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One of the reasons that it fell was the use of violence by the Roman elite. After the attempted (mainly agrarian) reforms of the Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius in the 130s to 120s BCE, violence and bribery became endemic in the system. Tiberius and Gaius were murdered by mobs controlled by the senatorial elite after the Gracchis use of novel constitutional methods .

Another key factor was that Roman republican generals such as Marius , Sulla, Pompey and Gaius Julius Caesar had in effect, private armies that looked to them for retirement packages and to defend their interests.

This was all set against the massive expansion of the empire from the Punic wars onward - a growth in both territory and wealth and the dislocations that this caused. These dislocations included an increased use of money bribes by Republican statesman, provincial governors growing massively wealthy on plunder and landlessness of the Italian peasantry caused by a series of wars.

The Republic (not the empire) came to and end when one Republican statesman became in effect a monarch, Octavian, later to become the first Roman Emperor Augustus.

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15y ago

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The Republic failed because it did not meet the needs of the people, and because Augustus wished to take sole control of Rome and her provinces. The Roman Republic was thus replaced with the Roman Empire.

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14y ago
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Q: Why did the Roman Republic fail?
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