Editing Gracchi brothers (section)

== Background ==

It used to be standard view that through the second century BC, the number of free farmers in rural Italy suffered a precipitous decline.{{sfn|Nicolet|1994|pp=618–19}} This traditional view, transmitted from the ancient sources, "has been much overstated"; the narrative connecting military service to the decline of the yeomanry, moreover, "has to be rejected".<ref>{{harvc |last=Erdkamp |first=Paul |c=Army and society |pages=289–90 |in1=Rosenstein |in2=Morstein-Marx |year=2006 }}</ref> The main driver for this reevaluation is archaeological evidence of Italian settlement patterns from the 1980s onwards: "impressive methodological advances that have been achieved in survey archaeology have ... done much to undermine the credibility of earlier claims concerning the spread of slave-staffed estates and the survival or otherwise of subsistence-oriented smallholders".{{sfn|de Ligt|2006|p=598}}

=== Rural conditions, 159–33&nbsp;BC ===

Through the second century, there is documented some difficulty in raising men and some resistance against levies. This starts in the [[Third Macedonian War]] and continues through Roman campaigns in Spain from 151&nbsp;BC.{{sfn|Lintott|1994a|p=36}} Roman censuses – which were conducted largely to tally men for conscription – starting in 159&nbsp;BC also began to note a reduction in the free population of Italy, falling from 328,316 in 159–58&nbsp;BC down to a low of 317,933 in the census of 136–35&nbsp;BC.{{sfn|Nicolet|1994|p=603}} Politicians reacted to these constraints by securing volunteers for service; the reforms of the Gracchi were related to solving this problem and also minimising the impacts of conscription.{{sfn|Lintott|1994a|p=37}}

However, state difficulties in raising men for war did not mean that there were actual quantitative reductions in the populations of rural Italy. While the census ''reported'' a reduction in the republic's citizen population through the 130s&nbsp;BC, these population reductions were not at the time connected to unwillingness to serve in Rome's unpopular campaigns in Spain.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|pp=217, 227-28}} Because the easiest way to dodge the draft was to avoid registration by the censors, no ''actual'' decline in population is necessary to explain censorial reports thereto.{{sfn|de Ligt|2006|p=602}} The later results of the censuses of 125–24&nbsp;BC and 115–14&nbsp;BC, indicate large increases which are incompatible with any actual decline in Italian rural populations.<ref>{{harvnb|de Ligt|2006|p=603|ps=. "If the census figures of 125/124 and 115/114 are correct, then we must conclude that the theory of a drastic decline in the number of free country-dwellers is completely untenable".}}</ref><ref>Cf {{Cite journal |last=Cornell |first=T J |date=1996 |title=Hannibal's legacy: the effects of the Hannibalic war on Italy |url=https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.1996.tb01916.x |journal=Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies |volume=41 |pages=97–117 |doi=10.1111/j.2041-5370.1996.tb01916.x |issn=0076-0730}} Pace Cornell, {{harvnb|Santangelo|2007|p=475}}: "[Cornell 1996] is surely off the mark".</ref>

Archaeological evidence of small farms attested all over Italy in the second century and the general need for free labour during harvest time has led scholars to conclude that "there are no good grounds for inferring a general decline of the small independent farmer in the second century".{{sfn|Lintott|1994b|p=57}} The Gracchan narrative of rural population decline through 133&nbsp;BC – "long since... shown to be false"{{sfn|Potter|2014|p=68}} – likely emerged not from a general and actual decline in rural free-holding, but rather, generalisation from a local decline in coastal Etruria where commercial slave plantations were dominant.{{sfn|de Ligt|2006|p=603}} And while Gracchan observations of rural poverty were likely true;{{sfn|de Ligt|2006|p=603}} this, however, was not a result of slave-dominated plantations crowding out poor farmers, but overpopulation under [[Malthusianism|Malthusian]] conditions.{{sfn|Potter|2014|p=77 n. 59}}

In rural areas closer to Rome, expanding population and [[partible inheritance]] led to the splitting of previously modest farms into plots too small to support families.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=215}} Many of these small farms were not economically viable. Coupled with the high price of land near Rome, many of these farmers sold their lands to rich men and engaged instead in wage labour. "There is ample evidence to show that the temporary labour of free men was very important to large estates" especially around harvest-time.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|pp=215–16}} In the years before 133&nbsp;BC, a pause in construction of large public monuments also reduced demand for urban labour,{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=216}} triggering a prolonged period of poor labour market conditions. This general economic downturn was likely compounded by years of high food prices due to the [[First Servile War|ongoing slave revolt]] in Sicily, an island from which substantial amounts of grain were shipped to Rome.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=223}}

=== Public land ===
[[File:Roman republic, ager 133 BC.svg|thumb|This map shows Roman lands – the ''ager Romanus'' – in 133&nbsp;BC. The {{lang|la|ager}} was largely intermingled with the allied lands that covered essentially the rest of peninsula and required extensive surveying to disentangle.]]

