Land Commission
To administer the confiscations and redistribution of the public land the assembly appointed a three-man commission: Tiberius’ brother Gaius 13Sempronius Gracchus, Tiberius’ father-in-law 18Claudius Pulcher and Tiberius himself. Tiberius asked the Senate for funds to help the new settlers acquire housing, equipment and seeds, but he was given only a meagre daily allowance to pay for his expenses.
About this time the news arrived that Attalus III of Pergamum had died and fearing that his kingdom would be faced with internal disruption had willed it to the Romans. Tiberius said that this wealth should be distributed among his settlers and that he would submit a plan to the assembly. This further offended the Senate because their control of state finance and foreign affairs had previously been unchallenged, but Tiberius was interfering in both.
Rumours now swept Rome that Tiberius was aiming at tyranny. Frightened by threats and organised opposition, Tiberius decided to stand for a second tribuneship as the tribunes’ inviolability would then protect him. His enemies protested that it was unlawful to hold office in consecutive years (this is debatable although consecutive tribunates had not been held since the early fourth century BC).
A dispute over which tribune should preside at the elections led to an adjournment. The next day, Tiberius and his supporters gathered on the Capitoline, where the Assembly met. In the Senate the pontifex maximus, 29Cornelius Scipio (c.51; fl.141-132 BC), called on all those who wished to save the country to follow him. Tiberius’ supporters, fearing for their safety, had broken up staves with which to defend themselves and a fight broke out. Tiberius and more than three hundred of his supporters were killed and their bodies thrown into the Tiber. The civil strife and the violent death of Tiberius marked the introduction of violence into the domestic politics of Rome and the start of the Roman Revolution (133-31 BC).
In 132 BC the Senate set up a court under the consul 04Popillius Laenas and his colleague Publius Rupilius to punish more of Gracchus’ supporters. Many were condemned and executed; those that escaped were banished without trial. Of his friends, the rhetorician Diophanes of Mytilene was killed and the philosopher Gaius Blossius of Cumae fled to join the revolt of Aristonicus (r.133-129 BC) in Pergamum. As Nasica’s continued presence in Rome would remind men of his violation of the sacrosanctity of a tribune, he was sent on a commission to Asia, where he soon died.
The commission continued its work after Tiberius’ death, which shows that the Senate’s objection to his bill was mainly due to their dislike of his methods. After his death Roman politicians tended to fall into one of two groups: the optimates (‘best men’) or the boni (‘good men’), the conservative majority in the Senate; opposed by the populares (‘favouring the people’), also composed of the upper class but allied politically with the lower classes and tending to seek the office of tribute to use as a counterweight to senatorial interests.
Tiberius’ place on the commission was taken by Gaius Gracchus’ father-in-law, 06Licinius Crassus, but as consul in 131 BC he secured by intrigue a command in Asia. He suffered a defeat at Leucae, but was captured and killed in 130 BC by some Thracian troops of Aristonicus. The other triumvir, 18Claudius Pulcher, continued to serve on the commission until his death (c.130 BC). Their places were filled by 14Fulvius Flaccus and 05Papirius Carbo, together with Gaius Sempronius (13) who retained his office.
In 131 BC the tribune 05Papirius Carbo carried a bill to extend the secret ballot to legislative assemblies, but his proposal to allow tribunes to stand for successive terms of office was defeated on the intervention of 28Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, who had since returned from Spain.
By 129 BC the commissioners’ judgements were being perceived to be deeply biased against non-Romans. A group of Italian allies enlisted the assistance of Aemilianus, who as a soldier was aware of their valuable contribution in war and to alleviate their situation proposed a measure to transfer the judicial power of the commissioners to the consul 14Sempronius Tuditanus. Realising the dangers of adjudicating in such delicate claims Tuditanus refused to preside and the matter went unresolved. One morning Aemilianus was found dead in suspicious circumstances and high among the list of suspects was his wife Sempronia, sister to the Gracchi brothers.
In 126 BC a tribune 07Junius Pennus passed the lex Junia Penni, preventing peregrini (=non-citizens) from settling in Rome and expelling those that had done so. In 125 BC the consul 14Fulvius Flaccus proposed a bill to grant citizenship and the right of appeal to Italians. The senators were not persuaded and when Fregellae revolted, a move so desperate that the Romans suspected that the townspeople were expecting help from within Rome itself, suspicion fell on Flaccus and he was sent to fight the Salluvii (probably already Celtoligyes, i.e. a mixed race of Gauls and Ligurians), a tribe that occupied the plain of the Durance in southern Gaul between the Rhone River and the Alps; and the Vocontii in Gaul, a Gallic tribe that lived on the east (left) bank of the Rhone.
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