15 Facts About Gaius Gracchus

1.

Gaius Gracchus was born into a very well-connected political family.

2.

Gaius Gracchus had celebrated two triumphs during the 170s, one for the victorious establishment of a twenty-year-long peace in Spain.

3.

Gaius Gracchus's mother was Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, a noble woman who was a major influence on the Gracchi.

4.

Gaius Gracchus then was elected as quaestor and assigned to the Roman province of Sardinia to fight the rebels there under consul Lucius Aurelius Orestes.

5.

Orestes' command in Sardinia was prorogued for a second time, extending it to the point where Gaius Gracchus wanted to leave to continue his career.

6.

Gaius Gracchus, regardless, quit Sardinia and returned to the city early, without the permission of his commander.

7.

Gaius Gracchus embarked on an aggressive legislative programme immediately, aiming very broadly to appeal to many interest groups along with a "rousing style of public speaking that made him the greatest [Roman orator] between Cato the censor and Cicero".

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Scipio Africanus
8.

Gaius Gracchus then proposed a grain law establishing a maximum price of six and a third asses for a modius of grain and re-enacted Tiberius' law on agricultural land redistribution.

9.

Gaius Gracchus probably carried laws authorising new Roman colonies at Scolacium and Tarentum.

10.

Gaius Gracchus proposed a law, the lex Sempronia de provinciis consularibus, for the senate to assign consular provinces before elections to the consulship.

11.

Gaius Gracchus made such senatorial assignments immune from tribunician veto; Ernst Badian notes "this law shows how far he was from being a 'democrat'".

12.

Gaius Gracchus proposed, in probably two citizenship bills, giving citizenship to the Latins and Latin rights to Italian allies.

13.

Gaius Gracchus proposed a bill to have the centuries vote in a random order rather than in traditional order where the richest centuries voted first.

14.

Flaccus and his sons were killed, Gaius Gracchus was either killed or killed himself after fleeing across the river Tiber.

15.

Gaius Gracchus then built an imposing new temple of the goddess Concord at the northwest end of the Forum adjacent to the senate house.