INTRODUCTORY
Students of classics and ancient history should have The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) by their side. Excellent maps of the ancient world can be found in Richard J. A. Talbert, ed., The Barrington Atlas of the Ancient Greco-Roman World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Another exceptionally valuable source is Hubert Cancik and Helmut Schneider, eds., Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, English ed., managing editor, Christine F. Salazar; assistant editor, David E. Orton (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2002–2010), with an excellent online edition.
For Roman history without tears, see Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (n.p.: BBC Books, 2007). For an introduction to the turbulent era of the Late Roman Republic, see Tom Holland, Rubicon (New York: Doubleday, 2003) or Mary Beard and Michael Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (London: Duckworth, 2009). For a detailed account, see Christopher S. Mackay, The Breakdown of the Roman Republic: From Oligarchy to Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) or J. A. Crook, Andrew Lintott, and Elizabeth Rawson, eds., The Last Age of the Roman Republic, vol. 9 of The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). P. A. Brunt offers an introduction to the societal struggles of the era inSocial Conflicts in the Roman Republic (New York: Norton, 1971), esp. 1–41 and 112–47.
For the Roman army, see Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003); Kate Gilliver, Adrian Goldsworthy, and Michael Whitby, Rome at War (Oxford: Osprey, 2005); L. J. F. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984).
The most influential modern book, at least in English, on the transition from the Late Republic to the Early Empire is Sir Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939). The focus is on Augustus but there are also important chapters on Caesar’s last years and on the conspiracy against him. Some of Syme’s themes are the use of personal politics to build power, the irresponsibility of the Late Roman nobility, the key role that Octavian played in stirring up Caesar’s troops against the Senate in 44 and 43 B.C., and the reality of monarchy behind Augustus’s rhetoric of restoring the Republic. For Syme, the end of the Republic was inevitable. Erich Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), argues powerfully for the contrary: that the Republic was thriving and could have continued.
ANCIENT SOURCES
What we make of the conspiracy that killed Caesar depends in large part on what we make of the ancient sources. Robert Etienne brings this point out nicely in his fine book, Les Ides de Mars: la fin de César ou de la dictature? (The Ides of March: The End of Caesar or of the Dictatorship?) (Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1973). There are five main ancient sources, in chronological order: Nicolaus of Damascus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio. They agree about the overall picture of events but disagree both about certain points of detail and about the motives and relative significance of the various conspirators. Plutarch, who was Shakespeare’s main source, emphasizes the role of Brutus and his idealism. Nicolaus, whom Shakespeare did not read, accentuates the cold-blooded and even cynical motives of the plotters; he also makes Decimus a key character. Earlier scholars tended to discount Nicolaus because he worked for Augustus and so appeared biased. Recently, the work of scholars like Malitz and Toher has rehabilitated Nicolaus as a contemporary and shrewd source, if indeed one who sometimes offers Augustus’s version of events. As Toher argues, Nicolaus was a student of the writings of Aristotle and Thucydides, two of the ancient world’s finest minds when it comes to political analysis. I am convinced that Nicolaus offers information essential to making sense of the assassination.
The five major ancient sources on the conspiracy, the assassination of Julius Caesar, and the aftermath are all available in English translation. Appian, The Civil Wars is translated with an introduction by J. M. Carter (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1996). For the relevant books of Cassius Dio’s History of Rome, consult the Loeb Classical Library edition, Dio’s Roman History, with an English translation by Earnest Cary on the basis of the translation of Herbert Baldwin Foster (London: W. Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914–27). Nicolaus of Damascus’s Life of Caesar Augustus will soon be available in a new translation with scholarly commentary by Mark Toher, ΒΙОΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡОΣ (Bios Kaisaros) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Until then, the best English version is Jane Bellemore, edited with introduction, translation and commentary, Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Augustus (Bristol, England: Bristol Classical Press, 1984). Plutarch’s Lives of Pompey and Caesar can be found in Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic, rev. ed., translated with introduction and notes by Rex Warner, revised with translations of Comparisons and a preface by Robin Seager, with series preface by Christopher Pelling (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005); Plutarch’s Lives of Brutus and Mark Antony can be found in Plutarch, Makers of Rome, translated with an introduction by Ian Scott-Kilvert (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965). Plutarch’s Life of Cato the Younger can be found in Bernadotte Perrin, trans., Plutarch Lives VIII: Sertorius and Eumenes, Phocion and Cato the Younger (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919). Suetonius’s Lives of Caesar and Augustus are available in Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, The Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves, revised with an introduction by Michael Grant (London and New York: Penguin, 2003).
