First published in 1979, David Stockton’s The Gracchi is a scholarly, balanced and insightful analysis of the two Gracchi brothers, whose eventful — indeed revolutionary — tribunates set the course for the final Roman Revolution of Julius Caesar nearly a century later. Stockton’s book was published the same year as another significant work on the elder Gracchi, Alvin H. Bernstein’s Tiberius Gracchus: Tradition and Apostasy, and is in striking agreement with Bernstein on most key points of argument.
By 133 BCE, the Roman Republic was seriously ill. The Hannibalic Wars left a legacy of devastation and disruption. Long and ongoing campaigns, especially that in Spain, drained manpower and resources. The expanding military commitments of the Republic relied on an outdated militia system when a professional, standing army was needed. The elite derived huge fortunes from the foreign campaigns, leading to an influx of private wealth, the only safe investment of which was real estate, and of slaves, who increasingly were put to use working on the latifundia, the large agricultural estates acquired by the rich. Harsh debt laws and obstacles to obtaining legal redress against the wealthy alienated those on the bottom of the economic pyramid who were pushed off their land. Moreover, the number of those eligible for military service dropped because so many small family plots were lost to the new imperial barons, meaning that those farmers who still held on had a greater chance of being called up and forced to server longer. Finally, Rome had a political system designed for a city state, not a nation state, and a political capital increasingly filled with slaves and non-Romans, and a ruling class not predisposed to address these endemic problems that weighed on the military, economic and social fortunes of the state.
Into this breach stepped Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and his plan to rectify the unsustainable situation in the Republic, the lex agraria. “It provided for the election of a public commission of three men whose duty it would be to conduct a thorough investigation stretching over a number of years in order to determine where holdings existed which exceeded the legally permitted limits. Anyone found to be in breach of the rules, however, was not to be charged with the offence and punished, but simply required to surrender any excess holdings. Indeed, the pill was sweetened by granting to such individuals a secure legal title to the 500 iugera which they were permitted to retain, together with further blocks of 250 iugera for any children they had…The excess holdings thus recovered the agrarian commissioners were to distribute for settlement by small farmers.”
Stockton concludes that military manpower was the driving issue behind the law’s development, but also heavily influenced by the economic dislocation caused the disappearance of the small Roman landholder and accelerated by the personal ambition and methods of Tiberius Gracchus. He says that to take the step that Marius later did to end the land requirement for military service would have been politically impossible in 133 BCE. And he writes that Gracchus and his supporters knew that the proposed law was no panacea for the ills facing Rome, nor were they blind to the fierce and powerful political reaction it was sure to arouse. Likewise, opponents of the law had to realize that a serious problem confronted the Republic and their opposition to the law would be unpopular in some quarters.
In the end, Stockton argues that the tribunate of 133 BCE was revolutionary because of the personal actions and reaction of Tiberius Gracchus, rather than the law itself, which was only revolutionary in the sense that, for the first time, the Roman state sought to take land from citizens, rather than enemies. It was his means, rather than his ends, that ignited the conflagration, Stockton argues. Many aspects of the crisis were unusual — the law itself; the deposition of Octavius, the tribune who attempted to block the law; circumventing the Senate and taking the law straight to the people; appointing himself to the land commission — but not completely against precedent and certainly not illegal. Tiberius Gracchus’ other major misjudgment, Stockton argues, was to run for immediate re-election, ostensibly out of fear of being prosecuted once he was out of office, which only made him look more threatening and revolutionary to the reigning elites.
In many way, Tiberius’ younger brother, Gaius, was more revolutionary and hostile to the old Roman elite. On the one hand, he sought two major changes to his brother’s lex agraria: it included public land outside of Italy and it included colonial grants rather than just individual grants (i.e. veritone). However, it was Gaius’ lex de soccii, a proposal that never became law but that caused a political uproar in Rome and ultimately led to his violent death. It called for citizenship for the Latins and the old privileges of the Latins for the Italians (i.e. a vote in a single tribe). A final point was that the votes of the centuries were to be called at random. In the past, it started with the richest and then went downward until the necessary 18 were reached, at which point the voting was stopped. Thus, a random calling of the centuries would have a dramatic leveling effect.
As far as why the citizenship issue engendered so much hostility, Stockton suggests the answer that Bernstein claims to have inspired resistance to Tiberius’ land proposal: a massive shift in the political balance of power because of all the new voting clientelae. He cites competition for offices and the general diluting of the specialness of the citizenship as explanation as well. It struck me as analogous to poor southern whites during the civil rights era: they didn’t have much, but at least, in their eyes, they weren’t on the bottom wrung of society. In the end, the Senate was willing to make major concessions, so long as Gaius was taken out — and Gaius’ political base, particularly the equites, proved surprisingly flexible in their loyalty. That is, they were willing to abandon Gaius if the Senate guaranteed for them the rights he won for them.
The Gracchi is dense and academic but essential reading for the serious student of the Roman Republic.
What's Tim Reading Now? 
Leave a comment