The Gracchi

Summary

Podcast Summary: In Our Time – "The Gracchi"

Introduction

In the May 1, 2025 episode of BBC Radio 4’s acclaimed series In Our Time, host Melvyn Bragg delves into the tumultuous lives and lasting impact of the Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, pivotal figures in the late Roman Republic. Accompanied by experts Catherine Tempest, Federico Sant'Angelo, and Catherine Steele, the discussion explores the brothers' ambitious reforms, their violent deaths, and how their actions reshaped Roman politics.

Historical Context of the Gracchi

Catherine Steele sets the stage by describing Rome in the late second century B.C. As the dominant Mediterranean power post the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C., Rome was not yet the sprawling empire under the emperors but rather a patchwork of autonomous kingdoms and directly controlled territories. The Roman army, composed of citizen soldiers obligated to serve, was the backbone of this expansion. However, as Rome's conquests extended overseas, the traditional model of the citizen-farmer began to strain, leading to significant political and social challenges.

Rise of Tiberius Gracchus

Tiberius Gracchus emerged from a distinguished lineage, with his mother, Cornelia, being the daughter of the renowned general Scipio Africanus. Melvin Bragg highlights that Tiberius’ noble background, military experience, and powerful family connections positioned him well within Rome’s elite. His upbringing under Cornelia’s influence, who emphasized Greek education and oratory skills, prepared him to navigate the intricate landscape of Roman politics.

Reforms Introduced by Tiberius

Upon his election as tribune of the plebs in 133 B.C., Federico Sant'Angelo explains that Tiberius proposed significant agrarian reforms. His legislation aimed to redistribute public land to landless Roman citizens, restricting individual landholdings to 500 ugera (approximately 140 hectares) and allocating small plots to those without land. This move was a response to the depopulation of the Italian countryside and the overreliance on slave labor, which threatened the ideal of the citizen-soldier.

The Downfall and Death of Tiberius

Tiberius’ reforms threatened the entrenched elite, leading to fierce opposition. As Melvin Bragg recounts, Tiberius bypassed the Senate to present his agrarian law directly to the people, effectively circumventing traditional political channels. This move provoked hostility among the senators, culminating in his violent death in 133 B.C. A group led by the Pontifex Maximus, a relative of Tiberius, brutally killed him and approximately 300 of his supporters, marking a significant escalation in Roman political violence.

Rise of Gaius Gracchus

Following Tiberius’ assassination, his younger brother Gaius Gracchus continued the legacy of reform. Federico Sant'Angelo outlines Gaius’ political ascent, highlighting his exceptional oratory skills and charismatic leadership. Gaius not only implemented Tiberius’ land reforms but also expanded his agenda to include subsidized grain for Roman citizens and reforms to enhance senatorial accountability.

Reforms Introduced by Gaius

Gaius Gracchus broadened the scope of his brother’s initiatives. Catherine Steele details his introduction of subsidized wheat, allowing male Roman citizens to purchase grain at affordable prices, thereby addressing food security in Rome's burgeoning population. Additionally, Gaius reformed judicial processes by introducing non-senatorial juries for extortion trials, reducing senatorial favoritism, and reorganizing tax collection to diminish senatorial control. These measures aimed to empower the plebeians and curtail the excessive influence of the elite.

The Downfall and Death of Gaius

Despite his comprehensive reforms, Gaius faced mounting opposition similar to his brother. Catherine Steele explains that after two successful tribunates, Gaius attempted a third, which led to intensified resistance. A new tribune, influenced by political rivals, challenged Gaius, resulting in his loss of support. In 121 B.C., amidst attempts to repeal his reforms, violence erupted once more. Faced with imminent arrest, Gaius chose suicide over capture, symbolizing the irrevocable shift towards political violence in Rome.

Impact on the Roman Republic

The deaths of the Gracchi brothers signaled a profound transformation in Roman politics. Melvin Bragg emphasizes that their actions and the subsequent use of violence by the Senate set a dangerous precedent. The Senate’s willingness to suppress opposition through lethal means eroded traditional republican norms, paving the way for future power struggles and the eventual transition to imperial rule. This era marked the beginning of entrenched political factionalism and the introduction of violence as a tool for political resolution.

Historiographical Perspectives

Historians have long debated the legacy of the Gracchi. Federico Sant'Angelo notes that ancient sources present conflicting views: figures like Sallust view the Gracchi as honorable reformers wronged by the senatorial elite, while Cicero portrays them as dangerous demagogues who threatened the Republic’s stability. These polarized accounts have influenced modern interpretations, with some viewing the Gracchi as early champions of populism and social justice, and others as harbingers of the Republic’s decline.

Legacy of the Gracchi in History

The Gracchi brothers have become archetypal figures in discussions about political reform and populism. Catherine Steele points out that their legacy extends beyond ancient Rome, inspiring both revolutionary thinkers and conservative critics throughout history. Their attempts at wealth redistribution and challenging entrenched power structures resonate with modern political movements, highlighting the enduring relevance of their struggles.

Conclusion

The episode on the Gracchi brothers offers a comprehensive examination of their roles in the waning days of the Roman Republic. Through their ambitious reforms, tragic deaths, and the ensuing political violence, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus left an indelible mark on Roman history. Their lives encapsulate the tensions between populism and oligarchy, the challenges of societal reform, and the fragile nature of republican institutions—lessons that continue to echo through the annals of history.

Notable Quotes

• Catherine Tempest (00:05): “In the second century BC, the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus brought popular reforms to the Roman Republic.”

• Melvin Bragg (04:57): “Tiberius Gracchus has really become famous for the violent death and the whole policy of his Tribunate that preceded it in 133 BC.”

