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00:033,000 years ago, an extraordinary people rose from humble beginnings to force their will on the world.
00:15And create the greatest empire mankind had ever seen.
00:20An empire that stretched from Britain to the Middle East.
00:26Lasted a thousand years and shaped the way we live today.
00:34I'm Larry Lamb, actor, radio presenter and history fanatic.
00:40I'm like a kid at Christmas.
00:42In this series, I'm travelling back beyond the Marvel monuments to ask who these people were and why they were
00:51so successful.
00:56From the empire's earliest ruins to her first conquests in Africa.
01:02From Kingdom to Republic.
01:05From Romulus and Remus to Julius Caesar.
01:09I want to uncover the extraordinary story of how Rome became the world's first superpower.
01:28146 BC.
01:30A century of bitter warfare is about to reach its climax.
01:37Rome's forces are poised outside the city walls of their greatest enemy.
01:45Carthage must be destroyed.
01:50For six days, the Romans mercilessly annihilated everything and everyone in their path.
01:58They left the city and the Carthaginian civilization utterly devastated.
02:05During this savage attack, one young nobleman proved himself a brave and gifted officer.
02:11His name was Tiberius Gracchus.
02:15In 146 BC, Tiberius Gracchus was just a teenager.
02:19But listen to what Plutarch had to say about him.
02:23The younger Tiberius soon learned to understand that commander's nature.
02:27And led all the young men in discipline and bravery.
02:31Yes, he was the first to scale the enemy's wall.
02:36A teenager. First one over the wall.
02:43Tiberius left Carthage a hero, but he would soon face a far greater enemy.
02:49This would be a battle between the wealthy ruling classes and the ordinary citizens of Rome.
02:56A fight for the very soul of the Republic.
03:03With the fall of Carthage, Rome's influence now stretched thousands of miles across the Mediterranean.
03:09Nothing stood in the way of the Republic's ambition to conquer the known world.
03:15Each victory of the army brought unimaginable riches.
03:20War tribute of slaves, treasure and art poured into the nation's coffers.
03:34But this immense fortune was enjoyed by a privileged few.
03:43The ruling classes were becoming addicted to the trappings of their own success.
03:49An addiction that was eating away at the very character of the Republic itself.
03:57The Romans liked to think their success was due to their humble origins as peasant farmers.
04:02It was all about honest, hard work and discipline. No fancy stuff.
04:06But now, with all this extra disposable wealth sloshing around, I wonder how true that was.
04:11I mean, they say money is the root of all evil.
04:15And some of these guys were making fortunes.
04:20Dazzled by their own prosperity, the Roman elite began to lose sight of the traditional values of their ancestors.
04:28With the front blind now thousands of miles away, they cared less and less about the common people who fought
04:34their wars,
04:34and more about feathering their own nests.
04:40I've come to Bayer, in the Bay of Naples, to see for myself the level of opulence enjoyed by the
04:47privileged upper classes.
04:50Today, it's a busy seaside resort, popular with tourists and locals from all walks of life.
04:58In Tiberius Gracchus' time, this was the playground of the super rich.
05:03The Las Vegas of the ancient world.
05:07The stoic philosopher Seneca was so shocked by the debauchery he witnessed here, he branded it a resort of vice.
05:17In fact, he left after a day in total disgust, moaning about drunks on the beach, rowdy parties on boats,
05:24people singing and dancing along the quayside.
05:27To say nothing of all the other goings on, things don't change much, do they?
05:34What has changed is the landscape itself, sculpted by 2,000 years of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
05:42Look around today, and there's little evidence of the spectacular surroundings of the past.
05:51But incredibly, this ancient wonder is still here, now submerged beneath these waves.
06:18To think, these statues once adorned the villas of Rome's wealthiest aristocrats.
06:26Including the mighty Julius Caesar.
06:39It's an astonishing sight.
06:44Street after street of fantastically preserved ruins offer glimpses of its former magnificence.
06:55These mosaics, for instance, conceal the ultimate symbol of Roman luxury.
07:02Underfloor heating, known as the hypercourse, was invented right here at Bayer.
07:29And the man who developed this wonderful invention made an absolute fortune, but not from underfloor heating.
07:36But from another luxury item.
07:40Oysters.
