Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (born 169–164? bce—died June 133 bce, Rome) was a Roman tribune (133 bce) who sponsored agrarian reforms to restore the class of small independent farmers and who was assassinated in a riot sparked by his senatorial opponents. His brother was Gaius Sempronius Gracchus.

Born into an aristocratic Roman family, Tiberius Sempronius was heir to a nexus of political connections with other leading families—most notably with the Cornelii Scipiones, the most continuously successful of the great Roman houses—through his mother, Cornelia, daughter of the conqueror of Hannibal, and through his sister Sempronia, wife of Scipio Africanus, the destroyer of Carthage. He was equally associated with the great rivals of the Scipios, the Claudii Pulchri, through Tiberius’s wife, Claudia, daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, the contemporary head of the house and princeps senatus, who had the honour of speaking first in all discussions in the Senate.

He was educated in the new Greek enlightenment that had been adopted by the more liberal families after the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic kingdoms, and this gave form and clarity to his natural talent for public speaking. The Stoic teacher Blossius had special influence with Tiberius, but the central Stoic doctrine of duty merely enhanced his natural determination and obstinacy.

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ancient Rome: The program and career of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus

As a Roman aristocrat, Tiberius began a normal military career, serving as a junior officer with distinction under Scipio Africanus in the war with Carthage (147–146), and in due course went as quaestor, or paymaster, with the consul Mancinus to the protracted colonial warfare in Spain (137). There his personal integrity and family reputation enabled him to save a Roman army from total destruction at Numantia by an honourable compact with the Spanish tribesmen. But, at the insistence of Africanus, the agreement was disavowed by the Senate at Rome, and Mancinus, the defeated consul, though not his staff and his troops, was returned to his captors. This setback alienated Tiberius from the Scipionic faction in the Senate and drew him closer to his Claudian friends.

His military experience had shown him the latent weakness of Rome. Its manpower was stretched to the limit to maintain its hegemony over the Mediterranean world, while its sources in Italy were beginning to contract. The primitive subsistence 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 labourers. 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, abandoned only in the last 30 years, of settling landless men on the extensive public lands acquired by the Roman state during the former conquest of Italy. Much of this land had fallen irregularly but effectively into the hands of the Italian gentry, who had enjoyed use of the land for generations in return for a tax paid to Rome. Tiberius, with the support of a small but powerful group of consular senators, primarily of the Claudian faction, who shared his concern and also looked for political advantage from sponsoring such a scheme, concocted a bill for the redistribution of the public lands to landless labourers in plots of viable size. Those who received plots would become their clients and provide a political base for power. The novelty lay only in the scale of the scheme, which was not limited to a defined area of land or number of persons, and in the institution of a permanent executive of land commissioners. 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, which was not an essential part of a senatorial career. Tribunes at this period normally 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. Consul Scipio Africanus was fighting in Spain, and Tiberius in 133 had the support of the sole consul in Rome—Publius Mucius Scaevola, who had helped to draft the agrarian bill—and of several other leading senators, mostly of the Claudian faction, whose authority could be expected to deflate opposition while hordes of peasants flocked to Rome to use their votes. When, after lengthy public debate, 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 vainly 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’s supporters, who saw that it undermined the authority of the tribunate itself; they rejected the unfamiliar justification, devised by Tiberius, that tribunes who resisted the will of the people ceased to be tribunes.

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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, an elderly senator from the Scipionic faction, succeeded in limiting these to a derisory 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 by a fresh bill claimed these monies 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’s methods continued to rage. He was threatened with prosecution after the end of his tribunate, when he would have no formal means of protecting his law and would be liable to prosecution before the Centuriate Assembly, in which the wealthier classes had a voting advantage. The charge would have been violation of the immunity of the tribune Octavius.

Lacking the self-assurance to realize that the people were unlikely either to repeal the agrarian law or to pass sentence against its champion, Tiberius sought refuge in yet another impropriety. He proposed to stand for election to a second tribunate in 132, although reelection had not been practiced for 300 years and was widely believed to have been barred by an ambiguous statute. In the Senate the embittered opposition, again led by Nasica, tried to induce the consul Scaevola to stop the elections by force. Scaevola replied evasively that he would see that nothing illegal was done. Meanwhile, in the Assembly, Tiberius and the other tribunes were at loggerheads over the conduct of the election. 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 and staves 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 some scores of citizens.

The political fault lay with Tiberius. After presentation of the agrarian bill, he failed to act in prudent collaboration with his senatorial supporters, and he added to his troubles by dubious initiatives that were bound to offend the bulk of senatorial opinion. So Scaevola and the others abandoned him and effected a compromise. The Senate recommended that the land commission continue, and, though in 132 it set up a political court that punished many of the lesser followers of Tiberius, it also encouraged Nasica, who barely escaped prosecution, to leave Italy.

The tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus marked the beginning of the “Roman revolution.” With the disappearance of the traditional respect for mos maiorum—the system of compromise and restraint handed down from the past—legal chicanery and outright murder became the standard. The days of the Roman Republic were numbered.