A good collection of translated selections from the ancient sources, along with scholarly commentary, for the rise and fall of Caesar, 60–42 B.C., is found in Naphtali Lewis, The Ides of March (Sanibel and Toronto: Samuel Stevens, 1984). A valuable selection of the sources through the Ides of March, with commentary and bibliography, can be found in Matthew Dillon and Lynda Garland, eds., Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).
I benefited greatly from scholarly commentaries on ancient texts. Mark Toher was kind enough to share with me the relevant manuscript sections of his excellent commentary on Nicolaus of Damascus, ΒΙОΣ ΚΑΙΣΑΡОΣ (Bios Kaisaros) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). I learned much from Bellemore, Nicolaus of Damascus, and from Jürgen Malitz, Nikolaos von Damaskus, Leben des Kaisers Augustus, edited, translated, with a commentary (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003). Christopher Pelling, Plutarch Caesar, translated with an introduction and commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), is excellent and extraordinarily valuable. Also very useful is the same author’s Life of Antony/Plutarch (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and J. L. Moles, The Life of Cicero/Plutarch (Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1988). For Suetonius’s Julius Caesar, H. E. Butler, and M. Cary, Suetoni Tranquilli Divus Iulius, edited with an introduction and commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927) is old but still very useful. Carlotta Scantamburlo, Suetonio, Vita di Cesare, Introduzione, traduzione e commento (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, Pisa University Press, 2011) is helpful.
On Asconius, see B. A. Marshall, A Historical Commentary on Asconius (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985).
D. R. Shackleton Bailey, ed., Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965–70) is fundamental, as is idem, Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares (Letters to His Friends), 2 vols. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977) and idem, Cicero, Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrum et M. Brutum (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Two useful commentaries on Cicero’s Philippics are W. K. Lacey, Second Philippic Oration/Cicero (Bristol, Avon: Bolchazy Carducci; Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Humanities Press, 1986) and John T. Ramsey, ed., Philippics I–II/Cicero (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
CAESAR
Caesar wrote concisely but his life is a huge subject inspiring many books. For the man in a nutshell, it would be hard to beat J. P. V. D. Balsdon’s excellent little volume, Julius Caesar (New York: Atheneum, 1967). For an introduction to the many subjects in Caesar studies today that interest scholars, see the excellent essays in Miriam Griffin, ed., A Companion to Julius Caesar (Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). A classic of good judgment and good scholarship is Matthias Gelzer, Caesar: Politician and Statesman, translated by Peter Needham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969). Christian Meier, Caesar, translated by David McLintock (New York: Basic Books/HarperCollins) is a great book, scholarly and gripping, but not always right. For a critical review that advances a more negative theory of Caesar’s dynastic ambitions, see E. Badian, “Christian Meier: Caesar,” Gnomon 62.1 (1990): 22–39. An outstanding, recent biography is Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Philip Freeman, Julius Caesar (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008) is astute and succinct. W. Jeffrey Tatum, Always I Am Caesar (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008) is a lively and insightful introduction. For those with German, E. Baltrusch offers a trenchant comparison of Caesar and Pompey in Caesar und Pompeius (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004). Two important books by Zvi Yavetz analyze Caesar’s program, his propaganda, and his appeal to the ordinary Roman: Plebs and Princeps (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) and Julius Caesar and His Public Image (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). For more on Caesar’s appeal to the poor and noncitizens, see Luciano Canfora, Julius Caesar: The Life and Times of the People’s Dictator, translated by Marian Hill and Kevin Windle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). In a similar vein, see Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New York: New Press, 2003).
