We are also, for good as well as ill, the heirs of the Roman Republic. Had the title not already been taken, I would have called this book Citizens--- for they are its protagnoists, and the tragedy of the Republic's collapse is theirs. The Roman people too, in the end, grew tired of antique virtues, preferring the comforts of easy slavery and peace. Rather bread and circuses than endless internecine wars. As the Romans themselves recognized, their freedom had contained the seeds of its own ruin, a reflection sufficient to inspire much gloomy moralizing under the rule of a Nero or a Domitian. Nor in the centirues since, has it ever lost its power to unsettle.
---Preface, The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
Is this true?