1979: The Revolution that Promised Heaven but Delivered Hell

 

 Let me explain something about the Iranian Revolution of 1979, because many people today in the West either do not know what happened or they have been told a sanitized version of it.

The story often told is simple: the Iranian people rose up against a dictator, the Shah, overthrew him, and replaced him with an Islamic government that represented the will of the people.

That story is incomplete at best and misleading at worst.

What actually happened was far more complex and began with this:

The Shah made sweeping reforms which angered the mullahs. Women were given the right to vote in 1963, long before Switzerland did in 1971. His land reforms angered the mullahs as well as conservatives and landowners. He dismantled the feudal system by taking land from large and often absentee landlords and redistributing it to peasants. He also made it compulsory for people to have birth certificates, which angered the mullahs as well.

To modernize further, the Shah sent the best and brightest Iranian students to the United States and Europe on government scholarships so they could return and build their country.

He famously told Iranians that in the future there would be no need for them to go to Europe, because he was bringing Europe to Iran.

None of this sat well with conservatives and the clergy. The merchants of the bazaar, in particular, were not pleased, as Iran’s markets opened to foreign goods and they suddenly had to compete with imported products.

Meanwhile, the overseas students who had been sent abroad to study often returned not with technical knowledge alone but with Marxist ideology. Many dreamed of transforming Iran into a socialist utopia. Yet they were also Muslims and could not entirely detach themselves from religious identity. In the end, many of them joined forces with Islamist movements in order to overthrow the Shah.

The Shah ultimately left Iran because he did not wish to build his throne upon the blood of his own people.

The Man Who Brought the Revolution

At the center of the revolution stood Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a cleric who had spent years in exile.

When he returned to Iran in February 1979, millions lined the streets to welcome him. Many believed he would bring justice and dignity after the fall of the Shah, even though no one had truly suffered from the absence of either under the Shah.

But one moment during his return revealed something chilling.

On the Air France flight back to Iran, a journalist asked him a simple question:

“How do you feel returning to Iran?”

Khomeini answered with one word:

“Hichchi.”

In Persian, it means: nothing.

He felt nothing.

This answer was never told to the people celebrating his arrival.

Instead, they were told that his face had appeared on the moon. Many simple-minded people convinced themselves they had seen it. Others, out of fear, claimed the same.

But that one cold answer revealed something essential about the man who was about to reshape the country.

He felt no emotional connection to the joy of the crowds, to the hopes of the people, or to the nation he claimed to lead.

What followed confirmed that.

Promises of Prosperity

During the revolution, Khomeini made sweeping promises.

He promised free housing.

Free electricity.

Justice.

Dignity.

People believed him.

But what did he actually bring?

Not prosperity.

Not freedom.

He brought poverty, repression, and fear.

And he turned on the very Marxists who had helped him seize power, executing and imprisoning many of those same revolutionaries who had once marched in his name.

Then he turned against America—the very country to which he had promised cheap oil. He had made a prior agreement with Carter that if he could influence the Iranian military during the takeover, he would calm the nation and America would benefit greatly. Carter believed him and even referred to him as a holy man. Khomeini then rewarded Carter with the storming of the American embassy and the taking of American hostages in Tehran.

The Machinery of Punishment

Under the Islamic Republic, punishment quickly became a public spectacle.

Executions were not hidden. They were meant to intimidate.

Public hangings became common. In city squares cranes lifted prisoners into the air while crowds watched. Iran had become a medieval country where crowds were entertained by public executions.

Flogging was imposed for crimes and all sorts of moral offences, including homosexuality and adultery. Both homosexuality and adultery carried a further punishment — a death sentence. In cases of adultery that involved an act of rape, it would be the victim who received the death sentence. Under Shariah Law, the burden of rape falls upon the woman. If a woman had behaved properly and covered herself in a hijab, she would not have been raped.

The purpose of these punishments was not justice. It was control. Fear became the language of the state. Religion was no longer a matter of personal belief. It became a system imposed by force.

Religion Forced on a Nation

Iran had been a great civilization long before Islam arrived. Its history stretched back thousands of years through empires that shaped world history. But under Khomeini, religion became an instrument of political domination.

Dress codes were enforced.

Behavior was policed.

Thought itself became suspect.

People who did not conform risked imprisonment, punishment, or death.

What had once been a vibrant society became one where ideology dictated daily life.

The Attack on Iran’s Own History

Perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of the revolutionary ideology was its hostility toward Iran’s ancient past that to this day persists.

Khomeini openly dismissed the greatness of Iran’s pre-Islamic history. He referred to the period before Islam as Jahiliyyah, the era of ignorance.

One symbol in particular became a target of hostility: Cyrus the Great.

Cyrus founded the Persian Empire and is remembered for policies of tolerance and governance. Many historians regard the Cyrus Cylinder, now in the British Museum, as one of the earliest expressions of human rights principles.

For Iranians, Cyrus represents national pride and historical continuity.

