What's the "correct" answer here? An essay about the many factors that made it all-but-inevitable that someone would usurp power away from the senate?
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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Yeah, if you're asking "who" is responsible and looking for a single person, then Caesar is as good an answer as any. But if you want a real answer then an essay is what you need.
If you're looking for a single person, I'd point more towards Augustus (or, controversially, Cato)
Caesar pulled a lot of shit, but he was also a fairly cautious political operator by the standards of the Late Republic. The desperation of the conservative faction to prevent lawful reform - especially the intransigent hypocrites led by Cato - started the civil war.
"The Senate" would be a correct answer, for one, continually undermining the democratic aspects of the Republic for their own oligarchic power. "Augustus" I would also regard as more correct than "Julius Caesar".
The technical answer is Octavian/Augustus the first Emperor of the Roman Empire
The patricii would be a good quick answer.
That said, Caesar killed it like a lion kills a very sick gazelle. Without the lion the gazelle probably still dies, but may recover.
Why not "the optimates?" The answer doesn't necessarily need to be one person.
The fall of Carthage! Rome's dominance was its own undoing!
Ah, I disagree, but it's always based to see a Carthago servanda est enjoyer ๐
Now I'm curious where you draw the line.
For me, I don't really see a definitive fall of republic and rise of empire. Maybe I like Gibbon too much, but I like the idea of republic in decline and that starting a series of events that would lead to the rise of empire.
But if I had to pick a point that marks the peak I think somewhere around the full defeat of Carthage is when the Republic as a concept started to wane and groundwork for "Emporers" was beginning.
I bet if I look around I'll find your line.
I would see a pretty definitive fall of the Republic, ironically, in the death of Caesar. Not because Caesar was some hero of democracy, mind you, but because his dictatorship was ultimately still predicated on the continued functioning of the entire Republican process - including the election of many of his enemies to office without interference from him. You can argue, of course, and not without merit, that Caesar felt firmly positioned enough to allow this rather than it being out of any concern for the greater stability of the polity, but the point is that Caesar's dictatorship, like the strongman regimes of Marius, Sulla, and Pompey before him, still maintained essential Republican structures.
With the Second Triumvirate, much of that was washed away, especially as Augustus accumulated power. If Caesar's dictatorship was an autocracy that violated the law while preserving the power structures of the Republic, then Augustus's autocracy violated the power structures of the Republic while preserving the law - and the law means nothing without power structures willing and able to enforce it.
However, Caesar's own dictatorship and the succeeding Second Triumvirate is, itself, only the culmination of almost a 100 years of political chaos, dating back to the conservative assassinations of the Gracchi. So I would definitely agree that it was a long process rather than any single point.
Nero gets a lot of rightly deserved heat, but I don't think he is culpable for many of the tragedies that played his reign. The follow up definitely was his fault though.
But Rome kinda destroyed itself. Between infighting triumvirates and enlisting Rome 's enemies to fight for them. But heads of state started with Julius, so I mostly do blame him.
Other than the Great Fire of Rome, most of the tragedies of Nero's reign were his own damn fault.
Caesar was neither the first dictator nor strongman of the Late Republic. You could just as easily cite Marius, Sulla, Cicero, or Pompey.
Yes!