The Roman Republic, where did it all go wrong?

[CountArach]

I think the Republic went wrong when Caesar was outlawed

That takes an extreme apologist vision of Caesar - there is a perfectly good case for the senatus consultum being justified. Surely you can accept that the Sullan and Marian civil war through the 90s and 80s laid the foundations for the rise of personal vendettas and showed that the state had lost a monopoly on force? As such wouldn't it be possible to say that the Republic had already gone wrong at least half a century earlier?

I also think it is worth questioning the theory of wealth and power destroying the Republic, because there was plenty of late republican development that was clearly beneficial, Citizenship was granted to Italy, more allies elsewere, in contrast to the Dominate corruption trials and trials for offenses like bribery happened regularly enough so there had to have been at least some deterrent for those without any connection to Cicero, Hortensius and other top orators, the status of women improved to a level that wasn't seen again untill relatively recently, the Roman State began giving cheaper bread and housing to the poor, I could go on.

But the ultimate reasoning for those reforms, and the methods by which they were attained, were for the personal gain of a handful of the Senatorial class. The appeals to the plebs fueled the rise of the use of violence as a valid tool of political statement - running concurrently with the populares reforms was the rise in street gangs (See Clodius and Milo for example). Now, even if you think this was a valid way to make a statement, you can surely accept that it had destabilised the Republic?