Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

by Baker, Simon

  The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens and holes to lurk in, but the men who fight and die for our country enjoy the common air and light and nothing else. It is their lot to wander with their wives and children, houseless and homeless, over the face of the earth. And when our generals appeal to their soldiers before a battle to defend their ancestors’ tombs and their temples against the enemy, their words are a lie and a mockery, for not a man in their audience possesses a family altar; not one out of all those Romans owns an ancestral tomb. The truth is that they fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others. They are called the masters of the world, but they do not possess a single clod of earth that is truly their own.36

  Tiberius’s speech was a tour de force that built to a passionate crescendo. It posed one simple question: who should benefit from Rome’s empire? ‘Was it not right,’ he demanded to know, ‘that what belonged to all should be shared by all? Did not a citizen always deserve more than a slave? Was not the man who served as a soldier more useful than the man who did not? Was not the man who had a stake in his country more loyal to its common interests?’37 The loudness of the applause and cheers from the plebs drowned out the vitriolic heckling from the onlooking conservatives of the Senate. Tiberius had detonated a political time bomb.

  To the smallholders gathered in the assembly the benefit of Tiberius’s proposal to the Roman republic was clear: by redistributing public land, the land bill would not just share the wealth more equally. Crucially, it would re-enfranchise the plebs, make them eligible once more for military recruitment and inject new energy into Rome’s army. And the small price that the wealthy landowners had to pay for this? The surrender not of their privately owned land, but simply of the state-owned public land above the limit of 125 hectares (300 acres) that they had acquired over the last few centuries. Yet the core of the landowning aristocrats would not hear of it, and protested loudly.

  This insolent revolutionary with a personal grudge to bear, they said to each other, was undermining the very foundation of the republic. Evicting them from the land they had long occupied and taking away their wealth would surely strip the state of its prime defenders, its leaders in war. Others argued that they and their forefathers were the ones who had invested so much in the public land. Most of it had been ravaged in the Second Punic War, they claimed, and it was their hard toil, constancy and application – not to mention money – that had returned it to productivity. Their ancestral homes had been built on that land, their noble fathers laid to rest in it.38 The hard truth facing the senators, however, was that the Roman people were sovereign. Only they could vote on laws in the assembly. Now they had found a magistrate who was prepared to break with the customary cooperation between the Senate and the people, defy the aristocrats and put the plebs’ interests first. The aggrieved senators could do nothing about it. Or could they?

  On the day of the vote, the senators deployed their secret weapon: Marcus Octavius. Before dawn the auspices were taken by the presiding magistrate in order to ensure that the gods looked with favour on the proceedings. Then the heralds took to the streets and the city walls with their tubas, summoning the throngs of voters who had come to Rome in their thousands. Finally, the tribunes mounted the rostra and, amid the air of excitement, the presiding magistrate called the voting to begin. But when the land bill was announced, Octavius stood up and shouted, ‘Veto’. The crowd growled their disapproval. Tiberius knew full well that the most effective way to stop the passage of the bill was through the power of veto accorded to all ten tribunes of the people. He never imagined, however, that any tribune would veto what was plainly in the interests of the very people he was elected to represent. Nonetheless, Octavius stood his ground and the voting was temporarily suspended.

  Thus began a stand-off between two old friends, now turned adversaries. Day after day the assembly was called, and Tiberius would attempt once again to win over his opponent, but under the threatening gaze of the conservatives on the steps of the Senate House, Octavius persisted in obstructing the bill. The senators had chosen their man well. Octavius was in his late twenties, from an undistinguished family eager to make a name for itself in the Senate, and an owner of much public land himself. So, although discreet and of good character, Octavius stood to lose not just some of his land, but any prospect of a career among the aristocracy he had so recently joined should he fail them.

