On March 15, 44 B.C., Julius Caesar lay dead from 23 knife wounds inflicted by his assassins. The next day, the question on every Roman citizen’s mind was: Who will rule Rome now? Getting to the answer took more than 13 years—until Caesar’s chosen heir, Octavian, crushed his rival Mark Antony in a ferocious naval battle at Actium, a Roman outpost along the Greek coast.
The history of those years is steeped in bloodshed, intrigue and sexual diplomacy. In “The War That Made the Roman Empire,” Barry Strauss relates the story fairly and fluently—in ways that set the main characters in their full historical context and yet also show their relevance to our current moment. One lesson of the epic struggle for control of Rome is that no political system can survive when its ruling elite has lost touch with reality.