On Caesar as commander, see J. F. C. Fuller, Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier and Tyrant (New Brunswick, NJ: Da Capo, 1965); Kimberly Kagan, The Eye of Command (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006). On Caesar as risk taker, see my Masters of Command: Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar and the Genius of Leadership (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), passim.
On the enduring legacy of Caesar, see three very valuable books by Maria Wyke: Caesar: A Life in Western Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); idem, Caesar in the USA (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); idem, ed., Julius Caesar in Western Culture (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).
On Caesar’s early career, see: Lily Ross Taylor, “The Rise of Julius Caesar.” Greece and Rome (Second Series) 4.1 (1957); R. T. Ridley, “The Dictator’s Mistake: Caesar’s Escape from Sulla,” Historia 49.2 (2000): 211–29.
On Caesar in Gaul, see K. Gilliver, Caesar’s Gallic Wars 58–50BC (London: Routledge, 2003); T. R. Holmes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911); Christophe Goudineau, César et la Gaule (Paris: Errance, 1992); Kathryn Welch, “Caesar and His Officers in the Gallic War Commentaries,” in Kathryn Welch and Anton Powell, eds., Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter: The War Commentaries as Political Instruments (London: Duckworth; Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 1998), 85–110.
On the Civil War, see Adrian Goldsworthy, “Caesar’s Civil War 49–44 BC,” in Kate Gilliver, Adrian Goldsworthy, and Michael Whitby, with a foreword by Steven Saylor, Rome at War (Oxford and New York: Osprey, 2005), 106–82. I offer an analysis of Caesar’s Civil War tactics and strategy in Masters of Command, passim.
On Caesar as propagandist, see J. H. Collins, “Caesar as a Political Propagandist,” in H. Temporini, ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, vol. 1.1 (Berlin and New York: DeGruyter, 1972), 922–66. On Caesar’s use of Venus as propaganda, see “Caesar’s Divine Heritage and the Battle for Venus,” retrieved July 24, 2013, from http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/acans/caesar/Career_Venus.htm.
On Caesar’s appearance, see P. Zanker, “The Irritating Statues and Contradictory Portraits of Julius Caesar,” in Griffin, ed., Companion to Caesar, 288–313.
The best study of Caesar as dictator is Martin Jehne, Der Staat des Dictators Caesar (The State of the Dictator Caesar) (Cologne, Germany: Böhlau, 1987). Important essays on the last phase of Caesar’s career are found in Gianpaolo Urso, ed., L’ultimo Cesare: Scritti, Riforme, Progetti, Congiure: atti del Convegno Internazionale, Cividale del Friuli (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000). See also John H. Collins, “Caesar and the Corruption of Power,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 4.4 (1955): 445–65; Marta Sordi, “Caesar’s Powers in His Last Phase,” in Francis Cairns and Elaine Fantham, eds., Caesar Against Liberty? Perspectives on his Autocracy, Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar 11 (Cambridge: Francis Cairns, 2003), 190–99; J. T. Ramsey, “Did Julius Caesar Temporarily Banish Mark Antony from His Inner Circle?,” Classical Quarterly 54.1 (2004): 161–73. On the Lupercalia, see A. K. Michels, “The Topography and Interpretation of the Lupercalia,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 84 (1953): 35–59.
A basic work on the deification of Caesar is Stefan Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). See the important revisions by Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).
ROMAN POLITICS: INSTITUTIONS AND PRACTICES
Two fine introductions to Roman political life in Caesar’s day are Lily Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961 [1949]) and Claude Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome, trans. P. S. Falla (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1980). Fergus Millar argues that Roman politics was more democratic than scholars had thought in The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988). For a skeptical view of Roman democracy, see Henrik Mouritsen, Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Robert Morstein-Marx offers an insightful analysis of Roman political oratory, with the days after the Ides of March being an important case in point, in Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). F. Pina Polo offers a catalog of Public Meetings (contiones) in Las Contiones Civiles y Militares en Roma (Zaragoza, Spain: Universidad de Zaragoza, 1989).
