Rome’s First Civil War and the Fragility of Republican Political Culture
Abstract: This chapter asks what civil war does to a republic, arguing that civil war destroys not only people and property but the whole social contract that gives a republic coherence. It identifies the first real civil war at Rome as that of Sulla, and maintains that it destroyed the Republic as traditionally defined. The various constitutions that replaced one another with ever greater frequency between Sulla and Augustus were different republics, destroyed by their own civil wars, until the “restored republic” of Augustus was created from the ruins.
Chapter in Breed, B., Damon, C., and Rossi, A. (2010) Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars.
Published by Oxford University Press.