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The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Peter Garnsey  and
Dominic Rathbone
Peter Garnsey
Affiliation:
Jesus College, Cambridge
Dominic Rathbone
Affiliation:
King's CollegeLondon
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Extract

One of the measures carried by Gaius Gracchus in the course of his first tribunate in 123–2 B.C. provided for the regular sale of grain to citizens of Rome at the price of 6⅓ asses per modius. Gracchus also, presumably by the same law, provided for the construction of state granaries.

The sources for the law are meagre. None of them is contemporary, and those later writers who do comment on the law furnish few details. What is known of its content is conveyed in a brief sentence from Livy's Epitomator supported by a scholiast on Cicero's pro Sestio, and in a few words of Appian. The Epitomator and Scholiast give the price at which the grain was sold.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 75 , November 1985 , pp. 20 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Peter Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone 1985. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Select bibliography: H. Last, CAH ix, 57 ff.; Bolkestein, H., Wohltätigkeit und Armenpflege im vorchristlichen Altertum (1939), 364 ffGoogle Scholar.; Brunt, P. A., Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (1971), 376–7Google Scholar; Schneider, H., Wirtschaft und Politik: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der späten römischen Republik (1974), 363 ffGoogle Scholar.; Veyne, P., Le pain et le cirque (1976), 126 ffGoogle Scholar.; Rickman, G. E., The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (1980), 156 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 Sources in Broughton, MRR I, 514; Greenidge and Clay, Sources, 32–3. Texts cited below: Livy, Per. LX, cf. Schol. Bob. 2. 132, 135 Stl.; App., Bell. Civ. 1, 21; Plut., C. Gracch. v; Cic., Tusc. Disp. III, 20, 48.

3 Recently stressed by Rowland, R. J., ‘The “very poor” and the grain dole at Rome and Oxyrhynchus’, ZPE xxi (1976), 69 ffGoogle Scholar.

4 Sail., Hist. III, 48M, cf. Licin. 34F.

5 For grain prices in Rome (but there is no information for our period) see Jasny, N., ‘Wheat prices and milling costs in classical Rome’, Wheat Studies of the Food Research Institute xx (1944), 137Google Scholar ff.; Duncan-Jones, R. P., Economy of the Roman Empire (2nd ed., 1982), 145–6, App. 8Google Scholar. It can be assumed that Gracchus' state grain was subsidized. How did he arrive at his price? He may have costed 5 modii at 2 denarii, supposing grain was rationed under his law at 5 modii per person per month. 5 modii at 6⅓is 31⅔ asses, almost 2 denarii ( = 32 asses). We suspect that 5 modii were sold for 2 denarii (or 8 sesterces).

6 Cic., de off. II, 72, cf. 74; Brutus 62, 222.

7 All dates in the text are B.C. Heichelheim, F. M., ‘On ancient price trends from the early first millennium B.C. to Heraclius I’, Finanzarchiv xv (1954–1955), 498Google Scholar ff. (at 506–8); based on his Wirtschaftliche Schwankungen der Zeit von Alexander bis Augustus (1930), especially 51–2, 67–8, 72–7, 118–22 (Table VIII).

8 Notably A. H. Boren, ‘The urban side of the Gracchan economic crisis’, AHR LXIII (1957–1958), 890 ff. repr. in Seager, R. (ed.), The Crisis of the Roman Republic (1969), 54 ffGoogle Scholar.

9 Heichelheim, Wirtsch. Schwank., 74 claimed as evidence for Italy the ‘rise’ from the price of wheat in the Po valley given by Polybius 11, 15, 1 to that of Gaius' frumentatio, but these prices are not directly comparable. In fact, in terms of silver weight the Gracchan price is almost exactly the same as the price charged at Rome in 203 and 201 for wheat sold cheaply by the then aediles. See Garnsey, P., Gallant, T., Rathbone, D., ‘Thessaly and the grain supply of Rome during the second century B.C.’, JRS LXXIV (1984), 30Google Scholar ff., at 43 n. 55.

10 T. Reekmans, ‘The Ptolemaic copper inflation’, in Van't Dack, E. and Reekmans, T., Ptolemaica (Studia Hellenistica 7, 1951), 61–119Google Scholar (especially tables on pp. 111–13). The particularly high price cited by Heichelheim, Wirtsch. Schwank., 121 for 162/1 B.C. derives from misinterpretation of the text (UPZ 52; see Reekmans, 89 n. 1). Reekmans omits text 10 in Sethe, K., Demotische Urkunden zum ägyptischen Bürgschaftsrecht vorzüglich der Ptolemäerzeit (1920)Google Scholar, which gives a penalty price for wheat equivalent to 6,000 copper drachmai, twice the normal rate; however, since it is an isolated case and since penalty prices were always arbitrary, it is not good evidence for generally high grain prices in Egypt at that time.

11 Reekmans (n. 10), 98 believed the ‘real’ price of grain remained stable; for these copper drachmai as units of account, see Gara, A., ‘Limiti strutturali dell' economia monetana nell'Egitto tardo-tolemaico’, in Virgilio, B. (ed.), Studi Ellenistici I (1984), 107Google Scholar ff. We owe this reference to Dr. Dorothy Thompson.

