Chapter 12
By 133 b.c.e., the changes resulting from the Punic wars and Rome’s rapid expansion overseas were producing serious problems and discontent among a number of groups (pp. 180–5). At the same time, aristocratic political competition was intensifying (pp. 188–9). Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and his brother Gaius tried to deal with some of these problems and advance themselves. They ushered in a century of increasingly violent political upheavals that helped eventually to destroy the Roman Republic. Therefore, the careers of these two men and the circumstances surrounding them constitute one of the most intensively studied subjects in Roman history.
Sources for the period of the Gracchi, 133 to 121 b.c.e.
Sources for this crucial period are not nearly so extensive or reliable as for the preceding one. There is no extant contemporary source. Polybius lived through the Gracchan crisis, which colored the later stages of his writing, but he ended his history with the year 145/144 b.c.e. Posidonius’ continuation of Polybius down to about 78 b.c.e. is lost (p. 334). Books 58 to 61 of Livy contained much valuable detail from contemporary or nearly contemporary sources. They, too, are lost, except for the brief summaries in the Periochae and the sparse outlines derived from Livy in the late Empire (p. 398). The few relevant fragments of Diodorus Siculus and Cassius Dio have little value, and Velleius Paterculus’ brief treatment has little to add. Two extensive accounts, Plutarch’s biographies of Tiberius and Gaius and sections 7 to 26 in Book 1 of Appian’s Civil Wars, make it possible to construct a reasonable analysis of the events.
Mounting problems
By 133 b.c.e., many Romans must have sensed that serious problems needed to be addressed. Slave rebellions had been causing great difficulties since 143 b.c.e. There were shortages of grain in 140 and 138 at Rome. The government had to intervene. Worst of all from the point of view of Roman leaders, it was becoming harder to raise armies. By 133, whether or not the amount of actual property required for legionary service had been lowered, many Romans saw a crisis in the number of assidui (small landholders) available for military service. It now seems that the freeborn population did not fall but was actually increasing and dividing up a limited amount of available land into units too small for families. The number of Romans who registered for the census had dropped by 19,000, the equivalent of more than three legions, between 164/163 and 136/135. Men whose small inheritances did not meet the property requirement may not have bothered to register. Others who did meet the requirement may have wanted to avoid service by not registering. Levying troops for unpopular wars met stiff resistance on a number of occasions from 151 onward. In 134, Scipio Aemilianus was allowed to recruit only volunteers for service in Spain. Supposedly, a full-scale levy would have stripped Italy of manpower. Some people thought that the overall population was falling and that Romans needed to produce more children. Others sought to give more land to those who no longer had enough to support a family. The real problem may have been that Italy no longer had enough farmland for its population.
In 145 or, more probably, 140 b.c.e., Gaius Laelius, friend of Scipio Aemilianus (p. 206), had tried to relieve the situation by proposing a law to restore the provisions of the so-called Licinio-Sextian laws of 367. These laws supposedly limited to 500 iugera (about 320 acres) the amount of public land that an individual could hold. Laelius wished to confiscate the excess and resettle the needy on it. Whether he saw this proposal as a three-way solution for reducing the high urban population, replacing a portion of slave labor with small freeholders, and providing more assidui for legionary service is not known. Such goals were expressed for similar proposals later. Many fellow senators vehemently opposed Laelius. He decided to withdraw his proposal and avoid a difficult issue. In 133, however, the tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus refused to avoid a confrontation under similar circumstances.
The tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus, 133 b.c.e.
The thirty-year-old Tiberius Gracchus took office as tribune of the people for 133 b.c.e. He bemoaned the impoverishment of Roman citizens and worried about the loss of recruits for Roman legions. Without consulting the senate, he immediately proposed a land-reform bill in the concilium plebis. His bill was designed to break up the large estates created out of public land and to divide them among landless Roman citizens. It had been drafted with the support of his father-in-law, Appius Claudius Pulcher, the “first man” (princeps) of the senate, and of two learned jurists, P. Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus and P. Mucius Scaevola. Crassus was Gaius Gracchus’ father-in-law; Scaevola was one of the consuls. The bill ordered the state to repossess holdings of public land in excess of 500 iugera (320 acres) plus an allowance of 250 iugera (160 acres) for each child. Those who held public land were to receive clear title to the amounts allowed. That land would be unencumbered by taxes or rent. Reimbursement would be made for any improvements (such as buildings or plantings) on the land to be repossessed. The repossessed land was to be assigned to landless citizens in lots varying in size, probably from fifteen up to thirty iugera (nine to eighteen acres). It would be subject to a nominal rent payable to the state. The allotments were inalienable and entailed against sale or transfer.
