... cunning and force ...

... scheming and violence ...

There are lots of good possibilities.

Rome has served us well in this translation.

Sorry, I didn't give enough context. This is in reference to a letter of Caesar's. It refers to his rhetoric, not to his actions. So "force" and "violence" don't seem to fit. This is an idiom I'm not familiar with; I'm guessing that it calls for some less literal translation. Oder?

Still, thanks for the quick response and the starting point.

Biss has nothing to do with force or violence; it's more like biting sarcasm. So here maybe: with wit and sarcasm

How do we know it's a translation from Latin? mabr only says it's a reference to one of Caesar's letters.

Support #3 ("with wit and sarcasm")

Der DUDEN erwähnt:

"ihr beißender Witz
sein Witz (Spott) macht vor nichts halt
sein Witz hat Biss"

Thanks to all. It's not from Caesar's letters but about them. "Witz und Biss" (exact quote) gets 30K Google hits, so I thought it was a fixed expression for which someone might come up with a similar fixed English expression that hadn't occurred to me. Absent that, "with biting wit" will do. More formally, of course, we might use the Latinate equivalent, "with mordant wit."

Biss geht in Richtung Schärfe, nicht Sarkasmus...

support "with biting wit" - "bite" doesn't work for "Biss" here