The story of ancient celebrity Gracchus

One day at the beginning of BC 133, it was a sunny day in Rome, and the crowd in the central square was bustling. A young man in his late thirties is giving an impassioned speech:

"Italy's wild animals have nests, and those who die fighting for Italy can only enjoy the air and sunshine. They are homeless, homeless and wandering around with their wives and belts. The general deceives soldiers to fight to defend ancestral graves and ancestral temples. In fact, it is a lie, because no soldier has his own altar and ancestral graves, and they are just risking their lives to fight for the prosperity of others. Although they are called the masters of Rome, they don't even own a small piece of land. Is this fair? " The audience shouted excitedly "No!"

Who is this young man? What is he talking about? This young man, Tiberius Gracchus, is the tribune of Rome. He is lobbying the town meeting to pass his land reform plan.

So why did Rome carry out land reform? What about Tiberius Gracchus and its land reform plan?

We already know that ordinary people are citizens who have the right to vote in Rome. They reclaimed wasteland or obtained a piece of land from Roman countries to engage in individual agricultural production. Civilians have the obligation to perform military service for Roman countries and are the main source of Roman troops. However, from the 4th century BC to the 2nd century BC, in the process of Rome conquering Italy and establishing hegemony in the Mediterranean region, farmers went out with the army year after year, the land was barren, farmers were sold as slaves, and large manors using slave labor quickly spread all over the country, and the small-scale peasant economy was unable to compete with it, and they went bankrupt one after another and the land was annexed. Therefore, the civilians strongly demand to recover the land. Moreover, the Roman military service law stipulates that people who perform military service must bring their own clothes and weapons. Because the civilians went bankrupt and could not be soldiers, the Roman country was in a state of war and confusion. In order to solve the above problems, in the second half of the 2nd century BC, Gracchus resolutely launched a reform movement centered on solving the land problem.

Gracchus was born into a noble family in Rome. His father was a high official in Rome, and his mother was a famous beauty. Tiberius Gracchus worked as a fortune teller in his early years, and later participated in many overseas military colonial wars in Rome. He is an influential official in Rome.

In BC 134, BC 12 February, Tiberius was elected tribune with the support of civilians. As soon as he took office, he formulated a land reform plan, stipulating that each household should not occupy more than 1000 pots of state-owned land (about 250 hectares), and the excess part will be nationalized after the state pays the land price, and then divided into small plots of land with 30 pots for each household and distributed to civilians without land. However, this plan was strongly opposed by aristocratic conservatives who owned a lot of land. On the one hand, they tried their best to transfer the property, and on the other hand, they were ready to try their best to kill Tiberius.

When I went to Qiu Lai in the spring, the land reform was going on hard and slowly, and the term of Tiberius Tribune was about to expire. In order to prevent the reform from dying halfway, Tiberius decided to run for tribune again next year.

When the election day came, it was just dawn and the central square of Rome was already crowded. As we all know, Tiberius' stay or not affects the interests of almost all Roman citizens, so many farmers from other places also rushed to Rome overnight. There were a lot of people in the dark at night. The nobles headed by Nasica led their servants and supporters, either hiding weapons or holding sticks, and mixed in the crowd, ready to make trouble at any time. Tiberius was warmly welcomed by supporters when he entered the stadium, and the atmosphere in the stadium was obviously beneficial to Tiberius. Halfway through the voting, Tiberius was a shoo-in. Just then, Tiberius was told that the aristocratic conservatives had arranged a large number of armed men and were planning to attack him. Be careful and say, "Tiberius, you'd better go home and take shelter first." We will observe here and see what they can do. " Tiberius replied: "It will be a great shame for me to leave at this time, the people will be disappointed, and my enemies will make fun of me maliciously." He quickly told people around him to prepare for self-defense, and the meeting was a bit messy. People in the distance somehow craned their necks, stood on tiptoe to look in, and repeatedly asked, "What's the matter? What's wrong? " Tiberius then put his hand on his head and made a gesture that his life was threatened. At this time, an aristocratic conservative spy immediately shouted: "It's broken! It's broken! Tiberius asked to be crowned, and the people will support him as king! " When Nasica saw that the time had come, he jumped up and shouted, "Since the supreme leader has betrayed the country, all the people who saved the country should come with me!" Then he lifted his cloak and took a group of thugs with swords and guns to see Tiberius. Suddenly, a hand-to-hand combat began in the square. As a result, Tiberius and his supporters fell in a pool of blood because they were washed away and outnumbered. The murder of Tiberius aroused great indignation among ordinary people and upright nobles. Nasica became a street rat. Everywhere he went, people shouted at him and cursed him as a sinner who defiled Rome. As a last resort, he went to Asia Minor like a lost dog and finally died in a lonely and desolate foreign land. The Senate was frightened by public anger and did not dare to abolish the land reform easily. Six years after Tiberius' death, 80,000 civilians were distributed to the land.

In 124 BC, Tiberius' younger brother Gayo Gragu was elected as the tribune of 123, and publicly condemned the atrocities of the aristocratic conservatives before 10, winning the cheers of the civilians. The aristocratic conservatives exclaimed, "Tiberius is back." Guy is older than Tiberius Xiao Jiu. Like his brother, he is an honest and frank man and leads a serious life. However, their personalities and styles are quite different. Tiberius is gentle, serious and rational; Guy is short-tempered, aggressive and impassioned. He walked up and down the stage, sometimes lifting his robe to his shoulders and sometimes cursing loudly. He is more attractive to the people and more dangerous to aristocratic conservatives.

After Gail came to power, he immediately put forward the food bill and the land bill, which were passed at the citizens' meeting. The Food Act stipulates that the state provides cheap food to urban civilians. The land law stipulates that Tiberius' land reform should continue. But at this time, a new problem appeared. Rome doesn't have much state-owned land, so Gayo put forward a plan to build three immigrant lands, two in Italy and the other in Africa.

As soon as Gail's plan was put forward, aristocratic conservatives instructed another civil servant, Levi Druce, to put forward opposition suggestions in order to win over civilians and undermine reform. They took advantage of the reluctance of some civilians to leave their homeland, saying that there were too few resettlement sites, and they wanted to build 12 sites, all in Italy. But in fact, there is no place to build a 12 settlement in Italy, and Druce's suggestion is just a confusing piece of paper. However, some civilians have unrealistic illusions about this.

Although Druce's opposition proposal won the favor of some civilians, there are still many civilians who firmly support Gail. Noble conservatives know that violence is the only way to kill reform completely.

At a citizens' meeting to discuss the colonies in North Africa, an assistant of a conservative consul deliberately called Gayos a hooligan and made insulting gestures, deliberately angering the reformists. As a result, Gayle's men stabbed the waiter to death on the spot in a rage. This is exactly what conservatives want. The next day, when they held a parade, they caused armed mobs to slaughter the reformists on a large scale. Although Gayo and his supporters stubbornly resisted, they failed to resist the organized armed attack, and more than 3,000 people were killed on the spot. Gayo fled into the jungle and committed suicide in despair. Later, conservatives brazenly built a temple in Rome and named it "Harmony". However, one night, an ironic remark was engraved under the inscription in the temple hall: "A very disharmonious event gave birth to a' harmonious' temple."