  The highlight of the two tribunes’ public struggle came when Tiberius offered to compensate Octavius for any loss of land. To the delight of the crowd, he said he would do so from his own pocket. On another occasion, Tiberius discarded the carrot for the stick, and suspended all state business until the land bill was voted on. As a result, the city came to a standstill. The hearing of court cases was forbidden, the markets were closed and the state treasury shut down. Tiberius’s gang of supporters, their blood boiling, were quite prepared to use threats and intimidation to ensure that no one broke the suspension. Yet still the impasse went on; the mob became more agitated and enraged, Tiberius all the more desperate and determined. In total frustration, he finally hit on a solution to the problem of Octavius’s veto that would raise the temperature in Rome even higher.

  When the masses of riled plebs next assembled and Octavius vetoed again, Tiberius put forward a new motion that no one had ever tried before. He stood up on the rostra and calmly asked the people to cast their votes at once on whether Octavius should be stripped of his office for the simple reason that he was not fulfilling his duty as a tribune of the people. The crowd, baying for blood, let out a loud cheer and immediately began casting their votes. One by one, each tribe voted in favour of deposing Octavius, the presiding magistrate calling out, ‘The Tribe of Palatine casts its vote: against Octavius. The Tribe of Fabia casts its vote: against Octavius,’ and so on. It soon dawned on Tiberius that after weeks of increasing tension, the mob was about to reach boiling point. Any more heat and it would erupt into a riot.

  Tiberius called an urgent halt to the voting and pleaded earnestly and passionately with his old friend. Embracing and kissing him, he begged Octavius to give way and allow the people what they were rightly owed. In response, the young tribune, ‘his eyes filled with tears, for a long while did not utter a word’.39 However, as he looked up to Nasica and his faction observing from the steps of the Senate House, the fear of losing their good opinion gripped him. With this emotion overriding all others, Octavius persisted in his stance one last time and the voting resumed. Just before the final vote was cast, Tiberius, alert to the impending danger, urged his own immediate gang of supporters to drag Octavius from the rostra and protect him. Sure enough, when the voting was complete and Octavius was deposed, the mob rushed headlong at the former tribune. His allies failed to repel them, but under the protection of the bodyguard, Octavius escaped with his life. His servant was less lucky: his eyes were gouged out.

  That same day the land bill finally became law with an overwhelming vote. The law stipulated the immediate appointment of three commissioners charged with surveying, recovering and reallocating public land. The three were Tiberius, his younger brother Gaius and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius Pulcher. After the elation of having their bill passed, however, the reformers were stymied from the start. The showdown with Octavius had served only to make the aristocratic faction more hardline and entrenched. Whenever the commissioners requested funds to carry out their work, the Senate successfully sabotaged any progress by refusing to finance it. It is also possible that even Tiberius’s allies felt that he had gone too far in exploiting the power of the office of tribune.

  Mutterings in the Senate House spread to the streets of Rome, and a smear campaign now gained momentum: Tiberius was not interested in the people, but only in power; he was simply using the plebs to assert his personal ambition and dominion over the apparatus of the republic. In short, went the word, he was a tyrant who wanted to be king. His violent removal of Octavius from the sacrosanct office of tribune pr
oved as much!40 As the rumours grew apace, Tiberius, cresting a wave of popular acclaim and dizzy with direct action, played into the hands of his opponents. Early in 133 BC came news that Attalus, the king of Pergamum, a wealthy Greek city in Asia Minor loyal to Rome, had died. In his will he named the Roman people as his heirs. At a stroke, Rome acquired a rich, cultured economy. But this was not how Tiberius took the news. He saw it as a windfall, the very injection of cash that his land commission urgently needed. He immediately brought another bill before the Plebeian Assembly, proposing to use the royal money to finance the land reform. Since the Roman people were the nominated heirs of Attalus, ran Tiberius’s argument, they should be able to dispose of the money as they wished.

