Were The Gracchi Demagogues Or Heroes - 1588 Words

Were the Gracchi demagogues or heroes? This essay will attempt to explain the motives that have led to the rise and fall of the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus in the late second century B.C. Although very few sources remain of these accounts, which are based mainly on works of the historians Appian and Plutarch, the Gracchi have been the subject of study by several scholars. If on the one hand earlier historians tend to represent them as heroes and revolutionaries, on the other, more recent ones have regarded them as two controversial figures which were politically motivated by personal gains. They proposed and passed a series of legislations and the most controversial one is the agrarian law about the redistribution of the land. It can be argued that their motives have been certainly and thoroughly selfless for the good of the people of Rome in the specific period of history which spans from 133 B.C to 121 B.C. On the contrary, as it will be explained below, their methods have not always been ‘orthodoxâ€℠¢. There could be three main areas that will help this essay to conclude if they were truly heroes of the people or political opportunists; the first is to evaluate what their true motives were, the second is to assess if there was an agrarian crisis and the third to establish who the beneficiaries of their legislations were. Overall, as all political figures, the Gracchi have to be taken in the context of the specific roman society of their time. Appian of Alexandria