Caesar and Roman Politics, 60-50 B.C.

Roman political history of the first century BC offers an almost embarrassing wealth of source material -- the contemporary testimony of Caesar and Cicero, the full derivative accounts of Appian and Dio, the biographies of Suetonius and Plutarch, to name but a few. This selection, of some 400 extracts from over twenty authors, presents in English translation a fair selection of those sources concentrating on Caesar around the mid-century. The passages are arranged thematically rather than chronologically, and introductions and interpolation guide the student through the material. This is an ideal book to encourage a student to form opinions -- and criticise those of others -- about the achievements of Julius Caesar in the dying Republic's crucial years, 60-50 BC.

Using his own translations throughout, James Sabben-Clare here weaves together four hundred excerpts from twenty classical sources plus inscriptions and late authors such as Jordanes to capture the critical decade 60-50 BC. The book captures the intense vitality of the source material, moving in steady chronological progression to produce a rich portrayal of the complex political scene.