The Gracchi and Populism I: Tiberius
--9 August 2020
When looking at the transition of the Roman State from a republic to an empire, many historians begin in the years after the destruction of Carthage which finally and unquestionably ended the Punic Wars. Sallust is the earliest of our sources who lays the blame fully on Rome’s destruction of its primary and most powerful rival. (for the background on this, see Sallust and Superpowers) He felt that once ambitious Romans could no longer make their reputation in wars, they could not help but fight amongst themselves. This is exemplified by the story of the Gracchi brothers, who sought to change the relationship of the Roman People to their government with the idea of improving life for individuals and the Republic as a whole, and ended up in the middle of civil conflict.
Shortly after the end of the Punic Wars, a young man named Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus came of age. He was the eldest surviving son of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a well-respected Plebeian elder of the Senate who had served as consul and censor, the two highest offices one could hold in the Roman Republic.[1] His mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of Publius Scipio Africanus, the man who had defeated Hannibal Barca and ended the Second Punic War. She was greatly respected in her own right, as an intelligent and virtuous Roman matron who served as an exemplar for women long after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.[2] Cornelia and the elder Tiberius had twelve children, of whom only three, Tiberius, Gaius, and Sempronia, survived to adulthood. All of the children were educated in their early years: the boys were expected to follow their father’s footsteps in Senatorial politics and their sister was included with the idea of having improved marriage prospects in upper-class Roman society.
As the older of the two boys, Tiberius began his political career first. He spent the requisite time in the army, then ran for one of the ten Plebeian Tribune seats for the year 133 BCE.[3] His platform was one of land reform; he had seen in his travels with the Army that many of the small independent farmers who made up the army had lost their land and livelihood. The Roman army during all but the last century of the Republic was made up not of professional soldiers but of the Roman citizenry who were required to have a minimum amount of assets in order to equip and keep themselves during their service because they were not paid by the state, though they did expect to get a share of any spoils taken in a war. Tiberius saw the loss of land for these smallholders as potentially damaging to the state: first, because the landless would move into cities looking for work (and often finding little or none) and, second, without these families producing strong young men for the army, Rome herself could be left defenseless. Tiberius’ plan for land reform focused on the ager publicus, “the public land,” taken in various wars and intended to be available as pasture or farmland for any Roman citizen who could pay the rental fee to the treasury. In practice, it was taken up by the aristocratic Patricians, who added it to other lands to create massive farms called latifundia.
Shortly after taking office, Tiberius presented a bill in the Senate that would have redistributed these public lands, owned by the Republic, to Roman citizens who were poor or landless. Much of this land was being held (illegally) by members of the Senate, and Tiberius was accommodating to them in order to gain their support. The legislation allowed those who had been holding the land to keep a maximum of 500 iugera (about 325 acres) for themselves, with an additional 250 iugera allotted for each son. These amounts were in line with the policy set up by the Senate over two hundred years earlier, policy which had been almost immediately ignored. The legislation also included monetary compensation for land that was returned to the State. The Senate refused to consider the legislation, so Tiberius took it to the Assembly of the People, who had sovereign authority when it came to the passage of laws, even over the Senate. Some senators arranged to stop the bill by purchasing the vote of man named Gaius Octavius, one of Tiberius’ fellow tribunes.[4] When Tiberius presented his bill to the people, Octavius’ job was to use his veto power (all tribunes could veto any legislation, immediately ending debate). Octavius and Tiberius publicly debated the bill, Octavius hoping that Tiberius would withdraw the legislation and Tiberius hoping the Octavius would withdraw his veto. Eventually Tiberius called the Assembly to order with a new request: he asked the people to vote if he or Octavius should be removed from office on the grounds that they were not working for the people. The People overwhelmingly voted to remove Octavius and defended Tiberius. Octavius had to be bodily removed from the stage from which he and Tiberius had been addressing the Assembly. The action was unprecedented—magistrates had been removed from their positions before, but by the Senate, not by the Assembly. This caused Tiberius to lose what little support he had left in the Senate. Tiberius presented his land bill again, this time confident that there would be no veto as the other tribunes were afraid they would also be removed from office. The People passed it overwhelmingly, and the Senate could do nothing to stop it. The Senate did, however, have a final say in the funding needed to enact the new law; they showed their disapproval by allowing very little money.
