Thesis Final Draft

Tribunatus Populusque Romanus
By:
Patrick McMahon
History Honors Thesis
Advisor: Dr. Kathryn Williams
11/17/2014

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Scholarly Tradition..............................................................................................................5
Background Information......................................................................................................9
Tiberius Gracchus..............................................................................................................14
Gaius Gracchus..................................................................................................................20
Sullan Constitution............................................................................................................29
Publius Clodius Pulcher.....................................................................................................32
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................38
Bibliography......................................................................................................................45

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Introduction
The People and the Senate of Rome were in a constant struggle for political power from
133 B.C.E. to 44 B.C.E. This power struggle between the two groups was a recurring conflict
throughout Roman Republican history, but the end of the Third Punic War in 146 B.C.E. brought
that conflict to the forefront of domestic politics. The office of Tribune of the Plebs, created in
494, was the primary representative of the Roman People, while the Senate of Rome was the
primary representatives of the Roman patrician class. The Roman tribunate was a powerful
institution that benefited the Roman People and resulted in the holders of that office, with the
garnered support of the constituents whose interests they represented, challenging the traditional
authority and power of the Senate. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and Publius Clodius Pulcher are
exemplary tribunes who used the support of the people to challenge the Senate, and show how
the office could hold so much influence in the late Republican politics. The popular policies that
these three tribunes advocated for proved to the aristocracy that with the backing of the people,
the tribunate could wield immense political power in Rome. The symbiotic relationship between
the late-republican tribunes and the Roman People was a powerful political reality that served
not only as a primary factor in the destabilization of the republic but also as a crucial model in
the establishment of imperial Rome.
This paper will examine Roman politics and government in a more “democratic” manner
that tries to understand the relationship between the Tribune and the average Roman citizen, and
how the aristocracy then tried to imitate this relationship. Certain tribunes, like the ones
discussed in this paper, realized that the people of Rome had the potential for immense political
power. A model tribune, like either of the Gracchi or Clodius, persuaded the citizenry of Rome
into supporting their policies and opposing the policies of other politicians, most notably

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members of the Senate. Plebeian Tribunes held and wielded the power of the people, and
understanding the office and the men who held that office is crucial for scholars to fully
understand the politics and the power of the tribunate.
The tribunate had a great deal autonomy, and power in Roman politics. A lot of the
scholarship, however, does not focus specifically on the tribunes because many historians have
seen them as agents of the aristocracy. Tribunes such as Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and
Publius Clodius Pulcher, however, were not pawns in a great game of chess played by the elite
but rather independent politicians who used their connections with the people to accomplish their
objectives and legislative programs, often at the expense of the patricians. The legislation passed
by the tribunate was meant to relieve the plight of the people, and to become popular among the
citizenry. This popularity allowed these tribunes to expand their influence and power. These men
are remembered as populares, or popular politicians, because their relationship with the people
benefitted both the holders of the office and the average citizen. Tribunal legislative programs
included land reform, fixing the price of the grain supply, and judicial reforms that protected and
even empowered the people.
The Gracchi and Clodius used complex and sophisticated political maneuvers to secure
the passage of their most radical legislation as well as to prevent rival tribunes from opposing
their programs. The three men discussed in this paper were either assassinated or executed during
their term as tribune or as a result from their legislation which was too radical and too popular
for an aristocracy that feared losing their control over Rome. Tribunes had to rely on political
networks of plebeians, both urban and rural, and their skill of oratory to persuade the people of
Rome to their causes. The tribunes also needed to have an understanding of inter-tribunal politics
so that the other tribunes did not obstruct their legislation through the use of the veto. The ability

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to maneuver Republican politics and pass legislation that often directly challenged the elite show
that the tribunes influenced the plebeians by understanding their interests, furthering their
political standing, and bettering the lives of the Roman people. With the support of the people the
tribunes were in a position that could not be ignored by the Senate.
Scholarly Tradition
The scholarly tradition has shifted from viewing the relationship between the people and
the oligarchy from the perspective of the oligarchy to a more democratic understanding. Ronald
Syme in his book, The Roman Revolution, argues that the Senate and the Republic were
suffering from structural weaknesses that lead to the decay of both. The Roman Revolution
discusses Augustus’s rise to power through personal political connections.1
Syme is aware and
appreciative of the power of the individual in the late Republic, but dismissive of the power of
the individual tribune. Clodius, the only tribune discussed within this paper who lived in the
period Syme wrote about, is a minimal figure in the work. The Roman Revolution is a history of
the Roman aristocracy. Syme argues that the triumvirate of Crassus, Pompeius and Caesar, and
certain influential members of the Senate were the most important men in Rome and the shapers
of the Empire. He does not focus on popular politics or the office of tribune, because to Syme
they were issues that were separate from the major concerns of aristocracy.2
Syme does not
consider the continued success of popular tribunes and their effect on the aristocracy, as shown
by Sulla’s curbing of powers of the tribune. Syme also does not consider how this continued
success inspired the aristocracy namely Pompeius, Caesar, and Augustus, to seek popular
support.
1 Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1939), Kindle edition.
2 Syme, Roman Revolution.

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Erich Gruen whose book, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, is often described
as a response to Syme, does recognize and discuss the popular politics in Rome in the years from
about 70 to 44 B.C.E., the last three decades of the Republic.3
Gruen’s main argument is that
Rome was a functioning government in a state of change, rather than the state of disrepair that
Syme had argued. He views tribunes, such as Clodius, as men who had questionable motives, but
who were effective reformers. Even though Gruen recognizes the legislation and programs of
popular tribunes, and their relationship to the people, he does not believe that they posed any real
threat or challenge to the power of the Senate and the aristocracy. Gruen viewed real power in
Rome as controlled first by the Senate then by the triumvirate, and ultimately by the emperor.
There is within the scholarly tradition a school of thought which dates back to the ancient
sources that has recognized that Rome was at the very least a partially democratic society in
which the citizenry possessed real political power. Polybius wrote in his Histories, that Rome’s
government was superior to any in Greece because it was a conglomerate of the three
governments that were present in Greece. Rome incorporated elements democracy, aristocracy,
and monarchy into their government. The legislative and electoral roles of the citizen are the
aspects of a democracy, while the auctoritas (Highest moral authority) of the Senate was present
in Greek aristocracies, and the power of the consul was reminiscent of a monarchy.4
Scholarship drifted away from this assessment and it began to see the magistrates and
Senators as members of the same class of people who were able manipulate the citizenry into
forfeiting all their power. The first modern scholar to challenge this claim and argue that Rome
was a city with real democratic power and institutions, like the tribunate, was Fergus Millar.
Millar argues in, The Crowd in the Late Republic, is that the constitution of the Roman Republic
3 Erich Gruen, The Last Generation off the Roman Republic, (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1995).
4 Polybius, The Histories of Polybius, translated by W.R. Paton, (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 1922)
Book IV.

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was undeniably a direct democracy.5
This argument is ultimately false. Rome was not a direct
democracy especially in the years leading to the rise of the Empire. Nevertheless, Millar’s work
is important because he argues for the importance of popular politics in Rome. Millar remains an
important scholar for starting a debate that is still at the forefront of modern classical Roman
scholarship.
The historian Henrik Mouritsen has followed Millar and tries to determine the actual
amount of power that the people had in the Republic. Mouritsen in his book Plebs and Politics in
the Late Roman Republic, examines not only at the participation of the people, but at the
political institutions that were available for them to participate in. Mouritsen’s determination of
which plebeians participated politically and what their motivations for that participation were are
central to his argument. The institution that he examines in most detail is the contio, the informal
non-voting magisterial business assembly, and he argues that popular politicians, like the
tribunes, used these meetings to persuade the people to back them and their legislation.
Mouritsen ultimately concludes that the majority of the people did not participate in politics and
that only wealthy merchants had the incentive and the time to attend the numerous contiones
called each week, or spend an entire summer day going to a voting assembly. The reason why the
majority of the plebeians did not actively participate was that they had to work as laborers or
shopkeepers, and could not abandon work to pursue their political interests.6
Robert Morstein-Marx is another historian who has written about the people’s role in
politics but with a focus on how the use of oratory in the contio influenced plebeian
participation. Morstein-Marx wrote extensively about the role of the contiones. His book, Mass
Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic, examines public discourse between
5 Fergus Millar, Crowd in Republic, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
6 Henrik Mouritsen, Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001), Kindle Edition.

