Caesar: Portrait Of A Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy

Recently, I had to take some time off, and that meant I had time for some reading. One of the books I read was Caesar: Portrait Of A Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy. It was quite a good summary of both Caesar’s life and the state of Roman politics at the end of the Republic. When modern people think of a “republic”, they think of something like the US, but the Roman Republic was essentially an oligarchy that allowed its members to compete among themselves for power. When the system started to break down, allowing oligarchs to seize too much power, the Republic began producing men like Sulla, Marius, and Cinna, and finally Caesar, the first man to seize supreme power in Rome. His successor Augustus essentially codified the dictatorship, and kept the Republic on as window-dressing for his power.

Definitely recommended for anyone interested in Roman history.

-JM