Gracchus
Gracchus names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Gracchus TIBERIUS SEMPRO- NIUS, a Roman politician
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
TIBERIUS SEMPRO- NIUS, a Roman politician, son of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus Major; born about 168 b. c. HHe was already a distinguished soldier when in 137 he served as quæstor to the army of the consul Manicus in Spain, where the remembrance of his father's honor, after 40 years, enabled him to gain better terms for the 20,000 Roman soldiers who lay at the mercy of the Numantines. But the peace was repudiated at Rome, and Mancinus was stripped naked and sent back to the Numantines. Elected tribune of the people in 133, he endeavored to reimpose the agrarian law of Licinius Stolo, and after violent opposition on the part of the aristocratic party, who had bribed his colleague M. Octavius Cæcina, he succeeded in passing a bill to that effect. Tiberius Gracchus, his brother Caius, and his fatherin-law Appius Claudius were appointed triumvirs to enforce its provisions. Meantime Attalus, King of Pergamus, Pergamus died, and bequeathed all his wealth to the Roman people. Gracchus proposed that this should be divided among the poor, to enable them to procure agricultural implements and to stock their newly acquired farms. It is said that he also intended to extend the franchise, and to receive Italian allies as Roman citizens. But fortune turned against the good tribune. He was accused of having violated the sacred character of the tribuneship by the deposition of Cæcina. In the midst of the next election for the tribuneship, in 133 b. c., Tiberius Gracchus, with some hundreds of his friends, was murdered.
Gracchus CAIUS SEMPRONIUS (grak'-us)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CAIUS SEMPRONIUS (grak'-us), a Roman politician, younger brother of Tiberius Gracchus, and like him a reformer. The patricians artfully proposed measures more popular than those which he brought forward, and turned the popular feeling away from him, when they commenced the repeal of all the reforms he had effected. On his opposing this, they raised a faction fight, and massacred thousands of his adherents in the streets and in the prisons. He had himself put to death by his own slave, that he might not fall into their hands, in 121 b. c.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's account of 1921 still stands in its essentials: Tiberius was killed in 133 B.C. during the tribunician elections, and Gaius had a slave kill him in 121 B.C. rather than be taken. What has moved is interpretation. Modern historians avoid Collier's framing of "the aristocratic party" and "the patricians" as the enemy, since the Gracchi were themselves grandsons of Scipio Africanus and their opponents were mostly plebeian nobles too; the fight is now read as one within a single governing class, and the notion that Tiberius already meant to enfranchise the Italian allies is usually treated as a later confusion with Gaius's programme. Inscribed boundary stones set up by the land commission have been found in southern Italy, giving physical evidence for the redistribution that the ancient literary sources describe. The Gracchi have also become a political symbol in their own right, invoked by nineteenth- and twentieth-century radicals as the first martyrs of land reform.
Written for this edition, 2026.