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politicians and the people and how these two groups interacted with each other. The book
examines how the oligarchical and the democratic aspects of Roman politics came together and
interacted with each other in the contio and how the skill of oratory was at the heart of this
interaction. Morstein-Marx argues that it was oratory that was the most important skill for
anyone in the political sphere to have and that the better a politician was at orating, the more
power that politician could attain.7
There was a struggle for power between the people and the patricians in Rome, a struggle
in which both sides experienced times of strength and times of weakness. This paper examines
an office, the tribunate, often at the epicenter of this power struggle, and the ways individual
tribunes used political assemblies like the concilium plebis, or the contio to their advantage.
Understanding the relationship between the tribunate and the people during that conflict is
critical in understanding how the tribunate used the people to strengthen the office and at the
same time benefit the plebeians. The three tribunes that are examined in this paper are three
popular tribunes. There were more conservative, more aristocratic tribunes who supported the
Senate, but the popular tribunes were all successful in expanding the power of the plebeians,
through greater political participation, and increasing the number of the citizenry. The success of
these three tribunes in expanding the power of the people expanded their own power and
weakened the authority of the Senate. The potential of tribunician power, and the success would
ultimately lead to Augustus assuming the power of the tribunes during his consolidation of power
as emperor.
7 Robert Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), pg. 1-35.

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Background- Roman Politics and Government
The office of Tribune of the plebs was created in the 494 B.C.E. When the Republic was
established in 509, every magistracy was open to only the patrician class. The word patrician
comes from the Latin word patres literally meaning fathers, but referring to the Senators in a
political context because they advised the king during the Roman monarchy, and were
traditionally seen as the fathers of Rome. English words like patriarchy and patriotism, or names
such as Patrick all stem from the word patres. These patricians dominated Roman politics both
foreign and domestic in the early Republic. During that period, the plebeians had no recourse of
action or an avenue to bring about grievances against the patricians. After years of the patricians
ignoring the domestic needs of the plebs, and constant war with neighboring city-state, what is
now known as the first secession of the plebs occurred.8
The plebs saw that their only course of
action for political reform was to physically withdraw from the city, and settled on the Sacred
Mount just outside of Rome; to show the patricians that without a large number of plebs in the
city Rome was weak. Fear among the patricians soon spread throughout the city that with no
plebeians to serve in an army, Rome was vulnerable to foreign forces. The patricians sent a
wealthy and highly regarded plebeian, Menenius Agrippa, to begin negotiations that would
ultimately result in the creation of the Tribune of the Plebs.9
The secession of the plebs would result in granting political power to the plebeians for
the first time in Roman history. In 493 the people and patricians agreed that the plebeians would
have their own assembly known as the concilium plebis, and their own office known as the
Tribune of the Plebs. The concilium plebis would meet once a year on the Sacred Mount, and
barred patricians from participation. The tribunate was created to protect the people from the
8 Titus Livius, The History of Rome: Books 1-5, translated by Valerie M. Warrior, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 2006), Book II.
9 Livy, History of Rome, Book II.

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consuls and the Senate, and so senators, and patricians were barred from holding the office.10
The office was sacrosanct, no tribune could be physically harmed during their term. The tribunes
were given the power to veto legislation passed by the Senate if they felt that the law opposed the
will of the plebeians. Livy, in Book II, is unclear in how many tribunes were elected in the first
year. Livy claimed that two tribunes were elected and three more were appointed, but states that
some other scholars claim that only two men and not five became tribunes.11
The office,
however, would continue to grow in number, eventually there were ten annually elected tribunes,
and in power, the tribunate would gain more influence and power in legislation, over the course
of centuries.
The tribune’s greatest power, made officially into law by the Lex Hortensia in 287,
allowed them to bring a bill to the concilium plebis that if it passed became a law that applied to
every citizen of Rome.12
These laws were known as plebiscites, and all the laws discussed in this
paper will fall under this category of legislation. The plebiscite did exist, unofficially, in Rome
before the Lex Hortensia, but now that power was written into law and applicable to every
Roman citizen, patricians included. The plebiscites is what transformed the tribunate from a mere
annoyance for the patricians into a viable rival political office. The power of the veto was now
applied to both tribunal and Senatorial legislation, and when a tribune chose to exercise this
power to his own and to the people’s own advantage is instrumental in understanding the office
and how the men who occupied that office operated.
The Tribunate did have its limitations. The annual term limit made it difficult for tribunes
to continue their legislation once their term ended. After a tribune’s year in office there was no
guarantee that their laws would not be repealed by a new tribune. Furthermore, a tribune could
12Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola, Richard J.A. Talbert, The Romans from Village to Empire: A History of
Ancient Rome from Earliest Times to Constantine, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 62-63.

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not physically remain outside of Rome for more than twenty-four hours. This physical limitation
would make it difficult to travel to other parts of Italy to meet with citizens who lived outside
Rome, and to be able to understand their needs. Another limitation to consider is that the
tribunate was not an office held by a single man, but by a group of men. This could pose a
challenge for a tribune to pass legislation because he would have to cooperate with nine other
men who had their own agendas, popular and conservative alike, and could use their power of
veto at any time. It was imperative for a tribune not only to be able to control the people, but to
control his fellow tribunes as well.
Roman citizenship was the most coveted form of civic identity in the Mediterranean
world by the last century B.C.E, and people would take up arms to acquire it13
From the time of
the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus in 123 until the end of the Social War in 88 B.C.E., the privilege
of citizenship would be fought over both in the political arena and on the battlefield. Roman
citizenship was not confined to the city of Rome, and many Latin towns under Roman control
were either granted citizenship or were Roman colonies that were established with citizenship.
Partial citizenship was also granted automatically to manumitted freedmen.14
These freedmen
along with every urban citizen and some provincial citizens had the ability to exercise the most
important aspect of Roman citizenship, the right to vote. Votes elected magistrates, and decided
on tribunal legislation. Finally male Roman citizens, besides freemen, had the right, and the duty
to serve in the military, and also the ability to run for and serve as magistrates, and as senators.
Tribunes, like Gaius Gracchus, attempted to spread Roman citizenship to more people
throughout Italy. If a tribune was able to accomplish granting provincial citizenship then they
strengthened their office in two ways, firstly the number of plebeians increased giving the class
13 Catherine Steel, The End of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 B.C: Conquest and Crisis, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2013), 35-41.
14 Boatwright, The Romans, 150.

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greater political power and the tribunate more responsibility, and secondly the number of loyal
grateful supporters to that specific tribune also increased.
The Roman Republic had a complex and intricate political system that provided
democratic rights to all of its citizens, but the Senate tried to manipulate most of that power for
their own control. Political power was inconstant contention in Rome between the patricians and
the plebeians. The plebeians gained more political influence in the 3rd century B.C.E. when they
gained the ability to hold magistracies and thus be elected to the senate.15
By the time the
Gracchi held their tribunates two new political classes had emerged in Rome. The Nobiles, or
the Senatorial and magistracy holding patrician and plebeian families, and the equites, or Roman
knights, but in reality were the wealthy plebeians who amassed their wealth through business
like trading rather than agriculture.16
The rest of the plebeian held political rights, but economic
and social reasons, such as running of shops, or day laboring, prevented them from pursuing
these rights. The two new classes would be influential in the rise of popular politics in the late
Republic, the Gracchi and Clodius were all members of Nobiles families, and their status
provided them with legitimacy. It was the equites who supported the tribunate politically.
The concilium plebis was the only assembly of the four existent in Rome that was not
open to the entire citizenry but only to the plebeian class.17
The tribunes would propose bills and
conduct any official business they had with the plebeians in the concilium plebis.18
The
concilium plebis would meet on the Sacred Mount, in honor of the first secession of the plebs
and the creation of the tribunate, to conduct business without any interference from the patricians
and the Senate. It was in the concilium plebis that tribunes would draft plebiscites and the
plebeians would vote to pass or reject these laws. Plebeians in the concilium plebis were allowed
15 Livy, History of Rome, Book IV.
16 Mouritsen, Plebs and Politics, Kindle.
17 Shotter, The Fall of Roman Republic, (London: Routledge, 2005), Kindle Edition.
18 Shotter, Fall of Roman Republic, Kindle.