• Catherine Steele (07:09): “Cornelia... she had great influence in this period of expansion, mixing new Greek fashions and educational reforms into her children's upbringing.”

• Federico Sant'Angelo (10:32): “Land holding across Italy was the key issue of Tiberius’ tribunate.”

• Melvin Bragg (15:14): “What got Tiberius killed was not actually land legislation, but the actions he took to implement it, which made others fear he aimed at tyranny.”

• Catherine Tempest (27:23): “The Gracchi brothers introduced a new way of operating, bypassing the Senate and appealing directly to the people, introducing violence into politics.”

• Federico Sant'Angelo (37:31): “The Gracchi are one of those episodes in Roman history that lend themselves to neat comparisons with modern politics.”

Further Listening

For those intrigued by the dramatic turn of events that led to the downfall of the Roman Republic, the next episode of In Our Time explores the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, where High King Brian Boru of Ireland defeated the Viking forces, shaping the future of Ireland.

Transcript

[Melvin Bragg]

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts this is.

[Catherine Tempest]

In our time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. In the second century bc, the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus brought popular reforms to the Roman Republic. Tiberius brought in land reform so every soldier could have his farm, while Gaius offered cheap grain for Romans and targeted corruption among the elites. These reforms were such a threat to those elites that they shockingly had the brothers killed, Tiberius in 133 BC and Gaius 12 years later. And this increased violence in politics was to destabilize the Republic forever, tying the Gracchi to the question of why Rome's Republic gave way to the Rome of Emperors. With me to discuss the Gracchi are Catherine Tempest, Lecturer in Roman History at the University of Leicester, Federico Sant'Angelo, professor of Ancient History at Newcastle University, and Catherine Steele, professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow. Catherine Steele, can you take us to this period in Rome's history, the late second century B.C. what did Rome rule and how?

[Catherine Steele]

By this point, Rome is unquestionably the dominant power in the Mediterranean, a fact that it is amply demonstrated only 13 years before the events we're talking about with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE. But it's not an empire colored in on the map or with the uniform control and power that we associate with the Rome of the emperors. The Mediterranean is still a patchwork of different kinds of political communities. There are notionally independent kingdoms still, such as the Attalids in Pergamum, who have complete autonomy over their internal rule. But if they try to do anything foreign policy related that Rome doesn't like, Rome will be there. And alongside that there are bits of territory that Rome controls directly by sending military commanders, magistrates with military authority on an annual basis with armed forces. And what backs this whole structure up is the Roman army. Rome was known in antiquity, remarked upon in antiquity for the size of its citizen body. And one of the obligations of being a male citizen was military service. And as a result, Rome was able to levy enormous armies of a citizen militia which could sustain these conquests. And behind that model lay the ideal of the peasant farmer, the man who owned a small and self sufficient plot and would fight for Rome himself as a young adult, and then hopefully would have sons who would do likewise. Now, it wasn't necessarily a very large amount of land that was required in order to generate this obligation, but it existed. And that was one of the issues that began to reverberate in this period.

[Catherine Tempest]

What if good potential soldiers didn't have any land?

[Catherine Steele]

Well, that's a really interesting question. The general assumption is that they were exempted from obligation to serve. How far that could actually be maintained is a bit less clear. And some campaigns, those campaigns where there was the prospect of booty, didn't seem to have any difficulty in filling their recruiting totals. But where Rome was facing a campaign that was long or difficult or not, perhaps very attractive, there began to be an issue about could they fill their levies, what happens?

[Catherine Tempest]

They take them away and then they train them for a while. What's the process?

[Catherine Steele]

There's an elaborate system of training. Yes. Actually, Polybius, the Greek historian, is absolutely fascinated by the Roman army, and he tells us a lot about the Roman army at this period in book six. We always read book six because of constitution, but actually most of it is Polybius, a military commander himself, absolutely fascinated. And there are all sorts of really interesting things about how the Roman army worked. So, for example, it deliberately avoided territorial unity in its forces. The way that the men were called up and assigned to the different units meant that local geographical connections across Italy were broken up and they had to serve in a Roman army. But, yes, there's training. A good deal of debate about how far the equipment was paid for by the state or how far people had to supply their own equipment. So issues to be worked out that seem to have their origin in this ideal of a citizen militia, where you grab your sword and you head out from your farm and you fight Rome's enemies, which kind of worked when Rome was one small community in central Italy fighting other small communities in central Italy. When you're now fighting overseas for campaigns that can potentially go on for years, it's a bit more difficult to operate that system.

[Catherine Tempest]

Thank you, Catherine. Tempest, let's turn to Tiberius Gracchus. How did he rise to prominence? And almost as importantly, why did he rise to prominence?

[Melvin Bragg]

Absolutely. So Tiberius Gracchus has really become famous for the violent death and the whole policy of his Tribunate that preceded it in 133 BC. But there was absolutely nothing in his background to suggest that this would be the course he would take. In many ways, he had all the essentials for success in the kind of system that Catherine has just outlined for us. So he belongs to an incredible, incredibly famous family. In this period of expansion, when Rome has gone over and conquered Carthage, his Mother Cornelia could claim ancestry from the great general Scipio Africanus, who had defeated Hannibal in the Second Punic War, the wars against Carthage. His sister was married to the Scipio Aemilianus, the man who had then gone and finished it all off by razing Carthage to the ground in 146 BC. And our Tiberius Gracchus had taken advantage of these connection. So he had gained military experience by being attached to the army of Scipio Aemilianus, and notoriously, according to our sources, was the first to climb the walls of Carthage as it had been razed to the ground. So he's got this elaborate family that's on his mother's side, on his father's side. His father, also called Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, had been a consul twice before. So within the domestic politics of Rome, there was the ladder of offices. The chief magistrate of state would be that consulship. It was the goal to which many politicians aspired. And he had held twice. He'd also been a censor, which is a marker of the esteem in which he was held. He oversaw Rome's morals, kept a check of how many men there were. And so he's brought up in this illustrious family. He's got great wealth, great connections, and his rise really had all the promise of a man of his nobility, a man who belonged to the real top ranks of Roman aristocracy.

