From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68

by H. H. Scullard

  Tiberius, who became an augur at the age of ten, served with distinction under his brother-in-law Aemilianus at the siege of Carthage (146) and married Claudia, daughter of the Princeps Senatus, Appius Claudius Pulcher. His quaestorship in 137, when he served under Hostilius Mancinus in Spain, had a twofold importance. It was while he was travelling through Etruria on his way to Spain that, seeing the large estates worked by slaves and noting the absence of free peasants, he realized the need for reform. After he had reached Spain he extricated a Roman army from disaster. When Mancinus’ troops were cut off by the enemy near Numantia, the Spaniards allowed them to depart under terms for the fulfilment of which Tiberius made himself responsible since they trusted him for his father’s sake. The Senate, however, later shamefully repudiated the treaty and made a scapegoat of Mancinus who was handed over to the Spaniards. His officers, including Tiberius, nearly suffered the same fate; though Tiberius escaped by the skin of his teeth, he may well have been embittered by this treatment. Even if the tradition that he turned demagogue because of the odium arising from this episode derives from the propaganda of his political opponents, at very least he will not have been encouraged to expect honourable conduct from the Senate in the future, while the fact that he had saved a Roman army in Spain will have enhanced his popularity.

  It is difficult to be sure which were the dominant motives that turned him into a reformer. Knowledge of Greek political thought and practice, the effect of the Spanish episode, the contemporary slave-rising in Sicily, concern at the changing economic conditions with their impact on peasant husbandry and army recruiting, the consequent growth of unemployment at Rome, all these factors may have combined to urge a generous-hearted man to risk his own political future in an attempt to re-establish the peasants on small-holdings once again.7 But he did not stand alone at first: his was not a voice crying in the wilderness, but one backed by a powerful group in the Senate. His father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher, who had been consul (143 B.C.) and censor (probably 136) was Princeps Senatus (i.e. his name now headed the senatorial roll). With them were linked by marriage two other influential men: P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, a wealthy jurist and scholar (later to be consul in 131 and Pontifex Maximus), had married Pulcher’s sister, Clodia, and their daughter Licinia married Gaius Gracchus. Crassus’ brother P. Mucius Scaevola, one of the greatest jurists of the day, was holding the consulship in 133, the year of Tiberius’ tribunate. Other outstanding supporters included M. Fulvius Flaccus (later consul in 125), C. Papirius Carbo (consul in 120) and C. Porcius Cato (consul, 114). With relations and friends of this weight behind him, Tiberius might at least hope for a fair hearing for his proposals, while even the Scipionic group, though politically hostile, could scarcely be expected to show unreserved opposition in view of Laelius’ earlier attempt at land reform.8

  3. THE LAND-BILL OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS

  Early in his tribunate Tiberius proposed a lex agraria to make land available for distribution in allotments. Everyone holding more ager publicus than the legal limit of 500 iugera (c. 300 acres) must give up the surplus, but should retain the 500 iugera (and possibly also 250 iugera for each son, up to a maximum of 1000 iugera) which should become the possessor’s in perpetuity and should not be subject to rent (vectigal); probably no further compensation was offered. The fertile ager Campanus was not included in the scheme. The land so reclaimed by the State was to be distributed to Roman citizens in small allotments, with perhaps a maximum size of 30 iugera; the new holders were not allowed to alienate them and were to pay a small rent.9

