Category: Republican Rome

In the pantheon of Roman historical scholarship, few works have challenged conventional wisdom as provocatively as Erich Gruen’s “The Last Generation of the Roman Republic” (1974). This magisterial study fundamentally reinterpreted the final decades of the Roman Republic, arguing against the prevailing scholarly consensus that portrayed the period from 78 to 49 BC as one…

In the landscape of Roman historical scholarship, few works have proven as influential or controversial as William Harris’s “War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327-70 BC” (1979). This seminal study fundamentally challenged prevailing academic orthodoxy about the nature of Roman expansion, arguing that Rome’s imperial growth was driven not by defensive necessity or reluctant responses…

First published in 1979, David Stockton’s The Gracchi is a scholarly, balanced and insightful analysis of the two Gracchi brothers, whose eventful — indeed revolutionary — tribunates set the course for the final Roman Revolution of Julius Caesar nearly a century later. Stockton’s book was published the same year as another significant work on the…

The nature of Roman imperialism, during both the Republic and Empire, has been endlessly debated. In Badian’s view, the rise of Roman imperialism, an aggressive system marked by exploitation and annexation, can be best explained by looking at the weltanschaug of the Roman ruling class — the Senate. By the late Republic, he argues, the…

For those looking for a tight, readable introduction on political life in Republican Rome there is no better place to start than Lily Ross Taylor’s 1949 classic, “Party Politics in the Age of Caesar.” She reviews a wide range of institutions and practices — from religion and the law courts to voting assemblies and political…

The conventional academic view of Rome during the Republic is that of small, all powerful aristocratic government. Fergus Millar turns that entire argument on its head in “The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic.” He says that too much focus has been put on the role of the patrician and noble class. Yes, family…

If Jesus Christ is the greatest story ever told, I’d like to put my vote in for another “JC” as the second: Julius Caesar. And Adrian Goldsworthy tells that remarkable story marvelously well. I’ve read several other biographies on the great Roman general and statesman before (Fuller, Meier, Gelzer) and “Caesar: Life of a Colossus”…