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to express the greatest amount of political power they had in the Roman government because of
their ability to legislate for the entire empire with complete freedom from aristocratic
interference. The power of the plebiscite within the concilium allowed the tribunate to pass
legislation that garnered the support of the people, expanded their own power, and challenged the
authority of the Senate with impunity.
The other important setting for the Tribunes to sway the opinion of the plebs was the
contio. The contio was an informal assembly that any magistrate could call to address the people
of Rome directly.19
Contiones were called to bring about charges against a person, to discuss
proposed legislation and why it should be enacted, or any other matter the magistrate thought it
important for the people to assemble.20
Tribunes retained their popularity by addressing the
people directly, or cross examining rivals in front of the Roman people. Contiones allowed the
tribune to remain relevant in Roman politics outside the concilium.
Success and popularity for tribunes in the contio was dependent on their skill of oratory.
How impassioned and persuasively a tribune could address Rome’s citizens had a direct
correlation on how successful and popular that tribune was and how much power they held in
Rome. The Gracchi and Clodius were all noted orators and their ability to hold the attention of a
crowd, and their ability to persuade and influence that crowd gave provided them with the source
of their power. The contio provided the tribunes with a mob, and with that it created a mob
mentality and the man who how to inspire and control that mentality held the power of the
people. The only way for a tribune, or any politician for that matter, to inspire and control the
contio was by mastering the art of oratory and being able to speak more convincingly than any
rival who also wished to control the people.
19 Henrik Mouritsen, Plebs and Politics, Kindle.
20 Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory, 3.

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The Office of Tribune was the servant to the Roman people, and many tribunes worked to
improve the lives of the plebeians. This work came at a cost to the aristocracy though and that
cost was to weaken the power the Senate held over Rome, and also to expand the power of the
Office of Tribune. Tribunes, such as the Gracchi and Clodius, believed in the power of the people
and the need for the backing of the people. They believed that the more power the plebeians held,
the more power they individually held and with that power the tribunate could circumvent and
even limit the power of the Roman aristocracy. Because of the continued success of the tribunate
in limiting the power the Senate, that Augustus assumed tribunal powers to secure autocratic
power in Rome and ultimately limited the power of the Senate.
Tiberius Gracchus
The election of Tiberius Gracchus to the tribunate in 133 B.C.E. would bring Rome into
an era of increased popular power. Tiberius, a son of a former consul of Rome and a maternal
grandson of Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War, was not the first popular tribune
in Roman History, but his term as tribune revived a popular movement that would last until
Augustus assumed imperial power. Tiberius, as tribune, promoted and carried through a program
of reform that benefited the people of Rome over the wealthy elite. In Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita,
Livy spends a large portion of the first five books treating the relationship between the tribunes
the people, and between the tribunes and the patricians. Livy writes about the extensive history
of tribunes stirring up trouble in Rome by drafting land bills.21
Land bills were land redistribution
legislation, and in a pre-industrial society, land redistribution meant wealth redistribution, which
the patricians mostly certainly did not want, but the people did.22
21 Livy, History of Rome, Books I-V.
22 Livy, History of Rome Books I-V.

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In 133 B.C.E. a 29-year-old Tiberius Gracchus, without consulting the Senate, proposed a
land bill directly to the concilium plebis that would redistribute the ager publicus, the public
lands that Rome had amassed as a result of the Punic Wars.23
Italy was suffering. The three
Punic Wars had left many citizens impoverished and without land. The Roman Army which had
a property requirement had trouble recruiting troops and the wars had decimated their numbers.
The Punic Wars drastically increased the number of slaves present in Rome and the economy
soon became dependent on slaves. The patricians were able to manipulate what land the Republic
considered ager publicus, publicly owned land, and ager privatus, privately owned land, and
because the land had never been surveyed and defined the patricians who owned land in rural
Italy were able to assume public land as their own.24
The ager publicus that was promised to
veterans and citizens alike in theory, was controlled by the patricians in reality. Many of the
patricians that controlled the land were also members of the Senate and so the bill had two
purposes, gain the support of the landless rural citizens of Italy, and challenging the wealth of the
patricians. It seems that Tiberius may have considered the fact that with less land in their
possession the elite could not afford to have so many slaves, and thus producing a large
population of manumitted freedmen with the right to vote.
Tiberius’s land bill established a three-man land redistribution board that would consist of
himself, his 20-year-old brother Gaius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. The bill allowed
for landowners to own only a certain amount of land, which was then further limited in matters
of inheritance. The landowners had to prove to the board that they controlled as much land as
they said they did, and what land they could not account for was confiscated from them. The
board was able to determine what land was claimed as ager publicus and how that ager publicus
23 Plutarch, “Tiberius Gracchus,” Roman Lives, translated by Robin Waterfield, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), 88.
24 Andrew Stephenson, Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic, (Baltimore: John’s
Hopkins University Press, 1891). E-Book, Chap.2, Section 11.

16
was redistributed to the citizenry. One familia was accountable for the entire land redistribution
and all the credit and praise from the people would go to the Gracchi.
The Senate attempted to reign in the influence and the power of Tiberius among the
people by attempting to have rival tribune Marcus Octavius veto the legislation of Tiberius.
Octavius was considered a friend of Tiberius, and even after many wealthy men were able to
convince the hesitant tribune to oppose his ally, their debates were focused on the issues and
never resorted to ad hominem attacks. Octavius’s motive for betraying Tiberius was that he own
enough land that the law would have a direct effect on him and his holdings. Tiberius was so
unwilling to let any obstruction happen to his bill that he had Octavius expelled as tribune. This
feat was accomplished by having the concilium plebis vote Octavius out of office because
Octavius had acted in the interest of the Senate, and opposed the will of the people and therefore
was no longer fit to hold the office of the Tribune of the Plebs. After Octavius had been expelled
from his office, the land bill was immediately passed.25
The notion to expel a tribune from office
was completely unprecedented, but over the next century occurred with greater frequency as
corruption saturated the Republic. The threat of expulsion could be used against a Senate backed
tribune like Octavius, and weakened the Senate’s position to indirectly influence the concilium
plebis.
Tiberius soon passed another bill that was revolutionary in expanding the power of the
tribune. This bill came as a result of his land bill and the challenges that arose from his attempt to
enforce the bill. The Senate, whose backing of Octavius shows that most of its members opposed
the land bill, did not grant any public funds to support it. Senators opposed the bill because
Tiberius had passed it without the consultation and advice from the Senate and that many
Senators would be targeted if the bill possessed any real power. They essentially made the
25 Plutarch, “Tiberius Gracchus,” 92-93.

17
redistribution board, the enforcers of the bill, powerless.26
Tiberius, desperate for funding, had to
find a way to make sure the board could carry out the land redistribution it was created to do. His
opportunity presented itself when Attalus Philometor, the king of Pergamum, died and named the
people of Rome the heir to his kingdom.27
The money from Attalus’s will was the means in
which Tiberius would finance his land bill. Tiberius passed a plebiscite that claimed the money
for the entire citizenry before the Senate was able to act.28
This law was a direct challenge to the
Senate, as it went against their traditional purview of foreign policy. Tiberius who had already
appointed himself commissioner of his own land bill, and had expelled another tribune from
office, was now attempting to wrestle power that traditionally belonged to the Senate, and
granting it to the people.
Foreign policy had always been the domain of the Senate.29
The Senate determined what
provinces its magistrates served as governor in, what treaties it would make with other nations,
and what would happen to the revenues that were brought in from foreign powers. Controlling
foreign policy and protecting Rome from external threats gave the Senate their most important
responsibilities. Tiberius with his finance bill caused a shift in power in Rome. Everything he
had done at this point was to strengthen his relationship with the people, and his most dramatic
acts, like expelling Octavius made sure that he was the premier tribune within the confines of the
politics of the concilium plebis. Tiberius challenge to the Senate by controlling the funds from
the will went beyond the concilium. The law weakened the power and the authority of the
Senate, while at the same time expanding the power of the tribunate in the republican
government. Tiberius was challenging the Senate for not providing him with sufficient funds to
26 Steel, End of Roman Republic: Conquest, 18.
27 Plutarch, “Tiberius Gracchus,” 94.

