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Socio-Economic Repercussions

Socio-Economic Repercussions. Military Recruitment Crises and the Gracchan Revolution. Rome’s Great Period of Imperial Conquest, 200-150 BC. New Extra-Italian Territories: Sicily (241), Sardinia and Corsica (238), Spain (197), Africa (146), Macedonia and Greece (146), Asia (129)

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Socio-Economic Repercussions

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  1. Socio-Economic Repercussions Military Recruitment Crises and the Gracchan Revolution

  2. Rome’s Great Period of Imperial Conquest, 200-150 BC • New Extra-Italian Territories: Sicily (241),Sardinia and Corsica (238), Spain (197), Africa (146), Macedonia and Greece (146), Asia (129) • Changes in Roman Military Needs • Continuity in High Command: Prorogation • Long-term Service for Roman Legionaries—Armies of Occupation

  3. Traditional View:Hannibal’s Legacy as Hannibal’s Revenge • Ruin of Small Italian Farmsteads • Influx of Wealth and Socio-Economic Dislocations • Growing Urban Proletariat in Rome • Poverty-Stricken Falling Below Property Qualification for Military Service

  4. Nathan Rosenstein, Rome at War (2004): A Challenge to the Traditional View • Roman military service begins at 17; Roman males marry after 30 (claims that Roman military demands adversely affected small agriculture are exaggerated) • Conflicts between military service and agriculture date back to fourth century BC • High military mortality alters Italian demography; paradoxically creating conditions for population growth • Cessation of colonization and Spanish wars contribute to population pressures • Roman authorities misread the evidence; believed there was a manpower shortage, when the reverse was the case

  5. Spain: Military Recruitment Crises • Tough, Mountain Tribesmen (Celtiberians, Lusitanians) • Nearly Constant Guerilla Warfare (197-179, 154-133 BC) • Viriathus defeats several Consular Armies in the 140s BC • Military Service in Spain Unprofitable; Low Army Morale

  6. Roman Ineptitude in SpainConsequences at Home ca. 150 BC • Tribunician Agitation for Military Reform • Rioting in Rome over Recruitment • Failure to Turn out the Levy (dilectus) • Scipio Aemilianus’ Volunteerism for Service in Spain • Incarceration of consuls in 151 BC

  7. Paradox of Roman Imperial SuccessSocio-Economic Turbulence in Roman Society • Increased Social and Economic Differentiation (insufficient “trickle-down” effect) • State-Subsidized Grain for the Populace of Rome (seen as a radical, demagogic maneuver on the part of individual Roman statesmen in the historiography of the earlier Republic) • New Magnificence in Public Buildings, Games, and Triumphs • Electoral Bribery (ambitus) and Legislation Against It • Sumptuary Legislation

  8. Problem: Real (Traditional) or Imagined (Rosenstein) Assidui and Property Qualification for Eligibility for Military Service

  9. Gracchan Challenge • Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus • Gaius Sempronius Gracchus • Aristocratic Background • Father T. Sempronius Gracchus, consul and patron of Spain • Mother Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal • Revive the Original Function of the Tribunate as the Defender of Plebeian Interests • Creators of the Popularis Tradition for the Late Republic

  10. Aristocratic Background of the Gracchi

  11. This year [480 BCE] also had a tribune who advocated a land law, Tiberius Pontificus. He set out on the same path that Spurius Licinius had taken, as though Licinius had been successful, and for a time obstructed the levy. The senators again were thrown into consternation, but Appius Claudius told them that the tribunician power had been overcome the year before, actually for the time being, and potentially forever, since a way had been discovered for employing its resources to its own undoing. For there would always be some tribune who would be willing to gain a personal victory over his colleague, and obtain the favor of the better element, while doing the nation a service. There would be a number of tribunes…who would be ready to help the consuls; and a single one was enough, though opposed to all the rest. Only let the consuls, and the leading senators as well, make a point of winning over, if not all, at any rate some of the tribunes to the state and the Senate.Livy, History of Rome, 2.44

