Julio-Claudian Equestrians

How important was the rise of the equites class in the changes in the Republic to Empire? What role did these "new men" play in imperial administration?

Sir, if you asked Jacob Abbott who wrote extensively about the period preceding the Julio-Claudians.  He takes the view that a Roman middle class per se "the equites" did not exist the way you and I conceive them to exist:

"Then they were not interested, as men are now, in the pursuits and avocations of private industry. The people of Rome were not a community of merchants, manufacturers, and citizens, enriching themselves, and adding to the comforts and enjoyments of the rest of mankind by the products of their labor. "

That view is incorrect.  Abbot's claim of a Roman dearth of industry flies in the face of centuries of archeological work that asserts quietly that Rome was "a community of merchants, manufacturers, and citizens, enriching themselves, and adding to the comforts and enjoyments of the rest of mankind by the products of their labor."

Rome always had new men rise and fall in the history of the Republic.  Rome held a cultural prejudice against such men whether they by Marcus Tullius Cicero or Gaius Flaminius

Polybius wrote that the authors of the Roman constitution adhered to the ideas of Lycurgus which warned that the aristocrats would vie against one another placing one ahead of the other in the acquisition of wealth.  Thus the Roman Republic had in it legislation that was distributive in nature.

At the end of the second Punic war, the Senate relaxed such legislation.  Thus the middle class that emerged and yes I concede the premise incased in your question that a middle class did emerge.  I do not think the Imperial constitution had much with that rise of the middle class.  What the Imperial constitution did provide was respite from the violence of the Civil Wars that ended the Republic.

Professor Rufus Fears recounts a story of how fisherman saluted Gaius Octavius Thurinius (Augustus) toward the end of his life and how they thanked him for establishing peace and that peace made them rich.

The glow of the Octavian reign we tend to generalize Julio-Claudian as stable and prosperous.  That is not so and we see it instability and poverty in the careers of its prominent equestrians.  Shall we forget the mass political murder of Sejanus?  The ladder that Naevius Sutorius Macro climbed up?  Shall we forget whose bed that Claudius' most trusted advisor Marcus Antonius Pallas shared?  For every Pliny the Elder there are legions of equestrian intriguers and hatchet men willing to enrich themselves in the folly of evil.

Certainly we cannot point the finger of a total collapse to Caesar:

Certainly we cannot point the finger of a total collapse to Caesar:  

We most certainly can point to Caesar as the main culprit in killing the Republic.  For he succeeded where so many failed.  Roman had would be tyrants before.  The most conspicuous tyrant of the Early Republic was Appius Claudius Crassus or the innumerable tribunes who agitated against Rome in times of peace and on the brink of war for real and IMAGINARY offenses against the people.
he neither created it nor could he stop it.  
 I am sorry.  I can't seem to neglect this nasty little detail of history that a one Gaius Julius Caesar, consul of 59 BC beat up and placed his colleague Bibulus under house arrest.  How is that Constitutional?

It is also a bit curious that his nephew's father, the popular and able Governor of Macedonia - Gaius Octavius dies under mysterious circumstances - much like Caesar's own father.  I suppose in the absence of forensic evidence we must therefore absolve Caesar of foul play or the instance of foul play in the death of Octavian's father - distant relative to consul Gnaeus Octavius.

Then for seven years, Caesar had a let loose a vicious little tyrant named Clodius to savage the rights of noble Romans while he waged his wars in Gaul.

Think what the world would be if Caesar was a Republican, an Optimate or even a humanitarian Populare like Sertorius.
No I am afraid Caesar is a name that will live in infamy.  We must look at him as kind of Hitler had Hitler died in 1942 instead of gambling his losses for another three years.  Even the most dedicated Casareans of which they are legion in this study of history must concede the list of Caesar's accomplishments were born the backs and blood of his countrymen.
It was a series of several actions, achievements, and social conditions . . . Social problems evolved continually, even with periods we may define as stable times.

That is the human condition.  Why is that the ship of state in republics, democratic or even monarchical governments sail through changing times of actions, achievement and social conditions yet in one circumstance a people thrive whether it be Rome after the Samnite War, the Westward Expansion or the Glorianna and yet the in same set of relative circumstances, the people fall apart? 

It is not to say that Character counts, in this instance Character is the only thing can reasonably explain what happened here. 


But through the years, its expansionist policies created difficulties in the political scene.  
Aesop's fable of the Man and the Satyr illustrate the foolishness of this argument.

A Man had lost his way in a wood one bitter winter's night. As he was roaming about, a Satyr came up to him, and finding that he had lost his way, promised to give him a lodging for the night, and guide him out of the forest in the morning. As he went along to the Satyr's cell, the Man raised both his hands to his mouth and kept on blowing at them. "What do you do that for?" said the Satyr.

"My hands are numb with the cold," said the Man, "and my breath warms them."

After this they arrived at the Satyr's home, and soon the Satyr put a smoking dish of soup before him. But when the Man raised his spoon to his mouth he began blowing upon it. "And what do you do that for?" said the Satyr. "The soup is too hot, and my breath will cool it."

"Out you go," said the Satyr. "I will have nought to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath."

So I ask you sir, why is it that Rome's unbroken expansion from the first king of Rome to the end of the Hannibalic wars bespoke well of the Romans, but all expansion subsequent Hannibal bespoke ill of the Romans?

Two men grow wealthy in the enterprise of business - one man is enriched by his wealth and another man broke by it.  Shall we outlaw wealth because the weakness of the second man?  Or should we instead the study the hallmark's of the first man's character?

Without a beginning and an ending of the death of the Republic centered on character the rest of this discussion of factors and causes is a lot of cacafuego.

The way the Senate governed did not help.    

The Senate reflects what?  A representative body of the character of the people, therefore we may presume that the Senate as an institution failed but in doing so we forget that the people that comprised that institution caused it to fail as an institution cannot EXIST without people!
Rivalries created severe problems in a system that was weakening.  There was always conflict within the Senate that divided the people. 

Again you seem to validate my argument in your escape for rivalries are human nature.  It is how we dispose of these rivalries that speak to our character.