The Life of Tiberius Gracchus

Tiberius Gracchus, and his brother Gaius, are two important figures in early Roman history that we are told about by Plutarch in his 'Lives'. Tiberius and Gaius brought about the reforms that shaped Rome into being the superpower and empire that it was to become, but yet little is known about them or their eventual sacrifice of their lives for the ideals they espoused. I propose therefore to offer a portrait of the important parts of Tiberius Gracchus' life here, Gaius Gracchus in my next article and then offer an interpretation of the moral and warning of their lives and actions that is beneficial to National Socialism as it enters the second Kampfzeit. Since their lives are examples for National Socialists to understand and follow. I have based my account on Plutarch's 'Tiberius Gracchus' and will make references to relevant passages in footnotes (1). So let us begin our tale.

Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were two brothers born nine years apart into a prominent Aryan family of Romans. Their father, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, was a general with two triumphs to his noble name and was renowed throughout Rome as a man of good character and principle. Their mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of one of Roman's greatest generals, the 'Roman Hannibal', Scipio Africanus and a woman whose honourable character and beauty were well known throughout the world to such an extent that the powerful Pharaoh of Egypt, Ptolmey VI (2), expressed his love for her and requested that she honour him by being his queen after her husband's untimely death in 150 B.C (3), but she refused this on the probable grounds that the Ptolmey dynasty, descended from one of Alexander's (Aryan) Greek generals, had become mixed with undesirable (negro and semitic) stock and would inevitably result in the dilution of her family's bloodline, which she rightly treasured.

Tiberius, the eldest remaining son of the marriage, retained these noble characteristics and he, with his brother Gaius, was known to be just, trustworthy and honourable (4). This respect was shown by Tiberius' swift appointment to the college of augurs, of whom there were nine, and a fellow augur and leader of the Senate, Appius Claudius Pulcher (5), offering Tiberius his daughter's, much sought after, hand in marriage, which Tiberius gratefully accepted, during the banquet that celebrated Tiberius' appointment to the college of augurs (6).

Tiberius was soon recruited to serve in the Roman army in Africa under Scipio Africanus the younger in the third, and final, Punic war against Carthage and was noted for his bravery being the first to storm over the wall into Carthage. Tiberius resultingly received much acclaim for this feat of bravery and was also held in great esteem by his commander with whom he was given the honour of sharing a tent (7).

After this military triumph Tiberius was elected as a quaestor (8) and dispatched to serve in Spain against the Numantines, a Celtic warrior tribe in northern Spain (9), under the command of the incompetant consul Gaius Mancinus. Mancinus proceeded to lose every engagement that he fought against the Numantines and his army was soon surrounded and outnumbered by fierce Numantine warriors. In order to try and save his own skin Mancinus promptly sent out peace envoys to the Numantines, but they refused to negotiate with anyone but Tiberius, because they had heard of his personality and had known his father who they held to be a great and honourable warrior (10)(11).

Tiberius negotiated fairly with the Numantines and managed to befriend them so that they allowed the Roman army to march back to Rome thus saving the lives of some twenty thousand Roman citizens (12). For this great feat of diplomacy and care these citizens and their families felt truly indebted to Tiberius, because he had saved their lives and allowed them to go back to their peace time occupations. This was little thanks to Mancinus who was rightly villified in Rome, by both the Roman people and the Senate, for his incompetance and lack of courage (13).

Unfortunately as a result of this villification of Mancinus a vocal minority of the Senate, who were more interested in enriching themselves by seizing land in the name of Rome for their own personal profit than maintaining the honour and diginity of the Roman people, used this strong feeling to demand that Rome not honour the terms of the peace as agreed by Tiberius but rather send a new army under Scipio Africanus the younger to crush the brave and honourable Numantines. These same self-centred Senators, much like the politicans of today, also tried to translate this into further political advantage by demanding the enslavement of all the officers of Mancinus' army, especially Tiberius, so that they could stripped naked and sent in chains to the Numantines as a statement of Roman's intent not to honour the peace treaty agreed by Tiberius (14).

Only the quick-witted actions of Scipio Africanus the younger in the Senate to mollify the majority that had been enraged by the rhetoric of the self-interest minority saved Tiberius and his fellow officers and in doing so had to sacrifice the incompetant Mancinus to the Senate's lust for blood. Unfortunately Tiberius saw this as a gross betrayal of everything he had agreed with the Numantines and strongly reprimanded Scipio Africanus the younger for his actions, which had saved Tiberius from a vicious punishment (15). This confrontation was eventually to help cause Tiberius' downfall and prevent what he belived in so passionately from coming to pass in his lifetime due to the creation of an enemity between himself and Scipio Africanus the younger who also divorced Tiberius' sister, Sempronia on the grounds that the marriage was not a happy one (16).

After Tiberius' awful experience in the Senate he began to notice that there was an increasing level of misery on the streets of Rome and noted that the same minority of self-interested senators who had been demanding his, and his fellow soldier's, blood were using all manner of con artist's tricks, such as creating non-existent tenants, and even illegal evictions of the inhabitants to forcibly confiscate land in their own name in defiance of the Lex Licinia of 366 B.C., which ruled that each citizen could only hold 310 hectares of land and no more. After forcibly evicting the citizens, with little but what they could carry and the clothes on their backs with no food or money, the greedy minority then brought in slaves, likely Semitic Carthaginians, to work the land in place of the original Aryan inhabitants.

