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Arthur Janson iegik — I am of two minds about this book. There is no denying that as an overview of the final years of the Roman Republic, running from roughly the time of the Social War to the establishment of the principate, it's a fine achievement. Holland takes events which have been recounted many times over the last two thousand years or so, and makes them fresh and interesting, even to someone like myself who has read of them more times than I care to think about. There is a great sense of narrative verve and energy to the book, and certainly if I were to recommend a starter book on Republican Rome to someone, this would be one of the first I would pick off my bookshelves for that very reason. The intricacies of the various triumvirates and factions can be bewildering at times, and Holland handles them all skilfully. I did have some problems however, with Holland's style, which came across at times as being overly sensational, as if he was trying to shock the reader with some of the more unsavoury (to us) aspects of Roman life. He descibes some things in ways that are, to my mind, too anachronistic and exaggerated to give an accurate picture of what was going on at this period in history. Describing Caesar's legionaries as stormtroopers is dramatic, but it gives a completely false idea of the organisation of the Roman army, its function, and projects back the loyalties of the legionaries towards the end of Caesar's life too far back towards the beginning of his career. Caesar was certainly popular with his men, yes, but to imply with the word 'stormtrooper' that his men were fanatically loyal to him when he was just setting out on the trip to, say, Bithynia? Anticipates too much. No one at that stage could possibly have guessed that he would use the loyalty of his men to manoeuvre his way into a pre-eminent position in the political system of the republic. Holland's translations of some of the primary sources also tended towards the, how shall I put this, ribald, at times. Often unnecessarily so, I think - there's a difference between describing Clodia as flirtatious and as a cocktease, for instance, and I don't think it's a word you can apply backwards to first century BC Latin with any great efficiency. There are also one or two instances of a slight cultural bias sneaking through, despite Holland's best efforts at cultural relativity - as far as we are concerned, yes, the marital practices of the Ptolemies are incestuous. They weren't considered so by the Ptolemies. I think the author would also be well advised to have a quick glance at Said's Orientalism. If I had to read the phrase 'Oriental decadence' once more, I would have thrown the book across the room, I think. In all, it's a good, mostly intelligent popular history. I wouldn't rely on it for much more than that, though.