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The research room of Livarva: ancient authors, modern historians, citations, notes, and the foundations of future Ask Livarva.
The Livarva Source Library gathers the voices through which the Roman Republic is known: ancient witnesses, moral biographers, political historians, and modern interpreters.
The ancient writers do not give certainty. They give voices, memories, arguments, fragments, and political imagination.
Gaius Julius Caesar was not only one of the principal actors in the fall of the Republic, but also one of its most important literary witnesses. His Commentarii present c…
Open Source PageMarcus Tullius Cicero was Rome’s greatest orator and one of the most revealing witnesses to the late Republic. His speeches and letters preserve the anxieties, ambitions,…
Open Source PageGaius Sallustius Crispus was historian, politician, and moral interpreter of Rome’s decline. His works see the crisis of the Republic through corruption, ambition, luxury…
Open Source PageTitus Livius wrote the great narrative history of Rome from its foundation. Although much of his work on the later Republic is lost, his surviving books shaped Roman memo…
Open Source PagePlutarch of Chaeronea wrote moral biographies of Greek and Roman figures. His Lives of Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Cato, Cicero, and Marius are essential to the Livarva trilog…
Open Source PageAppian of Alexandria wrote a Roman History whose Civil Wars are among the most important narratives for the violent collapse of the Republic.…
Open Source PageGaius Suetonius Tranquillus wrote imperial biographies, including the Life of Julius Caesar. He preserves anecdote, scandal, public memory, and details that often illumin…
Open Source PageCassius Dio wrote a vast Roman History in Greek during the imperial period. His account of the late Republic and early Principate is shaped by hindsight from a world in w…
Open Source PageModern scholarship does not replace the ancient sources. It teaches us how to ask better questions of them.
Theodor Mommsen was one of the most powerful nineteenth-century interpreters of Roman history. His prose, judgment, and political imagination shaped modern views of Caesa…
Open Source PageRonald Syme transformed the study of the late Republic and early Principate through a hard, unsentimental analysis of power, aristocracy, faction, and political language.…
Open Source PageMatthias Gelzer was a major twentieth-century scholar of Caesar and Roman nobility, especially important for understanding aristocratic networks and political careers.…
Open Source PageChristian Meier is among the major modern interpreters of Caesar and the crisis of the Republic, attentive to political structure, contingency, and the limits of action.…
Open Source PageKarl Christ was a major German historian of Rome whose work brought clarity, balance, and scholarly discipline to the study of the Republic and empire.…
Open Source PageAdrian Goldsworthy is a modern historian known for accessible but detailed studies of Roman warfare, Caesar, and the Roman world.…
Open Source PageThree simple paths for readers entering the world of the Roman Republic.