by Horatius Piscinus on Sun May 02, 2004 3:22 pm
Salvete
The kalends are past, and although today is a dies ater I will continue the preliminaries to our discussion by offering some initial thoughts.
The Gracchi are often depicted as social revolutionaries. In order to discuss whether or not this was true we will have to have some understanding of Roman social structure. Rome was a highly stratified society. To speak of high, middle and lower classes as we might for a modern society really has nothing to tell us about Roman society. There was a level of citizenry that was too poor to be counted in the census. These were the unpropertied proletarii and the censi who had property but not enough to meet the minimum requirement of the classes. The rest of Rome?s citizens were divided into five classes according to their wealth, but even in that there were diverse strata in each class. The most important one for us to consider with regard to the Gracchi is the prima classis with its various strata.
The equites are often attributed as being Rome?s middle class, above them being an aristocratic Senatorial class. That is really not the case and to think of the equites in such terms hinders our understanding of the social dynamics of the Gracchan period. Technically, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, equites referred only to those 1,800 individuals known as the equites equo publico who received a horse and payment for its upkeep at state expense. Originally this was to provide for a Roman cavalry, but by the Gracchan period it was more an insignia of rank to have a state horse. Nearly all members of the Senate were equites equo publico in an earlier period, but that changed in the Gracchan period. Cato, as censor, had caused quite a stir when he ordered senator Lucius Scipio, to give up his horse due to his age. He had intended to remove all members of the Senate from the rolls as equites equo publico in order to enlarge the number of individuals counted in the upper portion of Roman society. His measure did not pass the Senate however. The practice continued until 129 when a plebiscitum equorum reddendorum was passed that ordered all who were or would became senatores to surrender their horses. This freed 300 public horses for others to be given, and thereby increased the number to 2,200 in the uppermost echelon of Roman society. So the term equites equo publico means something a little different at the time of Tiberius Gracchus than it does in the time of his brother Gnaeus Gracchus. This is important to remember because when Gnaeus Gracchus passed a measure making juries composed of equites and excluding senatores, he was referring only to those 1,800 equites equo publico. It is a misnomer to say his measure included all who may thought as equites in its broader meaning, a term from the Late Republic that does not really apply to the Gracchan period. Other measures, made earlier, tried to severe the senatores from certain commercial activities. One example was the Lex Claudia of 218 limiting the size of ships owned by senatores. Senatores could not become publicani collecting taxes, or contractors for state funded building projects. Contractors and publicani still had to be wealthy land-owners as land was required as a surety. The reform movement to curtail senatorial privilege did not end with the Gracchi either.
There is a broader meaning to the term ?equites.? It does not, however, refer to a middle class but rather to the wealthiest members of Roman society. Roman citizens were divided into five classes according to their wealth. However, things changed dramatically after Aemilianus Paullus won his victory over Perseus of Macedonia when there was a sudden and dramatic increase in Roman wealth, and the display of wealth. At some time prior to the Gracchi a new qualification was introduced in the prima classis of the census. The minimum required to be in the prima classis was to demonstrate ownership of property amounting to at least 100,000 sestertii (=100,000,000 sesterces), the new qualification was for those above 400,000 sestertii. Members of this new class became popularly known as equites, but not officially, and there were certainly more than 1,800 of them by then. Because of the influx of wealth, although not equally distributed, a lot of Romans were becoming quite wealthy, able to compete for public contracts. Not only Romans either. Jugurtha's massacre at Cirta, Mithradates' massacre in Asia, are of Italians, rather than Romans, serving in the provinces as Roman publicani.
As more individuals came to meet the requirements, there was greater competition for few political offices. Attention is often drawn to this fact by historians. But it was not only the higher magisterial offices that competition was fierce. The basic political units in Rome were the neighborhoods, organized into curia. Each curia was headed by a curio and a curio maximus headed all of the curiae. The curiones were officials who organized these bloc units when votes were taken in the different comitia. They also held some religious functions and had a degree of status above other citizens. The comitia curiata still met to confer imperium on magistrates and to witness wills and adoptions, and for religious ceremonies. (By the late Republic the curiae were each represented by a lictor.) The curiones were not clientelia of powerful senatores as is sometimes thought, but rather independent power brokers, bargaining their support to politicians who relied upon them to deliver the votes of their own clientelia. These curiones came almost exclusively from the equites, if not the equites cum equo publico. There was also increasing competition for public contracts, and since land was still needed as a surety for any contract, there was increased competition for land in Italy. The wars in Spain, Africa, and the East had devastated and depopulated large tracts of land that could be exploited, but we do not know if they were used as a surety, and no attempt was made to extend Roman colonies outside Italy until Gaius Gracchus. So if you wanted to compete for a lucrative state contract, you had to wealthy enough to be in the upper portion of the prima classis and own a lot of land in Italy itself. What the census figures tell us is that there were a lot of people who met those qualifications, all competing for those contracts.
