Scholarly, but suprisingly readable considering that this work is very dense, translated from German and with lots of untranslated Latin terms. I was impressed at the author's description of the gradual changes in the upper and lower social strata of the Roman Republic (and, later, Empire), their degrees of homo- and/or heterogeneity and how these changes contributed to the growth, stability (early Empire), instability (Late Republic and Late Empire) and eventual decline and fall of Rome.