Brothers Grakhov Biography

I was asked to tell about the Grachov brothers. And although I have mentioned them more than once in the stories about the prerequisites of the citizen, but always by the way. So we correct the omission. Moreover, it was these guys to save the republic with their attempts to save the civil wars in Rome inevitable.

Their mother was the daughter of the very Scipio of African who defeated Hannibal, and his father was a diplomat, military leader and consular from a noble plebeian family. That is, their origin was very cool. From childhood, both brothers were drawn surrounded by the "reformers" of their cousin Scipio Emilian's grandson of Scipio African from whom the origin of the population of populations can be carried out.

The appearance of a circle of reformers was caused by the radical reconstruction of Rome after the Hannibal War. The ruin of Italy by the war, the death of many Romans and the huge wealth, captured by the belly, led to an increase in the well -being and influence of a rather narrow layer of senators. These surnames managed to accumulate a significant amount of land in their hands and thereby acquired great power, which they were able to convert into even greater opportunities to strengthen their position.

The enlargement of land ownership and the concentration of large volume of land in the hands of senators, as well as a large influx of slaves, led to the ruin of many small farms. This, in turn, led to many problems: from the accumulation of large masses of landless peasants in Rome, to the weakening of the mobilization potential - the Roman militia had to buy equipment for himself, and the landless peasants were not capable of this.

The solution to the problem of the landless plebs was secondary and directly linked to the issue of equipping the army. Due to the fact that the very problem of equipping the army in the second third of the II century BC. A significant part of the conservative senators of the optimas believed that it was not necessary to change anything, and when it was impatient, it would be possible to reduce the qualification and gain the landless plebs into the army at the expense of the state.

The reformers believed that to restore the mobilization potential of Rome, it is necessary not to reduce the qualification, but to solve the radical reason - to redistribute public lands in Italy and to resettle the landless peasants there so that they are able to provide themselves. The problem was that it was the occupation of public lands that was the key to the strengthening of many senators, and no one was going to undermine the foundations of their own power.

The reformers were small and not that one, but they realized that in any case, reforms were needed so that the republic would not derack so much that it would become a full -fledged oligarchy. Therefore, between the conservatives and the reformists there was a deaf positional struggle in which supporters of reforms had very few opportunities. Scipio Emilian himself has always been a supporter of a moderate compromise, as he understood that any attempts to sell reforms would cause troubles and could cause the republic’s fall to the anarchy.

The correlation of the forces of supporters of the conservative course and reforms in the Senate of Tiberius Gracch, probably, more than once participated in the dialogs of Scipio Emilian's circle of the republic’s problems. He saw how the Senate stubbornly after time fails all initiatives to correct all aggravating problems. He saw how the individual surnames of the senators are living on the suffering of the plebs.

But the start of Gracha’s career was extremely unsuccessful. The war with the namation, which has been around for 4 years, was almost lost by Rome due to command mistakes - the huge thousandth army was trapped and could be destroyed at any moment. Under these conditions, the consul Guy Gayli Mancin was forced to conclude peace, in which the Military legate of Tiberius Sempronniy Grakh spoke, whose father achieved 40 years before this world in Spain and enjoyed certain respect for the Iberians.

But the “shameful” world with the recognition of the old status-QVO in Spain in the face of the threat of the complete defeat of the Roman army turned out to be unacceptable to many senators, including Scipio Emilian, who believed that the duty of a real Roman to fight even in the most adverse conditions. Voyeri, seeing his relative and idol opposed his peace treaty, is disappointed both in Scipio Emilian and in the reformists because of their caution.

All this taken together made a further path along Cursus Hinorum for Tiberius extremely complicated and pushed its side of radicalism. He realizes that the compromise with the Senate is not enough, and he is most likely impossible that it is necessary to bend him and do what should not yet be too late. And for this there was a loophole of which the reformers were forced to use more and more often - the commander of the national assembly.

