Editing Tiberius Gracchus (section)

=== Political impact ===

The impact of Tiberius' murder started a cycle of increased aristocratic violence to suppress popular movements. By introducing violent repression, the senatorial oligarchy created norms making future repression more acceptable.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Mackay|first=Christopher S|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/165407940|title=Ancient Rome: a military and political history|date=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-71149-4|edition=1st|location=Cambridge|oclc=165407940|page=129}}</ref> Political disputes in the middle republic were not resolved by killing political opponents and purging them from the body politic; before this point domestic political strife basically never resulted in violent death.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=82}} Roman republican law, when passing ostensibly capital sentences, permitted convicts to flee the city into permanent exile.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Nicholas|first=Barry|date=2016-03-07|title=exile, Roman|url=https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-7206|access-date=2022-02-13|website=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics|language=en|doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.7206|isbn=978-0-19-938113-5|quote=''[E]xsilium'' was institutionalised as... a substitute for the death penalty. The magistrates were required to allow a condemned person time to escape... }}</ref>

His death also suggested that the republic itself was temperamentally unsuited for producing the types of economic reforms wanted or hypothetically needed, as in Tiberius' framing, by the people.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=84}} However, Tiberius' actions did not mark him as an enemy of the senate seeking to destroy its authority: he sought a traditional career in the senate and irresponsibly engaged in excessive popular indulgences to further his career.{{sfn|Yakobson|2006|p=387}} Yet, his aggressive political tactics also showed that the republic's norms and institutions were far weaker than expected, that a non-existential political issue such as distributing public land to help with army recruitment, could overwhelm the republican constitution.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=84}}

The senate's continued pursuit of Tiberius Gracchus' supporters also entrenched polarisation in the Roman body politic, while at the same time endorsing private use of violence to enforce or suppress a group, even a majority, of fellow countrymen.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=85}} While the framing of Tiberius Gracchus' murder in terms of religious ritual sets it aside from the explicitly political killings of Gaius Gracchus and [[Marcus Fulvius Flaccus (consul 125 BC)|Marcus Fulvius Flaccus]] that were [[senatus consultum ultimum|authorised by the senate]], the use of violence in of itself subverted the norms of consensual republican government.{{sfn|Flower|2010|pp=85–86}}