Crassus: The First Tycoon

The story of Rome’s richest man, who died a humiliating desert death in search of military glory

“A perfectly paced biography.”—Tom Holland, Times Literary Supplement

Marcus Licinius Crassus (115–53 BCE) was a modern man in an ancient world, a pioneer disrupter of finance and politics, and the richest man of the last years of the Roman republic. Without his catastrophic ambition, this trailblazing tycoon might have quietly entered history as Rome’s first modern political financier. Instead...