But Islamist hardliners ridiculed this legacy. Some even proposed destroying the tomb of Cyrus. They even wanted to destroy the statue of Ferdowsi, the great poet who wrote the Book of Kings (Shahnameh in Persian), thereby preserving the Persian language. When the Muslim Arabs conquered Persia, Persians had to learn Arabic, as did all the conquered nations; hence today most Muslim nations of the Middle East speak Arabic. Iran, on the other hand, had Ferdowsi, who saved their language and culture.

At any rate, the message was clear. Iran’s identity was no longer to come from its long civilization. It was to come from revolutionary ideology. Khomeini was not interested in Iran or its history. He famously said that he did not want nationalists; he wanted Muslims.

People were even told that everyone in heaven spoke Arabic while everyone in hell spoke Persian. Learning Arabic in schools became compulsory.

The Women Who Said No

One of the earliest signs of the regime’s direction came almost immediately.

In March 1979, when the government moved toward mandatory Islamic dress, Iranian women responded with courage.

On March 8 — International Women’s Day — approximately 100,000 women marched through Tehran.

They were not asking for privileges.

They were defending freedoms they had already possessed.

The response was brutal.

Pro-regime mobs attacked them in the streets.

Women were beaten.

Insulted.

Threatened.

The attackers shouted a slogan that became infamous:

“Ya roosari, ya to sari.”

“Either a headscarf, or a blow to the head.”

Compliance would not be optional. It would be enforced. The protests lasted several days. But the state prevailed. Mandatory hijab became law.

And a generation of Iranian women grew up under restrictions their mothers had never known.

Exporting Revolution

The Islamic Republic did not limit its ambitions to Iran’s borders. From the beginning, the leadership sought to export its ideology. One method was the funding and support of militant groups across the region, including Hamas and other armed organizations aligned with Tehran.

This policy placed Iran at the center of regional conflicts, particularly the long struggle involving Israel.

Instead of rebuilding the country and improving the lives of its citizens, vast resources were poured into ideological and geopolitical confrontations.

For ordinary Iranians, the consequences were predictable.

Economic hardship deepened while national wealth flowed outward.

This is only a brief summary of how the monarchy collapsed and how Khomeini came to power. But to understand why so many Iranians today reject the Islamic Republic, one must understand what they see when they cast their gaze back through time—back to the years before the Revolution.

The Iran that existed before the Revolution

Before the revolution, Iran was not some medieval society. It was a country modernizing rapidly.

Women attended universities in large numbers. They worked as doctors, engineers, lawyers, professors, judges and journalists. They walked in public without hijab, and no girl under fourteen could legally be married. Polygamy too was prohibited.

Culturally, music flourished. Cinema flourished. Iranian universities ranked among the best in the region. Tehran was beginning to look more like a European capital than the dark, oppressive society that would later emerge. This is something younger generations of Iranians discovered in a heartbreaking way.

They opened old family photo albums.

There they saw their mothers and grandmothers in the 1960s and 1970s, wearing fashionable clothes, something that they could not do.

These photographs told a truth the Islamic Republic had tried to erase.

Iran had once been modern, hopeful, and moving forward.

The revolution did not liberate Iran.

It dragged it backwards.

Then came YouTube, and the Iranian diaspora uploaded videos of interviews the Shah had given to Western journalists. They found out that he was a highly educated and intelligent man who wanted to modernize his country. They also saw how people lived during his reign. And they couldn’t understand why Iranians mounted an uprising against him. It was then that they came to hate generation 79 and everything that they stood for.

The Long Shadow of 1979

More than four decades have passed since the revolution. Its consequences remain visible everywhere. A society once moving toward modernity was forced into an ideological system that polices thought, behavior, and culture. Yet the story is not only one of repression. It is also one of resistance.

Students.

Workers.

Women.

Young people who refuse to accept a future defined by fear.

They continue to ask a simple question:

Why must a nation with such a long and proud history live under a system that denies its people freedom?

Corruption and a New Aristocracy

The Islamic government is not just about religious tyranny.

It is also about corruption.

The Mullahs in the government have grown enormously wealthy from the resources of the nation. Their children are now known as Aghazadeh—sons of noblemen, a new term for a new aristocracy created by the revolution. Many of them live comfortably in the United States and other western countries, while their fathers continue chanting: “Death to America.”

The Islamists once accused the Shah of serving the United States.

Today the same regime bends the knee to Moscow and Beijing, while the two powers milk the country dry and exploit it for their own military purposes.

 

This article is only a brief summary of the key events that have shaped today’s Iran under the Islamic regime. It is not within the scope of this article to write about the environmental vandalism committed by the Islamic government of Iran, nor to describe the theft of national treasures such as the two priceless hand-woven gold carpets that were gifted to Putin—carpets that were folded tight and squeezed into chests for transport. Even an entire book would not be enough to explain all the horrors that this government has unleashed since its advent.

