5. The Revolt of the Gracchi¶
Core Argument¶
The revolt of the Gracchi marks the moment when the Roman Republic’s internal contradictions erupted into open class war. The early Republic’s subsistence farming and free peasantry had been dissolved by war and conquest, replaced by a money economy that polarised rich and poor. A new aristocracy of equites—speculators, tax farmers, merchants—rose on the backs of slaves and plunder, distinct from the old patrician nobility yet equally devoted to private property. Rome split into three centres of power: the Senate, the comitia of wealthy citizens, and the contiones of the urban poor. The populares emerged as a radical wing opposing the conservative optimates. As Marx noted, the secret history of the Republic is the history of its landed property: the ager publicus was monopolised by the wealthy, and agrarian laws like the Licinio-Sextian limits fell into disuse.
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, an aristocrat who broke with his class, was elected Tribune of the Plebs in 133 BC. His clash with the Senate originated in the Numantian war, where the Senate reneged on a treaty he had brokered, mortifying him. He proposed the Lex Sempronia Agraria, reaffirming the old limit of 500 iugera per person with an extra 250 for each of two sons, so a man with two sons could keep 1,000. Remaining public land was to be redistributed in inalienable 30-acre plots to create new smallholders and army recruits; current occupants would receive full title to retained land, a major concession. Despite this moderation, the wealthy bitterly opposed the bill. Gracchus bypassed the Senate and presented it directly to the Plebeian Council. When the Senate used a tribune’s veto to block it, Gracchus had the tribune deposed—an unprecedented act. The Senate then sabotaged the reform by withholding funds; Gracchus countered by seizing the treasury of Pergamon. His term nearing its end, he stood for re-election, another unconstitutional move. The senatorial faction, led by Scipio Nasica, attacked a popular assembly on the Capitol, beating Tiberius Gracchus to death with clubs and bench legs. Over 300 were killed, none by the sword. This was the first open bloodshed among Rome’s ruling elite in nearly four centuries. A white terror followed: Gracchus’s body was thrown in the Tiber, supporters were executed or banished without trial, and one was killed by being shut in a vessel with vipers.
The murder introduced political violence onto Rome’s streets and ended any possibility of compromise. Gaius Gracchus then assumed leadership, proposing a broader programme: public clothing for soldiers, no conscription under seventeen, reduced grain prices, adding 300 equites to the Senate, public works, and extending citizenship to Italians. The urban poor, unwilling to share privileges, united with the Senate to defeat the citizenship proposal. In 121 BC, Gaius lost re-election; his supporters’ protest on the Aventine was met with a massacre by consul Opimius. Gaius had his slave stab him; his headless corpse was thrown in the Tiber, and up to 3,000 followers were strangled in prison. The Gracchi failed because the Roman proletariat was a lumpenproletariat dependent on state handouts and opposed to sharing citizenship with Italians. Their aim to recreate a class of small farmers was futile against the unstoppable concentration of land by slave-owners. The Republic’s social basis had ceased to exist, leading to continuous crisis and setting the stage for army intervention. The Gracchi revolt exposed the irreconcilable contradiction between the Republic’s democratic ideology and its slave-based, oligarchic economic structure, prefiguring the civil wars to come.