Editing Tiberius Gracchus (section)

== Legacy ==
[[File:François-Noël Babeuf.jpg|thumb|Engraving of "Gracchus Babeuf", who took the name Gracchus from the reformist brothers. He advocated a significantly more radical land reform programme (in comparison with the Gracchan programme) in [[revolutionary France]]. ]]
{{See also|Gaius Gracchus|Gracchi brothers}}

Tiberius' brother, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, continued his career without incident until he too stood for the tribunate and proposed similarly radical legislation, before also being killed with now explicit approval of the senate.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=86}} Part of Gaius' land programmes was to start establishing Roman colonies outside of Italy, which later became standard policy in consequence of the more general realisation that Italy was insufficiently large to fulfil popular demands for agricultural land.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|pp=242–43}}

Personally, the killing of Tiberius also caused a greater break between Scipio Aemilianus and his Claudian and Gracchan relatives, especially after Scipio Aemilianus approved of Tiberius' murder.{{sfn|Brunt|1988|p=463}}

=== 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}}

=== 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}}}}

=== Impact on the Italian allies ===
Contrary to Appian's claims about how Tiberius acted to give Rome's Italian allies land, there are no seeming indications that Tiberius Gracchus' reforms helped them in any way.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=244}} Moreover, it was the Italian allies who launched the fiercest opposition to the land reform programme; Tiberius Gracchus' supporters also are never Italians in Appian's account, but only rural plebeians.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=245}} 

After Rome acquired its public lands via conquest, the Italians expected that their rights to use it continually were surety for their loyal conduct.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=250}} While those who complained the most were likely rich over-occupiers, Appian also reports that the commission's work was rushed and inaccurate. Furthermore, the land given in exchange for land taken per the {{Lang|la|lex agraria}} might have been of inferior quality, also stoking resentment.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=250}}

By altering this implicit agreement, the loyalty of the Italian allies during the Punic Wars and other conflicts therefore had won nothing.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=281}} In the end, Roman enforcement of its long-unexercised rights over the {{Lang|la|ager publicus}}, stoking resentment and removing disincentives to rebellion, contributed to the [[Social War (91–87 BC)|Social War]] between Rome and its Italian allies.{{sfn|Roselaar|2010|p=284}} This interaction between the Italians and land reform also brought up later proposals, including those of Tiberius' younger brother, to trade the Italian aristocracy's occupied lands for Roman citizenship or {{Lang|la|provocatio}} rights.{{sfn|Lintott|1994|p=75}}

=== Modern legacy ===
The French revolutionary [[François-Noël Babeuf]] took up the name ''Gracchus Babeuf'' in emulation of the then-contemporary view of the Roman brothers as revolutionaries who were misinterpreted as seeking limitations on private property.{{sfn|Russell|2008|pp=4–6, 22}} He also published a newspaper, {{Lang|fr|Le tribun du peuple}} ("the tribune of the people").{{sfn|Russell|2008|p=18}} Modern perspectives see the comparison as unapt, as Babeuf intended abolish private land ownership entirely and overthrow the French republic, goals incompatible with Tiberius'.{{sfn|Russell|2008|pp=21–22}}