After the Hannibal war in this authority, the city plebs dominated, positively configured to the ideas of reformers. With the help of comments, the reformists arranged a bargain with the conservatives as a result of which another compromise was born. In the current conditions, this was a very big achievement, but moving to the goal was not tibia for Tiberius.He decides to be elected by the popular tribune, for the right to introduce draft laws in comment and conduct his draft reform, regardless of the will of the Senate.

By tradition, any such bill had to be first approved in the Senate, but the tradition is not a law, it can be circumvented, having a mandate of the people. And during the election, Tiberius received such a mandate, since almost most of the city plebs was for his political program. The problem was that not all reformists were ready to support Tiberius’s plan. For the Romans of that time, an ancient and respected tradition was no less important than any law, which means it can be violated only in cases of crisis.

Is there a crisis? Then if you please act according to tradition. Yes, in this case, the conservatives will pump the initiative in the Senate, but it is better so than by their own actions to create a precedent for further violations of the rules and at the same time a political crisis. Tiberia was not supported by many, including Scipio Emilian, who feared both anarchy in Rome and the fact that the allies of the Gracchus, intensified, can become more dangerous than any conservatives.

The essence of Tiberius’s reform was to create tools to limit the sizes of families and redistribute the liberated land in favor of the poor. The comment, not without counteracting supporters of the nobititis, adopted a bill. True, for this it was necessary to violate another tradition and withdraw through comment the authority of the people's tribune of Octavia due to the "loss of trust." But even after that, the Senate began to sabotage now the implementation of the reform.

For the rest of the year, the Gracx unsuccessfully fought for organizing the work of the commission on the distribution of land, but he simply did not have enough time to do everything to make it earned. Then he decided to once again violate the traditions - to re -elect into the people's stands, taking advantage of the popularity of plebs. And so the Senate could not let him go, since it was a direct spit throughout the republican system.

After all, Tiberius could, instead of re -election, spend his supporters into the stands, help them with his authority, but did not. From the point of view of the senators, all this was a contempt for republicanism and a craving for tyranny. Although, in fact, Tiberius was simply afraid that after the end of authority he could be convicted of imaginary abuses and he needed a tribune judicial immunity.

After all, Tiberius himself was actively accused of violations of traditions and rumors crawled around Rome that he wanted to become a king. It was impossible to solve the conflict of the world: the senators could not allow one of the most important traditions of the state, even under the pressure of the plebs, as this would open the Pandora's box. In an effort to stop the crisis that had not yet happened, Tiberius Grach managed to call another to life, perfectly demonstrating that the old social treaty was already incapable.

Unable to remove the Gracha’s elections with legal methods, the senators declared him a rebel and killed him in a fight right during the election. The death of Tiberius Gracha. Yes, they fought with sticks, as it was forbidden to be in a city with weapons by Guy Grakh defeating Tiberius Gracha, the Senate was in a difficult situation. On the one hand, many supporters of the rebellious tribune were condemned in hot pursuit, on the other hand, it was necessary to prevent a split in society, since the plebs continued to seethe, and a number of conservatives were dissatisfied with some unconstitutionality of the murder.

As a result, the Senate was forced to strengthen the safety and preservation of the stability of the republic not only not to pursue the leaders of the Grachan movement, but also to promise to preserve and continue all the undertakings of the Gracchus, and the initiator of the murder of Tiberius, forced to go on voluntary exile to the suburban villa. Conservatives needed to at least temporarily show that peace and stability returned to the republic.

In the changed conditions, the younger brother of the murdered tribune - Guy Gracch - headed the land redistribution commission. He strove to honestly continue his brother’s policy, but due to the pressure of the Senate he was put in an uncomfortable position. A significant part of the public lands that were transferred to the commissions were located in Southern Italy and belonged to the masses of their Italians from Roman allies.

Tiberius Gracch, when lpanizing the reform, intended to ensure the support of the Italians of the distribution of land plots and the Italian poor. But noble Italians were naturally indignant that they were taken away from the land and filled the Senate with complaints, which caused first to suspend the activities of the commission, and then even to close it.