07:43The nobility's insatiable appetite for them allowed Sagaius Arata to establish an oyster empire here in Bayer.
07:52To keep the supply going through even the coldest of winters, he designed a system of artificially heated pools.
08:00This oyster warming technology led directly to the underfloor heating that came to symbolise the pinnacle of Roman affluence.
08:12Oysters.
08:12Heated floors.
08:13Drunken debauchery.
08:15Life was pretty sweet.
08:17If you were wealthy.
08:19But as the young Tiberius Gracchus was about to see for himself, not everyone shared in such decadence and luxury.
08:31Tiberius would soon realise there was a critical flaw in Roman society.
08:37One that threatened the very soul of the republic itself.
08:41Twink.
08:44Twink.
08:45Twink.
08:45Twink.
08:46Twink.
09:01Twink.
10:15The story of the young nobleman called Tiberius Gracchus
10:19begins at the very highest level of Roman society.
10:34He was born into a world of privilege,
10:37where heritage and ancestry meant everything.
10:47This mausoleum was designed specifically to broadcast
10:52the prominent status of those laid to rest here,
10:56whose families were amongst the most powerful in the Republic.
11:02So for 350 years, this whole complex of tombs
11:07was the final resting place for generations of the Scipio family.
11:10The man who wiped Carthage off the face of the earth was buried here.
11:15And probably before him, Scipio Africanus Major,
11:18the general who finally defeated Hannibal.
11:20Huh. Imagine.
11:26Since Rome's earliest beginnings,
11:29rich patrician families like the Scipios
11:32had dominated the Senate, holding all the political aces.
11:38Tiberius' connection to this ancient line of patricians
11:41and all the power and privilege that went with it was maternal.
11:46His mother was Cornelia Africana,
11:49the daughter of Hannibal's conqueror.
11:53His paternal family line was no less illustrious.
11:58Here too, Tiberius was at the very apex of Roman nobility.
12:04Both his father and grandfather had served as consul,
12:08the highest political office in Rome.
12:11But they were self-made men of plebeian stock
12:15who'd earned wealth and status through their own actions.
12:20Even so, the Gracchi remained strictly plebeian at heart.
12:28Plutarch has this to say about Tiberius' father.
12:31Although he had been censored at Rome, twice consul,
12:33and celebrated two triumphs,
12:36he derived his more illustrious dignity from his virtue.
12:40So obviously his father stood for the traditional values of the Republic.
12:45Honour, bravery, hard work.
12:47The very principles that had made Rome great.
12:50So, it's clear to me that growing up,
12:53Tiberius would have been influenced by his father's sense of fair play.
13:01When Tiberius was still only a boy, his father died.
13:05But the influence the father had on the boy reached out from beyond the grave.
13:11This was achieved partly through a bizarre practice reserved solely for the aristocracy.
13:21To find out what it was and how it would have affected the path that the young Tiberius took,
13:26look, I'm paying a visit to this ceramics workshop.
13:29I'm volunteering myself as a human guinea pig.
13:35My face is my fortune, be careful.
13:41Following the same methods used in ancient Rome,
13:44art historian Laurie Anne Touchette is going to create a funeral mask,
13:49a copy of my face in wax.
13:53We're going to use Vaseline, although we've also brought some olive oil,
13:58which is probably what they used in ancient Rome.
14:02It will protect your face and also your eyelashes, your eyebrows.
14:07Yeah, don't pull them out.
14:08Oh, dear, oh, dear.
14:10Now, that seems to be pretty good.
14:13Let's keep your eyes closed.
14:17The first stage is to build up layers of plaster and gauze to create a mould,
14:23a negative from which the mask will be made.
14:35After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally ready to come up for air.
14:41Okay.
14:43Wow.
14:44Wow.
14:45That's spectacular.
14:45That's spectacular.
14:47And you probably can step down directly.
14:53The next stage involves building up layers of melted beeswax to create the mask.
14:59Thankfully, this left me free to find out more about how they were used.
15:06These masks were a tremendously important part of the theatrical spectacle aspect of funerals,
15:13because if you were an important man during your lifetime,
15:18you would have your portrait cast in this manner.
15:22On your death, you would have an actor who played you,
15:25who actually had learned you during your lifetime.
