The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder (1948)
An epistolary novel on the year leading up to the assassination of Caesar. The various letter writers gossip, pontificate, and plot. It's a vivid book throughout but, I think, a largely forgotten book, and that's a pity. Here are a few excerpts from Caesar's writings, in letters to an old comrade from the campaigns:
"I can now appraise at a glance those who have not yet foreseen their death. I know them for the children they are. They think that by evading its contemplation they are enhancing the savor of life. The reverse is true: only those who have grasped their non-being are capable of praising the sunlight."
"Life has no meaning save that which we may confer upon it. It neither supports man nor humiliates him. Agony of mind and uttermost joy we cannot escape, but those states have, of themselves, nothing to say to us; those heavens and hells await the sense we give to them...I dare to ask that from my good Calpunia a child may arise to say: On the Meaningless I choose to press a meaning and in the wastes of the Unknowable I choose to be known."