[Catherine Tempest]

Can you pick out the influence his mother had and who she was and why she had such influence?

[Melvin Bragg]

Yeah. So his mother was Cornelia, As I said, she's the daughter of the great Scipio Africanus, who had defeated Hannibal. And she was married, fortunately, to Tiberius Gracchus. But he, the father, Tiberius Gracchus Sr. Died quite early on, when Tiberius was probably just less than 10 years old. So she did what any Roman woman would have done, she took care of her children's education thereafter, even, so the story goes, refusing all offers of marriage thereafter, including a proposal from the king of Egypt. Nonetheless, so she's often remembered as having this really powerful steering influence in this period of expansion that Catherine has been describing, we have great migration taking place, some involuntary as people are enslaved or taken hostages, but some is also more voluntary as Rome becomes a magnet for Greek culture. And Cornelia has all of this new fashion around her as she grows up. And so when she is entrusted with the care of her children, as three in total that survived, we're told she had 12. But Tiberius, his brother Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, and his sister Sempronia, she brings Greek tutors into the house. They're taught oratory, they're taught rhetoric, they're given the gifts of speech that would really help them on the stage of domestic Roman politics, which is a perfect complement to the military experience they were gaining as well.

[Catherine Tempest]

Was this unusual?

[Melvin Bragg]

I think it was quite unusual at the time, or at least it was reserved for the highest of the elite in Roman society.

[Catherine Tempest]

Because it was expensive?

[Melvin Bragg]

Because it was very expensive. But also not everyone was open to this Philhellenism, as we call it, this love of the Greek culture. Some people felt ambivalent towards it, that this was going to be a malevolent presence. Whereas she very much sees the potential of using Greek ideas, Greek philosophical thought, to really mold the way her sons were going to conduct themselves in the future.

[Catherine Tempest]

What did she want to mold them into?

[Melvin Bragg]

We presume great statesmen, people like her father, people like Tiberius Gracchus the senior, the father of her children, men that had been great consuls, men that been great statesmen, men that had made a difference.

[Catherine Tempest]

Did her sons take much notice of her?

[Melvin Bragg]

I think they did. I think she was probably a force to be feared. She was the granddaughter of Cornelius Scipio Africanus. So I think, especially since she'd led their education and especially because she had these connections and they listened to their tutors as well. Blossius of Cumae is one in particular that gets highlighted in the narratives that she had hired and who steers the brothers in their sort of decision making processes, especially Tiberius's. So there is a sense that the brothers jointly listen to her. And Gaius Gracchus in particular is probably responsible for a lot of the stories that are recorded around her great influence, her marriage, the way she conducted herself. So she becomes what's called an exemplum, an example of how a Roman mother should be. And the legend goes that she wanted to be remembered as the mother of the Gracchi.

[Catherine Tempest]

Thank you very much indeed, Federico. What was the issue that Tiberius Gracchus wanted to fix?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Land. Land holding across Italy, across the Italian countryside. That was the key issue of his tribunate. He gets elected to the tribunate of the plebs for the year 133 BC.

[Catherine Tempest]

Who are the plebs? I know what they're there. But you tell us who you think the plebs were at that time.

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

The plebs by this point in Rome, is anyone who's not a patrician, that is anyone who is a Roman citizen and does not belong to the fairly narrow circle of families that trace their lineage Back to the age of the kings and indeed to the inner circle of the kings. I suppose, as a tribune of the plebs, he and his nine colleagues who are elected to that magistracy, well, is in principle entrusted with the protection of every single plebeian, every single member of the plebs, but also with the promotion of the interest of the plebs as a corporate body, as a collective body. And crucially, the tribunals of the plebs are entitled to put forward legislation, pieces of legislation. And that's what Tiberius does early on in his tribunal. He puts forward an agrarian law, a law on land tenure which has fundamentally really two tenets. First, it sets restrictions to the amount of public land that an individual can hold. In fact, he reinstated a limit that an ancient piece of legislation had introduced, 500 ugera, roughly 140 hectares in modern parlance. And along with those restrictions, he introduces a plan for the allocation of small plots of land, relatively small plots of land to the poor. Why?

[Catherine Tempest]

Because when he says introduce it, does he give them it or do they have to buy it?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

The land is given to those landless Roman citizens and they will have to pay a fairly modest rent to the public treasury. Why does he do that? Because he perceives a major problem with the, I suppose, pattern of landholding across Italy. According to a story that his brother Gaius told, he traveled across Etruria on his way to Numantia, on his way to Spain, where he fought a war in the a few years before his tribunate under Scipio A. And as he made his way through the Etrurian countryside, he saw that that land was depopulated and was largely tilled by barbarian slaves, as the ancient source Plutarch that tells us about the story puts it. And he therefore sees signs of, I suppose, a structural crisis in the Italian countryside. The model of the Roman citizen soldier who's first and foremost a farmer and who tills his own land, a fairly modest farm in the Italian countryside seems to be going through a fundamental crisis as a consequence, I suppose, of the. Of the empire and of the flow of wealth from the east to a large extent into Italy. And in an attempt to revive this traditional model, Tiberius comes up with an agrarian law.

