This theme certainly picks up the idea that civil conflict was embedded in Roman politics, but it also points to another fault line in Roman political culture: that is, how power was transmitted from person to person or generation to generation. It is worth noting that more than half a millennium later, the first dynasty of new autocrats, the emperors from Augustus to Nero, had a similar, or even worse, record of brutal death, largely murder, or alleged murder, from within the family.