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implement his agrarian reform, and showed them and the people of Rome that he was able to go
beyond the Senate and act with the power of the people as his legitimacy.
Tiberius’s rapid rise to power created rumors throughout Rome that he was seeking the
kingship. He recognized that his challenges to the Senate had not gone unnoticed, and members
of the Senate wanted to reclaim the power that they had lost. Tiberius feared for safety of his life,
despite the sacrosanctity of his office. It is said that Tiberius traveled with a posse of about 3,000
plebeian who provided him protection and that he even carried a sword under toga, although
carrying a weapon was illegal within the city limits of Rome.30
Tiberius believed that if he was
reelected to the tribunate, it would mean he had retained the backing of the people and protect
him from any nefarious attack by members of the Senate.
Reelection to the tribunate was not illegal or unheard of, but was such a rare and
extraordinary measure that it deserves some discussion. The tribunate for many man was a
stepping stone to reach an imperium holding office. To some men it seems that the tribunate was
their highest aspiration. One such man was Lucius Sextus who had served tribune for seven
consecutive years. Sextus served as tribune before plebeians could hold magistracies. He was
able to hold the tribunate until his efforts to have plebeians serve as consuls was successful and
he was the first elected plebeian to hold the office. Gracchus’s motives to seek reelection were
for different reasons. Tiberius lived in a Rome where one of the two elected consuls every year
had to come from a plebeian family. His father, also named Tiberius, had served as consul. The
younger Tiberius Gracchus sought reelection to first protect his life from attacks by the Senate,
but more importantly because his land bill had not yet taken full effect and without him serving
as tribune, the bill was vulnerable to amendments or worse, repeal.

19
Tiberius did not live long enough to gain re-election. Rumors had spread throughout
Rome that claimed he was seeking to be named king. The Senate met to decide whether Tiberius
should be executed as a tyrant. When the consul did not permit the Senate to legally execute
Tiberius a group of Senators and other rich men stormed the Capitoline hill where Tiberius had
gathered his forces to vote to re-elect him.31
They overtook the hill and killed Tiberius, the
consular Flavius Flaccus, and 300 people by stone them and beating them with clubs.32
This was
the first time in Roman history since the overthrow of the monarchy that blood was spilled in
civil strife also it was the first direct and clear challenge to tribunate sacrosanctity. A legal basis
for the challenging of sacrosanctity would not be resolved until the death of Tiberius’s brother,
the Tribune, Gaius Gracchus.
Tiberius Gracchus’s life and death were turning points in Republican Rome. The tribune
ushered in a new age of popular politics that would persist in Rome until the rise of Augustus
Caesar, who used popular politics himself to consolidate power among Rome’s citizenry. The
tribunate of Gracchus transformed the way the government in Rome operated in the last one
hundred years of the Republic, and he defined the role that the last generation of Tribunes would
play in that system. He inspired to his brother to the tribunate, who would inspire other later
leading tribunes in Rome. This increase of interest in popular politics would convince Julius and
Augustus Caesar that the only way to be the dominant man in Rome was to cater to the needs of
the people as well as the Senate.
Gaius Gracchus

20
Gaius Gracchus is the most important individual in Republican Rome in increasing the
power and the authority of the tribunate. Gaius was Rome’s first true demagogue. Tiberius was a
popular politicians and certainly demagogic, but he alienated the people when challenging the
Senate. Gaius would not follow suit. It is important to note the tone in which the word
demagogue will be used in this paper. Demagogue usually has a negative connotation related to it
to define a rabble-rouser who stirs up the people to manipulate them for his personal political
gain. Demagogue will have a more positive connotation in this paper to describe men who
gained greater political influence, and had a relationship with the people that was symbiotically
beneficial. Gaius, unlike his brother, was able to challenge the power and authority of the Senate,
but with the full support of the people of Rome and of Italy. With this power Gaius was able to
expand the nature and power of the tribunate more than any other individual in Republican
history, and influenced Augustus to seek the support and power of the people in his quest for
absolute power.
In his biography of Gaius, Plutarch describes the personality of the younger Gracchus so
that the reader understands the type of man Gaius was, and why he accomplished what he did.
Plutarch describes Gaius as a man who was irascible, intense, and informal when addressing an
audience; Plutarch mentions that he would move so fast and sudden that his toga fall from his
shoulder during speeches, and Gaius would not bother to amend himself.33
He was a natural
orator, a person that a crowd loved and was drawn to naturally, and because of this Gaius was
successful with persuading a crowd. His skills of oratory were noticeable during Tiberius’s
tribunate, despite having barely turned twenty-years-old. His reputation for oratory was so high
that it is said he was Rome’s greatest orator until the rise of Marcus Tullius Cicero.34
Gaius
34 Harriet I. Flower, “Beyond the Contio: Political Communication in the Tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus,”
Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, ed. Catherine Steel and Henriette Van
Der Blom, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 86.

21
would become so impassioned during his speeches that he had to have his slave stand in the
crowd with a whistle to signal whenever Gracchus began to speak to fast or when his voice
would become to shrill. Gaius was as unapologetic and irreverent and committed to his cause, as
he was unapologetic and irreverent and committed when he orated to crowd.35
Gaius had secured a political future before he was old enough to hold any political office.
He was the maternal grandson of Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War, the son of
a former Consul of Rome, and brother to the most powerful tribune in recent memory. Gracchus
was named to board of commissioners for the land redistribution during Tiberius’s tribunate
when he was only twenty-years-old. Gaius resisted going into politics following the death of his
older brother and retreated to a life as a private citizen. His time as an ordinary citizen, spent as a
socialite and partygoer, soon revealed itself as unsatisfactory to him and Gaius decided to return
to public life. Gaius wanted to restore honor to his family name, avenge the death of his brother,
and continue his brothers work and legacy as a popular politician.36
After a successful court
defense of a friend in his first real public appearance, he found himself assigned to a
quaestorship in Sardinia, where he excelled and distinguished himself apart from the brother of
Tiberius, or the grandson of Scipio Africanus.37
On his return to Rome, and defeating his
enemies’ challenges, he was elected to his first term as tribune, and the impact he had on the
office and the course of Roman history was like any other Tribune.
Mastering the skill and the art of oratory was essential to a tribune who aspired for
popular power. If a tribune could orate better and be able to persuade the people where others
could not that would secure the support of the people and grant the tribune with the power that
came with that support. Gaius was such a master and even radical orator that he was willing to
36 Plutarch, “Gaius Gracchus,” 100-101.
37 Plutarch, “Gaius Gracchus,” 101.

22
break with centuries of tradition if it meant persuading the people. This became apparent when
speaking to a crowd one day at a contio, Gaius decided to face the Forum and turn his back to the
Senate House, something that no other speaker had done before, instantly changing the nature of
oratory in Rome and the tribunate.38
Gaius, ever the demagogue, by physically facing his Forum
and turning his back on the Senate house, was a symbolic gesture that as tribune he would focus
and serve the needs and causes of the people without the Senate and their auctorictas.
Gaius’s tribunate is in multiple ways a continuation or a completion of his brother’s
tribunate. The younger Gracchus sought to improve and better the life of the plebeian who lived
outside the walls of Rome. The land bill of Tiberius was reinstated, and the landless plebs were
once again given redistributed land. Gaius also passed a bill that required the Republic to supply
soldiers in the army with their cloak and equipment, and that no one under the age of seventeen
could serve in the army. This was popular among the rural plebeians because as landowners they
were heavily relied upon to supply the army with men. Most men in the Army came from and
lived in the country. Ensuring that these citizens had land to own, that they did not have to spend
any of their own money to equip themselves to fight, and to protect their young men from dying
in battle before they were ever old enough to bear children was crucial to Gaius in gaining their
support.
A tribune could convince and persuade an urban citizen in the Forum or the concilium,
but a tribune needed to show a rural citizen, who was not physically in Rome to attend contiones,
results to secure their support. Agrarian and military reforms accomplished that feat, but there
was challenge of turning the support of the rural plebeian into manifested political power the
actual presence of rural citizens within the city of Rome was required. Gaius answered this
problem by passing laws that improved Roman infrastructure, namely the overseeing the
38 Flower, “Beyond the Contio,” 86.

23
construction of roads that stretched all across Italy. This building of roads was a notable
engineering feat. The roads were not only functional in that they were level and well built, but
also aesthetically pleasing. This aesthetic component was not only in the construction of the
roads but also the path through the Italian countryside that the roads took. The roads were
designed to bring the rural citizens to Rome so that they could vote, but also had other beneficial
effects. The roads led to increase trading, greater communication, and continued to center Rome
in the Italian world.
Gaius’s reforms did not only focus on the plight of the rural plebeians or only appeal to a
specific Roman demographic like those of Tiberius. Tiberius wanted the landless to have land
and the ultra-wealthy to have less control and power over the populace. Gaius did not distinguish
between the needs rural or urban plebeians and in doing so expanded his support base from his
brother’s. Gaius gained plebeian support through an expansive legislative program that shifted
power away from the Senate and the oligarchy and into the hands of the people. Expanding the
power of the people by extension expanded the power and influence of the tribunate. His reforms
affected foreign citizenship, the price of grain, election requirements, the powers of the
magistracies, and the lives of the military. Anywhere Gaius saw that the people could play a
stronger role, or where he could better improve the lives of all the citizens of Rome, instead of
the few, Gaius passed a bill.
In his first year as tribune Gaius Gracchus passed a law that revolutionized how grain
was distributed in Rome and to whom that grain was distributed. The continued success of grain
bills for future tribunes is the greatest lasting legacy of the Lex Frumentaria. The law provided
every citizen of Rome to purchase monthly rations of grain at a fixed price. This prevented
wealthy merchants from setting exorbitant prices and prevented plebeians from incurring debts.

