The Lesson of the Fall of the Roman Republic We Ignore at Our Peril

Richard Alston is Professor of Roman History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the author or editor of over a dozen books on ancient Rome. His latest book is Rome's Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire (Oxford University Press, 2015).


On 15th March 44 BC, Marcus Brutus and sixty of his closest friends conspired to murder Julius Caesar. Their aim was to rid Rome of its dictator (a constitutional position in Rome) and thereby restore the Republic to its former glory. Three years later, Brutus and most of his fellow conspirators were dead, Octavian and Mark Antony were masters of Rome, and nearly five centuries of Republican government were at an end.

In retrospect, it is easy to think of the imperial age as inevitable: the Republic had repeatedly been torn asunder in a spiral violence over its final century, but when the assassins raised their bloody daggers to the skies, they were confident that their actions would enable the return of Republican liberties. They were catastrophically wrong, but it is not obvious why they were wrong. Furthermore, historians have never satisfactorily explained why a political system which had been so long-lasting, resilient and successful fell apart over a very short and violent period. This was Rome’s catastrophic revolution. In an age in which Western powers are engaged in state building, not only does Rome’s revolution offer insights into why states fail but it also provides uncomfortable lessons as to why anti-democratic, authoritarian and plainly vicious regimes can succeed.


http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159603

one thing that really differed between the Free republic and the dictatorial empire was the use of spies against Roman citizens... All to keep the Plebs safe from Boogeymen