Academic literature on the topic 'The Gracchus brothers'

This essay explores social and political values conveyed by nineteenth century world and universal history textbooks in relation to the antebellum era. These textbooks focused on the histories of ancient Greece and Rome rather than on histories of the United States. I argue that after 1830 these textbooks reinforced both the US land reform and the antislavery movement by creating favorable depictions of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. Tiberius and Caius Gracchus (known as the “Gracchi”) were two Roman tribunes who sought to restore Rome's land laws, which granted public land to propertyless citizens despite opposition from other Roman aristocrats. The textbook authors' portrayal of the Gracchan reforms reflects a populist element in antebellum American education because these narratives suggest that there is a connection between social inequality and the decline of republicanism.

AbstractIn 133 BC, when Scipio Aemilianus heard of the violent death of his cousin and brother-in-law, Ti. Gracchus, he uttered a line from Homer: ‘Thus perish all who attempt such.’ In effect, this endorsed the lynching of Gracchus. At a deeper level, it cast Gracchus (in the Homeric context of that quotation) as the tyrant Aegisthus. It may also have suggested an image of moral turpitude, Aegisthus having debauched his cousin Agamemnon’s wife. By analogy (if intended), that would have suggested an adulterous union between Gracchus and his sister Sempronia. It is further suggested that gossip arising from this extraordinary insinuation might have prompted a special reading of the claims circa 102 BC of L. Equitius to be the bastard son of Gracchus.

With a prompt that has been written about countless times, this essay argues that the fall of the Roman Republic was inevitable by examining the end of the republic through a new lens- political instability. This paper draws on primary sources and key individuals such as Julius Caesar and the lesser-known Gracchi brothers. The title does not lie – the fall of Rome is filled with exciting twists and turns that are examined within this work. This paper focused on three important political leaders from roughly 130-40BC. The Gracchi Brothers introduced a new strategy to gain power as Tribunes and set a precedent for political violence in the Roman Republic. Lucius Sulla utilized his unstoppable military power to gain control of the Republic as a dictator and removed plebeian favour reforms, removing power from the citizens of Rome. Julius Caesar was the Roman Republic’s final leader; his thirst for power and political self-interest is what eventually caused the Roman Republic to come to an end. The reader will come to find that ancient politics was much more violent than its modern-day counterpart. The Roman Republic did end, but why? Could these key figures have made different choices that might have saved Rome?

In this article, I explore the meaning and function of Lycurgus in Machiavelli’s thought. While the exemplarity of the mythical Spartan legislator progressively fades in Machiavelli’s thought in favour of the Roman model, Lycurgus’ reforms are central in Machiavelli’s works on two issues of primary importance: wealth and land distribution. First, I analyse Machiavelli’s use of the ancient sources on both Lycurgus and other Spartan legislators to show how the former builds a selective and strategically balanced reading of the ancient sources to build an image of the latter as a pro-popular ruler and of the subsequent Spartan reformers as followers not only of the mythical legislator generally, but also of his most controversial and popularly oriented attempts to reform property ownership in ancient Sparta. Lycurgus reveals how Machiavelli, far from seeing mixed government as the best form of government, promotes a strongly anti-aristocratic model. Second, I show that in Machiavelli’s thought the Spartan question can largely be seen as a background for his reading of Roman history, particularly its most crucial, conflictual and controversial period – that in which the Gracchi brothers’ attempted to achieve agrarian reform.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how did form veterans landowning in the Roman land surveying. The main sources on the problem are the treatises of Roman land surveyers (1-2 centuries AD). They contain information about the principles of surveying of land plots for Roman retirees and about right guarantees the veterans had. The task of this article is reconstruction of the process of civic assignations in Ancient Rome and highlighting of features of this action when land was granted to the veterans. At the end of 2nd century BC the limitatio has become the most common way of land division thank to activities of brothers Gracchi. The limitatio assumed the creation of dividers that organized space: Decumanus maximus and Cardo maximus . Their intersection created four parts of the future Ager Colonicus for veterans. The limits parallel to the main ones turned the colony field into a clearly organized boundary grid with a square unit of area - centuria, within which the land plots (intended for tillage, horticulture, viticulture) were formed for veterans. Since the time of Caesar and Augustus, the question of adding grazing land to the arable land was decided in the Roman land surveying art. The most desired types of non-arable land was not only forests, pastureland and relicta but also subseciva - remainders from land division. Those vacant centuriae were a good arable land which the state temporarily allocated to new settlers on a lease basis. In the cadastre, a special right of remainders (ius subsecivorum) was created, unifying the lease relations. Thus, the farm of the Roman veteran consisted of fertile land suitable for all types of agricultural activities, as well as different categories of land, which contributed to the development of property and ownership relations.

Around the year 108 B.C., the triumvir monetalis M. Herennius issued denarii which bore the portrait of Pietas on the obverse and one of the Catanean brothers carrying his parent on the reverse. This article aims to demonstrate that previous interpretations of these types as narrow allusions to the history of the gens are fallacious. Accordingly, new arguments are provided in order to give value to the political-ideological context of the last decades of the II century B.C.: in these years, pietas emerged alongside libertas as a fundamental value of the popularis ideological construct. This tradition was inspired by the oratorical and literary self-representation of Gaius Gracchus, that made his pietas erga fratrem and the pious portrayal of the family an important pillar of his legitimiz ing agenda. The political heirs of the Gracchi, such as C. Memmius and L. Apuleius Saturninus, continued to claim vengeance for the killed brothers and to blame the behaviour of the optimates – so that pietas remained a profitable slogan of the popularis political tradition. In this respect, Aetna’s eruptions in the Gracchan period and their explanation as prodigia formed an ideal humus for actualising the type of the Catanean brothers as catalyzing reference to the pietas popularis.

Rome was famous because of its strong military force and it dominate the Mediterranean Sea. However, it was facing severe shortage of soldiers for a long time during 150 BCE. This problem had enormously effect on the Roman society and political life such as the appearance of slavery in Rome and the use of violence in Rome. The reasons why Rome had shortage f soldiers were related to its own military system and political system. The three great reformers, Tiberius Gracchus, Caius Gracchus and Caius Marius tried their best to solve the problem. Gracchus brothers failed but Marius succeed. Experiences we can learn from these reforms will also be mentioned.