  As a short-term scheme the bill had great advantages. There could be no objection on the legal score to this resumption of land settlement: Tiberius’ friend, the jurist Scaevola, would have seen to that. It would alleviate much distress, though if the terms of army-recruitment remained unaltered and overseas wars continued, it would scarcely prove a permanent solution to the problem as a whole. The existing occupiers of the public land had cause for both satisfaction and annoyance. Those who occupied a small amount could henceforth enjoy security of tenure, but those who had to surrender many acres had some reason to complain: for years, or even generations, they had regarded the land as their own, putting capital into it, building their homes and family tombs on it, using it as dowries for their daughters, perhaps mortgaging it. The majority of the large landowners, who had most to lose by the proposal, were of course senators, but Tiberius had friends in the Senate and if he had followed the normal procedure of bringing his bill to the Senate before taking it to the People, there is no justification for believing that it would not have been given a fair hearing. Vested interests would naturally have biased many senators, but others might have been willing to consider the good of the community first. Gracchus, however, decided to follow a hundred years old precedent, that of C. Flaminius who had carried a land-bill without consulting the Senate: he took his measure straight to the Popular Assembly. His motives are obscure: perhaps he thought that it might get bogged down in prolonged and futile discussion in the Senate, and so decided that, as he had only one year in which to act, shock-tactics would be better. But his impatience proved unwise. When with eloquent appeals he brought his bill to the Concilium Plebis, it was unexpectedly vetoed in the interests of the Senate by a fellow-tribune, M. Octavius, whom Gracchus may hitherto have considered as a friend. The Senate was unwilling to acquiesce in his blatant disregard of its traditional rights.

  Undeterred, Tiberius pressed on. In his annoyance he may have withdrawn the concession that the 500 iugera retained by the possessores should become their private property and proposed that this should remain ager publicus, though still rent-free. He repeatedly urged Octavius to withdraw his veto; he may have tried to delay the transaction of public business until his bill was passed, even if he did not formally declare a iustitium; he was even persuaded to submit the question to the Senate for consideration at last, but this was useless, since his conduct had alienated much of the sympathy that he had enjoyed there.10 Finally he summoned the People and after further vain appeals to Octavius to retract, he took a step of the utmost gravity: he proposed the formal deposition of Octavius from the tribunate (see p. 25 f.). The people voted the deposition, elected another tribune in his place and carried Tiberius’ agrarian bill.11

  The bill was passed but another hurdle remained: to secure its effective working. For this a commission independent of the Senate would be desirable, Tiberius accordingly proposed and the People established a triumviral agrarian commission, with judicial powers to settle disputes (triumviri agris iudicandis adsignandis), members probably being eligible for annual re-election.12 The men chosen were a family group: Tiberius, his younger brother Gaius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher. The commission soon started work, but they needed money to help the settlers to stock their allotments, and public finance was controlled by the Senate which refused help and insulted Tiberius by offering him an allowance of about two shillings a day for his expenses. At this difficult moment news arrived that Attalus, king of Pergamum, had died and had made the Roman People his heir. Tiberius thereupon introduced a bill, or threatened to do so, to authorize the use of some of this wealth for his settlers, and said that he would bring the question of settling Attalus’ kingdom before the People.13 This was going too far: until now the Senate’s control of finance and foreign affairs had been unchallenged, but Tiberius was interfering in both spheres. His action must have destroyed any sympathy that still remained for him in the Senate: his reliance on the People will have increased senatorial fears of his aims. He was reproved by Q. Metellus, and denounced by T. Annius, but he had got the funds for his settlers.

  In the course of the summer the tribunician elections for the next year drew near, and Tiberius decided to stand for a second tribunate: his motive may have been to remain in office in order to safeguard the working of his agrarian bill, but his intention must have suggested to his opponents a dangerous personal ambition. Re-election was not illeg
al, but the last important case belonged to a period two hundred years earlier when the function of the tribunate was very different.14 As harvest time prevented some country-voters from coming to Rome, Tiberius may have broadened his programme to appeal to more of the city population.15 At first a dispute over which tribune should preside at the elections led to an adjournment. Next day Tiberius and his supporters gathered on the Capitol, where the Assembly met; during a discussion about his eligibility to stand a second time, he gave some signal which perhaps accidentally led to a brawl: the meeting broke up and the other tribunes fled. In the Senate, which met in the Temple of Fides, P. Mucius Scaevola was asked to save the State and destroy the tyrant, to which he replied that he would neither act illegally nor recognize any illegal act by the People. This was no answer for the Pontifex Maximus, P. Scipio Nasica, who resorted to force. Leading out those senators who would follow him, and joined on the way by other opponents of Gracchus, he rushed to the assembly where they clubbed and stoned to death three hundred Gracchans. Tiberius himself was struck down near the door of the Temple of Juppiter Capitolinus, close by the statues of the Kings. All the bodies were thrown into the Tiber by night. After nearly four hundred years blood had again been shed in Rome in civil strife.16