There is one other deeply troubling factor in this already disturbing system, and one that we cannot dismiss lightly. The Islamic government and its supporters believe with absolute certainty in the coming of their Imam Zaman, the end-time Imam whom they also refer to as the Mahdi. They believe that only by causing mayhem and chaos throughout the world can this Imam come, whereupon Jesus will come as well, and the Mahdi will take Jesus by the hand and they will circumambulate Mecca. And in this Islamic utopia, there will be no room for Jews.

There are now two parallel societies in Iran. On one side stand the secular youth of Iran who no longer regard themselves as Muslims and who wish to join the modern world. On the other side are those who are deeply religious and have declared Iran a Hezbollah country. Hezbollah means Party of Allah—hezb means party. The latter is the minority that supports the government; the former is the majority. Whether these two groups can coexist peacefully is another matter.

The war with Israel and the United States might play an important role in determining which group ultimately shapes Iran’s future.

Trump has called for the unconditional surrender of the Islamic government—something the regime is unlikely to accept. The reason is simple: if it were to surrender, the government would collapse, and its leaders would face a Nuremberg-style trial for crimes against humanity. If the war were to stop now without such a collapse, the regime could unleash its fury on the protesters and their families, wiping them out in a wave of repression.

Iran now stands at one of those rare turning points in the history of nations, when the fate of an ancient civilization hangs between decline and renewal: whether Persia will remain chained to the yoke of Islamism, or rise once more to reclaim the place it once held among the great civilizations of the world.

 

The Fall of the Roman Republic

The spectacular rise of Rome as a world power after the destruction of Carthage in 146BC changed the political structure of a city-state to that of an empire. The Roman Republic, governed by the elite members of the Oligarchy, the nobiles, whose power rested on the control of the votes of the Roman people, supported within the organization of a patron-client system, was to face the unprecedented challenge of governing an empire. We are to examines the critical period from the tribunate of the Gracchi to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon and his subsequent assassination to determine the causes that precipitated the fall of the Republic.

The Oligarchy, of which only a few prominent families held a monopoly over the elections of important magistracies, primarily the consulship, meant that the same families would occupy the office for generations. Thus, the elections were often accompanied by fierce competition between the ruling elite. The natural progression of such a system was the formation of political alliances to further their ambitions. Amicitia and competitions for consulship were part of the Roman tradition and in themselves were benign enough. The magistrates were the government’s administrative arms, but their tenure of office was only one year, and it was the Senate, which was the perpetual advisory body. Although its power was not based on any legal enactment, nevertheless it had its basis on mos maiorum.

 

We may assume that mos maiorum did not provide a firm foundation for the Republic, but in a conservative society such as Rome with a strong emphasis on tradition, it was unlikely anyone would challenge the role of the existing institution. As Cicero stated in de re publica, ‘The Roman state is founded firm upon ancient customs and men.’ Still, such a system could only be effective if it operated within the framework of a political structure for which it had been designed — the city-state.

It is broadly perceived that it was not until the Gracchi brothers’ challenge of the legalities of the Senate that it began to lose power. The Gracchi also suffered the accusation of splitting the state into two parties, later to be termed as the Optimates and the Populares. This is by no means conclusive, for according to Cicero, there had always been two classes of men active in the public affair: the Populares and the Optimates. Indeed, Gaius Flaminius (consul in 223 and 217) represented the former as he challenged the Senate by directly carrying his measure through the Assembly only a century before the Gracchi.

Admittedly the role of the two parties was crystalized during the Gracchi, particularly after Gaius’s transfer of the courts to the equites, which provided them with a wide latitude of political power without shouldering the responsibility, ultimately driving a sharp wedge between the two groups. It was the equites who, after the Social Wars, allied themselves with Sulpicius Rufus to pass a bill to remove those senators, who were in debt more than 2000 denarii, from the Senate. The equestrians also abused their position of power and took to bribery, but since the judicial laws regarding bribery only applied to the senatorial jurors, the equestrians could indulge in their illegal activities without the fear of any prosecution by law.

But long before the Gracchi, a change, however subtle, had taken place in Roman society as well as government, for beneath the foundation, cracks had appeared. The cracks were not the result of any particular activity within the city-state political system, but were made by the empire operating within a much larger structure, producing two particular ills for the Republic.

In the early history of Rome, her army consisted of citizen-militia, ploughing with one hand, fighting with a sword on the other. The influx of slaves due to the conquest of the Mediterranean, combined with the pressure of military service in protracted foreign wars, destroyed the rural-based structure of Roman society. Small-farm peasantry vanished and instead grew the mass of unemployed proletariat, which swelled the city of Rome, creating a recruiting pool for professional armies.

The credit for creating the professional army must assuredly be given to Marius. However, Marius did not create a professional army to overthrow the Republic. Long before Marius, the needs of the empire had demanded the existence of such armies to sustain its evolution. Even so, a deadly weapon was forged whose masters were the generals that held the higher magistracies and were members of the elite. By creating extraordinary commands for these men, the empire introduced an unstable element into the small Republican government, whereby the competitiveness in the election moved into a larger structure, that of an empire. Now, the generals were the patrons and the armies along with the provinces, the clientele.

