ABSTRACT
The twenty years that followed Sulla’s death saw the rise of three men of particular ambition and power, and the flowering of the political and forensic skills of a fourth. Marcus Licinius Crassus (c. 115-53 BC) acquired prodigious wealth; Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106-48 BC), Pompey the ‘Great’, was a born military leader and organizer; Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) was both a military genius and an astute politician. Together they took advantage of Caesar’s election as consul for 59 BC to form a political pact, known as the ‘First Triumvirate’, which ruled unconstitutionally for several years. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) lived through these times and left to posterity many examples of his oratorical and prose styles in the form of speeches and letters. All four were stabbed to death within ten years of each other.