24
Grain was now available to every citizen of Rome, despite class, for an affordable price.39
While
the law was applicable to every citizen, it is clear that this grain bill was directed to gain the
support of urban plebeians. These people did not own land and therefore could not grow their
own food. After the passage of the Lex Frumentaria the urban citizen did not need to worry about
the cost of food, or the availability of grain because it was now guaranteed. The urban plebeian
also did not have to worry about famine or a grain shortage because Gaius also established
granaries all throughout Roman Italy.40
Grain bills soon became a standard tribunician measure
for promoting a popular agenda that was on par with passing land bills in gaining the support of
the people.
Before the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus, courts established to collect debts and recover
money had juries that were composed entirely of member of the Senate. Gaius passed a law that
changed the requirement for jurors. Gaius’s law had those jurors selected from the equestrian
class, and barred Senators as sitting on juries.41
This class of men was composed of mostly
wealthy urban merchants who generally stayed directly out of politics. Many equestrians
indirectly played a role in politics by financially backing politicians, and while many equestrians
were connected to the oligarchy they were not members of it. Mouritsen, in Politics and Plebs in
the Late Republic, argues that the plebs who would have both the interest and the ability to
attend contio and voting assemblies on a regular basis would have been the equestrians.42
The
laws enacted would influence their income and since their income was not dependent on running
a shop, store, or labor then they had the time to participate politically in the Forum. This
legislation then gave them more power, in an area, money, that was of great concern to them. It
would have made Gaius a more popular man with the people that he needed the most to generate
39 Stockton, Gracchi, 126-129.
41 Stockton, Gracchi, 138.
42 Mouritsen, Plebs and Politics, Kindle.

25
change for all of the Roman populace. This legislation weakened the close ties between the
equestrians and the Senate and strengthened the relationship between the equestrians and the
tribunes and by proxy with the rest of the plebeians. Gaining support among the equestrians with
the rest of the people made Gaius’s position in Rome stronger.
Gaius had the support of the rural and urban citizens, especially the urban equestrians,
and as Plutarch notes this gave him almost autocratic power in Rome. He was the most popular
man in the city and it was rumored that he was planning to stand for the consulship while also
standing for re-election to the tribunate. It turned out that he had no intention at being elected
consul, and he did not stand for another term as tribune. The people, however, still voted and
elected him tribune because of how highly regarded him and how universal his popularity among
the entire plebeian order was. Electing a man to an office he had held the year before and was not
standing for reelection was unheard of in Rome, but Gaius was the vox populi.
After Gaius’s reelection he directed his legislation at challenging the power of the Senate
while expanding the power of the populace. Gaius passed a piece of legislation that was
specifically directed at granting the entire populace more power at the expense of the Senate.
That legislation was the Lex de Provinciis Consularibus, which required the Senate to announce
what province it would send its imperium holding magistrates to govern before the magistrates
were elected.43
Traditionally the provinces were not assigned until after the elections were held.44
Knowing where a consul, or praetor may go and what kind of operations would be carried out
and what peoples would be governed and how those men would govern them were now
questions that the electorate could and did ask.
43 Stockton, Gracchi, 129.

26
Gaius continued the legacy of his brother by strengthening the plebeian position in
Roman foreign policy. Gaius oversaw the establishment of the colony of Junionia, in Northern
Africa in the land that the city of Carthage had once occupied.45
The establishment of colony by a
tribune is incredibly radical. First it enfranchises more people and as we will see this becomes a
defining cause for Gaius, and second like Tiberius it is an answer to the landlessness that is
rampant in Roman Italy. This is a colony for the people in which Roman citizenship could be
experienced with a roof over everyone’s head. If the Senate did not want to enfranchise more
people, then why did they allow for the construction of this or bribe a tribune to veto it? Well it
seems that the most obvious answer is that the Senate opposed granting voting rights to non-
Romans but Carthage is so far away that just like how Gaius Gracchus was unable to travel
quickly between the two, a voting citizen would not be able to either, and so the only one who
could somewhat participate would have been the rich who could afford to travel in the summer
for the elections and these citizens may have been more likely to agree with the position of the
Senate and aristocracy.
Establishing a colony was revolutionary but Gaius’s leaving Rome to oversee the
construction has baffled historians for millennia. Plutarch writes that Gaius would leave Rome to
oversee the establishment of the colony, and so it seems that Gaius would break the law by
leaving Rome for more than a day.46
Even if we accept that the powers-that-be allowed him to
break the law and travel to the colony for weeks on end, it was a risk not worth taking.
Physically separating himself from Rome, and the people and by extension his power would
ultimately prove to be Gaius’s greatest political blunder. A city like Rome does not stop for a
tribune to establish a colony, and to retain power and control over the political system and the

27
popularity of the people it require a man to remain in Rome. The absence of Gaius led to his
popularity decreasing and his control of the people while remaining strong would never again be
at the height of when he was reelected to the tribunate for the second time. The rival tribunes of
Gaius, namely Livius Drusus, who was backed by members of the Senate, acted magnanimously
and used many of the same political maneuvers as Gracchus, when Gaius was not able physically
able to do so. Drusus was able to steal some of Gaius’s supporters because Gaius was absent
from the city and could not convince his base to remain loyal to him. Gaius was successful in
gaining a wider support base throughout the Mediterranean World but lost some support in the
city of Rome which would prove fatal in the long term.
Gaius’s most ambitious legislative reform may be his greatest lasting legacy but may also
be his greatest failure. He planned to enfranchise all of Latium, and give every free Latin Italian
man Roman citizenship.47
He was able to grant citizenship to the Italian Allies in his first year as
tribune, but considering those Allies already had some political rights the legislation was not that
radical. Granting citizenship to all of Latium however was radical and it was incredibly
unpopular in the city, and was one of the main reasons in the shift of public perception of Gaius.
Giving citizenship to the entirety of Latium, the region of Italy that Rome is located in, was too
far for the Republic, it would shift the balance of power too much too quickly. Had it passed who
knows how political power would have shifted, or how much power Gaius Gracchus would have
truly held. Like his grain legislation this would be an issue taken up by future tribunes until the
death of M. Livius Drusus the son of Gaius’s greatest rival, and the start of the Social War. This
law shows us how radical Gaius was willing to better the lots of both the plebeians in Italy and
his own.

28
Gaius Gracchus dedicated such a large portion of his thirty years on earth to make the
Roman world a more open and democratic society. That is his legacy, and while his intentions
may be argued and debated, it is certain that he was one of the most demagogic and
revolutionary politicians in Roman history. Gaius, however, had reached too far and tried to
change the political makeup of the Republic too much. Gracchus tried expanding the population
and the power of the people too far. He attempted to increase his own power and influence as
tribune, and the Senate and the elite of Rome decided that the only way to stop Gaius Gracchus
was to execute him. The irony in the death of Gaius Gracchus is that despite all the reforms and
laws he passed to shift the balance of power to the people, it was his death that helped shift that
power firmly into the hands of the oligarchy and later the emperor. The Senate, fearing that
Gaius would be elected to the tribunate for a third straight year, passed the first ever Senatus
Consultum Ultimum (SCU). Traditionally a law passed by the Senate because of their auctoritas,
moral authority, was known as a Senatus Consultum “The Decree of the Senate” which the
comitia centuriata would pass as a formality. While they were always followed the comitia and
even the tribune could interpret how to follow them. This SCU was an ultimatum. The law
demanded the death of Gaius Gracchus in order to protect the safety of the Republic. This would
set a precedent that would often be imposed on any tribune who would go too far and become
too popular. The power dynamic between the Tribune and the Senate was now more clearly
defined. The office of tribune would not see the like of a man as dominating as Gaius Gracchus
for another seventy years, and that is in part because the office was severely weakened it the
wake of his assassination. The Senate was now a body that could and would legally assassinate
elected officials. No matter how popular or how much power a politician wielded, the Senate was
always stronger.

