For new scholars and old, I think that it is a good idea for us to understand certain source abbreviations we find in most ancient history articles in magazines, books, and on the internet. One such series of books that the reader will nearly always find is the Prosopographia Imperii Romani (DG 203.5 P.9 in libraries) known more frequently as PIR. PIR has been around since the early 20th Century and brings out a thourough description of EVERY Roman individual mentioned in literature of the Ancient Roman Republic and Empire that they can find. Everything wrote about a person is in Latin so you really need to know your Latin but unlike Cicero, this is easy Latin to read. You don't have to chase around the verb and look for the ablative in the sentence- it's all in order as if you were speaking any modern language. I use it when I want to know everything about a historical person that is known.

Each letter usually has its own volume. I currently have in my hand the volume for the letter "A" and "B". To find a person, I need to know the family name (such as Aemilius, Aufidius, or Brutus). If I want to find a man named Tiberius Arruntius Nicomachus, I would look up his family name "Arruntius" (not his cognomen of "Nicomachus"). Here we have it as the 1146th "A" name in the book listed as [T.] Arruntius Nicomachus. It then explains everything known about that man and the source (in bold here) it is listed from: Tiberiniani filius, primipilaris, adfinis consularium t. Temenothyris Flaviopoli rep. Bull. hell. 17, 265 sq., 50 = IGR 4, 617. Uxor Tullia Valeria.

IGR is another source book but if I explain it, it shall be in another post. Now, hopefully when you see PIR in an endnote and it says something like PIR A 1146, you know what it means. It means that the source is in the Prosopograhia Imperii Romani in the section A and the 1146th "A" name listed.

As for historical fiction, there's Colleen McCullough of the Thornbirds who wrote several books on Sulla and Caesar (Grass Crown) but I'm on page 60 of the Grass Crown and it still is boring.