Although the bill was controversial and inflamed opinion against Tiberius in the senate, his initial failure to consult that body was neither illegal nor unprecedented. In 232 b.c.e., Gaius Flaminius had proposed his agrarian law without consulting the senate (p. 134). In 188, a tribunician bill to extend voting rights to some Latin towns was presented directly to the concilium plebis. Still, when the tribune Marcus Octavius vetoed Tiberius’ bill, Tiberius agreed to submit it to the senate for debate. When the senate rejected it, he made the bill more attractive to the common people by making it less generous toward the large landholders. When he resubmitted it to the concilium plebis, Octavius seems to have violated “constitutional” custom by continuing to veto it. Temporary vetoes trying to force a compromise were normal; denying a fellow tribune permanently his right to put a proposal to the concilium plebis for a vote was not.
Neither law nor custom provided any clear guidance at such a “constitutional” impasse. To break it, Tiberius took an even more radical step. It would virtually nullify the power of veto. Arguing that Octavius was working against the interests of the plebs instead of for them as a tribune should, Tiberius called for a vote to remove Octavius from office. Tiberius needed eighteen of the thirty-five tribal votes. When the first seventeen tribes had voted against Octavius, Tiberius held up the voting for a moment to appeal to his colleague to change his mind. The latter remained obdurate. The voting resumed. Octavius was divested of his tribunate and forcibly removed from the tribunes’ bench. Later, the land bill passed.
The implications of Tiberius’ actions only aroused more opposition. By deposing a fellow tribune for exercising the veto, he had, in effect, removed one of the Republic’s fundamental checks on the acquisition of excessive power. To many senators, even some not opposed to land reform, Tiberius appeared to have gone too far.
The Agrarian Commission
To carry out the provisions of the land act, Tiberius asked the people to appoint a commission of three members consisting of himself; his younger brother, Gaius; and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius. Such blatant packing of the commission, though probably not yet illegal, also may have disturbed many senators. The commission was later granted full judicial powers with imperium to determine which lands were public and which private, to repossess all public land not exempt by the law, and to distribute it to new settlers. Ample funds were required to pay the salaries of surveyors and other officials. They were also needed to help the settlers make a new start by providing them with housing, tools, work animals, seed, and even subsistence until their crops were harvested. Now Tiberius’ opponents in the senate, which traditionally controlled appropriations, had a chance to stop him. They appropriated operating expenses of only a denarius and a half a day. Tiberius took another radical step to thwart them.
The Pergamene treasure
The late Attalus III of Pergamum had willed his personal fortune and kingdom to the Roman People (p. 165). This matter usually would have been handled in the senate. Yet, Tiberius, it is said, at once asked the people to make these funds available for the use of the commission. It is not completely certain whether such a threat to the senate’s prerogatives in financial affairs was ever passed. Perhaps the mere proposal caused that body to open up the public treasury for the use of the commission. Thus thwarted, Tiberius’ opponents began to threaten his life. To prepare the ground for violence, they circulated the rumor that he was planning to declare himself king (rex, i.e., tyrant) and had retained for that purpose the diadem, scepter, and royal vestments of the Pergamene kings.
Tiberius campaigns for a second term
To protect his legislation from annulment and to save himself from certain prosecution, Tiberius offered to run for a second term. That was contrary to recent custom but not illegal. The sovereign people could reelect him in spite of law or custom. They had similarly violated custom when they elected his maternal grandfather, the elder Scipio Africanus, to the supreme command during the Second Punic War. Tiberius frustrated and embittered his opponents by refusing to abide by traditional political rules. They were determined to stop him.
The first attempt to hold the election was broken up by a tribunician veto and bogus religious omens. The assembly reconvened in front of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill the next day. The spot could easily be blocked off. Tiberius’ supporters assembled early and tried to keep out his opponents. The senate met in the nearby Temple of Fides (Faith) to decide what action to take. The cumulative effect of Tiberius’ actions had raised fears, exploited by his personal enemies, that he was aiming to set up a regnum (tyranny). The majority of senators present invoked an ancient law under which he could be killed as a tyrant (rex).
The presiding consul, P. Mucius Scaevola, refused to take part in what he saw as unjustified murder. Tiberius’ own first cousin, the pontifex maximus P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, had no such scruples. He commanded those who wished to save the state to follow him. Scipio then turned his toga upside down and veiled his head with the purple hem in front and rushed out of the Temple of Fides. The change in his dress may would have communicated to others that Nasica was acting in some ritual capacity. The exact nature of the ritual is still vigorously debated, but many scholars think that Scipio meant to turn Gracchus over to the wrath of the gods. As Scipio and his followers approached the voting, many of Tiberius’ supporters fled. Using broken pieces of chairs and benches, Nasica and his followers clubbed to death Tiberius and 300 others. Then they threw the bodies into the Tiber.
