This Plutarch selection follows six men whose careers shaped the end of the Roman Republic, usually including Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar and Cicero. It is useful for readers who want the people and political choices behind late-republican civil conflict, rather than a battle-by-battle military history. The lives show how ambition, rivalry, public reputation and command turned republican competition into personal power.
Plutarch writes moral biography rather than continuous political history, selecting anecdotes and character traits that he believes reveal why powerful men succeeded or failed. Read together, the lives show how military command, wealth and popular support became increasingly difficult for republican institutions to contain, while also preserving stories that shaped later ideas about ambition and civic virtue.
Adrian Goldsworthy
12 books
Xenophon
Mary Beard
Arrian