{"product_id":"a-slow-and-secret-poison-christopher-s-m-lyon-9781959360254","title":"A Slow and Secret Poison: The Fall of the Roman Republic 146-31 BC","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Roman Republic did not die in a single stroke. It was poisoned.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor nearly a century, a succession of ambitious men of Rome each administered a fresh dose to an institution already corrupted by faction, graft, and the slow surrender of civic virtue to personal glory. By the time Octavian's fleet shattered Antony's at Actium in 31 BC, the cure had killed the patient. Rome had a single, omnipotent master.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Slow and Secret Poison\u003c\/i\u003e traces the long, violent unmaking of the Roman Republic-from the rhetorical thunder of the Gracchi brothers to the burning ships at Actium and the last of the pharaohs dying in her Alexandrian tomb. Drawing exclusively on the ancient sources-Plutarch, Appian, Suetonius, Cassius Dio, Sallust, and Caesar himself-Christopher S. M. Lyon restores the late Republic to its own voices, its own quarrels, and its own blood.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere are Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Crassus, Caesar and Antony-not as marble busts but as ambitious, ruthless men dosing an ailing state with a venom that took a hundred years to kill. The poison was not in any single act, but in the slow erosion of restraint, the steady normalization of violence, and the seductive bargain by which a desperate populace traded a republic for a master.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA vivid, sweeping account of the most consequential and evocative collapse in Western history-and the first volume of \u003ci\u003eLegends and Legacies\u003c\/i\u003e, a seven-volume history of Europe from the fall of the Republic to the fall of Constantinople.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Christopher S. M. Lyon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1959360256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781959360254\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Signum University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/20\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 158\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.48lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.34d","brand":"Christopher S. M. Lyon","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48659910492415,"sku":"9781959360254","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_d05071bc-0cea-4864-9be2-b8a1e5a44bc2.jpg?v=1781203950","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/a-slow-and-secret-poison-christopher-s-m-lyon-9781959360254","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}