VI – Securing The Reform
A controverse exists in modern historiography: was the gracchian reform a consitutional changing of the rules of politics or a revolutionary event? Both sides of the discussion have good arguments to support their respective theories. The truth is surely in the middle – the reform wasn't very legal: a consul was murdered for attempting to save the state, a dictator was elected under the pressure of arms. But to be a revolution, this event was certainly too marginal. No expropriation or slave liberation occurred (as in later “revolutions”); the society's structure remained as it was before.
The main change was a political one; the power of the senate had to be limited, the situation of the poor citizens to be improved (to conserve the military recruiting pool); the knights had to be given a leading position in the system to support it.
During this search for political stability, Scipio Aemilianus the legitim republican order was restored in Africa; the remaining opposition was crushed by local militias in Sicily and Macedonia and Scipio was allowed to return to Rome as a triumphator.
Meanwhile, the senatorian order, discouraged, feering repressions and aspiring to secure a preeminent place in the new order, abandon open protest against the reform; only a little and intransigent minority of nobiles fled the city and demanded for asylum in Egypt which the king Ptolemy VIII granted benevolently. The most famous of these senators were: Cn. Octavius (a relative of the tribune Octavius), Publius Popillius Laenas (a consul and leader of the oligarchic repressions in OTL), Publius Rupilius and Quintus Pompeius
Overall, the reformist senators, supported by the eminent Scipionic Circle and the middle classes of the Roman society, were the winners of this development: the Gracchus brothers could now publish they definitive reform project enacted by the Senate and the prestigious comitia centuriata in november 620 AUC 1).
2) 133 BC