Guy did not reconcile his brother’s legacy torpedoing and decided to follow the path of classes of government posts in order to, with their help, achieve the resumption of the commission. But here, the Senate, reasonably fearing the growth of the influence of Gracha, in every possible way inserted his sticks into the wheels, and after the end of the term of office they tried to judge him.

All this convinced Guy that there was no alternative to Tiberius’s path - if he wants to achieve something, he should also become a popular tribune.Understanding that one of the key reasons for the loss of Tiberius was the rate only on the city plebs, Guy proposed a comprehensive program that expressed the aspirations of various layers of society. He promised the city plebs to continue the allocation of land and establish a maximum of bread prices, ridicule - the expansion of the representative office of the estate in the courts, militias from rural plebs - the full support of the state in military service of soldiers, Italians - the expansion of civil rights.

The only stratum of society, which Gayu had nothing to offer, remained a nobilita, but he did not seem to count on some reasonable compromise with them. The promises of Gracha lay down on fertile ground. The Senate again tried to interfere with his election, but nothing came of it. Unlike Tiberius, Guy, having received the Tribuna powers, immediately began to clean the field of activity from the Senate supporters, competently using folk moods.

Since he needed money to conduct reforms, and the Senate did not want to give them, Grach, as necessary, spent laws through the comment, allowing him to gain access to one or another financial flows. The key task of his activity, he still posed a solution to the land issue. But instead of point redistributions, he relied on the removal of the colonies, both to Italy and beyond, which was an innovation for Rome.

The reason for such large resettlements was that after the organization of the colony to play back all changes in the land fund would be very difficult. Since in Italy the main fund for including the lands of Italiks were the composition of the colonies, in exchange for the withdrawal of the colony, the Gracchus proposed the expansion of rights. The horsemen were supposed to support the initiatives of GAY due to a significant expansion of the system of recovery and the introduction to the courts of the provinces of the riders - which only aggravated the problems with corruption in the provinces.

In order to ensure colonial activity, Guy began to create a warehous system for which the city plebs was actively involved. Thus, in less than a year, Gai created around himself an almost parallel system of power, almost in no way connected with the Senate and is the full trust of the city plebs. The popularity of Gracha was so great that he was chosen for a second term even without his participation, which once again became a trigger for conservatives.

The Senate, faced with the fact that the power in the city in fact passed into the hands of Gracha, put down the bricks and began to actively stagger the GAY support group, because not everyone liked his activity. Firstly, the law on the restriction of bread prices painfully hit the rural plebs, which raised grain for sale. Secondly, the horseman, having received an expanded representation, wanted to consolidate these changes that only the Senate could provide.

Thirdly, the Italics did not burn the desire to share the land even more for the sake of ephemeral promises to give them more rights. Fourth, already the city plebs himself was frightened that the expansion of citizenship on Italiks would put them on one step in competition for the Earth. As a result, in just a year, Grach lost a significant part of popularity and lost the next elections.

Unlike his brother, he did not arrange clashes with his opponents, which was probably expected from him. But he could not avoid disassembly: the Senate had to finish Gai, if not physically, then politically. To do this, a law on the folding of colonization activities in Africa and the abolition of the Junony colony, located on the site of the former Carthage, was put to vote in comments.

It was the most impudent project of Guy, and its destruction was very symbolic. Gracch himself doubted whether he should enter into a decisive confrontation, since the forces of his supporters were clearly not enough. Nevertheless, other Grachanans began to spontaneously gather on the forum, where the Senate supporters were already waiting for them. In the ensuing brawl, Lictor was killed by someone that it was all that it was a big setup, after which the Senate decided to bring the troops into the city and suppress the rebellion.

This time, the senators did not make mistakes of the past, and Guy, like everyone who sided with his side in the conflict, was destroyed during the followed stripping.