The assassination of Julius Caesar marked the end of the Roman Republic and changed the course of Western Civilization.
"In this story of the most famous assassination in history, “the last bloody day of the [Roman] Republic has never been painted so brilliantly” (The Wall Street Journal).
""[A] compelling, clarifying account of one of history's most dramatic assassinations. . . . [Strauss] conveys the complexity of late republican Roman politics while keeping up a lively pace." (Lev Grossman Time)
“[A] page-turner. . . . Detail after detail clothes the familiar facts of Caesar’s seemingly inevitable murder with fresh images. . . . The last bloody day of the Republic has never been painted so brilliantly." (Greg Woolf The Wall Street Journal)
“This history of Caesar by the American academic Barry Strauss is a romp, yes, but a glorious one, through the final months of Rome’s most famous ruler. . . . One of the most riveting hour-by-hour accounts of Caesar’s final day I have read. . . . An absolutely marvelous read.” (Catherine Nixey The Times (London))
"This stupendous book has all the pace and action of a top-quality thriller—murder, lust, betrayal and high politics—yet it's all true, and comes from the pen of the world's senior academic expert in the field. A lifetime's study of the ancient sources has gone into Barry Strauss's utterly gripping account of the day that the course of human history radically changed. Superbly researched, wittily written, but above all driven by a truly exciting narrative that never lets up, this is history-writing at its best. Our understanding of what happened on the Ides of March and its chaotic, bloody aftermath is forever changed, and this will be the standard work for decades to come." (Andrew Roberts, author of NAPOLEON: A Life )