P. Popillius Laenas and P. Rupilius, consuls in 132 b.c.e., set up a special court to try the Gracchan partisans. The more outspoken ones were executed. To forestall popular retribution in the backlash that followed Tiberius’ death, Scipio Nasica was whisked away on a diplomatic mission to Pergamum for organizing Rome’s new province, where he died.
Tiberius’ motives
The struggle over Tiberius Gracchus’ land bill has often been simplistically portrayed as a struggle between Tiberius, on the one hand, and the Roman senate, on the other: Tiberius appears as some kind of ideologically motivated, democratic liberal or radical reformer in the modern mold; the senate merely represents the corporate interest of a wealthy, landed oligarchy seeking to protect its financial interests without any regard for the social and economic problems of Rome. Such a view is untenable. Tiberius did not start out with some scheme of radical reform in mind. His reform was essentially a conservative one. It was designed to restore Roman military manpower, which had always depended on the class of smallholders, and to halt the spread of estates worked by slaves. Their increasing numbers posed a serious threat to internal peace and security, as witnessed by the slave revolts in Italy and Sicily from 143 to 132 b.c.e. (pp. 181–3).
Perhaps, Tiberius hoped that his law would stem further migration of poor rural citizens into the city and even attract back to the countryside some of those who had already gone to the city. Thus, the law might have helped to alleviate some of the unemployment and attendant sociopolitical stress existing in Rome itself. The flow of booty that had sustained economic growth at Rome had ceased with the sacks of Carthage and Corinth in 146. Since then, Rome’s wars, mainly against poor tribesmen and slaves, had become an economic burden. The urban economy was heavily dependent on expenditures for publicly and privately funded construction projects. It probably was not growing enough to keep pace with population growth (p. 186).
Tiberius’ reforms, therefore, were not based solely, or even primarily, on consideration of some abstract radical ideology. Still, it is quite possible that his education at the hands of Greek and Stoic teachers chosen by his mother (on whom, see p. 183) influenced his thinking and provided him with arguments to support the rightness and justice of his cause. Nor was Tiberius fighting the senate as an institution or seeking to destroy the primary role of the senatorial aristocracy in governmental affairs. Tiberius himself was a member of one of the consular families that dominated the senate. The senate was not a monolithic bloc opposed to Tiberius: it is often overlooked that powerful members of the senate worked on his initial reform bill.
Tiberius’ initial actions must be viewed as part of the normal workings of the senatorial oligarchy. When some powerful and influential senators wanted to promote legislation that other senators opposed, it was not unusual for them to work through a friendly tribune. In return, he could hope to advance his career with their support in elections for higher offices. The crucial point is that Tiberius refused to follow the normal rules of republican politics by deposing a fellow tribune (albeit one who may have been going to an extreme himself), by usurping the senate’s prerogatives in fiscal matters, and by violating the tribunes’ customary practice of avoiding consecutive terms. Therefore, even many senators initially supporting his legislation abandoned or opposed him. The stability of the republican system depended on no one man having the kind of unfettered power that, as tribune, Tiberius seemed to be usurping, however laudable or understandable his motives.
Personal and factional conflicts
Tiberius Gracchus’ determination to pursue agrarian reform in the face of bitter opposition from many of his fellow nobles cannot be understood without reference to the personalities, careers, alliances, and animosities of individual senatorial aristocrats. As expected of members of his class, Tiberius Gracchus was a politically ambitious young man. A number of factors made him particularly so. It was the duty of Tiberius, the oldest surviving son, to equal or surpass the achievements of his father and preserve the dignitas of the family. Tiberius’ mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus, victor over Hannibal. Ambitious for her sons, she is said to have urged them to live up to the glory of both sides of the family and make her known not only as the daughter of Africanus but also as the mother of the Gracchi. She obtained the accomplished rhetorician Diophanes of Mytilene and the respected Stoic philosopher Blossius of Cumae as their tutors. She also used her personal connections to promote their careers.
Cornelia’s mother, Aemilia, was the sister of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, victor at Pydna. He was the natural father of Scipio Aemilianus, the younger Africanus, destroyer of Carthage. By blood, therefore, Scipio was Cornelia’s first cousin. By law, having been adopted by Cornelia’s brother, he was also her children’s first cousin. Finally, he married her daughter Sempronia and thus became the brother-in-law of her sons, Tiberius and Gaius.
At first, the connections with Scipio Aemilianus served Tiberius well. As a youth, he had accompanied Scipio to Carthage and won his praise for valor. That would have impressed the voters when he ran for the quaestorship in 138. Nevertheless, there was ill-will between Tiberius’ immediate family and Scipio over an issue of inheritance produced by their complex relationships. Also, the marriage of Sempronia, which probably had been designed to restore friendly relations, was an unhappy one and merely made matters worse. As so often happened in the Roman aristocracy, complex interrelationships that had arisen from close political cooperation between families in earlier generations led to personal animosities that embittered political differences and rivalries in later generations.