29
The Sullan Constitution
Gaius Gracchus was assassinated by orders of the Senatus Consultum Ultimum in 121
and Publius Clodius Pulcher would not serve as tribune until 58. Rome drastically changed in
the sixty-three years between the tribunates of the two men. The end of the Social War, the first
of several civil wars in Rome, saw one man rise to assume absolute power. This man limited the
power of the people and the power of the tribunes because that power was a danger to the
Republic. This man changed the Roman Constitution and forever changed the manner in which
political business in Rome was conducted. This man was named Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix.
Sulla came to power as a result of the Social War that began in 88 following the
mysterious assassination of a tribune, Livius Drusus, who like Gaius Gracchus attempted to
enfranchise Italians. The assassination of Drusus caused the Italian cities to join together in
confederacy and revolt against Rome. The Italians fought to gain citizenship and have all the
political rights that came with that citizenship. The forces of Sulla were victorious on the
battlefield, but the goal of the Italian cities to attain citizenship, nevertheless, was
accomplished.48
The majority of Italian males were now also Roman citizens. The Social War
was the first of several civil conflicts in Rome and in Italy, and these conflicts ultimately saw
Sulla named dictator for life in order to restore order.
The years following the Social War were filled with civil strife for the control of Rome.
This struggle is separate from the struggle between the plebeians and the patricians, but not
unlike it. This struggle was between two men, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius, and it
shifted the dynamics of Rome. Marius and Sulla’s Civil Wars were violent, not only on the
battlefield, but in the political arena as well. Marius had ordered the first series of proscriptions
48 Boatwright, The Romans, 181-183.

30
in Republican history. Proscriptions were orders for the public to execute any named citizen as
they threatened the safety of the Republic. The proscriptions targeted the supporters of Sulla and
the rivals of Marius. These orders did not only target popular plebeian politicians, but patricians
politicians as well, making it a first in Rome that a person’s politics could get them executed
without trial.49
Legal proscriptions would not return to Rome for almost another fifty years, but
the trend that politics could be a lethal and dangerous business remained well into the Imperial
Age. The ability for an individual to attain absolute power by means of violence is important for
understanding post-Sullan Republican politics, and the motives of certain individual politicians.
The first legacy of Sulla’s dictatorship was its length. Even though he retired from office
before his death, Sulla was originally appointed to a term that would last the remainder of his
life. The Romans were not opposed to autocratic rule, as the Office of Dictator was almost as old
as the Republic itself, but it was limited in that it was granted to a person in times of crisis and
was required to be relinquished after the crisis had been averted. Sulla was the first man that
assumed autocratic rule for an undefined period of time since the Kings of Rome. This
established a precedent that a man could assume complete unlimited autocratic power. This
precedent would become a catalyst in ending the Republic and bringing about the Empire.
As dictator, Sulla wanted the power of the Republic, which had been gained by the
tribunes, to return to the patricians and the Senate. Sulla repealed almost all the powers of the
office of Tribune to its status in 494. This took away a tribunes ability to legislate for Rome
without Senatorial approval. Sulla’s reforms then went beyond than returning it to its original
status, by disqualifying any man who held the tribunate from standing for higher office. These
reforms changed the tribunate in two ways. The first is obvious and it was that they had less
power and influence in politics, but the second, less obvious result, was that these reforms would
49 Boatwright, The Romans, 185-192.

31
ensure that ambitious men such as the Gracchi did seek election to the office.50
Sulla’s reforms of
the tribunate show that he realized the immense potential in power that the people held, and how
the potential could be fulfilled and wielded in the hands of an influential and charismatic tribune.
Instead of seeking popular support for himself he attempted to ensure that support from the
Roman people would mean very little in Roman politics. Sulla wanted a Rome where the people
depended on a Senatorial oligarchy rather than a Senatorial oligarchy that was dependent on the
people. The notion that there should be an office for the people that could legislate, and could
veto Senatorial laws was absurd to Sulla.
Sulla retired as dictator of Rome, despite any legal obligation to, after restoring order to
Rome. Power was now returned to the Senate and the power of the people and the tribunate had
been returned to their original status. In the years following his rule, however, order did not
remain, and the power of the tribunate soon returned to the status it held before Sulla and the
Social War. The one change of Sullan reform that remained was that civil violence was an
acceptable expression of power, and that there was greater emphasis on the power of the
individual. The powers of the tribunate were restored and the laws that were passed by earlier
tribunes were regarded as law. Sulla’s constitution wanted to return Rome to something that it
once, but no longer was. Rome was changing and evolving and could not return to its previous
system of government. That government did not fail, but it grew old and did not adapt. Patrician
leaders like Pompeius, Julius Caesar, and Augustus Caesar all learned from Sulla and his
inability to create lasting reformation. Power in Rome could no longer rest solely in the hands of
the Senate, and that if an individual were to rule Rome then that individual would need to rule
with the consent of both the patricians and the plebeians.

32
Publius Clodius Pulcher
The tribunate of Publius Clodius Pulcher is exemplary of the changes both in the
tribunate and the political landscape in Rome that were present in the 50s. Clodius is one of the
most polarizing, but often overlooked figures in the last generation of the Roman Republic.
Mobster, populist, gangster, and reformer are words that are used to describe Clodius. Clodius
was a man who was unafraid to use the help of the aristocrats, specifically the triumvirate of
Pompeius, Caesar and Crassus who indirectly controlled Rome, to accomplish his goals.
Nevertheless Clodius was unafraid to consider the triumvirate and other leading men of the
Senate such as Cato and Cicero his political rivals. Clodius was unpredictable, a man who was a
brilliant politician and tactician, but was motivated more by his emotions than by his convictions.
It is difficult to discern if Clodius’s legacy on Rome was a positive or a negative one. His
motives for becoming tribune and his legislation have been called into question, but the results of
that tribunate and subsequent legislation are undoubtedly successful.
Publius Clodius Pulcher is one of the most extensively written about tribunes in ancient
sources. More is known about Clodius’s tribunate than any other tribune of his time because
most of our knowledge of Clodius comes from the writings of Cicero. Cicero’s writings of
Clodius must be taken with a grain of salt due to the intense rivalry and because of Clodius’s
presence in the letters of Cicero that it is clear that Cicero allowed his personal feelings influence
his writings. Cicero has a tendency to exaggerate no matter the subject, and especially when the
subject is something concerning Publius Clodius Pulcher. Despite the clear bias in the ancient
sources, scholars still have a full understanding the trajectory of Clodius’s career and how he
attained tribunate and what popular legislation he passed as tribune.

33
P. Clodius was born to the patricians family of the Claudii, but he chose to go by the more
plebeian sounding cognomen Clodius rather than the patrician sounding Claudius. Clodius
disgraced himself and his family in 62 B.C.E when he had to find a new way to gain political
prominence. In 62, Clodius was charged with the crime of dressing as a woman to sneak into the
house of Julius Caesar, the pontifex maximus, during a ritual of the Vestal Virgins for the Bona
Dea, “The Good Goddess,” to seduce the wife of Caesar.51
Clodius trying to gain admittance from
something that he was barred from, from birth would happen again when he sought the tribunate.
Clodius was charged and had to stand trial because no men were allowed to attend a ritual the
Vestal Virgins. Clodius broke not only a Roman law, but committed a religious offense as well.
During the subsequent trial Clodius attempted to call Cicero as a witness to provide an alibi, but
Cicero testified that he had not been with Clodius that day. Clodius did escape conviction, at a
great personal cost, but Cicero’s failure to testify cemented a feud that would last rest of
Clodius’s life.
The Bona Dea Affair seemed to ruin chance Clodius had for continuing his political
career, and he needed to find a new way for advancement. Clodius saw the tribunate as his
chance at political redemption. The problem, however, was that Clodius was a patrician and only
plebeians could stand for the office. Clodius found the solution in adoption.52
His adoption to a
plebeian family was very controversial because his rivals saw it as a way for Clodius to strike
back at Cicero. Publius Fonteius, a twenty-year-old plebeian adopted Clodius, and immediately
emancipated his adopted son. This adoption was approved with the help of the influence of
51 Marcus Tullius Cicero, “Letter 13,” Letters to Atticus, translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey, (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999).
52 W. Jeffery Tatum, The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1999), Kindle ed. Chapter 4. The process of adoption that Clodius went through was known as adrogatio
which happened when a man who was sui juris, “in his own right,” meaning his father had died was adopted and
subjected himself to another’s patria potestas, “power of the father,” and required the approval comitia curiata.

