I suspect our disagreement is one of emphasis, not substance.
The various dictators and civil wars were a symptom of the decline and collapse of the Republic, not their cause. Though of course they contributed.
In the final analysis, IMO, the Republic fell because absolutely nobody really believed in it anymore. Just as the USSR fell for the same reason.
You can always find people willing to kill for a cause. But if you don’t have those who are willing to die for the cause, its days are numbered.
Yes, I think that’s about right.
And they stopped believing because they lost their moral ‘center’, just as the so-called post-Christian west seems to have lost ours? Funny how the social experimenters think they can change the fundamental building blocks of society, such as marriage, family, sexual mores, with absolute impunity.
How the true, first century Romans must have longed for the values of the early Republic, (I’m thinking preface to Tacitus’ Histories here, or Seneca; although Juvenal and Martial provide a biting look into the shortcomings of the ‘new’ Roman society).