(3 of 3)
THE FIRST MAN IN ROME, by Colleen McCullough (Morrow; 896 pages; $22.95), is a truly astonishing work, the first of five planned volumes about life -- mostly political life -- in ancient Rome. Robert Graves covered this ground, in I, Claudius, and so did Shakespeare, for that matter. McCullough, who wrote The Thorn Birds, is not awed, and her narration marches sturdily through a period of fascinating turmoil in the last years of the Republic. Terrifying German barbarians have wiped out most of Rome's legions. The Senate dithers; Gaius Marius, a wealthy military man of low birth, has the energy but not the bloodline to save the situation. The author is interested in everything: how the city's sewers worked, how marriages were arranged, and how the horsehair plumes in a soldier's helmet could be detached for storage. She has drawn maps and even portraits of her characters, and supplied an encyclopedic glossary. The result, though dangerously overweight, is airport fiction at its best.