PART V 37 Tiberius Gracchus.the Roman SENAte

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27114/27114-h/27114-h.html#toc69
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Tiberius


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 Tiberius Gracchus.the Roman SENAte 

For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna, the Roman State enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple

 The administration of justice was improved. The senatorial commissions to the provinces were found inadequate.

The senators were compelled to renounce their public horse on admission to the Senate, and also the privilege of voting in the eighteen equestrian centimes.

The government no longer disposed of the property of burgesses for the public good, nor favored the idea among them that they were exempted from taxes. Political corruption reached through all grades and classes. Capitalists absorbed the small farms, and great fortunes were the scandal of the times. Capital was more valued than labor.In one day as many as ten thousand slaves were 
[pg 490]disembarked and sold. Farms, and trades, and mines were alike carried on by these slaves from Asia, and their sufferings and hardships were vastly greater than ever endured by negroes on the . But they were of a different race

At this crisis, when disproportionate wealth and slavery were the great social evils, Tiberius Gracchus arose—a young man of high rank, chivalrous, noble, and eloquent. His mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, and therefore belonged to the most exclusive of the aristocratic circles. Tiberius Gracchus was therefore the cousin of Scipio Æmilianus, under whom he served with distinction in Africa. He was seconded in his views of reform by some stern old patriots and aristocrats, 

This patriotic patrician was elected tribune B.C. 134, at a time when political mismanagement, moral decay, the decline of burgesses, and the increase of slaves, were most apparent. So Gracchus, after entering upon his office, proposed the enaction of an agrarian law, by which all State lands, occupied by the possessors, without remuneration, should revert to the State,

Marcus Octavius. Gracchus then, in his turn, suspended the business of the State and the administration of justice, and placed his seal on the public chest. The government was obliged to acquiesce. Gracchus, also, as the year was drawing to a close, brought his law to the vote a second time. 

The distribution of land ceased, but the revolution did not stop. The soul of Tiberius Gracchus “was marching on.” A new hero appeared in his brother, Gaius Gracchus, nine years younger—a man who had no relish for vulgar pleasures,—brave, cultivated, talented, energetic, vehement. A master of eloquence, he drew the people; consumed with a passion for revenge, he led them on to revolutionary measures. He was elected tribune in the year 123, and at once declared war on the aristocratic party, to which by birth he belonged.

Gracchus raised the power of the equestrians by a law which provided that the farming of the taxes raised in the provinces should be sold at auction at Rome. A gold mine was thus opened for the speculators. He also caused a law to be passed which required the judges of civil and criminal cases to be taken from the equestrians, a privilege before enjoyed by the Senate. And thus a senator, impeached for his conduct as provincial governor, was now tried, not as before, by his peer, but by merchants and bankers.