Livy wrote a vast History of Rome. This is Book 45, the last that still exists. After 168 BC, at Pydna in Macedonia (northern Greece), the general Aemilius Paullus destroyed King Perseus and Macedon's last great royal army; the king was captured, and that monarchy was over.

Macedon is cut into districts, disarmed, and forbidden to become a kingdom again. Illyria, on the Adriatic, is ordered the same way. Rhodes, a Greek island, and Pergamum in western Turkey find that unmatched Rome rewrites its friendships. Paullus's triumph, the victory parade, brings gold, paintings, and a living king. The Senate, the city's council of leading men, not the camp, writes the peace. Booty arrives on a scale that must change Roman society. Rome is now the Mediterranean's referee, rich enough to fear its own success. Lost books would have told how that gold unmade the Republic, a city run by a senate and elected officials, not a king. This is the last Livy we have.