M. A. Robb . Beyond<i>Populares</i>and<i>Optimates</i>: Political Language in the Late Republic . (Historia Einzelschriften, number 213.) Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 2010. Pp. 225. €56.00.
Josiah Osgood
What do we know about politics in the late Roman Republic? A wealth of contemporary evidence survives writings key participants: Julius Caesar, Sallust, and above all Marcus Tullius Cicero. Senators three, they reflect their works senators' concerns, as more synthetic accounts later historians biographers such Plutarch. The result is that fundamental questions sometimes can only be answered vaguely. How often, for example, did citizens living outside Rome journey popular assemblies alone could pass laws? ordinary Romans think political process senators, whose control it lay? Even knowing what most senators themselves thought difficult, so much does Ciceronian predominate: thousands speeches given to Senate people, his survive. It was reliance on some famous remarks Cicero (from speech Pro Sestio)...
The American Historical Review