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Please respond to the following prompt in 750 words.Please be very familiar with the subject and have seen the HBO series Rome. I attached notes for powerpoint if needed. Q: In what ways does knowledge of the Gracchan crisis in earlier Roman history (133-121 BC) affect your appreciation of the period covered by the series Rome, Season One (50-44 BC)? This earlier period is covered in POWERPOINT #3.
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Military Recruitment Crises
and the Gracchan Revolution
The Road Not Taken
Rome’s Great Period of Imperial Conquest,
200-150 BCE
New Extra-Italian Territories: Sicily (241 BCE), Sardinia
and Corsica (238 BCE), Spain (197 BCE), Africa (146
BCE), Macedonia and Greece (146 BCE), Asia (129 BCE)
Changes in Roman Military Needs
◼ Continuity in High Command: Prorogation
◼ Long-term Service for Roman Legionaries—Armies of
Occupation
Roman Republic and Roman Empire
(146 and 44 BCE)
Traditional View:
Hannibal’s Legacy as Hannibal’s Revenge
Ruin of Small Italian Farmsteads
Influx of Wealth and Socio-Economic Dislocations
Growing Urban Proletariat in Rome
Poverty-Stricken Falling Below Property
Qualification for Military Service
Problems in Spain
Military Recruitment Crises
Tough, Mountain Tribesmen (Celtiberians, Lusitanians)
Nearly Constant Guerilla Warfare (197-179, 154-133
BCE)
Viriathus defeats several Consular Armies in the 140s
BCE
Military Service in Spain Unprofitable; Low Army
Morale
Roman Ineptitude in Spain
Consequences at Home ca. 150 BCE
Tribunician Agitation for Military Reform
Rioting in Rome over Recruitment
Failure to Turn out Levy (dilectus)
Scipio Aemilianus’ Volunteerism for Service in Spain
Incarceration of Consuls in 151 BCE
Paradox of Roman Imperial Success
Socio-Economic Turbulence in Roman Society
Increased Social and Economic Differentiation
(insufficient “trickle-down” effect)
State-Subsidized Grain for Populace of Rome (seen as a
radical, demagogic maneuver on part of individual
Roman statesmen in historiography of earlier Republic)
New Magnificence in Public Buildings, Games, and
Triumphs
Electoral Bribery (ambitus) and Legislation Against It
Sumptuary Legislation
Gracchan Challenge
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus
Aristocratic Background
◼ Father T. Sempronius Gracchus, consul and patron of
Spain
◼ Mother Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus,
conqueror of Hannibal
Revive Original Function of Tribunate as Defender of
Plebeian Interests
Creators of Popularis Tradition for Late Republic
Aristocratic Background of Gracchi
Livy, History of Rome, 2.44
This year [480 BCE] also had a tribune who advocated a land law, Tiberius
Pontificus. He set out on the same path that Spurius Licinius had taken, as though
Licinius had been successful, and for a time obstructed the levy. The senators again
were thrown into consternation, but Appius Claudius told them that the tribunician
power had been overcome the year before, actually for the time being, and
potentially forever, since a way had been discovered for employing its resources to
its own undoing. For there would always be some tribune who would be willing to
gain a personal victory over his colleague, and obtain the favor of the better
element, while doing the nation a service. There would be a number of
tribunes…who would be ready to help the consuls; and a single one was enough,
though opposed to all the rest. Only let the consuls, and the leading senators as well,
make a point of winning over, if not all, at any rate some of the tribunes to the state
and the Senate.
Tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus
(133/132 BCE)
Limitations to Holdings of Public Land (ager publicus)
Land Redistribution: Reestablish Free Peasantry to Small
Farmsteads
Gracchan Commission for Assigning Land (triumviri agris iudicandis
adsignandis)
Tribunician Obstacles (M. Octavius) and Senatorial Obstruction
Attalus III of Pergamum’s Legacy (133 BCE)
Tiberius’ Direct Appeal to Popular Assembly
Re-election Bid; Riots and Lynchings
Bodies of Tiberius and 300 Gracchan Supporters found floating in
Tiber River
Gracchan Story: From Numantia
to Pergamon to Carthage (Junonia)
Gracchan Land Commission
and Ager Publicus
Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 8
His brother Gaius recorded in one of his writings that when Tiberius on
his way to Numantia passed through Etruria and found the country
almost depopulated and its husbandmen and shepherds imported
barbarian slaves, [Tiberius] first conceived the policy which was to be the
source of countless ills to himself and to his brother. But it was the people
themselves who chiefly excited his zeal and determination with writings on
porticoes, walls, and monuments, calling on him to retrieve the public
land for the poor.
Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 14
About this time [133/132 BCE] King Attalus Philometor died, and
Eudemus of Pergamum brought to Rome his last will, in which the
Roman people was named the king’s heir. Tiberius promptly proposed a
law of popular appeal providing that the king’s money, when brought to
Rome, should be distributed among those of the citizens receiving
allotments of public land (ager publicus), to provide them with equipment
and give them a start in farming. As for the cities that were in the
kingdom of Attalus, he declared that the disposal of them was not the
Senate’s business, but that he himself would put a resolution before the
people. By this he offended the Senate more than ever.
Gaius Gracchus’ Tribunate
(123/122, 122/121 BCE)
Continues Tiberius’ Land Redistribution Program (ager publicus)
Overseas Colonization; Junonia (Carthage)
Regular, State-Subsidized Grain for Capital (lex Sempronia
frumentaria)
Reform of Extortion Court (quaestio de repetundis): equites and
publicani
Knights granted rights to exploit Province of Asia (lex de Asia)
Reserved seats for knights next to senators in theater
Acilian Law on Extortion (123/122 BCE)
From any person who has been dictator, consul, praetor, master of the
horse, censor, aedile, tribune of the plebs, quaestor, member of the threeman board on capital crimes or the three-man board for granting or
assigning lands, military tribune in any one of the first four legions, or from
a son of any of the foregoing, or from…any person who, or whose father, is
a senator, for a sum of money…having been, in the exercise of an imperium
or magisterial office, carried off, taken away, exacted, embezzled or
misappropriated from [various categories of subjects]. In such case the said
person shall have the right to sue and to summon the defendant….
~ Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. I, 2nd ed., no. 583
Senatorial Reaction
Gaius Gracchus failed reelection bid for 121 BCE
Italian Question
Unrest and Rioting
Emergency Decree of Senate (senatus consultum ultimum)
Murder of Gaius and 3,000 Supporters
Appian, Civil Wars, 1.4.27
Thorian Law, 118 BCE
Not long after [the death of Gaius Gracchus] a law was enacted to
permit holders to sell the land about which they had quarreled; for even
this had been forbidden by the law of the elder Gracchus. At once the
rich began to buy the allotments of the poor, or found pretexts for
seizing them by force. So the condition of the poor became even worse
than before, until Spurius Thorius, a tribune of the plebs, brought in a
law providing that the distribution of public domain (ager publicus)
should be discontinued, that the land should belong to those in
possession who should pay rent for it to the state, and that the money so
received should be distributed; and this distribution was a kind of
solace to the poor, but it did not help to increase the population. By
these devices the law of Gracchus…was once for all frustrated….
Aftermath and Consequences
Cancellation of Gracchan Land Laws
Precedent for Violence as a Solution in Roman Republican Political
Life
Fracture Lines in Roman Aristocracy: Senate and Equestrian Order
A New Politics: Optimates and Populares
Social, Economic, and Military Recruitment Crises Unresolved
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