[Catherine Tempest]

So can I switch to you, Kathleen Steele? Would you like to add to this?

[Catherine Steele]

Well, I mean, Federico set out the problem he thought he was solving. We need more peasant farmers who can serve in the army. And he said about that through legislation. And the interesting thing, I think, about the legislation is he didn't just come up with it off his own bat. We tend to think of Tiberius as an independent figure and that's largely to do with his death. But he had some serious advisors, people who'd held the consulship, people who were holding the consulship. And I often wonder actually whether if he'd managed to get through his tribuna and not get killed at the end of it, we wouldn't think of Tiberius Gracchus, the great land reformer. We'd think of a body of men within the Senate who saw a problem and fixed it, using the perfectly traditional method of, of a tribune to put forward legislation to address an issue which a wider group of people were interested in.

[Catherine Tempest]

This is quite a good way to get popular. Was that one of his intentions?

[Catherine Steele]

Absolutely, yeah. So there's nothing odd about Tiberius holding the tribunet of the plebs. The Semproni are a plebeian family. Right. So there's no problem about his being a tribunate. And the plebeian members of the ruling elite very often used the tribunate as an early office to develop their reputation, which they could then cash in when they stand for election to higher offices. So he's looking to be popular. I mean, it's very difficult to strip away the biographical tradition and the disaster of his tribunet to go back to the optimism of December 134when he took office and he puts forward this legislation. But he and his backers may genuinely have thought this is a no brainer, this will work and it won't cause the crisis that in fact it did provoke.

[Catherine Tempest]

He was badly advised then.

[Catherine Steele]

Well, perhaps or you know, they underestimated the intransigence of the Senate or arguably the problems actually develop a little later in the year 133 with some of the decisions that Tiberius makes after he's put forward his legislation.

[Catherine Tempest]

Okay, cut to Catherine with a K. Catherine Tempest. Tiberius came to be violently killed. How did that. How and why did that happen?

[Melvin Bragg]

Catherine has already alluded to the events later in 133 BC and there are a series of key moments that punctuate the narrative that we can address here. The first is that the bill doesn't go down well. He bypasses the Senate, he presents it to the people and in the process he also gets into conflict with another tribune. So there's a.

[Catherine Tempest]

Excuse me, may I? If he's an experienced chap, why did he do something as stupid as bypassing the Senate?

[Melvin Bragg]

Well, because you could effectively, if you noticed that there was so much hostility against your proposal. And the Senate were not actually going to ratify this and agree that this is a bill that should be presented to the people. It was only tradition that dictated that they should be consulted. So if you wanted that bill so badly and the Senate weren't going to give it to you, you could just go to the popular assembly. And they had the power to turn something into law through what's the process of the assembly of the plebeians. And this was called a plebiscite. So it's a golden opportunity to get the legislation in despite the hostility he's facing from a few among the Senate. And these few use a fellow tribune, a man called Octavius, to interject his veto. Now this is one of the rights that the tribune of the plebs had. If one tribune says, I forbid it, veto, it doesn't go forward. And so Octavius decides to throw his hat in the ring with the senators who are working against Tiberius Gracchus. And he interjects his veto. And there's a brilliant moment where Tiberius Gracchus goes to the stage and he says to the people, actually, let's not vote on my bill today. Here is a tribune who is not representing your interests. So let's vote on whether he should be a tribune of the plebs. I'm paraphrasing dramatically here, but the fallout is that the bill gets passed and then some money comes his way. King Attalus III of Pergamon dies. He leads his empire to the Romans. Tiberius Gracchus again says, right now I've got the money to finance the scheme, put it to the people. And the proposal is that that money should be put into the service of enacting his plans. But the final part of this story, the real clincher is that he decides to stand for re election to the Tribunacion. And people are worried about where this is leading. You don't hold this power successively. It's unprecedented. And so this sets the stage for.

[Catherine Tempest]

His ultimate demise, which is violent and nasty, isn't it?

[Melvin Bragg]

Really nasty.

[Catherine Tempest]

Do you mind describing it briefly so as not to totally shock the listeners?

[Melvin Bragg]

I'd love to describe it. It's set in three parts. The first part very quick, he's going to the Capitoline Hill where voting is going to be taking all the omens that normally accompany these bad events happen. He stopped trips on the threshold. Simultaneously, the Senate are debating it. They say to the consul, we need to take urgent action. This consul forbids anything illegal happening, whereupon the chief Priest, A relative of Tiberius says, those who want to save the state need to follow me. And they gather as many senators as possible. He leads a procession. He dramatically drapes his toga over his head, gathers as many people along the way, and they club to death 300 of Tiberius supporters. That's the number that's given to us, at least. And Tiberius himself is murdered in the process. And their bodies are thrown into the Tiber to prevent them having a proper burial.

