Appian Primary Source: Cassius Dio also includes a narrative of the late Republic, and one can be pieced together from Plutarch, but Appian’s is probably the most important (surviving!) Imperial Period narrative history of the late Republic. The Foreign Wars and especially the Civil Wars provide for us one of the most well developed narratives of the late Republic. Book 1 of the Civil Wars in particular is the only surviving comprehensive narrative history of the latter half of the second century B.C. and the beginning of the first. Cicero Primary Source: Cicero is, beyond question, the most important contemporary source for Rome in the first century B.C., and he is also the most prolific surviving Latin prose author. His speeches and letters (of which there are over 900) are the most important for the historian interested in dates and events, but his philosophical works provide crucial information for understanding how an educated (if hardly “average”) Roman who thought a great deal about the operation of the state conceived of Roman institutions and the role of public rhetoric. Plutarch Primary Source: Plutarch’s Parallel Lives compare famous Romans of the republican period with Greek counterparts. He includes well known figures such as Romulus, Caesar, Pompey, Sulla and Cicero, as well as those who are more obscure, at least to most modern readers. As biographies they focus on the personality and moral character of their subjects as much as their military and political activities (although Plutarch is more ‘historical’ in his style than Suetonius), with the aim of providing lessons for the audience to follow. Modern editions usually publish selections rather than the full collection, often chosen thematically: Oxford World Classics Roman Lives, Penguin’s Plutarch series.
Polybius, The Histories Primary Source: One of the most enlightening and influential ancient works of history, that has done much to form modern opinions of the Roman Republic in general and the Roman army in particular. Polybius wrote for a Greek audience and his (stated) primary purpose was to explain how this insignificant Italian people had come to rule most of the known world in just a few generations. He made a very credible attempt at this, helped in no small part by his access to the Scipio clan and by writing about a period not long before his own lifetime. Polybius is not a writer with a great sense of style or patience for poetic license, but rather hard-nosed in his pursuit of the truth and preferring stark, mechanistic explanations to more nebulous appeals to morals, virtue or national spirit like Livy sometimes does. This, together with his very entertaining rants against his fellow historians, can seduce the modern reader into thinking him more rational and clear-sighted than his contemporaries. This should be avoided. Polybius has many biases, both because of his close association with the Cornelii Scipiones and because of his own mindset and should be read with the same amount of care and scepticism as any other ancient historian. That said, though sometimes dry, his work remains one of our best sources on the Roman Republic and the Punic Wars.