timelets

After fear of Carthage had been removed, and there was space to exercise enmity, many mob actions, acts of sedition, and in the end civil wars arose, while the few who had power, and to whose influence most had yielded, aspired to domination under the honourable pretexts of ‘the Senate’ or ‘the people’, and men were called good and bad citizens not for their services to the Republic—all had been equally corrupted—but, as each was one of the wealthiest or more powerful from his injustices, so he was regarded as good because he defended the status quo.
The honour of all parties had been corrupted into some- thing of exchange value.

--- Sallust, Histories.