On the Best Men and the Populists, see W. K. Lacey, “Boni atque Improbi,” Greece & Rome, 2nd ser. 17.1 (1970): 3–16.
CAESAR’S RIVALS
On Pompey, two succinct biographies are Robin Seager, Pompey the Great, A Political Biography, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002) and Patricia Southern, Pompey (Stroud, England: Tempus, 2002). For more details, see P. A. L. Greenhalgh, Pompey, the Roman Alexander (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981) and idem, Pompey, the Republican Prince (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982).
A good introduction to Cato the Younger is Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2012).
A fine introduction to Cicero is Anthony Everitt, Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (New York: Random House, 2002). Elizabeth Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), is the work of an expert in the intellectual world of the Late Republic. Two good introductions to Cicero and politics are R. E. Smith, Cicero the Statesman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966) and D. Stockton, Cicero: A Political Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
On Clodius, see W. Jeffrey Tatum, The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
CAESAR’S MEN
Two good introductory biographies to Mark Antony are E. G. Huzar, Mark Antony: A Biography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978) and P. Southern, Mark Antony (Stroud, England: Tempus, 2006). There is much of value in Adrian Goldsworthy,Antony and Cleopatra (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). An important work on Antony’s relationship to Caesar is J. T. Ramsey, “Did Julius Caesar Temporarily Banish Mark Antony from His Inner Circle?,” Classical Quarterly 54.1 (2004): 161–73. A grand old account, by turns fanciful and wise, is Arthur Weigall, The Life and Times of Marc Antony (Garden City, NY: Garden City, 1931).
On Lepidus, see Richard D. Weigel, Lepidus: The Tarnished Triumvir (London and New York: Routledge, 1992); L. Hayne, “M. Lepidus and His Wife,” Latomus 33 (1974): 76–79; L. Hayne, “M. Lepidus (cos. 78)—A Reappraisal,” Historia 21 (1972): 661–68.
On Oppius and Balbus and the bitterness their rise inspired in the Roman nobility, see Kathryn E. Welch, “The Praefectura Urbis of 45 B.C. and the Ambitions of L. Cornelius Balbus,” Antichthon 24 (1990): 53–69. See also Ralph Masciantonio, “Balbus the Unique,” Classical World 61.4 (December 1967): 134–38.
THE CONSPIRATORS
The old but still fundamental discussion of the evidence for the conspirators and the conspiracy is W. Drumann, Geschichte Roms [History of Rome] in seinem Übergange von der republikanischen zur monarchischen Verfassung; oder, Pompeius, Caesar, Cicero und ihre Zeitgenossen nach Geschlechtern und mit genealogischen Tabellen, vol. 3: Domitii–Julii, 2nd ed., ed. P. Groebe (Leipzig: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1906), 624–28. The commentary in Pelling, Plutarch’s Caesar is essential for serious study of the conspirators, the assassination, and the aftermath. The best and most concise introduction to the conspiracy and the aftermath is the chapter in Greg Woolf, Et Tu, Brute? The Murder of Caesar and Political Assassination (London: Profile Books, 2006), 1–51; Woolf is, however, unduly diffident about the possibility of reconstructing the details of the assassination. Woolf argues that the conspirators would have gotten away with their murder if not for Caesar’s soldiers, a force that insisted on revenge; the Roman nobility was probably willing to accept it. Zvi Yavetz, “Existimatio, Fama and the Ides of March,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 78 (1974): 35–65, argues that the conspirators mistakenly believed that public opinion was on their side. D. F. Epstein, “Caesar’s Personal Enemies on the Ides of March,” Latomus 46, Fasc. 3 (1987): 566–70, argues that personal and not ideological motives inspired the conspirators. Andrew Lintott, “The Assassination,” in Griffin, ed., Companion to Caesar, 72–81, takes ideological motives more seriously. Also valuable are R. E. Smith, “The Conspiracy and the Conspirators,” Greece & Rome, 2nd Series 4.1 (1957): 58–70, and R. H. Storch, “Relative Deprivation and the Ides of March: Motive for Murder,” Ancient History Bulletin 9 (1995): 45–52.
