Editing Tiberius Gracchus (section)

=== {{lang|la|Lex agraria}} ===
[[File:Comic History of Rome p 238 Tib Gracchus canvassing.jpg|thumb|Tiberius Gracchus [[canvassing]]. Image by [[John Leech (caricaturist)|John Leech]], from ''[[The Comic History of Rome]]'' by [[Gilbert Abbott à Beckett]]. The [[top hat]] worn by Tiberius is a deliberate [[anachronism]] intended to compare him to 19th-century British politicians.|368x368px]]

Tiberius believed that a previous law – commonly identified by modern scholars as the [[Licinio-Sextian rogations]] of the early fourth century&nbsp;BC<ref>{{harvnb|Roselaar|2010|pp=99, 231|ps=. None of the ancient accounts name the {{lang|la|lex Licinia}} directly; identification is based on descriptions of that law in Livy. }}</ref> – had limited the amount of public land that any person could hold to 500 [[jugerum|jugera]] (approximately 120 [[hectare]]s).<ref>{{cite book |last=Steel |first=Catherine |title=The end of the Roman republic, 149 to 44&nbsp;BC: conquest and crisis |year=2013 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |series=Edinburgh History of Ancient Rome |isbn=978-0-7486-1944-3 |page=17 }}</ref>{{sfn|Beard|2015|p=223}} This legal maximum on land holdings, if it actually existed,<ref>{{harvnb|Roselaar|2010|p=100}} documents scholarly disagreement as to when a 500 {{lang|la|jugera}} maximum was in fact implemented. Suggested dates range from 300–133&nbsp;BC, with the last date implying that no such prior law existed.</ref> was largely ignored and many people possessed far more than the limit,{{sfn|Scullard|1982|p=18}}{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=239}} including [[Marcus Octavius]], also serving as tribune in that year, and [[Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio]], then [[pontifex maximus]].{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|pp=239–40}}

The accounts of Appian and Plutarch are largely based on Tiberius and his supporters' political rhetoric and argumentation. Modern scholars have argued that those arguments were tendentious and did not reflect contemporaneous conditions objectively.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=225}} Source difficulties also emerge, inasmuch as some modern scholars also doubt whether the Gracchan narratives in Plutarch and Appian are based more on tragic dramas about their deaths rather than credible historical narratives.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Beness |first1=J Lea |last2=Hillard |first2=TW |date=2001 |title=The theatricality of the deaths of C Gracchus and friends |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S000983880100012X/type/journal_article |journal=Classical Quarterly |volume=51 |issue=1 |pages=135–140 |doi=10.1093/cq/51.1.135 |issn=0009-8388}}</ref>

According to Plutarch, referencing a pamphlet attributed to Tiberius' brother Gaius, Tiberius developed his measures after being moved by the dearth of free Italians tilling the fields in Etruria on the march to the Numantine war.{{sfn|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''|loc=8.7}} The poor, without land, became unavailable for military service and stopped reproducing, causing population decline.<ref>{{harvnb|Roselaar|2010|p=226}}; {{harvnb|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''|loc=8.3}}.</ref> A quote from Tiberius Gracchus is preserved in Plutarch:

{{quote|The wild beasts that roam over Italy... have every one of them a cave or lair to lurk in; but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy the common air and light, indeed, but nothing else; houseless and homeless they wander about with their wives and children. And it is with lying lips that their [commanders] exhort the soldiers in their battles to defend sepulchres and shrines from the enemy; for not a man of them has an hereditary altar, not one of all these many Romans an ancestral tomb, but they fight and die to support others in wealth and luxury, and though they are styled masters of the world, they have not a single clod of earth that is their own.<ref>Cited in {{harvnb|Roselaar|2010|p=226}}; translation from {{harvnb|Plut. ''Ti. Gracch.''|loc=9.4–5}}.</ref>}}

To resolve what he identified as the problem, Tiberius proposed a {{lang|la|[[lex agraria]]}} to enforce a limit on the amount of public land that one person could hold; surplus land would then be transferred into the hands of poor Roman citizens.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=221}} Benefitting the poor was not the only goal of his legislation: Tiberius also intended to reduce the level of inflammation in the city by moving the poor into the countryside{{sfn|Gruen|1995|p=387}} while also endowing those people with the necessary land to meet army property qualifications and reverse apparent population decline.{{sfnm|Roselaar|2010|1p=229–30|de Ligt|2004|2pp=752–53|Beard|2015|3p=267}}

This agrarian policy, focusing on people with agricultural skills, led to much of his support coming from the poor rural [[plebs]] rather than the plebs in the city.{{sfn|Brunt|1988|p=250}} Thousands reportedly flooded in from the countryside to support Tiberius and his programme.{{sfn|Lintott|1994|p=66}} Tiberius was not, however, alone in his views: he was supported by one of the consuls for the year (the jurist [[Publius Mucius Scaevola (pontifex maximus)|Publius Mucius Scaevola]]), his father-in-law Appius Claudius Pulcher (who had served as consul for 143&nbsp;BC), [[Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus|Publius Licinius Crassus Mucianus]] (elected {{Lang|la|pontifex maximus}} the next year), and other younger, junior senators.{{sfn|Lintott|1994|p=65}}{{Sfn|Broughton|1951|p=499}}

The amount of land each beneficiary would have received is unknown. Thirty {{Lang|la|jugera}} is often suggested. That amount, however, is greatly in excess of the regular amount of land distributed {{lang|la|viritim}} in colonisation programmes (only 10 {{Lang|la|jugera}}).{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=232}} There were also restrictions on alienation and possibly rents (a {{Lang|la|vectigal}}).{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=233}} While these conditions place the private ownership of the distributed land into question, and therefore also question whether an owner could be registered in the census as owning that land. Later laws indicate that it was legally treated as private with tenure maintained given payment of the ''{{Lang|la|vectigal}}''. An unpaid {{Lang|la|vectigal}} would trigger reverter to the state, which would then be able to redistribute it again.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|pp=235–36}}

The law would also create a commission, staffed following elections, by Tiberius Gracchus, his brother Gaius Gracchus, and his father-in-law, [[Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul 143 BC)|Appius Claudius Pulcher]], to survey land and determine which illegally occupied land was to be seized for redistribution.{{sfn|Brunt|1988|pp=466–67}}