Rome learned about Attalus’s death shortly after the passage of the Lex Agraria, and Tiberius was himself among the first to be told of the terms of the will. Tiberius’s father had once served on a senatorial embassy that confirmed the alliance between Rome and Pergamum—and when the envoy bearing King Attalus’s will arrived in Rome, he stayed in the Gracchi home. One step ahead of his enemies, Tiberius convened the Assembly and announced that because Attalus’s will said “Let the Roman people be heir to my estate,” that both the disposal of the royal treasury and subsequent administration of
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