T. P. Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late Republican Politics and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) argues that Caesar’s killers were arrogant aristocrats while Caesar followed the rule of law and had the support of the Roman people. See the valuable review by Josiah Osgood, Classical Journal 105.2 (2009): 180–83.
M. H. Dettenhofer offers an important insight into the generation of most of the conspirators—and for that matter, of their opponents Antony and Lepidus—who were all around the age of forty at the time of the Ides of March. See her Perdita iuventus: zwischen den Generationen von Caesar und Augustus (Lost Youth: Between the Generations of Caesar and Augustus) (Munich: Beck, 1992).
The most accessible book in English on Marcus Brutus is M. L. Clarke’s fine work, The Noblest Roman: Marcus Brutus and His Reputation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), but the most penetrating analysis is in German: Hermann Bengston, Zur Geschichte des Brutus, Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich: Beck, 1970). Erik Wistrand offers a persuasive account of Brutus’s moderation in The Policy of Brutus the Tyrannicide (Göteborg: Kungl. Vetenskaps-och Vitterhets-samhället, 1981). See the review essay by G. Dobesch, “Review of the Noblest Roman. Marcus Brutus and His Reputation by M.L. Clarke; The Policy of Brutus the Tyrannicide by Erik Wistrand,” Gnomon 56.8 (1984): 708–22.
Ramsay MacMullen offers a perceptive analysis of Brutus’s motives and his later reputation in Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in The Roman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 1–45. Sheldon Nodelman offers an insightful study of the evidence of coins and sculpture in “The Portrait of Brutus the Tyrannicide,” Occasional Papers on Antiquities 4: Ancient Portraits in the J. Paul Getty Museum 1 (1987): 41–86. T. W. Africa puts Brutus on the couch in “The Mask of an Assassin: A Psychohistorical Study of M. Junius Brutus,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8, 4 (1978): 599–626. Graham Wylie emphasizes Brutus’s status as an icon and his failure as a leader in “The Ides of March and the Immovable Icon,” in Carl Deroux, ed., Studies in Latin literature and Roman history, vol. 9 (Brussels: Latomus, 1998), 167–85. M. Radin, Marcus Brutus (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1939), is highly speculative.
On Brutus as an orator see Andrea Balbo, “Marcus Junius Brutus the Orator: Between Philosophy and Rhetoric,” in Catherine Steel and Henriette van Der Blom, eds., Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 315–28.
For a perceptive study of Cassius and Brutus, see Elizabeth Rawson, “Cassius and Brutus: The Memory of the Liberators,” in I. S. Moxon, J.D. Smart, and A. J. Woodman, eds., Past Perspectives: Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing, Papers Presented at a Conference in Leeds, 6–8 April 1983 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 101–19.
On Decimus Brutus, the fundamental study, with a full citation of sources, is Friedrich Münzer, s.v. Iunius (Brutus) (55a), in August Pauly and Georg Wissowa, eds., Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Supplementband V, Agamemnon-Statilius (Stuttgart, 1931), cols. 369–85 (in German). Also extremely important is Bernard Camillus Bondurant, Decimus Brutus Albinus: A Historical Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907). I have benefited from the short but astute analysis of Decimus in Dettenhofer, Perdita Iuventus, 258–62.
Syme pursued his thesis that Decimus was Caesar’s bastard son in “Bastards in the Roman Aristocracy,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104, 3 (1960): 323–27, and “No Son for Caesar?,” Historia 29 (1980): 422–37, esp. 426–30. G. M. Duval puts forth a much more convincing thesis in “D. Junius Brutus: mari ou fils de Sempronia?,” Latomus 50.3 (1991): 608–15. There is a good discussion of Decimus and the sea in R. Schulz, “Caesar und das Meer,” Historische Zeitschrift 271.2 (2000): 281–309. See also John C. Rolfe, “Brutus and the Ships of the Veneti,” Classical Weekly 11.14 (Jan. 28, 1918): 106–7.