Nothing had ever shaken the foundation of the Republic as the army would in the last century of the Republic. And the guilt must rest with Marius. Blinded by his own crazed ambition to gain the command against Mithridates, he allied himself with Sulpicius. The result was calamitous. Sulpicius unconstitutionally withdrew the command from Sulla and ignited a chain of events that brought Rome her first taste of military dictatorship.

Nevertheless, it was the empire that had launched the events leading to the Italian enfranchisement, providing Marius and Sulpicius with necessary weaponry to undermine the stability of the city-state political structure. It was the empire that had generated the influx of wealth into Italy, which was to be concentrated in the hands of a few minority ruling elite, breeding nothing but selfish greed and cruelty.

It was the callous and brutal conduct of this new generation of Oligarchy in dealing with the Gracchi that alienated the people and furnished them with justifiable hatred of the elite minority. Even during Marius’s first consulship, an illegal act had taken place, for an aggrieved people, disaffected with the aristocracy, disregarded the Senate’s prerogative to extend Metellus’s command and instead appointed Marius to replace Metellus to conduct the war against Jugurtha.

The avarice of the ruling elite was not lost on Jugurtha, who used his riches to corrupt various members of the Oligarchy to suit his own ends. The conduct of the aristocracy during the Jugurthine crisis not only did not endear them to the Roman people but also fanned the flame of their hatred. The image of the aristocracy was further muddied by Jugurtha’s parting comment from Rome: Yonder is a city put up for sale, and its days are numbered if it finds a buyer.

After Marius’s death, Cinna was the sole power, but he instituted no political reform, and his government was hardly peaceful. A lull in civil strife cannot be equated with peace since fear often produces the same result. Cicero’s writings reflect the stagnant and fearful climate of which he recorded that most orators were either dead or exiled and as for himself, he kept his head down and studied.

Upon Sulla’s return to Italy, after the conclusion of the war with Mithridates, he was to find Rome divided into two camps: the Populares and the Optimates. Sulla was determined to make an end of the Populares and restore the Republic. Historians have judged Sulla’s constitutional reforms as ineffectual and, worse still, his march on Rome. However, Sulla took all the appropriate measures to restore the Republic as he perceived it.

His reforms were based on sound political judgment, for he had considered the problem of powerful proconsuls with loyal armies, who could do what he did. Thus, he took steps to legislate more stringent rules in obtaining higher magistracies. By enforcing cursus honorum and reactivating the Lex Villia Annalis of 180 BC, which stipulated a period of ten years must pass between holding the same office and raising the age limit, he was trying to achieve two objectives.

First, to prevent young men from acquiring too much power too soon, and second, they would learn responsibility and gain knowledge of the state’s political machinery. By stripping the tribunate of all its former power, which the office had come to exercise unconstitutionally, he removed the object of demagogy, but without violating the right of veto, which had always been part of the Roman tradition.

The tribunate was later restored to its former structure with Pompey’s support. The office had always been part of the Roman tradition, and without the backing of powerful dynasts, it was never a threat to the government. The fate of Saturninus after losing the support of Marius serves as an example. The most disrupting tribune of this period was Clodius, who held the tribunate in 58 and got killed by Milo in 53.

Next, Sulla turned his attention to the restoration of the Senate by handing over the courts to the senatorial order while at the same time expanding it. This act would have healed the wounds and ended the quarrel over the courts between the equites and the Senate. By enlarging the Senate, Sulla was rejuvenating a tired Senate worn out by a series of internal conflicts. Sulla introduced to this body the equites themselves, some already experienced jurors, others from the Italian aristocracy, thereby infusing the Senate with fresh talent.

Sulla took these measures to increase the efficacy of governmental administration and prevent the formation of a clique, which could monopolize the provincial commands due to insufficiency in the numbers of magistrates. He could have made the Senate an actual representative body of the government, but Sulla could not divorce himself from the fundamental yet outdated idea that the sovereign rights of the people exercised by the people cannot be transferred to any select body. More importantly, what Sulla could not apprehend was the rapidly advancing separation of soldiers from civilian society.

The Roman army operating within the political framework of a city-state had been a people’s army; thus, the politics and military were integrated. People had to assemble at Campus Martius and vote in comitia centuriata on matters of war and peace. The emergence of professional armies, raised from Italy after the enfranchisement, broke the link between military and civilian society, severing the ties with politics.

The soldiers were physically far too removed from Rome to have any involvement in the politics of the city-state. Furthermore, the Oligarchy was neglectful of the soldiers’ needs and provided no form of pension or relief for when they were to retire from the army. Thus, the army was not serving the political needs of a city-state, or the empire for that matter, but the ambitious generals who provided means of advancement and saw to it that they were looked after upon retirement.