Probably two or three years after he returned from Carthage, Tiberius became betrothed to the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, who happened to be Scipio’s chief rival for preeminence within the nobility. In 137, Tiberius served as quaestor in Spain under C. Hostilius Mancinus, who was besieging Numantia. Mancinus’ close relative, L. Hostilius Mancinus, was an enemy of Scipio. Mancinus and his whole army suffered the disgrace of being captured by the Numantines (p. 172). Tiberius, because of his father’s reputation, was the only one with whom the Numantines would negotiate a treaty. He obtained the release of the whole Roman army and saved much precious manpower for Rome. It looked as if Tiberius would gain the kind of fame and honor that would advance his career.
Tiberius was bitterly disappointed. When he brought the treaty to the senate for ratification, Scipio Aemilianus strenuously opposed it and helped persuade a majority of senators to reject it. Furthermore, Mancinus, Tiberius, and the other officers were prosecuted for cowardice. Tiberius and the others secured an acquittal, but Mancinus was ordered stripped, bound in chains, and handed over to the Numantines. (The Numantines showed their contempt for Rome by sending him back.) Hostility to the Hostilii Mancini may well have been a factor in Scipio’s actions. Even more important was his desire to keep the war going so that he could obtain the command and gain the glory of avenging Rome’s disgrace with another great victory. He succeeded in 134 and 133 after obtaining exemption from the law forbidding second consulships. In fairness to Scipio, he did help Tiberius escape Mancinus’ fate, and he took Tiberius’ brother Gaius to Spain as an officer on his staff, but the whole episode had dealt a tremendous blow to Tiberius’ prestige.
Running for the office of tribune in 134 b.c.e., Tiberius was desperate to find a means of saving his political career. Land reform was the perfect vehicle. It seemed to be a solution to some of Rome’s pressing socioeconomic and military problems and was a very popular issue with a large bloc of voters in the rural tribes. Moreover, his father-in-law—Appius Claudius Pulcher—and Appius’ powerful friends were backing land reform to gain popular support in rivalry with Scipio. Once Tiberius was elected and succeeded in obtaining a law for redistribution of land, they hoped that the recipients would become a grateful source of future votes in the rural tribes. The rural tribes, of course, were the key to the election of tribunes and passing of plebiscites in the concilium plebis. Also, the backing of a grateful Appius and his friends would help Tiberius gain election to the higher magistracies through the comitia centuriata. Significantly, Scipio Aemilianus’ friend C. Laelius assisted the consuls P. Popillius Laenas and P. Rupilius, another friend of Scipio, in persecuting Tiberius’ followers in 132.
Personal animosities and political maneuvering within the senatorial aristocracy, therefore, go a long way to explain the actions of Tiberius Gracchus, his major backers, and some of the leading opponents of his reform. Tiberius was certainly sincere in his desire to alleviate some of Rome’s pressing problems through land reform. Moreover, he also may have honestly believed that there was more long-term danger to Rome’s well-being if he bowed to the traditional obstructionist tactics of his opponents within the senate than if he mobilized the inherently sovereign power of the concilium plebis to overcome them. Nevertheless, for a politician, the most attractive reform is one that is not only just but also politically beneficial to the politician himself. Once embarked on reform, Tiberius could not give up in the face of powerful opponents. To have suffered a second political defeat after the rejection of the Numantine treaty may well have meant the end of his career within the senatorial elite. That is why, every time his opponents tried to use traditional legal means to stop him, Tiberius resorted to more and more untraditional practices to thwart them.
The land commission and its impact
The land commission set up to administer the Sempronian land law was allowed to function even after its creator was slain. Again, therefore, it seems that much of the opposition to Tiberius in the senate was not based on ideological opposition to reform or narrow economic self-interest but on personal and larger political grounds. Because the man who would have reaped the most political benefits from the reform was now dead, it was no longer a threat to his rivals. Indeed, they now tried to reap for themselves the benefits of gratia (gratitude) among those who received land. One official, often identified as Popillius Laenas, actually boasted of what he had done to carry out the law. On a milestone in Lucania, it is inscribed that he was “the first to compel the shepherds to make way for the plowmen.”
Also, once any perceived threat that Tiberius posed was gone, his brother and other supporters like M. Fulvius Flaccus and C. Papirius Carbo were allowed to serve on the land commission. Despite lawsuits and delaying tactics by those who possessed the land, within six years the commission may have settled over 75,000 men, an increase of 20 percent in the manpower available for military service. The Gracchan land law seems temporarily to have achieved the objective of strengthening the military power of Rome.
The work of the commission was hard and probably involved some injustice. After the passage of years and with the poor methods of keeping records in ancient times, it was seldom easy to determine what land was public. Probably, in some cases, the commissioners seized private property and in others confiscated the only good land that the occupiers possessed. The complaints must have been numerous and bitter.
