In this period is a series of events that will culminate in the end of the republic. In it we find the Optimates against everyone else, called the Populares. It should be noted, however, that the Optimates came together only when the Populares were able to threaten their economic and social positions.
Agriculture was the basis of ancient economies. Trade was either for luxury or semi-luxury goods or essential commodities. Given the modes of transportation, profit in trade was unlikely. In the late empire the maximum load permitted for carts in government service was no more than that of an unladen farm cart in the 19th century. Using overland transportation increased the price of grain 1/3 in Diocletian’s time. Transportation by water was much cheaper, but offered no cost benefit to those living far from the coast. Manufacturing came through manual labor, making the concentration of workers for the manufacture of goods unnecessary. Moreover, neither trade nor industry were esteemed at Rome. Cicero despised retail trading on the moral grounds that it required lying. One could loan money, but charging interest was either disapproved or forbidden. Marcus Brutus lent money to provincials at 48%; credit-worthy Romans could get a 4% rate. The difficulties of investment explain in part conspicuous consumption.
In the 2nd century Cato considered land the safest investment; Cicero recommended that successful merchants buy land; Trimalchio invested the gains from his maritime adventures in land. The issue was not simply in acquiring wealth; it was preserving it, and any investment outside of land was risky.
In some places the land was used for grazing sheep, to the extent that it can be said that in some parts of Italy sheep drove out men. Using land for wine and olive oil was available only to the rich who could affort to wait for returns on the capital. Most latifundia were run by managers and slave-gangs. Ordinary citizens usually held no more than seven and as few as two iugera; in 49 it is estimated that Lucius Ahenobarbus owned over 400,000 iugera (1.6 iugera equals one acre; 640 acres equals one square mile; 390 square miles!). Many rich people owned several farms in several places (Cicero held several). Seven iugera barely produced enough grain consumption for the family, with no margin for animals or for sale. Under such circumstances small farmers would lease part of their land, or in hard times sell it.
As for work, slave gangs did most of the work. Using gravestones as evidence, at Rome no more than 10% of the artisans were of free birth. Slave competition must have caused severe unemployment among the free poor. The profits from expansion enabled the upper classes to import hundreds of thousands of slaves, cargoes of Greek art, and buy land and stock it with cattle or thrun them into orchards.Thus the free poor could migrate (recall Mithradates massacring 80,000), but it is unlikely that much emigration could take place without government support.
Another characteristic of this period lies in the Italian countryside. Rome managed what we call public domain by renting it out. Since the Senate administered the public domain and senators were wealthy landowners, after a few generations public domain came to be seen as private property. The havoc Hannibal brought to the south made the country population disappear, making huge amounts of land available to the “public domain.” In addition, senators were restricted by law in commercial dealings, making investing in land a logical choice. Cheap grain from the provinces made it more profitable to cultivate olive orchards and vineyards, which required huge amounts of land and slaves. There were loads of slaves, and Cato advocated working them until they could no longer work then disposing of them. In 136 200,000 slaves revolted and challenged Roman armies for four years. Peasants could not compete with free slave labor. Contact with easy spoils of war made the difficult life of farming less appealing. Returning to their farms to find them mortgaged, many simply abandoned farming and flocked to the cities.
The most lucrative business of the Romans was war and government.
Saint Augustine City of God: If there is no justice, what are kingdoms but robbery on a large scale?” (4.4)
Since 494 the plebs had made progress in their struggle with the patricians. Given that the distinction between patrician and pleb was one of birth, once the rich plebs had gained entry into the senatorial class, the poor plebs found it more difficult to find champions once the political ambitions of the rich plebs had been satisfied.
Recall that Roman success militarily, and thus economically, lay in the type of soldiers it fielded. All male citizens between 17 and 46 were eligible for the draft, and they were paid for their service, not hired for it. We saw that in Egypt the natives began clamoring for greater participation in the government after they were called upon to fight for Egypt. In Rome the struggle between the privileged and the rest went back as early as 494, when the plebs won tribunes and an assembly and to 451, when law was codified. In this period the plebs sought to make the same kind of economic gains that they had made politically. The pressure came from two plebeian fronts, one economic and the other military. Economically, there were those plebs who were as wealthy as the patricians and thus wanted the same political and social status. Rome’s numerous foreign wars required plebs share in the danger; accordingly, they wanted to share in the profits.
