Suggested Reading?

[spittle]

Thanks for the suggestions.

There's not enough hours in my day so I have to be selective in my choice of books hence fiction has been neglected. However, I am interested in Colleen McCullough's 'Masters of Rome' series.

The reason for this is that I consider the Sulla/Marius 'war' to be the true beginning of the end for the republic and the first book in her series, 'First Man in Rome', deals with these times/events. I also consider this episode in Romes history to be the most overlooked, despite being of paramount importance.

 

How many 'average' people even know who Sulla or Marius were? Virtually everyone knows of Caesar. many know of Pompey, Mark Antony, Cicero and the other players in the civil war but the military/political giants of a generation before remain very much in the domain of the scholar or Romanophile. To my way of thinking the war between Sulla and Marius created the foundations for Caesar to take absolute power. For the first time Roman soldiers marched on their own capital, lessening, if not destroying, the absolute certainty that this was a totally unacceptable method of winning victory against fellow citizens of the republic. Quite simply the rules were thrown out of the window. And if Sulla's initial march on the city could have been written off as the exception to the rule, Marius' repeat of the act, followed by Sulla doing it for a third time demonstrated to all that the stakes had gotten higher and the rulebook slimmer.

 

Also many of the historic titans who are immortalised through their involvement in the Caesar/Pompey/Crassus triumvirate and then its break down and subsequent civil war learned who they were, what they were capable of and developed their public images whilst fighting with/against Sulla.

 

Its a sin that for many Sulla and Marius are totally unknown. For others thay are mere footnotes in the books they have read on Caesar. And for people like myself they seem hugely under-represented in the available literature. thats why I will break my usual 'no fiction' choice to read McCullough.