Editing Gracchi brothers (section)

=== Modern reception ===

By the 17th and 18th centuries, many books on ancient history repeated a false notion that Rome had limited all men to only 500 {{lang|la|jugera}} of land.{{sfn|Ridley|2000|p=459}} The incorrect understanding emerged in 1734 with the publication of [[Montesquieu]]'s ''[[Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline|Considerations on the causes of the greatness of the Romans and their decline]]'', which furthered this mistaken notion of large scale land reform rather than redistribution of state-owned lots.{{sfn|Ridley|2000|p=463}} This led to the characterisation of the Gracchi as "socialists".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Katz |first=Solomon |date=1942 |title=The Gracchi: an essay in interpretation |jstor=3291626 |journal=The Classical Journal |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=65–82 |issn=0009-8353}}</ref><ref>Less academically, {{Cite web |last=Cassar |first=Claudine |date=2022-06-12 |title=Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus - the earliest 'socialists' in recorded history |url=https://anthropologyreview.org/anthropology-explainers/tiberius-and-gaius-gracchus/ |access-date=2023-07-05 |website=Anthropology Review |language=en-gb |quote=Tiberius Gracchus is often described as the one of the first socialists in history. }}</ref> Through the later 18th century, the waters became further muddied, until the matter was largely re-cleared by [[Barthold Georg Niebuhr]] in his [[History of Rome (Niebuhr)|''History of Rome'']].{{sfn|Ridley|2000|p=466}}

During the [[French Revolution]], the revolutionary [[François-Noël Babeuf]] named himself "Gracchus" after the Gracchi brothers, in an attempt to connect his desire for large scale land redistribution with the Gracchan programme for agrarian reform. Babeuf's plans, however, differed substantially from the Gracchan programme in ways that exemplify how the reception of the Gracchi had deviated from their actual historical policies. First, Babeuf envisioned the nationalisation and communal ownership of lands, which was incompatible with the Gracchan programme of privatising already state-owned lands. Second, Babeuf's choice of name was made under the prevailing assumption at the time that the Gracchi acted to place a limit on ''private'' land holdings. Finally, Babeuf's name demonstrated his belief that a comparison was apt, consistent with contemporary beliefs that the Gracchi were revolutionaries. However, "the truth of the matter was otherwise[:] the Gracchi sought to strengthen and uphold the Roman republic; Babeuf wished to overthrow and radicalise the French republic".{{sfnm|Russell|2008|1p=57|Ridley|2000|2p=459}}

During the 19th century, the use of the Gracchi in then-current politics continued. The process of [[enclosure]] in England, for example, led to the formation of a large body of poor urban workers; many of their leaders were likened to the Gracchi and proposed reforms were compared with reference to the Roman land crisis as described in the ancient sources.<ref>{{cite book |last=Butler |first=Sarah |chapter=Heroes or villains: the Gracchi, reform, and the nineteenth-century press |chapter-url=https://academic.oup.com/book/3122/chapter-abstract/143968344 |title=Classics in the modern world: a democratic turn? |date=October 2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |editor-last=Hardwick |editor-first=Lorna |editor-last2=Harrison |editor-first2=Stephen |isbn=978-0-1996-7392-6 |pages=300–18 }}</ref>

Some 19th and early 20th century scholarship argued that the Gracchi were to some extent influenced by Greek political philosophy, especially in the extent to which Greek democratic principles could be applied at Rome.<ref>Eg {{Cite book |last=Stobart |first=John Clarke |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ry3VAAAAMAAJ |title=The Grandeur that was Rome |date=1912 |publisher=Sidgwick & Jackson Limited |page=86 }}</ref> These influences are largely attributed to Tiberius' interactions with Stoic egalitarian philosophy through [[Blossius of Cumae]].{{sfn|Santangelo|2007|p=483}} This is no longer believed, however, as there is little evidence for Tiberius being a Stoic or for Stoicism justfying democratic policies.{{sfn|Perelli|1993|pp=52 et seq}}{{sfn|Santangelo|2007|p=484}}