Can we agree that the Roman Empire was a mistake? They should've stayed as a Republic

The republic was failing as a governing institution after the disappearance of external threats. That an empire rose was natural

Have you even heard of the Pax Romana?

Dominitian did literally nothing wrong, you're falling for senate propaganda

nah

I'm as big a Roman republic fan as the next guy, but lack of an equal power (like carthage was) made them turn on themselves to gain power, so you get shit like Sulla and Marius making empire all but inevitable.

CETERUM

For the Republic to have survived and been viable it would have needed pretty drastic reform. It was a system of government intended for the running of a small city-state that ended up having a global empire. Inter-senate and inter-family rivalries that used to be settled pretty much within Rome ended up resulting in civil wars involving dozens of Legions on both sides, which was draining Rome of manpower and money at a pretty dire rate toward the end of the Republic.

On top of this, the idea of exclusivity in the Senate amongst Latin peoples wasn't viable anymore. If the Republic had survived, you would have seen the provinces demand increased representation, and rebellions like the Socii wars breaking out (especially since lots of governors tended to treat provinces like their own piggy banks). There's no guarantee Rome would have survived wars like this.

> It was a system of government intended for the running of a small city-state that ended up having a global empire.
This

The huge amount of social unrest plaguing the late republic and early empire was related to the fact that these other metropolitan areas were basically being extorted: taxed without a say in the government to pay for a rich guy's military conquests so they could make themselves even richer while passing most of the costs onto the state, or to pay for massive, luxurious public works projects in the city of Rome itself while leaving everywhere else an underdeveloped shit-hole.

And reforming the system would have invariably meant the Latins having to share political and economic capital with the peoples in their provinces which would have meant less money for them, and they just weren't having it. The Empire may not have been a better system, but it was at least a less hypocritical one.

The second it stepped out of Italy it was doomed to fail, and although its greatest achievement is helping spread Christianity, a Christian Persia would have been great, even if our world would be radically different

Wow maybe Caesar was right

Or maybe he was a tyrant who really did want to be king of Rome. We'll probably never know. But people like Cato, Cassius, Cicero, Brutus etc. were almost definitely just trying to preserve a system that favoured their little strata of society.

No the Gracchi brothers were right. They were the last chance the Republic had to save itself

>Cato was just a reactionary
Is this your explanation for his monkly life

Caesar did literally nothing wrong

Yes.

Furthermore, the Gracchi were right in their goals, but their means were wrong.

>his monkly life
Roman Stoicism was just old rich guys showing off to each other. They treated restraint like a luxury.

It didn't stop the fact that they focused all of their energies obsessing over spooks and turning a blind eye to their backers' pilfering of the provinces.

>Before Augustus: 100 years of civil wars and disasters.
>After Augustus: 200 years of peace and prosperity.
And before those 100 years of civil wars, which actually wasn't a continuous state of civil war, Rome under the Republic experienced its fastest rate of expansion for 400 years and elimination of all other major powers.
Picking up from already dominating the world isn't that much of a feat, IMHO.

And after the 200 years of peace and prosperity under the principate, Rome descended into half a century of civil strife and ended up becoming an open autocracy just decaying away for almost 200 years. Beginning with the crisis of the 3rd century, it had lost all that made it great, which can, for example, be nicely seen in the drastically lower quality of sculptures beginning around then.

>, Rome under the Republic experienced its fastest rate of expansion for 400 years and elimination of all other major powers.
Well once its main rival Carthage was humbled Rome had more or less free reign to plunder Europe to their heart's content.

And it was precisely this insane growth which lead to the Republic outgrowing its political apparatus. What do you do with the Italians and Cisalpine Gauls who have been paying taxes and supplying soldiers to the army for generations and are now demanding a say in the "democratic" government?

>Rome descended into half a century of civil strife and ended up becoming an open autocracy just decaying away for almost 200 years.
They ran out of other people's money. There was no one left to conquer except piss poor Germans and Parthians who weren't even worth the costs to conquer. When that happened they had a gigantic military industrial complex mired in debt and nobody left to use it on but each other, until Roman culture deflated out of existence in the west.

>What do you do with the Italians and Cisalpine Gauls who have been paying taxes and supplying soldiers to the army for generations and are now demanding a say in the "democratic" government?
You do what they had been doing before: You keep upgrading the rights of the municipii, depending on the state of integration and loyalty exhibited, until giving them full citizenship, and you keep creating more tribes, preferably like the Athenians did: In multiple levels, inhibiting the concentration of power in the hands of few.

They should also have streamlined the constitutional system, though. Get rid of the tribal assembly, or get rid of the plebeian assembly. There should only be one primary assembly allowed to pass laws. The Senate can exist, for all I care, as long as the power legally stays with the tribunes and the people that elect them.

>Well once its main rival Carthage was humbled Rome had more or less free reign to plunder Europe to their heart's content.
The Seleucids were still powerful, and conquering the Greek city states and the Antigonids, and vassalizing the Ptolomeians aren't feats to be disregarded.

I don't know shit about Rome, but I was reading somewhere that one of the reasons the Republic might've broken down was due to Sulla setting the standard for powerful Generals who use their army for political gain, is that true? I can kinda see it, the Republic suffered from tons of civil wars started by political rivals

Sulla is just the culmination of a series of events introducing violence to the political system in Rome, starting with the Gracchi.

When people realized that murdering your political opponents is easier than trying to gain majorities in the assemblies, and acted upon that, was were things really escalated.

>free reign to plunder Europe to their heart's content.
Who gives a shit about Europe?

The Eastern Mediterranean is where the world's desire, it's wealth and massive populations, are.

>that gif
My sides

By the end of the Republic, Rome had actually already conquered all the wealthy areas around.

We would definitely be talking about them, if they'd suddenly collapse by then.