Download The Struggles of the Gracchi

Fariha Ramay
ARTICLE: Government
The Struggles of the Gracchi
A deeper look into the political efforts of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus
By: Fariha Ramay
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus is best known as the Roman tribune (133 BC) who
sponsored agrarian reforms to restore the class of small independent farmers and who was
assassinated in a riot sparked by his senatorial opponents. As a Roman aristocrat, Tiberius began
a normal military career, serving as a junior officer with distinction under Scipio Aemilianus in
the war with Carthage (147–146 BC), and in due course went as quaestor with the consul
Mancinus to the protracted colonial warfare in Spain (137 BC). There his personal integrity and
family reputation enabled him to save a Roman army from total destruction at Numantia by an
honorable compact with the Spanish tribesmen. But, at the insistence of Aemilianus, the
agreement was disavowed by the Senate at Rome, and Mancinus, the defeated consul was
returned to his captors. Unfortunately, this setback alienated Tiberius from the Scipionic faction
in the Senate and drew him closer to his Claudian friends.
Tiberius Gracchus’ military experience had shown him the latent weakness of Rome. Its
manpower was stretched to the limit to maintain its domination over the Mediterranean world,
while its sources in Italy were beginning to narrow. The economy that in past centuries had
nourished a large population of poor peasants was being eroded by new factors, notably the
development of large estates owned by magnates enriched in the imperialist wars and devoted to
cash crops worked by slaves and day laborers. The landowning peasantry, who alone were
thought useful for military service, were declining in numbers, while the landless citizenry were
increasing.
Tiberius sought a solution of the manpower problem in a large-scale revival of the
traditional Roman policy of settling landless men on the extensive public lands acquired by the
Roman state during the conquest of Italy. Much of this land had fallen into the hands of the
Roman gentry, who regarded it as their private property. Tiberius, with the support of a small but
powerful group of consular senators (primarily of the Claudian faction) concocted a bill for the
redistribution of the public lands to landless laborers in plots. Opposition from vested interests
was certain, but Tiberius hoped to pacify it by a generous provision allowing the great occupiers
of public land to retain large portions in private ownership.
To implement this measure Tiberius secured the legislative office of tribune, for 133 BC.
Tribunes legislated in the People's Assembly on the advice of the Senate, but more than once in
recent years tribunes had passed reformist measures without senatorial approval. Tiberius in 133
had the support of the sole consul in Rome (Publius Mucius Scaevola) and of several other
leading senators of the Claudian faction. When the bill was presented to the voters, the tribune
Octavius used his right of veto to stop the proceedings in the interest of the great occupiers.
When he refused to give way, Tiberius sought belated approval from the Senate. That should
have been the end of the matter, but Tiberius, convinced of the necessity of his bill, devised a
novel method of bypassing the veto: a vote of the Assembly removed Octavius from office,
contrary to all precedent. The bill was then passed. But the deposition of Octavius alienated
many of Tiberius' supporters, who saw that it undermined the authority of the tribunate itself,
They rejected the unfamiliar justification that tribunes who resisted the will of the people ceased
to be tribunes.
Furthermore, fresh complications arose from the lack of financial provision in the
agrarian law for the equipment of the new landholders. Tiberius expected the Senate to make the
traditional allocation of funds, but Scipio Nasica limited these to a small sum. Tiberius countered
by a second outrageous proposal, of which he failed to see the implication. The King of
Pergamum, a city in Anatolia, on his death in 134 had bequeathed his fortune and his kingdom to
the Roman state. Tiberius claimed these in the name of the people and assigned them to the land
commissioners, thus interfering with the Senate's traditional control of public finance and foreign
affairs. The storm over Tiberius' methods continued to rage. He was threatened with prosecution
after the end of his tribunate.
Lacking the self-assurance to realize that the people were unlikely to repeal the agrarian
law or to pass sentence against its champion, Tiberius sought refuge in another impropriety. He
proposed to stand for election to a second tribunate in 132, although reelection had not been
practiced for 300 years. In the Senate the opposition led by Nasica tried to persuade the consul
Scaevola to stop the elections by force. Scaevola replied evasively that he would see that nothing
illegal was done. An abortive vote had shown that the success of Tiberius was assured if only the
election could be completed. He expected no violence and made no preparations against it.