  12. Tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus (133/132 BC) • Limitations to Holdings of Public Land (ager publicus) • Land Redistribution: Reestablish the Free Peasantry to Small Farmsteads • Gracchan Commission for Assigning Land (triumviri agris iudicandis adsignandis) • Tribunician Obstacles (M. Octavius) and Senatorial Obstruction • Attalus III of Pergamum’s Legacy (133 BC) • Tiberius’ Direct Appeal to the Popular Assembly • Re-election Bid; Riots and Lynchings • Tiberius and 300 Gracchan Supporters found floating in the Tiber River

  13. Light Green= Roman Territory In 133 BCE Rust Color= Ager Publicus Annexed from Disloyal allies in Hannibalic War

  14. His brother Gaius recorded in one of his writings that when Tiberius on his way to Numantia passed through Etruria and found the country almost depopulated and its husbandmen and shepherds imported barbarian slaves, [Tiberius] first conceived the policy which was to be the source of countless ills to himself and to his brother. But it was the people themselves who chiefly excited his zeal and determination with writings on porticoes, walls, and monuments, calling on him to retrieve the public land for the poor.Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 8

  15. About this time [133/132 BC] King Attalus Philometor died, and Eudemus of Pergamum brought to Rome his last will, in which the Roman people was named the king’s heir. Tiberius promptly proposed a law of popular appeal providing that the king’s money, when brought to Rome, should be distributed among those of the citizens receiving allotments of public land, to provide them with equipment and give them a start in farming. As for the cities that were in the kingdom of Attalus, he declared that the disposal of them was not the Senate’s business, but that he himself would put a resolution before the people. By this he offended the Senate more than ever.Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus, 14

  16. Gaius Gracchus’ Tribunate(123/122, 122/121 BC) • Continues Tiberius’ Land Redistribution Program (ager publicus) • Overseas Colonization; Junonia (Carthage) • Regular, State-Subsidized Grain for Capital (lex Sempronia frumentaria) • Reform of Extortion Court (quaestio de repetundis): equites and publicani • Knights granted rights to exploit the province of Asia(lex de Asia) • Reserved seats for knights next to senators in theater

  17. Acilian Law on Extortion (123/122 BC)From any person who has been dictator, consul, praetor, master of the horse, censor, aedile, tribune of the plebs, quaestor, member of the three-man board on capital crimes or the three-man board for granting or assigning lands, military tribune in any one of the first four legions, or from a son of any of the foregoing, or from…any person who, or whose father, is a senator, for a sum of money…having been, in the exercise of an imperium or magisterial office, carried off, taken away, exacted, embezzled or misappropriated from [various categories of subjects]. In such case the said person shall have the right to sue and to summon the defendant….Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. I, 2nd ed., no. 583

  18. Senatorial Reaction • Gaius Gracchus failed reelection bid for 121 BC • The Italian Question • Unrest and Rioting • Emergency Decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) • Murder of Gaius and 3,000 Supporters

  19. Aftermath • Cancellation of the Gracchan Land Laws • Precedent for Violence as a Solution in Roman Republican Political Life • Fracture Lines in the Roman Aristocracy: Senate and Equestrian Order • A New Politics: Optimates and Populares

  20. Thorian Law (118 BC) Appian, Civil Wars, 1.4.27

  21. Not long after [the death of Gaius Gracchus] a law was enacted to permit holders to sell the land about which they had quarreled; for even this had been forbidden by the law of the elder Gracchus. At once the rich began to buy the allotments of the poor, or found pretexts for seizing them by force. So the condition of the poor became even worse than before, until Spurius Thorius, a tribune of the plebs, brought in a law providing that the distribution of public domain should be discontinued, that the land should belong to those in possession who should pay rent for it to the state, and that the money so received should be distributed; and this distribution was a kind of solace to the poor, but it did not help to increase the population. By these devices the law of Gracchus…was once for all frustrated….

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