(A peculiar title ...) I'll leave aside the professional historians, but if we're tossing in story telling like Tom Holland's, I'd put in a good word for John

(A peculiar title ...) I'll leave aside the professional historians, but if we're tossing in story telling like Tom Holland's, I'd put in a good word for John Maddox Ford's (also named) SPQR series - a dozen or so stories about a fictional character inserted in the critical final years of Roman republic. Best hard-nosed, not excessively modern look at those times I've come across.