by Baker, Simon
By 138 BC, with Nasica’s conservative faction outmanoeuvring the reformers led by Pulcher, there were clear signs that the crisis over land was not about to go away; in fact, it was getting much worse. A rebellion of 200,000 slaves broke out in Sicily, and, with the Roman army at full stretch elsewhere, a grain shortage consequently struck Rome. In the same year too, Roman soldiers deserted en masse from campaigning in Spain, frustrated at their length of service and absence from their lands. Many were caught and punished by Nasica himself: they were flogged in public and then sold into slavery for one humiliating sesterce.30 However, it would not be long before the crisis was witnessed at first hand by another man. Tiberius would soon see for himself quite how bad the situation had become.
While 138 BC may have been a year of political turmoil for Rome, for Tiberius it was the year in which his political career took off. In the summer he was elected to his first junior office, that of quaestor, an office connected mainly with state financial activities. However, his duties would not detain him in the metropolis, but take him off to war once again, this time in Spain. In the northeast of Rome’s Iberian province, the republic had been struggling for some years to put down resistance from the semi-independent Celtiberian tribes of the Numantines. The Spanish warriors had shown amazing physical courage and fierce determination. The geography of the land too was something of a metaphorical quagmire; the fighting had been confined to defiles, dangerous ravines and precarious mountain passes. For these reasons, a string of Roman commanders had tried and failed to make any headway in finishing off this nagging, dogged war. In a new expedition Gaius Hostilius Mancinus, the consul for 137 BC, was determined to crush the rebels once and for all. As his financial officer, he took along with him the twenty-five-year-old Tiberius.
With his official account books in hand, and his foot set firmly on the ladder of political office holding, Tiberius was living up to the memory of his father’s glorious career. En route to war, however, he saw something that would prove to be his real political awakening. It would also prove crucial to the legend of Tiberius. As his detachment marched through Etruria, the Italian countryside north of Rome, he was able to see for himself how Roman empire-building had transformed it for the worse. What he saw was not industrious single farms of Roman citizens, but large estates worked by gangs of foreign slaves.31 It is possible that en route he even met peasants who had been forced off their land through the death of their males, or whose farms had simply fallen into disuse through neglect and shortage of help. The ancient sources certainly make clear that Tiberius’s experience in Etruria inspired the dramatic course his life took when he returned to Rome. The events in Spain, however, would be the trigger.
DISGRACE
Mancinus’s expedition was ill-omened from the start. The chickens that he meant to sacrifice to the gods escaped from their cage; then, as he boarded a ship for Spain, he heard a haunting shout go up, ‘Mane Mancine’ (Remain, Mancinus); after changing ships and choosing to set off from another port altogether, the unlucky general was set back once again when he spied a snake on board, which fled before it could be captured.
As the expedition began, so it continued. In Spain, against the Numantines, Mancinus lost engagement after engagement. The only note of hope was struck by his young quaestor. ‘Amid the various misfortunes and military reverses that marked the campaign Tiberius’s courage and intelligence shone out all the more brightly.’32 In addition, the young aristocrat showed his strength of character by always maintaining ‘respect and honour’ for his commander, in spite of the general’s miserable progress. One disaster in particular, however, would prove especially testing for both of them.
One night Mancinus received a false rumour that significant reinforcements from some neighbouring Spanish tribes were about to join the Numantines. Panic-stricken, the Roman general decided to break camp under cover of darkness and move his army to more advantageous ground. As fires were extinguished and the quiet retreat began, the Numantines learnt of his plan and responded with lightning speed: they captured the Roman camp, then attacked the army as it fled. The rearguard infantry bore the brunt of the casualties, but there was worse to come. The 20,000 soldiers of the Roman army soon found themselves trapped in difficult terrain and encircled by an enemy force less than a quarter of their number. There was no escape.
