Swords Against the Senate

the long version

Personal intrigue, treachery, and occasional moral virtue vie in ancient Rome -- undisputed master of the world, but fatally unable to control its own citizens or army. In the first century BC, Rome was the undisputed ruler of a vast empire. Yet, at the heart of the Roman Republic was a fatal flaw: a dangerous hostility between the aristocracy and the plebians, and each regarded themselves as the foundation of Rome's military power. Turning from their foreign enemies, Romans would soon be fighting Romans. In a fast-paced narrative peopled with a memorable cast of heroes and villains, Swords Against the Senate describes the first three decades of the century-long civil war that transformed Rome from a republic to an imperial autocracy, from the Rome of citizen leaders to the Rome of decadent emperor thugs. It relates how the republic came apart amid military and political turmoil and how Gaius Marius, the "people's general," first rose to despotic power and then fell to the brutal dictator Sulla in a clash between opposing Roman armies. The citizen army, once invincible against foreign antagonists, became a tool for contending aristocrats in Rome's bloody civil war. - Back cover.