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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Tiberius Gracchus Biography TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS, (c.163-133 B.C.). Tiberius and his brother Gaius (see below) were brought up under the special care of their mother, Cornelia, since their father died when they were very young. Tiberius had his first military experience in Africa, on the staff of his brother-in-law, Scipio Africanus the Younger, and took part in the capture and destruction of Carthage (146), on which occasion he is said to have been the first Roman to scale the city wall. In 137 he acted as quaestor to the army of the consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus in Spain; the people of Numantia would treat with no other Roman than the son of their former benefactor. (See 2, above.) He was thus enabled to save from utter destruction an army of 20,000 Romans, who had been defeated and were at the mercy of the Numantines. But the peace was considered disgraceful by the aristocratic (senatorial) party at Rome and was repudiated. On their return to Rome the consul Mancinus was disgraced, as being wholly responsible, but Tiberius was held in high esteem by the populace, who saw in him a champion of justice. His interest in the cause of the common people was roused by the sight of the vast estates of wealthy Romans worked by gangs of slaves, while the poor free citizens had neither land nor means of employment. He determined to dedicate himself to the reform of this deplorable state of things and became a candidate for the tribuneship, to which he was elected in 133. The bill which Tiberius, as tribune, now proposed involved a renewing of the Licinian Rogations (q.v.; see also AGRARIAN Laws), with many modifications designed to lighten the hardships of those who in good faith or profiting by the laxness of a century or more had acquired "title" to the public domain. Such a bill was to be submitted to the vote of the people, tribe by tribe; in the comitia tributa. (See COMITIA.) Its popularity was manifest, and its passage was assured, when the opposition found a means to block its way, at least temporarily. One of the tribunes, Caecina, was induced to put a veto on the measure, and the veto of a tribune overweighed even the voice of the tribes themselves. Tiberius was forced to impeach the tribune, an unheard-of measure and one which laid him open to the charge of unconstitutionality. The comitia tributa, however, voted to depose Caecina, and the obstacle was removed. The bill was thus passed, and a committee of three (triumviri), consisting of Tiberius himself, his brother Gaius, and Appius Claudius, was appointed to carry out its provisions. Not content with the aid given to small farmers by his new law, Tiberius now devised further means of aiding them to begin life with live stock and implements. He suggested that the wealth bequeathed to the Roman people by Attalus III (q.v.), King of Pergamus, should be devoted to this purpose. When the term of his tribuneship came to an end, he presented himself again for the office, as a measure of self-defense, though this was most unusual. The election took place in June, when the mass of his supporters were busy in the country, and when everything was favorable to the intrigues of his opponents. Partisan feeling ran very high, threats and calumnies were rife, and the election was marked by terrible riots, in one of which Tiberius himself was killed. For the careers of Tiberius and Gaius, consult their lives by Plutarch; Beesly, The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla (London, 1878); Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. iv (Eng. trans., New York, 1903-05); Meyer, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Gracchen (Halle, 1894); Greenidge, History of Rome, vol. i (London, 1904); Fowler, in English Historical Review (ib., 1905); Oman, Seven Roman Statesmen of the Later Republic (ib., 1902). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. X (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 205-206. |