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

by Mike Duncan

Historians also still argue about the motivations of the authors of the bill. Maybe they were acting on high-minded principle and simply wanted to restore the citizen-farmer and rebuild the manpower reserves of the legions. But it could also be that the law was cynically designed to add thousands of new clients to the political networks of its authors. Traditionally, the man tasked with distributing land absorbed the families that benefited onto his client rolls. And it is here that we might also detect the source of the intransigent opposition to the bill. Because what the Lex Agraria proposed to do was take all the miserable tenants attached by default to their landlords and transfer their political allegiance to the Claudian faction—an intolerable shift in the balance of senatorial power.28 A piece of legislation this controversial and far-reaching was not drafted on a whim. Claudius, Scaevola, and Mucianus would have spent years carefully picking through Roman law, laying out how the survey process would work, and who would arbitrate contested claims. But once the law was written they simply had to wait for the right time and the right person to introduce the bill. And for that, Claudius had his eye on his talented young son-in-law Tiberius, who was now trying to recover from the shame of the Numantine Affair.