Nowhere the bond between the army and its general and the separation of the army from civilian life is better demonstrated than Caesar and his army. When Caesar’s Tenth Legion was agitating for discharge and bounty and was terrorizing the city, Caesar, in order to admonish them for their mutinous behaviour, addressed them as citizens. In response, the soldiers shouted: we are your soldiers, Caesar, not citizens! Here existed a warrior class loyal only to its commander. It was the conflicts between the Senate and the generals, who wanted land for their warriors, which led to the formation of the First Triumvirate in 60BC and Caesar’s coming into the political scene.

The First Triumvirate of which the participants were Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus was forged out of one man’s desire to rule an empire. According to Plutarch, Caesar sought support from both these men because he felt that his prospects would be hopeless without the help of either of them. Of the two men, Pompey was to play a critical role in the coming of the civil war, for Crassus was soon to be killed in an ill-conceived war with the Parthians at the battle of Carrhae in 53BC. Pompey, obsessed by an insatiable lust for both power and popularity, had obtained extraordinary commands, which seemed to have gone beyond what the Sullan constitution had set up.

However, the forces responsible for Pompey’s rise were not the making of a city-state politics, although it was the flexibility of the Roman constitution and even mos maiorum which had always allowed such precedents to take place in times of crisis. The Senate’s decree authorized Pompey with extraordinary powers to meet the challenges of Lepidus, Sertorius, Spartacus, the pirates, and Mithridates. The Lex Gabinia in 67 invested Pompey with imperium infinitum for three years to deal with the problem of the pirates. In 66, the Lex Manilia empowered him further with the command against Mithridates.

While it is admissible to maintain that Pompey was never a serious threat to the Republic, nevertheless, he did not shy away from aggravating a state already plagued with chaos and discord, only to establish himself as a dictator. After the murder of Clodius by Milo, Rome was in the grip of anarchy, and Pompey encouraged this lawlessness to create the need for a dictatorship. Plutarch wrote that the people who went to the forum to vote for the candidates were not only heavily bribed but went there with swords, bows, and arrows to fight against the opposition.

It was during these stressful times that intelligent people began to think that the only way out of this madness was the rule of one man. The dangerous climate was not lost on Cato, who persuaded the Senate to elect Pompey as the sole consul, only to thwart the danger of him becoming a dictator. The acquie-escence of a people to one-man rule was a warning to a city-state to brace itself for an impact with its destiny — the Imperial rule.

Throughout history, Sulla has sustained the blame for Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. But there is an inherent flaw in this argument. Both men were forced to march against their country. Sulla did it out of necessity to restore the legitimate government; Caesar to preserve his dignitas. And both were faced with political extinction. Sulla was to relinquish his absolute rule willingly; Caesar was to hold on to it and criticize his predecessor for resigning his dictatorship.

What precipitated the civil war is to be found in the most revealing comment hoc voluerunt made by Caesar as he surveyed the dead bodies of the Optimates in Pompey’s camp at Pharsalus. The battle of Pharsalus was not about the restoration of the Republic but a mockery of the entire institution. The Optimates invalidated everything they had claimed they stood for by ignoring the procedure of casting lots, as they were assigning provincial commands to their friends. Worse still, they did not bother to seek ratification of those commands by the people.

Nor did they uphold the sacrosanctity of the tribunate, for they abrogated the tribunician rights of veto, and the tribunes were given six days to secure their own safety. Fifteen thousand men died in vain so that twenty-two men could carry out their own private agenda and secure Caesar’s political extinction. Curio put the question to the Senate that both Caesar and Pompey should disarm simultaneously, which in response, three hundred and seventy men voted affirmative and only twenty-two voted against.

Not even Cicero, who viewed himself as the guardian of the Republic, favoured war. Two of his letters to his friend, Atticus, are particularly revealing in which Cicero, as he pondered on the inevitability of the war, questioned the logic of it by enumerating Pompey’s follies in aggrandizing Caesar’s power and then taking the side of the Optimates to take it all back. Certainly, Pompey’s duplicity was not lost on Cicero, for he also wrote that Pompey had shown greater concern to recall him from exile than to prevent his exile.

The Senatus Populusque Romanus, as Rome’s legitimate government, worked only in theory and provided no stable foundation for the empire as the power fluctuated between the people and the Senate without actually affecting the rule of the Oligarchy.   Caesar was the protégé of the empire, for he had understood only too well the demands of the empire, which required the concentration of power in the hands of one political body. This is quite clear in his comment, which referred to the Republic as a mere name without form or substance.

Yet it must be maintained that at no stage, Caesar can be accused of seeking kingship. Monarchical power is not to be confused with a dynastic monarchy. Not even Augustus had begun his princeps with the idea of establishing a hereditary monarchy. The proof of this rests in the fact that when he was seriously taken ill in 23BC and thought he was dying, he handed his signet-ring to Agrippa and some state documents to Piso, who was sharing the consulship with him at the time. It would take Augustus four decades to establish his principate. The empire had assuredly produced men who were ready to seize power and rule supreme and alone, but they were not as yet ready to renounce their ancestral ideological belief, which was deeply rooted in the idea of Republicanism.

