In his Preface, Prof. Taina (Sorbonne and Salento), asks “The End of the Roman Republic: Civil War or World War?” (p. viii) It’s a very good question. The sources on the wars that followed Caesar’s death for some fourteen years tell us much about what the Romans were doing as they fought each other, but far less about the third parties in these wars, the peoples, city-states, tribes, kingdom, over whose lands they were often fighting.

The book opens with an introduction covering Caesar’s last campaign and final actions up to his assassination. There follow four chapter covering the war between the “Caesaricides” or “Tyrannicides” and “Caesar’s Avengers,” and then eight more chapters on the break down of the Second Triumvirate through the death of Antony and Cleopatra and the assumption of supreme power by Octavian, soon to be Augustus.

Although sources are sparse on some aspects of the wars, Taina gives us an excellent account of the actions of the Roman combatants, while throwing some valuable light on how these affected the many peoples living within the Roman sphere of influence. Many were visited by the horrors of war, squeezed for money or troops, and all tried hard to avoid too close ties to any of the Roman factions, lest their opponents take vengeance on them. But these peoples could also exert some agency as well, at times greatly influencing events. Writing of the many little statelets in the Levant Traina tells us “It must always be kept in mind that friendly kingdoms had lives of their own and were not mere pawns in the game of Roman politics.” (p. 101).

Though very much needing a dramatis personae, compared with many earlier books on these events, Traina’s offers an innovative, insightful, and more global look at the protracted civil wars in the final decades of the Roman Republic.

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Note: The Roman World War is also available in e-editions.

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