Rome’s allies and the death of Scipio
The grievances of Roman citizens probably were not given a sympathetic hearing, but those of the Latin and Italian allies could not have been brushed aside so easily. To have ignored the complaints of the allied states might have constituted a violation of their treaty rights with Rome, disturbed peaceful relations, and perhaps even invited revolt. To some allies, whether individuals or communities, Rome had assigned public lands by lease or by outright grant. In other cases, wealthy allied landowners simply had encroached on otherwise unoccupied Roman public land, as had wealthy Romans.
In either case, when the allies looked for a patron to champion their interests, they found one in Scipio Aemilianus, the destroyer of Carthage and Numantia. Realizing the value of their military help and anxious to extend his network of clients, he gladly consented to press their claims before the senate. He succeeded in having the judicial powers of the commissioners transferred to the consuls, at least as far as the Latin and Italian allies were concerned. If the consuls preferred to go on long campaigns to avoid involvement in irksome land disputes, the work of the commission would be brought to a standstill.
Scipio’s meddling with the land problem in 129 b.c.e. did not help his popularity. In fact, his popularity had waned since 131 b.c.e., when he spoke out against a law proposed by the land commissioner Carbo, who was also a tribune that year. The bill was to legalize reelection to the tribuneship. In the course of the debate, Carbo asked him what he thought of the murder of Tiberius Gracchus. Scipio replied, “If Gracchus intended to seize the government, he has been justly slain.” When the crowd greeted this remark with jeers and catcalls, Scipio roared, “I have never been scared by the shouts of the enemy in arms. Shall I be frightened by your outcries, you stepsons of Italy?” The bill in question failed, but Carbo did succeed in extending the secret ballot to legislative assemblies (see Box 12.1). That was detrimental to the politically entrenched nobles. At voting time, now, they could less easily hold accountable those on whom they had bestowed benefits.
12.1 The secret ballot
Traditionally at elections and legislative assemblies, Roman citizens openly declared their votes in front of an official who recorded the vote in a record book. Anyone standing close by could hear the declaration, making it relatively easy for the powerful (patrons, commanders, landlords, etc.) to coerce or entice those dependent on them to vote in a particular way. In the new secret ballot system introduced to Roman voting assemblies over the course of the 130s b.c.e., voters posited a clay tablet, marked with “yes” or “no” (in the case of legislation) or the name of a candidate, into a basket. It is difficult to ascertain the precise ramifications of the secret ballot in Rome beyond giving voters some measure of independence, but it is unlikely to have eliminated electoral fraud. The introduction of the secret ballot in other societies has been shown to change one form of corruption for another. Under the new system at Rome, it would have been more difficult, if not impossible, to prove how an individual voted, so the use of bribes and threats to obtain a particular vote would be less useful than they had been in the past. Now less direct methods would have to do: the minds of voters could be turned by gifts of food and drink. Alternately, unfriendly voters could be persuaded to stay home, while supporters could be enticed to show up on voting day. Even so, the introduction of the secret ballot spurred important changes to the Roman political landscape and should be taken as a sign that, for the Romans, voting was a civic duty that was not taken for granted.
In May of 129 b.c.e., Scipio announced that he was going to make a speech about the Latin and Italian allies. It is not known whether he intended to talk about the granting of Roman citizenship. He went home early to work on his speech. The next morning he was found dead in bed. He may have died from natural causes. Rumor made him the victim of foul play by one of the Gracchans, perhaps aided by Sempronia, Scipio’s wife and sister of Tiberius Gracchus. The truth cannot be known.
The Romans previously had been fairly generous in granting citizenship to upper-class individuals in the Latin and Italian towns. There had never been any widespread desire for Roman citizenship among the allied communities. Now, however, the activities of the Gracchan land commission seem to have brought into sharper focus the increasingly inequitable relationship between Roman citizens and the allies (p. 181). A number of Latins and Italians began to press more actively for citizenship. Their overt agitation in Rome made them quite unpopular. In 126, with senatorial approval, a tribune pushed a bill through the assembly to legalize their expulsion.
The land commissioner Fulvius Flaccus took up the cause of citizenship for the Italian allies. As consul in 125 b.c.e., he proposed the grant of citizenship to any of the allies that wanted it. Fulvius had to abandon his efforts when his opponents in the senate sent him off at the head of a consular army to help Massilia fight hostile neighbors in southern Gaul.
In the same year, 125 b.c.e., the allied town of Fregellae rose up in rebellion. What, if any, connection this event had with the question of Roman citizenship for the Italians is unclear. The events in Rome may simply have aggravated a particular local conflict among the Fregellans. At any rate, the revolt was crushed with the help of Fregellan “loyalists,” who were rewarded. The rest were stripped of their property and the town was destroyed.
