1. Gaius Gracchus Ended Up Like His Older Brother
Tiberius Gracchus’ younger brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (154 – 121 BC) followed in his older brother’s footsteps. He became a tribune of the plebes, a populares politician advancing the cause of the plebeians, an advocate of agrarian reform, and finally, a victim of political violence when the conservative Roman Senate and the optimates murdered him. Elected a tribune of the plebes in 123 BC, Gaius Gracchus used the popular assemblies to push through his brother’s agrarian reforms, and advocated other measures to lessen the power of the senatorial nobility. He also pushed through legislation to provide all Romans with subsidized wheat, and was reelected tribune in 122 BC. In 121 BC, the Senate again organized a riot to go after a turbulent tribune. After one of his supporters was killed, Gaius Gracchus and his followers retreated to the Aventine Hill, the traditional asylum of plebeians in an earlier age.
The Senate ordered the consuls to go after Gaius, which they did with a mob. Gaius committed suicide, and the mob massacred hundreds of his followers, then threw their bodies into the Tiber river. In the long run, the murders of the Gracchi brothers backfired upon the optimates and the patrician class. The patricians were virtually exterminated during rounds of prescriptions that claimed the lives of thousands, first by the dictator Sulla going after populares following his victory in Rome’s first civil war, only for the pendulum to swing a generation later when Octavian and Mark Antony went after the optimates in an even bloodier and more thorough prescription following their victory in a civil war against Julius Caesar’s assassins. What relatively few patricians survived were gradually killed off later as they were caught up in or were falsely accused of conspiracies against various emperors, until they became virtually extinct.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Aird, Hamish – Pericles: The Rise and Fall of Athenian Democracy (2004)
Ancient History Encyclopedia – The Roman Funeral
Burn, A. R. – The Pelican History of Greece (1982)
Casius Dio – Roman History, Book LXVIII
Encyclopedia Britannica – First Jewish Revolt
Encyclopedia Britannica – Greek Tyrants
Factinate – 42 Bizarre and Disturbing Facts About the Ancient World
Gonick, Larry – Cartoon History of the Universe: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (1990)
Harvey, Brian K. – Daily Life in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook (2016)
Holland, Tom – Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (2004)
Live Science – Mummified Kitten Served as Egyptian Offering
Nature, May 24th, 2016 – The Secret History of Ancient Toilets
Office of NIH History – A Timeline of Pregnancy Testing
Plutarch – Parallel Lives: Life of Crassus
Sherrow, Victoria L. – Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History (2006)
Suetonius – The Lives of the Twelve Caesars
Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
Washington Post, February 17th, 2016 – Lead Poisoning and the Fall of Rome
