Gaius Gracchus

Gaius Gracchus (born 160–153? bce—died 121 bce, Grove of Furrina, near Rome) was a Roman tribune (123–122 bce), who reenacted the agrarian reforms of his brother, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and who proposed other measures to lessen the power of the senatorial nobility.

Gaius was the son of a Roman aristocrat whose family had regularly held the highest offices of state for the past century and was connected to the most powerful political families of the day. Like his elder brother, Gaius was educated in the new Greek enlightenment, a movement that emphasized literature, oratory, and philosophy. He was not long deterred from public life by his brother’s murder in a political riot. Though barely 22 years old, he joined in the immediate outcry against the senator Scipio Nasica (accused as one of those responsible for the violence), and he acted energetically as land commissioner in executing his brother Tiberius’s agrarian law. He became quaestor, a magistrate usually concerned with finance, in 126 at the normal age, after lengthy military service. When in 124 an intrigue against him at Rome delayed his already overdue recall from Sardinia, he asserted his independence by returning unsummoned, and he was acquitted when accused before the censors after he defended himself by underlining the honesty of his administration.

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ancient Rome: The program and career of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

The contentious tone forecast a vigorous politician, and his candidacy for the tribunate of 123 brought out great crowds of voters, though the opposition of family enemies prevented him from receiving the highest number of votes. As tribune he soon showed himself bent on exploiting his legislative power to the maximum. Gaius realized that, by fostering sectional advantages, the influence of the wealthy upper class of landowners and businessmen outside the Senate known as Roman knights could be largely detached from its traditional support of the senatorial aristocracy and combined with the votes of the poorer citizens to carry reforms that no single group could manage by itself. But his purpose was not democratic, for none of his measures intended the permanent replacement of the Senate and the annual officers of state by the popular Assembly. He used the Assembly not as an administrative body but as the source of reform and as a power base from which to counter the Senate. This is seen clearly in his regulation for the annual assignment of provinces to the consuls, the most important policy-making moment in the Roman year. By securing passage of this law he ensured that the provinces would be allocated before the consuls were elected, thereby preventing the Senate from using the allocation of provinces as a means of punishing consuls of whom it disapproved and rewarding those of whom it did approve. As an aristocrat Gaius had no intention, however, of subordinating the consuls and other magistrates to the detailed control of the Assembly or of the people, so he added a proviso making the allocation not subject to veto by the tribunes of the plebs.

The true understanding of Gaius is obscured by the uncertainty of the chronological order of his measures in 123 and 122. But, despite minor confusions, it is clear that Gaius completed the whole of his program that touched the government of the Roman state before he turned to a different problem—the relationship between Rome and its Italian allies—early in his second tribunate and that his bill for the extension of the franchise to the independent peoples of Italy was his last legislative proposal. His preceding measures were criticized by the extreme conservatives as a general attempt to “destroy aristocracy and set up democracy,” but they did not satisfy the radicals either.

The measures of 123 were concerned with the abuse of power and with the extension of his brother’s economic policy. He began with a demonstration against the enemies of Tiberius: the family vendetta was a regular part of Roman politics. He formulated a bill—aimed at his brother’s enemy Octavius—that would have denied further office to magistrates deposed by the Assembly. Though Gaius did not press this proposal, it deterred his colleagues from using their vetoes against him. A law forbidding the establishment of political tribunals by the Senate without the sanction of the Assembly was intended to prevent a recurrence of the judicial murders committed by the political court set up to punish the supporters of Tiberius in 132.

A second law, concerned with judicial corruption, sought to provide independent juries for the “extortion court.” This court had been created only 26 years earlier to curb the malpractices of Roman governors by enabling provincial subjects to sue for the restitution of monies taken improperly from them. Hitherto the jurors of this court had been senators, who had failed to protect the provincials against extortion through their own private interest in the fleecing of provinces. The judiciary law of Gaius excluded senators from the juries altogether and replaced them with Roman knights, wealthy nonpolitical Romans who were expected to be more impartial. Considerable portions survive of the text of what must be either the actual judiciary law of Gaius or a revised version modelled closely upon it. These show the same determination and ingenuity as his laws about special tribunals in their attempt to stop corruption and abuse in the working of the court. The exclusion of all magistrates and senators is minutely regulated, and no qualified juror may sit on a case if he and the accused person are members of the same club or confraternity. Lengthy clauses exactly regulated the distribution and collection of voting tablets and the counting of the vote. This attention to detail is the hallmark of all the work done by Gaius about which there is any substantial information.