34
Pompey and Caesar. Clodius had convinced the two that if he could become a plebeian and then
a tribune then Clodius would be a useful ally to them against their rivals.53
Scholars have argued that the triumvirate of Pompeius, Caesar, and Crassus essentially
controlled Rome when Clodius was elected tribune for 58. Older scholarship suggests the
triumvirate were the patrons of Clodius and that they used Clodius for their own popular means,
and that they enacted their own legislation through Clodius. Clodius only used this relationship
with the triumvirs when it was advantageous to him, and when it bettered him and the people to
challenge or attack the syndicate, he would do so.54
Clodius would use these triumvirs to seek
legitimacy and influence to carry out his own legislation at legislation, or as a cause to bring
about new legislation at others. In 58, Pompeius was losing his control of the conservative
faction of Rome, Caesar was in Gaul, and Crassus opted for . Cicero’s letters show that Clodius
did not follow the orders of Pompeius signifying how much power he had lost. Cicero mentions
in a letter to Atticus that Pompeius had ensured him that if Clodius took the tribunate, not harm
would come to Cicero.55
Cicero’s self-imposed exile in 58, when Clodius assumed the office,
confirms otherwise. Cato was appointed to govern Cyprus in 58, and left Rome. Clodius was
now the only individual left in a city of individuals.
From his first day as tribune, Clodius began an aggressive legislation campaign so to
establish himself as the most powerful man within the city. This legislation had two purposes, to
gain the support of the plebeians, and to challenge the authority of the triumvirate, especially
Pomepeius’s, and the Senate. Clodius wanted to show the people that he was their true champion
while weakening the power and influence of the triumvirate. The law that Clodius passed
continued the tradition of Gaius Gracchus by providing the people with free monthly rations of
53 Gruen, Last Generation, 98.
55 Cicero, Letters to Atticus.

35
grain.56
This was an immensely popular piece of legislation despite it being obviously financially
irresponsible. The bill had practical results for Clodius too because if a person did not need to
make money to pay for food and knew that their food was going to feed them every month then
their desire and demand to keep their shops open, or go to work every day lessened. The grain
bill thus allowed the citizens who normally did not attend contiones or vote in the concilium
plebis to know do so thus expanding the support base of Clodius even further than the support
bases of previous tribunes.
Another bill he passed on his first day in office limited they ways in which the office of
Censor could expel an individual from the Senate or the equestrian order. He also re-instituted
the collegia, “social clubs.”57
These collegia were clubs or guilds where men would meet for
social gatherings like trade guilds, or religious gatherings. The Senate had become suspicious of
these groups and feared that they may cause civil unrest and violence and outlawed them.58
Clodius knowing that restricting people’s right to assemble was unpopular restored this right to
increase his popularity.59
The reinstitution of these collegia provided Clodius supporters who
were not only loyal, but also organized. Both this loyalty and organization would prove to be
beneficial to Clodius especially after his term, as tribune had come to an end.
After his first day as tribune and passing a bulk of his popular legislation, Clodius moved
his attention to Cicero. Clodius passed a law that made it illegal for any Roman citizen to put
another citizen to death without a trial. The law was retroactive, meaning that any citizen who
had executed others in the past could now be put on trial. Cicero as consul in 63 had executed
Cataline, and his supporters who had conspired to overthrow the Republic. The conspirators were
not given a trial because they posed an immediate threat to the safety of the Republic the
56 Steel, End of Republic: Conquest, 169.
57 Steel, End of Republic: Conquest, 169.

36
execution was considered legal. Clodius’s legislation made the execution illegal. Since the bill
was clearly directed at Cicero and a conviction was a guarantee, he was forced to go into self-
imposed exile.
After Cicero’s exile, Clodius passed another law to disgrace Cicero, this time mentioning
Cicero by name.60
The bill declared Cicero an outlaw, stripped him of his property, and limited
how close to Rome Cicero could physically get.61
Clodius then led a mob of the people and
destroyed Cicero’s house and damaged his property. After, Clodius consecrated the ground in
honor of the gods, and erected a shrine to Freedom.62
This law would eventually be repealed and
Cicero was able to return to Rome in 57, but the damage had been done and Clodius showed
Cicero and Rome that he was not a politician who should be taken lightly.
The implications of Clodius’s first bill against Cicero went beyond their initial creation.
There is no doubt that the bill was drafted as an indirect assault to Cicero, but since it was not
appealed the law after the tribunate of Clodius it was instrumental in discouraging the Senate
from passing so many Senatus Consultum Ultimum. The SCU was designed so that the Senate
could execute its own citizens whom they felt threatened the immediate security of the Republic.
It circumnavigated the courts and was an extralegal maneuver to deal with crises that almost
always ended in the death of Roman citizens. The law though did not take this power away from
the Senate but was strong enough to caution them into when they chose to use that measure.63
This not only protected the lives of populist politicians like Clodius, but also protected the lives
of their supporters who would often lose their lives when an SCU was ordered. At the same time
60 Gruen, Last Generation, 245. Ad hominem legislation was considered illegal in the Republic since almost its
foundation.

37
it also checked the Senates, or consuls ability to suspend due process and civil liberties because
of some real or imaginary crisis.64
Clodius’s tribunate at the close of 58 was reelected as tribunate and his control of popular
politics persisted. Clodius still retained loyal, and well organized paramilitary gangs who he was
not afraid to spur to violence, and the man would constantly call for contiones so that he could
accuse politicians of various charges, or to argue for plebeian causes, or most likely to cause
disruption in Roman politics. Clodius vetoed every attempt to recall Cicero from exile and even
though he ultimately failed, his attempts show that the animosity between the two men remained
and was worsening. The tribune that is credited with successfully recalling Cicero was a man
named Milo and posed the largest tribunal threat to Clodius. The two men both controlled mobs
of people and used violent disruptive tactics to obstruct the other from accomplishing their
legislative goals.
The rivalry between Clodius and Milo continued after 57, after both men left the
tribunate. Clodius and Milo still retained large bands of loyal supporters and continued the use of
violent political tactics to disrupt contiones and the concilium. Clodius would remain the
strongest popular politicians in Rome throughout the 50s, until his death at the hands of Milo in
52 B.C.E. The death of Clodius shook Rome in a way that was unprecedented in the wake of a
political assassination. Milo was put on trial for the murder but because of civil unrest there was
never a verdict. Cicero did publish what he would of said in his defense of Milo in his work, Pro
Milone.65
The body of Clodius was brought back to Rome and a funeral pyre was set up outside
the Curia Hostilia, better known as the Senate House, and burned. In the violence and rioting
following the funeral the fire spread throughout the Forum and engulfed the Curia. Elections
65 Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Milone, translated by N.H. Watts, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1979).

38
were postponed as both Clodius and Milo were standing for the praetorship and the consul
respectively. The weeks of chaos following the death and funeral of Clodius led to both the
patricians and plebeians calling for Pompeius to serve as consul, an office held traditionally by
two men, solely and restore order. It was after Pompeius’s election to the consulship and the end
of triumvirate in 55 following the death of Crassus in 55 that create the conditions in Rome that
would lead to civil war between Pompeius and Julius Caesar to determine what individual would
be able to gain control of the Republic.
Conclusions
The Office of Tribune was the office of the people in Rome. The tribunate protected the
people in Rome, and not just the ones who could afford to support a politician, but also the
people who would otherwise be unrepresented. Tribunes were then supported by the citizenry,
and with their support expanded the power of the tribunate. With this power the tribunate
challenged the Senate and leading individuals in Rome. This paper has shown that the most
important tribunes of the last century of the Roman Republic, beginning with Tiberius Gracchus
in 133 B.C.E., supported and promoted the causes of the people. At the same time these men
expanded the power of both the people and the tribunate in the last century of the Roman
Republic.
Scholarly tradition has seen a shift in focus in recent decades that examines the
democratic aspects of Roman politics. Historians such as Millar, Mouritsen, and Morstein-Marx
all have written extensively what avenues were available for the Roman people in Rome to
express their political power. These three scholars have all noted that the concilium plebis and
the contio were the two most important political institution to promote the cause of the plebs.

