-- Sulla, Marius and Mithridates -- The return.

"In 146 B.C. Rome vanquished its age-old enemy, Carthage, and took control of an empire that stretched from Spain to Macedon. But at the heart of the Roman Republic was the flaw that would prove its undoing: the centuries-old conflict between the aristocrats and the plebeians. In a fast-paced narrative peopled with a memorable cast of heroes and villains, Swords Against the Senate shows just how the Roman Republic came apart in the throes of military and political turmoil - the smoldering anger of the common people, a petty war against a treacherous North African prince, an invasion by Germans, an Italian political revolt." "In the midst of the crisis, Gaius Marius, the "people's general," rises to despotic power and creates a military power base for competing aristocrats. The Roman army, once invincible against foreign antagonists, soon becomes little more than a tool for the powerful. In a bloody civil war of opposing Roman armies, Marius is replaced by the brutal dictator Sulla, who in turn gives rise to the man destined to transform Rome's turmoil and dissolution into imperial triumph." "With that man, Julius Caesar, begins a new and spectacular chapter of Roman history - a chapter that can be viewed with new clarity against the backdrop of the epochal events brilliantly recounted in Swords Against the Senate."--Jacket.