he acquisition of territory, land, tribute money, and so on fostered acquisition of position and status for its own sake among the senatorial class. Because for the first time it became profitable to control government, wealth could come not only from estate-farming or merchant classes but also from political appointments. Thus there was competition among the wealthy and powerful for economic, social, and political advantage.
While all of this was going on, a different category of competition was taking place among the common people. As Roman military power encroached on barbarian outlands, indigenous peoples found their liberties curtailed in a variety of ways, their lives managed by a series of Roman governors who commanded legions designed for that purpose. Still, the size of the military ranks declined as Rome ran out of barbarian peoples to conquer. Meanwhile, smaller farmers were by and large squeezed out of agricultural marketplace. It was unprofitable for them to try to farm competitively against wealthy landowners equipped with slaves and large blocks of land, often comprising smaller farms, and often left fallow, an index of the concentration of the means of production in the oligarchy. Together, displaced (and unemployed) yeoman farmers and ex-soldiers converged on the cities. Social and economic tension was informed by a widening gap between rich and poor, which in turn fed riots by mobs of common people on one side, and enforcement of civil order by means of private armies on the other.
The environment of civil war between political rivals within the oligarchy on one side and between the oligarchy and the masses on the other made real reform impossible. Some 50 years before Caesar came to prominence, a patrician family named Gracchi had attempted to reorganize the highly unbalanced agricultural economy by way of land reform and grain subsidy, in ways that would benefit plebian classes. The Gracchi were assassinated by...