Enraged by the attitude of the Consul, Nasica and his associates stormed out of the Senate,
equally unarmed. Seizing sticks, they precipitated a riot. It may well have begun as an attempt to
disperse the electoral meeting, but it ended with the clubbing to death of Tiberius and the
indiscriminate killing of many citizens.
However, the political fault lay with Tiberius. After presentation of the agrarian bill, he
failed to act in practical collaboration with his senatorial supporters. The Senate recommended
that the land commission continue, and in 132 it set up a political court that punished many of
the followers of Tiberius.
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman tribune (123–122 BC), who reenacted the
agrarian reforms of his brother, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and who proposed other
measures to lessen the power of the senatorial nobility.
Though barely 22 years old, he joined in the immediate outcry against the senator Scipio
Nasica (accused as one of those responsible for the violence), and he acted energetically as land
commissioner in executing his brother Tiberius' agrarian law. He became quaestor, a magistrate
usually concerned with finance, in 126 at the normal age, after lengthy military service. When in
124 an intrigue against him at Rome delayed his already overdue recall from Sardinia, he
asserted his independence by returning unsummoned and counterattacked his critics, underlining
the honesty of his administration.
The contentious tone forecast a vigorous politician, and his candidacy for the tribunate of
123 brought out great crowds of voters, though the opposition of family enemies prevented him
from receiving the highest number of votes. As tribune he soon showed himself bent on
exploiting his legislative power to the maximum. Gaius realized that, by fostering sectional
advantages, the influence of the wealthy upper class of landowners and businessmen outside the
Senate—later known as Roman knights because of their liability to cavalry service—could be
largely detached from its traditional support of the senatorial aristocracy and combined with the
votes of the poorer citizens to carry radical reforms that no single group could manage by itself.
But his purpose was not democratic, for none of his measures intended the permanent
replacement of the Senate and the annual officers of state by the popular Assembly. He used the
Assembly not as an administrative body but as the source of legislative reform. This is seen
clearly in his regulation for the annual assignment of provinces to the consuls, the most
important policy-making moment in the Roman year. By securing passage of this law he ensured
that the provinces would be allocated before the consuls were elected, thereby preventing the
Senate from using the allocation of provinces as a means of punishing consuls of whom it
disapproved and rewarding those of whom it did approve. As an aristocrat Gaius had no
intention, however, of subordinating the consuls and other magistrates to the detailed control of
the Assembly.
It is clear that Gaius completed the whole of his program that touched the government of
the Roman state before he turned to a different problem—the relationship between Rome and her
Italian allies—early in his second tribunate and that his bill for the extension of the franchise to
the independent peoples of Italy was his last legislative proposal. His preceding measures were
criticized by the extreme conservatives as a general attempt to “destroy aristocracy and set up
democracy,” but they did not satisfy the radicals either.
The measures of 123 were concerned with the abuse of power and with the extension of
his brother's economic policy. He began with a demonstration against the enemies of Tiberius:
the family vendetta was a regular part of Roman politics. He then formulated a bill that would
have denied further office to magistrates deposed by the Assembly. Though Gaius did not press
this proposal, it deterred his colleagues from using their vetoes against him. A law forbidding the
establishment of political tribunals by the Senate without the sanction of the Assembly was
intended to prevent a recurrence of the judicial murders committed by the political court set up to
punish the supporters of Tiberius in 132.
A second law, concerned with judicial corruption, sought to provide independent juries
for the “extortion court.” This court had been created only 26 years earlier to curb the
malpractices of Roman governors by enabling provincial subjects to sue for the restitution of
monies taken improperly from them. Hitherto the jurors of this court had been senators, who had
failed to protect the provincials against extortion through their own private interest in the
fleecing of provinces. The judiciary law of Gaius excluded senators from the juries altogether
and replaced them by Roman knights, who were expected to be more impartial. Considerable
portions survive of the text of what must be either the actual judiciary law of Gaius or a revised
version modelled closely upon it. These show the same determination and ingenuity as his laws
about special tribunals in their attempt to stop corruption and abuse in the working of the court.
