Taking two lines from the historian Suetonius ("At the age of 25 he sailed for Rhodes and was captured by pirates off the island of Pharmacussa. They kept him prisoner for nearly forty days to his intense annoyance."), Panella has crafted a novella length exploration of Julius Caesar's mental transformation from politician/poet to great leader. His captivity by the pirate lord Cutter, and subsequent ransom negotiations allow glimpses into both the development of his "command" abilities, as well as his classically educated poetic side. The idleness of being in captivity becomes a device allowing for Caesar to ruminate on his young life. Thus, there are flashbacks throughout the book showing the political climate leading up to his capture, his marriage to Cornelia, and his sensuous (and graphically described) affair with Servila (Brutus's mother). A fair bit of this backstory tries to present him as a man of destiny, a spin that somehow never quite feels right. Toward the end we get Cutter's life story, which is full of the cruelty and gore of ancient Rome, but never really rises above archetype. The lean and precise prose is quite readable, and there are a few rousing moments in the ship-to-ship battles, but it's not really the swashbuckling adventure tale the jacket blurbs would lead you to believe. A cautionary note that has nothing to do with the quality of the prose- the publishers have done their best to create a novel, but be warned, it's really a novella length story. Although the book is 192 pages long, the text doesn't start until page 15, and once you count up all the blank pages and half pages at chapter changes, there's another 60 pages of dead space!

Two historical novels on Julius Caesar were recently released, Vincent Panella's first-person account, Cutter's Island: Caesar in Captivity (Academy Press, Chicago, 2000, 197 pages, ISBN 0-89733-484-1), and Patricia Anne Hunter's omniscient third-person narrative, No Other Caesar (Authors Choice Press, 2001, 224 pages, ISBN 0-595-15778-5). Short but rewarding is Panella's first-person account of a small but critical stage in the life of Julius Caesar, the time he spent in 75 BC as a captive of the pirates on their secluded island. The telling is vigorous, the characters of Caesar and of the head pirate, Cutter, are well-developed, and the concentration on a single sequence of events is tailored to keep the reader's interest and understanding growing in tandem. Hunter begins with Caesar's famous intereview with Sulla ("In that boy there's many a Marius") in 81, when the dictator tried, unsuccessfully, to get Caesar to divorce Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, and she follows him through the rest of his political and military career, right up to the closing scene in the hall of Pompey's theater on March 15, 44, taken from Suetonius's Life of Julius Caesar. The penultimate line of the novel is "Even you, boy?" - rendered by Shakespeare as "Et tu, Brute?" Both authors are concerned with historical fidelity to Whereas Panella concentrates on character, Hunter emphasizes historical events. Both novels are well worth reading. Choose Panella's lively work if you prefer more depth and, through Caesar's experiences with the pirates, a foreshadowing of Caesar's character as it will eventually be revealed. Choose Hunter's tightly-packed account, if, instead, you wish to follow the development of that character all the way from the bold defiance of Sulla's wishes that could have gotten him killed, through the full realization of that very boldness and decisiveness in the heat of battle and chill of politics, right up to the careless indifference about his own death that led him to ignore all the portents and warnings and on the very Ides of March to make himself the object of "the most senseless crime in history" (Hunter quoting Theodor Mommsen). A cautionary note: neither book is overly violent or pornographic, but both contain sexual passages (auto-erotic in Panella) that might warrant a PG-13 rating. Be sure to read them first before assigning them to a high school class. Fred Mench, Professor of Classics, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

An exciting look into young Ceasar's psyche. Mr. Panella's inventive prose does justice to the subject material. A quick read, but well worth it. Highly recommended.