Alterations on the Constituion by Gaius Gracchus
Distribution of Grain
Change in the Order of Voting

Tiberius Gracchus had come before the burgesses with a single administrative reform.  What Gaius introduced in a series of separate proposals was nothing else than an entirely new constitution; the foundation-stone of which was furnished by the innovation previously carried through, that a tribune of the people should be at liberty to solicit re-election for the following year.(8) While this step enabled the popular chief to acquire a permanent position and one which protected its holder, the next object was to secure for him material power or, in other words, to attach the multitude of the capital—­for that no reliance was to be placed on the country people coming only from time to time to the city, had been sufficiently apparent—­with its interests steadfastly to its leader.  This purpose was served, first of all, by introducing distributions of corn in the capital.  The grain accruing to the state from the provincial tenths had already been frequently given away at nominal prices to the burgesses.(9) Gracchus enacted that every burgess who should personally present himself in the capital should thenceforth be allowed monthly a definite quantity—­ apparently 5 -modii- (1 1/4 bushel)—­from the public stores, at 6 1/3 -asses- (3d.) for the -modius-, or not quite the half of a low average price;(10) for which purpose the public corn-stores were enlarged by the construction of the new Sempronian granaries.  This distribution—­which consequently excluded the burgesses living out of the capital, and could not but attract to Rome the whole mass of the burgess-proletariate—­was designed to bring the burgess-proletariate of the capital, which hitherto had mainly depended on the aristocracy, into dependence on the leaders of the movement-party, and thus to supply the new master of the state at once with a body-guard and with a firm majority in the comitia.  For greater security as regards the latter, moreover, the order of voting still subsisting in the -comitia centuriata-, according to which the five property-classes in each tribe gave their votes one after another,(11) was done away; instead of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously in an order of succession to be fixed on each occasion by lot.  While these enactments were mainly designed to procure for the new chief of the state by means of the city-proletariate the complete command of the capital and thereby of the state, the amplest control over the comitial machinery, and the possibility in case of need of striking terror into the senate and magistrates, the legislator certainly at the same time set himself with earnestness and energy to redress the existing social evils.

Agrarian Laws
Colony of Capua
Transmarine Colonialization