What is Tiberius Gracchus?

"4 Plutarch discusses Tiberius Gracchus's negotiating a cease-fire with the Spanish, which saved lives of Roman soldiers under Caius Mancinus, who had been fought to a stalemate at Numantia. Tiberius Gracchus's return to Rome was marked by controversy, inasmuch as bingle faction, cheated of army triumph, "censured and reproached" the truce "as a proceeding that was bandstand and scandalous to the Romans. "But," recounts Plutarch, "the relations and friends of the soldiers . . . came flocking to Tiberius, whom they acknowledged as the preserver of so many citizens."5

Tiberius Gracchus's initial decision to retire as a soldier and enter public life was marked from the starting time by controversy because he stood for election as tribune with a formal fieldreform program. Plutarch describes the background for the program as the great fund of public lands acquired by Roman success and dispersed among politically powerful (patrician) landowners. This is vital to an understanding of Tiberius Gracchus's career. With so much land at their disposal, landowners imported slaves to work it and achieved much(prenominal) economies of scale that they drove down farm prices and forced handsome farmers, unable to compete on price, either to become the analogous of sharecroppers by affiliating with large owners of adjacent lands or to get come on of the market altogether. While the twentiethcentury e

All of this has been winked at by the Senate, which should have taken more care from whom its nominal freehold rents were collected. Let us say that the annual freehold rental is 12 Roman Dinars per year. To the beefeater farmer, 12 Roman Dinars may represent 25% of his annual income from farming. In other words, he would have to work his land an faultless season in order to retain his freehold. If farm prices had remained fair, the yeoman would work his land hard but be sensible of a living wage. But to the estate landowner, with many freeholds entailed on the estate, 12 Roman Dinars per year is nothing, a tiny constituent of his income from a vast estate.

At this point there occurred an emergence so convenient that, were it not reported by Plutarch or else of Plautus, it would be seen as an incredible plot twist. This was the bequest of land and monies to Rome by a subject king, Philometor. Tiberius Gracchus promptly proposed that Philometor's bequest be used to finance development of new minuscularfarm leaseholds. The proposal should have satisfied everyone; it did not, for disposition of such legacies came under senate authority. Further, Cowell notes, "to create such a precedent for the look of distant lands by the assembly of the people of Rome was pregnant with unforeseeable consequences. To relegate imperial responsibilities to such an ignorant vista assembly in this way seems to have been asking for trouble."13

The important Theatre. Vol. III. Ed. Eric Bentley. Garden City,

Plutarch. "Tiberius Gracchus."The Lives of the Noble Grecians and

An ambitious man would have taken the honors entailed upon the office of tribune and turned them to his advantage. He would have taken bribes to enrich himself both during and after his term of office. He would have agree not to challenge the Senators, if only some Senators would enrich him, realise some of their illgotten lands over to him, provide him with slaves, a military triumph, a promotion in battle. I leave t
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