It must be noted that between 265-133 the aristocracy, in spite of plebeian political gains, had a monopoly on the magistracies and the Senate. This was due in part to the fact that after 287 the plebeian who had “made it” into senatorial ranks worked to close off those ranks to others. Livy illustrates this in 6.39 in the story of Licinius and Sextius, tribunes who were mainly intent on gaining access to the consulship, at that time denied to plebeians. Their followers were much more concerned about economic issues, viz., land and debt. Licinius and Sextius were absorbed into the ruling class, leaving the other plebs without anyone to represent them. They were able to create and hold this monopoly because of the huge cost involved in holding public office, which was unpaid, and in running campaigns for them. Thus from the passing of the Hortensian Law in 287 to 133 the Senate exercised unchallenged control over the government. Previously the tribunes could veto actions, but after 287 with more plebs in the Senate, they had more influence over the tribunes.
Sallust noted that the period of domestic strife began when the fear of Carthage had been removed. Throughout the 3rd century the foundation of colonies alleviated land hunger. In 232 Flamininus distributed land on the Adriatic coast, which the Senate bitterly opposed. Other settlements were added in Cisalpine Gaul. Overall, perhaps probably 50,000 small farms were created for Romans after 200. It stopped in 170.
Thus, the conflict of the orders to this point was to replace the patrician hegemony with a plebeian-patrician hegemony that differed very little in outlook or behavior. The Roman governing class, though grudgingly consenting to broader basis of power, remained very much the same in character.
In sum, Rome in 133 was living off the provinces, with most of that going into the aristocracy and business class.
In Plutarch we read the following speech attributed to Tiberius Gracchus:
The savage beasts in Italy have their particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge; but the men who bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more in it but the air and the light. They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and wealth of other men. They were styled the masters of the world, but in the meantime had not one foot of ground which they could call their own.
Tiberius Gracchus was the son of a consul and Scipio Africanus’ daughter. He had served as quaestor in Spain, where he developed a reputation for honesty and an understanding of the military needs of Rome. Note that it cannot be said that he was just a typical leader of the plebs, for he would have had access to the Senate both by dint of his family connections and his elected office. He thought the decline of the free peasantry was the chief menace to the state. The soldiers of the legion came from the landed peasantry; only in times of crisis did Rome use the proletariat, and never did they use slaves. Tiberius observed while traveling through Italy great estates worked only by slaves. Even the censor Quintus Metellus (131), who opposed Tiberius’ politics, was concerned about the decline in population. While concerned about the plight of the poor, the interest of the state was probably uppermost in his mind, and it was for the sake of Rome that he subjugated his and his class’s interests.
Elected tribune in 133, he proposed a land law that restricted the amount of land any one person could own to about 500 iugera (310 acres); holdings in excess of this amount had to be given to the state. Land within this amount would be declared private property. Improvements to the land would be compensated. Land turned over to the state would be rented to landless Roman citizens. The Senate opposed this measure, and persuaded the other tribune to veto it. Tiberius appealed to the Tribal Assembly, arguing that his fellow tribune Octavius was thwarting the will of the people. Polybius (200-118) stated (6.16) that a tribune should always do what the people thought fit and most of all aim at compliance with its will. Octavius was clearly thwarting the will of the people. The Assembly deposed Octavius and the bill became law. Tiberius’ defense was that the people were sovereign and the tribunes its creatures (Plutarch).
It is important to realize that the rural and not urban poor were the main political support of this measure. It is a complete mistake to think that this or subsequent agrarian schemes were designed for or attracted the urban population.