So within the equites we can distinguish three separate groups to begin with, although there were more than three, distinguished not by wealth but by status. 300 Senatores, 1,800 Equites equo publico, and then everyone else in the prima classis above a certain level of wealth who could be called equites. Among the latter were further strata based on status rather than wealth, depending upon what offices one held and, we may assume, on how many generations of their family had been able to meet the qualification of the prima classis. What had changed in this period leading up to the Gracchi was that now status did not always match wealth as it had in the past. And the disparity of wealth, within the equites, let alone between them and the lower classes, had grown to extreme levels. The minimum level was 400,000 sestertii. When Paulus died in 167, considered one of the poor among the aristocracy, his total worth was 3,600,000 sestertii or nine times that of the minimum qualification for the equites. Scipio Africanus the Elder received 1,800,000 sestertii from Antiochus alone in 190. The Aqua Marcia contracted in the 140's cost 4,500,000 sestertii. For comparison, a legionary may have received as much as 1,080 sestertii per year at that time. The publicani would not have the social status as a senator or an eques equo publico, but he could, and often was, far more wealthy and had a greater number of clientelia among the voting citizens. A senator seeking high office need to have such individuals among his amicitas, or circle of friends, since they could provide the wealth and the clientelia, but to consider them as clientelia of a senator is to misconstrue the relationship. What we end up with is not a simple structure of high, middle and low status groups among the equites, but rather networks of relationships that overlapped and were constantly shifting. Rather than view political struggles in this period as one between the classes, what we have are parallel, competing networks, each network composed of the various strata of society.
It is in this period that the first temples built of marble appear at Rome, at a cost far above that of an aqueduct. Complaints begin to be raised that marble statues, taken as war booty, were being brought in to private houses while temples still had terracotta. There is complaint on all types of luxurious display. One thing about those complaints though is not that wealth was being consolidated into fewer hands. Just the opposite was happening apparently. A lot of people were becoming rich, and their expenses were making other Romans wealthier than before, to the point where the old censorial classes did not really apply. Another problem is, because wealth was not being distributed evenly or proportionately, the old elite's claim to power by status no longer applied when men of lesser status could become far more wealthy. Battles over status distinction between plebeians and patricians had ended some hundred and fifty years earlier. By the time of the Gracchi there were about 130 patrician families remaining, declining to about 30 in Cicero's time two generations later. No one really knows what that distinction was originally - not ethnic, not wealth, and not really political at the beginning of the Republic. Vestiges of that distinction remained but by around 211 BCE, when the ?as? was devalued and the denarius introduced, the censorial classes were definitely placed on the basis of wealth, if not earlier. In the fifty years leading up to the Gracchan reforms, the upper portion of the Roman social pyramid was bulging as more citizens began to meet the minimum for becoming prima classis first and then equites, while the lower end of traditional Roman society was shrinking. I will look at the lower classes in a different post, but one of the significant problems of the time was that the Romans could no longer fill a citizen fleet. While one had to be a propertied citizen to serve in the army, it was the non-propertied proletariat that served Rome?s navy. The fact that Rome could no longer find non-propertied citizens does not mean that they were losing their citizenship, but that they too were gaining in wealth, enough wealth to enter the censorial classes, and even the potential for their children to become equites.
When we begin to consider the Gracchi, who they were, for whose benefit their reforms were aimed, who opposed them, and then who did actually benefit in all this, it will all be in terms of the equites. We will have to distinguish further the various strata of those equites who formed the Senate, who formed the equites equo publico, and then some other groups like the publicani and curiones that were likewise equites. Two additional groups can be distinguished out at this time for their status rather than their wealth. There remained the patricians who held a traditional status. The only concrete benefit of being a patrician by this time was that the religious offices of the flamines maiores and the rex sacrorum were reserved for patricians. The majority of pontifices and augures were plebeians (after the Leges Ogulnia in 300 BCE), the pontifex maximus could be a plebeian (although the first plebeian elected to this office was the tribune Q. Mucius Scaevola in 106BCE), while the decimviri were usually plebeian even before 300 and the tresviri epulones created by tribunus Licinius Lucullus in 196 BCE were exclusively plebeians. The other group that would figure prominently in the Gracchan period were the nobiles. The story that Livy gives us is that from the very beginning of the Republic there were patricians who sided with the plebeians against some radical patricians. The ?closing of the patriciate,? as it is called, was as much opposed by some patricians as it was by plebeians. Then in each step of the later struggles there were interrelations, political networks, which joined plebeian and patrician politicians together. But in these networks plebeians did not play a lesser role to the patricians, or serve as an underclass clientelia. Nor can it be assumed that those plebeians who acted in opposition to Licinius and Sextiusin in the fourth century and to other reforms sponsored by plebeian tribunes at later periods were themselves clientele of powerful patricians. The nobiles was a group of patricians and plebeians, and their descendents, who had sponsored earlier reforms, and had been able to do so by having been elected to high office. In that, they represented a particular group of political networks, networks that had been successful in the past. That poses though that there were other political networks as well, which identify with a different political tradition. To say that the nobiles as a whole formed any sort of cohesive political group would be wrong. But it is equally wrong to view them in terms of class. The nobiles were opposed by other political networks composed of individuals who had just as much wealth, power and status, only these others did not identify their current political interests with the tradition of reforms fostered by Licinius and Sextius in the fourth century.
When we begin to look closer at Tiberius Gracchus, where his political roots lay, we will then examine one of these political networks, as I have referred to them. For the moment though let me state that Tiberius Gracchus was a member of the highest echelons of the equites, a member of a senatorial family and in fact one of the very highest level of the Senate; his father, also Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, was twice consul and a censor, as well as an augur. He was by birth a plebeian but his mother Cornelia was not only a patrician but from the very highest status patrician families of the time, being the daughter of Scipio Africanus the Elder. And Tiberius Gracchus was in fact one of the nobiles, counting among his ancestors tribunes who had participated in earlier political struggles.
M Horatius Piscinus
Sapere aude!