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irregularities reect the historian's evolving interests. As Appian immersed himself in the available sources for the civil wars, his interest was piqued and he reshaped the plan of his work accordinglywhat scholar cannot relate to this?Overall, this is a valuable volume that contributes a number of illuminating case studies to contemporary discussions about how the memory and representation of civil war were forged, contested and adapted. While the constraints of space preclude giving every chapter of this diverse array its due here, the individual contributions each add a new perspective to the conversation around their respective author and how they understood and represented the late republican civil wars. If there is one element a reader might be left wanting, it would be a more substantial introduction or a concluding essay to highlight the connections among the various contributions. It is when these contributions are in dialogue with each other (directly or indirectly) that this volume most shines, and more cultivation of the seeds of connection within individual chapters would have amplied the value of this collection even further, elevating its contribution to something greater than the (already considerable) sum of its parts. However, particularly for the reader who takes the time to explore the full collection, this volume successfully illustrates the uid nature of the memory of late republican civil war and the diverse ways in which historiographical writing shaped (and was shaped) by it over the centuries.

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This chapter schematizes the different ways that Roman emperors, their surrogates, and their detractors deployed Hercules as a way of framing, authorizing, or delegitimizing imperial rule. In looking at the evidence from Augustus to the Tetrarchs, it identifies three primary relationships that Roman emperors occupied or were seen to occupy relative to Hercules: like Augustus, they could be viewed as similar to Hercules; like Commodus, they could claim to be identical with Hercules; or, like the Tetrarchs, they could self-fashion as simply associated with Hercules. The best emperors therefore merely sought a connection with Hercules, while the worst longed to collapse the distinction between emperor and hero to become Hercules himself.