Ahvey and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is

Associate Professor Rianna Evans, senior lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at

Latrobe University. This is episode CXX, Tiberius Gracch and the landless masses.

As it's becoming apparent, any system of government that has been around for long enough is going to develop its problems and that is

definitely the case with the Roman Republic. There was inequality between the

ruling class and the common people and if young Tiberius Gracchus is to take up the cause, what's the worst that could happen?

He's Rianna Evans.

Tiberius Gracus. He was the son of a man by the same name, and his mother was Cornelia, who was the son of a man by the same name and his mother was Cornelia who was the subject of our

previous podcast he was born by 162 b.c. he's a very important figure often seen as the beginning of a whole change in Roman society and

Roman politics hence the Scullard book from the Grackai to Nero, like the Grackai is the beginning of something and Tiberius

Grackus is the elder of the two Grackai.

I remember last year we did a series in Emperors of Rome called the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic and we put the beginning of the end at 133 BC

so his death is kind of like the start of the end of all these ideas and the start of new ideas.

Yeah, I think that although this is always a kind of a construct that historians use so we can have beginnings and

endings so we can have and everything's nice and neat. Yeah to make things neat

exactly in ways that real life isn't. Historians like like order. Who would have known?

There is some logic to this because much of what unravels later on, you can see is some kind of progression upon what Tiberius Gracchus was trying to do.

By the same token, you could almost certainly argue and would be able to more easily if we had more evidence, I think think that a lot of the forces he was

dealing with were already coming into being he's the one who starts to harness them

I suppose yeah I mean as we'll get into later on maybe perhaps the land reform ideas did not begin with him.

Yeah well certainly there had been recognition that there were problems. Yes.

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