15:28That actor would be joined with other actors or younger members of the family
15:35who would be impersonating the ancestors.
15:39But the influence that these masks exerted stretched well beyond the funeral ceremony.
15:46After their funeral, those wax portraits would go in the family home,
15:51almost certainly in the atrium.
15:53And there they would become a sort of reference point for the people living in the home,
15:59for people who would come to visit.
16:01I mean, we actually think nothing of having a photo of old Uncle Joe or, you know,
16:07Grandad Bill or whatever else up on the wall.
16:09That's as close as they could get, really, wasn't it?
16:11It is. It is.
16:12And we know from the ancient sources that these were seen as a kind of incitement to greatness.
16:19The ancestors, the great men of Roman history,
16:23gave an example to the younger generation of how they should behave.
16:28There he comes.
16:33There he is.
16:38What a bizarre, a really bizarre sensation.
16:46I can rather well imagine young Tiberius Gracchus, as it were,
16:52growing up under the gaze of the old paterfamilias
16:57and reminding him constantly of all those Republican values
17:02that he held so dearly.
17:07Always there, the old man.
17:15In 137 B.C.,
17:18nine years after proving himself at Carthage,
17:22Tiberius served as a diplomat in the fight against Numantia,
17:27one of the last cities in Spain still holding out against the Republic.
17:33The Roman army found themselves hopelessly surrounded by Iberian warriors.
17:39Only Tiberius' skills as a negotiator saved them
17:42from certain massacre.
17:44The peace deal he brokered spared the lives of 20,000 Roman soldiers,
17:49making him a hero of the people of Rome.
17:55But it was what he saw on the way to Numantia,
17:59as he made his way through the Italian countryside,
18:01that would shape this young man's destiny
18:04and that of the Republic itself.
18:08This is Tuscany, the essence of rural Italy.
18:12It's hard to imagine more beautiful, peaceful, idyllic setting.
18:18And it was still like that back in 137 B.C.,
18:21although then it was called Etruria.
18:24But whatever it was that Tiberius Gracchus witnessed on his way through here
18:29would eventually drive him headlong into a deadly showdown
18:32with the very ruling classes he'd been born into.
18:41So what exactly was it that had such a profound effect on him?
18:45To find out, I need to try and retrace his steps.
18:54Along his route, Tiberius would have encountered hundreds of villas
18:58like this one at Seta Finestra, built in the 1st century B.C.
19:06Most of the present-day structure dates from the 1500s,
19:10when the Spanish were here.
19:11But in Tiberius' time, villas like this
19:14were the property of wealthy Roman landowners.
19:19They were the centrepieces of huge industrialised farms
19:22producing wine on a massive scale,
19:26which in ancient Rome could mean only one thing.
19:32Plutarch wrote,
19:33As Tiberius was passing through Tuscany,
19:35he observed the dearth of inhabitants in the country,
19:39and that those who tilled its soil or tended its flocks there
19:42were imported barbarian slaves.
19:45Of course. Slaves. Spartacus and all that.
19:49I mean, I suppose like everybody else,
19:51my image of slaves and slavery does come from the films and television.
19:56But, obviously, slavery was a massively important part of Roman society.
20:05Can you say how important slaves were effectively
20:08in the whole running of the Roman system at that time?
20:11I think they were very important in Italy.
20:15Not in the whole of the empire, but definitely in Italy.
20:18They're providing nine-tenths of your agricultural labour.
20:22They are providing all of the domestic labour.
20:26And they're doing a lot of the administration as well.
20:28So, I mean, this is, I suppose,
20:30the kind of thing that we get from films or whatever
20:32of slaves being chained,
20:33manacles literally, you know, chained to the wall every night.
20:37Would this have been quite the case?
20:40I don't think so.
20:41We don't find many manacles in Italy.
20:44And it's going to be hard to prune your vines if you're manacled.
20:48I think the problem is that there's nowhere to escape to.
20:55Tiberius Gracchus saw how the wealthy Roman landowners
20:58were using this captive army of slaves
21:00to produce wine in vast quantities.
21:02This estate alone generated nearly 4,500 amphorae a year.
21:10That's roughly a quarter of a million bottles today.
21:15Where was the wine going?
