Editing Tiberius Gracchus (section)

===Roman land in the second century===
[[File:Social war (Roman and insurgent territory).svg|thumb|Roman land – the ''[[ager Romanus]]'' – in red on the eve of the [[Social War (91–87 BC)|Social War]], some forty years after the events of Tiberius' tribunate. What this later map shows, however, is that Roman land was distributed in patchy areas across the peninsula and intermingled near the lands of Rome's Italian allies.]]

At the time of Tiberius' tribunate in the late 130s&nbsp;BC, there were a number of economic issues before the Roman people: wage labour was scarce due to a dearth of public building, grain prices were likely high due to the ongoing slave rebellion in Sicily, population growth meant there were more mouths to feed, and declining willingness to serve on long army campaigns had increased migration to the cities.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=223}} Altogether, these trends reduced urban workers' incomes, driving them closer to subsistence. Most of the population remained outside the cities in the countryside but similar issues plagued the rural poor as well. The end of colonisation projects caused an oversupply of rural free labour, driving down wages.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=223}}

The Roman state owned a large amount of public land (''[[ager publicus]]'') acquired from conquest. The state, however, did not exploit this land heavily. While it was theoretically Roman property, Rome had allowed allies to work and enjoy it after its de jure seizure.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=222}} In the traditional story, derived from Appian and Plutarch (two historians writing during the imperial period), the {{Lang|la|ager publicus}} had been occupied by rich landowners operating large {{lang|la|[[latifundium|latifundia]]}} staffed largely by slaves, driving poor farmers into destitution between military service and competition with slave labour.{{sfn|de Ligt|2012|p=158}} This narrative is both incompatible with two republican censuses{{sfnm|de Ligt|2012|1p=160|de Ligt|2004|2pp=740–41}} and the ancient necessity for productive lands to be close to market.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=180}} Illegal occupation of the {{Lang|la|ager publicus}} for commercial production was unlikely due to the {{lang|la|ager}}'s inaccessibility by urban markets; if displacement consistent with the ancient sources happened, it likely occurred only in farmlands areas close to Rome.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|pp=188–89}} Slave-staffed estates, the driver for displacement in that narrative, also did not become common until the first century BC, after the {{lang|la|lex Sempronia agraria}}.{{sfn|de Ligt|2012|p=165}}

It is more likely that the expanded population of Italy through the second century&nbsp;BC had led to greater demands for land redistribution and pressure on food supplies.<ref>{{harvnb|de Ligt|2004|p=725|ps=. "[T]he widespread rural misery lying behind the Gracchan reforms should be seen as a consequence of continuing population growth".}}</ref> Due to [[partible inheritance]], modest farms had become divided into plots too small to feed a family.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=215}} This led to [[underemployment]] of farmers; close to Rome, where demand for land was high, those farmers sold their lands to richer men and engaged in wage labour, which was a major source of employment around harvest time.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|pp=215–16}} Some of those farmers also found wage work in the cities, such as jobs in public works, itinerant manual labour, and selling food; their material livelihoods declined, however, after 140&nbsp;BC when a pause in monumental building projects caused wage rates to fall.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=216}} 

Alternate occupations included the army, but by the late 130s&nbsp;BC, army life was hard; the plunder of the early 2nd century's armies had ended and Rome was instead engaged in sanguinary and unprofitable wars in Hispania. There are many contemporaneous reports of endemic desertion, draft evasion, and poor morale.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=217 n. 253}} A recent census also recorded a fall in Rome's population and, therefore, the number of leviable citizens; modern archaeology, however, has shown that this apparent decline was illusory.{{sfn|Potter|2014|p=68}} Nobody at the time connected unwillingness to serve in Spain with evasion of conscription by avoiding censorial registration.{{sfnm|Roselaar|2010|1pp=227–28|de Ligt|2012|2p=172|de Ligt|2004|3pp=742–43, 753}} The Romans eventually righted their census undercount in the census of 125/4&nbsp;BC, which showed the population had actually increased.{{sfnm|Roselaar|2010|1p=228|de Ligt|2004|2p=754}}