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

by Mike Duncan

WITH ALL THESE social and economic problems swirling, Tiberius Gracchus was elected quaestor for 137. This was supposed to be the routine first step on his ascent up the cursus honorum, but instead it nearly ended Tiberius’s public career before that career even began. Attached to the command of consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus, Tiberius landed in Spain in the spring of 137 to continue the war against the Numantines, a Celtiberian tribe who had managed to resist all Roman attempts at pacification. Upon arrival Tiberius found himself caught up in one of the most embarrassing defeats the legions ever suffered. The consul Mancinus was far more a scholar than a soldier and the experienced Numantine guerrillas ran circles around his clumsy maneuvers. After a series of poorly executed skirmishes, Mancinus attempted a strategic retreat under cover of darkness, but discovered as the sun rose that his army was surrounded.20 Having fallen prey to Roman treachery in the past, the Numantine leaders demanded young Tiberius Gracchus be sent forward to negotiate. While serving in Spain a generation earlier, Tiberius’s father had brokered an equitable peace treaty with the Numantines, and they remembered the name Gracchi and trusted the son to play as fair as his father. On his first campaign and with as many as thirty thousand lives on the line, Tiberius negotiated a treaty that allowed the legions safe passage out of the region in exchange for a pledge of future peace.21