ABSTRACT
Between 140 bc and 63 bc, serious problems came to beset the Republic. Ambition, greed, and corruption appeared everywhere, and cracks opened in the nobility between the optimates, conservatives, and populares, populist politicians who courted the will of the people. The reform movements of Tiberius Gracchus and his brother Gaius Gracchus, which attempted to address some of the fallout from Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean, failed amidst shocking levels of public violence. Worse was to come with Marius and Sulla, with Sulla’s march on Rome and the Great Proscription of 82 bc. Meanwhile, most of Rome’s nobility had a shot at fighting Mithridates, the king of Pontus, and suppressed the revolts of Sertorius, Spartacus, and several slave revolts and a revolt in Pergamum. By the close of the period, Julius Caesar had made a name for himself in the Mithridatic war, and Pompey had provincialised much of the Levant as the new Roman province of Syria, creating the necessary context for further bloody aristocratic competition. A feature of the period was the continued importance of family relationships and senatorial alliances, as well as the activities of the publicani and negotiares.
