Reviewed on the weekly Maine Beacon Podcast as a "ray of hope" at http://mainebeacon.com/podcast-preview/

This is an interesting overview of the history of the Roman republic. It might be useful for a high school or college class. However, given the length of the period covered, and the brevity of the book, there is a lot of detail omitted. The introduction to the book led me to believe that there would be some comparisons drawn between the collapse of the republic and current events. However, there is none of that analysis in this book. I found the narrator of the audio book to be overly dramatic, especially at the beginning of the book. I’ve rounded 3.5 stars up to 4. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

An informative and authoritative account of the fall of ancient Rome. Packed with information and expert commentary.

An excellent summary of the long slide of the Roman Republic, from its height of political participation in its complex polity, through stymied reforms, to the dictatorships of the first century BC, and the end of its great experiment. Rather than cling to excuses of "inevitability", Watts argues that the fall of the republic was never inevitable, and that like all republics it existed through the choice of its people. Along the way he clearly explains the extraordinarily complicated system of offices, assemblies, and committees that Romans had developed over the centuries. Guaranteed to teach something to the layperson, and to provoke the fellow classicist; and any citizen of a modern republic will be given much to reflect upon.

Popular histories of the fall of the Roman Republic are not in short supply. There are excellent entries in this crowded field. One can look to Tom Holland’s Rubiconor the recent New York Times bestseller The Storm Before the Storm by popular podcaster Mike Duncan. Into this crowded field we have Mortal Republicby Edward J. Watts. Dr. Watts is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. His previous works have focused on the period of late antiquity and the clashes between pagan and Christian culture. In his newest work Dr. Watts examines the forces that brought about the end of the Roman Republic.

This book does not start, as is common, with the rise of the Gracchi brothers. Those radical reformers whose lives and deaths plunged the Republic into short periods of chaos. Instead he begins in 280 BC, with the wars between Rome and the Greek King Pyrrhus. Why this period? He wants to show the nature of the Roman leaders in this period. Roman leadership was a duty that was held by men who held honor above wealth.

This is an important point that will be seen throughout this book. In the early days of the Republic the nobles of Rome “agreed that virtue lay in service to Rome and that dishonor fell upon those who put their private interests above those of the Republic.” This noble ideal would become stressed as the Roman Republic grow in size, power and wealth. The change can be seen as the Romans fight the Carthaginians for control of Sicily. The Punic Wars spread Roman power abroad and soon the Republic had foreign territories to manage. With those territories came officials needed to run them. Those officials tended to become wealthy in those jobs. That wealth became the new motive for public service. Now honor gave way to avarice. As the quest for wealth and glory became the prime motivator factions began to arrive. Those factions would eventually wear away at the fabric of the Republic until it frayed and crumbled.

This did not happen in one lifetime. It took almost two centuries for the ethics and values of the Romans to devolve to the place where strong men like Sulla, Marius, Pompey, and Caesar could tear it apart. The great weakness in the Roman system was the reliance on personal honor to maintain itself. Tradition and honor were no defense against personal ambition and tremendous wealth.

The book is written for the general reader. One does not need a specialized background in Roman history to understand. The topic is indeed timely. In the Preface to the book Dr. Watts hopes “that this book allows its readers to better appreciate the serious problems that result both from politicians who breach a republic’s political norms and from citizens who choose not to punish them for doing so.” That is as far as he goes in trying to connect the past and the present. It is up to the readers to notice the signs and to take warning.

The book ends as did the Republic: with the reign of Augustus. For over half a century the Republic had been torn by one faction after another competing for power. What are we supposed to gather from this book? Why read another book on the fall of a government that fell 2,000 years ago? Because the freedoms and laws of a republic must continually be upheld and protected. Ronal Reagan famously said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Perhaps the closing statement of the book sums it up best. “When citizens take the health and durability of their republic for granted, that republic is at risk. This was as true in 133 BC or 82 BC or 44 BC as it is in AD 2018. In ancient Rome and in the modern world, a republic is a thing to be cherished, protected, and respected. If it falls, an uncertain, dangerous, and destructive future lies on the other side

“The past is no Oracle and historians are not prophets, but this does not mean that it is wrong to look to antiquity for help understanding the present. “

This was intense.

“No republic is eternal. It lives only as long as its citizens want it.”

As soon as I finished the book I thought it would be a labor of Hercules to make a comprehensive review, especially because the book is exhaustive in itself.

“Romans had avoided political violence for three centuries before a series of political murders rocked the republic in the 130s and 120s BC.”

I will give a speech that, in my mind, seems coherent enough.
First fact: this book is really well done. It has numerous sources, has a large bibliography, a large number of notes and more informations to the text.

Second fact: while maintaining the chronological order of events, the author analyzes them, compares them to each other and compares them to the events of the future and the past, as to give a true examination of history.