21:17The wine was mainly going to Gaul.
21:20The Gauls are consuming Italian wine
21:24in the most enormous quantities.
21:26It's been estimated that as much as 40 million amphorae
21:33from this area finished up in Gaul.
21:36Amphorae are exchanged in Gaul.
21:39One amphorae for one slave.
21:41So, those 40 million amphorae
21:45came back in the form of millions of slaves.
21:50Millions of slaves?
21:52Yeah.
21:54And, of course, those slaves could then be put to work,
21:57producing even more wine.
22:02This self-generating success allowed the owners
22:05to multiply their wealth almost exponentially.
22:09I mean, these people are enormously rich.
22:12I think that's the moral of this story.
22:16The Roman aristocrats of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC
22:20are just accumulating wealth
22:24in the form of landed property
22:26at the most enormous rate.
22:30For the already wealthy nobility,
22:33these massive slave-based enterprises
22:35were a licence to print money.
22:41But it wasn't this embarrassment of riches
22:44that travelled Tiberias.
22:46Nor was it the suffering of millions of slaves.
22:50It was something else entirely.
22:59In that quote from Plutarch,
23:02he said,
23:03in Tuscany,
23:03Tiberias observed the dearth
23:05of inhabitants in the country.
23:08So what have become of them,
23:10these ordinary citizen farmers?
23:12kingsters...
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23:20Of the first place
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23:21of the 최대an
23:35Many people
23:36of the goodness
23:36of grown-Rose
23:41For the first place
23:42of the чicated
25:12Still in his twenties, the young nobleman Tiberius Gracchus is returning to Rome from the wars in Spain.
25:20What he saw in the Italian countryside would change his life and the history of Rome forever.
25:28The fields were filled with the slaves of the wealthy nobility, not with Roman citizens as he would have expected.
25:38Tiberius knew that these citizen farmers made up the ranks of the Roman army.
25:43Many were away fighting in campaigns that had grown from months to years.
25:47But he also observed something far more sinister.
25:52The absence of veteran soldiers back from the wars.
25:59The farms that these soldiers had left in the care of their wives and children had been abandoned and then
26:05snapped up for a pittance by the owners of the huge slave estates.
26:11Worse of all, Tiberius knew that much of this land was public land, ager publicus, which the wealthy landowners had
26:22no right to take.
26:25According to Plutarch, a law had been passed around 250 years earlier, strictly limiting the amount of public land that
26:33could be owned by any one man to about 320 acres.
26:37But, of course, the rich weren't above using dirty tricks to get around this.
26:42Neighbouring rich men, by means of fictitious personages, transferred these rentals to themselves and finally held most of the land
26:51openly in their own names.
26:57Basically, these wealthy landowners were stealing from the very people who had fought and died to keep Rome on top.
27:03And I mean, they were stealing it.
27:05They were doing this illegally.
27:10The brave few who battled on to bring their meagre crop to market found themselves undercut by the rich landowners.
27:18Forced to quit, they had no choice but to pack up and head for the city.
27:26Tiberius alone realised that this exodus of citizens threatened the very core of the republic.
27:32Why?
27:33Because to join the army, you had to own land, by law.
27:39So, no farmers in the countryside meant no soldiers on the battlefield.
27:46What Tiberius saw in his return to Rome would trigger a desperate desire to fix the social imbalance that was
27:54tearing at the heart of the republic.
27:59By now, the city's population was around a quarter of a million and rising fast.
28:04But for most, winter oysters and heated floors were the stuff of dreams.
28:13Far from the world of opulence enjoyed by the wealthy, the streets were crammed with the poor and dispossessed in
28:20their thousands.
28:23Throw in disease, hunger, poverty, and life couldn't have been much fun.
28:29And remember, these were citizens of Rome, many of whom had fought for the glory of the republic.
28:41The more fortunate ones did manage to find work and a place to stay, but just how fortunate were they?
28:50As I'm about to see for myself, the only living spaces available were a far cry from the marble villas
28:57of the rich.
29:00This brick building is the only surviving example of its kind left in Rome.
29:05It's called an insula, a multi-storey apartment block, typical of Roman housing in the late republic.
29:14How many people would have lived in a building like this?
29:17We can imagine a couple of hundred potentially.
