He was the son of the Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus who had earned the gratitude of Spain by his generous administration, had served twice as consul and once as censor, and had saved the brother and married the daughter of Scipio Africanus. Cornelia gave him twelve children, all but three of whom died in adolescence; and his own death left upon her the burden of rearing Tiberius and Caius and a daughter—also named Cornelia—who became the wife of Scipio Aemilianus. Both parents shared in the Hellenistic culture and sympathies of the Scipionic circle. Cornelia gathered about her a literary salon, and wrote letters of so pure and elegant a style that they were reckoned as a distinguished contribution to Latin literature. An Egyptian king, says Plutarch, offered her his hand and throne in her widowhood, but she refused; she preferred to remain the daughter of one Scipio, the mother-in-law of another, and the mother of the Gracchi.
Brought up in the atmosphere of statesmanship and philosophy, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus knew both the problems of Roman government and the speculations of Greek thought. They were particularly influenced by Blossius, a Greek philosopher from Cumae, who helped to inspire in them a passionate liberalism that underestimated the power of the conservatives in Rome. The brothers were almost equally ambitious, proud, sincere, eloquent beyond reason, and brave without stint. Caius tells how Tiberius had the agrarian tragedy borne in upon him when, passing through Etruria, he “noted the dearth of inhabitants, and observed that those who tilled the soil and tended the flocks were foreign slaves.”6 Knowing that at that time only property holders could serve in the army, Tiberius asked himself how Rome could preserve its leadership or independence if the sturdy peasants that had once filled its legions were displaced by desolate and alien bondsmen. How could Roman life and democracy ever be healthy with a city proletariat festering in poverty, instead of a proud yeomanry owning and tilling the land? A distribution of land among the poorer citizens seemed the obvious and necessary solution of three problems: rural slavery, urban congestion and corruption, and military decay.
Early in 133 Tiberius Gracchus, elected a tribune of the people, announced his intention to submit to the Tribal Assembly three proposals: (1) that no citizen should be permitted to hold more than 333—or, if he had two sons, 667—acres of land bought or rented from the state; (2) that all other public lands that had been sold or leased to private individuals should be returned to the state for the purchase or rental price plus an allowance for improvements made; and (3) that the returned lands should be divided into twenty-acre lots among poor citizens, on condition that they agree never to sell their allotment, and to pay an annual tax on it to the Treasury. It was not a Utopian scheme; it was merely an attempt to implement the Licinian laws passed in 367 B.C., which had never been repealed and never enforced. “The beasts of the field and the birds of the air,” said Tiberius to the poorer plebeians in one of the epochal orations in Roman history,
have their holes and their hiding places; but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy only the light and the air. Our generals urge their soldiers to fight for the graves and shrines of their ancestors. The appeal is idle and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar. You have no ancestral tomb. You fight and die to give wealth and luxury to others. You are called the masters of the world, but there is not a foot of ground that you can call your own.7
The Senate denounced the proposals as confiscatory, charged Tiberius with seeking a dictatorship, and persuaded Octavius, another tribune, to prevent by his veto the submission of the bills to the Assembly. Gracchus thereupon moved that any tribune who acted contrary to the wishes of his constituents should be immediately deposed. The Assembly passed the measure, and Octavius was forcibly removed from the tribune’s bench by the lictors of Tiberius. The original proposals were then voted into law; and the Assembly, fearing for Gracchus’ safety, escorted him home.8
His illegal overruling of the tribunician veto, which the Assembly itself had long ago made absolute, gave his opponents a handle with which to frustrate him. They declared their purpose to impeach him at the end of his one-year term, as having violated the constitution and used force against a tribune. To protect himself he flouted the constitution further by seeking re-election to the tribunate for 132. As Aemilianus and Laelius and other senators who had defended his proposals now withdrew their support, he turned more completely to the plebs. He promised, if re-elected, to shorten the term of military service, to abolish the exclusive right of senators to act as jurors, and to admit the Italian allies to Roman citizenship. Meanwhile the Senate refused funds to the agrarian commission that had been appointed to execute Tiberius’ laws. When Attalus III of Pergamum bequeathed his kingdom to Rome (133), Gracchus proposed to the Assembly that the personal and movable property of Attalus should be sold and the proceeds distributed to the recipients of state lands to finance the equipment of their farms. The proposal infuriated the Senate, which saw its authority over the provinces and the public purse being transferred to an unmanageable and unrepresentative Assembly largely of servile origin and alien stock. When election day came, Gracchus appeared in the Forum with armed guards and in mourning costume, implying that his defeat would mean his impeachment and death. As the voting proceeded, violence broke out on both sides. Scipio Nasica, crying that Tiberius wished to make himself king, led the senators, armed with clubs, into the Forum. The supporters of Gracchus, awed by patrician robes, gave way; Tiberius was killed by a blow on the head, and several hundred of his followers perished with him. When his younger brother Caius asked permission to bury him he was refused, and the bodies of the dead rebels were thrown into the Tiber, while Cornelia mourned.
The Senate sought to mollify the bitter plebs by consenting to the enforcement of the Gracchan laws. An increase of 76,000 in the register of citizens from 131 to 125 suggests that a large number of land allotments was actually made. But the agrarian commission found itself faced by many difficulties. Much of the land in question had been obtained from the state years or generations back and its present possessors claimed rights established and sanctified by time. Many parcels had been bought by new owners, for a substantial price, from those who had bought them cheaply from the government. The landowners in Italian allied states, whose squatter rights were imperiled by the laws, appealed to Scipio Aemilianus to defend them against the land board; and through his influence its operations were suspended. Public opinion flamed out against him; he was denounced as a traitor to the already sacred memory of Gracchus; and one morning in 129 he was discovered dead in his bed, apparently the victim of an assassin, who was never found.