While there are many general histories of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, the Oxford historian, Charles Oman, writes that his little book is rather "a series of studies of the leading men of the century, intended to show the importance of the personal element in those miserable days of storm and stress." We hear of the tragic struggle of the brothers Gracchi to make farm ownership possible again for ordinary Romans, of Marius's reform of the army, and of the ruthless proscriptions of Sulla. Next comes the real estate tycoon, Crassus, who buys his way into politics only to lose his head in Syria, Cato clinging desperately to lost republican ideals, and Pompey a military prodigy greedy for fame. The volume ends with Julius Caesar, who Oman writes "did much to shape the future destinies of the world" so that even in "the darkest times of the Middle Ages his story was not forgotten."