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This article seems to be overwhelingly about Tiberius Gracchus. Perhaps that content should be moved to that page, and any other Gracchi might be mentioned here? -- Brion VIBBER
This article is missing the meat of the story, which is that both Gracchi were murdered by the Senate, becoming some sort of "martyrs of the people", like Malcolm X, or something. Also that bit at the end about thugs is definitely not NPOV. Lemme dig up my books and I'll add to this. Graft 17:07 Aug 8, 2002 (PDT)
Surely it's not possible to be both noble and plebeian? Isn't noble just a synonym for Patrician, or am I mistaken?-- Alun 10:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it was possible to be noble and plebeian - many of the top noble families were. Exactly who the nobles are is open to some speculation (but see Brunt, PA 1982 'Nobilitas and Novitas' JHS 72 p1.17 for a brief summary of some positions). I suspect most believe that nobles were those who could count a consul among their ancestors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.10.121.2 ( talk) 08:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
This is how it was taught to me by my professor of ancient Roman history: the term 'nobilitas' denotes a mixture of patricians (i.e. descendants of Rome's earliest inhabitants, making up its upper class) and plebeians (= descendants of later immigrants), who, after plebeians were allowed to stand for the consulate (367 BC: the leges Liciniae), were incorporated into the senatorial order, which was originally all-patrician. Old patricians (patres) and new senators (conscripti) made up what became known as the 'nobilitas'. So, yes, you could be plebeian and noble at the same time. 'Noble' and 'patrician' aren't synonyms. (Stefan van den Broeck) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.201.241.142 ( talk) 13:23, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Have just made a moderately large edit to expand the article. I moved some of the original writing about a bit to keep it coherent. Some changes I’ve made are to make it more clear that the reforms were focussed on economic conditions, not so much at the army. And to make it a little clearer that Equestrians were not an altogether separate class from senators. Ive taken out the mention of Gaius committing suicide as Ive never seen that in any of the sources, and it contradicts what was already written in the lede. FeydHuxtable ( talk) 10:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
This article seems to present a somewhat romanticized view of the Gracchi. Not only did Tiberius Gracchus claim that a tribune who opposed the will of the people was no tribune at all, he brought a bill to have said tribune, Octavius, to be voted out of office in an unconstitutional action. And Gaius' attempts to curry the favor of not only the people but also of foreigners by attempting to grant citizenship to the Latins make it seem like he could very well have been gathering allies for war. Furthermore, it cannot be assumed that just because a politician courts the good will of the people his intentions are pure. To cite the goal of the two as the same and clear-cut is overly simple, I think. It was a very common practice in the late republic to court the support of the people to increase one's own power, as Julius Caesar did. On that note, footnote 1 as well as the sentence in which it is referenced seem to be lacking in sources. 132.161.244.108 ( talk) 04:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
I removed the Stobart material because it seemed impertinent and came from an old secondary source. Given that it's been reverted I'll mostly keep it, as it's fairly harmless. But the part about the Gracchi being taught "democratic views that all the power rightly belongs to the people" is wrong and a clear misinterpretation of what Stobart is saying on p. 77. Somebody seems to have read him a bit too quickly. Catobonus ( talk) 01:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
Please stop mentioning that the Gracchi were patricians. They were not. This makes the article self-contradictory and misleading. It would be incredible indeed if the most famous tribunes were patricians. Catobonus ( talk) 13:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
@ Quuxplusone: What is the justification for your revert at https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Gracchi&diff=1072468563&oldid=1072288182 ? There are major problems with the previous article. Among other things, it creates a far more cohesive narrative between the two brothers than is supportable by modern sources (the nature of land reform being especially drawn together even though that does not reflect things well). Ifly6 ( talk) 03:09, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Gracchi is basically the entire branch of the family. If the vast majority of the article is about the brothers (with only minimal no discussion of other people in the family), a clearer organisation would be to split to Gracchi brothers and leave
Gracchi as a stub. It doesn't seem this was considered in the past, the
redirect from Gracchi brothers was created ab initio as a redirect.
