Caesar Against Rome ― The Great Roman Civil War

Caesar Against Rome is an absorbing narrative of the four-year Roman Civil War that began with Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BCE. Focusing always on Caesar, the book sketches a panorama of Roman society--the first society to display the ambition, greed, and intrigue of modern politics--in the last century before Christ. Caesar was a complex and contradictory figure, extraordinarily talented and extremely ambitious, but at the same time vain, careless, and inclined to be forgiving. While Caesar's unusual clementia was a major factor in winning popular support, soldiers, and towns to his side, it allowed virtually all enemy leaders to return to the battlefield against him.

RAMON L. JIMENEZ, a freelance writer, has devoted much of the last ten years to studying and writing about Julius Caesar, the Celts, and the history of the late Roman Republic.