Eventually, this whole area and a lot more would be incorporated into a system of provinces and millions of people would be ruled by the Roman Empire. And it's ridiculous to say that Rome was a republic until Augustus became Rome's first official emperor, because by that time, Rome had been an empire for almost 200 years. There's a reason I'm arguing that the death of the republic came long before Caesar and probably around the time that Rome became an empire. If anything destroyed the idea of republican Rome, it was the concentration of power into the hands of one man. And this man was always a general. I mean, you can't march on Rome without an army, after all. Why were there such powerful generals?