By the middle of the second century BCE, Rome had established its dominance over the majority of the Mediterranean, either through direct conquest or treaty. This period was a prosperous one, although not equally so for all roman citizens. Predictably, the majority of wealth and power in the Republic was in the possession of a select group of elites. This senatorial oligarchy controlled virtually all the economic production of the state through their vast landholdings, while simultaneously controlling its political operations. Yet, there were many, even among the elite, who were critical of the situation at Rome. Foremost among these antagonists were the Gracchi brothers. To the ruling oligarchy, the laws proposed by each of the Gracchi were seen as encroaching on or even subverting their powers. During his tribuneship in 133, Tiberius propsed and passed legislation that directly opposed the authority of the Senate. While he was hardly a democrat, Tiberius believed that the Republic could only survive and progress if power were apportioned otherwise than it was at Rome. The Senate obstructed the improvement of the Republic, and thus it had to be circumvented. Ten years later, his younger brother Gaius continued along a similar ideology, although in several respects he surpassed his older brother’s contention to senatorial authority. Yet, he did not wish to obliterate oligarchical rule through democratic revolution; he merely wished to broaden it. Ultimately, the Roman elite maintained its supremacy in the Republic, and the Gracchi and their followers were killed. Indeed, the issuance of the senatus consultum ultimum by the Senate in order to deal with Gaius forcibly demonstrated its authority.
The expansion of the empire created many opportunities for the Roman elite to amass power and wealth. Military conquest itself proved to be highly profitable: plunder from war added greatly to the coffers of the generals and other senators, while hardly being noticed by the soldiers themselves. Those who supplied the armies also benefitted greatly by war. Additionally, the land conquered by Rome within Italy was largely in the hands of the wealthy. Many peasants in Italy sold their plots of land to the rich, either because they were forced or less likely because they wanted the money to climb the social hierarchy themselves. Increasingly prevalent, however, was the appropriation and exploitation of ager publicus—the public land in Italy. While Roman law prohibited ownership of more than 500 iugera of ager publicus, the law was rarely adhered to. While large estates, or latifundia, began to become evermore conspicuous in rural areas, the majority of land held by the elite was to be found in many smaller plantations. Indeed, such monopolization of land was a virtual necessity as the wealth gained by the aristocracy during the wars had to be spent in an honourable trade such as property ownership; senators themselves were barred from trade and thus maintained their prestige through their landholdings. At the same time however, these estates were worked by the large number of slaves captured during Rome’s conquests. Increasingly, therefore, poor citizens, already having been evicted from their land, found themselves lacking employment as well. They found no recourse in the army, however, as minimum property requirements to enter the legions remained in place. Even if they met the requirements many plebeians did not wish to enter into military service as there was little opportunity to gain from the experience. Previously, veteran soldiers received plots of land upon retirement, yet by the mid-Republic, most of the land in which such colonies could be created was in the hands of the elite. Consequently, recruitment declined and the army suffered due to the lack of soldiers. It can be seen that the gap between the rich and the poor was increasing, and indeed, the failure of the latter was a direct consequence of the success of the former. By 133 the condition of the plebians seemed desperate.
It was from this dire economic climate for the plebeians that the Gracchi brothers emerged as tribunes, Tiberius in 133 and Gaius in 123-2. The laws proposed by both Tiberius and Gaius would have indeed ameliorated the situation of the poor and middle-class, and at the same time angered many in the aristocracy. The most potentially damaging to the Senate and to wealthy equites was the lex agraria, proposed by Tiberius in 133. The law was a measure to redistribute ager publicus in order to enfranchise the dispossessed urban poor and rehabilitate them “both as farmers and soldiers”. Landowners who possessed more than 500 iugera of ager publicus were to relinquish the excess land. Yet, while ager publicus was supposed to indeed be public, its possession was assumed “to be perpetual and hereditary”. A great deal of capital had been invested in these lands: households, industries, and lodgings for slaves were built. Obviously, landlords did not therefore wish to lose this land and simultaneously a portion of their wealth. The empowerment of the country poor would have affected the patron-client relationship however. In addition to slaves, many wealthy landlords employed indebted peasants, who were their clients, on their estates. Indeed, it was important that these clients remain indebted to the wealthy, as their vote was important in the tribal assembly. While many of the registered citizens of the country did not vote on a regular basis, the importance of their support for their patrons is evidenced simply in the constitution of the tribal assembly: thirty-one rural and four urban tribes. Thus, while the urban poor may have voted for legislation removing power from the elite, the numerical dominance of the rural tribes would have ensured the dominance of the aristocracy. If they were to acquire land themselves through the lex agraria, they would be freed from dependence on their patrons for survival, and consequently would vote according to the interests of their own socio-economic class.
