The decade preceding the war with the Allobroges and the Arverni witnessed the shameful and bloody episodes of the rise and fall of the Gracchi and their efforts to reform landownership. Abuses in the management of the ager publicus – lands confiscated from Italian or foreign peoples as bounty of war – had resulted in blatant disregard for the Lex Licinia Sextia Agraria of 386 A.U.C which stipulated that citizens could possess and exploit no more than 500 iugera* of public lands. In fact, an élite minority possessed easily ten times the allowed 500 iugera, leaving many former legionaries and poor Roman citizens without property and virtually homeless. To refresh the memory of those who have forgotten :

In 621 A.U.C Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was elected tribune of the plebs for the first time. He earned the enmity of the privileged landowning few, and virtually the whole order of senators, for his attempts to implement agrarian reforms. Fed up with large-scale agrarian irregularities, he passed the Lex Sempronia Agraria hoping to redress the situation by compelling the wealthier families to relinquish their excess properties. The motions alienated the senators from Tiberius. In an illegal attempt to exercise the office of tribune for a second consecutive year, Tiberius pushed one of his own cousins, Publius Scipio Nasica, and other opponents, into making a call to arms against the reformers. In the ensuing riot, Tiberius was murdered on the slopes of the Capitoline Hill.

There followed a short period of respite from civil unrest, but the plight of the poor remained the same, and the privileged upper crust held on to their enormous properties farmed usually by slaves and not free citizens. The dream to alleviate the suffering of Rome’s poor by a more equitable distribution of land was taken up by Tiberius’ younger brother Gaius. In 630 A.U.C, Gaius was elected tribune of the plebs. The cause of reforming landownership had a new champion.

The political scene in Rome grew more and more agitated. Gaius succeeded in obtaining the office of tribune for a second consecutive year, still an illegality. He won over the order of equites with reforms in the judiciary system (Lex Calpurnia) and the handling of monies accrued from the legacy of Attalus III who had bequeathed his kingdom to Rome in 621. In 632 he ran for office for a third time, but lost. The fall from power of Gaius prompted the consuls Quintus Fabius Maximus (the soon-to-be Allobrogicus) and Lucius Opimius to start dismantling the reforms engineered by the former tribune. Some months later, after a short sojourn in the province of Proconsular Africa, Gaius Gracchus rallied his supporters to revolt. He was declared an enemy of the Republic. It was a sentence of death. He escaped to the other side of the Tiber, to the Grove of Furrina,** where he had one of his slaves help him end his life, while thousands of his supporters were massacred by Opimius’ mob.

It was a dark hour for Rome. Although the Gracchi were no more, the plight of the poor could not go on being ignored. The landowners however refused to let go of their privileges and properties. In the hopes of restoring peace and preventing the rise of a successor to the Gracchi, a few senators hatched a plot to ease the pressure for reform.

*I.e. approximately 310 acres.
**Plutarch erroneously says Grove of the Furies.