By the late second century BC, the Roman Republic had persevered and conquered through many disasters: so many, in fact, that conquest and eventual victory were taken for granted. In response to a barbaric tribal threat, a small group of selfish and complacent Roman aristocrats would bungle Rome into a catastrophe that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The price for eventual victory would be freedom itself, as events were set in motion that would destroy the Republic and replace it with the autocratic Empire.