Now that the Roman electorate was no longer representative of the Roman army, what Sulla’s coup had done (and despite everything, it was indeed a coup) was to assert the army’s primacy over the Roman voter in decision making. Once this primacy had been asserted, there was no going back, and to a very real extent, the Roman Republic after 88 BC was a sham. In reality, Rome was a military dictatorship that had just not realized it yet.