  Once again, the bill drove Nasica and the conservatives in the Senate to fury. Control of foreign and economic affairs had always belonged to the Senate, and the Senate alone. Tiberius’s enemies immediately seized on his action as further proof of his naked ambition for absolute power. In the Senate one of Nasica’s faction, Pompeius, stood up and threw fuel on the flames. As Tiberius’s neighbour, he said, he had witnessed how envoys from Pergamum had come to the tribune’s house, bringing with them a crown and a purple robe from the royal treasures ‘in the expectation that he would soon be king of Rome’.41 The senators erupted in horror. However, there was another reason why Tiberius’s controversial bill had played into his enemies’ hands: it was grounds for prosecution. No criminal case could be brought against a magistrate while he was still in office, but Tiberius’s tenure of the Tribunate was quickly running out. At last, believed the senators, they had their man.

  Constantly in fear of his life, Tiberius was now accompanied by a bodyguard wherever he went. Death threats and rumours of plots to kill him had so rattled him that his associates and supporters now guarded his house by camping outside it day and night. Inside, he took advice from them. The only way to avoid prosecution, they said, was to remain in office: why not stand for tribune for the following year? Running for the same office for two consecutive years was unconstitutional by custom, but a vote in the people’s assembly could create a new precedent. Fired by this idea and the encouragement of his immediate coterie, Tiberius entertained grand ideas for a new manifesto on which to campaign, a new set of proposals designed to curb the power of the Senate even further.42 Increasingly, the rumours and slanders against Tiberius and his motives were beginning to wear the look of truth. Was this indeed a quest for personal power, a vendetta of revenge against the very men who had so humiliated him, a quest that was, in the end, out of step with what even the people wanted?

  There were certainly signs that his own faction in the Senate was estranged from him, for the ancient sources now go increasingly silent on the role of the eminent politicians who had once backed him. Furthermore, the rural voters whose support had been so critical in passing the land reform bill had returned to the countryside for the harvest. They could not be counted on to come back to the city for the vote on Tiberius’s re-election. Nonetheless, the young man went ahead with his crusade and the greatest gamble of his life. The decision would set him on the ultimate collision course with the Senate.

  At daybreak on the morning of the elections the auspices were taken. They did not bode well. The birds, although enticed with food, would not even leave their cage. Other bad omens followed. When Tiberius left his house he stubbed his toe so hard on the threshold that it split his toenail. Then a raven dislodged a stone from the roof of a house he was passing on his way to the Forum, which landed on his foot. The signs shook his resolve so much that he thought about abandoning the election. But one of his Greek tutors, who had been influential in shaping his political thought since he was young, told him that ‘it would be a shame and an unbearable disgrace if Tiberius, the son of Gracchus, a grandson of Scipio Africanus and a champion of the Roman people, should fail to answer his fellow-citizens’ call for help because he was afraid of a raven’.43

  When Tiberius reached the Forum and climbed the Capitol Hill, he walked into mayhem. Amid the cheers and applause for him, the rival gangs of supporters for the tribune of the people and for the aristocratic élite were jostling and pushing each other around. As the voting got under way, a senator loyal to Tiberius threw himself into the mêlée and made his way towards him with a warning: the Senate, he said, was in session, and Nasica and his faction were at this very moment rallying their colleagues to kill Tiberius. Alarmed, Tiberius passed on the word to his nearby supporters, who prepared themselves for a fight. Some of them, however, were out of earshot, caught up in the swarms of people. To them Tiberius signalled that his life was in danger by putting his hand to his head. His enemies took this gesture to mean something else entirely. They rushed to the steps of the Senate House and made an announcement: Tiberius was calling for his crown!44

  In the Senate, Nasica used this news to drive home his case. He shouted at the consul to save the republic and kill the tyrant. The consul, however, stood his ground and defended the principle of justice on which the republic was founded: he would authorize neither the use of violence in politics, he said, nor the execution of a man without trial. At this point, in frustration and fury, Nasica jumped to his feet and declared a state of emergency: ‘Now that the consul has betrayed the state, let every man who wishes to uphold the laws follow me!’ Then, in the manner of a priest before a sacrifice, Nasica pulled his toga around his head and left the Senate House.45

