Gracchi

The Gracchi brothers, and, were Roman plebeian  who both served as s in the late 2nd century BC. They attempted to pass land reform legislation that would redistribute the major patrician landholdings among the plebeians, in addition to other reform measures. Generally considered to be among the most significant of the populares, the Gracchi have been considered the of both socialism and populism. After achieving some early success, both were assassinated for their efforts.

Early life
The brothers were born to a plebeian branch of the old and noble. Their father was the elderly or Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, who was tribune of the plebs, praetor, consul and censor. Their mother was a named ; her father was. Their parents had 12 children, but only (who later married ) and two sons, Tiberius and Gaius, survived childhood. Their father died while they were young.

Cornelia provided her boys with the best available Greek tutors, who taught them in addition to oratory skills and political science, progressive and democratic views that all the power rightly belongs to the people. The brothers were also well trained in martial pursuits; in horsemanship and combat they outshone all their peers. The older brother Tiberius was the most distinguished young officer in the, Rome's last campaign against. He was the first to scale Carthage's walls; before that he saved an army of 20,000 men by skilled diplomacy. As the boys grew up, they developed strong connections with the ruling elite.

Background
Central to the Gracchi reforms was an attempt to address economic distress. Peasants were being pushed off their farms by rich landowners. While their old lands were being worked by slaves, the peasants were often forced into idleness in Rome where they had to subsist on hand outs due to a scarcity of paid work.

A related issue was a shortage of troops due to recruitment difficulties and mutinies in the. This was partly due to lack of public land to give in exchange for military service; most of the land had already been divided among large landholders and speculators.

The Gracchi aimed to address these problems by reclaiming lands from the patricians that could then be granted to soldiers; by restoring land to displaced peasants; by providing subsidized grain for the needy and by having the Republic pay for the clothing of its poorest soldiers.

Efforts of Tiberius Gracchus
was elected to the office of tribune in 133 BC. He immediately began pushing for a programme of land reform, partly by invoking an old that limited the amount of land that could be owned by a single individual. Using the powers of, Tiberius established a commission to oversee the redistribution of land holdings from patricians to peasants. The commission consisted of himself, his father-in-law and his brother Gaius.

Even liberal senators were agitated by the proposed changes, fearing their own lands would be confiscated. Senators arranged for other tribunes to oppose the reforms. Tiberius then appealed to the people, and argued that a tribune who opposes the will of the people in favour of the rich is not a true tribune. The senators were left with only one constitutional response – to threaten prosecution after Tiberius's term as a tribune ended. This necessitated Tiberius to stand for a second term.

The senators obstructed his re-election. They also gathered an ad hoc force, with several of them personally marching to the Forum, and had Tiberius and some 300 of his supporters clubbed to death. This was the first open bloodshed in Roman politics for nearly four centuries.

Tiberius's land reform commission continued distributing lands, albeit much slower than Tiberius had envisaged, as Senators were able to eliminate more of its supporters by legal means.

Efforts of Gaius Gracchus
Ten years later, in 123 BC, took the same office as his brother, as a tribune for the plebeians. Gaius was more practical minded than Tiberius, and so was considered more dangerous by the patricians. He gained support from the agrarian poor by reviving the land reform programme and from the urban plebeians with various popular measures. He also sought support from the second estate, those who had not ascended to become senators.

Many equestrians were, in charge of tax-collecting in and of contracting for construction projects. The equestrian class would get to control a court that tried senators for misconduct in provincial administration. In effect, the equestrians replaced senators already serving at the court. Thus, Gaius became an opponent of senatorial influence. Other reforms implemented by Gaius included fixing prices on for the urban population and granting improvements in citizenship for  and others outside the city of Rome.

With this broad coalition of supporters, Gaius held his office for two years and had much of his prepared legislation passed. This included winning an unconstitutional re-election to the one year office of Tribune. However Gaius's plans to extend rights to non-Roman Italians were eventually vetoed by another Tribune. A substantial proportion of the plebeians, jealous of their privileged Roman citizenship, turned against Gaius. With Gaius's support from the people weakened, the consul was able to crush the Gracchan movement by force – Gaius lost his life and about 3000 of his supporters died in the fighting or in emergency execution shortly afterwards.

Assessment and reasons for failure
According to the classicist, Tiberius's Greek education had caused him to overestimate the reliability of the people as a powerbase, causing him to overplay his hand. In Rome, even when led by a bold Tribune the people lacked anywhere near the influence they enjoyed at the height of the polis.

Another problem for Gaius's aims was that the, specifically the , was designed to prevent any one individual governing for a sustained period of time – and there were several other checks and balances to prevent power being concentrated on any one person. Another reason for the efforts' failures was the Gracchi's idealism; they were deaf to the baser notes of human nature and failed to recognize how corrupt and selfish all sections of Roman society had become. According to, the characteristic mistake of the Gracchan age was to believe in the possibility of the reversibility of history – a form of idealism which according to Spengler was at that time shared by both sides of political spectrum – had sought to turn back the clock to the time of , and restore virtue by returning to austerity.

Classics writer ranked the conduct of the Gracchi second out of all the known cases of good hearted conduct recorded by history for classical Rome, ahead of the Scipios and Virgil.

Aftermath
The new forces of urban factions, rural voters, and equestrian class members meant that the problem of effective governance awaited resolution.