Analyse the causes of the fall of the Roman Republic, 133-31 BCE

What this dot point is asking

The Roman Republic was a system of shared, annual power designed to prevent any one man from becoming a king. Two consuls held supreme office for a single year, the Senate guided policy, and assemblies of citizens elected magistrates and passed laws. Tribunes of the plebs protected ordinary citizens and could veto legislation. By the late second century BCE this system was under strain from the consequences of rapid expansion: huge slave-worked estates, a displaced peasantry, and generals who commanded the loyalty of their soldiers more than the state.

The crisis is usually dated from the tribunates of the Gracchi brothers. Tiberius Gracchus, tribune in 133 BCE, proposed redistributing public land to the poor and was killed by a senatorial mob, the first major political murder of the era. His brother Gaius Gracchus pursued wider reforms and died in violence in 121 BCE. Their careers showed that reform could be pursued by bypassing the Senate and that political disputes could now be settled by bloodshed. The historian Sallust later saw this as the moment when ambition and greed corrupted Roman public life.

The first century BCE saw the system repeatedly broken by force. Marius and the conservative Sulla fought a civil war, and Sulla marched on Rome itself, an act once unthinkable, becoming dictator around 82 BCE and posting lists of enemies to be killed in the proscriptions. After Sulla, three men dominated: Pompey the Great, the immensely rich Crassus, and Julius Caesar. In 60 BCE they formed an informal alliance, the so-called First Triumvirate, to control politics between them. Caesar's conquest of Gaul (58 to 50 BCE) gave him glory, wealth and a devoted army.

When the alliance collapsed after the death of Crassus in 53 BCE, Caesar and Pompey went to war. In 49 BCE Caesar crossed the Rubicon river into Italy with his army, an illegal act that began civil war. He defeated Pompey at Pharsalus in 48 BCE and was made dictator, eventually dictator for life in 44 BCE. To many senators this looked like monarchy, and on the Ides of March, 15 March 44 BCE, a group led by Brutus and Cassius assassinated him. Instead of restoring the Republic, the murder triggered a new round of civil war between Caesar's heir Octavian and his ally Mark Antony, who formed the Second Triumvirate. Their alliance also broke down, and Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the naval Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, leaving himself sole ruler.

The evidence is plentiful but partisan. Cicero's speeches and letters give a vivid insider view but defend the senatorial cause; Sallust and Plutarch wrote with moral lessons in mind; and the later account of Appian narrates the civil wars. Caesar's own commentaries on the Gallic and civil wars are self-justifying propaganda. For a TASC answer, treat these sources critically and explain the fall of the Republic as the long interaction of social conflict, militarised politics and individual ambition, ending with Octavian's victory in 31 BCE.