29:20Really?
29:20It depends how many people you think could fit in a space.
29:25Across the road would have been another one and another one.
29:27Would this have been an area of these tenement blocks, as it were?
29:30There would be lots of tenement blocks down here because we're in the valley.
29:33Whereas up on the hills, you'd have the aristocratic palaces.
29:37Because this area floods, so we have all the diseases which you might associate with big cities which are growing.
29:45You have TB, you have malaria.
29:49There must have been some sort of basic toilet facilities, water.
29:53Would they have had a kitchen? Was there a chimney? How did cooking work?
29:56There's no real sanitation-type stuff.
29:59Right.
30:00Because there's a story of a chamber pot flying off one of these apartment blocks and hitting somebody on the
30:05head.
30:06But it is evidence that when you need to go to the toilet, you had to then go and empty
30:10it down in the street.
30:11So if you want water, you have to go down and get it in the street.
30:14And if you want to cook, you cook on braziers.
30:17So the place would have been full of smoke a lot of the time then?
30:21Yeah.
30:25Except this would have been a kind of a first-stop lodging place for people when they arrived.
30:29I mean, if you went looking for somewhere to live and you'd come up from the country?
30:32Well, you're not in the sort of lowest of the low in terms of accommodation.
30:37That would be further up, because there's another three storeys from here.
30:40Yeah.
30:41And as you get higher and higher and higher, the apartments get more crowded.
30:45And they're the places you don't get out of when there's a fire.
30:50The higher up you lived in one of these insulae, the lower your social status.
30:57The upper levels have gone now.
31:00But even one floor up gives an idea of this upside-down social structure.
31:06You've just come in through the corridor into one of the smaller apartments, as a bit for a family.
31:14It's a tough existence, because I think you have to think about everybody working.
31:18Child labour is a factor of Roman life.
31:21Really?
31:22So the children could be working as well as the father figure which you're setting yourself up to be.
31:28So this was a very, very basic life for ordinary people.
31:33No frippery, no element of sophistication.
31:37It was survival, right?
31:38Yeah.
31:43This is a quote from Juvenal, who was a satirist, writing in the first century AD.
31:50The sick die here because they can't sleep, though most people complain about the food rotting undigested in their burning
31:57guts.
31:58For when does sleep come in rented rooms?
32:02It costs a lot merely to sleep in this city.
32:06I mean, what a commentary.
32:09You've come from the country trying to make a new life, displaced, lost your land, you've got your family here,
32:16there's not enough work, not enough money, the place is full of malaria, probably running alive with rats and other
32:22nasty things, and here you are, you're stuck in it.
32:28An incredible 95% of the city's population was crammed into places like this.
32:35Tiberius Gracchus, when they should have been working the land, Tiberius Gracchus began to hatch a plan.
32:46If he could reinstate the ancient law restricting ownership of land, it would keep the massive slave enterprises in check
32:53and free up smaller plots for homeless citizens.
33:03But the bit that I really want to understand is the way that he went about it, instead of using
33:08all the advantages of his privileged birth, he took a stand against the all-powerful Senate.
33:17Animosity between Tiberius and the Senate had begun with the peace deal he brokered in Numantia.
33:23This saved 20,000 soldiers' lives and made Tiberius a hero in the eyes of many.
33:29But the Senate saw things differently.
33:33They ruled that his action had made Rome look weak and they failed to honour the agreement.
33:40With his political reputation blackened and his family name shamed, Tiberius made a radical decision.
33:48He would not seek the Senate's approval to get his land reforms passed.
33:53He would find another way.
33:58So why didn't Tiberius Gracchus do things in the normal way and just submit his proposals to the Senate?
34:05He's very angry.
34:06He's very angry that he's been turned over by the Senate.
34:10He's very angry that they appear to have taken away his position, his face.
34:16The second reason is he's going to do something which takes away land from senators, possibly, and certainly friends of
34:24senators.
34:24So he thinks he's going to meet opposition.
34:26How radical were his proposals in terms of ownership of land?
34:30Actually, the original proposal isn't terribly radical.
34:33It's framed as a return to a previous law, which is already, by that point in time, a couple of
34:39hundred years old.
34:40He offers compensation.
34:42It's quite gentle as a piece of legislation.
