A review by sandrinepal
The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar by Peter Stothard

challenging informative slow-paced

3.0

A+ for subject matter, C for execution, and F- for style. This is a VERY (emphasis not just mine) detailed account of the months that followed the assassination of Caesar. The usual suspects feature prominently (Brutus, Cicero, the new triumviri) but so do bit players in the plot and the subsequent civil war. It's especially enlightening to see family rivalries and old grudges come to the fore in service of Octavian's new thirst for revenge/legitimacy. Because ultimately, it's hard to countenance that the future Augustus did all this to honor the manes of his dearly departed "dad". He was a shrewd kid, with a need to assert his authority, and getting rid of (almost) everyone who was anyone on the political scene is one heck of a way to achieve that. The shifting pov didn't do much to illuminate the relationships between factions, let alone when allegiances turned on a dime, but mostly there were some turns of phrase that were very opaque and I found myself doing more than one double-take to make sense of some sentences.
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