Re-Election and Death

“Then Scipio Nasica said:

‘Since the Consul, by following legal process, is acting in a way that will overthrow the Imperium Romanum, and the laws with it, I offer myself, a private individual, as leader of your decision.’

Then he wrapped the hem of his toga around his left hand and raised his right, proclaiming:

‘Let those who want the Res Publica to be saved follow me.'” (Clark, 127)

In 132 BC, Tiberius Gracchus stood for re-election to the Tribunate in order to finish his work with the Land Commission. This was taken as a second attack on the Republic’s virtue of a limited tenure of office, and was not viewed kindly by the Senate.

Many conservative Senators feared a new “mob rule” led by the Tribunate, especially in hindsight of Gracchus’ deposition of Marcus Octavius. This prompted action during Gracchus’ re-election. As Gracchus gestured toward his head to indicate fear for his life and anxiousness, members of the Senate took it as a plea for a crown, as though Tiberius Gracchus were declaring himself King.

This misinterpreted gesture prompted Pontifex Maximus Cornelius Scipio Nasica to call for action to “defend the Republic” against tyranny through the murder of Tiberius Gracchus. It is noted that Nasica “wound the border of his toga about his head” while mobilizing the Senate toward murder, prompting historians to wonder if this movement was “either to induce a greater number to go with him by the singularity of his appearance, or to make for himself, as it were a helmet as a sign of battle for those who aw it, or in order to conceal himself from the Gods on account of what he was about to do” (Appian, 33). Such drama was made over the act, not just because using violence for political means was hereto unprecedented in the Roman Republic, but because it would be “a sacrilegious act, killing a tribune who was made sacrosanct by an oath of the people” (Clark). This carries with it a whole new weight of the loss of traditional Roman morals. Nasica and the Senators beat Tiberius Gracchus to death, as well as a number of his supporters, in the first act of outright political violence the Roman Republic had seen, setting a new precedent.

This new precedent would be the undoing of the republic, opening the door for other power hungry, ambitious generals and politicians to seize power and ultimately drive the state to a dictatorship within 100 years of the death of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.

 

BBC Dramatization of Tiberius Gracchus’ Murder

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