I've done the formal review here, but informally - I have truly mixed feelings about this book because I find it difficult, and yet in the end, very rewarding! It is, of course, NOT about Caesar or his legacy at all except in the largest sense - that Caesar's legacy was the Triumvirate and Civil War, and that searing experience looms larger after his death that anything he himself did.

I regret to trumpet my ignorance that there was SO much in both Horace and Virgil (and Osgood works in depth with their earlier poetry) that really outlines just how awful this period was, or how it changed everyone and everything - a true sea change in the identity of the Republic.

It reminds me of one of the comments Caesar made towards the end of his life - that no one would (by implication) be stupid enough to kill him, because what would follow him would be so infinitely worse than his own administration. Eerily prescient!

Anyway, this book won't be for everyone, but it IS worth reading.