Not wishing to spark a riot, Octavius settled on principled martyrdom, rather than suicidal intransigence, and did not veto the deposition bill. The Assembly was free to depose him if they wished and Tiberius called on the voters to prepare to vote. For the purposes of voting, the Romans were divided into thirty-five tribes that would each receive one collective vote. Individual members of a tribe would file through voting stalls and deposit their ballot in an urn. When they were finished the ballots would be tallied with the majority opinion determining the single collective vote of the whole tribe. Then the process would repeat for the next tribe until a majority of tribes agreed.43
When the first tribe completed their balloting, the herald announced the result: one vote for depose. Since Tiberius understood that he was suborning an unprecedented attack on a fellow tribune, he halted the proceedings after this first vote and begged Octavius to withdraw his veto. But Octavius refused. The next sixteen tribes deposited their ballots and every single one voted in favor of deposition. On the brink of victory, Tiberius again halted the proceedings and gave Octavius one last chance to stand down. Octavius again refused. The eighteenth tribe then cast their ballots. When they were done, the herald announced that a majority had been reached: Octavius was deposed from office. Stripped of his tribunate, Octavius no longer enjoyed the protections of his office and found himself menaced by the looming mob. He was only able to escape thanks to a group of friends who pushed their way through the crowd and escorted Octavius out of the Assembly.44
The deposition of Octavius was a decisive turning point in the battle over the Lex Agraria. Until Tiberius took this fateful step, he still enjoyed a great deal of support from his fellow tribunes and senatorial backers. But this reckless assault on a fellow tribune made Tiberius toxic to the naturally conservative elite. His father-in-law Claudius stuck with him but many others who supported the reform in theory were happy to lay the bill aside in the face of relentless opposition, let things cool off, and then try again a year or two later. But Tiberius could not afford to lose. His future career depended on passing the Lex Agraria, so he was willing to go to any lengths to push it through. And for the moment it had worked. Tiberius Gracchus won the battle. With Octavius out of the way, the Assembly overwhelmingly passed the Lex Agraria. The controversial land bill was now law.45
THE LEX AGRARIA called for a panel of three commissioners to survey the ager publicus, determine ownership, and parcel out land. To make sure the job was done properly (and to monopolize political credit for the distribution of land) Tiberius induced the Assembly to elect Tiberius himself, his father-in-law Claudius, and his twenty-one-year-old brother Gaius to serve as the first three land commissioners. So far so good. But Tiberius soon learned that passing the law and enforcing its provisions were two very different things.46
Unable to prevent the bill from becoming law, conservatives in the Senate hit back with their own bag of tricks. This opposition was now led by the pontifex maximus Publius Scipio Nasica, who hailed from a more conservative branch of the Scipione clan. Nasica personally possessed far more than five hundred iugera of ager publicus, so he engineered an insulting blow to the new land commission. It was the Senate’s responsibility to appropriate funds to pay for the men and material necessary to complete the surveying work, which required a small army of secretaries, clerks, surveyors, architects, carts, and mules. At Nasica’s urging, the Senate voted a pittance to cover merely the daily expenses of the commissioners themselves. This calculated stinginess left Tiberius the captain of a boat with no oars. It was infuriating but there was nothing he could do about it.47
Shortly after being dealt this blow, one of Tiberius’s closest supporters suddenly died and foul play was suspected. The increasingly paranoid Tiberius already kept his family surrounded by an informal group of friends and clients who acted as permanent bodyguards—and this protection now seemed more necessary than ever. Whether he was just playing to the crowd or genuinely afraid for his life, Tiberius donned mourning garb and brought his children to the Assembly where he “begged the people to care for them and their mother, saying that he despaired of his own life.”48
But then fate intervened to alter the course of Roman history—and as will so often be the case, domestic Roman politics were shaped by events far beyond the shores of Italy. In this case the far off event was the death of King Attalus III of Pergamum. Pergamum was a Greek kingdom, occupying what is today the Aegean coast of Turkey, and had been an ally of Rome for close to a century. Since King Attalus III had no sons and believed his death would lead to a bitter power struggle among his potential heirs, he willed his entire kingdom and royal treasury to the people of Rome.49
Rome learned about Attalus’s death shortly after the passage of the Lex Agraria, and Tiberius was himself among the first to be told of the terms of the will. Tiberius’s father had once served on a senatorial embassy that confirmed the alliance between Rome and Pergamum—and when the envoy bearing King Attalus’s will arrived in Rome, he stayed in the Gracchi home. One step ahead of his enemies, Tiberius convened the Assembly and announced that because Attalus’s will said “Let the Roman people be heir to my estate,” that both the disposal of the royal treasury and subsequent administration of the new province would be handled by the Assembly. Then Tiberius announced that a portion of King Attalus’s royal treasury would be used to fund the work of the land commission and even provide startup capital for the new owners.50
This bold gambit sent conservatives in the Senate through the roof. By every right of custom the Senate enjoyed full discretion over both state finances and foreign policy. Polybius, a close student of the Republican constitution, said the Senate “has the control of the treasury, all revenue and expenditure being regulated by it,” and “it also occupies itself with the dispatch of all embassies sent to countries outside of Italy for the purpose… of settling differences.” The people, he said, “have nothing to do with it.” By laying claim to Pergamum, Tiberius was attempting to wrestle both away at the same time. The Senate met in a furious session to denounce Tiberius as a reckless demagogue aiming to make himself a tyrannical despot.51
Soon after, either to retain the legal immunity his office provided or to protect the integrity of the land commission (or both), Tiberius made another shocking announcement: he was going to run for reelection. No law forbade a tribune from serving consecutive terms, but the overwhelming force of mos maiorum made his bid unprecedented. To his political enemies, this was all iron-clad proof that Tiberius planned to make himself a tyrant. If he controlled the state finances, distribution of property, foreign policy, and claimed the right to permanent reelection, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus would be the king of Rome in all but name.52
UNFORTUNATELY FOR TIBERIUS, his political strength was at an all-time low as the summer elections approached in 133. During the battles over the Lex Agraria he had been able to count on a solid block of rural voters to stand with him. Perhaps it was because harvest was then in full swing that Tiberius had difficulty remobilizing his supporters for another contentious vote. Just as likely, however, is that conservatives now decided that Tiberius must be denied reelection at all cost. If they let it be known that they no longer opposed the Lex Agraria and land redistribution would go forward whether Tiberius was tribune or not, the urgency of the coming election would be undercut and many voters would stay home.53