Given the importance of the consulship in the political world of the Roman Republic, its annual nature, and the fact that its holders might expect to have some years of active life ahead of them once they had demitted office, it is surprising that there has not yet been a book-length study dedicated to ex-consuls. Francisco Pina Polo's excellent new monograph amply fills the gap, and in so doing reminds us of the complex interaction of individual talent, tradition, and collective restraint which kept the Republic going for such a surprisingly long time.

The monograph is structured chronologically, with three substantial chapters treating the period of the war with Hannibal; the long second century down to Sulla's victory in 82; and the interval from Sulla's dictatorship to the outbreak of civil war in 49. A shorter final chapter surveys the triumviral period. Each chapter also has a biographical appendix discussing a selection of individual consular careers from the period.

Pina Polo's approach is admirably systematic, considering consular activity in military, political, religious and diplomatic spheres, and one function of the book will be as a work of reference; the index, fortunately, is excellent. But wider trends are not ignored. The monograph adroitly traces changes and developments in the role, from being a reservoir of military expertise in the crisis decades of the late third century BCE into a position of seniority within the ordered cursus honorum that had developed by the early second century, which persisted into the post-Sullan period despite the challenges posed by new models of military command in that period. The collapse of consular authority in the triumviral period in the face of the Triumvirate and its use of the position of consul suffect provides a crisp conclusion.

The outlines of this narrative of institutional history are perhaps not, in broad terms, unexpected; the strength of the monograph's analysis lies in its capacity to animate detail. In particular, it offers a superb discussion of the development of diplomatic activity during the second century BCE, in which the Senate's increasing workload, as the institution dealing with this new and complex aspect of public business, drives the use of consulars to manifest the authority of the res publica and its expertise. There is also a brief but very suggestive account of consular wealth in the post-Sullan period, which suggests that elite wealth, and stratification of wealth within the elite, are overdue a re-examination.

In contrast to the comprehensive discussion of consulars in the chapters proper, the appendices offer a more selective approach. The biographies themselves are excellent and suggestive; I was struck, for example, by that of M. Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 187 and 175) which drew out his agrarian specialisation. It is not entirely clear, however, what the rationale was for including particular consulars; the first three chapters seem to concentrate on more notable - and better-documented - examples, but in the final chapter we find, alongside Statilius Taurus, Q. Laronius, cos. suff. 33, of whom Pina Polo justly observes (209), 'Absolutely nothing is recorded of his activities as a consular. Laronius is one of the homines novi who attained the suffect consulship in the 30s thanks to their loyalty to the Triumvirs, in his case the young Caesar. Like many others in that period, he was a magistrate without pedigree who faded into history after his ephemeral consulship.' It is a fitting conclusion for the decline of the consulares.

This monograph is now the standard reference work on consulares, but it is more than that. Pina Polo successfully demonstrates that the category of consularis is one that had meaning in the Republic and therefore deserves analysis; and he also underscores the civilian manifestations of ex-consuls, particularly in the Senate. For these reasons he has produced a major work on the politics and institutions of the Roman Republic.

Catherine Steel