Although no other town revolted, the events at Fregellae may have heightened interest in the question of citizenship among other Italians. At Rome, feelings intensified: attempts were made to punish those who were suspected of having inspired and encouraged the revolt. Even the younger brother of Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius, who had just returned from a year as quaestor in Sardinia, was accused but was able to prove his innocence.
Gaius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs, 123 to 122 b.c.e.
The powers and capabilities of Gaius Gracchus were known and feared years before he became a tribune. Those who had opposed Tiberius considered Gaius a menace because of his influence over crowds and his membership in the land commission set up by his brother. In 124 b.c.e., despite hostility from powerful fellow nobles, he campaigned for the tribuneship with promises of reform and was elected for 123. Voters from the rural tribes poured into the city, as they had done ten years before to support his brother. In 123, they voted him into office again for 122 b.c.e., although he was not an official candidate at that time.
The motives of Gaius Gracchus in promoting reform were essentially those of his brother Tiberius, with two major additions. First, there was the desire to avenge the murder of his brother and repair the damage to his family’s honor. Second, he wanted to build a far broader and more complex coalition of socioeconomic groups not normally powerful participants in the political process. He would gain an even broader base of political support than Tiberius had. That would help him win the offices necessary to repair his family’s tattered dignitas.
The two years of the tribuneships of Gaius Gracchus were politically among the most memorable of the Roman Republic and perhaps the most crucial. The tribuneship had become an instrument controlled by the same small number of noble families that also dominated the senate. Gaius turned it into a powerful weapon by which an ambitious individual, usually from one of the same noble families, could effectively circumvent the control of his peers. A century later (in 23 b.c.e.), Emperor Augustus strengthened his position against opposition from nobles loyal to the old Republic by invoking not the powers of a consul but the power of a tribune (tribunicia potestas).
The reforms of Gaius Gracchus
Upon taking office, Gaius Gracchus proceeded to stir the fury of the people against his brother’s murderers, who had violated the sacrosanctity of a tribune. He also took aim at the procedure by which Popillius Laenas had condemned his brother’s followers to death without appeal to the people. The concilium plebis responded by passing a bill that prohibited the senate from creating extraordinary tribunals to condemn political offenders without the right of appeal. Under a retroactive provision of this law, Popillius Laenas was condemned and exiled.
Revenged, Gaius Gracchus proposed a series of measures. He hoped to advance both his and the public’s interests by organizing a coalition of the equestrian class, the proletarian city voters, and the small farmers. His program dealt intelligently and realistically with the social and economic problems generated by Imperial expansion. The most pressing problems concerned the spreading unemployment and slums, the periodic fluctuations in food prices, the decline of military strength and efficiency, the frequent slave revolts, the continuing challenges of provincial administration, and the disaffected allies.
Land and roads
To win over the farmers’ vote and further meet their legitimate needs, Gaius revived and amplified his brother’s legislation. He restored to the land commission the judicial powers that Scipio Aemilianus had persuaded the senate to remove. Most of the public land had by now been assigned, but he was able to benefit the farmers by an extensive road-building program that created a network of secondary roads linking farms with markets, villages with towns, and towns with Rome. These roads not only employed farmers as road builders but also permitted them to move their crops more easily and cheaply to markets and thus improved trade. Also, by facilitating travel to Rome and, therefore, attendance at assembly meetings, they promoted fuller participation in the affairs of government. The extraordinary speed with which this project was completed under Gaius’ personal direction further increased the fears of many senators.
The Grain Law
To gain the political support of the city masses and relieve their real distress, Gaius persuaded the assembly to pass the famous lex Frumentaria, or Grain Law, which provided that the state should buy and import grain from overseas for sale to citizens residing in Rome. It was sold on demand in fixed monthly amounts at six and one-third asses per modius (about one-quarter of a bushel), a price roughly equivalent to one-half of an unskilled worker’s daily wage. Sometimes this price was a little below the average market price in Rome, but it was often much higher than the market price, in which case there would be no demand for public grain until the market price rose again.
This law, the most severely criticized of all the Gracchan reforms, did not constitute a dole; it was passed solely to promote price stabilization for the benefit of the consumer, not, as now, for the producer. A considerable amount of the wheat consumed in Rome came in as tribute and cost the state only the expenses of transport, naval convoy, and storage. The Grain Law even provided for the construction of warehouses and wharves in Rome, a measure that would, intentionally or not, give employment to many while it implemented the subsidy for grain.
The Grain Law also had a more subtle purpose. It was designed to weaken the patronage of entrenched fellow nobles and increase that of Gaius by using public money. In periods of high food prices, candidates for high office had regularly bought votes by the provision or promise of cheap grain. The Grain Law helped to restore the independence of Roman citizens and rendered more effective Carbo’s secret ballot law of 131 b.c.e. (p. 217). It also earned gratia for Gaius among the voters resident in Rome.