With the agrarian bill passed, the question remained of how to fund it. In 133, Attalus III king of Pergamum, died. In his will he made the Roman people his heir. Tiberius proposed that Attalus’ treasury be used to pay for his program. This encroached on senatorial privilege. It was now 132, and two new tribunes were to be elected. Tiberius decided to stand for a second consecutive term, which was unprecedented and illegal. With the agrarian bill passed, Tiberius’ rural supporters had left town; it also was harvest. Before the elections could take place, he and his followers were murdered by slaves and clients of senators. This murder was sanctioned ex post facto by the consuls of 132 who put to death many more of Tiberius’ supporters on the grounds that they had been revolutionary supporters. Also in this year Tiberius’ father-in-law Scipio returned from Spain and sided with the Senate.
The land commission encountered many problems in implementation; finally Scipio had the power of the commission transferred to a consul, who left to administer a province. The work of the commission soon ended.
Gaius Gracchus, Tiberius’ brother, returned to Rome from his quaestorship in Sardinia in 124 and was elected tribune. Gaius proposed founding colonies for the landless poor, where they would be given land. One such colony was at Carthage. It was unlikely that the urban poor could have benefited from land distribution. He passed a law that required grain to be sold in Rome at ½ the market price. Like in Greece, all citizens were eligible to profit from the public wealth, without means testing. His motivation may have been as simple as feeding the poor who were constantly facing starvation; or he may have desired to challenge the client relationship the poor had with the Optimates. The result was an exorbitant cost to the treasury and a culture of idleness but a mob of city poor adherents of Gaius Gracchus.
Having learned from Tiberius that relying on the rural peasantry was insufficient, he tried to attract the equites to his side by passing a law that prevented Senators from serving as judges, giving the position to the equites. In addition, he auctioned off works in Asia to the highest bidder, which helped the non-senate business class. He proposed establishing colonies for the urban poor to settle and thus become economically independent.
While away from Rome working such a colony, the Senate conspired to depose him by proposing that the colony at Carthage be cancelled. Gaius resorted to force to keep this from happening. A riot ensued and a senator was killed, which gave the Senate the pretext to declare martial law. Attacked by slaves, Gaius had one of his own slaves kill him rather than be killed by the senators’ militia. It is said that 3,000 of his followers were killed.
The Senate emerged from this struggle weakened, for it resorted to violence to gain its ends. Moreover, the combination of city poor and rich was a formidable combination, one that could take on the Senate. There was undoubtedly a rise in the number of free peasant due to these reforms. By 111, all land occupied was declared private, which stopped distribution and greatly helped the rich.
It is within the conflict of the optimates and populares that Cataline makes sense. Recall Cicero’s contempt for Greek assemblies in pro Flacco. It should be noted that in Laelius Cicero said that Tiberius Gracchus was attempting to seize regnum for himself. Couple that with Cataline’s reputation among the people. In Sallust we find recorded a letter by Cataline in which he says it has been his practice to uphold the interests of the poor in public life (publicam miserorum causam pro mea consuetudine suscepi, Cat. 35.3).
The question remains, then, as to the sincerity of these people and where Cicero stands in the political spectrum.
Much is made of Tiberius Gracchus’ motives. He has been called a foil to Scipio Aemilianus, and a rash, self-righteous tribune (Syme). There is another perspective, according to which the motives are difficult to reconstruct accurately and at all events less significant than the the real grievances and discontents on which they could play (Brunt). According to Plutarch, when T. Gracchus was proposing his grain bill, the Roman people wrote graffiti in Rome calling upon Tiberius to give them back their old possessions. Plutarch also informs us that Gaius Gracchus left his fashionable house on the Palatine Hill for one near the Forum, with the express purpose of arousing the regard of the poor who mostly lived in that area. After the death of Gaius the Roman people demonstrated their respect for the Grachhi brothers by setting up statues of them, regarding the places where they had died as sacred, bringing offerings as though they were visiting religious shrines. According to Cicero (pro Flac 95), Cataline’s tomb was adorned with flowers when C. Antonius, the consul who had destroyed Cataline and his followers, was condemned. It is perhaps in this political lineage that we should try to understand Julius Caesar.
The Gracchi did not solve the agrarian problem, and the problem persisted. The next stage in the struggle lay with the veterans who would demand allotments from the commander and get them if the commander were capable. The Gracchi exposed all the divisive forces in Roman society. According to Cicero (Republic 1.32), Tiberius and his policy divided the people into two parts.