The decline and fall of the Roman Republic has been a prominent theme of discussion for 2,000 years. The reasons given for its demise are practically as numerous as the years that have followed it. Josiah Osgood, one of the nation’s leading scholars on ancient Rome, presents a number of the most obvious reasons—such as corruption, vice, militarism, and political violence—for the Republic’s erosion into Empire. But it is less about those reasons and more about how he presents them that makes his new book so compelling.
“Lawless Republic: The Rise of Cicero and the Decline of Rome,” as the subtitle suggests, guides the reader through the final decades of the Roman Republic as witnessed through the eyes of one of the city-state’s most famous citizens: Marcus Tullius Cicero. It was, indeed, a most creative way to chronicle those final years.
