SOURCE: "Vast Roman Saga: Colleen McCullough Tackles Marius and Sulla," in Chicago Tribune Books, October 7, 1990, p. 3.

In the following review, Idema offers a generally favorable assessment of The First Man in Rome, though noting its daunting length and large cast of characters with unfamiliar Latin names.

At the beginning of the last century of the Roman Republic, which was already deteriorating under pressures of economic stress and class conflict, two leaders emerged whose friendship helped preserve the republic for a time and whose rivalry hastened its subsequent collapse.

Colleen McCullough's prodigious novel, first in a series, is concerned with the 11 years of friendship, years during which the relentless drive for supreme political power by Gaius Marius, a war hero who had transcended his humble origins, was abetted by his confidant, Lucius Comelius Sulla, a brilliant and corrupt aristocrat. Although at the close of The First Man in Rome...