Gracchi reforms

 by

iroabuchi onwuka

Juvenal describes “Rome is supported on Pipe Stems match sticks; it’s cheaper thus for the landlord to shore up his ruins, patch up the old cracked walls, and notify all the tenants. They are expected to sleep secure through the beams are about to crash above them.” 

That Plebs and proletariats, “has no standing in court…Men do not easily rise whose property hinders their merit.” this remained the case in Rome till the 2^nd century –B.C when more lands were acquired by Roman Citizens and war veteran. The tribunes were appointed to deputize on their behalf and Roman Senators were in central position to question some of the more daring petition over. 

According to Michael Parenti, “In 121, in response to Gaius’s initiatives, the Senate passed what was later called the Senatus Consultum utimum, a decree that allowed for a suspension of republican rights “in defense of the defense.” It gave magistrates license to discharge absolutist power, including political repression and mass murder.” 

“After repeated threats against his life, Gaius and 250 supporters including another popularis, Fulvius Flaccus, were massacred by the Optimates’ death squads in 121 B.C. These assassins then rounded up and summarily executed an additional 3000 democrats. The victims’ relatives were forbidden to mourn publicly for the dead.”

With the increase of population, it was a question of time that Rome began to expand the Agrarian laws between 121 B.C – 111 B.C. Rome entered period of street fights and blood baths and according to Cicero, and the people could not tolerate the ‘King-like power’ exhibited by Tiberius Gracchus and by consequent others such as his brother Gaius Gracchus and Flavius Flacca. 

Using a similar argument by Michael Parenti, he noted that popularity led to street fights and it was the optimates and the people who backed Rome sought to remove by sword or by prinile thus in the words of Otto Kieter…”Gracchi perished in furious street fighting” 

“That the Senatus consultum ultimum was used to cut down Gaius Gracchus and thousands of his followers” that, that some of the legislative intent of Gracchi was riddled with reforms that stepped on the privileges of the few. 

It was his understanding as well many that the age of Rome following a hundred years of wars with Samnite was a society politically and religiously divided and direct military and autocratic leadership was necessary.   

Thus the faith of the young empire depended on this very premise of a collective and oval office and a Maximus Pontiff as elected by the people of Rome. 

Parenti marginalized this view by citing an alternative reason that the so-called highest law was ‘often a cloak for the lowest deeds.’ In the next ten years, the selective process and the reform perpetrated a decade earlier brought Lucius Saturninus to an end, following long spells of disagreement and fights in the street. 

P.A Brunt interpretation of Gracchi reforms was that the division created problems of stability and the Senate had little power over the mobs and middle men and the reforms was a disregard for the magistrate but on the premise that  “…the highest law was the public safety’ and perhaps nothing more. 

The Eastward expansion of Rome to Africa and Asia Minor swelled the number of poor and placed people, whose lands were collateral for the survival of the Senate. It soon fetches problems for Rome and it was tethered against the wish of the State towards Civil war as earlier as 120 B.C.