A review by julis
Chronicle of the Roman Republic: The Rulers of Ancient Rome from Romulus to Augustus by Philip Matyszak

4.0

Pretty good! This took the form of a series of biographies about various important Romans between ~753 BCE and 27 BCE (it didn’t really get into the latter half of Augustus’s life). On the one hand, this let the reader get a good look at the men (always…yay ancient historians) and see each of them as a narrative whole. On the other, especially during the Second Punic War and again from 100 on, this meant either a) certain events came up several times or b) certain events didn’t come up at all, even though they were relevant.

Also Matyszak has a hateboner for Julius Caesar which is like, fine, not wrong, but man did he take it to weird places (the Gallic war was not the worst loss of life until 1492, what the fuck).