The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire (51 page)

With all the postponed Assembly meetings, it was now summer and the victorious Tiberius feared that when he left office at the end of the year his law might be repealed before it had been put into full effect. All his good work would have gone for nothing. Also, he was worried about his security and, as an elected guardian of the People, his person was inviolable. He took his third and last fateful decision. Although once again it broke convention, he stood for a second year as tribune. For conservatives in the Senate, this was too much.

Voting began at the election, which was held on the Capitol, but order soon broke down. The presiding officer handed over to another tribune, who was a friend of Tiberius. Noisy objections were raised. Tiberius put off the voting until the next day. He and his followers got up early to occupy
the assembly-place in front of the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest before the opposition arrived. When leaving his house, he accidentally stubbed his big toe on the threshold and blood was noticed leaking from his sandal—not a good omen.

A meeting of the Senate was also held that day in the tiny Temple of Fides, Good Faith, at the edge of the assembly-place. It was dominated by Tiberius’s enemies, in particular a cousin of his who was another of Africanus’s grandsons. This was Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica (“big nose”). A senior politician who had held all the great offices of state and was now
pontifex maximus
, or high priest, he had a high opinion of himself: at a noisy public meeting, he once said, “
Be quiet, please, citizens. I know more about the public interest than you do.”

Nasica tried to persuade the consul to call a state of emergency, but the consul declined to use force or kill a citizen without trial. Meanwhile, a fight started outside between supporters of the different sides. Confusion reigned. The tribunes deserted their places, priests closed the Temple of Jupiter, and many people ran wildly about trying to escape. In the noise, Tiberius signaled that he was in personal danger by pointing to his head. This was reported to the Senate, which decided that the gesture meant that he wanted a diadem (a white cloth headband signifying royal power) and was aspiring to be king.

Throughout the history of the Republic, this ambition was the ultimate crime. Would-be tyrants deserved no mercy. Nasica seized his moment. “
Since the Consul betrays the state, anyone who wants to save the constitution, follow me,” he declared. The
pontifex maximus
then pulled a fold of his toga over his head, as if he were about to conduct a sacrifice, and ran out of the temple followed by senators and their attendants.

The Gracchans were startled by the sight of so distinguished a company rushing at them and lost their nerve. Nasica and his people snatched the makeshift weapons with which their opponents had armed themselves—sticks, rods, and the like—and broke up the benches that had been laid out for the meeting. They then chased the Gracchans over the precipitous edges of the Capitoline Square. Somebody grabbed at Tiberius’s clothes. He let his toga fall
and ran off. With bitter symbolism, he was caught, this (allegedly) potential despot, beside a cluster of statues of Rome’s kings. An assailant hit him on the head with a bench leg; others piled in, and the sacrosanct tribune was beaten to death. He was not quite thirty years old. When the riot was over, all the corpses were thrown into the Tiber under the cover of darkness.

The death of Tiberius was an earthquake that shook the pillars of the state. Reactions were contradictory. Tiberius’s cousin and the leading man of his day, the cultured Scipio Aemilianus, gave the deed his cautious approval. The Senate instructed the consuls for 132 to investigate and execute those who had conspired with Tiberius. However, Nasica was the object of popular fury and was challenged even in the Senate to justify his actions. His continued presence in Rome was an embarrassment. He was sent off on a foreign assignment and soon conveniently died in Pergamum.

Tellingly, no one challenged the land-reform legislation, and the implementation commission got on with its work unhindered. It was Tiberius’s methods, not so much his policies, that had incensed Rome’s élite. Furthermore, repeal could well lead to dangerous public disturbances. Best to leave well enough alone.

ONE DAY A
Roman consul paid a visit to Teanum Sidicinum (modern Teano), an Oscan-speaking settlement on the borders of Samnium. His wife accompanied him, and said that she wanted to bathe in the men’s baths. (These seem to have been something of an attraction, and the remains of extensive baths can be seen by today’s visitors.) A certain Marcus Marius, the town treasurer, was instructed to send the bathers away so that she could have the place to herself. Later, she complained to her husband that the baths were not cleared quickly, and that they were not clean enough.

The consul had a stake planted in the main square and Marius, Teanum’s leading citizen, was led to it. Then his clothes were stripped off and he was whipped with rods. When news of this
reached a nearby municipality, its Assembly passed a law forbidding anyone to use the public baths when a Roman elected official was in town.

Gaius Sempronius Gracchus told this story in a speech complaining of the outrageous behavior of senior Romans when traveling in Italy. It was not only officeholders who acted with criminal insolence. “
I will give you a single example of the lawlessness of our young men, and their complete lack of self-control,” Gracchus said on another occasion. “Not many years ago a young man who had not yet held public office was sent as an envoy to the province of Asia. He was carried in a curtained litter. A herdsman from Venusia in southern Italy [presumably, the Roman was on his way to the port of Brundisium] met him and, not knowing who the passenger was, asked as a joke if the litter-bearers were carrying a dead body. The young man heard this. He ordered that the litter be set down and that the peasant be beaten to death with the leather thongs by which it was fastened.”

Rome’s allied communities were seething with resentment. They not only complained of arrogance by roaming dignitaries; they felt that the historic concordat between them and their conqueror all those centuries ago was breaking down.

The system of some one hundred and fifty bilateral treaties between Rome and each of them had worked well. As we have seen, they were obliged to supply troops on request to help fight Rome’s many wars. In return, allies were guaranteed security and a share of the very considerable spoils of victory. They also had the right to benefit from land assignations and to join or found
coloniae
.