For Decimus’s behavior after Caesar’s funeral, see S. Accame, “Decimo Bruto dopo i Funerali di Cesare,” Rivista di filologica e di istruzione classica 62 (1934): 201–8. An important study of the endgame of Decimus’s life is Denis van Berchem, “La Fuite de Decimus Brutus,” Les routes et l’histoire: 355 études sur les Helvètes et leurs voisins dans l’Empire romain (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1982), 55–65.
Although certain scholars recognize Decimus’s significance in the conspiracy they argue that it is impossible to ascertain his motives; Baltrusch, Caesar und Pompeius, 166–67, is a good example. Syme points a way forward when he notes how much of his career Decimus spent in Gaul and how little in Rome (Syme, “No Son for Caesar?”, 436). As a military man and a person with one foot in Celtic notions of honor, Decimus might not have responded kindly to his exclusion from the Parthian War and his eclipse by Octavian.
THE IDES OF MARCH
In addition to Woolf, Et tu Brute?, 1–18, and Lintott, “The Assassination,” there are important introductions in J. V. P. D Balsdon, “The Ides of March,” Historia 7 (1958): 80–94, and N. Horsfall, “The Ides of March: Some New Problems,” Greece and Rome 21 (1974): 191–99. Etienne, Ides de Mars, offers a more detailed account. So does Stephen Dando-Collins, The Ides: Caesar’s Murder and the War for Rome (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010). Parenti, Assassination of Julius Caesar, 167–86, offers a discussion. M. E. Deutsch considers an earlier, failed assassination plan in “The Plot to Murder Caesar on the Bridge,” UCP 2 (1908/16): 267–78.
On what Caesar said to Brutus, see P. Arnaud, “Toi aussi, mons fils, tu mangeras ta part de notre pouvoir—Brutus le Tyran?,” Latomus 57 (1998): 61–71; F. Brenk, “Caesar and the Evil Eye or What to Do with ‘кαι συ, τέκυоυ’,” in Gareth Schmeling and Jon D. Mikalson, eds., Qui miscuit utile dulci: Festschrift Essays for Paul Lachlan (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy Carducci, 1998), 31–49; M. Dubuisson, “Toi Aussi, Mon Fils,” Latomus 39 (1980): 881–90; J. Russell, “Julius Caesar’s Last Words: A Reinterpretation,” in Bruce Marshall, ed., Vindex Humanitatis: Essays in Honor of John Huntly Bishop (Armidale, New South Wales: University of New England, 1980), 123–28.
On Spurrina and soothsayers, see E. Rawson, “Caesar, Etruria and the Disciplina Etrusca,” Journal of Roman Studies 68 (1978): 132–52; J. T. Ramsey, “Beware the Ides of March!: An Astrological Prediction?” Classical Quarterly, New Series, 50, 2 (2000): 440–54.
J. T. Ramsey offers a tour de force leading to a reevaluation of the morning’s chronology in “At What Hour Did the Murderers of Julius Caesar Gather on the Ides of March 44 B.C.?,” in Stephan Heilen et al., In Pursuit of Wissenschaft: Festschrift für William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag (Hildesheim and Zurich: Olms, 2008), 351–63.
On Late Republican Roman military daggers, begin with an excellent and broader cultural history of Roman weapons, Simon James, Rome and the Sword: How Warriors and Weapons Shaped Roman History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011) and then even more general considerations in G. Walker, Battle Blades: a Professional’s Guide to Combat/Fighting Knives. (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1993).
On the use of gladiators as bodyguards see A. W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 83–85.
