Plutarch's Lives of Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, and Cicero feature in the Penguin Plutarch: Fall of
the Roman Republic. They can also be found, with other relevant biographies, in the eleven Loeb
volumes containing all of Plutarch's Lives. Suetonius' biography of Caesar is available in the Penguin
volume Suetonius: the Twelve Caesars and in the first volume of the Loeb Suetonius.
Modern Works
There are many modern accounts of this, the most richly documented period of the Roman Republic.
They vary greatly in scope, emphasis, and level of detail.
Brief accounts in a long perspective can be found in the works of H. H. Scullard, P. A. Brunt, and M.
Crawford, mentioned on p. 416.
For more detailed narrative, older works such as volume iv of the Everyman Edition of T. Mommsen's
History of Rome (Engl. trans. 1880) and T. Rice Holmes, The Roman Republic, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1923),
are still worth reading. The relevant chapters of the Cambridge Ancient History, vol. ix (1932), are still
useful, though soon to be superseded by a new edition.
The great modern work on the fall of the Republic is Sir Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution
(Oxford, 1939), which concentrates especially on the later part of this period. A more recent analysis of
political activity in the late Republic, combined with a penetrating, but controversial, diagnosis of the
fall of the Republic, is contained in E. S. Gruen's The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley,
1974). For a lively account of the working of Roman politics and of the mechanics and setting, see Lily
Ross Taylor's Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley, 1949) and Roman Voting Assemblies (Ann
Arbor, 1966).
Much of the up-to-date and detailed analysis of the politics of the period is, however, contained in
biographies of the leading figures. Most notable are those by M. Gelzer, of which only Caesar, Politician
and Statesman (Oxford, 1968) is available in English. J. P. V. D. Balsdon's Julius Caesar and Rome
(Harmondsworth, 1967) is brief and readable; Z. Yavetz, Julius Caesar and his Public Image (London,
1983), concentrates on his dictatorship. Several biographies of Pompey have appeared recently, by J.
Leach (1978), R. Seager (1979), and P. Greenhalgh (1980-1), of which Seager's is the most detailed on
politics at Rome. The unrewarding task of constructing a biography of Crassus has been attempted by B.
Marshall (1976) and A. Ward (1977).
Cicero, the most feasible subject for a biography, has been well served in English. D. L. Stockton's
Cicero, a Political Biography (Oxford, 1971) provides a useful account of his work as a statesman; D. R.
Shackleton Bailey in Cicero (London, 1971) makes good use of his work on the letters in evoking
Cicero the man; E. D. Rawson offers a sympathetic and well-rounded study in Cicero, a Portrait
(London, 1975; repr. Bristol, 1983). Different aspects of Cicero's life and work are illuminated in a
collection of essays edited by T. A. Dorey (London, 1965) while his youth and early career are carefully
analysed by T. N. Mitchell in Cicero: The Ascending Years (New Haven and London, 1979).