  4. THE IMPORTANCE OF GRACCHUS’ ATTEMPT

  This unjustified recourse to force by part of the Senate was the result of much provocation by Tiberius. He had disregarded their customary prior right of discussing legislation, and he had interfered in finance and foreign affairs which he claimed should be handled by the People.16a Apart from any slight to their order, many senators much have had genuine misgivings about such conduct. True the Roman People was theoretically sovereign, but the Roman People could not be equated with the urban mob that thronged the assembly in Rome. This was becoming increasingly irresponsible and unrepresentative of the needs of the people as a whole. Further, since it clearly lacked the knowledge or skill to take over from the Senate the transacting of the complicated business of finance and foreign relations, Tiberius was unwise to encourage it to intervene on specific points. In thus transgressing traditional observance, he had not broken the law, but he had shown undue hastiness and folly.

  His attitude to the tribunate was even more disquieting. Neither the deposition of Octavius nor his own attempt at re-election may have been formally illegal, but these acts must have suggested to the prudent some possibilities which may have escaped the consideration of the over-zealous reformer. The original function of the tribunes had been to protect the people against patrician domination, but this need had long passed and they had become useful agents for the nobility, often using their veto to check the popular assemblies. In urging the People to depose Octavius while he was still in office, on the ground perhaps that he was blocking the People’s wishes, Tiberius was threatening to turn the tribunes into agents of the People’s will, whereas constitutionally legislation could only result when magistrates co-operated with the People. To turn the tribunes into a mouthpiece of the People and to make their veto capable of being swept aside, would be to give the Concilium Plebis greater responsibility than it could properly wield. When, in addition, Tiberius sought reelection, the possibility of prolonged tribunates would open the way to demagogy: the result would not be democracy on the Athenian pattern, but mob-rule or dictatorship. Tiberius may not have been aware of the latent implications of his actions, but he does seem to have sought sufficient personal leadership in the interests of his land reform scheme, to render plausible, if not true, the charge of his opponents that he claimed that ‘interempto senatu omnia per plebem agi debere’. To Rome’s great loss the plebs were not capable of responding adequately to such a call. Instead, the Senate responded with force and thus set in motion the series of civil wars in which the Republic perished.

  5. THE LAND COMMISSION, SCIPIO AEMILIANUS AND THE ALLIES

  The Senate pressed home its advantage: it set up a court under the consul of 132, P. Popillius Laenas17 and his more attractive colleague P. Rupilius, to punish more of Gracchus’ surviving supporters. Many were condemned and executed: those that escaped were banished without trial. Of Tiberius’ Greek friends Diophanes was killed and Blossius fled to join Aristonicus’ revolt in Asia (p. 33). Despite this display of strength the Senate decided that, since Nasica’s continued presence in Rome would remind men of his violation of the sacrosanctity of a tribune, he was better out of sight: he was therefore sent on a commission to Asia, where he soon died. The Senate, however, did not interfere with the working of the agrarian commission, a fact that demonstrates that its objection to Tiberius’ bill was much weaker than its dislike of his methods. Tiberius’ place on the commission was taken by Gaius Gracchus’ father-in-law, P. Licinius Crassus, but as consul in 131 Crassus secured by intrigue a command in Asia, where he died in 130; Ap. Claudius, the other triumvir, also died. Their places were filled by M. Fulvius Flaccus and C. Papirius Carbo, who, together with Gaius Gracchus, remained in office until 122. As tribune in 131 (or 130) Carbo carried a measure to extend secret ballot (cf. p. 20) to legislative assemblies of the People and proposed one to legalize re-election to the tribunate. Scipio Aemilianus, who was back from Spain after sacking Numantia in 133, helped to defeat the proposal, though a similar measure possibly was carried soon after his death in 129.18 The turbulence of the times was reflected during the censorship of 131, when this office was held by two plebeians for the first time in history; a disgruntled tribune tried to push the censor Q. Metellus Macedonicus over the Tarpeian Rock, from which condemned criminals were hurled. More memorable perhaps was Metellus’ speech ‘de prole augenda’, an appeal to enforce marriage and thus increase the birth-rate; he was clearly conscious that Rome’s economic difficulties required reform, though his solution was on different lines from that of Gracchus.

