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The legend SPQR - Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and People of Rome - emblazoned on the standards of the city's all-conquering legions in the last few centuries before Christ was both a potent symbol of the source of the republic's power and a reflection of the smouldering tension inherent in its system of government. This partnership between the haves and have-nots of the republic enabled it to survive defeats that would have fatally crippled more hierarchical states and to ultimately emerge as master of the Mediterranean world. But its very success proved the undoing of this system.