Aching Wrists

[Gibbon]

I always rather liked the Gracchi brothers. They used a constitution based on an electoral system rigged heavily in the favour of the aristocracy to attempt some kind of redress for the pressures being put on the ordinary Roman by social and economic changes. No wonder they were whacked.

But being of the higher orders of the aristocracy were they just using the people to gain power? Many would say so, including me.
Yes the system needing changing and land redistributing but they showed up a consistutional flaw that ultimately led to rule by one man.

[Old Greg]

But being of the higher orders of the aristocracy were they just using the people to gain power? Many would say so, including me.
Yes the system needing changing and land redistributing but they showed up a consistutional flaw that ultimately led to rule by one man.

The constitution was basically one of a city state that was unsuited to an empire and the end of the Republic was inevitable. I think that the Gracchi's abuse of the tribune of the plebeians post is only one of a number of devices that stretched the constitution, including:

Holding post of Consul multiple times (Marius)
Holding post of Dictator for more than 6 months (Sulla)
Use of the 'consultum optimum de republica defendena' (emergency decree for the defence of the republic, various, including Cicero)
Sole Consul (Pompey)
Dictator in Perpetuo (Julius Caesar)
Imperator (Octavian / Augustus)

Next to these, the Gracchi's attempts to legislate for land reform and extra-constitutional abuse of the tribune of the plebeians' post looks mild, although threatening to those who had seen a transfer of public land into their own hands.

It is hard to understand the Gracchi because the source are those of the winning factions of aristocracy, but I think it's wrong to dismiss them as cynical demagogues rather than idealists (or idealist demagogues, perhaps).

[Gibbon]

The constitution was basically one of a city state that was unsuited to an empire and the end of the Republic was inevitable. I think that the Gracchi's abuse of the tribune of the plebeians post is only one of a number of devices that stretched the constitution, including:

Holding post of Consul multiple times (Marius)
Holding post of Dictator for more than 6 months (Sulla)
Use of the 'consultum optimum de republica defendena' (emergency decree for the defence of the republic, various, including Cicero)
Sole Consul (Pompey)
Dictator in Perpetuo (Julius Caesar)
Imperator (Octavian / Augustus)

Next to these, the Gracchi's attempts to legislate for land reform and extra-constitutional abuse of the tribune of the plebeians' post looks mild, although threatening to those who had seen a transfer of public land into their own hands.

It is hard to understand the Gracchi because the source are those of the winning factions of aristocracy, but I think it's wrong to dismiss them as cynical demagogues rather than idealists (or idealist demagogues, perhaps).

Yes, it's all rather subjective. However the most extant sources for the Gracchi are Appian and Plutarch, both greeks writing some 250 years later and both with agendas. The closest sources we have are Cicero and a certain Siculus both writing about 50 BC and both these sources as in my opening post are scathing of Gaius in particular. The importance of the Gracchi was the precendents set; the use of the tribuneship to manipulate the people and bypassing the senate; also the use of murder in the political arena by their enemies.