User:Ifly6/Crisis of the Roman republic
Political instability from 134 to 44 BC causing the fall of the Roman republic / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The crisis of the Roman republic (also called the Roman revolution in older scholarship[1]) is a term used to describe a prolonged period of political instability with resulted in the eventual collapse of the Roman Republic into a system of permanent one-man rule in the Roman Empire.
Various theories have been put forth as to the crisis's aetiology. The most influential modern theory is that the senate's short-sighted and self-serving policies alienated important stakeholders – especially the equites, poor plebeians, and the army – causing it to lose legitimacy and support, which allowed it to be overthrown by Julius Caesar in his civil war. Another influential theory that the republic suffered from a "crisis without alternative" where those who destroyed the republic did so unintentionally, not having conceived of and having no desire for an alternative political system.
Others, such as Erich Gruen, do not believe that the republic was suffering from any terminal disease at all, and was, up until the eve of Caesar's civil war in 49 BC, functioning (if under some difficulties) in a traditional fashion before it was destroyed by that civil war, the assassination of Caesar, and the ensuing chaos. Yet others view the crisis of the republic as having already come and gone by the Caesarian period: that the impact of the Social War and the politicisation of the army had already doomed the republic, which in it's Sullan form was living merely on borrowed time.