16. The Roman Republic’s First Serious Bout of Domestic Political Violence
Tiberius Gracchus proposed agrarian reforms to break the giant estates illegally seized by the elites from public lands, and redistribute them in small parcels to lower class citizens in order to restore the independent yeoman class. He was vehemently opposed by Rome’s elites. When he nonetheless pushed through legislation that began to redistribute the land, he was murdered by a senatorial mob in a riot organized by optimates. That was the name of a faction of conservatives who sought to limit the power of the popular assemblies and the tribunes and extend that of the pro-aristocratic Senate. It was the Roman Republic’s first act of organized political violence.
That broke two taboos: one against political violence in general, and one against violence against a tribune of the plebes, whose persons had been deemed sacrosanct and inviolate for centuries. Violence begat violence, and Tiberius Gracchus’ political murder ushered in nearly a century of turmoil, as the Roman Republic tore itself apart in bouts of civil wars and bloody political purges. In a historic irony, the violence fell disproportionately upon and virtually wiped out the very patrician and senatorial class whose interests the optimates sought to advance.
