This stimulating and timely collection of essays stems from a conference held at the University of Melbourne in July 2023. This is, at its core, a book about the last generation of the Roman republic, bookended by several comparative chapters. It consists of 23 essays. Many contributors boldly and innovatively draw on approaches from political science to shed light on the causes and effects of the breakdown of ‘democratic/republican’ political norms. In particular, S. Levitsky and D. Ziblatt’s influential 2018 book, How Democracies Die, informs many of the contributors’ approaches to the topic. The title of the present book is a nod to their work.

The volume is divided into five parts: the first three are on various aspects of ‘The Death of the Roman Republic’ (with one essay by M. Simonton on Greek democracy); the fourth and the fifth offer some useful comparanda on (among others) the Venetian Republic, the First French Republic and the rise of fascism in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. A great strength of the volume lies in the lack of consensus across the chapters about the causes and outcomes of the decline of republican norms at Rome in the first century bce. Different perspectives are offered throughout, which generates a stimulating, if implicit, internal debate.

The editors – Vervaet, Rafferty and Dart –, who collaboratively have written three chapters within the volume, lay out plainly and forcefully in their introductory chapter, ‘New Perspectives on Old Problems/Old Perspectives on New Problems’, the causes of the death of the ‘traditional republic’ as they see them. Authoritarian military strongmen killed the republic, implementing competitive authoritarian structures that were heavily skewed in their favour. Embedded is the notion that the ‘traditional republic’ was far less susceptible to creeping authoritarianism, and something went wrong. So far, so conventional.

But the editors are not shy about picking a side. Ti. Gracchus operated ‘within the boundaries of the political system’, while it was Scipio Nasica who undermined republican norms (p. 17). In their second chapter, ‘Reform Unwillingness and the Death of the Roman Republic’, which convincingly disputes C. Meier’s thesis that Rome’s constitution was structurally unreceptive to reform, we meet a number of Roman elite individuals who ‘were capable of future-oriented, structural, and even “progressive” (in the sense of more inclusive, participatory, redistributive) reforms’ (p. 78). M. Livius Drusus emerges as a ‘visionary’ in the middle of an ideological dispute between populares and optimates (p. 92). In their third chapter, ‘Competitive Authoritarianism on the Eve of Empire: Pompeius’s New Republic of 52 bce’, the trials conducted under the leges Pompeiae in 52 bce are described as nothing short of a ‘purge’ (p. 314), overseen by an ‘uncontested strongman’ who was paving the way for a ‘Pompeian New Order’. In sum, their chapters present a bold and unapologetic vision of what was at stake – and who was primarily at fault – in Rome in the second and the first centuries bce.

Different perspectives emerge elsewhere. A. Russell’s chapter, ‘Consensus Breakdown: Or, How Cicero Was Wrong About Rome, and We Might Be Wrong About America’, challenges us to rethink the notion that republican norms were fixed, painting a picture of the republic that is quite different from the one that we see in the editors’ chapters. In Russell’s view there never was the kind of consensus that Cicero dreamed of; conventional understandings of mos maiorum are thrown out the window; ‘Ciceronian norms’ may not reflect Roman norms. As she admits, her chapter is meant to be provocative and to stimulate conversation. K. Morrell’s chapter, ‘Enabling Laws, Rule of Law, and the Transformation of the Roman Republic’, provides the important reminder that, whatever the motivations of prominent figures in the late republic, due legal process was consistently followed. Very differently from the editors’ contribution on Pompey, Morrell focuses on Pompey’s ‘readiness in laying down powers’ (p. 222) in the late 50s in a bid to stress that authoritarianism was not rendered inevitable by his sole consulship. More generally, ‘untraditional powers’ and their ‘enabling laws’ (p. 195) did not necessarily snowball into increasing levels of authoritarianism.

E. Gruen’s scholarship sits in the background of many discussions in the volume, with many contributions animated by questions about the symptoms of democratic decline and the inevitability of authoritarian rule. An emblematic quotation from Gruen’s The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974) – ‘Civil war caused the fall of the Republic – not vice versa’ – is repeated four times across the volume. No contributor argues that monarchy was rendered inevitable at Rome by the events of the last generation of the republic. But there are some who, in their opposition to Gruen’s thesis, are further along the inevitability scale than others. (C. Rosillo-López’s thought-provoking chapter, which compares the observations of Cicero and Victor Klemperer, offers a compelling means of avoiding a ‘teleological view’ of the late republic.) Because the contributors mentioned above have different perspectives on this matter, the volume breathes new life into debates on the rise of authoritarianism at Rome, without supplying a definitive answer.