  Meantime the commissioners were hard at work, asserting the State’s claim to the extra ager publicus and distributing it to new settlers.19 But difficulties arose, especially where the interests of the Latin and Italian allies were involved. Already exasperated by Rome’s recent treatment of them, those allies who had been allowed to occupy ager publicus in the past would not now enjoy having to surrender any surplus they held in order to provide allotments for the unemployed from Rome, while disputes may have arisen with the commissioners over the title to borderland where land originally taken from the ally by Rome ran alongside land retained by the ally.20 To air their grievances they sought the help in Rome of Scipio Aemilianus who as a soldier knew the true value of the allied contribution to Roman life. In 129 their new patron persuaded the Senate to warn the commissioners not to deal with disputes about land held by the allies; such cases should be transferred to the consul Tuditanus, who conveniently went off to Illyricum.21 But the distribution of land went on: the census figures of 125 B.C. (about 395,000) were some 75,000 higher than those of 131 B.C., and this increase almost certainly reflects the progress of land settlement.22

  Scipio’s championship of the allies increased his unpopularity with the urban mob who had already disapproved of his opposition to Carbo’s bill. One morning, when he was due to make a speech on the Italian question, he was found dead. His death remained an unsolved mystery. Although various people were blamed at the time or later (including Flaccus, C. Gracchus, Carbo, and even Sempronia or Cornelia), murder is not very likely; suicide is possible, but most probably he died a natural death (a heart-attack?).23 Rome thus lost an upright soldier, who had exercised a moderating influence on her political and cultural life.

  Many of the allies, now without their patron, began to come to Rome to agitate, but they met with a sharp rebuff: a tribune named Iunius Pennus (126) passed a law, despite the opposition of C. Gracchus, to prevent non-citizens settling in Rome and to expel those that had done so.24 But the land commissioner Fulvius Flaccus won the consulship of 125 and tried to settle the whole Italian question in a most statesmanlike manner: he proposed that all the allies should receive Roman citizenship if t
hey wished, or alternatively those who wanted should remain independent states and receive the right of appeal against Roman magistrates. If the Romans had accepted this generous and prudent proposal they would have solved a problem which embittered political life for the next generation and led to a terrible and ‘unnecessary’ war. But the Senate was too conservative: it responded to a timely appeal from Massilia for help against the Salluvii by assigning Gaul as a province to Flaccus, who was thus compelled to abandon his proposal.25

  The allies were thwarted – all but the Latin colony of Fregellae in the Liris valley (modern Arce, not far from Monte Cassino). This hill-town, hitherto an outstandingly loyal ally, revolted. The attempt, unless based on a lively hope that its lead would be followed by others, was suicidal, but it demonstrates, as does nothing else, the bitterness felt towards Rome even by her old friends. Rome reacted sharply. Fregellae was besieged and then captured through internal treachery; the city was destroyed and the inhabitants were moved down to the plain where a colony was established at Fabrateria.26 Thus a Social War was averted for another thirty-five years and the Senate had rounded a dangerous corner, just as internally it had survived the pressure of Tiberius and Flaccus. But a more powerful challenge was at hand.