The soldier without two acres
Tiberius’s speech survives in Plutarch: "The wild beasts of Italy have their dens, but the men who fight and die for Italy have only air and light. Homeless, they wander with their wives and children. They are called masters of the world, and have not a clod of earth of their own." The Roman legions drew their recruits from propertied farmers, and land concentration was hollowing out that pool — his reform was less charity than a rescue of the army system. The senators were not failing to understand; the estates simply happened to be theirs.
The first drop of blood
On election day a rumor spread: "Tiberius means to make himself king." The chief priest Nasica cried, "Let those who would save the Republic follow me," and the senators hitched up their togas and rushed toward the Capitol, breaking benches for clubs. In the melee Tiberius was beaten to death, and that night his body and his supporters’ were thrown into the river, with even burial forbidden. Looking back, Romans of Livy’s age dated the Republic’s onset of illness to that day: once one side found it could solve a political problem by killing without punishment, the other side would sooner or later answer with an army.