  Joined by their slaves and associates who had come armed with clubs, the hundreds of senators following Nasica now tied their togas around their waists to free up their legs, armed themselves with whatever they could find en route – broken staves or legs of benches – and marched towards the Capitol. Many of the crowd gave way out of respect to their rank and seniority, and fear at the sight of so many noblemen bent on a single, violent purpose. Others, even Tiberius’s supporters, panicked and trampled over each other in their attempts to disperse. In the confusion and chaos, Tiberius too tried to run. At first someone caught hold of his toga, so he threw it off. Then, dressed only in his tunic, he tried once again to get away, but tripped over some bodies. He fell down and was promptly clubbed to death.

  No fewer than three hundred people were killed in this way: not honourably with swords, but ignobly and brutally with clubs, sticks and stones. In the aftermath, Tiberius’s younger brother Gaius requested that his dead brother’s body be returned to him. But the aristocratic senators refused Tiberius the dignity of a proper burial and threw his bludgeoned corpse into the Tiber that same night, along with those of his supporters and friends. It was the first time in the history of the republic that a political conflict had ended in murder.

  EPILOGUE

  In foreign wars, campaigns and battles spanning 150 years between 275 BC and 132 BC, the aristocratic élite of Rome had led the republic to victory across the length and breadth of the Mediterranean. They had generated amazing wealth, both for themselves and for Rome; in the process they had won an empire and become a superpower. But the price they paid for this, so a conservative commentator of the time might have said, was the loss of the very principles of justice, decency and honour that they had used to justify their conquests and that had helped to make the republic so powerful in the first place.

  Following the destruction of Carthage, the nobles’ pursuit of military excellence, riches and prestige served only to intensify the rivalry and competition for office between the families of the aristocracy. As a consequence, they turned in on themselves and, through greed and self-interest, ignored the developing social and economic problems that empire-building had brought in its wake. As a result, they alienated many sections of society – sections that, in the 130s BC, crystallized into a power base for Tiberius and his associates to use in their bid for reform.

  Although Tiberius took a controversial political path in championing the cause of the people against the interests of his own milieu, the aristocratic élite, his aim was essentially conservative: to
save the republic by alleviating the problems of the needy. Constitutionally too, Tiberius had been well within his rights as tribune in proposing the land bill without the Senate’s approval and in deposing Octavius. But in setting the people against the Senate in such a directly confrontational manner, Tiberius was damaging the customary respect that the élite liked to think underpinned the relationship between the Senate and the sovereign Roman people. In the nobles’ eyes such behaviour was utterly offensive. Ever since the expulsion of the kings from Rome, concord and cooperation between the political orders had been seen as cornerstones of the republic, its unique source of strength, power and dynamism. For this reason alone it was easy for enemies, such as Nasica, to paint Tiberius as a revolutionary, to pick at the sensitive nerve of the Romans’ fear of domination by one man and to suggest that he was capitalizing on the people for his own ends.

  In reality, though, Tiberius and his land bill sought only to restore things to the way they had been centuries earlier before Rome had won the riches of its empire abroad. That aim continued after Tiberius’s death. The land commission carried on its work for three more years. Six years later, in 123 BC, his proud younger brother Gaius picked up the baton, was also elected tribune and introduced an even more ambitious and comprehensive programme of reform. He too was branded an enemy of the republic by the conservatives in the Senate and murdered. As with his brother, they despised what he stood for. To the mass of the Roman people, however, Tiberius and Gaius were heroes. In their eyes at least, the two sons of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus the elder and Cornelia had honoured the funeral masks of their father and their dead aristocratic ancestors. Those ghostly likenesses were displayed in cases in the atrium of their family home. The glorious memory of the men they represented had been renewed.