The concluding chapter revisits several broader issues regarding the emergence of money in historical societies, drawing conclusions from the historical contexts explored in this book. Emphasis is placed for example on the distance through which objects are constructed as valuables in exchange, making them appropriate as a form of money, and the effect that developing state institutions could have had on the use of money. In the framework of these and other issues connected to the early development of money, several novel insights are outlined, while highlighting the need for additional questions, and pointing to opportunities for future research.

The story of the final months of Caesar’s life has been dominated by the question whether he wanted to be "king." That is to focus the question in a way that privileges the perspective of his assassins. Caesar himself was preoccupied at this time with massive preparations for a war of vengeance against the Parthians on a truly extraordinary scale. The knock-on effects of the mobilization effort were themselves extremely disruptive, causing an explosive intensification of the political game at a time when the Dictator was about to absent himself from the capital for several years. He had gravely alienated the urban plebs, encouraging the conspirators’ expectations (falsified in the event) that they would have popular support. The Caesarian coalition was coming apart, as shown by the remarkable clash between Mark Antony and Dolabella on the eve of Caesar’s scheduled departure. Caesar made little to no effort to create a new political system out of the ruins of civil war during the short period that he spent in Rome before his intended departure on an expedition that would keep him abroad for several years, much less to oversee a transition to a whole new kind of politics.

Caesar is usually supposed to have sought to exploithis legal immunity as proconsul to escape judgment for his "crimes," and when he was prevented from doing so, to have plunged Rome into the first of the civil wars that would destroy the Republic. This is based on the ill-founded hypothesis that he was bound to face prosecution on his return to Rome with a predetermined verdict engineered by his enemies. In fact, what Caesar demanded was an honorific return from his victory in Gaul that was consistent with republican norms and traditions, while his inveterate enemies, now joined in increasing anxiety by Pompey, rejected his demands, fearing that if they did not do so he would escape the reckoning that they hoped for. To quash Caesar’s plans his enemies were "forced" to jettison various core principles of the Roman republican tradition, but most Roman citizens likely saw Caesar not as a rebel against "the Republic" but as its defender against a faction bent on vengeance. Neither Caesar nor Pompey appears to have sought this war; ultimately Cato and his faction forced this confrontation.