The exclusion of all magistrates and senators is minutely regulated, and no qualified juror may
sit on a case if he and the accused person are members of the same club or confraternity. Lengthy
clauses exactly regulated the distribution and collection of voting tablets and the counting of the
vote. This attention to detail is the hallmark of all the work done by Gaius about which there is
any substantial information.
Two measures served partisan interests. The first established a beneficial system for the
basic food supply of the now overgrown metropolis of Rome, where urban employment and
prices were equally irregular. The second bill transferred the lucrative farming of taxes in the
new province of Asia from local businessmen, who farmed the taxes on behalf of the Roman
governor, to financial syndicates of Roman knights who dealt directly with the treasury at Rome,
thus creating a monopoly for the Roman financiers. Both measures suggest a positive bid for the
votes of persons domiciled at Rome. The rural population was wooed by two other measures:
one transferred payments for military clothing from the conscript peasantry to the Roman
treasury, and the second, modifying the law of Tiberius, proposed the establishment of selfgoverning communities of colonists. This innovation led in later times to the widespread
settlement of Roman colonies that latinized southern Europe.
Though in late summer of 123 popular enthusiasm swept Gaius into a second tribunate,
for which he had not originally intended to stand, his judiciary bill was subsequently passed by
the vote of only 18 of the 35 voting groups of the Assembly. In so close a situation his successes
are the more remarkable. But he had a yet more difficult project in mind for the next year. The
greatest of Roman problems at this time concerned the management of the allies in Italy, who
occupied two-thirds of the peninsula. They provided the larger part of the Roman armies that
held the world in fee, yet these peoples were treated with increasing disdain and severity by the
Roman aristocracy, though they were akin in race, language, and customs.
Gaius proposed a complex solution of the Italian question. The Latin-speaking allies, whose
communal life was akin to that of Rome, were to be incorporated into the Roman state as full
citizens and organized in locally self-governing municipalities, and the Italic peoples of nonLatin stocks were to have the intermediate status of the Latin allies. This ingenious measure
shows the disinterested yet committed character of Gaius as a statesman. Such an enlargement of
the Roman state was, however, intensely unpopular with Romans of all classes. Gaius'
persistence at once weakened his popular following, strengthened the political opposition, and in
the end wrecked his career.
Gaius' position at Rome was not helped by his departure for two months to Africa to
manage the foundation of a colony of 6,000 settlers at Carthage. Among the business classes,
who had nothing more to gain from Gaius, his support was weakened by the alienation of the
numerous corn merchants whose profits had been decreased. On his return Gaius tried by a series
of demonstrations to restore his popular following. He moved his residence from an aristocratic
quarter down to the plebeian streets around the Forum, insisted on the right of the common
people to watch the public games without charge, and tried, though ineffectively, to prevent the
execution of a consular decree forbidding Italians to remain in Rome during the vote on the
enfranchisement bill. Altogether, opposed by senatorial opinion and shorn of his equestrian
supporters, Gaius was a more isolated and a more demagogic figure than in 123. The
enfranchisement bill was rejected, and Gaius failed to secure a third tribunate at the elections of
122.
In adversity Gaius showed the same stubborn determination as his brother to maintain a
good cause at all costs. Like Tiberius he fell defending the agrarian colonization that was the
basis of their position. In 121 a tribune proposed the dissolution of the great colony of Carthage.
Helped by the remnant of his plebeian supporters, Gaius organized an illegal
counterdemonstration. In the fracas one of Gaius' party was killed, and the Gracchans retired
uneasily to the Aventine Hill, traditional asylum of the Roman plebeians in an earlier age.
The Senate seized the opportunity to pass a novel decree, which urged the consuls to protect the
state from any harm. Gaius, appalled, sought a parley. But the consul Lucius Opimius, refusing
any negotiations, organized a heavily armed force composed largely of Roman knights and
assaulted the Aventine. Massacre followed, as did the suicide of Gaius. But most of his
legislation survived, and his unfinished projects were remembered, becoming the basis of politics
in the next generation. His rejected unification of Italy was finally conceded in 89 BC, after a
destructive and unnecessary civil war that came close to destroying the foundations of Roman
power. Hardly any substantial reform was proposed in the last century of the republic that did not
owe its conception to the political intelligence of Gaius Gracchus.