Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Gracchi Brothers (Encore)

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

During the Roman Republic, two brothers took it upon themselves to seek to change Rome to benefit the poor and underclass. Needless to say, the Roman elites did not like this and did everything in their power to ensure it didn’t happen.  …and the elites were successful. But in the process, they changed Roman history forever and put the Republic on a path to destruction.  Learn more about the Gracchi Brothers and how they tried to change Roman society on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. During the Roman Republic, two brothers took it upon themselves to seek to change Rome to benefit the poor and underclass. Needless to say, the Roman elites did not like this and did everything in their power to ensure it didn't happen. And the elites were successful. But in the process, they changed Roman history forever and put the Republic on a path to destruction.

Learn more about the Gracie brothers and how they tried to change Roman society on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. if your perceptions about the past were wrong. ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Tiberius and Gaius Gryas Grakus were born to a very prestigious Roman family.

Their father, Tiberius Sempronius Grakis, had an impeachment. impeccable resume for a Roman. He was a general awarded two triumphs, the highest honor you can bestow a Roman general. As a politician, he served as a praetor, governor of Hispania, and censor, and he was elected consul, the highest position in the Roman Republic twice. Unlike other men elected as consul, he also served as the Tribune of the Plebs, which was a very high position in its own right, and he was able to do this because he was a Paublean, not a patrician. The distinction between Poblians and patricians has everything to do with who your ancestors were when the republic was founded. The 100 men selected as the first Roman senators were the basis of the patrician class.

Clearly, as the elder Grakas proved, you could advance pretty far as a Poblian. Having consuls in your family, especially your father, was a very big deal in Rome. The elder Tiberius was 30 years older than his wife and died when his children were still quite young. The mother of the two brothers was a woman by the name of Cornelia, who was the daughter of Scipio-Africano. Women are often overlooked in Roman history, but Cornelia gets special mention. She was upheld by Romans for centuries as the example of what the prototypical Roman woman should be. She had 12 children, which was unusual for a Roman, of which three survived to adulthood. She was well-versed in literature and was a prolific writer. She's one of only four

women in Roman history whose writings have survived to the present day. She was also the first woman in Roman history who had a statue erected in her honor while she was still alive. And on top of all that, not surprisingly, she was instrumental in her son's political careers. So, to summarize, the Grocky Boys came from a top-notch family, but just so happened to be Plobulians. Tiberius, the older brother, was born in 163 BC, and Gaius, his younger brother, was born in 154. By this time, the Roman Republic had been around for about 350 years. It had become extremely corrupt, and wealth, and in particular land, has slowly become concentrated in the hands of a small number of patrician senators.

The Republic had been founded on the idea of citizen farmers like Cincinnati. But by the time of the Grakai, that had all but disappeared. The tradition in Rome was divide up land between all heirs, which over time led to smaller and smaller plots of land. These plots of land eventually became so small where you couldn't feed yourself so people would just sell the land, which was then purchased by wealthy landowners. Largest states were now the norm, owned by the very rich, and run almost a exclusively on slave labor. The slaves took jobs that would otherwise have been available for

Roman citizens, leaving them unemployed. On top of all of this, Rome had expanded to encompass the entire Italian peninsula, but the number of people with Roman citizenship and the rights of citizenship was actually rather small. So, with this background of the state of Rome, we're finally able to introduce Tiberius Grakus. Once he came of age, Tiberius was on a career path where he looked to follow in his father's footsteps to possibly become consul. During the third Punic War in 147 BC, he served as a legate to his brother-in-law, Scipio Emilianus. And if you remember back to my episode on the war, this is where the Romans leveled the city of Carthage.

In 137 BC, he was elected to the position of Quaester, which was sort of like a treasurer position. He served in Hispania, where he negotiated a treaty to surrender Roman forces that otherwise would have been encircled and wiped out. his treaty actually saved many Roman lives, and it wasn't his idea to negotiate, but it was looked upon unfavorably in Rome where any surrender was seen as dishonorable. What makes Tiberius Grakas notable, and someone worth doing a podcast episode about, occurred in 133 BC, when he was elected to the position of Tribune of the Plebs.

The Tribune of the Plebs was only open to Poblians, of which Tiberius was. There were two of them elected every year, just like consuls. It was a powerful position as the Tribune could propose legislation, summons the Senate, and veto laws. Thus, the Tribune of the Plebbs served as a check on the power of the patrician class in the Senate. Also, and this becomes really important, the person of the Tribune was considered sacrosanct. Anyone who assaulted a tribune would be executed. Tiberius was a member of a political faction known as the Poplares. He began advocating a policy of radical land reform.

putting limits on the amount of land that could be owned and redistributing it to those without any land. His words were recorded by the Roman historian Plutarch, when he said, quote, The wild animals of Italy have their dens. Each of them has a place to rest and refuge. But those who fight and die for Italy have nothing, nothing except the air and the light. Houseless and homeless, they roam the land with their children and wives. They fight and die to protect the rich and luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by others. The so-called masters of the world have not one clot of earth that they can call their own." His proposal, known as the Lexagraria, would limit the amount of public land anyone could own to about 125 acres or 50 hectares.

