With the deaths of the Gracchii, the Senate had managed to stonewall reform attempts at the cost of most of its moral authority as a representative of the Republic, and with the even more worrying precedent of introducing legislation-by-mob-violence into the republican system. Troubling, too, was the fact that the Senate was no longer united - most of them, the optimates ("good men") were still in favour of the status quo, but some, the populares ("populists") desired land reform, if only as a safety valve. The optimates' nightmare scenario was a popularis general returning with his army to enforce his troops' demands; there would be little the Senate could do to stop such a combination.
In the actual event, the general was named Gaius Marius. The popularis Consul for 107 BC, he enacted a reform abolishing all land requirements for military service. This eased the manpower shortage that had been tightening around the army for the last half-century, but at the cost of setting up the army in utter opposition to the optimates. The Roman Legions of the fourth and third centuries had been composed of peasant farmers, really a (highly trained) militia. The legionary would go out to fight the Samnites or Epirotes; he would return in time for the harvest. The new army was recruited from the landless underclass springing up in Rome and its colonies, and what it wanted was cheap food for the cities, and land for the returning veterans. The soldiers, recruited direct out of the slums of Rome, would return to nothing if their generals couldn't get them land to retire on; and a general who promised this to his men was guaranteed their support in Republican politics. The Senate could not help but see the dangers of this, but their foreign enemies were on the move again and keeping the army up was vital.
Case in point: Marius' first two Consulships saw him overseas, putting down the Numidians, and then his next four saw him in northern Italy, stopping the invasions of the Cimbri and Teutones*. His unprecedented six terms as Consul, and the popularity he had gained in fending off the Cimbri and Teutones, deeply disturbed the Senate, which henceforth resolved to make the least possible use of his services. They managed to associate the credit for defeating Numidia to one of Marius' more conservative lieutenants, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and when Rome's Italian allies, looking to get a little more of fruits of empire, revolted in 91 BC, Sulla was put in charge of that too. The causes of the war were pretty straightforward to solve; once the Senate offered to grant all Italian allies Roman citizenship, the war was pretty much over, and the only real result of this "Social War" (apart from the widening of citizenship) was the enhancement of Sulla's reputation.
The same year the Social War ended (88 BC), a new war began in the east. The century of instability in Anatolia that had followed the defeat of Antiochus was coming to an end; the Kingdom of Pontus, under Mithridates VI, had conquered most of the surrounding kingdoms, including a few that had been put under Roman protection. But - distracted by the Social War and its own rapidly mounting social stresses - Rome's warning to him was uncharacteristically soft-spoken. Encouraged, Mithridates invaded the Roman province of Asia** in 89 BC and Greece in 88 BC.
This demanded a Roman response, of course, but the Republic was divided on who to send. The Senate voted for Sulla but the Popular Assembly - still remembering him as the saviour of Italy a decade earlier - voted for Marius. Sulla took matters into his own hands, took command of the army, and - to the horror of everyone, including the optimates - marched it into Rome. Marius attempted briefly to defend the city, failed, and barely managed to escape to Africa while Sulla's troops massacred Marius' supporters. Sulla's command of the army was hastily confirmed, and he marched back out again to Pontus. But, for the first time, Roman troops had fought each other in the field, and even more ominously, a Roman general had used his army to enforce his will on the city. It was all downhill from here for the Republic.
Sulla's war in the East ran smoothly, with Mithridates being pushed out of his new conquests in a couple of short campaigns; but the treaty they signed in 85 BC was again notably lax; Mithridates was required only to disgorge the Roman protectorates he had conquered and was permitted to keep the enlarged Kingdom of Pontus independent. Sulla swung his army around and sailed back to Italy: while he had been off fighting Mithradates, Marius had returned to Rome.
Marius' coup - enforced by an army he had raised in Africa - was surprisingly bloodless; he proscribed*** a few of the more conservative senators but for the most part kept his troops in check. But only a month after his return to Rome, he died of a stroke and without the great general his troops were easily defeated by Sulla's. Sulla's takeover (82 BC) was far bloodier than Marius' had been. Hundreds of Senators and thousands of people in total - anyone of any prominence whatsoever who could plausibly be connected to Marius or his rule - were proscribed and executed. Sulla was made Dictator for life by the cowed Senate****. He extensively revised the government, stripping away most of the reforms that had outlived the Gracchi and greatly reducing the power of the Plebeian Tribunes. With everything the populares had ever accomplished destroyed, along with most of their membership, Sulla retired (79 BC) and then died.
Sulla's retirement (and, even more, his death) restored Senatorial rule. But even compared to the half-century after the Gracchi, it was an unstable, tottering thing. Marius and Sulla had opened the door and now the Republic was a prize for anyone with an army and the ambition to use it. The most the Senate could reasonably do now was appoint conservatives as often as they could and hope none of them got too ambitious anyways.
While Sulla had been conquering the Republic, the situation out overseas had been deteriorating again. There was a general, Quintus Sertorius - not so much popularis as Marian - holding Spain in opposition to the Senate; Mithradates was on the move in Anatolia agian; and there was piracy. The Republic had long since removed any opponents capable of policing the seas but with its attention turned inwards, piracy now ran rampant. This was a particular problem as Italy had long since become insufficient for supplying the food needs of Rome; the city was now fed from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. For dealing with these, the Senate turned to the competent (and more importantly, loyal) Gnaeus Pompey. Pompey reconquered Spain (helped along quite a bit by Sertorius' convenient assassination) in 71 BC; returned to Italy to mop up the rebellion of Spartacus (along with a man named Marcus Licinius Crassus, more on whom later), then headed east to deal with the pirates. In three months in 67 BC he cleared them out; he was then given command of the army facing down Mithradates. He defeated Mithradates (64 BC) then moved south, conquering what was left of the Seleucid Empire and making a protectorate of the little Jewish Kingdom (63 BC; the Jews had become independent in the chaos following the Syrian War a century before).
Pompey returned to Rome again, having, in his words, "made the center of the Republic what I had found as its frontier". But in the course of the war he had promised his soldiers lands on their return***** and in any event his reputation was now too much for the Senate, who were now as afraid of him as they had been of Sulla. They waited for him to disband his army, then turned down his soldiers' demands and even refused to ratify his settlement of the east. Pompey took this smiling, and then mounted a constitutional coup. He got Crassus on his side for funding: Crassus was the richest man in Rome and more than ambitious enough to side with Pompey. For a front man, he picked a middle-aged playboy Senator named Gaius Julius Caesar, who was in charge of what was left of the populares. Between the three of them, they took the Consulate of 59, handed out offices to their supporters, and generally ran the Republic: much to the surprise of the Senate, which suddenly found itself powerless.
Nobody knew it then, but the Senate had now exercised its authority for the last time; the clock was ticking down fast on the Republic.
*Despite the fact that "Teutonic" has long been a synonym for "German", the Cimbri and Teutones were both Gallic, not Germanic, tribes.
**Consisting of westernmost Asia Minor, this had formerly been the kingdoms of Pergamum and Bithynia.
***Think "Stalinist purge" and you won't be far wrong.
****The Roman constitution actually contained a position for a Dictator (lit "one who speaks", since his every word was law). However, he was explicitly limited to a single term of six months; Sulla's unlimited Dictatorship was essentially a suspension of the constitution and Republican rule. (Just to note, the last Dictatorship had been during the Second Punic War, when it was feared Hannibal would attempt to take Rome.)
*****This rapidly became a necessity for post-Marian generals; even Sulla had done it (and, as dictator, was able to get it for them in the Po Valley).
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