Josiah

“The final victory over Carthage in the Punic Wars led to rising economic inequality, dislocation of traditional ways of life, increasing political polarization, the breakdown of unspoken rules of political conduct, the privatization of the military, rampant corruption, endemic social and ethnic prejudice, battles over access to citizenship and voting rights, ongoing military quagmires, the introduction of violence as a political tool, and a set of elites so obsessed with their own privileges that they refused to reform the system in time to save it.”
― Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

“Every member of every tribe was entitled to his vote, but since this had to be delivered in person at the Ovile the practical effect was to ensure that only the wealthiest out-of-towner could afford to travel to Rome to exercise his right. Inevitably, this served to skew the voting in favor of the rich.”
― Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

“All status was relative. What value would freedom have in a world where everyone was free? Even the poorest citizen could know himself to be immeasurably the superior of even the best-treated slave.”
― Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

“The Romans themselves had always dreaded that this might be their destiny. As Sallust, their first great historian, put it, “There can be no doubting that Fortune is the mistress of all she surveys, the creature of her own caprices, choosing to broadcast the fame of one man while leaving that of another in darkness, without any regard for the scale of what they might both have achieved.”
― Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic