A reflection on history, libraries, and the future of the Sulla, Caesar, and Cato trilogy.
There comes a moment in every long intellectual journey when one must ask a simple question: what is the purpose of the work?
For many years I devoted myself to the study of the late Roman Republic. What began as curiosity gradually became research, and what began as research eventually became writing. The result was a trilogy centred upon three men whose lives illuminate the final century of the Roman Republic: Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Julius Caesar, and Marcus Porcius Cato.
Each of them attempted, in his own way, to answer the same question. What was to become of Rome?
Sulla believed that the Republic could be restored through authority and constitutional reform. Caesar believed that the political order had become incapable of governing itself and required transformation. Cato remained convinced that the old principles of the Republic could still be defended through steadfast adherence to law and tradition.
Their answers differed. Their fates differed. Yet together they tell a single story: the story of how one of history's most remarkable political systems entered its final crisis.
Like many authors, I followed the path that modern publishing places before us. Manuscripts were prepared. Covers were designed. Books were printed and made available through commercial platforms. There is nothing unusual in this. Books have long been the principal means through which ideas travel from writer to reader.
Yet over time another question emerged.
Was the purpose of these works merely to exist as books?
Or was their purpose to be read?
The distinction may appear trivial, but it is not. A book on a shelf, however beautifully produced, remains silent until someone opens it. The value of historical research lies not in its physical form but in the conversation it creates between past and present.
History is unlike many other pursuits. It concerns itself with questions that never entirely disappear. The names change. The centuries pass. Yet societies continue to wrestle with power, law, ambition, reform, corruption, liberty, and political responsibility. The Romans confronted these questions two thousand years ago. We confront them still.
For that reason the history of the Roman Republic is not merely an antiquarian interest. It remains one of the great laboratories of political experience. Its successes continue to inspire. Its failures continue to instruct.
If this is true, then the next question naturally follows.
Should access to such discussions be limited to those who purchase a particular volume, or can a different approach be imagined?
Livarva emerged from that question.
From its beginning, the intention was never simply to create another website about Rome. Nor was it conceived merely as a place to advertise books. The ambition was more modest and, perhaps, more old-fashioned.
The ambition was to build a library.
A library differs from a bookstore in one fundamental respect. A bookstore exists to sell access to knowledge. A library exists to provide access to knowledge.
The distinction is not a criticism of commerce. Authors deserve compensation for their labour, and publishers perform valuable services. Yet there are occasions when the wider dissemination of ideas becomes more important than the sale of the object in which those ideas are contained.
The digital age presents possibilities unknown to previous generations of historians. A chapter can be linked directly to its sources. A reader encountering Cicero may immediately explore Caesar. An event may lead to a place, a place to a person, and a person to an entire network of historical relationships. What once required several shelves of books may now be explored through a single connected library.
Most importantly, a website is not fixed.
A printed book is necessarily static. Once published, it remains what it is until a new edition appears. A digital library may continue to grow. New essays may be added. Sources may be expanded. Interpretations may be refined. Questions from readers may inspire entirely new areas of inquiry.
In this sense Livarva is not merely a repository of texts. It is an ongoing conversation.
The Romans themselves understood the value of such conversations. Their political life was shaped not only by laws and institutions but by debate. The Republic was sustained by argument, persuasion, disagreement, and the continual re-examination of public questions. While our circumstances differ greatly from theirs, the principle remains valuable. Knowledge flourishes when it is shared rather than hidden.
For that reason the future of this project may ultimately lie here.
The three volumes devoted to Sulla, Caesar, and Cato were conceived as books. Yet they may find their most natural home as part of a larger historical library, where chapters, sources, essays, places, events, and ideas exist together rather than in isolation.
Such a library will never be complete. No worthwhile library ever is.
But it may become useful.
If Livarva succeeds, it will succeed not because it contains definitive answers, but because it encourages thoughtful questions. The purpose of history is not to provide certainty. It is to enlarge understanding.
The Romans called a collection of books a bibliotheca. The old Cornish word from which Livarva takes its name carries a similar meaning: a library.
That remains the guiding idea behind this project.
Not merely to publish.
Not merely to preserve.
But to make history available.
— Gerhard Klein