William Shakespeare's gripping play showed Caesar's assassination to be an amateur and idealistic affair. The real killing, however, was a carefully planned paramilitary operation, a generals' plot put together by Caesar's disaffected officers and designed with precision. Brutus and Cassius were indeed key players, but they had the help of a third man--Decimus. He was the mole in Caesar's entourage, one of Caesar's leading generals, and a lifelong friend. It was he, not Brutus, who truly betrayed Caesar. Caesar's assassins saw him as a military dictator who wanted to be king. He threatened a permanent change in the Roman way of life and in the power of senators. The assassins rallied support among the common people, but they underestimated Caesar's soldiers, who flooded Rome. The assassins were vanquished; their beloved Republic became the Roman Empire.
About the Author :
Barry Strauss, a leading expert on ancient military history, is the author of several books, including The Spartacus War, The Battle of Salamis, and The Trojan War. He is a professor of history and classics and chair of the Department of History at Cornell University. A former director of Cornell's Peace Studies Program, he is currently director as well as founder of its Program on Freedom and Free Societies. Robertson Dean has recorded hundreds of audiobooks in most every genre. He's been nominated for several Audie Awards, won nine Earphones Awards, and was named one of AudioFile magazine's Best Voices of 2010. He lives in Los Angeles, where he records books and acts in film, TV, and (especially) on stage.
Review :
"[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."
-- "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."
-- "Wall Street Journal"
"A riveting blow-by-blow account by a masterful scholar and storyteller of a human drama that changed the course of Western history."
-- "Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of The Savior Generals"
"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."
-- "Times (London)"
"I have never read so detailed an account of the world's most famous assassination...[It] brings back all the suspense of an extraordinary story, as if we weren't sure what was going to happen next."
-- "Anthony Everitt, New York Times bestselling author"
"Robertson Dean's subtly dark, intimate tone gives Strauss' account of Caesar's assassination a sense of the urgency and danger of those days. Dean deftly narrates the events leading up to the Ides of March...Dean maintains a serious tone for a serious work without losing energy or slowing the pace. This performance is like the narration of an intelligent documentary, watched with the mind's eye."
-- "AudioFile"
"Strauss underscores [the conspirators'] dilemma with an urgency that makes each page crackle with suspense....The Death of Caesar serves us both as an entertaining, vital act of preservation for those details and figures glossed over by other historians and as a reminder of a plot so daring it would be unthinkable today."
-- "Los Angeles Review of Books"
"The author explains how Caesar's funeral was even more dramatic than Shakespeare's version--especially Mark Antony's eulogy. Strauss takes us deep into the psyche of ancient history in an exciting, twisted tale."
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
"With keen historical insights and the pace of a thriller...this is history as it should be written--a deeply human story of all the men and women caught up in these famous events."
-- "Adrian Goldsworthy, author of Augustus"