[Catherine Tempest]

Well, I suppose I'll say thank you for that, Federico. His younger brother Gaius must have been aware of this. So how did he rise to prominence in Rome?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Gaius is nine years younger than Tiberius. He belonged, like him, to a family that has instant name recognition in republican Rome. During his brother's tribunate, he's in fact fighting the tail end of a lengthy Messi campaign that Rome had been leading in Spain in the city of Numantia under Scipio Aemilianus. He is, however, involved with the implementation of the agrarian law. Upon his return to Italy, he's actually on the committee that is in charge of those land assignments. The law is not scrapped, crucially, after Tiberius death, and its implementation continues in the aftermath of his killing. And Gaius is central to that. And like any gentleman of his standing and reputation, well, he obviously goes for a political career, and he therefore has his eyes on the tribunate of the plebs. And he first has a term as quaestor. He spent some time in Sardinia, which was a Roman province at the time, and he then starts making the case for the revival of the agenda pursued by his brother. On the back of extraordinary personal charisma. He clearly emerges as one of the most gifted and, indeed, in spite of his young age, accomplished public speakers of his generation. His brother had been an excellent orator too. But Gaius really seems to stand out. And indeed his speeches are studied in schools, in Roman rhetoric schools for generations to come. And when he then puts his hat in the ring for the tribunate of the plebs, well, he's a widely known individual in Rome and he, yes, advocates the debt that he has towards the legacy of his brother and indeed his strong commitment to the promotion of the interests of the Roman people. And what he shall then be doing during his two minutes is indeed to broaden the agenda of his brother, not simply focusing on land, but promoting the interests and the political standing of the plebs in a much wider sense.

[Catherine Tempest]

Can we turn to you again, Catherine Steele? What did you propose to go on.

[Catherine Steele]

From what's been said well, whereas Tiberius was a single issue politician, it's all about land. As Federico has animadverted, Gaius had a much broader range. So some of it is about the direct material interests of the Roman plebs, but he recognizes that you can't capture all of that through land. So in addition to continuing and amplifying land redistribution, he also introduces subsidised food.

[Catherine Tempest]

How subsidized?

[Catherine Steele]

Modestly subsidised. So what the law seems to have allowed is it allows every male Roman citizen in Rome to buy a quantity of wheat every month at a low but not negligible price. And the quantity seems to have been slightly larger than a single man could have eaten, but probably not quite enough for an entire household. So a very useful subsidy that is to be paid for by the treasury, and that actually has huge effects on how Rome manages its corn supply. But also, Gaius is really interested in governance and he's really interested in senatorial accountability. So he introduces a whole range of measures that make it much easier for the Roman people to keep track of what senators are doing. So he introduces non senatorial juries in extortion trials. There'd been extortion legislation at Rome, but the only people really who can commit extortion are senators. So to have senatorial juries is kind of a problem now. They're non senatorial. He introduces a new way of collecting taxes that again takes the magistrate out of the equation. He comes up with a system that is going to cause huge problems later on, but it at least is controlling power of senators. And he's very interested even in minutiae. So he reorganizes how the jobs that consuls are given are organized. And he does this by saying to the Senate, you have to choose the jobs that the two consuls each year are going to have before we elect, so that the Roman people have full information before they go to the polls.

[Catherine Tempest]

Despite this range and this eloquence, he too gets killed if you've gone from his brother. Can you tell the listeners about that?

[Catherine Steele]

Yes. So he holds the tribuna in two successive years. So whatever the problem was for Tiberius, it seems to have evaporated. He manages to hold it two years, so he has a long time to put forward this program. But his opponents get organized. And what they do in the second year that he's tribunate is they make sure that another tribune in the college of 10 is his opponent. And unlike Octavius in 133, who frankly was pretty ineffectual, they identify a Man called Marcus Livius Drusus, also from an ancient family, also an extremely competent figure who kind of outguns Gaius Gracchus. He proposes even better things for the Roman people. And as a result, it is an entirely cynical move, as far as we can see. But as a result, Gaius loses his appeal. And the third year, he tries to stand for the tribunate, he loses the election. So 1, 2, 1 starts, and he's back to being a private individual. And lo and behold, there's an attempt to start repealing his legislation. And it's in the context of that legislation that violence breaks out and the Senate take action. They summon Gaius to a meeting. He refuses to come. He goes to the Aventine, the Senate says, we've got an armed uprising. And they pass a decree that instructs the consuls to see that the res publica suffers no harm, and that allows the consul to levy forces and go and suppress Grais uprising with armed force. And Gaius dies by suicide to evade capture.

[Catherine Tempest]

Thank you, Catherine. How did the Roman state change with the influence of and then the death of the Gracchi brothers?

[Melvin Bragg]

Irrevocably. They couldn't call back the monster they had unleashed. And a lot of this is to do with the way that it was managed in the aftermath of the murder of particularly Gaius Gracchus, where trials are held and it is upheld that the actions they had taken were legitimate, that in a crisis, the Senate can protect themselves, even if this causes death and destruction. And so this tool, this instrument in the hands of the senators, and the terrible precedent for the sanctioning of violence echoes throughout the century that follows and really punctuates the narrative. The second way in which it changes politics for good is that the Grackchi brothers had shown a new way of operating. And more successful politicians jump on that bandwagon, bypassing the Senate, going through the popular route, appealing to the people, really putting up opposition to the senators. We see it playing out in the conflict between Marius and Sulla, with Sulla championing this sort of the right of the Senate to take a lead in running the state, with Marius going through the popular assemblies, we see it re echoing in Caesar and Pompey. And then Caesar is just a popular politician that they can't take down. So there's other crises as well. Famously, Cicero prevents a coup d'etat against the state during his consulship in 63 BC, and he uses these moments as precedents for an action of the authority of the Senate to see to it that the state comes to no harm.

[Catherine Tempest]

Are we talking about a fundamental change at the Gracchus?

[Melvin Bragg]

They haven't changed the way that politics could work, but they have shown a way in which it can operate to the advantage of other politicians that want to champion the authority of the people. And that is where we see the fundamental change and the fundamental shift and the introduction of violence into politics.

[Catherine Tempest]

FEDERICO had the threat of violence always been present in the Roman Republic, Rome.