Two measures served partisan interests. The first established a system to provide wheat, usually at a subsidized price, to Roman citizens who inhabited the now overgrown metropolis of Rome, where urban employment and prices were equally irregular. The second bill transferred the lucrative farming of taxes in the new province of Asia from local businessmen, who farmed the taxes on behalf of the Roman governor, to financial syndicates of Roman knights who dealt directly with the treasury at Rome, thus creating a monopoly for the Roman financiers. Both measures suggest a positive bid for the votes of persons domiciled at Rome. The rural population was wooed by two other measures: one transferred payments for military clothing from the conscript peasantry to the Roman treasury, and the second, modifying the law of Tiberius, proposed the establishment of self-governing communities of colonists. This innovation led in later times to the widespread settlement of Roman colonies that latinized southern Europe.

In late summer of 123, popular enthusiasm swept Gaius into a second tribunate, thus confirming the legality of his brother’s candidacy for a second consecutive term. His judiciary bill, however, was subsequently passed by the vote of only 18 of the 35 voting groups of the Assembly. In so close a situation his successes are the more remarkable. But he had a yet more difficult project in mind for the next year. The greatest of Roman problems at this time concerned the management of the allies in Italy, who occupied two-thirds of the peninsula. They provided the larger part of the Roman armies that held the world in fee, yet these peoples were treated with increasing disdain and severity by the Roman aristocracy, though they were akin in race, language, and customs. In addition, it was their land that Tiberius Gracchus had distributed to poor Romans.

Gaius proposed a complex solution of the Italian question. The Latin-speaking allies, whose communal life was akin to that of Rome, were to be incorporated into the Roman state as full citizens and organized in locally self-governing municipalities, and the Italic peoples of non-Latin stocks were to have the intermediate status of the Latin allies. This ingenious measure shows the disinterested yet committed character of Gaius as a statesman. Such an enlargement of the Roman state was, however, intensely unpopular with Romans of all classes. Gaius’s persistence at once weakened his popular following, strengthened the political opposition, and in the end wrecked his career.

Gaius’s position at Rome was not helped by his departure for two months to Africa to manage the foundation of a colony of 6,000 settlers at Carthage, a site that had been virtually cursed by his brother’s enemy Scipio Aemilianus in 146. Among the business classes, who had nothing more to gain from Gaius, his support was weakened by the alienation of the numerous corn merchants whose profits had been decreased. On his return Gaius tried by a series of demonstrations to restore his popular following. He moved his residence from an aristocratic quarter down to the plebeian streets around the Forum, insisted on the right of the common people to watch the public games without charge, and tried, though ineffectively, to prevent the execution of a consular decree forbidding Italians to remain in Rome during the vote on the enfranchisement bill. Altogether, opposed by senatorial opinion and shorn of his equestrian supporters, Gaius was a more isolated and a more demagogic figure than in 123. The enfranchisement bill was rejected, and Gaius failed to secure a third tribunate at the elections of 122.

In adversity Gaius showed the same stubborn determination as his brother to maintain a good cause at all costs. Like Tiberius he fell defending the agrarian colonization that was the basis of their position. In 121 a tribune proposed the dissolution of the great colony of Carthage. Helped by the remnant of his plebeian supporters, Gaius organized an illegal counterdemonstration. In the fracas one of Gaius’s party was killed, and the Gracchans retired uneasily to the Aventine Hill, traditional asylum of the Roman plebeians in an earlier age.

The Senate seized the opportunity to pass a novel decree, the Last Decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum), which urged the consuls to protect the state from any harm. Practically, it was a declaration of martial law. Gaius, appalled, sought a parley. But the consul Lucius Opimius, refusing any negotiations, organized a heavily armed force composed largely of Roman knights and assaulted the Aventine. Massacre followed, as did the suicide of Gaius. But most of his legislation survived, and his unfinished projects were remembered, becoming the basis of politics in the next generation. His rejected unification of Italy was finally conceded in 89 bce, after a destructive and unnecessary civil war that came close to destroying the foundations of Roman power. Hardly any substantial reform was proposed in the last century of the republic that did not owe its conception to the political intelligence of Gaius Gracchus.

The achievements and failures of Gaius Gracchus have many sources. Some of his measures sprang from family loyalty and were intended to confirm the legitimacy of his brother’s actions. His colonization plans were meant to extend the advantages of land distribution to the Italian allies, whose land had been given to poor Romans by Tiberius Gracchus’s policies. His judicial legislation was not intended to introduce democracy but rather to preserve the authority of the Senate in directing policy and of the magistrates in executing it, under legal checks and without financial temptations. By taking the farming of taxes away from local businessmen under the supervision of Roman senators and giving it to Roman businessmen—the knights—and by putting the knights on juries, Gaius ultimately turned the knights into a new exploiting class that was not, in contrast to many senators, restrained by a tradition of service or accountability to the laws. Not for the first or last time in history, the law of unintended results was more influential than a politician’s plans.