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Historical person
86 BCE–43 BCE
Marcus Junius Brutus was a Roman senator, philosopher and one of the leading assassins of Julius Caesar. Although Caesar had pardoned and promoted him after the civil war, Brutus joined the conspiracy in the belief that dictatorship threatened the republic.
After the murder he failed to secure political control of Rome, raised armies in the east and fought Antony and Octavian at Philippi. Defeated in 42 BC, he took his own life. Other treatments emphasise wealth, provincial exploitation and the contradiction between republican principle and civil war.
Richard Foreman’s Augustus: Son of Rome and Augustus: Son of Caesar present Brutus as one of the principal assassins whose flight and resistance leave Caesar’s teenage heir facing a republic already divided into armed camps. Alex Gough’s Caesar’s Avenger follows Brutus and Cassius as they build forces in the east while Antony, Octavian and Lepidus organise the triumvirate that will pursue them. Peter Tonkin’s Death at Philippi centres the final military contest in Macedonia, where Brutus’s republican cause is destroyed by the triumviral armies. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar makes Brutus the moral and political centre of the assassination itself, dramatising the conflict between his attachment to Caesar and his fear that Caesar’s power threatens the Republic.
Series
The Emperor series is a highly fictionalised retelling of Julius Caesar’s life and the violent end of the Roman Republic. It follows Caesar from youth through war, political ascent and conquest, then continues beyond his assassination into the struggle between Octavian, Antony and Caesar’s killers.
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The Marius’ Mules series follows Marcus Falerius Fronto and Caesar’s legions from the invasion of Gaul to the destruction of the Roman Republic. Battles recorded in Caesar’s commentaries are viewed through officers and soldiers who must endure the practical cost of his ambition, while conspiracies in Rome steadily…
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The Masters of Rome series reconstructs the final century of the Roman Republic from the rise of Gaius Marius in 110 BCE to the settlement that made Octavian Augustus in 27 BCE. Across seven novels, military commands, elections, family alliances, provincial wealth and personal patronage become instruments in…
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The enslaved twins Romulus and Fabiola are separated when Romulus is sold to a gladiator school and Fabiola to a brothel. Romulus comes under the protection of the Gallic gladiator Brennus and meets Tarquinius, an Etruscan warrior and seer. The three men are forced into Crassus’s army and…
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Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy reconstructs the final decades of the Roman Republic through Tiro, Cicero’s enslaved secretary and eventual freedman. Imperium follows the advocate’s prosecution of Verres and campaign for the consulship; Lustrum places his consulship inside the Catilinarian crisis; and Dictator carries him through exile, Caesar’s civil…
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The Roma Sub Rosa series follows Gordianus the Finder through the last generation of the Roman Republic. His investigations begin in the aftermath of Sulla’s dictatorship and continue through slave revolt, aristocratic trials, Catiline’s conspiracy, Caesar’s civil war and the assassination of Julius Caesar. The series uses murder…
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The Lucius Sestius Mysteries follow the historical Roman senator Lucius Sestius Quirinalis through the destruction of the Republic and the consolidation of Augustus’s principate. Beginning as a young lawyer under Julius Caesar, Forsyth’s Lucius is repeatedly drawn into murder inquiries whose evidence threatens the political settlement of the…
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The Mark Antony series presents a biographical saga of the Roman commander from the Catilinarian crisis to his defeat by Octavian. Antony’s youth is shaped by the execution of his stepfather, service under Aulus Gabinius in Judaea and Egypt, and the campaigns in Gaul that bind him to…
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The Caesar’s Spies series follows Iacomus Artemidorus, code-named Septem, and the intelligence unit operating for Julius Caesar and later Mark Antony. The sequence begins with the attempt to prevent Caesar’s assassination in March 44 BC and continues through the pursuit of the conspirators, the struggle among Antony, Cicero…
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The Dream of Rome is an omnibus collection rather than a single continuous saga. Its volumes gather the complete Sword of Rome campaigns, the two Augustus novels, the first three Spies of Rome investigations, the complete Sword of Empire sequence and three later Rufus Varro novellas. The collection…
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The Augustus series follows Gaius Octavius from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the point at which Caesar’s heir can compete for control of Rome. The two novels place his personal development within the collapse of republican government, showing an inexperienced claimant learning to use adoption, veteran loyalty,…
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Sword of Rome follows the fictional centurion Lucius Oppius through Julius Caesar’s campaigns from Britain and Alesia to the civil war against Pompey. The first three novellas establish Oppius as a soldier repeatedly diverted into intelligence work, where missions behind enemy lines and political violence in Rome demand…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
