For an elite Roman male, the cursus honorum was intensely competitive, inspiring him to be as successful as possible at the earliest possible age, not just to live up to the his 'look at' ancestors, but to enhance their achievements and thus honor his family. A magistrate of any rank had only one year to make a name for himself, as "... each age group, equal in years and theoretically equal in prestige, progressed together through a series of elections in which they competed with each other for public favor" . and political power” (Beard and Crawford, p. 53). From this competitiveness and the result of a growing empire, which those in power struggled to control, came men who exposed and exploited the defects of the constitution. The support of the people, including the poor, has always been important, because they were the ones who voted for you; however, this new politician saw flaws as a path to personal power, which increasingly needed the support of the poor. Tribune, Tiberius Gracchus has been credited by scholar # as one of the first politicians to use the poor to achieve success. It is unclear whether Tiberius deliberately chose a populist cause to support, but his agrarian law of 133 BC under the guise of increasing the number of small farmers in Italy, to make them eligible for conscription into the army, was perhaps just that. Plutarch attributes the saying to Tiberius: the poor: "... fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others... but do not possess a single piece of land that is truly theirs". (Plutarch). Appian confirms Tiberius' views in this period, describing a speech in which he sympathizes with the poor, saying that they were increasingly destitute and, consequently, declining in population...... middle of paper...... ure personal power in the 70s and 60s BCE Gaius Julius Caesar used the same methods to come to power in the 60s BCE In the year 60 BCE Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus formed an alliance (a "triumvirate") to rule informally Rome. Technically, the Senate still had power, but used the military to override it with the unspoken threat of violence. Caesar ruled alone, the Senate declared him "Dictator for Life", and began a vast program of populist reforms. He enacted debt reform, launched a vast public housing program, and expanded citizenship to people in northern Italy. He exercised his own personal power and not that of the republic. Rome became his vs a res publica. The guardians of the republic were up in arms and feared that Caesar was establishing himself as king. Therefore, the Republicans in the Senate, led by Brutus, assassinated Caesar in 44 BC.