WI: More Gracchus style Roman Land Reform succeeds

Many argue the conduct of the Senate OTL towards the Gracchus brothers and their attempts to reform marked the decline of Rome as a Republic by the 2nd B.C.E. Their attempts at reform draw the closest comparison I can think of to the US Homestead Act, in its principle of giving at least.:eek:

So somehow Tiberius, Gaius Gracchus or both push many of the patricians to give up portions of holdings throughout the empire and grant them to subsidized and/or tax exempt for a time being citizens to settle as farmers. One thing to consider is how in the world this could happen, perhaps if they got enough of the tribune and publicans (regional governor and tax collectors) with the duty to call upon legions to turn on the senate, as well as by threat of civil insurrection from the plebeians, the patricians relent.

What many don't seem to cover here in any Roman TL is how the post Carthage Roman Empire basically became a slave run economy, since patricians, and publicans to a lesser extent, bought up much of the fertile land within the empire setting up latifundia (plantations) in where not only slaves did much of the hard labor but also transported, and did business transactions on behalf of their masters. Even a highly subsidized farm working plebeians would have a tough time competing with the scale the patricians built up, especially if they could not afford slaves themselves.:(

So do you think the kind of reform the Gracchus brothers proposed as their max intent is ultimately futile even if it succeeded to pass or would it be able to hold out long enough to spur innovation from the citizenry to the effect of creating a Roman cotton gin?:rolleyes: Regardless, its success would still have large repercussions regarding how future rulers in the region were able to treat property and eminent domain. Any other thoughts?
 
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Good question. How about if the Gracchi realise how difficult it will be to get the reforms through and so decide on a more cautious approach? After all the reforms were desperately badly needed by that point and the land reform problem would only get worse.
 
It would be very hard

Good question. How about if the Gracchi realise how difficult it will be to get the reforms through and so decide on a more cautious approach? After all the reforms were desperately badly needed by that point and the land reform problem would only get worse.

According to one article I read, on what some may consider a questionable source, Gaius did manage to go about taking patritians pieces of property in a kind of limited and underhanded way before he was killed along with his supporters.

The problem was that many with the authority or ability seemed to comfy with their positions to really put up any sign of resistence to those patritians that wanted to keep growing the status quo. In a way the rise of Caesar to a permanent position seemed to be a reaction or initially considered great by many plebians because of this. Many publicans didn't seem to care either as the first emperor Julius was one of them anyway.

That is why if the either of the Gracchus had more support and took more a practical perogative for legionaire support (such as adopting a war veteran's first policy) for populist generals such as Gaius Marius, who ended up and failed at passing similar reforms anyway as consul, the senate would have been pressured to abide by them. Of course that meant bringing Rome to the brink of all out sectarian violence that no publican was intent on bringing.
 
The problem was that the Roman Republic was a plutocracy, and the Senate included the richest landholders. Trying to get the Roman Senate to agree to land reform would be like trying to get the Confederate government to support emancipation. They would have to give up their ideology and their power.
 
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