Military and monetary reform
Some other important laws also brought needed relief to poorer citizens and politically valuable gratitude to Gaius. The Military Law (lex Militaris) required the government to clothe and equip Roman soldiers without deductions from their pay, shortened the term of military service, and forbade the drafting of boys under the age of seventeen. This law was intended to improve army morale, always a concern of the Gracchi, and to win the political support of soldiers, allies, and voters with small incomes. Furthermore, in 122 b.c.e., the weight of the denarius was reduced. This measure not only meant that in real terms Roman citizens had to pay less in fixed rents and taxes but also significantly reduced the tribute of the Roman allies without special legislation.
New colonies
Gaius Gracchus’ laws authorized commercial and agricultural colonies in Italy and across the sea. They were intended to relieve overpopulation in Rome and provide economic opportunities for farmers, traders, craftsmen, and small businessmen unable to make a living. The sites selected were Capua, Tarentum, and Carthage. The most ambitious of these projects was authorized by the lex Rubria, which a friend of Gaius proposed. It sanctioned the founding of Junonia near the cursed site of Carthage, where 6000 colonists drawn from Rome and the rest of Italy were to be settled on farms of 200 iugera (125 acres). Gaius went to Africa to supervise in person the initial stages of the settlement. His opponents, using propaganda and appealing to religious fears of the curse pronounced in 146 b.c.e., persuaded the voters to repeal the lex Rubria. Had the project succeeded, he would have created a colony of loyal supporters in the vital grain-growing area of North Africa. Here, too, he anticipated by almost a century the policy of Augustus.
Provincial taxes and jury service
In an effort to drive a wedge between the wealthy equestrian class and his senatorial rivals, Gaius appealed to the economic interests of important equites. Those equites who had significant interests in the operations of the publicani, particularly in tax collecting, were already irked by the senatorial aristocracy’s control over finance and provincial administration. They were especially interested in the rich revenues of the new province of Asia. Its taxes were collected at a fixed rate directly by the senatorial governor. Gaius obtained passage of a law overturning this arrangement and directing instead that the taxes of Asia take the form of a tithe. Unlike the system employed in Sicily, where the tithe was auctioned and collected locally, the Gracchan law stipulated that the censors should auction the lucrative contracts for the tithes of Asia to companies of publicani in Rome for five-year terms. In that way, the money would come directly to the treasury in Rome, and the companies that won the contracts would then collect the taxes in the province.
The new system of taxation provided the Roman treasury with immediate funds and, theoretically at least, was less burdensome to the provincial taxpayers than fixed taxes. Payments would fluctuate with good or poor crops. It was also beneficial to the Roman tax collectors since clauses were added to protect them against losses from war and other calamities. It naturally benefited the rich men of the equestrian class, for the right to bid was open only to those owning property worth in excess of 400,000 sestertii (sesterces), the minimum equestrian census. Thus, Gaius’ law increased the economic power of the wealthy equestrians. They, in turn, were expected to use some of their wealth to advance their benefactor’s political career. At the same time, Gaius weakened the power of his rivals within the senatorial class.
An additional move that tended to divide the equestrians from Gaius’ senatorial rivals within the nobility was the lex Acilia, sponsored by another of Gaius’ supporters. It excluded senators, the relatives of senators, and all curule magistrates from the juries of the standing courts established by the lex Calpurnia of 149 b.c.e. to try provincial governors for extortion. The justification for the lex Acilia was the charge that senatorial juries acquitted governors commonly believed guilty. This law, therefore, transferred jury service from the senatorial class to the equestrian class. It dealt with a serious abuse and achieved its purpose of widening the breach between the equites and Gaius’ rivals. Unfortunately, it also gave equestrian business interests the means to punish good governors for preventing the wholesale exploitation and plundering of the provinces by publicani.
The Extortion Law
At the same time, Gaius reformed the extortion law itself so that provincials could use it to seek real redress from unscrupulous governors. The unintended consequence was that bad governors wanted to extort even more wealth. They needed to have enough to fight prosecution and still have enough for other purposes. Also, the extortion court became a weapon in elite political competition. Men tried to destroy their rivals by supporting their prosecution for extortion. The penalty was loss of citizenship and exile.
The Italian question again
One of Gaius Gracchus’ fellow tribunes in 122 was his old ally Fulvius Flaccus. Together they renewed Flaccus’ ill-fated earlier attempt to procure citizenship, or at least some citizenship rights, for the allies in Italy. That bill was a good attempt to address the justified discontent of Rome’s allies while it created more voters for Gaius and his friends. Unfortunately, it enabled those who opposed him for personal reasons or who genuinely thought that he was a demagogic threat to senatorial power to employ demagoguery against him.
