I don onot typically review products that I have purchased unless I find it extremely satisfying or a horrible experience. Scullard falls into the later catagory. Professional reviewers and book editors claim Scullard to by the defenitive resource of Roman history. While Scullard is pact with information, the delivery is very confusing. Written in linear format the book does a fantastic job of laying out the timeline of Roman history, however the author will leave whole sentences or partial paragraphs in latin which only confuses you and breaks up the reading experience by forcing you to find some way to translate all of the latin so you dont miss a important fact. Also the author makes no attempt to explain who some of the random people that are stuck in each historical event. While the information within the book is great and compact, it is not clear or concise and at times is to compact. I understand that it is difficult for a single book to tell the complete history of Rome, after all it wasnt built in a day, Scullard has condienced the history a little to much and unless you are a scholar in roman studies its going to leave you confused and aggravated in the end.
If you are wanting to study Roman history and are looking for suggestions on what books to start with, I would suggest starting with author Barry Strauss and any one of his books. He has written "The Spartacus War", which is proabably one of the best compiled books on Spartacus and the slave revolt. Most recently his new book "The Death of Caesar" discusses one of the most talked about assassinations in history. Also I would recommend Tom Holland's "Rubicon The Last Years of the Roman Republic" or "The Twelve Caesars" by Matthew Dennison and, one of my all time favorites "Marcus Agrippa: Right-Hand Man of Caesar Augustus" by Lindsay Powell.
Once you have read a little and gotten a decent understanding of the people who were leading Rome and living in and out of the city, or the commanders of the armies between 150 BCE and 33 BC then I would suggest maybe picking up Scullard to fill in some of the blanks.