I’ve been making a lot of videos about ancient Rome in the last few months, and there are three
good reasons for that. Eh, three reasons, good might be a stretch. First and most obvious is
that I really enjoy this stuff and you all seem to as well – Rome is a fascinating civilization
that offers us a wealth of topics to investigate as we celebrate their accomplishments and then
revel in the dramatic irony as the cracks start appearing. Second, I had a form of long-covid
earlier this year that sapped the old brainbox for a few months, and I needed to work in familiar
territory as I recuperated. On that note, please dear god stay up to date on your inoculations and
remember your Flu shots too. And third but most importantly, it is currently the season of Fall,
and I will guiltlessly run this joke into the ground until we get to Winter. So as we wind down
our Season of Rome, let’s also wind down the Roman Republic, by starting what will become a lengthy
and interminably-painful trend: Roman Civil Wars. In the latter centuries, these hooligans got it
down to a science, but today we’ll topple the first domino and introduce Rome to the concept
of Political Assassination. To see how this can’t possibly go wrong, let’s do some History.
By the mid 100s BC, Rome had become rather
adept at exporting violence. In 146, it capped the Punic War trilogy by burning the city of Carthage
to the ground, meanwhile that very same year, the Roman Army plundered, ransacked, destroyed,
murdered, and/or enslaved every Man, Woman, Child, and artefact in the city of Corinth to complete
their conquest of Greece. This was a banger year for Rome’s cartographers who had the happy task
of painting a beautiful shade of Red all across Greece and North Africa, but it was a mixed bag
at best for the new subjects, not citizens, who lived there. Violence was a key ingredient of
Roman statecraft abroad, and with such a thin line between the military and political establishments,
we shouldn’t be surprised when someone applies that same thinking to local politics. … OH NO.
With that foreboding
preamble out of the way, let’s meet the Gracchi Brothers! Members of the lower Plebeian class,
these boyos were the sons of a Consul and general, as well as the maternal grandsons
of the great general Scipio Africanus himself. During his political career, the elder brother
Tiberius set about reforming land rights to be more egalitarian. The plan was that no one could
own more than half a square mile of the Public Lands acquired by the state during wars. Notably,
a lot of Public Land was recently acquired by the state during wars. His idea was to partition all
that out in small lots for the poorer citizens, so that everyone — well, actually not everyone — but
all the citizens had a farm and a livelihood to call their own. The thing is, a version of this
law had already been in place since 367 BC, but nobody enforced it, so wealthy romans and generals
gobbled up loads of public land during the recent conquests. Naturally, the reason this law was
ignored was the same reason Tiberius would have so much trouble getting it back on the books: Rome’s
old-money-est citizens tended to be Senators, who had plenty to lose from a law that capped a
considerable source of their family wealth.
But Tiberius was not a Senator himself, rather, in 133 BC he held the office of Tribune. In centuries
past, this was the only office available to the lower Plebeian class, but generations
of reforms and good old fashioned bullying eroded the social, political, and financial
barriers between Patricians and Plebeians. And as a result, the Tribune was no slouch, having
the authority to veto many government actions and upper magistrates. Tiberius’ own father used this
veto to save Scipio Africanus from a sham bribery trial back in the 180s BC, which is supposedly
why Scipio’s daughter was swiftly betrothed into the Gracchi family. That particular sidebar will
remain unexplored, but the relevant point is how Rome’s weaponized gridlock pressured the Senate to
act in the interest of the Plebeians. Except this time, as Tiberius pushed his legislation through
the Plebeian Assembly, the Senators pressured an aristocratic-leaning Tribune to veto it.
This was legal, but had never been done
before, and despite Tiberius’ requests, neither the Senate nor the other Tribune would budge.
So Tiberius took a similarly unprecedented step and had the other guy deposed, voiding his veto,
and then finally passing the reforms, with him and his family in charge of divvying up the plots
to landless citizens. Now with all that done… even for the Romans who liked these reforms,
that last bit was a little shifty. A frivolous veto is one thing, but deposing a Tribune and
passing a law with blatant conflicts of interest made Tiberius look dangerous. And just like that,
Rome’s Proto-Socialist fave became problematic. Honestly, the political machinations at play here
are a fascinating showcase of how Romans began breaking constitutional customs before they got
to outright Breaking the Republic. But, let’s not get off-track, I promised you a bodycount,
so here is the fun part.
Fearing prosecution once he left office, Tiberius took another unprecedented step of running for a
consecutive second term as Tribune, which his opponents interpreted as a tyrannical power
grab on top of his existential threat to their wealth. Unfortunately for them, the land reform
was popular, and Tiberius' enemies in the Senate figured he would win his re-election for Tribune.
