Between them, Marius and Sulla trampled on laws and conventions that had ruled the Roman Republic for centuries. It was illegal for a general to bring armed troops into the city proper. First Marius and then Sulla flouted this law and deployed their legions as a vigilante force, slaughtering their political opposition in Rome. They displayed the heads of their enemies, real and imagined, on the Rostra in the Forum, bloody reminders of the wages of civil war and an important marker in the dissolution of the Republic.
Cicero thought the Republic could be restored. He was wrong. The Roman Republic was a political mechanism that had outlived itself. Removing Caesar brought not restoration but revolution, followed by civil war and the resurgent dominance of Caesarism.
Lampedusa The Leopard Epub 44
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