This book weaves together the military, political, and social aspects of this tumultuous period of Roman history.
"The entry of daggers into the Forum" is an expression that identifies two precise historical moments: when two tribunes of the plebs--brothers Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Caius Sempronius Gracchus--were murdered in Rome in 133 and 122 BC amidst bloody riots. These deaths and subsequent events marked the rupture of the constitutional order in the Roman Republic and the beginning of a political crisis. Thus began a political process that would lead, over the span of three generations, to the end of the res publica, a transition of endless violence, ransacking, and destruction, including three bitter and bloody civil wars.
Internal politics in Rome in this period was fueled by social conflict, the confrontation between two political alignments--the Optimates and the Populares--each headed by an eminent figure and was characterized by sectarianism and (factional) intolerance. It was characterized by speeches delivered in the Senate, in the streets, and in the courts with solemnity and intensity but equally by the daggers that flashed in the hands of conspirators and assassins; by street riots, with thousands of victims; by real or alleged coups d'
