Stothard explores the familiar ground with fresh, engaging and learned eyes, displaying a novelist’s knack for redolent and evocative detail, from cicadas and lizards to the press and horror of battle.

... his taut historical narrative...exemplifies its darkly lyrical style. In prose that evokes (and often quotes) tragic verse, Mr. Stothard tells a grim tale that spans 15 chaotic years and 19 violent deaths.

Stothard...rescues these minor men from historical obscurity and uses their fates to tell the most page-turning account in recent memory of this otherwise well-trodden history.

Stothard makes a seemingly odd but ultimately wise organizational choice: He centers the bulk of his book on an assassin whose name will be unfamiliar to pretty much everybody except his fellow historians: Cassius Parmensis, an amateur philosopher and poet.

A thrilling account of the vengeful manhunt for Julius Caesar's assassins.