Yet, while this law would have affected the elite, it was not the content of the law but rather the means by which it was passed with directly threatened senatorial authority. The law itself was not new; C. Laelius, consul in 140, had proposed a similar law to ameliorate recruitment in the legions but withdrew the measure, according to Plutarch, after protests by the “influential”. The means of passing the law were novel however, and greatly agitated the oligarchy. Disregarding legislative traditions, Tiberius circumvented senatorial consultation and advanced the lex agraria before the concilium plebis. This action itself was not entirely revolutionary however, and Tiberius himself viewed it as traditional. Indeed, through the potestas tribuni plebis he had the power to do so, and in a sense he was restoring the office to its traditional function as protector of the plebeians. More significantly however, he most conspicuously threatened the authority of the ruling oligarchy when he eliminated their means of legal recourse against the lex agraria. By unseating M. Octavius, the only tribune who had vetoed his motion, Tiberius explicitly demonstrated his contention with oligarchical rule; many authors stress the ‘democratic’ nature of Tiberius’s argument for the deposition of Octavius. The bill was passed into law and a council (triumviri agris dividendis adsignandis) was established to oversee the details of land distribution and settlement. Thus, the Senate was forced to exhibit its financial power by withholding funds from Tiberius’s council. Yet, when Tiberius appropriated the inheritance of Attalus III of Pergamum to fund the council, the Senate became obstinate. The legacy was bequeathed to the Roman state, and therefore Tiberius interpreted the funds as being under his jurisdiction as tribune. He wished the money to be given to the plebs along with their section of ager publicus in order for them to establish small farms and achieve a degree of economic independence. Additionally, the establishment of the new colony would be administered by the Assembly. Consequently, the Senate viewed Tiberius not only as an obstacle to its authority—he was intervening in its main realms of power—but he was also threatening to become too powerful, perhaps even a tyrant. If he were to supervise the establishment of colonies, he would gain numerous clients. Such a possibility was unthinkable to the Senate, and Tiberius and his followers were killed to maintain command by the ruling elite.
Shortly after obtaining the tribuneship in 123, Gaius proved that he was as equally opposed to oligarchical control of the state as his brother had been. He did not wish power to be maintained solely in the hands of the traditional elite, and consequently he proposed laws which pandered to the equites, the Italian non-citizens, the impoverished citizens, and the provincials. He re-proposed an agrarian law, nearly identical to Tiberius’s earlier measure; he also provided for the poor with the lex frumentaria, a measure to provide cheap grain for the destitute in Rome. Additionally, he proposed a lex de abactis which would have given further sovereignty to the Assembly and curbed the power of the Senate. The sovereignty of the people was also evidenced by the lex de capite civis romani, which held that only courts appointed by the people could inflict capitol punishment, a right which was up to then had been held by the consuls. Moreover, Gaius was passing laws which directly affected the behaviour and authority of the Senate, and thus it became increasingly hostile toward him. One of these laws controlled the assignment of provinces, a device frequently used to reward or punish magistrates. He appealed to the equites by giving them jurisdiction over the publicani, who were their peers, in extortion trials; by this law, governors lost control over taxation in their provinces. This law in particular was of great consequence to senators, as it “fundamentally altered the balance of power between [them] and knights [equites]”. Thereafter, the equites were bound to Gaius and offered him their support; indeed, perhaps Gaius wanted to elevate many of the equestrians to senatorial status in order to establish support therein. Most controversial, however, was the proposal to grant citizenship to all Italians. This measure was held in equal contempt by the Senate and nobility, who feared that Italian franchise would upset the balance of “clientage and electoral corruption”, and by the plebeians, who did not wish to extend the privileges of Roman citizenship to “outsiders”. The oligarchy also feared that the newly-franchised citizens would become clients of Gaius, and therefore support his more revolutionary measures. Consequently, he failed to be re-elected for his third tribuneship, and became once again a private citizen. Similarly to his brother Tiberius, however, throughout his tribuneship Gaius continually threatened to become overly powerful and dominate Rome. Once again the Senate and consuls could not remain inert, and in 121 the consul L. Opimius persuaded the Senate to rule Gaius and his supporters as traitors and issue the senatus consultum ultimum, which authorized their deaths.
Rome by the time of the Gracchi was ruled by a senatorial elite; in many respects the Gracchi were a threat to this hegemony. Yet, it must be noted that neither Tiberius nor Gaius wanted to revolutionize the government of Rome. They merely wanted to diversify and enlarge the oligarchy, allowing equites into the tightly controlled circle of governmental authority. That ruling class greatly feared the brothers, not so much because of the equites but instead because it seemed to them that both Tiberius and Gaius were setting themselves up for one-man rule of Rome, of tyranny in a sense. Indeed, they believed that the Gracchi were in fact doing harm to the state, and thus their countermeasures—notably the senatus consultum ultimum—seemed justified. Each of them pronounced their popular focus however, and thereafter the term populares was applied to politicians who followed the same path. There fates of the Gracchi cast a more ominous shadow on popular measures, as the bloodshed in 133 and 121 had proven the danger inherent in opposing the Senate.
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