The last century of the Republic had highlighted the force of the empire, which had imposed its will on the government of a city-state. Only an imperial system of government could resolve the endemic problems of factional infighting, which Plutarch described as the festering disease of envy in Roman politics. Caesar’s assassination was the triumph of the empire over a city-state, for, in his death, the Oligarchy was finally vanquished.

The Republic, which was only a sentimental concept of a city-state, had been part of a city-state’s political structure and could only sustain itself so long as the city-state continued to operate within that structure. But the city-state had long ceased to be one, and an empire had emerged in its place. Rome was an empire, and its government was to function in a much larger political structure, whence it could not project the much-romanticized Republic.

The Gracchi

 

 

The tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC introduced a new chapter into Roman history which is widely understood as the beginning of the Roman Revolution, leading to the downfall of the Republic. Nine years after his murder by Roman senators, his brother Gaius in 123 BC became a tribune, and a year later, he too was murdered. For the first time in its history, the Senate issued a decree — Senatus Consultum Ultimum — for the consuls to save the Republic. Both brothers had tried to bring laws to improve and alleviate the plight of the Italian poor, and both brothers were killed as a result of those laws.

We are going to investigate whether the Gracchi were reformers or revolutionaries by examining their methods of introducing those laws and how they offended the senatorial tradition.

The tribunate had been an important office in the early Republic, for a tribune was set up to protect the welfare of the ordinary people. Gradually, the office began to change complexion and became a powerful tool for two groups of people: ambitious politicians who used the tribune’s right of veto to promote their own interests, and those men of obscure births who used the office to gain notoriety and fame to promote their own ambitions. Tiberius did not fit in any of the two categories.

Tiberius was from a prestigious family. He was the grandson of the elder Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in 202. His mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, and his father, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, was twice consul (in 177 and 163).  He was also censor in 169. His wife, Claudia, was the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, the Princeps Senatus. Had Tiberius followed the proper steps of cursus honorum, he would have achieved, just like his ancestors, the office of consulship and all the other honors that were customary to someone of his position. But Tiberius had other ideas in mind.

In 137, passing through Etruria on his way to Spain to serve under Gaius Mancinus as his quaestor, he noticed that there weren’t any free peasants working the farmlands, only slaves on large estates. He must have seen the need for change then. During his time in Spain, Tiberius proved himself to be both courageous and intelligent. He saved the lives of twenty thousand Roman soldiers and made a peace treaty with the Spaniards, and yet he never lost respect for his general whom Plutarch described as the unluckiest Roman ever to hold the office of general.

Upon returning to Rome, Tiberius faced a hostile Senate that was not going to ratify the peace treaty. Instead, it was going to punish Mancinus along with Tiberius and other officers. But Scipio Aemilianus, Tiberius’s brother-in-law, together with the friends and families of the soldiers Tiberius had saved, urged the Senate to punish Mancinus alone. Mancinus was sent back to Spain in chain but the Spaniards rejected him. Tiberius and his friends blamed Scipio for not saving Mancinus and also for not insisting that the peace treaty be ratified by the Senate.

In 133, Tiberius became a tribune and as his first act he proposed a law to limit landownership. Anyone holding public land that was more than the legal limit of 500 iugera (126.5 ha) had to give up the surplus to be distributed to the needy. He added 250 for the first two sons as compensation, bringing up the total sum to 1000 iugera. This law, though fair and generous, angered the wealthy, for it would strip land from them.

How the public land had come into the possession of the wealthy is best explained by Plutarch:

“Whenever the Romans annexed land from their neighbors as a result of their wars, it was their custom to put a part up for sale by auction; the rest was made common land and was distributed among the poorest and most needy of the citizens, who were allowed to cultivate it on payment of a small rent to the public treasury. When the rich began to outbid and drive out the poor by offering higher rentals, a law was passed which forbade any one individual to hold more than 500 iugera of land. For a while, this law restrained the greed of the rich and helped the poor, who were enabled to remain on the land which they had rented, so that each of them could occupy the allotment which he had originally been granted. But after a time, the rich men in each neighborhood, by using the names of fictitious tenants, contrived to transfer many of these holdings to themselves, and finally they openly took possession of the greater part of the land under their own names. The poor, when they found themselves forced off the land, became more and more unwilling to volunteer for military service or even to raise a family. The result was a rapid decline of the class of free smallholders all over Italy, their place being taken by gangs of foreign slaves, whom the rich employed to cultivate the estates from which they had driven off the free citizens.”

According to Plutarch, Scipio’s friend Gaius Laelius had attempted to reform this abuse, but the opposition was so great that he took fright and abandoned the program for which he gained the name of the wise. Tiberius would not follow Laelius.

