Social, Political, and Economic Structures of Imperial Rome 83use of political influence. His motives included both
moral outrage and personal ambition; his most persua-
sive argument was practical. From the beginning of the
republic, land ownership was a prerequisite for military
service. An absolute decline in the number of free citi-
zens caused by the wars, coupled with a loss of prop-
erty by thousands of others, threatened the security of
the state by shrinking its base of recruitment. Only by
restoring land to Roman citizens could the
legions be preserved.
A number of powerful senators agreed. The dislo-
cations of the past century threatened to undermine
recruitment as well as the moral fiber of society. More-
over, Tiberius tried to couch the proposal in terms ac-
ceptable to the landowners. Up to one thousand iugera
(about six hundred acres) of land per family could be ex-
cluded from the distribution even if it had been taken il-
legally, and only Romans would receive the proceeds of
the confiscations. This was not enough. Some senators
balked at giving up land held by their families for three
or four generations. They were backed by a tremendous
outcry from the Italian allies. Wealthy Italians, too, had
received public lands. They would be forced to surren-
der them, not to other Italians, but to Romans. To them,
the reform was clearly discriminatory.
Faced with an uncertain outcome in the Senate,
Tiberius decided to bypass it altogether. He went to the
plebeian assembly, which rapidly authorized the neces-
sary legislation. When another tribune vetoed the bill,
he convinced the plebeians to vote the man out of of-
fice. Ignoring the Senate was bad politics, but deposing
a tribune was unconstitutional. Then, to make matters
worse, Tiberius left himself open to charges of corrup-
tion by entrusting the redistribution of lands to a com-
mittee composed of himself, his brother Gaius, and his
father-in-law.
The Senate began to close ranks against Tiberius.
While allowing the committee to proceed with its
work, the senators refused to appropriate money for its
support. This was critical, because land reform proved
more difficult than Tiberius had expected. Establishing
clear title to many public lands was nearly impossible,
and virtually every decision aroused protest. Desperate
for funds, he asked that revenues from the newly ac-
quired kingdom of Pergamum be devoted to the task.
The Senate saw this as an assault on its traditional dom-
inance in the areas of finance and provincial policy. In
its view, Tiberius and his reforms had become a threat
to the constitution.
Knowing that, if he left the tribuneship, he would
lose judicial immunity and be charged with treason by
his enemies, Tiberius decided to run for a second term.
This, too, was unprecedented, if not unconstitutional. A
group of senators claimed that he was trying to estab-
lish himself as a tyrant and instigated riots in which
they and their clients killed Tiberius and three hundred
of his followers. It was the first outbreak of civil vio-
lence in the history of the Roman republic, but it would
not be the last. The divisions in Roman society were
too great to be resolved without constitutional change,
and ambitious politicians had learned from Tiberius
Gracchus that they could ride to power on the shoul-
ders of the multitude. Such people were called populares.
Their opponents, who supported the traditional role of
the Senate, were known as optimates.
Among the populareswas Gaius Gracchus, the
younger brother of Tiberius. When elected tribune in
123 B.C. he prepared to implement reforms more far-
reaching than those favored by his brother (see docu-
ment 5.2). Gaius realized that the agrarian problem was
only one of many created by the transformation of
Roman society. First he reenacted his brother’s agrarian
law, which had been repealed in 129 B.C. Then, know-
ing that not everyone could receive land in Italy, he
guaranteed annual grain rations to every poor Roman at
a fixed price and tried to set up overseas colonies for
those willing to emigrate in return for land. The first of
the new settlements was to be established on the site of
Carthage.
To prevent the reversal of these policies by the
Senate, he allied himself with the equestrians to weaken
its power. The assemblies were given the sole right to
establish capital courts, and he replaced senators with
equestrians as jurors in cases of extortion. A more im-
portant attack on senatorial prerogatives came in the
area of provincial administration. The Senate had for
years influenced the behavior of consuls by waiting un-
til after their election to designate which provinces
they would control. By forcing them to make their ap-
pointments before the election, Gaius deprived the sen-
ators of an important source of political leverage. From
the senatorial point of view this was even worse than
another new policy by which he allowed syndicates of
rich equestrians or publicani(the biblical publicans) to
bid at auction for the right to collect provincial taxes.
In later years this practice became a fertile source of
corruption.
The issue of whether a tribune could succeed him-
self had apparently been resolved since Tiberius Grac-
chus’s death, and Gaius was reelected tribune in 122
B.C. Having addressed the grievances of the poor and
satisfied the equestrians in his first term, he turned to
the problem of the Italian allies, who remained angry
over agrarian reform and a host of other slights. His