Tribunate and murder of Tiberius Gracchus
- Date
- 133 BCE
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Italy (Rome)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
Elected tribune of the plebs in 133 BCE, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus proposed an agrarian law to redistribute Roman public land, enforcing a long-ignored limit on how much state land any individual could hold and resettling impoverished citizens as smallholders.
The reform aimed to reverse the decline of the small-farmer class that traditionally supplied the army's soldiers, a decline driven by long wars and the spread of large slave-worked estates. Facing senatorial obstruction, Tiberius bypassed the Senate and took his bill directly to the popular assembly, deposed a colleague who vetoed it, and sought re-election in breach of custom. His opponents, fearing he aimed at tyranny and threatened their estates, mobilised a mob of senators and supporters who clubbed Tiberius and hundreds of his followers to death. This was the first major outbreak of lethal political violence in the Republic in centuries, and it is widely regarded as the opening of the 'late Republic': a century of escalating factional conflict, mob violence, ambitious generals and civil war that culminated in the Republic's collapse.
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Empires active in 133 BCE
- Roman Republic509 BCE – 27 BCE
- Han Dynasty202 BCE – 220 CE
- Shunga Empire185 BCE – 73 BCE
- Kingdom of Numidia202 BCE – 25 BCE
- Ptolemaic Kingdom305 BCE – 30 BCE
- Indo-Greek Kingdom180 BCE – 10 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Assassination of Julius Caesar (the Ides of March)15 March 44 BCE
- Augustus founds the Principate (First Settlement)16 January 27 BCE
- Codification of the Law of the Twelve Tables451–449 BCE
- Qin unification of China and the First Emperor221 BCE
- Han-Xiongnu Heqin Treaty Inaugurates Tribute-and-Marriage Diplomacy198 BC
- Chandragupta Maurya founds the Maurya Empirec. 321 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
Gripping popular narrative of the Republic's fall.
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