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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.