Editing Tiberius Gracchus (section)

=== Periodisation ===

The death of Tiberius Gracchus in 133&nbsp;BC has been viewed, both in the Roman period and in modern scholarship, as the start of a new period in which politics was polarised and political violence normalised.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=19}}{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=82}}

In the ancient period, [[Cicero]] remarked as much in saying "the death of Tiberius Gracchus, and, even before his death, the whole character of his tribunate, divided one people into two factions".<ref>{{cite book |author=Cicero |author-link=Cicero |chapter=On the republic |chapter-url=https://www.attalus.org/info/republic.html |title=On the republic. On the laws |year=1928 |orig-year=1st century BC |translator-last=Keys |translator-first=C W |series=Loeb Classical Library 213 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |at=[https://www.attalus.org/cicero/republic1a.html 1.31] |ref={{harvid|Cic. ''Rep.''}} |via=Attalus.org }}</ref> Modern historians such as Mary Beard, however, warn that Cicero's claim is "rhetorical oversimplification [and that] the idea there had been a calm consensus at Rome between rich and poor until [133&nbsp;BC] is at best a nostalgic fiction".<ref>{{harvnb|Beard|2015|pp=226–27}}, citing {{harvnb|Cic. ''Rep.''|loc=1.31}}.</ref>

More modern commentators also express similar views. For example, Andrew Lintott writes:

{{quote|In this way Sigonio has helped to create the standard modern periodisation, whereby the Conflict of the Orders ends in 287 and the decline of the Republic begins in 133, the intervening period displaying the constitution at its best.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lintott|first=Andrew |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39706770|title=The constitution of the Roman Republic|date=1999|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=0-19-815068-7|oclc=39706770|pages=245–46}}</ref>}}

In the second edition of ''The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic'', Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg similarly writes:

{{quote|It was Tiberius' assassination that made the year 133&nbsp;BC a turning point in Roman history and the beginning of the crisis of the Roman Republic.{{sfn|von Ungern-Sternberg|2014|p=81}}}}