A review by tombradleyjr
The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination by Barry S. Strauss
4.0
What happens in Rome, stays in Rome…unless you happen to assassinate Julius Caesar. When that’s the case, blood is spilled and loyalties switch at the drop of a toga.
In The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination, author Barry Strauss exposes the political motivations and behind-the-scenes machinations of Caesar’s assassination, up to the dirty deed itself and beyond the subsequent civil war between Caesar’s loyalists and his enemies.
The cast of characters—Caesar, Brutus, Decimus, Cicero, Octavian, et. al.—is familiar to anyone for whom Shakespeare’s epic was required reading in school. However, unlike The Bard, Strauss digs deep into the pantheon of contemporary writings by and personal communications among those involved in the plot; the list of works he cites is exhaustive. Strauss sorts through the sometimes conflicting accounts of what happened in the months leading to the Ides of March in 44 B.C., to present as accurate a picture as possible of the assassins and their motives.
However, the assassination’s aftermath proves to be more compelling than the murder itself, as the subsequent rise of Mark Antony and Octavian—and the demise of Brutus, Decimus, and their co-conspirators—propels Rome on a path that the assassins may not have foreseen. In other words, they should have been careful about what they wished for.
The writing is clear and concise, though some stretches were dry. Personally, I found the book interesting as I have not read much of ancient Roman history; it opened a window on the time for me, particularly as it pertains to the political landscape. I suspect readers more familiar with the subject matter may find the book tedious, but to me, it was a fascinating and worthwhile read.
In The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination, author Barry Strauss exposes the political motivations and behind-the-scenes machinations of Caesar’s assassination, up to the dirty deed itself and beyond the subsequent civil war between Caesar’s loyalists and his enemies.
The cast of characters—Caesar, Brutus, Decimus, Cicero, Octavian, et. al.—is familiar to anyone for whom Shakespeare’s epic was required reading in school. However, unlike The Bard, Strauss digs deep into the pantheon of contemporary writings by and personal communications among those involved in the plot; the list of works he cites is exhaustive. Strauss sorts through the sometimes conflicting accounts of what happened in the months leading to the Ides of March in 44 B.C., to present as accurate a picture as possible of the assassins and their motives.
However, the assassination’s aftermath proves to be more compelling than the murder itself, as the subsequent rise of Mark Antony and Octavian—and the demise of Brutus, Decimus, and their co-conspirators—propels Rome on a path that the assassins may not have foreseen. In other words, they should have been careful about what they wished for.
The writing is clear and concise, though some stretches were dry. Personally, I found the book interesting as I have not read much of ancient Roman history; it opened a window on the time for me, particularly as it pertains to the political landscape. I suspect readers more familiar with the subject matter may find the book tedious, but to me, it was a fascinating and worthwhile read.