This coalition indicates the tendency of the Senate to be dominated by groups of the most powerful of the Roman families, a kind of inner-circle of old and influential families, the nobiles, (those families who could claim a consul as an ancestor).
The great hero against the Carthaginians, Scipio Africanus, was eventually forced to retire from public life because of the success of a coalition of senators hostile to him and his circle of relations and friends. Within the Senate, cliques and power groups tended to form and aimed at dominating the conduct of government.
If we look back at the period of Rome’s expansion into the Mediterranean, we shall see that the Senate had in fact, grown in strength, but that its increasing influence in government, also brought with it the potential for individuals to influence affairs. In the earlier days of the Republic, generals had been given special authority in the face of a serious military threat, but the Senate had carefully limited their authority and had been strong enough to keep control. The existence of such extraordinary commands, continuing until Octavian resolved the power struggle by his Victory at Actium and set about establishing the Roman Empire, with one individual in permanent possession of autocratic powers, indicates that the needs of the Roman state could no longer be met by using the established constitutional procedure. Crassus, the multimillionaire and Pompey, the popular general - had succeeded where the regularly appointed consuls had failed and the “extraordinary commands” with which they had been vested were a de iure recognition of the fact that the Roman state was now on the brink of being run by powerful individuals. The Roman state had been shaken by a bitter and violent social disturbance that had only been resolved by two individuals whose power, though technically constitutional, was far too great for the Senate to feel comfortable.
The happy judgment of the historian Polybius on the strength of the Roman constitution, because of its mixture of popular, oligarchic and monarchical elements, might certainly appear as an optimistic theorization after the revolt of Spartacus.
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