This, Tiberius saw, was destroying Rome's military and civic backbone as these farmers, who were the part of the population that the Roman military recruited from and once these shylockian senators had forced them off their land they became very unwilling to volunteer for military service decreasing Rome's ability to recruit new legions and turning the countryside into the province of the wealthy and slaves with the inherent risk of slave revolts only increasing. This discontent was also speading to the towns and even Rome itself with the poor chalking and painting slogans and appeals on the walls, statues and monuments (17).

Tiberius, who was now a tribune of the people, and his supporters such as his father-in-law, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and the then Pontifix Maximus Crassus, drafted a moderate law that was to force the greedy minority in the Senate to hand the land back that they had illegally acquired to the Roman state, for which they would be suitably compensated, and the land would then be redistributed to the neediest Roman citizens and the veterans who would then provide the basis for the healthy continuation of the Roman state by being the recruiting ground for the Roman military (18).

Unfortunately this rather moderate program still did not win full support among the Roman people, because it offered only a temporary solution in so far as it did not protect them from the future activities of these shylockian senators, but only righted the wrongs that had been done to them. On the other hand it positively infuriated the shylockian senators who wished to keep their ill gotten gains and began to stir up resentment against Tiberius among the Roman citizenry by alleging that Tiberius was out for his own personal advantage and wished to create a general revolution for the purpose of making himself the king of Rome (19)(20). Fortunately however Tiberius was more than a match for these accusations with his personality ringing true combined with his rhetorical ability allowing him to sway the citizens to the cause of right rather than of self-interest (21).

Since the shylockian senators could not sway the Roman citizenry they restorted to an old Senatorial trick to prevent Tiberius' law being passed by persuading one of the other tribunes of the people, one Marcus Octavius (a former close friend of Tiberius') (22), to veto Tiberius' law and thus prevent it from becoming law (and forcing them to comply with it) (23). Tiberius responded to this open provocation by reformulating his law so that it was less moderate and fulfilled the demands of the Roman citizens without any concilliation to the shylockian senators. This was again vetoed and so Tiberius proceeded onto more extreme measures by stopping the day-to-day running of the Roman government by using his veto to prevent the law courts from opening, sealing the treasury and preventing any of the normal business of Roman government to occur (24).

This heightening of the tension, as well as the stakes, by both sides caused the shylockian senators to form a conspiracy against Tiberius and this being somewhat known Tiberius took to wearing a dagger at all times as to protect himself (25). After days of intrigue and counter intrigue, including attempts to disrupt votes and debates in the senate, Tiberius finally made a move to break the deadlock by moving to remove Octavius as a tribune, which was duly granted after many appeals from Tiberius to Octavius for the latter to stand aside (26). The vote was overwhelming and Octavius was removed, which promptly caused a riot as the Roman citizens tried to kill the man who had stood in the way of a law that they not only wished for but needed for their very survival. Tiberius, to his credit, tried to restrain the rioters and did just enough, along with the senators, to prevent Octavius being killed by the angry citizens (27).

After these events Tiberius' law was passed and a three man group was appointed to put the law into practice. These three men were Tiberius, his brother Gaius (who was on campaign against the Numantines with Scipio Africanus the younger) and his father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher. These three then began to enforce the law, but were regularly attacked and insulted within the senate who also, in the thrall of the shylockian senators (particularly Publius Nasica (28)), refused these men, particularly Tiberius, the basic facilities to enact the law such as a tent in which they could work (29). This continued for sometime until eventually Tiberius fell victim to the conspiracy of the shylockian senators who managed to finally turn some of the Roman citizens against Tiberius and to murder him as to prevent him from restoring to the Roman citizens what was rightfully theirs.

(1) The edition and translation I am using is Plutarch, Trans: Ian Scott-Kilvert, 1965, 'Makers of Rome', 1st Edition, Penguin: New York
(2) Ibid., p. 154, n. 2
(3) Plut., Ti. Gracch., 1
(4) Ibid., 3:4
(5) Ibid., 4; Macrob., Sat., 2.10
(6) Plut., Ti. Gracch., 4
(7) Ibid.
(8) An official who looked after the financial affairs of Rome.
(9) The Numantines would later commit mass suicide rather than be enslaved to a man by the Romans.
(10) Plut., Ti. Gracch., 5
(11) One of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus' triumphs had been given to him for his military victories in Spain presumably against, or involving, the Numantines.
(12) Plut., Ti. Gracch., 5
(13) Ibid., 7
(14) Ibid.
(15) Ibid.
(16) Plutarch, Op. Cit., p. 154, n. 3
(17) Plut., Ti. Gracch., 8
(18) Ibid., 9
(19) Ibid.
(20) The popular mythos of Rome, especially in the Republican era, was that the kings of Rome had been tyrants and that anyone who tried to make themselves a king was to be reviled, because they sought to create a tyranny. Hence the power of the insinuation and the charge made by the hostile senators against Tiberius.
(21) Plut., Ti. Gracch., 9:10
(22) The reason for Octavius' opposition was because he had been one of the senators who had seized large tracts of land illegally. Tiberius seems not to have known this before he tried to enact his law.
(23) Among the tribunes of the people it was necessary for all the tribunes to agree before the people were able to vote and hence it was a simple matter to persuade, blackmail and/or bribe one of the tribunes to stop the enactment of laws that senators were opposed to.
(24) Plut., Ti. Gracch., 10
(25) Ibid.
(26) Ibid., 11
(27) Ibid., 12
(28) Publius Nasica was one of the senators who owned the largest amount of illegally confiscated land and hence was strongly opposed to this law and Tiberius because it would deprive of him of income and status regardless of whether he had stolen the land or not.
(29) Ibid., 13