system in its waning years, – but pins blame on the Romans' inability to conceive of alternatives to the traditional republican system. The second instead stresses the continuity of the republic: until its disruption by Caesar's civil war and the following two decades of civil war created conditions for autocratic rule and made return to the republic impossible. In this view, "civil war caused the fall of the republic, not vice versa". A core cause of the Republic's eventual demise was the loss of elite's cohesion from : the ancient sources called this moral decay from wealth and the hubris of Rome's domination of the Mediterranean. Modern sources have proposed multiple causes of elite cohesion, including wealth inequality and a growing unwillingness by aristocrats to transgress political norms, especially in the aftermath of the Social War. The Gracchi In the winter of 138–37, a first slave uprising, known as the First Servile War, broke out in Sicily. After initial successes, the slaves led by Eunus and Cleon were defeated by M. Perperna and P. Rupilius in 132 BC. In this context, Tiberius Gracchus was elected plebeian tribune in 133 BC. He attempted to enact a law to limit the amount of land that any individual could own and establish a commission, on which Gracchus and members of his family would sit, distribute to public lands to poor rural plebs. The aristocrats, who stood to lose an enormous amount of money, were bitterly opposed to this proposal. Tiberius submitted this law to the Plebeian Council, but the law was vetoed by a fellow tribune named Marcus Octavius. Tiberius induced the plebs to depose Octavius from his office on the justification that Octavius acted contrary to the manifest will of the people, a position that was unprecedented and constitutionally dubious: carried to its logical end, this theory would remove all constitutional restraints on the popular will, and put the state under the absolute control of a temporary popular majority. His law was enacted and took effect, but, when Tiberius ostentatiously stood for re-election to the tribunate, he was deliberately murdered by a faction in the senate. Tiberius' brother Gaius was elected tribune ten years later in 123 and re-elected for 122. Recalling the memory of his brother, he induced the plebs to reinforce rights of appeal to the people against capital extrajudicial punishments and institute reforms to improve the welfare of the