The End of the Roman Republic 146 to 44 BC

By 146, Rome had established itself as the leading Mediterranean power. Over the next century, it consolidated its power into an immense territorial empire. At the same time, the internal balance of power shifted dramatically, as a narrow ruling elite was challenged first by the rest of Italy, and then by military commanders, a process which culminated in the civil war between Pompey and Caesar and the re-establishment of monarchy. This volume traces the story from the sacks of Carthage and Corinth to the assassination of Caesar, combining a lucid narrative of events with detailed analysis of political and cultural change.

Catherine Steel is Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of Cicero, Rhetoric, and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001); Reading Cicero (London: Duckworth, 2005) and numerous articles and book chapters on Cicero, Roman oratory and Roman history. She is currently leading a five-year project funded by the European Research Council to edit the fragments of the Republican Roman orators.

Section I:146-91 BC; 1. The crises of the later second century BC; 1.1 The Wars in Spain; 1.2 The tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus; 1.3 Rome and the Eastern Mediterranean, 146-122; 1.4 The tribunates of Gaius Gracchus; 1.5 Foreign and domestic politics at the end of the second century BC; 1.6 The outbreak of the Social War; 2. Domestic politics: violence and its accommodation; 2.1 Elite competition; 2.2 Issues and ideology; 3. Imperial power: failure and control; 3.1 The parameters of Roman foreign policy; 3.2 War and imperial expansion; 3.3 The administration of peace; 3.4 Rome and the rest of Italy; Section II: 91-70 BC; 4. Social War, Civil War and the imposition of a new order; 4.1 The Social War; 4.2 Losing the peace: the transition to civil war; 4.3 Domestic politics and foreign affairs in the 80s BC; 4.4 The Sullan res publica; 4.5 The consulship of Pompeius and Crassus: a fresh start?; 5. The limits of autocracy; 5.1 Power and armed force; 5.2 Experiments in autocracy; 5.3 The Sullan res publica; 5.4 Rome, Italy and the Mediterranean; 5.5 Causes of change; Section III: 70-44 BC; 6. The end of the Republic, 70-44 BC; 6.1 The continuing problem of Mithridates; 6.2 Pompeius' campaigns 67-62 BC; 6.3 Italian crises; 6.4 Factionalism, the people, and the collapse of order; 6.5 Foreign Policy in the 50s; 6.6 The last years of the Republic; 6.7 The Civil War; 7. Imperial expansion: novelty and success; 7.1 Patterns of expansion; 7.2 Structures and methods of imperial conquest and government; 8. Elite competition, popular discontent and the failure of collective government; 8.1 Political culture at the end of the Republic; 8.2 The career of Pompeius; 8.3 Popular arbitration; 8.4 The implications of Caesar's dictatorship.