A force for good or a force for bad? Did they destabilize the

>>996962
>thinking the Empire was worse than the Republic
Nigga, are you serious? Maybe for patricians.

>>997000
The republic was better

>>997006
>Social wars
>Plebian-Patrician struggles over political rights

Not really.

>>997029
The class system didn't go extinct with the empire.
And the empire crashed and burned from the fucking start, insane leaders more often than competent ones, rome lost its identity during it's tireless conquest, the senate was its greatest strength.

>>996962
What they did was to break Roman constitution apart ,a constitution which for most part tried to prevent concentration of power in single hands. (Others then followed his example -people like Julius Caesar) And they destroyed Republic as a result.

>>997006
>100 years before Augustus: civil wars, internal strife, revolutions, external wars
>250 years after Augustus: peace, prosperity, stability

The Gracchi were shit, instituting the tax farmers for the provinces alone outbalances any good they might have done.

>>997029
>civil war every 50 years or less
>emperor can do anything to you and you have no recourse
>coinage debased from 40% silver to <5% silver
>"hey, let's turn our victorious legions into a glorified militia! what could go wrong?"

Literally the Starship Troopers 2 of governments.

>>996962
>the (objectively worse) empire
The only way you could possibly consider the empire worse is if you think Rome would have been better off never expanding beyond Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. The republican constitution was simply not equipped to deal with the bureaucratic requirements of running an empire.
The gracchi did some good and some bad shit. The agricultural reform was good shit, for nothing else because latifundism was the driving cause behind Rome having to put all the plebs on welfare and so creating such a ridiculous economic dependence on the eastern provinces and a war & plunder economy.

>>997131
>Rome would have been better off never expanding beyond Italy and Cisalpine Gaul.
Rome would have been better off never expanding beyond rome, ruling the world through client kingdoms

>>997158
You know, client kingdoms only works when you're much bigger and stronger than they are. A small ass city state doesn't have client kingdoms, a big ass empire does.

>>997171
rome did.

>>997216
Rome was not a small ass city state when it had client kingdoms. Rome subdued all of Italy before having anything bigger than a greek colony as a client. And it was big enough to totally outmatch the eastern potentates' armies before having kingdom sized client states.

>>997253
even when rome subdued italy it wasn't considered part of rome.

File: The_Growth_of_Roman_Power_in_Italy.jpg (1MB, 1043x1709px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1043x1709px

>>997282
They annexed some territory and forced their citizenship on some tribes, Rome wasn't "small city-state" at that time.

>>997282
All the municipia were part of Rome proper, the city state status ended when colonization started. After the punic wars there's no sort of argument to be made whatsoever.

>>997317
> After the punic wars there's no sort of argument to be made whatsoever.
So what the Social War was about then?

>>997329
It was about subjects wanting to become citizens.
You don't consider the roman privinces as client states do you?

>>997354
They weren't Roman subjects, they were subjects of their communities (Samnum, Etruria, etc.) and these communities were in unequal alliance with Rome. Only after the Social War all free population of Italia was granted Roman citizenship.

>>997366
>unequal alliance
One wonders where alliance ends and submission starts.
Regardless, it doesn't really matter. My point about the punic wars was that after Hannibal came, the romans completely annihilated the tribes that revolted and replaced them with colonies inhabited by citizens. The extent of those colonies was larger than the exten of latin land. So it's totally fucking ridiculous to talk of city state at that point. It was no more a city state than Venice was after annexing the Domini di Terraferma through the dedizioni (which were basically the same thing as the roman "unequal alliances").

>>997045
>And the empire crashed and burned from the fucking start
I literally cannot fathom this belief.

Rome continued to expand for nearly two centuries after the founding of the empire. In that time, there was (relatively) few political upheavals, and trade and culture prospered as a result. I'm sure you've heard of fucking *Pax Romana.*

How exactly is two centuries of uninterrupted peace, stability and prosperity "crashing and burning?"