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Tiberius Gracchus
Late Roman Republic politician, tribune of the plebs in 133 BCE, who pushed land reform distributing public land to landless citizens and was killed …
Timeline
- c. -163–-137Rome · LazioBorn to a prominent political family—his father Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus had been consul and his mother Cornelia was a daughter of Scipio Africanus—he received a Hellenistic education and, as quaestor in Spain, witnessed land concentration and social crisis.
- -133Rome · LazioAfter election as tribune he proposed an agrarian law capping each household's holding of public land and redistributing the excess through a commission of three; when his colleague Octavius vetoed it, he used tribunician power to depose him, sparking a fierce constitutional clash with the Senate.
- -133Rome · LazioThe Senate sent consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica with armed followers to charge the crowd on the Capitoline Hill; Tiberius and about three hundred supporters were killed, his body was thrown out, and his reform commission was immediately abolished—though the land question and popular demands remained unresolved.
Sources
- Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus — Plutarch https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Tiberius_Gracchus*.html
- Appian, Civil Wars — Appian https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Appian/Civil_Wars/1*.html