Book-The Conspiracy

John Hersey continues to impress me with his writing. He never hits the same subject twice and always has a different style, but every book I have read of his is impressive, smart and enjoyable.

In The Conspiracy, Hersey handles historical fiction with a great panache, tackling the Roman emperor Nero. Nero has become corrupt and his secret police think there may a conspiracy to assassinate him among the intelligentsia of Rome. This story is based on a lot of historical documents, and actually did happen. Hersey uses the names of the real people involved in this "conspiracy" some of the leading figures of Rome at that time, like the philosopher Seneca.

But how he tells this story is what makes it work---Hersey uses letters, (actually more like memos) from Tigellinus, Nero's right hand man, and the head of the secret police. Today these would be e-mails back and forth between the two. In these notes you see the two paranoid and wanting to hold onto power, pretty much suspicious of everyone who did not kiss-ass to Nero. They start inventing little traps for the leading figures to fall into. "If they say this, then that means they are after him."

When the leading men do not fall into the trap, they become even more suspicious. They figure if they have not found anything on Seneca et al, then the conspiracy is even deeper than they thought.

When they finally arrest the men, and torture them for names of other conspirators, they congratulate themselves on a job well done, protecting a corrupt and depraved emperor. Until they are executing Lucan, one of the last of the bunch. He mocks them as he is dying, and tells them plainly...there was never a conspiracy. You made this all up, and set up so many traps that we could not help but be seen as having this plan.

When Hersey wrote this book, is was considered to be a thinly veiled challenge to the Nixon White House...and that was before Watergate. But I think this kind of political paranoia is also reminiscent of a more contemporary White House...one that saw anyone who did not agree with them as a terrorist ally. One who would resort to endangering CIA agents lives, and the worst kind of character assassination, to put down "enemies," and keep power.

I don't usually quote from the books I review, but there is a passage in this one, about the abuse of power and tyranny, that I found really spoke to me. It is from a woman who comes from low birth, to a friend who is a poet and considered a leading man of Rome:

"The effects of tyranny, my dearest one, are to be seen not so much in executions, privations, surveillances, matricide and fratricide, ruined reputations, unjust trials, exile and murder, shocking event of the capital; no, tyranny has finally achieved its foul purpose when among the many, scatter at large, there are acquiescence, apathy, complacency, bland acceptance of outrage, pride in vulgar triumphs, blurring of the meaning of words, confusion in moral standards- in short, a blight of communal character. It is when people who are thought of as good solid citizens, whose who make up the backbone of the populace, become touched by this blight and do not realize it, become not only infected but the infectors-this is when tyranny has won the day. The 'good' citizens then say: What a beautiful day! What a fine year this has been! Are you going to the amphitheater this afternoon?"

John Hersey was not just writing about the Roman Empire.