Gracchi Reforms (133-121 BC): Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus

The Gracchi reforms were a series of laws proposed between 133 and 122 BC by two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, who served as tribunes of the plebs in Rome. They tried to give land to poor citizens, feed the city and weaken the grip of the Senate’s leading families. Both were killed by political opponents, and their deaths are usually seen as the start of the century of crisis that ended the Roman Republic.

Background: land, soldiers and wealth

By the 2nd century BC Rome ruled Italy and much of the Mediterranean. Wars against Carthage, ending with the Third Punic War, and in Spain and the Greek East brought huge wealth to Rome’s elite. Much of it was invested in Italian land, worked increasingly by enslaved people captured in those wars.

A large share of Italian land was ager publicus, public land confiscated from defeated communities. In theory a law limited each holder to 500 iugera (roughly 125 hectares). In practice wealthy families occupied far more and treated it as their own property.

Ancient writers, above all Appian and Plutarch, describe small farmers losing their land while serving long campaigns abroad. Since Roman legionaries had to own property, fewer citizens qualified for service. Modern historians debate how severe this decline really was, but the Gracchi and their supporters clearly believed it was a crisis.

Tiberius Gracchus and the land law (133 BC)

Tiberius Gracchus came from the heart of the nobility. His father had been consul twice and his mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of Scipio Africanus. As tribune in 133 BC he proposed the lex Sempronia agraria, which enforced the old limit on public land, with an extra allowance for holders’ sons, and handed the surplus to poor citizens in small allotments that could not be sold.

A three-man commission was set up to carry out the law: Tiberius himself, his younger brother Gaius and his father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher. Many senators who held public land opposed the bill. They persuaded another tribune, Marcus Octavius, to veto it.

Tiberius then took an unprecedented step. He asked the plebeian assembly to remove Octavius from office, and it did. The law was passed, but opponents argued that deposing a tribune broke the sacred protection of the office.

That same year King Attalus III of Pergamon died and left his kingdom to Rome. Tiberius proposed using the royal treasure to fund the new farmers, intruding on the Senate’s traditional control of finance and foreign affairs.

The killing of Tiberius

To protect his law and himself, Tiberius stood for a second consecutive tribunate for 132 BC, which was highly unusual. His enemies claimed he wanted to make himself king. On election day the Senate met while crowds gathered on the Capitol.

The pontifex maximus (chief priest), Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, demanded action against Tiberius. When the consul refused, Nasica led senators and their followers to the Capitol, armed with clubs and pieces of furniture. Tiberius and around 300 supporters were beaten to death, and their bodies were thrown into the Tiber.

It was, Plutarch says, the first political conflict in Rome since the end of the kings to be settled by bloodshed. Yet the land commission was not abolished and kept working for several years.

Gaius Gracchus and the wider programme (123-122 BC)

Gaius Gracchus, about nine years younger, was elected tribune for 123 BC and again for 122 BC. He was a famous orator and his programme was far broader than his brother’s.

His main measures included:

• a grain law that sold a monthly ration of wheat to citizens at a fixed, subsidised price;
• renewal of the land law and the founding of new colonies, including one called Junonia on the site of destroyed Carthage;
• a law giving juries in the extortion court, which tried governors accused of plundering provinces, to the equites (wealthy non-senators) instead of senators;
• an arrangement for the taxes of the new province of Asia to be auctioned to companies of tax collectors in Rome;
• a programme of road building in Italy.

In 122 BC Gaius proposed extending full citizenship to Rome’s Latin allies and Latin rights to other Italians. The proposal was unpopular with ordinary Roman voters, who did not want to share their privileges. Another tribune, Marcus Livius Drusus, backed by the Senate, outbid Gaius with more generous but largely empty promises, and the citizenship bill failed.

The death of Gaius (121 BC)

Gaius failed to win a third tribunate. In 121 BC the new consul, Lucius Opimius, a firm opponent, began moves to repeal parts of his legislation. During a tense meeting a servant of the consul was killed by Gaius’s supporters.

The Senate responded with a decree urging the consuls to see that the state came to no harm, later called the senatus consultum ultimum (“final decree”). Opimius gathered armed men and Cretan archers and attacked Gaius and his ally Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, who had occupied the Aventine Hill.

Flaccus was killed. Gaius fled across the Tiber and, according to ancient accounts, had a slave named Philocrates kill him in the grove of the goddess Furrina. Plutarch reports that some 3,000 of his followers were killed in the fighting or executed afterwards. Opimius then restored the Temple of Concord in the Forum, a gesture many Romans saw as bitterly ironic.

Consequences

The agrarian commission did redistribute land. The census of Roman citizens rose from about 319,000 in 131 BC to about 395,000 in 125 BC, according to figures preserved in summaries of Livy, although historians disagree on whether the land law caused the increase.

Later laws undid much of the scheme. A law of 111 BC converted remaining holdings of public land into private property, which ended redistribution and allowed the poor allotments to be sold.

The political consequences were deeper. Opponents had twice used lethal force against tribunes, and the Senate had invented an emergency decree to justify it. The question of citizenship for the Italian allies, left unsolved, led to the Social War in 91 BC.

Legacy

Later Roman politicians who appealed to the popular assemblies against the Senate were called populares, and their opponents optimates. Both sides looked back to the Gracchi. Some writers praised them as champions of the people; Cicero often condemned them as dangerous rebels, while admiring their eloquence.

Their mother Cornelia became a model of Roman motherhood. In modern times the brothers were celebrated by French revolutionaries; the journalist François-Noël Babeuf took the name “Gracchus” Babeuf.

Timeline

• 133 BC: Tiberius Gracchus, tribune, passes his land law after the assembly removes the tribune Marcus Octavius.
• 133 BC: Attalus III of Pergamon bequeaths his kingdom to Rome.
• 133 BC, summer: Tiberius and about 300 supporters are killed on the Capitol.
• 131-125 BC: The census figures rise while the land commission is at work.
• 123 BC: Gaius Gracchus becomes tribune and passes his grain law and other measures.
• 122 BC: Gaius serves a second tribunate; his citizenship proposal fails.
• 121 BC: The Senate’s emergency decree leads to the deaths of Gaius, Fulvius Flaccus and thousands of followers.
• 111 BC: A new agrarian law makes public land holdings private property.

Why it matters

The Gracchi raised the great questions of the late Republic: who should own land, who should vote, who should serve in the army and whether the people or the Senate had the final word. The violence used to stop them became a precedent. Within a generation, men such as Marius and Sulla would bring armies, not clubs, into Roman politics, leading eventually to Sulla’s March on Rome in 88 BC.