ABSTRACT
Rome had come through the difficulties of expansion, but only to be beset in the aftermath by an ever more turbulent political climate at home. Many of the reasons for this lay in the events covered in the previous chapter, but a crucial ingredient was provided by the ambitions and personalities of the politicians who came and went between 140 and 80 bc – for example, the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. All were men of very different backgrounds, but all would leave an indelible mark on the final century of the old republic.