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Is a deeply violent society. Pretty much any Roman citizen would have had some direct experience of warfare at some point in his life. And then, of course, we have slavery, we have the reality of the enslavement of large masses of people from all over the Mediterranean world and beyond. And we have various other layers of violence that are fundamentally built into the structure of that society. We also have, throughout Roman republican history, plenty of instances of political conflict. But what we do seem to be getting with the Gracchan period, with the two crises of the tribunals of Tiberius and Gaius, is somewhat of a shift, really. You get to a point when some political tensions that cannot be solved through more or less peaceful means get sorted out by resorting to violence on a large scale.

[Catherine Tempest]

Why do you think that is?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

The stakes are probably getting higher and higher. The magnitude of the challenge that Tiberius and even more remarkably, Gaius bring to the primacy of the Senate and indeed of the nobility of the most distinguished and wealthiest families in the senatorial nobility is such that, yeah, a traumatic solution must be brought about. But it's also interesting to see that the ways in which Tiberius and Gaius are dealt with, along with hundreds or indeed thousands of supporters of theirs, are actually rather different. With Tiberius, you have an intervention initiative that is taken by the then Pontifex Maximus. We're talking about one of the most senior priests in republican Rome, Scipio Nasica, who also happened to be a first cousin of Tiberius. And he's the one who leads, quite literally, the riot in which Tiberius and his associates are killed. By all intents and purposes, any legal initiative, there is no question about that. By that point, Tiberius is still a serving tribunal of the plebs. He is also, from a religious point of view, untouchable. And yet he gets killed. With Gaius Gracchus, you have a different story. You have an intervention of the Senate. You have a vote of the Senate that entrusts one of the consuls with the repression of the movement that has coalesced around Gaius Gracchus. So, yes, political violence is taking a rather more sophisticated shape. Emit 10 years after the first major occurrence in 133.

[Catherine Tempest]

You wanted to come in.

[Catherine Steele]

I think too, the question of why. It's very important, I think, that we acknowledge that what got Tiberius killed was not actually land legislation. Rather, it's the things which he feels compelled to do in order to implement his land legislation which make other people think he's aiming at tyranny. And tyranny is such a horrifying thought for the Roman republican elite that the idea that he might be consolidating his power to become sole ruler, I think that is what is the trigger for the violence at the end of the year. It's gone well beyond questions of policy. But the other thing, I mean, to pick up on what Federico was saying around the difference between the two men, one of the things we haven't talked about is the extent to which Tiberius death is horrifying. And the Senate are horrified and they engage in a wide range of expiatory moves in order to try and appease the gods for this terrible thing that has happened. Including, in fact, the Pontifex Maximus is encouraged to leave Rome, the first time the holder of that office has been absent from Rome. And in fact, he's encouraged to leave and he dies abroad, which is a way of solving that particular problem. They just don't know what to do with him. How can you kind of reintegrate him into society? Whereas Gaius death is state sanctioned and he's acquitted when it comes to trial. I mean, Opimius, the consul who led the charge.

[Catherine Tempest]

Do you want to take that up?

[Melvin Bragg]

Well, yes, because Opimius not only gets acquitted, he plonks a massive great temple of Concord nonetheless. Yes, right in the center of Rome to celebrate this narrative that Rome has been freed from a tyrant and somebody.

[Catherine Steele]

Puts graffiti on it.

[Melvin Bragg]

Yeah, exactly. And people are hating all of this. So the public reaction is giving us one story, but the attempts to control the narrative from the top are really telling about how the Romans are thinking about their history as well as their future, and how they can prevent these abuses of powers that they're really fearing at this stage.

[Catherine Tempest]

You talked about the graffiti on the Temple of Concord.

[Catherine Steele]

Yes, it's opponents of Opimius, it's supporters of the Gracchi, who've kind of gone underground, but are writing graffiti attacking Apimius and his repressive action in building this temple. I think it's through discord you have built Concord. So it's emphasizing that this is just a front. The idea that everybody buys into this Temple of Concord and graffiti play a.

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Significant part in the story. Even right at the start, according to Plutarch, Greek biographer of the Gracchi, Tiberius was incited to stand for the Tribunate as a young man by a number of graffiti that appeared on the walls of the city of Rome in the build up to the Tribunician elections.

[Catherine Tempest]

So, yes, is there a sense that once violence has begun, it just rolls on and increases?

[Melvin Bragg]

I think you can't bring it back from the centre of politics. Thereafter it becomes endemic and every crisis, once that precedent has been set, will get amplified. So I mentioned the conspiracy of Catiline, which Cicero suppressed and in debating it in the Senate he says, well, we saw a chief priest kill tribune of the plebs when he was only causing a minor disturbance, so we should really unleash the sword now too. Now Cicero is debating various options on the table, but it becomes played out in the Senate in great detail in various ways about how to deal with conspirators. They don't have a system of permanent imprisonment. How do you deal with people that pose such a threat? And the answer they keep coming back to is that they have to be killed, that the metaphor is amputation, taking a gangrenous limb away from the body.

[Catherine Steele]

And conversely, where do popular politicians now go if the Senate can execute them with impunity? How do you put forward a popular program? And we see that in things like in Clodius in the 50s BCE, with the development of paramilitary powers and paramilitary forces, in order to try and maintain his capacity to put forward legislation.