39
The relationship the people had with individual tribunes was another avenue for the plebeians to
express their power. The concilium and the contio were both ineffective institutions to the people
unless there was a strong influential tribune in power who could persuade the mob mentality of
the plebeians, to lead these assemblies. Through the tribunate the people were able to receive
greater political power, land, food, and other reforms that improved infrastructure and economic
benefits. In turn this support expanded the power and authority the tribunate held in Rome.
The tribunate was one office in a very complex system of government that had multiple
magistracies and voting assemblies within a very fragmented and class-conscious society. There
was very limited social mobility for the average citizen, and had it not been for the office of
tribune there would have been virtually no genuine representation for the people in Rome. The
tribunes of the last century were not only able to protect the people but to make manifest the
potential power that the plebeians always held in Rome. This increase of power in the people and
the tribune weakened the power of the Senate.
Tiberius Gracchus, by far the most traditional of the three tribunes, gained the support
and the backing of the demographic that he saw as the most vulnerable members of the Roman
citizenry, the landless rural plebeian. The support of rural plebs made Tiberius the most powerful
tribune in Rome. Tiberius’ major piece of legislation, a land bill, provided this landless plebeian
with physical property. This law came at the expense of the landowning elite who had amassed
large plots of land that were supposed to be in control of the Republic, and that land was
confiscated from them and given back to the Roman People. This decreased the wealth disparity
in Rome and allowed the military to recruit more soldiers, because more men met the property
requirement to serve in the Roman Army. The land bill thus gave Roman citizens land to live and

40
farm on and an opportunity for rural men to bring in an income outside the farm by serving in the
army.
Tiberius expanded the power of the tribunate further when he passed a bill, ensuring that
the plebeians, and not the Senate, received their inheritance from a foreign king. This law
directly challenged the traditional foreign policy purview of the Roman Senate. Foreign policy
was an unprecedented area for tribunal legislation, but because the will of Attalus II was
addressed to the Roman People, Tiberius claimed that his office should decide where the money
from the will would go. Tiberius’s decision was that it should go to benefit the people. The move
accomplished two things. It supplied the money that would provide land to more citizens, and
proved to the Senate that with the backing and the support of the people a tribune could have
influence in deciding an issue, regardless of whether that issue traditionally fell outside the
purview of the tribunate.
Gaius Gracchus gained the support both of the rural and urban citizens of Rome and of
Latium. Gaius knew that power came with the support of all the plebeians despite wealth or
economic status and the more supporters he gained among plebeians the more his influence and
power would increase. Gaius did not aspire to rule all of Rome, but that, as tribune, to shift the
balance of power from the authority of the Senate and patricians to the people. Gaius sought
power to guarantee that all of his reforms, most of which were radical, would be passed. These
Gracchan reforms improved the lives of the citizenry. Gaius built roads, continued to reform the
military, and reinstated the agrarian bill of his brother. Most of the reforms of Gaius sought to
improve the lives of a specific demographic of people like rural plebeians with continuing the
legislation of Tiberius, the urban plebeians with his grain bill, and the equites with opening up

41
membership to juries. Gaius further increased the power of the plebeians by enfranchising the
people throughout Italy, and the colonies that he established.
The reforms of Gaius also sought to weaken the power of the Senate in Rome. To Gaius
the plebeians were the only legitimate source of his power, and the influence and reforms of his
office reflect that sentiment. Thus Gaius did not see that the Senate was an authority over him or
the people of Rome. Gaius made it a law that the Senate would have to decide what province a
magistrate would govern over before that magistrate was elected. The establishing of colonies
did not only increase the number of plebeians, but it also continued to weaken the Senate’s hold
over Rome’s foreign policy.
A young politician from a patrician, senatorial family seemed to be the least likely person
in the Republic not only to pursue a popular agenda, but also to revoke his class and be adopted
by a plebeian so that he could stand for the tribune. Yet, that is exactly what Publius Clodius
Pulcher accomplished. He in many ways was a predecessor to Julius Caesar and Augustus. They
were able to gain the power of the tribune without revoking their patrician status. The Bona Dea
affair and the disgrace that followed may have been the impetus for Clodius to seek plebeian
adoption, but they were not the motives for Clodius’ pursuing a popular agenda. These views of
Clodius though are too simplistic, and do not serve to further understand Roman politics in the
50s, a decade Clodius was instrumental in shaping. It took him several years to become a
plebeian and there were other ways to repair a person’s political career in Rome. Clodius, born
Claudius, distanced himself from his historic patrician name even before he sought to revoke his
status. Clodius saw the tribunate as an office that brought a certain kind of power that was not
present in any other magistracy, that of the loyalty and the strength, both physical and symbolic,
of the people. Clodius saw the need for reform in Rome at the time to protect the interests of the

42
people instead of the interests of the triumvirs. Nevertheless, he ultimately misused his office
because the main motive behind that reform was to hurt and attack individuals in the Senate, like
Cicero.
Clodius used the tribunate to challenge the authority of the Senate and the triumvirate and
gain the popularity of the people. He passed popular legislation like the grain bill, and the
reinstitution of the collegia. These examples of Clodian legislation did not directly challenge the
triumvirate or the aristocracy, rather they secured the backing of the people. Because they did not
have to pay for food, and because they belonged to collegia, the plebeians, whom Mouritsen
claims could not and did not participate in politics, now could and did take part in Roman
politics. This ability to get average citizens to attend contiones regularly and participate in real
ways was a feat that even the Gracchi were not able to achieve. The members of certain collegia
backed Clodius so much that they served as a paramilitary force for him.
What makes Clodius different from the Gracchi is that he is the only one of the three who
lived beyond his term. Furthermore, even though he no longer had the powers of the office,
Clodius did not lose all of his power or prestige in Rome. Due to his tribunate Clodius was able
to gain a formidable political following that continued to follow him even after he left office. He
was able to disrupt voting assemblies and contiones so that his rivals would not be able to
implement their own legislation. Clodius operated the best in chaos, and he was skillful in
creating the chaos he needed. His use of violence and willingness to incite riots were a mark of
how Clodius conducted his business and how violent the political atmosphere in Rome was.
Clodius is just as much a product of the times in which he lived as he was an architect of those
times. Clodius gained the aedileship in 56, and had it not been for his death in 52 he may have
been able to gain a magistracy with imperium and retain the loyalty of the collegia.

43
The expansion of power of the tribunate and the continued success of the tribunate was
able to change the perception of popular politics among members of the elite. When Julius
Caesar was named dictator for life he was also granted tribunicia potestas (power of the tribune).
Caesar’s adopted son, Augustus, who was born to a plebeian family but became a patrician as a
result of his adoption would gain tribunicia potestas in the fourth year of his reign. In 23,
Augustus resigned from the consulship an office he had held since becoming Princeps Civitatis,
though he did retain maius imperium (military authority over all), and insisted upon being
granted tribunicia potestas.66
Augustus realized that to retain absolute power it was necessary for
him to have the power of the tribunate without having to retain the office. The maius imperium
granted Augustus the power of the magistracies without Senatorial approval, and tribunicia
potestas allowed the emperor to governor the people and legislate without the consultation or the
assent of the Senate. Caesar further realized that the only way to prevent tribunes like the
Gracchi from opposing him was to assume the powers of their office. The tribunate, like the
Senate, lost a great deal of significance after the consolidation of the Empire and the creation of
the office of Imperator. Nevertheless Augustus exposed that the power inherent in that office
remained critical for domination. The influence and the power of the tribunate remained in
Rome, but it was now controlled by the emperor, a patrician. This shift in the class that held
tribunicia potestas assured that that power of the people was not completely lost going into the
Imperial Age, but was no longer in the hands of a plebeian tribune.
The tribunate was an office that could only exist within a republic. The office was
representative to the citizenry, and it allowed for that citizenry to check the power of the
aristocratic Senate. The power of the tribunate reached a symbiotic equilibrium with the power of
the people. When the people were strong the tribunate was strong, and when the tribunate

44
expanded its power, it also expanded the power of the people in Rome. The office was not a mere
annoyance to the Senate, and the actions of Sulla and Augustus show that the tribunate was
dangerous, the tribunate was a threat to patrician power. When Augustus came to power the
influence of the tribune ceased to exist in the way it did before the empire, because a
representative office does not belong within an autocratic government. Nevertheless, the
tribunates of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and Publius Clodius Pulcher provided a template for
incorporating the voices and power of the people within their society. The emperors who
followed them continued to acknowledge this power of the plebeian voice by retaining the
tribunicia potestas.
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