This interesting collection investigates yet again the problem of the fall of the Roman Republic. Hölkeskamp's general introduction is largely sensible, though bedevilled with theoretical jargon. He catalogues the familiar problems that Rome and its ruling élite encountered, but insists that the question ‘why?’ remains to be answered, since the Senate had developed a repertoire of practical solutions. As he says, the golden age of oligarchy never in fact existed; therefore the question does indeed still stand: why did it happen when it did?

In another very theoretical piece, Walter addresses the question of inevitability. There are helpful discussions of the essentially flexible nature of mos maiorum, the limited usefulness of ‘contrafactual history’, and the reasons why Pompey and Caesar were prepared to run the risk of civil war. His rejection of the inevitability of the Republic's fall also seems plausible. Beck's topic is the rôle of the nobility. He surveys the traditional daily occupations of the ruling class and the degree to which they survived and functioned in the ‘last generation’ of the Republic. As destabilizing factors he cites the growth of extraordinary commands and the separation of civil and military functions, but against these may be set the survival of an agreed system of political norms and practices. But the balance of power was undoubtedly disturbed, and the task of Augustus may be seen as the restoration of that balance. David investigates patronage at the end of the Republic, finding, with convincing examples, that it became more complex with the rise of outstanding individuals, who sometimes worked through agents; these might be of dubious reliability. Such issues played a part in the outbreak of the Perusine War, before patronage became largely concentrated in the hands of the imperial house.

Nippel's subject is the relationship between law, constitutional convention and precedent. His principal contentions are that more importance should be assigned to sacral law and that mos maiorum is an illusion. The latter is an obvious overstatement, though he does demonstrate that the citing of precedent could be extremely selective and that the existence of a precedent did not constitute a binding argument. Bücher examines Cicero's treatment of the Gracchi. Negative in the Corneliana, it became positive in contrasts between them and Rullus, Labienus and Catiline in 63 b.c., and later between them and Clodius. In de prouinciis consularibus they are unfavourably contrasted with their father. Subsequently their fate provides an indication of how to deal with Antony. The obvious conclusion drawn is that these variations are determined by context and audience. Morstein-Marx defends Caesar's appeal to his dignitas as a legitimation of his resort to civil war. He is right to insist that Caesar must have thought that some at least would react favourably to his claims. But the suggestion that Caesar was fighting to defend the people's right to vote for whomsoever it wished is too abstract. Caesar would certainly not have fought to give the people the chance to vote for anyone other than himself. On the ‘Rechtsfrage’ he asserts that Caesar was in the right on the strength of the law of the ten tribunes. But he does not discuss or even mention the claim of Caesar's opponents that that law had been annulled by Pompey's law on personal candidature and that Pompey's unilateral rider exempting Caesar from its requirements was a mere graffito with no legal force, surely an eminently reasonable position. An extremely theoretical but typically acute paper by Jehne asks whether the civil war was inevitable. He concludes rightly that it was not, and also argues plausibly that neither a decision by Caesar not to fight in 49 b.c. nor the total non-existence of Caesar would have saved the Republic.

Hölscher's subject is the political importance of statues and their settings. Their object was to render people and events present to the viewer and they constituted a long-term, potentially competitive, claim to recognition. Here, as in other fields, in the late Republic increasing inequality between individuals led to ever more spectacular breaches of accepted norms; indeed, for the perpetrators, to demonstrate what one could get away with became an end in itself. Zecchini deals with Caesar's public buildings. His cogently reached conclusion is that Caesar consciously planned three areas: (a) the Forum Romanum and the Regia, whose function was religious; (b) the Forum Iulium, political and civic; (c) the Campus Martius, the theatre and the family plot, which combined these functions. Jupiter, Venus and Mars all had territories assigned to them as a new triad embodying various aspects of Caesar's power.

The last contribution, by Flaig, is perhaps the most stimulating. His theme is revenge and its rituals, which he traces from Lucretia and Verginia, through Clodius, to Caesar. He argues that all these examples are associated with a change of regime. At Caesar's funeral things did not go as Antony had planned. Suetonius’ claim that Antony made a moderate speech should be accepted; but the display of Caesar's clothing and the decrees of the Senate honouring him meant that Antony had no need to rouse the rabble. After this there was no possibility of a return to senatorial government. Eventually the placing of Mars in Augustus’ forum indicated that Augustus had completed the avenging of Caesar and so proved himself a worthy and the only possible successor.