Mancinus had no option but to send envoys to the Numantines and come to terms for peace. The Spanish enemy declared itself unwilling to negotiate with anyone except Tiberius. Such was their respect for his personal qualities and their high regard for his father that he alone would be acceptable. Their reason for this went back to 178 BC, when Tiberius’s father had made peace with the Numantines: he had put them in his trust, had become the protector of their interests in Rome, and had staked his own name and honour on the obligation to maintain the peace. Above all, the elder Gracchus ‘had always ensured that the Roman people kept the terms of the peace with the strictest justice’. On the basis of his family’s prestige, therefore, the young Tiberius now negotiated with the Numantine leaders and eventually, after giving way on some points and extracting concessions on others, he agreed a truce that established ‘terms of equality between Numantines and the Romans’.33 The peace was solemnized by an oath.
With this act, Tiberius saved the lives of 20,000 Roman soldiers, as well as those of their many slaves and camp followers. The army was set free and sent on its way back to Rome, but not before the Numantines had stripped them of its arms and property, and had asked Mancinus also to swear an oath to honour the peace. Once the Roman army had departed, however, Tiberius showed his conscientiousness in executing his duties as quaestor. He went alone to Numantia and asked for the return of his account books, which had been confiscated. The Numantine leaders were delighted to see him again, asked him to enter the city and made it clear that he could now trust them as friends. After dining at their table, Tiberius also left for Rome, his ledger books safely in his custody once more. Given his successes, perhaps he anticipated a hero’s welcome. The reality could not have been more different.
In the Senate the Roman treaty with the Numantines was greeted with vitriolic disdain. A savage debate was sparked. Nasica, the cousin of Tiberius and Aemilianus, voiced the dominant hawks’ point of view: this was no peace, but a pathetic, ignominious surrender. Indeed, the Numantines were not ‘equals’; they were not even an enemy worthy of a peace treaty. Rather, they were rebels in a Roman province and should be crushed at all costs. Mancinus was called to stand trial. He defended himself as best he could: what about the lives saved? If the treaty was not a success in absolute terms, surely it was in the circumstances? Tiberius, standing beside Mancinus, stepped into the debate, using all his rhetorical skill and education to defend his commander. But the Senate was not remotely swayed from its belief in Roman invincibility. Since the destruction of Carthage, Rome was now the only superpower, the master of the Mediterranean. It could do what it wanted to whomever it chose. If the price of defeating the rebellious Numantines was the glorious death of 20,000 soldiers in the service of the republic, so be it!
In response, Mancinus begged the Senate to consider the poor quality of the soldiers he had at his disposal in Spain. The levy had produced an inexperienced, ill-disciplined and ill-provisioned army that the previous commander in Spain, a man called Quintus Pompeius, had failed to improve in any way. But again, this defence was not enough to help his case. One reason was prestige. Pompeius had powerful friends within the Senate, whereas Mancinus’s family had far less political clout. A commission, led by Aemilianus and his friends, was appointed to conduct a thorough investigation. Following this, the Senate, to the horror of Mancinus and Tiberius, tore up the treaty.
The rejection was not strictly illegal because all treaties made in the field needed to be ratified by the Senate in Rome. The problem, however, was more a moral one: repudiating the treaty was, in effect, to trounce the Roman republic’s reputation for fides – good faith a
nd keeping true to oaths. Such a violation would be sure to incur the wrath of the gods. In order to atone for this wrong, the commission put forward two proposals for the Roman people to vote on: either that Mancinus, as the general responsible in Spain, be surrendered to the Numantines, or that his staff be offered in his stead. Aemilianus now entered the ring. He used his powerful influence among the senators to help his cousin and, accordingly, the first proposal won support in the Senate and was ratified by the Roman people. It was decreed that Mancinus alone was to pay the penalty. In a revival of an old military custom, the former consul was stripped naked, bound in chains, taken under military escort back to Spain and handed over to the Numantines. The Celtiberians refused to accept the offering, and Mancinus returned to Rome in shame.
