solainer:Alright, lemme tell you about my Roman history crushes the Gracchi babes brothers. The gran

solainer:Alright, lemme tell you about my Roman history crushes the Gracchi babes brothers. The grandsons of the famous Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal, they were famous in their own right, though not in the same sense as their granddaddy. Stick with me here, because their story is a sad one.Although they never commanded any armies, or conquered foreign Kings, these dirty socialists did something that made them the first of their kind, and some even blame these guys for the fall of the Roman republic.Around 135 BC, Rome was facing a sort of agricultural/economic crisis. There was a huge amount of wealth disparity between the rich and the poor. And one of the main causes was these farms called Latifundia. The rich were taking public land, and farming it using slaves. Now this wasn’t illegal, people were free to farm public land as they liked, so long as it wasn’t needed, but the problem was that the wealthy people were scaring the poorer ones off the land, and because they were using slaves to manage it, there was a lack of jobs for free citizens. Tiberius, the older Gracchi brother wanted to do something about it, and when he was elected as tribune of the plebs, he went to the senate with a law that would mean taking the public land from the rich, and distributing it among the poor, this land also couldn’t be sold, so there wasn’t a chance the rich would just buy it off the poor. The senate, as expected from a bunch of rich guys who had holdings in these farms, rejected the law.Tiberius then did something we take for granted, but was unprecedented in Roman politics. He went and got the popularity of the people. Since he was tribune of the plebs, he could make laws that could go to a vote in the Plebeian Assembly that bypassed the senate. These laws would only affect the Plebs, but as about 95% of Roman citizens were plebs, this was effectively law for everyone. With only a little bit of trouble (that was handled with underhanded means), the law passed.Unfortunately, this made the senate very angry, and Tiberius had effectively kicked the hornets nest. Being tribune protected him from danger, but his term of office was only for a year, and once that term was up, in attempt to protect himself, he tried to use his popularity to get voted into the same office again, but this was illegal.As he was trying to get re-elected in the Assembly, his enemies from the senate broke in, he was ripped from his clothes down to his undergarments and beaten to death with a wooden leg of a bench, afterwards, they dumped his body and those of his supporters in the Tiber River. He was 29.Ten years later, his brother Caius (or Gaius by some sources) was elected as Tribune. Caius was a great speaker, and soon became as popular, if not more popular than his brother, and he was mad as hell at the senate for what they did to Tiberius. Not only did he support his brother’s law, he started creating all these other ones that pretty much curbed the senate’s legal power, and made more laws that helped the poor. He was also the first to be legally elected as tribune for a second time in a row. The senate, not wanting to resort to violence again, tried to undermine Caius by creating more reforms than him that were popular with the people, and because of the Senate’s endorsement, people fell for it and Caius lost popularity.On the day the senate tried to repeal his laws, shit started to go down. A man was killed by one of Caius’ supporters, due to a misunderstanding, and that was all the senate needed to call for Caius to stand before the senate. Knowing what would happen, Caius refused, and with some of his supporters, fled to the Aventine hill in hope that the senate would call for a truce and something could be worked out. That didn’t quite happen and the senate sent a small army against them.Caius fled, supposedly taking refuge in the temple of Diana, before eventually meeting his end when he bid a slave to cut his throat. In the end, his head was cut off and presented before the senate, and his body was dumped in the Tiber river. He was 31.The Gracchi brother’s murders were considered the first political ones in Roman history since the time of Roman Kings, and lead the way in the use of violence to accomplish one’s political endeavours, which, in the end of course, lead to the fall of the Roman republic. -- source link

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