Plutarch states that the law was not drafted by Tiberius himself, that he consulted a number of very important men: Publius Licinius Crassus Mucianus the Pontifex Maximus, Publius Mucius Scaevola (sivola) the jurist who was the consul in 133, and Appius Claudius Pulcher. One would assume that Tiberius, having the support of some of the most powerful and distinguished men in the Senate, would have had good reason to believe that his proposal would get a fair hearing and most likely an approval. But Tiberius bypassed the Senate and took his proposal directly to the people, thereby offending the Senate.

An important question arises here. Why didn’t Tiberius’s backers advise him against bypassing the Senate? It is logical to assume that the Senate would have been fully aware of Tiberius’s proposal; hence, they would have already begun to take steps to block it. After all, the majority of the large landowners were the senators themselves and they had much to lose. Thus, the Senate’s response to Tiberius’s law would not have been favorable even if the proposal had the backing of some of the most distinguished members of the Senate. Appian speaks at length that the Roman people were aware of the condition, but they did not consider reforms as either easy or altogether fair to take away from so many men so much property.

However, Tiberius’s action of bypassing the Senate was neither revolutionary nor unprecedented. One hundred years before him, Gaius Flaminius had carried a land-bill without consulting the Senate and took his measure straight to the Popular Assembly. Another Tribune, C. Valerius Tappo, also bypassed the Senate and brought a bill granting full Roman citizenship to some Italian communities. The difference between Tiberius’s action and theirs was that Tiberius was actually taking away property from people who were in possession of it, however illegally it might have been. Nonetheless, Tiberius was acting within the boundaries of the law.

Those opposing Tiberius’s land-law resorted to the long-held tradition of using a tribune’s power of veto to block what they did not desire. Thus, they approached Marcus Octavius, Tiberius’s fellow-tribune and friend, who was a large landowner himself. Tiberius, however, was determined not to allow Octavius’s veto to cause his law a setback. Therefore, he took his proposal to the Senate, and according to Appian, he thought that the law would find favor with all right-thinking people but was rejected immediately.

The reason why Tiberius consulted the Senate, when he had refused to do so previously, could be that he might have believed that the Senate would see how determined he was in passing his law and would acquiesce to avoid trouble. When his attempt failed, Tiberius took an unprecedented step. He proposed for Octavius to be deprived of his office. People voted in favor of the proposal and Octavius was promptly removed. After another was elected in his place, the Lex Agraria was passed.

Though the law was passed, Tiberius was faced with the problem of implementing it and financing it. A commission of three men was set up to enforce the land distribution: Tiberius Gracchus himself along with his brother Gaius and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. The fact that Appius Claudius was elected as one of the commissioners is very important, for it meant that he was publicly supporting all of Tiberius’s measures.

However, finance was not forthcoming to fund Tiberius’s land project. But it so happened that just in time, king Attalus of Pergamum died and bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman People. Tiberius grasped this opportunity with both hands and went directly to the people to pass a law that the money should be spent on financing his land settlement as soon as it became available. Given his previous experiences with the Senate, he cannot be blamed for this action. However, this was regarded as an insult to the Senate. Tiberius had challenged the Senate’s authority to decide the destiny of the cities which lay within the bounds of Attalus’s kingdom. The foreign policy and finances had always been strictly in the domain of the Senate. Polybius was very specific in recording that all matters involving foreign matters were in the hands of the Senate, and the people had nothing to do with them. Although not by any legal constitution, but by the adherence to mos maiorum, which was the cornerstone of the Roman government.

Time was running out for Tiberius and he needed re-election if he were to accomplish all that he had in mind. Thus, he began to consolidate his position among the people and introduced new measures. According to Plutarch, these included a reduction of the period of military service, the right of appeal to the people from the verdicts of the juries, and the admission to the juries — which had hitherto been composed exclusively of senators — of an equal number of the knights. Tiberius was now angling for the support of the equestrian class.

Appian provides an account of Tiberius being fearful for his life and going around asking the city people to vote for him again, as the people from the country on account of the harvest could not come to Rome to vote for him. Tiberius seeking re-election was not something new, for it had already been done. According to Livy, two tribunes, Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius, were re-elected in 376 for a period of five years during the struggle of the orders between the patricians and the plebians.

Plutarch states that Tiberius’s program was designed to cripple the power of the Senate in every possible way, and it was inspired by motives of anger and party politics rather than by consideration of justice and the common good. This does not equate well with the facts. True, he was challenging the authority of the Senate, but the authority of the Senate had been challenged before. The Roman government, Senatus Populusque Romanus, of which Polybius was full of praise and stated that “the Senate stands in awe of the masses and takes heed of the popular will,” was based on the principle that people had a great role to play in running their country, however theoretical it might have been. At any rate, Tiberius never got the chance of being re-elected, for he was brutally murdered along with 300 of his followers by a gang of senators led by the Pontifex Maximus, P. Scipio Nasica.

The tribunate was an office that was supposed to be inviolable, and his person was to be protected. This brutal and criminal act of the Senate requires a close examination. To suggest that they killed him because Tiberius insulted the Senate and interfered with the Senate’s prerogatives is simply an oversimplification of a serious crime committed by the Senate. The cornerstone of the Senate’s power was based on mos maiorum, not by any legally drafted constitution, whereas the sacrosanctity of a tribune was established by law and oath.

