Gracchi brothers

They have been received as well-born and eloquent advocates for social reform who were both killed by a reactionary political system; their terms in the tribunate precipitated a series of domestic crises which are viewed as unsettling the Roman Republic and contributing to its collapse.

[3] Tiberius Gracchus passed legislation which established a commission to survey Roman public land, reassert state claims to it, and redistribute it to poor rural farmers.

They also were far more broad, touching on many topics such as assignment of provincial commands, composition of juries for the permanent courts, and letting of state tax farming contracts.

[21] In rural areas closer to Rome, expanding population and partible inheritance led to the splitting of previously modest farms into plots too small to support families.

This general economic downturn was likely compounded by years of high food prices due to the ongoing slave revolt in Sicily, an island from which substantial amounts of grain were shipped to Rome.

[25] Through the conquests of Italy in the fourth and third centuries BC, the Roman state had acquired legal rights to large amounts of land ceded by the subjugated Italian allies.

[27] The traditional narratives in the ancient sources which described the emergence of commercial latifundia (enormous slave-staffed plantations owned by the elite) on the public land itself is also largely unattested to by the archaeological evidence in this period.

Less favourable ancient sources, such as Cicero, instead attribute his actions to an attempt to win back dignitas and standing after the embarrassing treaty he was forced to negotiate after defeat in Spain.

[53] The main goal of Tiberius' agrarian proposal was three-fold: The purpose of the reform was to stimulate population growth and expand the number of people who would meet the property qualifications for service in the Roman army.

[66] Violent opposition to Tiberius' agrarian policy did not come to a head until he moved legislation to use the inheritance of Attalus III of Pergamon for the land commission.

[71] The consul refused to act extralegally, but one of the other senators, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, found this reply unacceptable and led an impromptu military levy of senators, which included one of Tiberius' colleagues in the plebeian tribunate; with Nasica, who was pontifex maximus, reenacting an archaic sacrificial ritual, they then stormed the Capitoline and bludgeoned Tiberius and a number of his supporters to death.

[76] The boundary locations and descriptions imply the distribution over just a few years of some 3,268 square kilometres of land to Roman citizens, concentrated in southern Italy and benefitting some 15,000 households.

[79] After the natural deaths of Appius Claudius and Crassus by 130 BC, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius Papirius Carbo were elected in their place.

Publius Popillius Laenas, the consul who had led the commission and was thereby opened to prosecution for violating those rights, immediately left the city for exile in Campania.

[101] Also importantly, he passed the lex Sempronia de provinciis consularibus, which required the senate to assign consular provinces prior to the elections of the consuls and insulated this decision from tribunician veto.

[109] A senatus consultum ultimum was then moved, instructing the consul Lucius Opimius to ensure the state came to no harm and urging him to suppress Gaius and Flaccus on the Aventine.

[117] While substantial acreage was distributed as a whole, more than 3,268 square kilometres in the first few years of operation,[77] there is some debate to the extent to which the Gracchan land allotments were actually economically viable for the families placed atop them.

[126] The continuing increase of the Italian population, however, would trigger later proposals for land redistribution; especially notable is Caesar's lex agraria during his consulship in 59 BC, which gave away the ager Campanus to some 20,000 settlers, albeit on less generous terms.

Their main purpose was to advance the quality of Roman government, reducing extortion and corruption among the senatorial governors while acting within the bounds of what his contemporaries would have considered due process.

[130] One of the elements best attested to is Gaius' lex repetundarum, which reformed the quaestio perpetua on provincial corruption with an equestrian jury to check senatorial governors.

[131] While, in the long run, the equestrian jury would prove a political issue for the next half century, these reforms were not meant to set the senate and equites into conflict.

[134] It was a reaction to corn disruptions in recent times that likely developed from army service, but his idea to have the Roman state smooth much of the variability of agriculture put the population less at the mercy of speculators and less dependent on magisterial largesse.

[135] These provisions continued in force after the death of Gaius, suggesting an emerging consensus at Rome that there was a "right of the people to enjoy the rewards of the empire [and that] frumentationes [were useful] to divert the interest and support of the urban plebs from the prospect of agrarian reform".

However, scholars such as Mary Beard also warn that Cicero is exaggerating for rhetorical effect and that "the idea there had been a calm consensus at Rome between rich and poor until [133 BC] is at best a nostalgic fiction".

The ex-consul, however, was able to successfully defend himself by appealing to the senate's decree and by arguing that Gaius and Flaccus deserved to be treated as seditious enemies rather than citizens.

Before the senate, he spoke of them negatively and focused on their alleged attempts to take over the republic; before the people, he instead praised their good faith, moral virtues, and quality as orators (especially in comparison to the popularis tribunes of his day).

[156] The incorrect understanding emerged in 1734 with the publication of Montesquieu's Considerations on the causes of the greatness of the Romans and their decline, which furthered this mistaken notion of large scale land reform rather than redistribution of state-owned lots.

[2] During the French Revolution, the revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf named himself "Gracchus" after the Gracchi brothers, in an attempt to connect his desire for large scale land redistribution with the Gracchan programme for agrarian reform.

Babeuf's plans, however, differed substantially from the Gracchan programme in ways that exemplify how the reception of the Gracchi had deviated from their actual historical policies.

The process of enclosure in England, for example, led to the formation of a large body of poor urban workers; many of their leaders were likened to the Gracchi and proposed reforms were compared with reference to the Roman land crisis as described in the ancient sources.

Depiction of the two brothers made during the 19th century by Eugene Guillaume , today located at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The brothers lay their hands on a document titled "property", consistent with then-current interpretations of their lives. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
This map shows Roman lands – the ager Romanus – in 133 BC. The ager was largely intermingled with the allied lands that covered essentially the rest of peninsula and required extensive surveying to disentangle.
Map of Gracchan land distributions. In red, distributions are attested to by archaeological finds of the boundary stones ( cippi ). In yellow, cippi are very likely.
This page in the revised edition of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum describes a number of columns documenting the work of Tiberius' land commission and its membership at various times. His brother Gaius and father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher appear multiple times.
Denarius of Gaius Minucius Augurinus, 135 BC, depicting the columna Minucia , which itself showed a grain distribution by Lucius Minucius Augurinus . It shows that grain distribution was already a hot topic several years before Tiberius' tribunate. He or his brother Tiberius probably replaced Octavius as tribune in 133. [ 54 ]
Denarius of Marcus Marcius minted in 134 BC. The modius on the obverse and the corn-ears on the reverse refer to his ancestor Manius Marcius, plebeian aedile c. 440 BC , who made a distribution of grain at a cheap price of 1 as per modius. [ 88 ]
A 1794 engraving of the French agitator and revolutionary, François-Noël "Gracchus" Babeuf. Babeuf also wrote a newspaper called Le tribun du peuple ( Tribune of the People ). Babeuf was executed in 1797 for attempting to overthrow the French Directory . [ 145 ]