The Ghost of Tarquinius, 133

For centuries, the ager publicus (‘‘public land’’) of the Roman People had been available to private users, whether Roman citizens or allies, for a fee payable to the state. Marginal farmers relied on it to make ends meet (their own plots often being insufficient); large-scale operators used it to round out scattered possessions or increase grazing pasture, often buying - or pushing - small neighbors off the public land they occupied (App. B Civ. 1.7-8; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8.1-4).2

On December 10, 134, Tiberius Gracchus, barely 30, took office as tribune of the plebs. By the first days of 133, he introduced a lex agraria (‘ ‘land law’’) reestablishing an earlier limit, long ignored, of 500 iugera (about 310 acres or 125 ha.) of ager publicus that could be occupied and farmed by any one person. Up to those limits, the law granted

Permanent possession (though not ownership), free of rent, to all current holders of ager publicus. The Roman state would reclaim all public land in excess of the legal limit, to distribute it in family-size plots among the landless poor. These plots, however, remained public land; their holders were barred from selling them, becoming thus permanent tenants of the state, secure from being bought out or displaced (App. B Civ. 9-11).3 Nothing in the law affected private property.

The immediate beneficiaries would be the rural (plebs rustica) as well as some of the urban poor (plebs urbana) - those willing to take up farming. But in turn, the res publica would benefit. The only realistic shield from destitution was secure possession of land sufficient for subsistence farming.4 The unchecked growth of a landless proletariat, both in the country and the City, was bound to create unrest, and dissatisfaction with established government. The nobles could ill afford that. Here was no revolutionary proposal: in boosting the numbers of small farmers (a conservative lot in virtually any society), the law would forestall social, hence eventually, political instability. The winner would be the ruling elite, the nobles - as a group. But individually, they would also be the losers; for the law required sacrifice of them. Most senators, whatever the size of their privately owned land, held ager publicus beyond the limit set in Tiberius’ bill, and the bulk of what was to be redistributed would have to come from them. If that caused pain to those who had presided over Tiberius’ disgrace in the Numantine affair, so much the better.

With Scipio Aemilianus gone to Spain to crush Numantia, Tiberius seized the opportunity. He had substantial backing in the Senate: his father-in-law, the current Appius Claudius, consul in 143 and princeps senatus (the man to speak first in the Senate) - a bitter rival of Scipio Aemilianus; also P. Mucius Scaevola, consul now, and his brother, P. Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, the leading jurists of their time: both were involved in drafting the bill.5 Yet he could not count on a majority, and an outright rejection in the Senate would doom his proposal. Hence he brought it directly before the plebeian assembly (Plut. Ti. Gracch. 9-20; App. B Civ. 9-17).6 Bypassing the Senate was neither illegal nor, for a tribune, against custom (mos); but it entailed the risk of alienating senators who otherwise might show support.

A fellow tribune, M. Octavius, now twice blocked the bill, by veto, from being voted on, prompting Tiberius to present it to the Senate after all. There his opponents had the better of his supporters, yet it appears that no formal recommendation issued as to which tribune ought to yield. Tiberius reintroduced the bill; again, Octavius vetoed it. Past custom did not sanction the veto’s repeated use to kill a tribune’s bill outright: it might persuade him to withdraw the measure, seeing how it lacked consensus; but failing that, there was no precedent for preventing the People’s vote indefinitely. Octavius was departing from mos, and in so doing, raised a political dispute to the level of a constitutional crisis: for both he and Tiberius had now reached a point where neither could stand down without damage to his dignitas.

Tiberius broke the deadlock with a bill that stripped Octavius of his office, as having abused his veto powers, and the People voted to remove him; no other tribune came to his aid. To argue that Octavius’ deposition was ‘‘illegal’’ or ‘‘unconstitutional’’ is to misunderstand the problem. No laws had been violated. Tiberius’ move was without precedent - in response to Octavius’ unprecedented use of the veto.

Innovation was as much a part of Roman life as clinging to mos maiorum, which could give no guidance in situations not experienced before.7 The danger lay elsewhere. In creating the precedent that an uncooperative colleague could be removed from office, Tiberius knocked away one of the unwritten principles of republican government, as the nobles understood it - the limitation of official power inherent in the presence of colleagues with exactly equal power.8

The agrarian law now passed. For its implementation, it authorized a commission of‘‘triumvirs to adjudicate and assign lands’’; the People elected Tiberius himself, his father-in-law, Ap. Claudius, and his younger brother Gaius. Yet in making the land reform a Gracchan family project and monopolizing all the goodwill accruing from its beneficiaries, Tiberius escalated, needlessly, his feud with his fellow nobles. Their reaction came with devastating effect. The commission required substantial funds: to survey Italy so as to determine the precise extent of ager publicus, and to furnish startup money and equipment to new settlers (App. B Civ. 18). Appropriation was the Senate’s prerogative, and it allocated the triumvirs six sesterces per day. Without money, Tiberius’ reform was stalled before it had begun.

Chance, unforeseeable, now supervened. King Attalus III of Pergamum died and bequeathed his entire realm to the Roman People. Tiberius immediately, by plebiscite, seized the Pergamene treasure to finance the land reform, and barred the Senate from freeing the cities of the new province (‘‘Asia’’) in accordance with the royal will: he would recommend better arrangements to the People. It was a stunning lesson in what a single man could do with popular support. It also knocked away a second pillar of republican government, the principle of deciding foreign and fiscal policy in the Senate, collectively and by consensus. The respublica of the nobles relied on restraint, mutual as well as self-imposed, on the part of those who managed it: Tiberius was no longer subject to either. He virtually had become the government of Rome. Only now did senators publicly attack him, with charges of despotic behavior, of recruiting a bodyguard from street toughs, of aiming to be sole ruler.9 Some announced that they would prosecute him as soon as he became a private citizen again.

Tiberius understood. The issue had moved far beyond his land reform (for which he need not fear; no one threatened to repeal it): his future in the state was now at stake. He decided to run for reelection. No law forbade that, either; but it had not happened in 200 years. Combined with all his other acts, it confirmed the worst of fears: he aimed to escape accountability and make his one-man government permanent - enough to cause most nobles sleepless nights as they beheld the specter, rising from the grave, of Tarquin the Proud.

Having sought, and failed, to manipulate in his favor the choice of tribune to preside at the elections, Tiberius had his supporters occupy the Capitol during the night; when the assembly met next morning, they attempted to keep opposing voters from entering. A bloody riot ensued: Tiberius no longer enjoyed overwhelming popular support. At a Senate meeting in the nearby temple of Fides, the consul P. Scaevola refused to intervene: Tiberius had not - yet - broken any laws. Upon which P. Scipio Nasica (consul 138), pontifex maximus and Tiberius’ cousin, called on everyone to take the safety of the res publica into their own hands; arming themselves with debris at hand, he and other senators rushed forth and clubbed Tiberius to death, along with scores of followers.

An even more fundamental element of self-restraint - the unspoken agreement not to take political disputes to the point of lethal violence - was thus swept away. Nasica might believe that he had saved the respublica, but at that very moment, Tiberius was already reduced to desperate measures in his bid for reelection: had cooler heads prevailed that day, he might have failed. Worse, in 132 the Senate resolved to apprehend and try those who had ‘‘conspired’’ with Ti. Gracchus: many were put to death (Cic. Amic. 37; Val. Max. 4.7.1; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 20.3-7). The killings more deeply split the ruling class than anything in memory.