Syllas' dictatorship, the Triumvirate, Caesars' aspirations of autocracy are just the external signs of a deep social pathogeny prevalent in the Res Publica ...

Through conquest unification was established between the highly advanced and complexe eastern economies and the more traditionalist Italian ones.

Under free trade the Italian markets could not respond to the economic challenge of the overtly antagonistic east ... steadily and under the overwhelming flow of goods coming from the periphery the Roman producer class (and especially the small/medium scale agriculturers ) began to disintegrate and its members were pushed into proletarian status.

this social shift (=masses of nouveaux-pauvres) was the underlying cause of all the major civil strife that followed. The citizen-soldiers were replaced by professionals hired from the plebeian masses by influential leaders. clientelle relationships became the order of the day-more and more ideas of civic duty and devotion to the impersonal State ( Res Publica) were substituted by personified allegiances and authorities... civil wars , violence, crime , political assassinations, corruption, radicalism, war economy or even Caesar or Augustus were the mere after-effects of this social/political disintegration ...

SPQR -------> social pact between classes.

CONQUESTS (=deregulation of the pact)

EMPIRE------> new attempt for peace and unity