Third fact: the book is divided into sections, chapters, which mark the various degrees of transition between the Republic and what will then be called empire. It takes into consideration a large number of facts, going specifically to each of them, studying them with a magnifying glass. To do this, the author based his work on direct and indirect sources. The direct sources, as I call them, are the commentaries and the things written by the contemporaries to the events. The indirect sources, however, on the other hand, are biographies and monographs presented by authors who live in years away from the events. It is important to underline that the author always reports when he takes the information from authors who lived a century later or more than the events he narrates.

Fourth fact: Roman history is always fascinating, full of intrigues and struggles. Unfortunately, it is precisely because of these intrigues and struggles that the Roman republic has fallen. The author does an excellent job in studying the causes and consequences of the actions of politicians, commanders and senators.

Fifth fact: The main hypothesis of this book is that the republic has fallen due to numerous exceptions to the idea of ​​the Republic, the “res publica”, which means “common thing”. Individualisms have won over the importance of the community and the common good. I can only share this vision.

Sixth fact: the book takes into consideration a great period of time. It speaks in depth of the Punic Wars, of the Italic wars, of the social and civil wars. It speaks of personalities who have entered world history, such as Sulla, Marius, Cicero, Ceasar, but also Fabritius and Scipio, or Crassus, Lepidus, Brutus, Catilina. The author has succeeded in not making the whole book seem like a great boring speech, indeed it has made the reading interesting and compelling, adding facts and historical curiosities (or at least shared the ones by ancient historians).

Seventh fact: as a lover of the period between the first century before Christ and the first century after Christ, I can say that this section of the book is really well done. Exciting and full of interesting notions.

And now we come to the only negative think: the beginning is slow. The whole part of the Punic Wars seemed to me slow and heavy, but this may also depend on my singular extraneousness to the facts of that period.

Equipped with images and maps, this book is even better than the one on which I studied Roman history at university. This, said by a student from Rome, means a lot. Congratulations to the author for doing this immense work, well orchestrated and well organized, engaging and rewarding. My brain thanks. I would recommend this book in universities and schools, precisely for its completeness.

What a fascinating and timely book this is. This is the history of how the Roman Republic transmuted into an autocracy; going from an austere, honor-driven, consensus based society to an unimaginably wealthy oligarchy which rested on the shoulders of one man. Well-written and beautifully flowing, this is a hard book to put down.

Watts describes the early Republic, with its interlocking system of mutual responsibility, where the most sought after goods; that is, honors and public acclaim, were the prerogative of the state. Individual wealth did not bring prestige, although it undoubtedly made people’s lives comfortable. He also makes clear that Rome was a regional power until the time of the Second Punic War. In order to defend itself from Carthage, and its greatest general, Hannibal, Rome had to recast itself, and in doing so the seeds of its destruction were planted.

As time goes along, Watts shows us the cracks in the Republic. Because the Roman polity was based on tradition and especially consensus, eventually there were men who decided to advance themselves by breaking the consensus and promoting violence in order to get their way. This led to crisis upon crisis, and eventually to civil war. The outward forms of the Republic remained, but inwardly the system of government was hollow and led, almost inevitably, to Augustus and autocracy.

I found this book to be thought provoking and a bit frightening. The parallels between our own time and the destruction of the Republic are far too close for comfort. We have as our leader a man who also refuses to accept the norms of our society and government, who lies incessantly, who proclaims that he alone can fix our problems, although he is the source of many of them, who provokes violence to get his own way, and who appeals to the mob in order to force his decisions on the rest of us. The Roman Republic was not sturdy enough to withstand the selfishness of greedy men, will the American Republic be strong enough to withstand Donald Trump?

My one real criticism of this book is the use of the now somewhat dated “BC” instead of the more inclusive “BCE,” which stands for Before the Common Era. It has always seemed sort of silly to me to describe ancient societies as Before Christ, when those societies existed in their own time. For those who are interested, the use of “AD,” Anno Domini, or In the Year of Our Lord, is likewise anachronistic and should be replaced with “CE,” meaning Common Era.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in Roman history, or indeed, to anyone who is worried about the fate of Western Civilization.

A study of several hundred years of ancient Rome, “Mortal Republic” tries to analyze why it became vulnerable to dictators and eventually fell. I found the writing style largely dry and often too repetitive, reading like a basic history textbook than anything else. As fascinating as the subject should be, this was often more of a slog of recited dates, names, and battles than the political study I was expecting. Watts’ conclusion, that the Republic fell to tyrants like Julius Caesar and eventually Augustus, was an interesting one- namely, that the average citizen allowed it to happen over centuries and in the end was willing to give up working for a republic, and give up many of their freedoms, to gain basic stability and safety. For all the senators and consuls working the system for their own selfish purposes, Watts believes it is the average citizen who allowed them to do this, and so allowed their republic to disintegrate. While he isn’t subtle about the parallels he makes between the fall of the Roman Republic and today’s political climate, perhaps there is no subtle way to do it.
A thought provoking, if dry, read.