Ifly6 (
talk)
03:12, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
What purpose does citing Oswald Spengler -- a fascist whose work inspired the Nazis -- in this article serve? The theory itself has very little to add to an understanding of the Gracchi beyond the author's speculations about human nature, and this is not exactly an instance where a person's political views are separate from their work. If this were part of a discussion of the reception of the Gracchi in later thought, or their political influence on the 20th century it would make sense to mention him, however it is in a section titled "Reasons for Failure", which a reader would expect to lay out an impartial account of events, and presented alongside professional modern historians. To be honest this whole section existing as a compilation of opinions in the middle of a page that's otherwise recounting historical events is a little odd, as is the use of the term "failure" in such a general sense. Menziesii ( talk) 16:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
[My book] is, in the main, frankly a derivative history intended for readers who are not specialists. The book received basically no academic reviews (or I cannot find them). The opinion sourced here, that C Gracchus was influenced by Greek political philosophy on popular sovereignty, is also rejected in more recent scholarship. I removed Stobart in my original rewrite of this article that was reverted without comment or explanation. The book adds nothing that could not be found elsewhere in a better source and is regardless obsolete. Ifly6 ( talk) 20:03, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@ Grnrchst: you placed a citation-needed tag after "Scholars today view these socialist comparisons as unapt", the last sentence of the lead, with the edit comment "Tagged claims of "proto-socialism" as needing citations". On the face of it, that suggests you too regard these socialist comparisons as dubious, but are you in fact saying that "view ... as unapt" needs supporting? Alternatively, it's the previous statement that "They were also portrayed inaccurately as social revolutionaries and proto-socialists during the French Revolution and afterwards" for which you're seeking citations, perhaps for them having been so portrayed or perhaps for that being inaccurate. Please can you clarify?
(There are citations in Gracchi brothers#Modern reception; maybe you'd like to say which you think need repeating in the lead.) NebY ( talk) 09:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
"Early modern perspectives wrongly stressed the nature of the agrarian reforms as a kind of proto-socialism."So I think while parts of the tagged paragraph could be kept (like their influence on French revolutionaries like Babeuf), I'm wondering where their association with proto-socialism is coming from, when I can't see any sources for that. It's less that I find the claims of proto-socialism dubious, more that I'm asking for sources on their characterisation (or mis-characterisation) as such. -- Grnrchst ( talk) 10:04, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Their policies have been mischaracterised as socialistthen with a short description. Speaking more personally, I know of people (in person and on the Internet) who think the Gracchi were socialists. Ifly6 ( talk) 18:45, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
mischaracterisationor
inaccurateseems a reasonable paraphrase. Second, WP:OR discusses the non-existence of sources and not their non-presence here. See Note
athereat:
By "exist", the community means that the reliable source must have been published and still exist... even if no source is currently named in the article. Articles that currently name zero references of any type may be fully compliant with this policy...Ifly6 ( talk) 16:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
First, the characterisation as socialist has been disproved; calling it a mischaracterisation or inaccurate seems a reasonable paraphrase.I'm not entirely sure to what portions you are objecting and on what basis. Ifly6 ( talk) 13:40, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
@ Titus Fisher: I reverted portions of your edits. There were a couple of reasons. First, there is no need to change proper spelling to American variants without consensus. This is not an American topic. See WP:ENGVAR for more details. Second, the population of Italy did not fall. Appian and Plutarch's claims thereof are wrong. Editing the portion cited to Roselaar 2010, below, has two problems:
these population reductions while could be connected to a certain extent to the fact that people in the 130s BC skipped the draft to simply stop themselves from being conscripted, some scholars also Argive this reduction in population might also have to do with other reason that were primly connected in reducing a population's number such as famine, increase in death rate and decrease in birthrate.
The first is that it is factually inaccurate. Modern reliable sources, especially after with Rosenstein Rome at war (2004), are very clear that the archaeological evidence points toward the "population reductions" in Appian and Plutarch being fictitious and having no place in reality. This is why the text I wrote emphasises a reported decline: census reported a reduction in the republic's citizen population
. Introducing material which treats the "population reduction" as actual misleads readers. It also is a
WP:CUCKOO edit which miscasts Roselaar 2010, who presents the modern view of no pouplation decline, into being incorrectly equivocal on a matter that is well-settled.