So the Pontifex Maximus and several senators went over to the Assembly with the intent to cause a
ruckus and stop the vote counting. But the ensuing scuffle got out of hand, and without any weapons,
they grabbed what was available, and subsequently beat Tiberius to death, with clubs and chairs. As
we will see later, stabbing Caesar with knives was one thing, but using chairs? Now that’s a
full-body workout – that takes intent and a good deal of persistence. This was the first time the
Roman instinct for violence had turned inward and spilled into republican politics, and with
that blood-red line so spectacularly crossed, boy oh boy it would not be the last. Frankly,
the senators were already in too deep to just go home and change, so they proceeded to kill another
300 of Gracchus' supporters, thus introducing the concept of political martyrdom and removing any
prejudice against the expediency of assassination.
Now with that point made, I mentioned Tiberius had a brother. That would be Gaius, and his story is…
well, let’s see for ourselves. Gaius was unfazed by his brother’s grisly demise, and embarked on
even more aggressive reforms when he became Tribune in 123. These new policies included:
redoing the provincial tax system so income went back to Rome instead of the governors, then using
that new revenue to offer low-price wheat for the Roman people. Elsewhere, he cut down on bribery
in the courts and stopped the senate from playing favorites with Consuls. Gaius’ consistent strategy
was to prevent Senatorial corruption by elevating the Equestrian class to advisory positions and
oversight roles in the Republic. Far more daring than Tiberius’ little old land laws, this thicc-o
slate of reforms touched nearly every level of government – from revenue to public programs
and courts to consuls – so it could only be passed with big help. Gaius allied with the Equestrians,
offering them new authority and prestige in exchange for passing those laws to help the poor
and make the Republic run smoother.
That all sounds good and noble, but let’s remember that Gaius’ brother was f*cking assassinated,
so the man justifiably held a grudge. To that end, he limited the Senate’s power to prosecute without
the Assembly’s consent, and forbade anyone deposed by the Assembly from holding any other office. On
paper, that’s a power-grab for the Assembly, but those are also just reasonable laws. So despite
all the reasons Senate hated him, he remained extremely popular with the Roman people, securing
a second consecutive term as Tribune in 122.
But it’s here that Gaius played himself by raising the question of citizenship. Essentially,
Rome was Rome, and proper Romans were citizens, but outside of Rome, the Latin-speaking population
weren’t citizens, and the other Italians in the peninsula had even fewer rights than the
Latins. Gaius sensed widespread discontent among these allied non-citizens, and figured
he could win them over by giving Latin Rights to free Italians, and making the Latins into full
citizens. One could imagine how such a grateful new voting block would happily elect Gaius into
everything forever. But while this solution was rather clever, it was intensely unpopular with
every class of citizen in Rome, so the measure completely failed, his popularity plummeted
across the board despite his astounding reforms, and he handily lost his next election for Tribune.
Wait hold on, this isn’t an assassination,
this is just realpolitik. Ugh, Dammiiiit. – Wait, wait, there’s another page – oh yeah, here we go.
SO, one of Gaius’ pet policies was setting up new colonies of Roman citizens in Carthage and Italy,
so that proper Romans had a place to live in these shiny new provinces they killed so many
people to get. But the new Tribune proposed to dissolve the colonies, so Gaius triggered illegal
protests against it, and in the ensuing scuffles, one of Gaius’ supporters was killed. The Senate,
horrified at the uproar, feared a classic Gracchi Brothers Power Grab, so they passed the Senatus
Consultum Ultimum, an ultimate decree branding Gaius and his allies as enemies of the state and
granting themselves the authority to strategically unalive them. And thus, the senators partied like
it’s 133 BC ­– Gaius and his gang fortified themselves atop the Aventine hill, so the
Consul raised a mob and brought soldiers within the city walls to go slash their way up. Sources
differ on the details, as is tradition, but Gaius had likely fallen on his own sword by the time the
Senate found him. So technically, technically, He Specifically was not actually assassinated…
However, 3,000 of his supporters were absolutely murdered to death during and after the riot,
and that handy purge left a template for targeted political violence that later Romans would be all
too eager to follow.
In the years after, nearly all of Gaius’ laws were repealed, but the Republic could
not escape him throughout its last century. His defining reforms remained highly contentious,
and the political violence of his term became frighteningly commonplace – decades later,
the issue of citizenship erupted into the Social War in 91 BC, ending with all Italians getting
full citizenship, but nearly toppling the entire Roman state in the process. Meanwhile,
the Equestrian class benefitted immensely from Gaius’ reforms, taking on vast new powers with
none of the checks or customs that kept the Senate at least nominally in line. The Roman Republic
didn’t collapse overnight, and the worst of its civil wars was yet to come, several times over,
but the reforms, political battles, and violent deaths of the Gracchi brothers made it far easier
to be Bad – and that was a temptation the Romans absolutely did not need. And thus
will unfold the great mishap of antiquity, as nobody could kick Rome’s ass like Rome.
Thank you so much for
watching! I went into this video thinking it would be a care-free tale of death and destruction,
but then the politics turned out to be really interesting? Question mark??? We’ve got one
more left on the docket for Blue’s Fall of Rome, so I will see you in the next video.