Tiberius Gracchus

I was born to Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, and to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. From youth I learned law, Greek letters, and the stern measure of the mos maiorum. As quaestor under Mancinus at Numantia, when our army was trapped, I went beneath the walls and bargained a surrender that spared thousands. The Senate annulled that treaty. I kept the memory of soldiers who had eaten their leather and of fields at home fallen to great estates and slave gangs.

Made tribune of the plebs in 133, I proposed the Lex Sempronia agraria. I revived the ancient limit on occupation of public land: about 500 iugera for a man, with small additions for sons; the surplus to be divided into inalienable small farms for citizens. I sat as triumvir with my brother Gaius and my father‑in‑law Appius Claudius Pulcher to measure and assign. When Marcus Octavius, a fellow tribune, vetoed the bill again and again, I asked the Assembly whether a tribune who betrayed the people’s welfare remained sacrosanct. They removed him.

To sustain the work I claimed King Attalus III’s bequest for the people, defying senatorial control of foreign monies. My enemies cried tyranny, and I sought a second tribunate to protect the law. On the Capitoline, Scipio Nasica gathered men with clubs; the meeting was broken; I was struck down, and many with me, our bodies cast into the Tiber. Yet plots were allotted, and the question endured: how far may a Roman break custom to save the Republic’s strength?