12 cf. Rathbone, D. W., ‘The grain trade and grain shortages in the Hellenistic East’, in Garnsey, P., Whittaker, C. R. (eds.), Trade and Famine in Classical Antiquity (1983), 45 ffGoogle Scholar.

13 cf. Garnsey, Gallant, Rathbone (n. 9), 40 n. 42. For revised date of this inscription see Appendix below.

14 Tithe of 3 million modii plus second bought tithe also of 3 million modii, plus further purchase of 800,000 modii: Cic., Verr. II, 3, 163.

15 cf. Rickman (n. 1), 42–5.

16 Examples in Rickman (n. 1), 44.

17 Obsequens 22. Orosius V, 4, 8–11 reports a pestilentia in Rome in 142 but makes no mention of food shortage. We cannot be sure of the date or significance of the fragment of Lucilius, ‘deficit alma ceres, nec plebes pane potitur’ (5 fr. 214, Warmington, , Remains of Old Latin (Loeb) III, 66)Google Scholar.

18 Val. Max. III, 7, 3; cf. Plut., , Cato Maior VIII, 1Google Scholar for a comparable anecdote about the elder Cato's (died 149) opposition to an ‘unseasonable’ popular demand for a grain distribution.

19 Figures for legions here and below are taken from Table XIII in Brunt (n. 1), 433.

20 See Appendix below for revised date of this inscription.

21 Plut., C. Gracch. VI. Orestes had proposed to requisition clothing from the Sardinian communities; they protested to the Senate, which vetoed the requisition. Then Gaius persuaded the Sardinians to give supplies ‘voluntarily’. This looks uncommonly like the kind of improper pressuring for which Gaius next year attacked Fabius (see n. 23).

22 Livy, Per. LX; Obsequens xxx; Orosius V, II, 1–3.

23 Plut., C. Gracch. vi, with Broughton, MRR I, 512. For the Roman tradition against accepting grain as a gift see e.g. Livy XXXVI, 4, 5–9, XLIV, 16, 2, and the Thessalian inscription, cf. Garnsey, Gallant and Rathbone (n. 9), 44. App., Pun. 136, to the effect that the staseis in Gaius Gracchus' tribunate occurred because of aporia, is not clear evidence of food crisis at Rome in 123. In Bell. Civ. 1, 9 where the Italian race is said to have been reduced to aporia and oligandria, aporia means ‘poverty’ in the sense of landlessness, and not ‘food shortage’.

24 See e.g. Livy XXX, 38, 5; XXXVIII, 35, 5; cf. Garnsey, P., ‘Grain for Rome’, in Garnsey, P., Hopkins, K., Whittaker, C. R. (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy (1983), 118–30, at 121 ffGoogle Scholar.

25 Livy XXXI, 50, 1; XXXIII, 42, 8 (2 asses); XXX, 26, 5 ff.; XXXI, 4, 6 (4 asses).

26 For a terse statement see Rickman, G. E., Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (1971), 149–50Google Scholar.

27 The word is P. Veyne's. His discussion in Le pain et le cirque (1976), 446 ffGoogle Scholar. is especially to be recommended.

28 cf. ORF 3 48, V, 28; 48, XII, 44; App., Bell. Civ. 1, 22; with Sherwin-White, A. N., ‘The Lex Repetundarum and the Political ideas of Gaius Gracchus’, JRS LXXII (1982), 18Google Scholar ff.

29 Polyb. VI, 39, 12–15; cf. Watson, G. R., The Roman Soldier (1969), 90Google Scholar. Soldiers were also charged for clothing and for replaced equipment, until Gaius himself abolished the charge for clothing. See Plut., C. Gracch. V; cf. Diod. Sic. XXXV, 25, 1.

30 Rickman (n. 26), 251–2.

31 contra, e.g., Tarn, W. W., Griffith, G. T., Hellenistic Civilization (3rd ed., 1952), 107 ffGoogle Scholar.; Hands, A. R., Charities and Social Aid in Greece and Rome (1968), 95 ffGoogle Scholar.; Rickman (n. 1), 156–7. The issue cannot be debated here. For a stimulating discussion of Greek influences on the Gracchi, see Cl. Nicolet, ‘L'inspiration de Tiberius Gracchus’, REA LXVII (1965), 142 ff.

32 Florus II, 1.

33 Garnsey, Gallant and Rathbone, art. cit. (n. 9 above); for the new texts see C. J. Gallis, Arch. Delt. 31 (1976, publ. 1984), B 1 (Chronika), 176–8, with pl. 127.

34 Kramolisch, H., Demetrias II: Die Strategen des thessalischen Bundes vom Jahr 196 v. Chr. bis zum Ausgang der römischen Republik (1978), 61–77Google Scholar.

35 These considerations go against the identification with Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos, consul in 98 and thus with Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos, consul in 98 and thus aedile by 104, suggested by Manganaro, G., ‘Ancora sulle rivolte “servili” in Sicilia’, Chiron 13 (1983), 405–9Google Scholar.

36 cf. Inscr. Delos 1526 = OGIS 135, with Fraser, P. M., Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972), 1, 122 (n. 242) 155Google Scholar.