On Pompey’s Portico and Senate House, the site of Caesar’s assassination, see K. L. Gleason, “The Garden Portico of Pompey the Great: An Ancient Public Park Preserved in the Layers of Rome,” Expedition 32.2 (1990): 3–13, and “Porticus Pompeiana: A New Perspective on the First Public Park of Ancient Rome,” Journal of Garden History 14.1 (January–March 1994): 13–27.
FROM THE IDES OF MARCH TO OCTAVIAN’S TRIUMPH IN 29 B.C.
Syme, The Roman Revolution is a classic account of this period. Now Josiah Osgood offers an excellent narrative and analysis, with an emphasis on the experience of ordinary people, in Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), is another fine introduction, prudent in its judgments and especially good on military events.
Kathryn Welch highlights the often overlooked factors of Sextus Pompey and sea power in the conflict in the decade after the Ides of March in Magnus Pius—Sextus Pompeius and the Transformation of the Roman Republic (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012). On the role of soldiers on the Ides of March and its aftermath, see Helga Boterman, Die Soldaten und die roemische Politik in der Zeit von Caesars Tod bis zur Begruendung des zweiten Triumvirats (Munich: Beck, 1968). I found much of value in Don Sutton, “The Associates of Brutus: A Prosopographical Study,” (1986), Open Access Dissertations and Theses, Paper 6910, http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/6910.
Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power, 150–58, demonstrates how Roman public opinion was up for grabs in the days following the Ides of March. Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People, 216–28, disagrees.
On Caesar’s funeral, see Weinstock, Divus Julius, 346–55; G. S. Sumi, Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005); G. S. Sumi, “Impersonating the Dead: Mimes at Roman Funerals,” The American Journal of Philology 123. 4 (2002): 559–85; George Kennedy, “Antony’s Speech at Caesar’s Funeral,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 54.2 (1968): 99–106; D. Noy, “Half-Burnt on an Emergency Pyre: Roman Creations Which Went Wrong,”Greece & Rome, 2nd ser. 47. 2 (2000): 186–96; Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People, 228–33.
There is much of value on Roman funerary customs and especially the mysterious beeswax masks in H. I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2000.
Ulrich Gotter, Der Diktator ist tot! Politik in Rom zwischen den Iden des März und der Begründung des Zweiten Triumvirats (The Dictator is Dead! Politics in Rome Between the Ides of March and the Founding of the Second Triumvirate) Historia Einzelschrift110 (Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner, 1996), is detailed and useful on the events from March 44 B.C. to November 43 B.C. Some valuable studies on the events of 44 B.C. are L. Hayne. “Lepidus’s Role After the Ides of March,” Antiquité Classique14 (1971): 108–17; Mark Toher, “Octavian’s Arrival in Rome, 44 B.C.,” Classical Quarterly, New Series 54. 1 (2004): 174–84; J. T. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44B.C. and Caesar’s Funeral Games (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997); J. T. Ramsey, “Did Mark Antony Contemplate an Alliance with His Political Enemies in July 44 B.C.E.?,” Classical Philology 96. 3 (2001): 253–68; A. E. Raubitschek, “Brutus in Athens,” Phoenix 11 (1957): 1–11.
Good studies of Brutus and Cassius’s strategy in 43–42 B.C. include Martin Drum, “Cicero’s Tenth and Eleventh Philippics: The Republican Advance in the East,” in Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, eds., Cicero’s Philippics (Auckland, New Zealand: Polygraphia, 2008), 82–94; Arthur Keaveney, “Cassius’ Parthian Allies,” Hommages à Carl Deroux, vol. 3 (Brussels: Latomus, 2003), 232–34.
Anthony Everitt, The Life of Rome’s First Emperor (New York: Random House, 2003), offers a good introduction to Augustus—as Octavian was eventually known. Two fine essays by Walter Eder (“Augustus and the Power of Tradition”) and Erich S. Gruen (“Augustus and the Making of the Principate”) explain how he bridged the gap between Republic and Empire, in Karl Galinsky, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 13–32, 33–51.