Although Tiberius had been saved from condemnation, this was scant consolation. The young man’s life now lay about him in ruins. The first blow was personally wounding. Not only had his own cousin, his brother-in-law and the man who had been his role model in Carthage, failed to save Mancinus. Aemilianus had also been the one to cast the deciding vote against Tiberius’s treaty. The bonds of friendship and family between the two cousins were thus broken apart. Only anger and recrimination were now left.
The second blow was more pummelling still. The Senate’s rejection of the treaty had effectively destroyed Tiberius’s career. He had staked not just his own integrity and dignity on the treaty, but also that of his dead father. Certainly, the loyalty of the Numantine people had been utterly betrayed. The implications of this, however, went much deeper, much closer to home. With his peace treaty spurned by the senators, Tiberius had irrevocably damaged his family’s reputation, his father’s and his own. Prestige had always been the essential ingredient of a political career in the Roman republic, the key to getting to the top. Aristocratic families had accumulated it over hundreds of years, driven on by the desire of sons to match the achievements of their noble fathers. Now Tiberius’s ability to command the respect and loyalty of allies, associates and the Roman people had been snatched away for ever. Or so it seemed.
The fate of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus the younger might have become just a footnote in history. Indeed, there are probably dozens of ‘Tiberiuses’, brilliant young aristocrats who never fulfilled their potential, about whom we know nothing. One simple fact, however, spectacularly altered the course of Tiberius’s life: his personal disaster intersected with the crisis enveloping Rome. This coincidence sparked the greatest upheaval in the republic’s long history thus far. Single-handedly, it turned Tiberius against the Senate, against the friends and allies of his family and forebears, and emblazoned his name in the history books. An illustrious, honourable career in the manner of his father’s and mother’s ancestors was now out of the question; that road to fame was closed. Another, however, lay waiting for him.
As Tiberius left the Senate House in disgrace, he received a very different reception from the Roman people. The wives, mothers, fathers, children and grandparents of the 20,000 Roman citizens whose lives he had saved in Spain now thronged the Forum, cheered his name to the skies and fêted him like a hero. Almost inadvertently, he had won the love and respect of the plebs. Perhaps in this moment the seed of an idea was planted. Tiberius’s path to winning prestige, his chance to channel his intelligence, idealism and political skills, and his opportunity to honour the achievements of his father now lay not with the Senate but with ‘the cause of the common people’.34 The ambition of an aristocrat had found another outlet.
Between the summers of 136 and 133 BC events moved quickly. Breaking constitutional precedent, Aemilianus was elected to a second consulship in order to head up the campaign in Spain. Only he, it was fervently believed by the Roman people, could bring this sticky war to a victorious end. As a result, under massive popular pressure, the Senate temporarily waived the constitutional obstacles once again, and Aemilianus became consul for a second time, leaving for Spain in 134 BC. Showing the same military genius, discipline and utter determination he displayed at Carthage, by 133 BC Aemilianus had subdued Numantia after another brutal siege. It lasted eleven months, saw only a handful of Numantine survivors (many of whom had chosen suicide over capitulation) and ended with the razing of that city too.
During the same period of time in Rome, his cousin’s life took a radically different path. The first overt sign of Tiberius’s change in direction was his marriage to the daughter of Pulcher. This signalled that he was making a clean break with the faction of his cousins Aemilianus and Nasica, who bitterly opposed Pulcher, and was now allied to the reforming faction of the Senate. This group included an eminent lawyer and the revered head of a college of priests – Publius Mucius Scaevola and Publius Licinius Crassus. Tiberius was happy to be associated with these new, high-powered allies. They suited his political outlook and the crisis to which he addressed his ambition. What he had witnessed on his way to Spain had been his political awakening. Now, catalysed by his political humiliation, that consciousness bloomed. According to Plutarch, what motivated Tiberius above all to join forces with Pulcher was the plight of the landless mob in Rome. It was they who ‘aroused Tiberius’s energies and ambitions by inscribing slogans and appeals’ on walls, porticoes and monuments across the city.35 But the question facing the reformers was how to improve their lot.