It is argued that the Senate did not object to the laws themselves, but to the method by which they were brought in. However, events regarding the land distribution after Tiberius’s death suggests otherwise. According to Appian, after Tiberius’s death, the three commissioners, Fulvius Flaccus, Papirius Carbo, and Gaius Gracchus, faced enormous difficulty in entangling the problems of landholders, for it seemed the landed Italians were not willing to cooperate with the land commissioners. The Italians sought the support of Scipio Aemilianus, who accused the commissioners of being prejudiced against the landholders; hence, the commissioners were rendered inactive.

After Scipio’s death, the landholders, by various means of pretext, delayed the distribution of land for a long time. Then came the offer of citizenship, which found greater favor among the Italians than the land distribution. One of the proponents of this proposal was Fulvius Flaccus. It was at this point that Gaius entered the stage. He proposed both the citizenship and the land distribution. Had the Senate acquiesced to the former, the Social Wars would have been averted in 90 BC.

Gaius’s measures expanded those of his brother’s. They included the founding of colonies, the construction of roads, the establishment of public granaries, raising the conscription age to seventeen, supplying the soldiers with clothing at the public expense, and the reduction of grain prices for the poor. Plutarch says that Gaius’s measures were meant to find favor with the people and undermine the authority of the Senate. But Gaius’s measures were responses to the social and economic needs of a society that was rapidly metamorphosing. Rome was an empire and the nation of Italy was being born. The Gracchi understood this and some of the more enlightened people understood it.

Gaius’s other law, which transferred the extortion court to the knights, cannot be criticized either, for he was not to know that the court, run by the knights, would be just as corrupt as it was with the senators. During his time, the courts were corrupt. There were suspected cases of bribery, and the corruption was to such a degree that the shameful Senate did not oppose the law and acquiesced to it.

Gaius became a tribune for a second time due to public enthusiasm. And he gained popularity with the Latins by extending full Roman citizenship to them. This caused the Senate to become fearful of his influence. Plutarch records that Gaius’s opponents secured the election of Lucius Opimius as consul, a man with extreme oligarchical views, who was a leading member of the Senate, to destroy Gaius. The plan was to revoke many of Gaius’s laws so as to provoke him into committing an act of violence, giving the Senate an excuse to kill him. The plan worked and Gaius along with 3000 of his supporters were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Tiber. Their properties, too, was confiscated by the public treasury and their wives were forbidden to wear mourning, while Gaius’s wife, Licinia, was deprived of her dowry. Among the slain was Fulvius Flaccus who was once a consul and had celebrated a triumph. And yet the same Opimius could not resist the temptation of fraud as he accepted bribe from Jugurtha.

One of the greatest moral qualities of the Senate was its ability for compromises. Rome would have been torn asunder if it were not for this one unique quality. Its history had been tumultuous, and its authority had always been constantly challenged by a host of tribunes over the centuries prior to Punic Wars, for at this juncture, the nature of the political crisis was such that it needed the unchallenged and concentrated effort of one body — that of the Senate. After the destruction of Carthage, Rome was the undisputed superpower with no enemy to challenge her position. Rome was secure, and real power on earth, and the riches flowed into her land. Rome gained the world, but, in the process, Rome lost her moral strength.

The new Senate was greedy, selfish, and had lost all perspective of right and wrong. Perhaps the words spoken by Licinia on the day of Gaius’s murder best captures this new Senate:

“You are going to expose yourself to the men who murdered Tiberius and you are right to go unarmed and to suffer wrong rather than inflict it on others. And yet our country will be none the better for taking your life, for injustice has triumphed in Rome, and it is violence and the sword which settle all disputes.”

The new Senate had inherited the power of the old oligarchy but not its moral strength, for Rome was not fighting to survive anymore. The new Senate, propped up with greed and vanity, was serving its own interest, not that of Rome. It would not be quite accurate to state, as many historians suggest, that the Gracchi period was the beginning of the end for the Republic. It is more accurate to suggest that the Gracchi period coincided with the demise of the Republic.

The Gracchi were not revolutionaries but two enlightened reformers who understood only too well the plight of their countrymen. Their motivation was anything but personal ambition. It was not they who contributed to the events that brought the fall of the Republic. It was the Senate. The greed of the Senate is best described by Gaius Memmius (tribune elect in 111 BC) as recorded by Sallust:

“In Rome, as well as at the battle front, the Republic has been put up for sale.”

Which confirms Jugurtha’s parting shot from Rome:

“Yonder is a city put up for sale, and its days are numbered if finds a buyer.”

Had the Senate refrained from unlawful violence against the Gracchi, perhaps the Roman people would not have unconstitutionally voted seven times for Marius to become a consul. And perhaps, the civil wars between Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Caesar, which destroyed the Republic, could have been prevented.