[Catherine Tempest]

Can we come, Federico, coming back to the Gracchi and the fall of the Roman Republic, can you develop that a little more?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Yes. Arnold Toynbee famously spoke of a 100 year revolution that starts with the Gracchi and ends with, well, I suppose the battle of Actium with the victory of Octavian and the emergence of the Principate. And that's one way of looking at it. Yes, there are some fundamental lines of continuity and indeed some ancient authors, some ancient sources do convey a similar account. Most notably, I suppose Appian of Alexandria, who's one of our key sources for this period, a Roman citizen who spoke and wrote in Greek and who wrote a major account of the civil wars. And yet what happens in the Gracchan period does not necessarily lead to ultimately an autocratic outcome. Emergence of monarchy is by no means a foregone conclusion. What I think is actually quite interesting to reflect on though, is the fact that there are a number of themes that emerge in the Gracchan age and that really do not Go away. Do not leave the political agenda for pretty much a century. Land, and indeed the connection between land and the army, the importance that military recruitment has to the stability of the empire, the role of the tribunes, of the plebs, and more generally, the balance of power between the voting assemblies of the Roman people and the Senate, but also the issue of control over the courts of law, or indeed the responsibilities that provincial governors had overseas, also in sort of upholding the good name of the Roman people. Corn distributions, access to food, and more generally, the corn supply of the city of Rome that is becoming bigger and bigger and increasingly crowded. These are all issues that will keep coming back on the political agenda and that ultimately, yes, bring about a structural crisis of the Roman Republic. Rome, after all, is still run as a city state, but is the center of a Mediterranean empire.

[Catherine Tempest]

Catherine, why weren't these reforms overturned?

[Catherine Steele]

Because a lot of them were quite sensible and quite workable, and enough people were invested in their continuance. Subsidised corn immediately was too popular, I suspect, to do anything about it. And there were some attempts to restrict it, and Sulla, as dictator, was able to abolish it, but it had to come back. Right. The populace in Rome, the landless populace in Rome, just needed and were deeply attached to that. Some of his governance reforms, Gaius, governance reforms were popular. And one of the things that Gaius may or may not have intended to do, but he certainly did do, was he made the equestrians into a political force. So we have equestrians being the equestrians being the wealthy members of Roman society who chose not to stand for public office, but often engaged in commercial activity or whatever. And Gaius Gracchus made them into an important political force because he entrusted the juries to them and he also entrusted tax collection to them. And one of the kind of complicating factors of the end of the Republic at moments, is the diversification of the ruling elite and the different interest groups that he created within that.

[Catherine Tempest]

We're moving towards the end. Now. How have historians depicted the Gracchae?

[Melvin Bragg]

So because of the controversy that they inspired during their lifetimes, the Roman writers that look back on this period either portray them as heroes or villains, depending really on their political outlook. To take two examples of contemporaries writing within 100 years, you've got Cicero on the one hand and Sallust, a Roman historian, on the other. So for Sallust, who was attached to Caesar initially and who is a supporter of the popular way of doing things, these are men that had honourable motives, good intentions. They didn't deserve the treatment that they received. The men who got them were conscious of their guilt and trying to cover their traces. So the language is really loaded in favor of of the Gracchi. But when you look at Cicero, the picture becomes more interesting. He has to admit that as orators, they were of the first class, but they had used their capacities and their abilities in public speech, really, to take a wrecking ball to the Republic. And that was unforgivable. He often changes his track in front of the people. In front of the people, he will happily say what wise men they were. And I always agree with issues on land reform that were first initiated by the Grackis. But when he's speaking to a senatorial audience, he toes the senatorial line. And that's more in tune with his thinking that they were justifiably killed for plotting to establish a tyranny over the Republic. And those two views, the view that was held by those in the Senate that despised the Gracchi, and those in the Senate who championed their ideals and their modes of operation, they reverberate and we see them in our sources later. A major source for the study of the Gracchi, elaborate, patchy, a bit anecdotal, is Plutarch's Life of the Two Brothers. We've mentioned Appian, and there's a later historian, Cassius Dyer as well. And we always see in those historians, these two voices competing, the story that wants to champion them and the story that really wants to demolish their reputations.

[Catherine Steele]

Katharine Steele and if you think that the social war is the big disaster of the late republic, then which is the war between Rome and its Italian allies, which breaks out in 91 BCE, then the effect of the gracchi is probably quite significantly negative because, you know, land legislation opens up these issues and makes it into a problem in a way that it arguably hadn't been prior.

[Catherine Tempest]

To Tiberius Federico There seem to be two strands here. Attitudes to the gracchi develop. Have they developed? Obviously, you'd expect that. What examples have they set?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

The Gracchi are one of those episodes in Roman history that really seems to lend itself to fairly neat comparisons with modern politics in a number of ways, because they are reformers, but they are ill fated reformers, and they were divisive figures in antiquity. They were divisive figures in different ways in the modern period, too. So, for example, Machiavelli regards Gaius Gracchus as an example of flawed leadership because he relied on too heavily on the people. And really, that is not what a Prince is supposed to be doing, Machiavelli maintains, but he's also very interested, especially in the discourses in on the one hand, recognizing that the Gracchi had laudable intentions, and on the other hand, in pointing out that really they undermined the republic fatally by putting forward an ill timed land reform which just unleashed a whole set of conflicts that up to the point really had been kept under control. Some French revolutionaries, not all the French revolutionaries, but some French revolutionaries regarded the Gracchi as indeed a great model of selfless champions of the people, who didn't simply stand for the promotion of the political position and political prerogative of the people, but also for the cause of the wealth redistribution. And indeed there is a leading French revolutionary, Babeuf, that even sort of renamed himself Gracchus Baboeuf. And at the same time you find reactionaries or conservatives of all kinds and chastising the Gracchi as examples of unbridled political ambition or quite simply, yes, misguided political leadership.

[Catherine Tempest]

Well, thank you all very much. Thanks to Katherine Steele, Federico Sant'Angelo and Catherine Tempest. Next week is the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 outside Dublin, when the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, defeated the Viking King of Dublin, the King of Leinster and their Manx and Norse allies. Thank you for listening.