With the acquisition of a large overseas empire, the terms of advantage changed. The regular taxes paid by new provinces were monopolized by the Roman exchequer. Colonization dried up and, although Tiberius Gracchus recognized that Italians were as much in need of succor as Roman citizens, his reforms had meant a loss of
ager publicus
in their territories.

Just as observant Romans recognized the case for land reform, they also saw that something would have to be done to quiet the allied communities and compensate them for their economic losses. One of these was Scipio Aemilianus, to whom allied landowners made representations. They objected to having a
Roman
commission interfere with their local property rights, and Scipio arranged for their cases to be considered by the consul; that official, however, knew what a thankless task he had been given and immediately went abroad to his province.

Scipio had already caused offense by his opposition to Tiberius Gracchus, and his sympathy for the allies only compounded his unpopularity with the urban mob, which saw no reason to make concessions to “foreigners.” His political enemies claimed that he was set on undoing Tiberius’s agrarian law and was plotting an armed massacre. With the city in this ill-tempered mood, few were surprised when, in 129, Scipio was found dead, his body unmarked. Intending to write a speech that night which he was due to deliver at a meeting of the Assembly, he had a notebook beside him.

The rumor mill got to work. Perhaps Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi (as she now certainly was known), had killed Scipio to prevent a repeal of her son’s legislation. Very probably, word went, her daughter Sempronia had aided and abetted her; she was Scipio’s wife, but unloved because of her ugliness and her childlessness. Others claimed that Scipio had committed suicide in the realization that he could not accomplish what he had undertaken to do. Apparently, Scipio’s slaves were put to the torture (this was the rule when a paterfamilias was murdered). They confessed, it was said, that strangers had been brought into the back of the house and had strangled their master.

Scipio may have been murdered, but if the reports of how he was found and the appearance of his body are correct, it is more likely that he succumbed to a heart attack or a stroke. In any case, he was dead, and despite the distinction of his career public opinion would not allow him the honor of a state funeral.

FOR SOME YEARS
after his brother’s killing, Gaius had stayed away from the Forum and the alarms of public life. But he disliked having nothing to do and was uninterested in the sexual promiscuity, drinking, and moneymaking practiced by many of his peers. He enjoyed army life but lost his temper when his commission as quaestor in Sardinia was unfairly extended. He sailed away to Rome in a rage. Charged with dereliction of duty, he easily cleared himself with a powerful speech in his defense. He had already served longer than the law required, he pointed out, and added, “
I am the only man in the army who entered the campaign with a full purse, and left it with an empty one. My colleagues brought amphorae of wine with them which they drank on service, and then took back home with them, stuffed with silver and gold.”

Supporters of reform kept prompting him to stand for tribune, and conservative senators let it be seen how much they feared that he would. Tiberius was said to have appeared to Gaius in a dream and said, “
However much you try to defer your destiny, you must die the same death that I suffered.” His mother was no ghost, and expressed her disapproval. A letter of hers has survived in which she tells her son, “
Apart from those who killed Tiberius Gracchus, no enemy has caused me so many troubles and so many labors as you. As my only surviving son, you should have taken trouble and care that I should have the fewest anxieties in my old age.”

Gaius refused Cornelia’s pleas and bowed to the inevitable. He was elected tribune in 123.

In a sign that times were slowly changing, he had no trouble getting reelected for a second year and he introduced a far-reaching catalog of reforms. First of all, he appeased his brother’s spirit by introducing two new laws. The first banned anyone who had been deposed from public office from serving again in any capacity. This was obviously aimed at Octavius, but, according to Plutarch,
Cornelia made representations and persuaded her son to withdraw it. This magnanimous gesture delighted public opinion.

Second, a bill was passed forbidding any capital trials without the Assembly’s approval. Anyone found to have deprived a citizen of his civic rights through execution or exile, as if he were an enemy of the state, was to be arraigned before the People. The prohibitions were retrospective, and the former consul who chaired the commission that persecuted Tiberius’s followers in 132 was driven into exile. It was not simply that revenge was sweet; reactionary senators needed to be reminded of the dangers they faced if they ignored the will of the People.

Gaius reaffirmed Tiberius’s land act but exempted some
ager publicus
from redistribution, perhaps so that it could be leased to non-Romans. He also announced the foundation of three
coloniae
in Italy and one in northern Africa, on the desolate site of Carthage. This last was to be named Junonia, or Juno’s Place (a tactful nod in the direction of the goddess?). It was a controversial project to countermand the recently dead Aemilianus’s curse and, in the event, the sheep pastures of Carthage were left undisturbed. Plans were commissioned for the building of new roads across Italy. All these measures would have the effect of alleviating unemployment.

The burgeoning city of Rome required reliable and copious supplies of grain, imported from Africa and Sicily. When harvests failed, famine followed. Food riots imperiled government. Gaius arranged permanent stockpiles of grain as an insurance policy against shortages and set a bargain price for its sale to citizens.

The tribune turned his attention to corruption in public life. He passed laws against fraud and theft by governors of provinces, and a special extortion court,
quaestio de repetundis
, heard cases in front of a jury of senators. The conviction rate was low, because the jurors were often friends of the defendants. Gaius decided to put this right by asking
equites
, originally Rome’s cavalry but now men possessing the next property qualification beneath that of senators, to share jury service. Then, on second thought, senators were barred altogether from serving on juries, which now consisted entirely of
equites
.