These tensions make the book a success: the volume is a celebration of the diversity of views on the causes of political disintegration. I suspect that some readers will disagree with the framing or the conclusions of many of the chapters. But their provocativeness and boldness should be taken as a challenge. Others follow suit in proposing novel perspectives and interpretations (and many of these contributors are upfront about the fact that their hypotheses are preliminary and constructed to generate discussion). J. Tan, in ‘The Role of the Economy in the Fall of the Roman Republic’, building on his influential work on Rome’s political economy, stresses the importance of hitherto underappreciated economic factors in the rise of authoritarianism in Rome without picking a side. J. Tatum, in ‘Just Another Word? The Lure of Libertas in the Seventies’, tentatively frames the tribunate and libertas as distractions engineered by elites in the 70s to facilitate ‘accountability sabotage’. Diversionary tactics such as these allowed authoritarian practices to creep in. T. Hillard and J.L. Beness innovatively read Catullus’ invective poetry of the 50s as an example of increasing ‘incivility’ and erosion of trust in existing leadership.

There are more orthodox contributions. T. Lanfranchi, in ‘Caesar and the Tribunes of the Plebs: Process and Events’, offers a useful survey of Caesar’s relationship with tribunes, reading 45 as a turning point towards greater authoritarian rule. T. Rushmer’s excellent chapter on Caesar’s drastic reduction of the number of recipients of the grain dole, ‘Who Counts as the Roman People? Caesar’s recensus and Discriminatory Populism’, offers compelling political explanations. Caesar is characterised, quite plausibly, as a discriminatory and exclusionary populist, maintaining and reinforcing divisions in society, as authoritarian figures tend to do. R.T. Ridley, in ‘Augustus’ Res Gestae as a Revolutionary’s Manual’, reads the Res Gestae as an explicit admission of Augustus’ violent and illegal usurpation of absolute power (‘Augustus conceals nothing’, p. 406). This represents a slight revision of the communis opinio that the inscription is a blatant and misleading fabrication of history by the authoritarian ruler.

A few common themes recur across the work. The capacity of moneyed elites to manipulate political processes and channels of communication in order to increase their own power comes up repeatedly, as do the risks posed by military strongmen to democratic political structures. Both themes emerge prominently in the final section (Part 5: ‘The Roman Republic and the Modern World’). Here we learn about parallel instances of how erosion of democratic principles is enabled by the complicity and, in many cases, active support of the wealthiest sections of society (particularly prominent in A. de Dijn’s excellent chapter, ‘From Caesarism to Populism: An Intellectual History’). And the role of non-elites in upholding or preventing authoritarianism, ancient or modern, runs as a red thread throughout the volume. Russell, for instance, challenges the notion, touted by Levitsky and Ziblatt, that it is essentially up to elites to act as ‘gatekeepers’ to stop demagogues and aspiring tyrants (pp. 45–52). Class is often in the background: it is oligarchy, not necessarily populism (and certainly not the people and their active civic involvement), which poses the greatest threat to democracy. De Dijn’s concluding remarks deserve to be quoted, as they characterise many of the findings across the volume (pp. 454–5):

On other occasions, it is violence and intimidation that hasten the process of democratic retreat: the Venetian republic ultimately ended because Napoleon invaded (C. Kovesi, ‘With a Bang or a Whimper? Reflections on the Fall of the Venetian Republic’); fascist governments in Europe in the early twentieth century, although capitalising on institutional weaknesses and actively undermining democratic norms, came to power by violence (F. Pina Polo, ‘The Civil War in Spain (1936–1939) and the Civil Wars in Late-republican Rome as Cases of Political and Ideological Polarisation’; Á. Alcalde, ‘The Death of Democratic Republics in the 1930s: Germany, Austria, Spain’). But – even in Hitler’s rise – authoritarian rule required a ‘change of mind of the power elites’ (p. 499) and a willingness to tolerate, or play a subordinate role within, an undemocratic system. Complicit oligarchs are recurring characters in the book.

The collected essays demonstrate how much historians of the ancient world can gain from political science and comparative history. The parallels between ancient and modern instances of creeping authoritarianism rarely feel forced, but they are always in the background, even implicitly. We learn about how wealthy men manipulate democratic processes to their own advantage, often through legal(istic) means; how the people are convinced by these elites to vote against their own interests; and how and why people of all social classes are persuaded to accept authoritarian strongmen. It is fantastic that this book is freely available online: it represents an important retort to some modern public figures who use a distorted or excessively eulogistic narrative of the ancient (usually Roman) world to justify their actions (see especially the editors’ important discussion of contemporary plutocrats, and their abuse of history, p. 5).

But for all the rich and productive differences in perspective and historical interpretation detailed in this review, the volume could be accused of being something of an echo chamber. One suspects that the people who should read this book will not.