“Et tu, Brute?” asks Julius Caesar in the titular play by Shakespeare. “Are you not entertained!?” roars Russell Crowe’s character to the crowd after slaying his opponent in Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator.

In SPQR, Beard draws again on tombstones, along with a host of other objects and ephemera, to reconstruct the lives of everyday Romans. Inscriptions on slingshot bullets attest to the laddishness of ...

Ah, Total War: Rome 2 mods. While the strategy game struggled at launch to forge its own path, it has in the years since its release found its footing, and its place in the pantheon of Total War games ...