Tiberius Gracchus

Tiberius Gracchus is one of the Personalities in their Times options in Section III (25 marks). You answer one question on your personality, with two or three parts, at least one worth 10–15 marks. The syllabus asks you to study:

• Historical context: the Roman Republic's institutions; the effects of overseas expansion on Rome and Italy; the land, the army and slavery.
• Background and rise to prominence: his family; his education; his military service at Carthage and Numantia.
• Career: his tribunate of 133 BC; the land law and the methods used to pass it; opposition; his death.
• Evaluation: his impact and legacy; ancient and modern images and interpretations.

All dates are BC.

The Republic's institutions

• Senate: about 300 former magistrates; controlled finance, foreign policy and provinces by custom rather than law.
• Magistrates: consuls, praetors and others, elected each year; ten tribunes of the plebs, who could propose laws to the plebeian assembly (concilium plebis), protect citizens and veto any act. Tribunes were sacrosanct — protected by a sacred oath.
• Custom (mos maiorum): tribunes normally consulted the Senate before proposing laws; re-election to the same office in consecutive years was not done.
• The nobility competed fiercely for office and glory.

Effects of expansion

By 133 Rome ruled Italy, Spain, Africa, Greece and Macedonia. Ancient writers, especially Appian (Civil Wars 1.7), describe the consequences:

• Ager publicus (public land taken in conquest) was occupied by the wealthy far beyond the legal limit and worked by slaves captured in the wars.
• Small farmers were away on long campaigns; some fell into debt or lost their land and drifted to Rome.
• Military manpower: legionaries had to own property, so fewer small farmers meant fewer recruits.
• Slave revolts: a great revolt broke out in Sicily in about 135.

Modern historians debate how severe the crisis was: field surveys show that many small farms survived, and some argue the problem was more about recruitment and politics than a collapse of the peasantry.

• Born about 163. Father Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus: twice consul and censor, respected for his fair settlement in Spain. Mother Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus.
• Education: Greek tutors, including the rhetorician Diophanes of Mytilene and the Stoic philosopher Blossius of Cumae.
• Family network: brother Gaius; sister Sempronia married Scipio Aemilianus; wife Claudia, daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, princeps senatus.
• 146: served under Scipio Aemilianus at Carthage; Plutarch says he was among the first on the walls.
• 137, Numantia: as quaestor to the consul Mancinus, he negotiated a treaty that saved an army of about 20,000. The Senate rejected the treaty and handed Mancinus over to the enemy; Tiberius was spared. Plutarch and Cicero suggest this humiliation turned him against the leading senators.
• Plutarch reports (from his brother Gaius' writings) that while travelling through Etruria he saw the land worked by foreign slaves, not free farmers.

The land law (lex Sempronia agraria)

• Enforced the old limit of 500 iugera of ager publicus per occupier, with an extra allowance for sons.
• Land above the limit was taken back; holders kept the rest rent-free and secure (Appian; Plutarch mentions compensation).
• The surplus was distributed in small plots to poor citizens. The plots could not be sold, so that the rich could not buy them back.
• A commission of three (Tiberius, Gaius and Appius Claudius) carried it out. Supporters included Appius Claudius, the jurist Mucius Scaevola (consul in 133) and Licinius Crassus Mucianus.

Methods and opposition

1. Tiberius took the bill directly to the plebeian assembly without the Senate's prior approval.
2. The tribune Marcus Octavius vetoed it. Tiberius had the tribes vote Octavius out of office — unprecedented.
3. The law passed. The Senate gave the commission only a tiny allowance.
4. Attalus III of Pergamum died, leaving his kingdom to Rome. Tiberius proposed using the treasure to equip the settlers and having the people decide about the cities — a challenge to the Senate's control of finance and foreign affairs. Rumours spread that he wanted to be king.
5. He stood for re-election as tribune for 132, against custom.

Death

On election day there was disorder. In the Senate the consul Scaevola refused to use force without a trial. Scipio Nasica, the pontifex maximus, led senators and their attendants to the Capitol, where Tiberius and about 300 supporters were clubbed to death and their bodies thrown into the Tiber.

• The land commission continued. Boundary stones (cippi) naming the commissioners have been found. The census figures in Livy's epitomes rise from about 319,000 (131/130) to about 395,000 (125/124), which some historians link to new landowners; this is debated.
• Supporters were tried and executed in 132; Blossius fled. On hearing the news at Numantia, Scipio Aemilianus is said to have quoted Homer: ‘So perish any other who does such deeds’ (Plutarch).
• Precedents: a tribune using the assembly to bypass the Senate; deposition of a tribune; attempted re-election; senators using force. His brother Gaius followed him as tribune in 123–122 and was killed in 121 after the Senate's final decree (senatus consultum ultimum).
• The terms populares (politicians working through the people) and optimates (defenders of the Senate's authority) are often used for the conflicts that followed.

Modern views: Ernst Badian stressed personal ambition and rivalry within the nobility; David Stockton (1979) a reformer with genuine concern for Rome's manpower; some recent historians (for example Nathan Rosenstein) question the scale of the agrarian crisis. Most agree that his tribunate marked a turning point in the methods of Roman politics.

You do not have to name historians to reach the top band, but using an interpretation accurately to support your argument is credited.

• Motives: genuine reform (land, army, slavery) versus personal ambition and family reputation (Numantia; rivalry with Scipio Aemilianus).
• Methods: legal but against custom; their breach of convention alarmed even moderates.
• Impact: a land program that outlived him; the start of political violence; a model for later tribunes.
• Legacy: hero to the populares, rebel to the optimates; seen by Appian as the first step to civil war.

A model paragraph

Here is how one paragraph might use evidence and evaluation (on his motives, not one of our bank questions):

‘Tiberius' motives were probably mixed. Plutarch, drawing on his brother Gaius, presents a reformer moved by the sight of Etruria worked by slaves, and his law did address the real problem of military recruitment. Yet Plutarch and Cicero also link his tribunate to the humiliation of the Numantine treaty, which the Senate had rejected, and to his rivalry with other nobles. A young noble from Rome's most distinguished family had every reason to seek a great reform that would bring him glory — so concern for Rome and personal ambition need not be opposites.’

• Saying the law confiscated private land. It applied to public land.
• Confusing Tiberius (133) with Gaius (123–122) — the grain law and the colony at Carthage were Gaius'.
• Treating Plutarch's speeches as exact records.
• Thinking the consul ordered his death. Scaevola refused; Nasica led a private group.
• Overstating certainty about the land crisis and the census figures.

• 10-mark parts often ask you to explain one aspect: his background, the problems behind the law, his methods, or why his tribunate ended in violence.
• 15-mark parts usually ask you to assess his aims, methods, significance or legacy.
• Name the perspective of each source: Plutarch the sympathetic moralist, Appian looking back from the civil wars, Cicero the hostile senator.
• Useful terms: ager publicus, iugera, tribune, veto, sacrosanct, concilium plebis, mos maiorum, populares, optimates.

• Julius Caesar: used similar popular methods; the civil wars Appian traces from 133.
• The Augustan Age: Augustus took tribunician power, the authority Tiberius had used.
• Historical skills: testing literary claims against inscriptions and census figures.