Through the conquests of Italy in the fourth and third centuries BC, the Roman state had acquired legal rights to large amounts of land ceded by the subjugated Italian allies. Their former lands, the ''[[ager publicus]]'', were not heavily exploited by the Roman state. Rather, the land "had been regarded as a sort of {{lang|la|beneficium}} to the allies, who had been allowed to continue to work the land which had been confiscated from them".{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=222}} Through Roman conquests, the Italians who were allied to Rome were ''de facto'' confirmed in their lands and also gained substantially from the influx of booty and wealth from Roman conquest.{{sfn|Patterson|2006|p=611}}

The traditional narratives in the ancient sources which described the emergence of commercial {{lang|la|[[Latifundium|latifundia]]}} (enormous slave-staffed plantations owned by the elite) on the public land itself is also largely unattested to by the archaeological evidence in this period.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=180}} Moreover, evidence indicates that the {{lang|la|ager publicus}} was largely located outside of the traditional farmlands close to Rome and instead located in non-Roman Italy closer to the Italian allies.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=202}} Public land redistribution was therefore necessarily at the expense of the allies, who would be evicted from ancestral lands still occupied.{{sfn|Patterson|2006|p=613}}

=== Early life of the Gracchi ===

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was born {{Circa}} 163&nbsp;BC.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Astin |year=1958 |first=A.E. |title=The Lex Annalis before Sulla |journal=Latomus |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=49–64 |jstor=41518780 |issn=0023-8856}}</ref> His younger brother Gaius was born {{Circa}} 154&nbsp;BC.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Scullard |first=HH |title=From the Gracchi to Nero: a history of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68 |date=2011 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-203-84478-6|location=London|oclc=672031526 |orig-date=1958 <!--|contribution=Foreword |contributor-last=Rathbone |contributor-first=Dominic--> |edition=4th |page=27 }}</ref> They were the sons of the [[Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (consul 177 BC)|Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus]] who had been [[Roman consul|consul]] 177{{sfn|Broughton|1951|p=397}} and 163&nbsp;BC{{sfn|Broughton|1951|p=440}} as well as  [[Roman censor|censor]] in 169&nbsp;BC.{{sfn|Broughton|1951|p=423}}<ref>For ancestry of both brothers, see {{harvnb|Zmeskal|2009|pp=246–48}}.</ref> He had [[Roman triumph|triumphed]] twice in 178 and 175&nbsp;BC.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Degrasssi |first=A |url=http://www.attalus.org/translate/fasti.html |title=Fasti Capitolini |year=1954 |publisher=J. B. Paravia |page=103 |via=Attalus.org}}</ref> Their mother was [[Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi)|Cornelia]], the daughter of the renowned general [[Scipio Africanus]], the hero of the [[Second Punic War]].{{sfn|Zmeskal|2009|p=99}} Their sister [[Sempronia (sister of the Gracchi)|Sempronia]] also was the wife of [[Scipio Aemilianus]], another important general and politician.{{sfn|Zmeskal|2009|pp=246–46}} Later Roman historians painted Cornelia as an "archetypical Roman matron", "heavily idealised and inevitably quite distance from the historical Cornelia", which may be a product of her son Gaius' own political presentation.{{sfn|Santangelo|2007|p=469}}

Tiberius' military career started in 147&nbsp;BC, serving as a [[Roman legate|legate]] or [[military tribune]] under his brother-in-law, [[Scipio Aemilianus]] during his campaign to take Carthage during the [[Third Punic War]].{{sfn|Broughton|1951|p=464}} Tiberius, along with Gaius Fannius, was among the first to scale Carthage's walls, serving through to the next year.{{sfn|Broughton|1951|pp=464, 468}} A decade later, in 137&nbsp;BC, he was [[quaestor]] under the consul [[Gaius Hostilius Mancinus]] in [[Hispania Citerior]].{{sfn|Brennan|2014|p=39}} The campaign was part of the [[Numantine War]] and was unsuccessful; Mancinus and his army lost several skirmishes outside the city before a confused night-time retreat that led them to the site of a camp from a former consular campaign in 153&nbsp;BC where they were surrounded.{{sfn|Goldsworthy|2016|p=119}} Tiberius negotiated a treaty of surrender, aided in part by his father's positive reputation built during a praetorship in 179–78&nbsp;BC; Tiberius' treaty, however, was later humiliatingly rejected by the senate after his return to Rome.{{sfn|Brennan|2014|p=42}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baker |first=Gabriel David |title=Spare no one: mass violence in Roman warfare |date=2021 |isbn=978-1-5381-1220-5 |location=Lanham, Maryland |oclc=1182021748 |page=179}}</ref>