Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

by Tom Holland

In practice as well as principle the Republic was savagely meritocratic. Indeed, this, to the Romans, was what liberty meant. It appeared self-evident to them that the entire course of their history had been an evolution away from slavery, toward a freedom based on the dynamics of perpetual competition.

The Romans knew that had they remained the slaves of a monarch, or of a self-perpetuating clique of aristocrats, they would never have succeeded in conquering the world.

The result was that Roman government increasingly began to mutate into what can perhaps best be described as a military-fiscal complex.