[Melvin Bragg]

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

[Catherine Tempest]

I'd like to go around asking you, Simon Federico, what did you not have time to say that you wanted to say?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Two things very quickly. First one is that, yes, this is a very violent phase in Roman history, but it is also a phase in which some big ideas are floating about. There are some fundamental disagreements on how the Republic should be run, how the Roman polity should be run, on the relative weight, I suppose, of the people versus the Senate, on the prerogatives of the magistrates. And there are, I think it's fair to say, some rather brilliant minds at work. I mean, the two raki, in their own ways, are very impressive individuals. But for example, the consul of 133 BC, one of the two consuls, is a man called Publius Mucius Scaevola, who is really one of the early major figures in the history of Roman jurisprudence, in the history of Roman law. So there are new ideas that are circulating, there are new modes, I suppose, of intellectual discourse which do apply to the way in which people think about and debate big political matters. And there are competing visions, I suppose, on what the Roman respublica the Roman Republic should be all about. A second point very quickly is that this whole crisis, and especially really the agrarian law and its implementation, bring into focus the fundamental tension and fundamental interdependence between Rome and Italy. In other words, if you come up with an agrarian law that will have to be implemented across the Italian peninsula, you're going to impinge on very significantly affect the interests of many Italians or many non Roman citizens that maybe had been serving in the auxiliary troops in the Roman army for generations. And that leads to some rather fundamental political problems and really to the fundamental question of how, to what extent and at which pace the Roman citizenship should be extended to the Italians. And that really becomes, within the space of 30 years, a major political issue on the agenda.

[Catherine Tempest]

Would you like to. Anything you want to do?

[Catherine Steele]

I suppose the two things that I would want to. We might have spent more time on. Not that I want to be a prosopography bore, but there is, I think, possibly more to be said about kind of the families of the Gracchi. And one of the things I think is quite interesting about them is it's at least worth speculating how far they push the importance of maternal inheritance, because normally Roman politics works on male line relations only. You know, the male line family, the gens. But the Gracchi are clearly tremendously proud of being grandsons of Scipio Africanus through their mother. So they really emphasize that. But we can also. I mean, there is more to be done, I think, in terms of the Gracchi's embeddedness within the political elite. They are not lone wolves, even though that is often the way they subsequently get presented. And the other thing I find very interesting about this is how rapidly political debate develops. So whereas the men who follow the Gracchi, those we sometimes call populares, still talk about Roman politics as though it's divided into two groups. There are the men like them who want to promote popular interests, and there is the elite. Members of the elite rapidly move to denying any voice to their opponents and instead frame political conflict as an existential matter for the state. So we see that in 133 with Scipio Nasica saying, if you want the state to be safe, follow me. We see it in 1, 2, 1, with the senatorial degree about damage to the Senate. So this shift in political rhetoric to deny any vice to popular reformers is really striking and really rapid.

[Catherine Tempest]

After the Gracchi, do you have anything to add?

[Melvin Bragg]

Yeah, I think coming back to the way we've talked about the events, we've been trying to get a sense of what was happening and why. And some of the strong reactions that they caused can also be looked at through the perspective of how they behaved. So why don't the Senate want these popular reformers putting their proposals to the bill and what damage are they doing? And there are some wonderful narratives surrounding Tiberius Gracchus, in particular, when he. He's deposing Octavius. The vote is going to the tribes. There's 35 tribes. Voting is by unit. You need a majority. So 18 tribes to vote, and Tiberius Gracchus will get his way. And our sources record, probably through Gaius Gracchus, which is recorded in Plutarch, how he tries to convince his opponent to step down. No, Octavius, please stop. I don't want to do this to you. And then the voting pursues. He says, look, there's five votes. Do you really want to keep going? You get to that critical 17 votes, and he turns to Octavius and says, are you sure you want to go ahead with this? You could back down now and remain a tribune. Octavius remains steadfast. The vote goes against him. He's deposed. The senators have to come and make way for him to be removed safely. And when you stop putting it on the stage in those terms, you can start refiguring these events through various lenses, as we've seen later writers did. What is really going on here is, on the one hand, these honorable motives, but on the other hand, this way of performing politics that's inherently dangerous because the Senate don't want this debate to happen. But then this debate is being pushed through from a different lens as well. So the element of the drama in politics, the staging of the people's power and the visual display of a tribune being deposed must have been enormous at that time. And I think that's something to feed into why the Senate actually stopped. Tried to stop that happening and nip it at the bud. It's embarrassing for them.

[Catherine Tempest]

Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed.

[Catherine Steele]

Does anyone want your coffee?

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Cup of tea?

[Melvin Bragg]

Cup of tea.

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

Cup of tea. Be lovely. Thank you.

[Catherine Tempest]

Yes, that went very well. I'll have a bit of chi. Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you.

[Catherine Steele]

In our time with Melvin Bragg.

[Federico Sant'Angelo]

It's produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios audio production.

[Catherine Steele]

It's a parent's nightmare.

[Catherine Tempest]

They said, oh, it's a boy.

[Melvin Bragg]

And I was holding my hands out.

[Catherine Tempest]

Ready to cuddle him, and they took him away.

[Catherine Steele]

A switch at birth discovered with the gift of a home DNA test.

[Catherine Tempest]

The so called brother that we grew.

[Catherine Steele]

Up with wasn't a brother. And there's someone out there. If he's still alive. Is a race against time. I don't want this woman to leave this earth not knowing what happened to her son. The gift from Radio 4 with me, Jenny Kleeman listen now on BBC Sounds.