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Book Cover for: The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar, Peter Stothard

The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar

Peter Stothard

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Many men killed Julius Caesar. Only one man was determined to kill the killers. From the spring of 44 BC through one of the most dramatic and influential periods in history, Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, exacted vengeance on the assassins of the Ides of March, not only on Brutus and Cassius, immortalized by Shakespeare, but all the others too, each with his own individual story.

The last assassin left alive was one of the lesser-known: Cassius Parmensis was a poet and sailor who chose every side in the dying Republic's civil wars except the winning one, a playwright whose work was said to have been stolen and published by the man sent to kill him. Parmensis was in the back row of the plotters, many of them Caesar's friends, who killed for reasons of the highest political principles and lowest personal piques. For fourteen years he was the most successful at evading his hunters but has been barely a historical foot note--until now.

The Last Assassin dazzlingly charts an epic turn of history through the eyes of an unheralded man. It is a history of a hunt that an emperor wanted to hide, of torture and terror, politics and poetry, of ideas and their consequences, a gripping story of fear, revenge, and survival.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • Publish Date: Oct 1st, 2021
  • Pages: 288
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.60in - 5.50in - 0.60in - 0.85lb
  • EAN: 9780197604878
  • Categories: • Ancient - Rome• Europe - Italy• General

About the Author

Peter Stothard is an author, journalist, and critic. He is a former editor of The Times of London and of The Times Literary Supplement. His books include Alexandria, The Last Nights of Cleopatra, and On the Spartacus Road, A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy.

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"Stothard... uses the fate of the assassins, and those closely identified with their cause, to give us a good history of the final years of the Republic...The Last Assassin is a great read for anyone unfamiliar with these events and will also prove valuable for serious students of the period." -- A. A. Nofi, StrategyPage"Clear and urgent as the day's news, The Last Assassin is a grim study of unintended consequences. It brings into sharp focus events that many of us only half-know, and tells a story sadder and more complex than we can imagine, giving a new life not only to Caesar and his killers but to the common people who filled the mass graves of the Roman wars. It is written with authority, passion and insight--a political thriller, and a human story that astonishes." --Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror & the Light and Wolf Hall
"Peter Stothard is a master of modern writing about ancient Rome. An implacable dictator cannot rest happy until each of his father's many killers is dead. A gripping history for today of how the assassins of Julius Caesar fell one-by-one, with ever fewer places to hide, before the vengeance of a would-be emperor." --Mary Beard, author of SPQR and Women & Power
"A thrilling account of the vengeful manhunt for Julius Caesar's assassins. Most readers' knowledge of the assassination in 44 B.C.E. ends with the bloody deed, but Stothard brings its aftermath to pulsing life... Stothard writes as if he lives and breathes the air of this tumultuous time. His readers will feel, for a brief time, that they are there as well."
--Kirkus, Starred Review"A riveting, fast-paced thriller that makes one think of the brutal settling of scores at the end of The Godfather."--The Times (U.K.)
"[A] gripping, gorgeously written new account of the killing and its consequences... Stothard explores the familiar ground with fresh, engaging and learned eyes, displaying a novelist's knack for redolent and evocative detail."--The Spectator (U.K)
"[A] tense and thrilling narrative."--The Critic"The most page-turning account in recent memory... The story of this marginal figure reveals a great deal about the bigger changes of the period, as Stothard elegantly demonstrates."--Smithsonian Magazine
"A writer of rare talent... he weaves a tense, fast-paced tale from the many strands of a turbulent era... The vigor of Mr. Stothard's prose, and the acuity of his insight, will propel many readers... into an ancient Roman world that is startlingly real."--Wall Street Journal"The excellent Last Assassin by Peter Stothard is a group biography of the killers of Julius Caesar... Stothard expertly guides us through the maze, in complete command of sources and narrative... The tale also is told with the genuine elegance we have come to expect from this author."--Times Literary Supplement

"Stothard's short book is unlike any you may have read about the Ides and its aftermath."--Air Mail"The Last Assassin brings to vivid life the whole extended drama of the death of Julius Caesar and the rise of the young man who would become Augustus Caesar. It's a remarkable reframing of that familiar old story."--Christian Science Monitor"Stothard has woven a taut thriller."--Financial Times"The Last Assassin is the most immediate account of Caesar's murder I have ever read. Even though the outcome of the Ides of March is one everybody knows, Stothard manages to endow it with something of the urgency and tension of a thriller."--Tom Holland, New Statesman"Stothard writes with a poet's eye for atmosphere and a novelist's imagination in reconstructing events... All in all, this is a striking and evocative treatment of this transformative period."--BBC History Magazine

"A light, swift, highly mobile narrative, fleshing out real characters by fictional means grounded in the author's sound, solid knowledge of his subject; a deft blend of narrative history and intelligent historical fiction."--The National Interest