029 - Tiberius Gracchus

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 29, Tiberius Gracchus. Last week, I partially summed up the domestic, political, and economic situation in Rome after the final victories of 146 BC. With the destruction of Carthage, Rome transitioned from what we now call the Middle Republican period into the Late Republican period. And even if you know nothing else about Roman history, you probably know that the Late Republican history was a time of intense turmoil. Today, we will enter the endgame of the Roman Republic, and the first move will be made by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.

Tiberius was born in 168 BC to Tiberius Gracchus the Elder in Cornelia Africana. His father was a well-respected member of the ruling elite. Though pleb by birth, by this time the distinction between patrician and pleb was less important than it had been in the past, and the Elder Gracchus was an upstanding defender of the old order. Over the course of his career, he had been tribune of the plebs, censor, and twice consul. When he was tribune, the Elder Gracchus had taken sides with Scipio Africanus during the political battle over the great general's actions in the East, and played a decisive role in securing an acquittal. In gratitude for this loyalty, Gracchus was given one of Scipio's daughters, Cornelia, in marriage. The match was unusual for the age difference, Gracchus at this point being 45 and Cornelia only 18, and also for the fact that there seemed to be genuine affection between them, something that was usually lacking from the political marriages of the upper class. Gracchus the Elder died in 154 BC, when young Tiberius was only 14.

Even up to that point, the father had spent much of his life in service to Rome, and was a rarely seen figure at the family estate. The education of the boy, as well as his brothers and sisters, was overseen by Cornelia, who in later years would be honored as the living embodiment of the true Roman woman, the dutiful daughter of Rome's greatest general, the wife of a consul, and mother of two of the most famous politicians in history. Her frugality and sense of honor and familial duty were lauded for years, and in time she passed from being a living person into a sort of virgin Mary figure for later Romans. She had three children survive into adulthood, Tiberius, his younger brother Gaius, and their sister Sempronia, who would wed Scipio Aemilianus, Sacre of Carthage, and the dominant political force of his day. It is not an understatement to say that this particular nuclear family may be the most politically connected in Roman history.

The career of Tiberius the Younger began in Carthage when he was attached to the staff of his brother-in-law, and also, I should mention, uncle by way of adoption, Scipio Aemilianus. According to the legend, Tiberius was the first man over the walls of Carthage when the North Africans finally fell to Rome. It goes without saying that this story maybe, just maybe, is an embellishment created later by Tiberius' political supporters. After serving in North Africa, Tiberius was stationed in Spain, which had yet to be incorporated as an official Roman province. I believe I mentioned earlier the irony that Spain, being one of the first territories outside Italy the Romans moved into, was also one of the last to be officially pacified. During this particular period, the 130s BC, there was trouble around Numantia, and Tiberius served in the legions dispatched to break up a revolt. The resulting campaign was a complete disaster, however, and in 137 BC, 20,000 Roman soldiers, were captured. Tiberius brokered a deal with the Spanish to secure the freedom of the legionaries, but when the terms were brought back, the Senate rejected them out of hand, issuing a public rebuking of Tiberius for the dishonorable treaty he had brokered. Critically, the call to reject the treaty came from Scipio Aemilianus, making the rejection personal and embittering.

I mentioned last week that after 146 BC, the ruling class began to lose their cohesion. The incident between the Senate and Tiberius Gracchus was an early indication of things to come. Though he was officially plebeian, Gracchus was clearly in the ruling party's camp. But after the stern questioning of his honor by the Senate, Tiberius would break from his colleagues and began to look to the people for political support. He was followed by others in the ruling party who began to look for ways to exalt themselves above and beyond the Senate by directly appealing to the will of the people. This was the early splintering of Rome into the familiar and famous political parties, the Optimates and the Populares. The Optimates represented the old oligarchic supremacy of the Senate, while the Populares supported reforms that would strip the disproportionate wealth and power that the elites held in their hands.

Looking for good guys and bad guys in this division is nearly impossible. During the civil wars, it was the Optimates, Cicero among them, who were the defenders of the Republic, while the Populares advocated for Caesar. But for all their platitudes about Republican virtue, the Optimates were interested merely in protecting their own position, not about protecting Republicanism per se. Features of freedom and liberty were everywhere in word and nowhere in deed during the final century of the Republic.

For the next five years, Tiberius watched a lot of the Roman people go from bad to worse. Their farms were being bought up, slaves were taking their jobs, and a revolt in Sicily had brought critical grain importation to a standstill. All of this left the average Roman desperate and impoverished, and it left Tiberius graucus with a golden political opportunity. In 133 BC, he stood for election as one of the ten Poblian tribunes for the year. Upon election, Graucus embarked on one of the most ambitious and controversial tenures in Roman history. It probably would have been the most ambitious and controversial tenure in Roman history had it not been for his brother's even more ambitious and even more controversial tenure a decade later.

At the heart of Tiberius' popularity was his calls for aggressive agrarian reform. With all the eloquence his upper-class education afforded him, Graucus made common cause with the lowly disenfranchised farmer. As I noted last week, the largest states in Italy were growing larger by the day. Tiberius proposed to put a cap on the amount of land that a man could own. The proposal was wildly popular with the people, but how would Tiberius ever get the measure passed by the Senate, who not only hated the bill, but also the man who proposed it? Tiberius sidestepped this problem with a solution that only further enraged the Senate. He would simply bypass them. There was nothing in the law that said measures proposed in the people's assemblies had to be brought to the Senate for approval. It had just been a long-standing working custom. So when Tiberius was elected tribune, he simply made his pitch to the people and figured the rest would take care of itself.

