Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi were proof that all was not as fair as it was made out to be, but it was Sulla who showed that the Republic itself was a sham - a dreamed up mimic of some ancient Greek system that any wealthy Roman could exploit, a wound slowly rotting away. Born in 138 BC to a poor aristocratic family, he of all people would be the first to expose the festering gangrene rotting away the core of the Republic. Power-hungry dictator or just a man willing to destroy the republic to save it, the consensus on Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix is still not out.
