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, tribune 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.