Published on 13 Aug 2016
Tiberius Gracchus took up the cause of land reform, determined to restore property rights to the average citizen and curtail the abuses of the rich. But another tribune vetoed his proposed law, so Tiberius began to fight back with his own veto and ground the government to a halt. At last, he held a special vote to remove his opponent from office so that his land reform bill could pass. ____________
Tiberius Gracchus returned from war to find a Rome where soldiers reaped no rewards for their service, and the rich worked all the farmland with slaves who were the spoils of war. Determined to fix this, he took up the cause of land reform. His first goal: to restore the ager publicus, or “public land.” Tradition held that some of the land won in war would always be set aside and distributed to the citizens, with no one allowed to hold more than 500 acres of it, but the rich had ignored that law so long that no one even tried to enforce it. Tiberius got himself electrd as tribune and wrote a law that didn’t punish the rich, just asked them to surrender their illegally held land after the state paid them for it. Nevertheless, the richest of the rich accused him of trying to foment a revolution. They tried and failed to turn the people against Tiberius, but when his law passed anyway, they recruited one of his fellow tribunes to veto the law. Tiberius responded by drafting another, harsher version of the law – only to see this one vetoed also. He began using his own veto in retaliation, refusing to let any other law pass and stopping the senate from withdrawing money from the treasury. Government ground to a halt. Roman government had always relied on the responsible use of powers that were now being abused, and the snowball began to roll downhill. Tiberius took the unprecedented measure of holding a special vote to get his opponent, Octavius, removed from office by popular vote. Despite Octavius’s efforts to hold out, the people voted with Tiberius: Octavius was stripped from office and barely escaped from the Campus Martius with his life after an angry crowd turned on him. But at last, with no more opposition from Octavius, the agrarian reform law proposed by Tiberius Gracchus passed.
August 30, 2016
The Brothers Gracchi – II: Populares – Extra History
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