While this was a radical proposal, Tiberius wasn't alone in advocating this. Needless to say, it was extremely popular with the common people, and it had the support of one of the consuls for the year, as well as many junior senators. Likewise, it was extremely unpopular with many wealthy senators whose land holdings would have been the target of the legislation. This group was known as the Optimates. The main opponent of the bill was the other Tribune of the PLEBs for that year, Marcus Octavius. Marcus Octavius continually vetoed Tiberius' proposals and worked against the clear desires of his Paublean constituents. Eventually, during an assembly of the Paubleans, Tiberius got the Plebs to revoke the tribunate of Marcus Octavius, and then he was literally pulled off the assembly by force.

Needless to say, this was a highly unorthodox and illegal move. Right when this was being debated, King Atalus III of Pergamon died and left his kingdom an entire fortune to the people of Rome. Tiberius proposed that this money be used to fund the land reform by compensating the landowners whose land would be taken. The bill eventually did pass, but it was hamstrung by the Senate, which didn't allocate enough money for the committee which was to oversee the program. Things came to a head when Tiberius decided to run for re-election in 132 BC. This was highly unusual, if not illegal. The optimates began saying that Tiberius was trying to become king, using his popularity with the masses to take

control of Rome. During the election for Tribune, a mob led by his cousin, Scipio Nasica, went to where the election was taking place and beat Tiberius and 300 of his supporters to death with blunt objects. This act of violating the sacrosanct powers of the Tribune broke a long-standing taboo. In fact, this was just the latest in many taboos which had been broken, some of which by Tiberius. With Tiberius dead, the Publians elected his younger brother, Gaius, to Tribune. Gaius continued with the same popularies measures as his brother, but his proposals were far more varied and far-reaching. For example, he banned a magistrates who were removed from office for running again. He renewed his brother's agricultural reforms. He established a state grain reserve. The government would buy when the price was low, store it, and then sell it when the price became too high. He established colonies for settlement by poor Romans. He set aside funds for uniforms for poor Romans who were conscripted into the army and banned conscription for anyone under the age of 17. Basically, he got a lot done in his one year as Tribune, all in the spirit of the policies his brother advocated. There was a 10-year wait between when you

could run for Tribune a second time. In 122 BC, Gaius was selected as Tribune again, but he actually didn't run for office. He was just spontaneously proclaimed. In his second term, his big issue was granting Roman citizenship to all Latins, who were the people who lived around Rome, and Latin rights to all Italians. He also wanted to establish a new Roman colony in Carthage. He was not nearly as successful in his second term as Tribune. He was still deeply unpopular amongst the optimates in the Senate, and he was starting to lose support with the Paubleans as well. In 121 BC, a scuffle broke out when someone insulted Gaius and his entourage, who wound up getting killed by Gaius' group and sparked riots associated with the repeal of several of Gaius' laws.

This violence by Gaius' supporters was the excuse that the Senate needed. For the first time in Roman history, the Senate passed a decree, known as the Senateist Consultum ultimum. This translates to the final decree of the Senate. It was used as a last-ditch effort to preserve the Roman state. Once the Senate's Consultum ultimum was passed, anything could be done to secure the objective. And in this case, Gaius was declared an enemy of the Roman state. He was to be killed without a trial.

A group of mercenaries were sent to the Aventine Hill to kill Gaius and his associates, and a reward of the weight of Gaius's head in gold was offered. It isn't known if Gaius was murdered or if he committed suicide, but the end result was that he died. The repercussions didn't end with the death of Gaius. In the weeks that followed, 3,000 of Gaius's supporters were executed without a trial. The story of Tiberius and Gaius Grycas is more than one of just the rich and powerful keeping the little guy down, although that's certainly a part of it. The reason why the story is so important is that it marked a pivotal moment in the history of Rome. Before the Groki, there were rules and norms that governed Roman domestic politics that were strictly enforced.

Violence was seldom introduced. With the murder of the Graki brothers, that taboo was now lifted. Over the next century, Rome saw a series of civil wars, Marius v. Sulla, Caesar versus Pompey, and Octavian v. Mark Anthony. In the end, it resulted in the death of the Roman Republic and the rise of imperial Rome. Did the Gracky really have the best interest of the common Roman in mind? Not all historians agreed that they did. They happened to have been born Poblians, Pablians from a very wealthy and successful family, but Pablians nonetheless.

Because they were Plebs, certain doors were closed to them, yet other doors were open. Being tribute of the plebs potentially offered certain advantages, like the support of the masses if they supported the right policies, which the Gracie brothers did. Ambition was everything in the Roman Republic. Given how powerful and influential their mother was in driving their careers behind the scenes,

it wouldn't be surprising if they used policies that had widespread popular support just to increase their influence in power. But regardless of the reason why they did what they did, Tiberius and Gaius Giacas were early versions of social reformers. There weren't really many examples in history before the Grackie brothers of the wealthy taking such risks

to publicly advocate programs for the common people. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. Associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in everything everywhere daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available.

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