[thinknubpad]

>im also not sure you can really correlate the fall of rome to a single oligarch hitman

Probably not, but Crassus did live in the time of Rome's centuries-long inflection point.

It's hard to use a phrase like "richest person in the world" in an age where living standards and currencies varied so much, but he was extremely, notoriously, extravagantly wealthy.

He cornered the housing market by showing up to burning buildings with a fire brigade, and offering to put out the fire only if the owners sold the property to him at a steep discount. If they didn't, he let the property burn.

He was eventually killed in a war with the Parthians, and legend has it that they found him so repulsive, they poured molten gold down his corpse's throat as a message.