The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

by Mike Duncan

THE LEX AGRARIA called for a panel of three commissioners to survey the ager publicus, determine ownership, and parcel out land. To make sure the job was done properly (and to monopolize political credit for the distribution of land) Tiberius induced the Assembly to elect Tiberius himself, his father-in-law Claudius, and his twenty-one-year-old brother Gaius to serve as the first three land commissioners. So far so good. But Tiberius soon learned that passing the law and enforcing its provisions were two very different things.46 Unable to prevent the bill from becoming law, conservatives in the Senate hit back with their own bag of tricks. This opposition was now led by the pontifex maximus Publius Scipio Nasica, who hailed from a more conservative branch of the Scipione clan. Nasica personally possessed far more than five hundred iugera of ager publicus, so he engineered an insulting blow to the new land commission. It was the Senate’s responsibility to appropriate funds to pay for the men and material necessary to complete the surveying work, which required a small army of secretaries, clerks, surveyors, architects, carts, and mules. At Nasica’s urging, the Senate voted a pittance to cover merely the daily expenses of the commissioners themselves. This calculated stinginess left Tiberius the captain of a boat with no oars. It was infuriating but there was nothing he could do about it.47