Mortal Republic is a brief, and highly readable, history of the collapse of the Roman Republic. I'll be honest, I had almost no knowledge or recollection that Rome was a republic, and I only had any familiarity with the Roman Empire; so to be able to read about the republican period of Roman history was surprising and illuminating. Edward J. Watts does an incredible job bringing the historical figures of this period to life and illustrating the structure of a very complex government. Including figures like Hannibal, Caesar, Cicero, and many, many others, this book gives the account of the high period and the eventual collapse of a republic which was a civilizing and representative entity in a region of the world still rife with tribalism and barbarianism. The lessons of the Roman Republic are still valuable today. Without harping on them or being explicit, Watts catalogs the impacts of oligarchic, kleptocratic, and populist trends which slowly chipped away at the structure of the republic. In the end the people of Rome chose the stability an Emperor would, in theory, provide in opposition to the chaos sowed by the factionalism of the waning days of the republic. With the structure of the U.S. government very heavily influenced by the Roman Republican government, the lessons and insights provided by this book have stark similarities to what we are experiencing the U.S. currently - the question is, will we learn from history? Highly recommended reading.

"No Republic is eternal. It lives only as long as its citizens want it.”
In Mortal Republic, historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains the collapse of democracy in the Republic and the rise of an autocratic Roman Empire.

At its peak, Rome was the world’s only democratic power of its time. Its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. Rome judged each man’s by his merit and service to the roman state as repaid with honor.

By the 130 BC, however, Rome's leaders began increasingly pursuing individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. Roman politics became a zero-sum game in which the winner reaped massive rewards and losers often paid with their lives. The stage was set for destructive civil wars--and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus.

The book offers a highly detailed political history of Rome. Mortal Republic covers a period of roughly 300 years From the 280 BC and 27 BC, from the victory of Rome in the Second Pyrrhic War to Octavian seizing complete power and marking the end of the Roman Republic. This is not a military history but rather the political history of Rome and rulers of that time and detailing the events occurred and how it affected the Republic.


From the opponents of Tiberius Gracchus who legitimized violence against political opponents to Sulla's using Roman army against it’s own citizens to Caesar usurping all power, Roman Republic died bit by bit every time a political procedure was misused or political opponents were intimidated. The death became inevitable when ordinary citizens either supported or refused to condemn people like Sulla, Marius, Ceaser and Augustus who destroyed the democratic institutions bit by bit. Ultimately the Republic died, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.

Unlike most historical books, this book aims to educate the readers without overwhelming them with facts, dates & jargon. The writing was excellent and the narration is free-flowing.

But where the book succeeds the most, is that is makes you introspect about the striking similarities between the political situation in the Roman Republic then and the political situation in most democracies now. The Roman republic teaches the citizens of its modern descendants the incredible dangers that come along with condoning political obstruction and courting political violence. It could not more show that when citizens look away as their leaders engage in these corrosive behaviors, their republic is in mortal danger. Unpunished dysfunction prevents consensus and encourages violence. In Rome, it eventually led Romans to trade their republic for the security of an autocracy, This Is how a republic dies.

As citizens, are were condoning political obstruction and courting political violence? Has the political divide now become so wide, that we have abandoned all attempts at building a consensus? Are we destroying the democracy we cherish by our stubbornness, whichever side of the political divide you may be.

In the end the book leaves you with a grim reminder:
A Republic is a thing to be cherished and protected. If it fails, an uncertain and dangerous future awaits on the other side.
Many thanks to NetGalley , Basic Books and the author for this ARC.

I am not a Classical/Ancient history person but it was an interesting read. A reader can get some good information out of it. There is a focus on how the Republic changed to tyranny. So if you are a person who likes or has an interest in this area of the Roman Empire, this could be the book for you.

A great book, accurate, informative and written in a very engaging style. Would be perfect as a introduction for students. I does rehash a lot of previously published material but the style is so refreshing you hardly notice.
I enjoyed this and will be recommending it.

Fantastic review of Roman history! I found it a great read, and especially for non-fiction was not dry. Definitely recommend and will be promoting in store!

I usually battle to enjoy history books that deal with the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire - they are just too confusing and boring. THIS book is different. I actually enjoyed reading it. The writing is clear and accessible, the subject straightforward, and the relevance of that subject to the current political climate highlighted.

Mortal Republi covers the Roman Republic period between 280 BC and 27 BC, when the Roman Senate formally granted Octavian overarching power and the new title Augustus, effectively marking the end of the Roman Republic. This book is not a biography of any particular set of Romans nor is it exclusively a military history. It does however successfully weave together politics, military, social and biographical details, along with the how and why events occurred and what this meant for the Repbulic in the long term.

In addition to a general history of the Roman Republic, Watts attempts to understand the current political realities of our world by studying what went wrong in the ancient Roman Republic, upon which many modern republics are based. The author makes evident that serious problems arise from both politicians who disrupt a republic's political norms, and from the citizens who choose not to punish them for doing so. In the end, Romans came to believe that liberty - political stability and freedom from domestic violence and foreign interference - could only exist in a political entity controlled by one man. This book explores why one of the longest-existing republics traded the liberty of political autonomy for the security of autocracy.

I found this book to be enjoyable, well-written and providing a new perspective on an old topic.