[allmendream]

The problem wasn't just “orderly succession”; it was that there was any succession at all for a “Dictator for Life”/ “Emperor”/ “First Citizen”. Ancestry is a piss poor way of determining who will be leader, and a lifetime appointment to absolute power is a rather bad policy for many reasons.

I think any sane person would rather live under the rule of two elected Consuls and the Senate. Although election was a mixed blessing. One Consul decided to try to “force” a military victory against Hannibal Barca in order to ensure an electoral victory. It was a bad mistake. Military campaigns shouldn't be run with an election timetable/ political concerns in mind.

[SunkenCiv]

I think any sane person would rather live under the rule of two elected Consuls and the Senate.

The unelected Senate was made up entirely of people who literally owned nearly all the land in Italy, and that was the source of their great wealth and power. Half or (often) more of the people living under the so-called Roman Republic were slaves, most of whom were owned by the same patrician families who owned all the land.

The Senators regarded everyone else -- slaves, freedmen, and plain citizens -- as inferiors to be ruled by the great and glorious patrician families. I don't call wanting to live under an assembly of despots and a couple of window-dressing Consuls a form of sanity, I call it living in a fantasy world to equate what the "Roman Republic" was to what we have due to the Framers. I think any sane person would prefer to live here and now.