In Cicero and Rome, David Taylor takes Cicero as the focal point for examination of the last years of the Roman Republic. He traces the often dramatic and violent events from the harsh dictatorship of Sulla (82 BC) to Cicero's own death in the massacres of Mark Antony and the Second Triumvirate (43 BC). Evidence is taken largely from the speeches and the orator's surviving letters - especially those to his close friend Atticus.