Tiberius’ efforts would have ended there, with the law on the books but with no means to bring it to fruition, had it not been for the timely death of the King of Pergamum whose will granted his kingdom and his vast fortune to “the Roman People.” Normally under these circumstances, it was the Senate who would dictate how the bequest would be handled, but Tiberius argued that because the will specifically said “the Roman People” it was the Assembly, not the Senate, who should determine how the money should be spent. He wanted to use it to fund his land commission and to provide start-up funds for those settling on the newly available land. This further angered the Senators, who now changed their tack against him: they no longer argued against his ideas, but against the man himself. They perceived his actions as having the intent to undermine the Senate and then use the People’s support to make himself a king.
When it came time for the next year’s elections, Tiberius made the unusual decision to run for a second term as tribune. This was not strictly illegal, but it did break precedent, as a man generally waited a decade between runs at the same office. This was, in part, because Tiberius had begun to fear for his safety and keeping the position would allow him to continue to be physically protected by virtue of his office. This further convinced the Senators that he was using the Tribunate as a steppingstone to take over, and so they arranged to delay the election until the next day, citing procedural issues. When people gathered for the election the next day, the senators again tried to delay it, causing a riot to break out. Tiberius was killed by a group of senators led by the Pontifex Maximus (and Tiberius’ cousin), Scipio Nascia. They claimed they had acted correctly, as they believed Tiberius wished to become a king over all of them. Tiberius’ was not the only death however; two to three hundred other Romans were killed in the unrest over the election.
That the Senate fully understood the dangers Tiberius was trying to avoid with his land redistribution was evidenced by the fact that they did not revoke his legislation after his death. They were less offended by what he showed the society needed than the means by which he caused it to happen. There is also the issue that he was a direct cause of the first significant civil bloodshed seen in the Republic in three centuries. Romans had begun to turn on each other around issues of class and who was to hold power: the aristocratic Senate or the people as a whole. Without intending to, Tiberius exposed and expanded the gap between the upper and lower classes and showed the politically-minded members of the lower class how they might gain some power.
Tiberius’ attempts to aid the Roman People did not do nearly as much good as he had hoped. The land to be used was surveyed, and some distributed to small farmers, but the efforts did not last. Tiberius’ hope that his actions would assure the soldiers needed for future wars turned out to be unnecessary: a generation after his death, Gaius Marius would solve the issue by turning the citizen-soldiery into a professional army, one whose loyalty was to their commanding general, not the state; an act from which the Republic never recovered.
[1] The fact that there were only about thirty first names for men in Ancient Rome and the societal convention of the eldest son being given the same name as his father makes it sometimes difficult to differentiate which man is referenced when using that name. This is somewhat alleviated by use of “the Elder” or “the Younger” and by use of a cognomen, a “nickname” added to a man’s given names which identified them by marking an accomplishment (e.g.: “Britannicus” for the man who conquered Britain).
Things can be more difficult when looking at Roman women, who had no personal name but were given the feminized version of the family name (e.g.: a daughter of Claudius is Claudia), then numbered according to birth order (e.g.: the second daughter of Julius is Julia Secunda).
[2] After the death of her husband, Cornelia did not remarry, making her a univera, a once-married woman. The decision to remain a widow was considered an appropriate and respected one, so long as the wife had already produced some children. She even refused a proposal from the Pharaoh, saying that it was better to be a Roman widow than the Queen of Egypt. Personally, I think it had more to do with her desire to have only twelve pregnancies.
[3] The Tribunate was both a low magistracy in the Roman Senate and one with a great deal of power, as any tribune could veto the proceedings or legislation of anyone else at any time.
[4] While bribery was illegal in Roman law, it was very rarely prosecuted.