Unfortunately for Graucus, though, by law any one of his tribunate colleagues could veto the measure, and this was a law, not merely a custom. So the Senate tapped an ally, a tribune named Octavius, who vetoed the measure. No amount of fist-pumping or hand-wringing or demagoguery could change the immutable fact that if another tribune vetoed a proposal, it was a dead issue. Tiberius moved that Octavius be voted out of office, but before that could happen, the vote had to be approved, and Octavius vetoed that too. So Tiberius made a fateful move, ordering his supporters to physically remove Octavius so he could no longer hinder the proceedings. Even Tiberius' supporters worried about the heavy-handed treatment of Octavius. A tribune was, and had been since the inception of the office, sancrosanct, and by law no Roman could lay a hand on a tribune. Only the immense popularity of Graucus with the people allowed him to commit this utter sacrilege. Tiberius then took things one step further and announced that he was going to veto every bill in sight until he got his way. Even the most trivial measure was cut off without debate. Tiberius brought Rome to a complete standstill. The Senate, seeing the ease with which Tiberius had been able to physically manhandle a state and wishing to get the business of business moving again, allowed the reform bill to pass.

A three-member commission was established to oversee the redistribution of land, consisting of Tiberius, his younger brother Gaius, and, inexplicably I know, Appius Claudius. I did a double-take myself when I first learned that an Appius Claudius was on the side of a radical populist, but it's true. Tiberius had married the man's daughter, and in the department of strange bedfellows, this Appius Claudius did not join the family business of defending patrician rights with his every word and deed. The three sat down and began doling out land. They turned first to the land in Italy that had been held by soldiers who had been killed in battle. Supposedly that land was supposed to revert to the people, but enterprising senators had been occupying the unclaimed plots. The agrarian commission set about breaking the plots up and redistributing them. It is estimated that roughly 75,000 new farms were created in that year. Unfortunately, lacking a proper budget, the entire endeavor was marked by inefficiency, confusion, and, yes, corruption.

Soon enough, though, the question of Italian land took a backburner to an even hotter question. King Atollus III of Pergamum, nephew of the long-standing Roman ally during the Macedonian Wars, Atollus II, died in 133 B.C., and, sensing that a dynastic struggle and inevitable Roman conquest would follow, the king willed Pergamum, which is today western Turkey, to the Roman people. The windfall was greeted by cheers in Rome, but pretty soon the question arose as to what exactly the king had meant. The Senate assumed that as responsible stewards of the state that the land fell under their jurisdiction and would be parceled out and governed by the consuls and proconsuls of the ruling class. Tiberius and his allies, however, read the endowment literally and argued that Pergamum had been left to the people of Rome, and therefore fell under the purview of the agrarian commission. Rome was in the midst of a land crisis and had been handed the answer to all of its problems on a silver platter, settlements for everyone. But by again taking his proposal directly to the people and bypassing the Senate, Tiberius was playing with fire.

The enmity between the Senate and Tiberius was deeply personal at this point. It is impossible to know which policies were pursued because they were thought best and which were pursued simply to poke the other side in the eye. The Senate, incensed, decided that the wisest course of action would be to simply wait. Tiberius' year in office would soon be up and once the shield of sancro sanctity was lifted they would have their revenge. It was common knowledge that men were lining up around the block with charges they planned to file against Tiberius the moment he stepped down. Tiberius, recognizing that he may have gone too far, too fast, and with much too heavy of a hand, decided to go double or nothing and announced he was running for re-election. This was in clear violation of the proscribed annual term limit, but Tiberius pushed ahead, arguing that if the people's assembly saw fit to return him for another year, who was anyone to deny them that right?

This was the last straw for a small cabal of conservative nobles who decided it was time for Tiberius to go. Led by Tiberius' own cousin and Octavius, the deposed tribune, a group of armed patricians descended on a public rally for Tiberius and ordered the people to disperse and cut off their support for this illegal candidate. The calculated fighting wards did their work and a fight broke out. In the ensuing riot, Tiberius was targeted and clubbed to death. When told of the death of his brother-in-law, Scipio Aemilianus reportedly quoted the Odyssey saying, So perish all who do the like again.

Tiberius' graucus had gotten the late republic off the ground with a bang. His extremism re-energized class struggles that had been dormant for centuries. The reactionary patricians, wrapped up in their own personal disdain for Tiberius the man, failed to see that he fronted a reform movement that had more than its fair share of legitimate grievances. Much of the time they failed to even pay lip service to the suffering of the common Roman family and succeeded merely in engendering further division. In their stubborn refusal to let go of the old order, they practically guaranteed it would be smashed apart. On Tiberius' head, however, was the subsequent wholesale abandonment of long-standing traditions that had bound the state together by ambitious politicians. The removal of the tribune Octavius was an unprecedented move and, for better or for worse, laid bare before Rome the reality that their laws and traditions were just words and that they could be broken with impunity if supported by a loud enough mob. The sacrosanctity of the tribunate went all the way back to the secession of the plebs in the first generation of the republic hundreds and hundreds of years ago. If such a long-standing tradition could be cast aside in the name of political expediency, what did the republic really have to stand on? It left the Romans without any guidelines, markers, rules, or boundaries. The next century would unfold as little more than a political free-for-all. Power was everyone's ultimate objective and might, henceforth, was the sole decider of right.

Next week, we will meet Tiberius' younger brother, Gaius, who sought to outshine his brother not just in the breadth and depth of his reform, but in the unflinching way he willed himself to power.