34:46So he's not starting in a particular radical place.
34:51But with bad blood between Tiberius and the senators already, he knew they'd never comply.
34:58Instead, he deployed a cunning strategy.
35:02He would harness the power of the people.
35:07His plebeian ancestry allowed him to stand as tribune, a position created in the early republic to protect the interests
35:16of the common citizen.
35:18His reputation as a people's hero meant that in 133 BC he was easily voted into office.
35:27Tiberius knew that tribunes possessed a powerful but seldom used political tool.
35:34They could have legislation passed without the consent of the Senate, if it was approved by the Assembly of the
35:42People.
35:44Understandably, many were afraid to go against the all-powerful Senate.
35:50Tiberius would have to win their support.
35:53All he had to do was to convince enough of the ordinary people that the reforms would be good for
35:58them,
35:58which wasn't going to be very hard for him because he was already an accomplished public speaker.
36:08So he's going to give this big speech.
36:11Would he have been very, very particular about where he was going to give this speech?
36:15Absolutely.
36:15Yeah, I mean, location, location, location.
36:20Today, if you're speaking in Parliament or you're speaking in Congress,
36:24you're limited to those major structures when you're addressing the body of your constituents or the body of your peers.
36:32But for the ancient Romans, the big guys could call where they're going to assemble.
36:39And that means they could be in front of this particular temple or this statue
36:43and will give added weight and meaning to what they're trying to say.
36:50Everything in a Roman oratory is very nuanced and it's very deliberate.
36:59Addressing the People's Assembly right here at the Forum,
37:03Tiberius gambled everything on the speech he was about to give.
37:08Without their support, his land reforms and his political career would be finished.
37:19The wild beasts who roam over Italy have every one of them a cave or lair to lurk in.
37:27But the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy the common air and light indeed, but nothing else.
37:35House!
37:36All of our politicians and all of our cultures can give added weight to what they're saying.
37:41Everyone's using their hands.
37:42Lying lips that they're in territory.
37:45Are they basically signaling what they're saying?
37:47But maybe 10,000 people who, without any system of amplification,
37:52are going to be reliant on what they see, right?
37:54The Roman orators then would specifically use certain gestures that would be more visible,
38:00let's say, to a larger crowd that would add emphasis to what they're saying.
38:05For not a man among them has an hereditary altar.
38:09Not one of all these many Romans, an ancestral tomb.
38:13Basically, I think what they're doing is what we're doing today.
38:16But Tiberius Gracchus was one of the great orators of the Republic.
38:21So he would have used his body as much as he used his voice and his words.
38:25Wealth and luxury, and though they are styled masters of the world,
38:29they have not a single clod of earth that is their own.
38:37The power of Tiberius' words won over the people's assembly,
38:41and his land reform was passed into law.
38:44But it was a victory that came at a terrible price.
39:15And why, and they had no power of Tiberius' words from Tiberius.
39:33So he had a terrible fact about Tiberius.
39:33He had a great day.
39:33So he was really kır 미리 the time.
39:33So he was going to check out the hall.
39:33And he was doing his day.
39:34So he tried to get an hour and a half.
39:34And he was like, I'm like, hi, this is my day.
39:34And so it was like, no, but he's like.
40:06133 B.C.
40:08Tiberius Gracchus has outwitted the Senate,
40:12shrewdly using the power of the people to get his land reforms made law.
40:18The masses hailed him as a hero, a champion who offered them hope.
40:24But the Senate now viewed him as an insidious threat.
40:28The battle lines were clearly drawn.
40:32Tiberius set up a commission to execute his law,
40:35but the Senate starved it of funds.
40:39Tiberius' next move was even more audacious.
40:43Rome was bequeathed a vast fortune by the death of a foreign king.
40:49Tiberius bypassed the Senate once again to claim these riches for the people.
40:57Now ordinarily, a bequest like that would have to be accepted by the Senate.
41:02The Senate deals with foreign affairs.
41:04So for him as a tribune of the people to say,
41:07I accept on behalf of the people of Rome this bequest,
41:11is to indicate that he wants to bring that resource in to be used for the benefit of the people.
41:18And clearly, it can help him fund his land redistribution and his compensation schemes and his grants to the people,
41:24etc., etc.
