The book under review has been given three important tasks within the scope of about 250 pages, not counting the bibliographies and endnotes: to provide an elementary introduction to Rome in the late Republic; to give an engaging and readable narrative of the period it covers; and to offer a deeper analysis of the main trends in political institutions and imperial economy, advancing an interpretation of the period as defined by the emergence of a ‘world state’. In doing so, it inevitably addresses a somewhat ill-defined audience. The explanations of Roman naming conventions, or the name Rex meaning ‘king’ (29), or of the derivation of ‘fascism’ from fasces (36), go side by side with quite advanced bibliographies and a considerable level of engagement with minor detail of political events. Analogies are pervasive, and not always precise: the explanation of the Roman ordines through ‘the idea of religious and fraternal orders like the Masons’ (7), or of the Roman prouinciae as ‘similar to the provinces of modern Canada’ (14), let alone the comparison of the Italian socii to the Confederates of the American Civil War (76–7), may not lead either the novices or the experts in the right direction. Occasionally the need for a good story and narrative tempo prove too much for nuance or doubt, as with Tiberius Gracchus and the rostra (35), to give just one example. And, not irrelevantly for some of the arguments in the book, the formula senatus populusque Romanus was certainly not conventional in the late Republic, as Osgood implies (5 and passim), but rather came into its own after the death of Caesar; see now C. Moatti, BICS 60 (2017), 34–48.

Nevertheless, for all these criticisms (which I imagine should ultimately be laid at the door of the publishers rather than of the author), O. carries off his task with all the excellent qualities one has come to expect from any book of his: he not only provides us with one of the more readable short political narratives of the period, but shows good and decisive judgement on a number of its thorny problems, and his ability to combine different types of sources with ease and obvious relevance commands admiration. It is with his main thesis that I have much more serious issues. While his treatment of it is inevitably at times squeezed out by the narrative, the main lines are clear enough: behind the collapse of republican institutions, wars and conflict, a more positive story was unfolding, of innovation and inclusivity, transforming Rome's empire in the Mediterranean and beyond into an integrated and rather beneficent entity. He ends the story on an upbeat note, describing Ovid in Tomis as ‘a proud member of the world state’ (258).

While he is too good a scholar to avoid harsh realities of conquest or of struggles for supreme power altogether, O. downplays the impact of piracy (20–2); Sullan indemnities and the clientelae of Roman generals in Asia are subsumed under the claim that ‘the great challenges in the east ultimately strengthened the empire by providing an opportunity for Rome to demonstrate the value of loyalty’ (156); the willingness of Cilician publicani to accept settlement of irrecoverable debts at a mere 12 per cent p.a. ‘suggests less rapacity on their part’ (152); and the destruction of the Salassi is passed over in favour of Augustus deciding that ‘it was time to come to terms with the tough mountain warriors’ (214, speaking of later campaigns). At the same time, Roman roads facilitated commerce (20) and hydraulic projects in Cisalpine Gaul brought a regional economic wonder (94; contrast W. V. Harris, Rome's Imperial Economy (2011), 188–97). O. is optimistic about local elites who found accommodation with imperial rule (146), and emphasises that ‘Romans were developing the majestic idea that universal Roman rule could offer universal peace, and the vision was one that provincials themselves could share in’ (158): this is not quite what was often meant by pax, as brilliantly shown by Hannah Cornwell, Pax and the Politics of Peace (2017). The rhetoric of slavery, as explored by Myles Lavan, Slaves to Rome (2013), does not get much airing here, and while one can agree that ‘Roman imperium helped make Pompeian landowners rich’ (97), the victims of that enrichment receive less attention than they deserve.

Nor does this teleology quite catch the contemporary concerns of the Roman elite, and while privileging the retrospective view can provide a valuable perspective, the risks of such detachment are also on display. I doubt that the main significance of the Gracchi for anyone during that period lay in their ‘ideas about finance and empire’ (8) or in ‘taking steps that would help to make Rome the world state’ (50), which in a different sense Polybius thought it was already by that point. The interpretation of Caesar and Augustus particularly suffers: even if we accept that Augustus attempted to deal with the problems of imperial subjects ‘as a good ruler’ (212), this bypasses the problem of what ‘a good ruler’ could mean, or how he might differentiate between citizens and subjects. The Augustus who claimed to stop the influx of ‘foreign and servile blood’ (Suet., Aug. 40.3) offers just one important corrective to O.’s Augustus who ‘wanted the top members of society to be role models for all’ (230).

Whatever Ovid felt in reality about the regime that arbitrarily sent him to Tomis, it is salutary to recall that at this same moment, in neighbouring Histria, local citizens were still actively contemplating wholesale relocation from their war-torn city (SEG LXIV 618). While it is no doubt important to understand why the Roman imperial enterprise proved more durable than most others, Rostovtzeff's claim that ‘at the end of the civil wars the Greek East lay ruined and prostrate beneath the feet of Roman capitalists and profiteers’ (The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (2nd edn, 1957), i, 9) or Pliny's denunciation of casualties in Caesar's wars as humani generis iniuria (NH 7.92) may more closely reflect the lived reality of this period in many parts of the world.