The End of the Oligarchic Stability: The Political Situation in Rome after the Second Punic War
The paper analyzes the political situation in the Roman Republic in the late 3rd - the middle of the 2nd centuries BC. It focuses on the members of Scipio Aemilianus' circle and the views they professed. The system of government in which the aristocracy, officials and citizen-body would counterbalance one another was their ideal; it clearly contradicted the reality of the Senate oligarchy's omnipotence. But already at this time there appeared the first attempts to struggle against the established system, the clearest manifestation of which the movement of the brothers Gracchi would be later.