THE WOMEN
Richard A. Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London and New York, Routledge: 1992) is a good introduction. See also Judith Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
On Cleopatra, see Stacey Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2010); Duane Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Diana E. E. Kleiner, Cleopatra and Rome (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).
SHAKESPEARE
S. Wells, ed., The Oxford Shakespeare Julius Caesar (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), is a fine edition with a good introduction and notes. Ernest Schanzer, ed., Shakespeare’s Appian: A Selection from the Tudor Translation of Appian’s Civil Wars (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1956), includes a sensible discussion of Shakespeare’s use of the ancient sources; Gary Wills, Rome and Rhetoric: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), is a lively introduction to the subject.
THE ANCIENT CITY OF ROME
Eva Margareta Steinby, ed., Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae [Topographical Lexicon of the City of Rome], 6 vols. (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1993–2000) is a fundamental encyclopedia, replacing the earlier Samuel Ball Platner, completed and revised by Thomas Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1929). An excellent, shorter book is Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Filippo Coarelli, Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide, translated by James J. Clauss and Daniel P. Harmon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), is detailed and scholarly. Amanda Claridge, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), is very useful, not least as a walking guide.
Several websites are valuable, among them: “Rome Reborn: A Digital Model of Ancient Rome,” retrieved December 15, 2011, from http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/; “Digital Augustan Rome,” retrieved December 15, 2011, fromhttp://digitalaugustanrome.org/; “The Theatre of Pompey,” retrieved December 15, 2011, from http://www.pompey.cch.kcl.ac.uk/index.htm.
On ancient Rome as an urban space, see S. L. Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Jon Coulston and Hazel Dodge, Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City (Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2000); Grant Heiken, Renato Funiciello, and Donatella De Rita, The Seven Hills of Rome: A Geological Tour of the Eternal City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
On daily life in ancient Rome, see the classic by Jérôme Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003 [1940]). See also John E. Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); F. Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); and the very accessible Alberto Angela, A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome, translated by Gregory Conti (New York: Europa Editions, 2011).
On Roman parks and gardens, see Pierre Grimal, Les jardins romains à la fin de la république et aux deux premiers siècles de l’empire; essai sur le naturalisme romain, 3rd ed. (Paris: Fayard, 1984); Maddalena Cima and Emilia Talamo, Gli Horti di Roma Antica(Milan: Electa, 2008); John D’Arms, “Between Public and Private: The epulum publicum and Caesar’s horti trans Tiberim,” in Maddalena Cima and Eugenio La Rocca, eds., Horti romani: atti del convegno internazionale: Roma, 4–6 maggio 1995 (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1998), 33–43.
The sources for the Temple of the Deified Julius and its dedication are conveniently available in English translation at “Rome Reborn: The Temple of Caesar,” http://romereborn.frischerconsulting.com/ge/TS-020.html.
MISCELLANEOUS
On clothing, see L. M. Wilson, The Roman Toga (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1924).
There are many novels on the subject of this book. Allan Massie, Caesar (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993) makes Decimus the narrator, looking back on Caesar’s assassination from his last days in a Gallic prison. Colleen McCullough, The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007) gives Decimus a major role in the story of the assassination. Steven Saylor, The Judgment of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: St. Martin’s, 2004) and idem, The Triumph of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: St. Martin’s, 2008) are detective stories that marvelously evoke the conspiratorial atmosphere of Rome. Saylor’s A Murder on the Appian Way: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) is set against the backdrop of the murder of Clodius in 52 B.C. Decimus is an important character in Ben Kane’s The Road to Rome (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012). Conn Iggulden’s Emperor: The Gods of War (New York: Delacorte Press, 2006) paints a stirring picture of the Civil War and of Caesar’s assassination. Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003 [1948]) is a subtle delight. Riccardo Bacchelli, I tre Schiavi di Giulio Cesare (The Three Slaves of Julius Caesar) (Milan: Mondadori, 1957) picks up on a detail in Suetonius, that after Caesar’s assassination, only three slaves were left to carry his litter awkwardly back home. Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004) vividly tells Cleopatra’s story in a historical novel narrated by the queen herself.