Livius Drusus
While Gaius was in Africa to lay the groundwork for the colony of Junonia, his enemies within the nobility went to work. Their agent was the tribune M. Livius Drusus. He pandered to the selfish interests of the Roman populace by pointing out that the benefits of citizenship would be diluted by extending it to greater numbers. His threat to veto the Gracchan bill extending citizenship to the Italians prevented it from being brought to a vote. It clearly would not pass. Livius then presented a bill to protect Italian soldiers from mistreatment by Roman army officers, which was an important advance, but a shabby substitute for the citizenship bill.
Livius subsequently introduced a bill to found twelve colonies in Italy, each to consist of 3000 colonists selected from the poorest class. The land was to be rent-free. He also proposed to end the payment of rent by settlers who had been allotted land under the law of Tiberius Gracchus. The proposal to found twelve colonies in Italy was never intended to be carried out. There was not enough public land left in Italy to permit so ambitious a scheme. After it had achieved its purpose of siphoning support from Gaius Gracchus, it was speedily dropped.
The fall and death of Gaius Gracchus
When Gaius returned from Africa, he discovered that Livius had succeeded in splitting the once-solid ranks of the city electorate, who had supported him. Too long had Gaius stayed in Africa; too late did he realize the extent of the alliance against him. His immense popularity had made him overconfident and forced his rivals into close cooperation against him. Fulvius Flaccus’ refusal to be cowed over the proposed rights for the allies reinforced the opposition. Therefore, Gaius was defeated in his attempt to run for a third term. Only the imperium granted by the lex Rubria for founding Junonia stood in the way of enemies now resolved to take his life.
In 121 b.c.e., to remove the personal protection afforded by his imperium, they were hastening to bring about the annulment of the lex Rubria. No longer tribune, Gaius had neither the authority to summon the people nor the power to resist the threatened repeal. He still wished to avoid acts of violence. They might give his enemies the excuse for authorizing extreme measures against him. Nevertheless, the newly elected consul, Lucius Opimius, the destroyer of Fregellae and a vehement opponent of Gaius, deliberately provoked an incident between his armed supporters and those of Gaius. Then, Opimius’ backers in the senate virtually declared martial law by passing what came to be known as a final decree of the senate, Senatus Consultum Ultimum (p. 228). Opimius organized an armed posse that killed many Gracchans, including Fulvius Flaccus. Gaius attempted to escape but, seeing the hopelessness of his position, ordered one of his slaves to kill him.
Thus died Gaius Gracchus. As tribune of the people two years in a row, he had temporarily broken the monopoly of power enjoyed by a small number of nobles who usually dominated the senate and the popular assemblies. He had concentrated in his hands many executive powers and functions. He had supervised the distribution of grain to the populace, changed the composition of juries, awarded contracts for and superintended the construction of highways, presided over meetings of the senate, supported and campaigned for candidates to the consulship, and converted the tribuneship into an office more powerful than the consulship itself. Some of his reforms were truly measures of enlightened statesmanship. Others were dictated by political calculation and must be described as frankly opportunistic. Most were combinations of both.
The popularis political legacy of the Gracchi
In death, the Gracchi became popular heroes. Statues were erected to them in public places, and the spots identified as where they had fallen became hallowed ground. Prayers and sacrifices were offered to them as to gods. Even the proudest noble, regardless of his private opinions, dared not speak of them in public except with respect. The common people gratefully remembered the benefactions that the Gracchi had tried to bestow upon them. The Gracchan strategy of gaining political advantage against fellow aristocrats by promoting such popular programs as land redistribution, colonization schemes, subsidized grain, and public works, particularly through the office of tribune, lived on. It became the hallmark of the popularis politician.
The careers of the Gracchi reveal a major reason why the reforms necessary for preserving the stability of the Roman Republic were extremely difficult to make. Reform, however altruistic or patriotically motivated, could not be separated from the highly personalized political competition within the Roman aristocracy. Laws always bore the name of the man who proposed them. Therefore, any law that brought about significant reform benefiting a large number of discontented people would bring the man who proposed it a large increase in supporters among the voters. Envy, jealousy, and political self-interest would cause many current or potential rivals for public office and esteem to resist the attempted reform with every weapon at their disposal—even including violence and eventually, as the competition intensified, civil war.
In addition, violence and murder reinforced themselves through vengeance. The victims of the violence employed by the opponents of Gaius Gracchus seethed in silence until they had an opportunity to retaliate. That, in turn, produced more retaliation and furthered the downward spiral to civil war. Overheated competition and the lust for revenge, therefore, created more and more instability. The republican system began to lurch from crisis to crisis without hope of a peaceful solution to its problems.
Suggested reading
Dixon , S. Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2007.
Stockton , D. The Gracchi. London: Oxford University Press, 1979.