against each other to dominate what has essentially become more empire than republic. Factions form around both men. Longstanding tensions also exist between Rome’s venerable families and an underclass of citizens who from the city’s founding have also possessed certain powers by custom and by law, rights that can turn quickly into mob rule.

Cicero embodies these conflicts. His skilled oratory and his status as a “new man” give him sway over the people, while at the same time, he works feverishly to become a consul, Rome’s highest office, which will boost his status among the rich and powerful. In him, too, we see the conundrum posed in politics then and now: the clash between what’s best for the country as opposed to what’s best for the party, the battle between acting for the good of the country and acting for personal gain.

Now as then, we daily witness these duels across our own country’s political spectrum. At times, the American republic founded 250 years ago seems to have grown as shabby as the Roman republic in the first century A.D., with our social media mobs, our oligarchs and politicians who vie for power by means of wealth or demagoguery, all proclaiming they knew what’s best for the people and the country, by which they all too often mean what’s best for themselves and their followers. Now as then, power and party pass themselves off as patriotism.

With all that said, “Imperium” is finally a book, in fact a manual, in the art and reality of politics. Politicians, college students majoring in history or political science, and anyone interested in the tumble and brawls of politics would benefit from this guide, particularly its reminder that “Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.”

We began with a touch of Harris’s wit and humor. Let’s end the same way. With the midterm election season now upon us, all those candidates running for office, left, right, and center, will be speechifying, delivering promises and threats, and stirring up controversaries. As we listen to them and weigh their deeds and words, we might keep our balance and a smile with this observation from Tiro: “Since when has idiocy been a bar to advancement in politics?” 

(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” minick0301@gmail.com.)