Social Sciences and History / Unit 3 SSH 0222 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Clientage and the Republic's End
Captions available
The idea
Roman life ran on clientage: patrons securing contracts, commissions and land for clients, who voted as directed. Conquest's wealth flowed to elites, and by about one hundred BCE debt and poverty afflicted citizens the assemblies could not protect.
In practice
Marius, Sulla, Caesar; the Second Triumvirate of forty-three BCE; Octavian over Antony.
Where people slip
The anchor insists neither the rise nor the fall was inevitable.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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