Colleen McCullough published The First Man in Rome in 1990 and over the following fifteen years completed six more novels covering the late Roman Republic from Marius and Sulla through the assassination of Caesar. The Masters of Rome series is the most extensively researched work of Roman historical fiction in English, the most narratively ambitious attempt to dramatize the Republic’s collapse in any medium, and the most reliably frustrating reading experience for anyone who comes to it wanting something other than a seven-volume commitment to historical immersion.