Ifly6 (
talk)
19:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
About 45 years ago I was living in Rome, and I spent the odd day wandering around the ruins of Ostia Antica. One day I was there with a friend who had lived in Rome for many years. We were in the section of the ancient cemetery, and she said, "Look at this." To the left of the pathway was what I can only remember as a sort of a hole that was almost overgrown with surrounding weeds. We knelt down and brushed the greenery aside and looked into it. There was a fairly small stone on which could be read "Gracchus". I don't believe there had been much, if any, excavations in Ostia Antica at that time, and I haven't been back there for many years. I just wonder if anyone else still knows the burial site of one of the Gracchi. 5.80.173.14 ( talk) 08:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
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This article seems to be overwhelingly about Tiberius Gracchus. Perhaps that content should be moved to that page, and any other Gracchi might be mentioned here? -- Brion VIBBER
This article is missing the meat of the story, which is that both Gracchi were murdered by the Senate, becoming some sort of "martyrs of the people", like Malcolm X, or something. Also that bit at the end about thugs is definitely not NPOV. Lemme dig up my books and I'll add to this. Graft 17:07 Aug 8, 2002 (PDT)
Surely it's not possible to be both noble and plebeian? Isn't noble just a synonym for Patrician, or am I mistaken?-- Alun 10:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it was possible to be noble and plebeian - many of the top noble families were. Exactly who the nobles are is open to some speculation (but see Brunt, PA 1982 'Nobilitas and Novitas' JHS 72 p1.17 for a brief summary of some positions). I suspect most believe that nobles were those who could count a consul among their ancestors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.10.121.2 ( talk) 08:51, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
This is how it was taught to me by my professor of ancient Roman history: the term 'nobilitas' denotes a mixture of patricians (i.e. descendants of Rome's earliest inhabitants, making up its upper class) and plebeians (= descendants of later immigrants), who, after plebeians were allowed to stand for the consulate (367 BC: the leges Liciniae), were incorporated into the senatorial order, which was originally all-patrician. Old patricians (patres) and new senators (conscripti) made up what became known as the 'nobilitas'. So, yes, you could be plebeian and noble at the same time. 'Noble' and 'patrician' aren't synonyms. (Stefan van den Broeck) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.201.241.142 ( talk) 13:23, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Have just made a moderately large edit to expand the article. I moved some of the original writing about a bit to keep it coherent. Some changes I’ve made are to make it more clear that the reforms were focussed on economic conditions, not so much at the army. And to make it a little clearer that Equestrians were not an altogether separate class from senators. Ive taken out the mention of Gaius committing suicide as Ive never seen that in any of the sources, and it contradicts what was already written in the lede. FeydHuxtable ( talk) 10:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
This article seems to present a somewhat romanticized view of the Gracchi. Not only did Tiberius Gracchus claim that a tribune who opposed the will of the people was no tribune at all, he brought a bill to have said tribune, Octavius, to be voted out of office in an unconstitutional action. And Gaius' attempts to curry the favor of not only the people but also of foreigners by attempting to grant citizenship to the Latins make it seem like he could very well have been gathering allies for war. Furthermore, it cannot be assumed that just because a politician courts the good will of the people his intentions are pure. To cite the goal of the two as the same and clear-cut is overly simple, I think. It was a very common practice in the late republic to court the support of the people to increase one's own power, as Julius Caesar did. On that note, footnote 1 as well as the sentence in which it is referenced seem to be lacking in sources. 132.161.244.108 ( talk) 04:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
I removed the Stobart material because it seemed impertinent and came from an old secondary source. Given that it's been reverted I'll mostly keep it, as it's fairly harmless. But the part about the Gracchi being taught "democratic views that all the power rightly belongs to the people" is wrong and a clear misinterpretation of what Stobart is saying on p. 77. Somebody seems to have read him a bit too quickly. Catobonus ( talk) 01:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
Please stop mentioning that the Gracchi were patricians. They were not. This makes the article self-contradictory and misleading. It would be incredible indeed if the most famous tribunes were patricians. Catobonus ( talk) 13:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
@ Quuxplusone: What is the justification for your revert at https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Gracchi&diff=1072468563&oldid=1072288182 ? There are major problems with the previous article. Among other things, it creates a far more cohesive narrative between the two brothers than is supportable by modern sources (the nature of land reform being especially drawn together even though that does not reflect things well). Ifly6 ( talk) 03:09, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
Gracchi is basically the entire branch of the family. If the vast majority of the article is about the brothers (with only minimal no discussion of other people in the family), a clearer organisation would be to split to Gracchi brothers and leave
Gracchi as a stub. It doesn't seem this was considered in the past, the
redirect from Gracchi brothers was created ab initio as a redirect.
