Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic

In this book P. A. Brunt is concerned with social conflicts throughout the history of the Roman Republic. While his main emphasis is on the discontents of the rural and urban poor, he also discusses the internal struggles within the propertied class, for at times it was among sections of the propertied class, denied the political power or social esteem to which they aspired, that the poor found support against the narrow ruling oligarchy. The author holds that the discontents of the poor were a major cause of the fall of the Republic, but he also suggests in an epilogue that they gained relatively little from the monarchic system they had helped to found.