This is the Friends of History debating society. I'm John Batcher, Gaius, and Germanicus Macavlios is here.

And we're turning to our own history here. We're Roman citizens. It's the first century a.

We're very happy with the Emperor system, not so happy

with our present Emperor, but he will move on. And there will be better emperors ahead.

We know this. However, how we got here is that Rome was a very successful city-state, ruled by 100

senators, all very well to do.

Big families, patricians. And in the summer of 133 B.C. a man named Tiberius

Gracchus who was one of the best families the gracai. He was a console and he had this idea

this vision of agrarian reform. Essentially he wanted to distribute land to the poor farmers who'd been dislocated by the

huge estates that were run by slaves working for our Senate.

The Senate had all the power. Consulships were year to year and shared

between the senators or the best families. Well Tiberis Gracchus had this idea that the situation was not sustainable, that the Senate

had to share power with the people of Rome, SPQR.

He presented it in terms of an agrarian reform. The idea here was sharing will

sustain the republic. Dramaticus knows the end of this story. Tiberius in front of the Temple of Fidelity was beaten to death with the chair of an arm by his Senate rivals.

They did not want to share power and they never did. Until a

century later the Civil Wars led by the strong man, the Julian family, and the

inheritor Octavius who becomes Augustus, there was no longer a question

of the Senate sharing power, it was elbow aside for the Emperor system. And the question I put to you, Germanicus, you know it's coming, is

that the path that the U.S. is chosen? The Senate will not share power with the

populists, the popularity, and therefore the only road ahead

is a

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