Gaius Gacchus, Roman Empire

Whilst Plutarch describes Tiberius as a man of mild and measured temperament, his younger brother Gaius is a completely different character. Bombastic and flamboyant, he is a firebrand who picks up his brother’s reformism and takes it in a radical new direction. 

Gaius is nine years younger than his brother but shares his reformist spirit and commitment to Rome’s poor. The young man begins his career in 124 BCE when he is elected to his brother’s former position of Tribune of the Plebeians. Gaius is a populist through and through; the historian Appian relates that when delivering his speeches, he does not face the Senate, as is custom, but chooses instead to turn and address the people who clamour outside, excluded from the deliberations of the city’s rich and powerful. Here, Gaius demonstrates his loyalties lie with the people, and he tells them that power can be theirs, that it can be taken away from the self-interested misers of the Senate House.

Gaius’ flagship policy as Tribune is that all Roman citizens should receive a monthly ration of grain at a very low, fixed, and subsidised price. Much of the burden of providing this grain falls on the rich, who must sell their produce to the city at a loss. Resentment grows among the upper classes, and then, as Gaius becomes more and more popular, resentment gives way to fear. What if, at the head of an army of the destitute, Gaius seizes control of the state and overturns the ancient privileges of the rich?

Tensions grow, but Gaius continues with his programme, winning re-election to the Tribunate for a second consecutive term. This throws the Senate into a panic, and many now become convinced of the need to rid Rome of the dangerous rabble-rouser. A plot is hatched.

Lucius Opimius, consul at the time and a staunch protector of the privileges of the rich, is granted the Senatus Consultum Ultimimum, a decree issued in emergencies that allows the execution of extreme measures to protect the Republic. Opimius marches out of the Senate with a gang of soldiers and begins street clashes with the Gracchan faction.

Realising the dire situation, Gaius gathers his supporters and leads them to a defensible position on the Aventine Hill. Opimius’ men are in hot pursuit, and they surround the base of the hill. There is no way out. Gaius dies by his own hand or by the hand of his slave Philocrates as the Aventine is stormed. Those of Gaius’ supporters who survive the attack are rounded up and executed.

The Gracchi fought for the interests of the Roman lower classes. Using the legal instruments of the state and appeals to the people, they rocked the foundations of the Roman constitution. Though they achieved important relief for the city’s poor, they also gathered a great amount of power around themselves by exploiting the economic and political rifts between Rome’s social classes. Cicero, speaking a century later, says that “the death of Tiberius Gracchus divided a united people into two groups.” And whilst class conflict is natural to any society with a class structure and had always existed in Rome, later historians note that the violence that followed the Gracchi’s reforms is the first civil strife that Rome has experienced since the city shook off their kings more than a century earlier.

While class conflict in Roman society has led to friction between the rich and the poor for centuries, the violence against the Gracchi brothers intensifies and sharpens these rifts. This is the beginning of the division of Roman politics into two loose, unofficial factions: the optimates, conservatives who believe it best to leave the guidance of the state to the rich and to defer to the judgment of the Senate, and the populares, who seek power and influence by circumventing the dominance of the Senate and appealing directly to the people in the assemblies and the forum.