The plan for reform was simple: Tiberius would stand in elections for the office of tribune of the people. This was a magistracy that since the early days of the republic had been devoted to protecting the interests of the plebs. Crucially it was also empowered to propose legislation before the Plebeian Assembly, the sovereign body in which the plebs voted. The strategy that would follow his hoped-for election was also straightforward: the reformers would propose a new law. In it a commission would be empowered to work out where state-owned public land had become illegally occupied by landowners in excess of their allotted limit of 125 hectares (300 acres); in addition they would also be granted the authority to redistribute this public land by lot to landless Roman citizens. The fairness of the proposal lay in the fact that it did no more than revive an old law that specified the same limit, but had been ignored for centuries. For the plan to work, all Tiberius needed to do was succeed in the election. After campaigning vigorously and passionately, he was voted into office. For the year 133 BC Tiberius thus became one of the ten tribunes of the people.
The conservative members of the Senate were quick to see danger. Many of them were large holders of public land beyond the legal limit. The man who stood to lose the most from Tiberius’s proposed land reform, however, was Nasica himself. Under his leadership, the conservatives in the Senate rallied together and prepared to retaliate. In the same elections for tribune, they too put forward their man to represent their interests in the Plebeian Assembly. Marcus Octavius, a childhood friend of Tiberius, had at first declined to help Nasica’s faction and stand in the election. It would have taken a stout, hardy soul, however, to resist the strong-arming of a large clique of aristocrats. Perhaps all that was required was to make it plain to him that he would have no political career in Rome unless he did as he was told. What is certain is that Octavius eventually stood in the election for tribune and also won.
When both men took office at the start of 133 BC, Rome was about to be rocked by the greatest political showdown in the history of the republic. For the first time there would be daggers in the Forum.
MURDER IN ROME
At the start of 133 BC the glorious flow of wealth that had followed the defeat of Carthage thirteen years earlier must have seemed as though it belonged to another age altogether. The aristocrats’ building programmes to commemorate their victories in war ground to a halt; the price of grain doubled, then doubled again; and the expensive war in Spain, still unresolved, had drained the state treasury dry. Meanwhile, with the landless swelling the numbers, unemployment in the city rose ever higher.
Into this feverish, tense year the land bill of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, tri
bune of the people, was written on a whitened wooden board and posted in the Forum of Rome. A day for voting was named and at that appointed time the votes were to be cast by the thirty-five tribes (or electoral colleges) of the plebs. Four tribes represented the urban plebs of Rome, seven the outskirts of the city, and twenty-four the countryside. While the senatorial élite could exert some influence over the urban plebs by virtue of their rank, money and connections, Tiberius needed as many rural voters as possible to come to the city to ensure that his bill would be passed.
The votes would be cast either by word to an official, or by writing on a small wooden tablet covered in wax and presented to the presiding magistrate on a raised wooden bridge – a system designed to prevent voters from being intimidated by any outside harassment. The Plebeian Assembly itself occupied the slope to the north of the Forum. It was made up of a series of concentric stone steps which led up to and abutted the Senate House. From this advantageous perch the senators were able to watch over and cheer or jeer all plebeian business being conducted there.
An opportunity for just such behaviour was not long in coming. Before the appointed day of voting, a series of public meetings was arranged for Tiberius to explain the land bill and allow for views to be expressed. When he mounted the rostra, the inflammatory nature of the bill became apparent in his very first action: he turned his back on the Senate and directed his proposal straight to the assembled plebs. This flew in the face of republican tradition. It was customary to consult the Senate and seek its approval on every piece of legislation before it was proposed. Yet Tiberius’s flouting of legislative custom could not have been detected from his utterly composed manner. He stood still, chose his words carefully and then proceeded to speak in an eloquent, courteous tone.