41:25But it also raises the spectre of the Senate losing control of foreign affairs to annually elected officers of the
41:35people of Rome.
41:36And that's dangerous.
41:42The war of attrition reached fever pitch.
41:45Anger turned to open hostility.
41:50With Tiberius' year as tribune drawing to an end,
41:54his followers began to fear for his safety.
41:57So they urged him to stand for an unprecedented second term.
42:04His opponents in the Senate cried foul.
42:08Declaring it an illegal move.
42:11Tiberius ignored this and stood for election anyway.
42:16For many in the Senate, this was the last straw.
42:19They took it as a signal that Tiberius was seeking the absolute power of a king.
42:24And if there's one thing I've learned about the Roman Republic,
42:26it's that rex was a dirty word.
42:29Would-be tyrants had to be stopped to all costs.
42:34Tiberius is being forced into a more and more radical position.
42:39Because he's got no other place to go.
42:43We often talk about politicians leaving themselves an exit strategy.
42:48Tiberius hasn't left himself an exit strategy.
42:51On the day of the election for tribune,
42:54Tiberius made his way to the capital.
42:58That morning, he observed many omens, none of them good.
43:04Augury birds refusing to leave their cage.
43:10A serpent curled up in his treasured battle helmet.
43:16A pair of ravens fighting on the rooftops above.
43:26Arriving at the capital, Tiberius was greeted with cheers and applause by his followers.
43:36But the mood of celebration soon turned to panic.
43:43Members of the Senate, Rome's oldest and most respected symbol of law and order,
43:47were baying for blood.
43:52In broad daylight, armed with clubs and sticks and bits of broken furniture,
43:58they brutally bludgeoned Tiberius Gracchus to death.
44:18So Tiberius Gracchus is basically bumped off.
44:23Yeah, more dramatically and more violently than that,
44:26he's actually beaten to death with planks with 300 of his supporters.
44:31So very grisly and dramatic.
44:33And then his body is just chucked in the Tiber,
44:35like you do with a common criminal.
44:37You know, this is a man who had everything going for him,
44:40and he ends up being treated like that.
44:42And so was there an immediate reaction amongst the people?
44:47Because they must have been aware of the fact he was trying to do something for them,
44:51and then all of a sudden their hero, as it were, is done away with.
44:55Was there any sort of response?
44:57I think, yes, there was a response,
44:58but at the same time not everybody is behind him.
45:01Right.
45:01Rome is a very patriarchal place.
45:04It's somewhere where patronage is very important.
45:06So all of these nobles had lots and lots of people
45:09lower down the social pecking order
45:11who owed their living and who they were to these great lords.
45:16So things don't happen that quickly,
45:18but what you're going to find is over the next 20 or 30 years,
45:21the Senate's going to have to change the way it sees things.
45:24It's going to be forced into a situation
45:26where actually popular legislation is going to come in
45:29and some land is going to get released to the masses.
45:34So what would you say overall is the result of his death?
45:38I think the death of Tiberius Gracchus was a real watershed moment
45:41because it showed individuals
45:44that they could go against the powerful status quo.
45:46They could go against the interests of this powerful clique
45:50by using the people in the Popular Assembly.
45:53And at the same time, it set a very dangerous precedent
45:56because the Senate deal with it by brute force, by violence.
46:01And what we're going to find in the next few decades,
46:03all the way until the end of the Roman Republic,
46:06is that the place becomes more and more violent.
46:09It's a really, really important moment.
46:11From then on, things are never going to be the same.
46:18I started off wondering what had driven Tiberius Gracchus
46:22to turn against his own class.
46:24But this chapter in Rome's history is about so much more.
46:28It's really about the deep fractures
46:31that started to form in Roman society
46:33as a result of their own runaway success.
46:39Tiberius had thrust these fractures firmly onto centre stage
46:43and shown that it was possible to harness the power of the people
46:47against the might of the aristocracy.
46:50This was a bold and powerful idea,
46:53one that would take root in the minds of others that followed.
47:01Next time, crisis in the Republic.
47:05As Rome descends into anarchy,
47:08one man plans to seize control for himself.
47:12His name is Julius Caesar.
47:17The End
47:18The End
47:43Transcription by CastingWords
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