While Rome was busy establishing dominance over the Mediterranean in the 200's BCE, there were problems on the homefront. Various enemies had abandoned fighting toe-to-toe with the legions in favor of hit-and-run ambushes and guerrilla warfare. However, Roman pride would not allow them to disband a legion until its campaign was finished, so many of the legionnaires were fighting for ten years or longer in places like Spain, Asia Minor, and North Africa. Meanwhile, back on the farm, their wives and children were tasked with caring for their estates, which often fell into ruin.
The wealthier land owners had plenty of money to buy or make slaves (by calling in debts), and they could leave their expansive vineyards and ranches in the hands of capable servants, paying them only food in return for tending their property. Soldiers at the lower end of the middle class who had smaller farms and no money to hire hands or purchase slaves would return from a long campaign to find their animals poached or rustled and their orchards gone to seed. Some tried to make the best of it, seeking work to earn money and reinvigorate their family farm, but work became very scarce with every new batch of conquered slaves that arrived from wherever there was a campaign. These men were unwittingly putting themselves out of work.
This economic crisis is one of the many factors in the Republic's ultimate death, but it is a significant one. The droves of people who later supported Julius Caesar and Augustus after him were the disenfranchised middle class whose farms had been plundered by greedy oligarchs who took advantage of their absence while they were defending Rome from the Barbarians. To my mind, it is the chief failing of the Republic's political structures that they didn't adequately address the needs of those they derisively referred to as “the mob.”
However, some within Rome's political elite tried to enact land and economic reforms before it became such a widespread problem. The Gracchi brothers were two such Patricians who attempted to reverse the injustice of losing one's home while fighting for the Republic. Their payment for these attempts was brutal death.
Tiberius Gracchus, born sometime between 168 and 163 BCE, and served as a military tribune in Spain. Plutarch tells us that while returning to Rome after a campaign, he began to notice the need for reform. He saw the huge tracts of land throughout Etruria (northern Italy) which were being tended mostly by foreign slaves, as well as the smaller farms which had gone into ruin. When he came to Rome itself, he saw several large mobs of unemployed and homeless men wandering the streets looking for work. He knew something had to be done, so when he was elected as Tribune of the People in 133 BCE, he went right to work campaigning for reform. In one of his fiery speeches, he said, "The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens, each has a place of repose and refuge. But the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy nothing but the air and light; without house or home they wander about with their wives and children."
This made him popular with the people, but very unpopular with the other Patrician families and Senators, who were all enjoying the benefits of the situation, paying meager sums of money to gobble up the small farms around them when they came to ruin while their owners were away at war. In retrospect, it was quite a nefarious scam that the Senate was running on the people; sending them to war for years so that they buy the land cheap, staff the huge farms with slaves which were captured during these same wars, and profit from the whole scheme. Thus, as they were benefiting so much from the system as it was, they were more than eager to douse this fire of reform.
Believing that the Senate would never pass his reforms, he planned on submitting them instead to the Plebeian Council, since they had some legislative power. The Senate learned of his plan and was deeply offended. In fact, some of the moderate Senators who may have supported these reforms were now firmly against them and against Tiberius himself. They somehow persuaded Marcus Octavius, another Tribune, to use his veto against Tiberius and make him a lame duck. Tempers ran red hot at the Council assembly, as it became clear that Octavius was acting as a tool of the wealthy. The people voted to depose him, and he vetoed them, which probably didn't help matters. Tiberius therefore ordered that Octavius be forcefully removed so they could have a proper vote. In a moment of horrible clarity, Tiberius realized that he had violated the law by using force against a Tribune, something which was very illegal and severely punished since the formation of the Council. So instead of moving forward with voting on his reforms, he moved to basically shut the entire city down until the Senate passed the bills themselves. Businesses weren't allowed to open, temples were closed, and all commerce ground to a halt until the Senate decided to approve his reforms, which they did, but used a parliamentary trick to give his newly-created agrarian commission only minimal funding.
Later that year, King Attalus III of Pergamum died without an heir, leaving his entire kingdom and vast fortune to Rome. Tiberius jumped at an opportunity to give his reforms teeth and claimed part of the inheritance for his commission. The Senate, who was constitutionally in charge of the treasury, saw this as a direct affront to their authority; a check without a balance. They also sought to prosecute him for his unlawful and unconstitutional expulsion of his fellow Tribune Octavius, and waited eagerly for his term to end.
Knowing that the end of his term would likely mean the end of his life, Tiberius ran for re-election as Tribune, making outlandish promises, including giving Roman citizenship to foreign allies. Neither side much liked that particular idea, since the poor were already competing with slaves and didn't want to share the rights of citizenship with a bunch of smelly Barbarians. Quintus Pompeius told the Senate that, since he was Tiberius' neighbor, he knew that the populist Tribune had received royal gifts from a Greek named Eudemus of Pergamum, who prophesied that he would one day be the king of Rome. This, coupled with the testimony of one of Tiberius' cousins who claimed that this Gracchi was amassing power for himself in a play to become King, led the Senators to do something that most of us today feel was a bit . . . drastic.
During the re-election vote, the well-groomed and cultured Patrician Senators followed the accusatory cousin down to where Tiberius was, beat him to death with their chairs and threw his body in the the river Tiber. About three hundred of his loyal followers tried to protect him and were also killed by the malevolent politicians.
Since they had now also violated the law against harming a Tribune, the Senators worked quickly to mollify the Plebeians, who were ready to take up arms against an upper class that was entrenched within the status quo. They agreed to fund the land reform commission, and this satisfied the mob for the moment. At least, until Tiberius' younger brother Gaius came upon the political scene ten years later.
Pax vobiscum
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