Ifly6 (
talk)
03:12, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
What purpose does citing Oswald Spengler -- a fascist whose work inspired the Nazis -- in this article serve? The theory itself has very little to add to an understanding of the Gracchi beyond the author's speculations about human nature, and this is not exactly an instance where a person's political views are separate from their work. If this were part of a discussion of the reception of the Gracchi in later thought, or their political influence on the 20th century it would make sense to mention him, however it is in a section titled "Reasons for Failure", which a reader would expect to lay out an impartial account of events, and presented alongside professional modern historians. To be honest this whole section existing as a compilation of opinions in the middle of a page that's otherwise recounting historical events is a little odd, as is the use of the term "failure" in such a general sense. Menziesii ( talk) 16:46, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
[My book] is, in the main, frankly a derivative history intended for readers who are not specialists. The book received basically no academic reviews (or I cannot find them). The opinion sourced here, that C Gracchus was influenced by Greek political philosophy on popular sovereignty, is also rejected in more recent scholarship. I removed Stobart in my original rewrite of this article that was reverted without comment or explanation. The book adds nothing that could not be found elsewhere in a better source and is regardless obsolete. Ifly6 ( talk) 20:03, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@ Grnrchst: you placed a citation-needed tag after "Scholars today view these socialist comparisons as unapt", the last sentence of the lead, with the edit comment "Tagged claims of "proto-socialism" as needing citations". On the face of it, that suggests you too regard these socialist comparisons as dubious, but are you in fact saying that "view ... as unapt" needs supporting? Alternatively, it's the previous statement that "They were also portrayed inaccurately as social revolutionaries and proto-socialists during the French Revolution and afterwards" for which you're seeking citations, perhaps for them having been so portrayed or perhaps for that being inaccurate. Please can you clarify?
(There are citations in Gracchi brothers#Modern reception; maybe you'd like to say which you think need repeating in the lead.) NebY ( talk) 09:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
"Early modern perspectives wrongly stressed the nature of the agrarian reforms as a kind of proto-socialism."So I think while parts of the tagged paragraph could be kept (like their influence on French revolutionaries like Babeuf), I'm wondering where their association with proto-socialism is coming from, when I can't see any sources for that. It's less that I find the claims of proto-socialism dubious, more that I'm asking for sources on their characterisation (or mis-characterisation) as such. -- Grnrchst ( talk) 10:04, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Their policies have been mischaracterised as socialistthen with a short description. Speaking more personally, I know of people (in person and on the Internet) who think the Gracchi were socialists. Ifly6 ( talk) 18:45, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
mischaracterisationor
inaccurateseems a reasonable paraphrase. Second, WP:OR discusses the non-existence of sources and not their non-presence here. See Note
athereat:
By "exist", the community means that the reliable source must have been published and still exist... even if no source is currently named in the article. Articles that currently name zero references of any type may be fully compliant with this policy...Ifly6 ( talk) 16:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
First, the characterisation as socialist has been disproved; calling it a mischaracterisation or inaccurate seems a reasonable paraphrase.I'm not entirely sure to what portions you are objecting and on what basis. Ifly6 ( talk) 13:40, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
@ Titus Fisher: I reverted portions of your edits. There were a couple of reasons. First, there is no need to change proper spelling to American variants without consensus. This is not an American topic. See WP:ENGVAR for more details. Second, the population of Italy did not fall. Appian and Plutarch's claims thereof are wrong. Editing the portion cited to Roselaar 2010, below, has two problems:
these population reductions while could be connected to a certain extent to the fact that people in the 130s BC skipped the draft to simply stop themselves from being conscripted, some scholars also Argive this reduction in population might also have to do with other reason that were primly connected in reducing a population's number such as famine, increase in death rate and decrease in birthrate.
The first is that it is factually inaccurate. Modern reliable sources, especially after with Rosenstein Rome at war (2004), are very clear that the archaeological evidence points toward the "population reductions" in Appian and Plutarch being fictitious and having no place in reality. This is why the text I wrote emphasises a reported decline: census reported a reduction in the republic's citizen population
. Introducing material which treats the "population reduction" as actual misleads readers. It also is a
WP:CUCKOO edit which miscasts Roselaar 2010, who presents the modern view of no pouplation decline, into being incorrectly equivocal on a matter that is well-settled.
Ifly6 (
talk)
19:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
About 45 years ago I was living in Rome, and I spent the odd day wandering around the ruins of Ostia Antica. One day I was there with a friend who had lived in Rome for many years. We were in the section of the ancient cemetery, and she said, "Look at this." To the left of the pathway was what I can only remember as a sort of a hole that was almost overgrown with surrounding weeds. We knelt down and brushed the greenery aside and looked into it. There was a fairly small stone on which could be read "Gracchus". I don't believe there had been much, if any, excavations in Ostia Antica at that time, and I haven't been back there for many years. I just wonder if anyone else still knows the burial site of one of the Gracchi. 5.80.173.14 ( talk) 08:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)