No boundaries created more hostility than those between Rome’s ager publicus and land owned by her Italian Allies. It was nearly impossible to disentangle ager publicus held by the Senate and People of Rome from ager publicus held by an Allied city. No less than their Roman counterparts, wealthy Italians had absorbed public land onto their estates while poor shepherds relied on public land to graze their flocks. The arrival of these Roman land commissioners looking to confiscate property threatened everyone’s livelihoods, but without the ability to stand for themselves in a Roman judicial proceeding, the Italians needed a Roman patron to protect their interests. They found a champion in Scipio Aemilianus, now taking the stage for the final public act of his long and storied career.44
Aemilianus’s reasons for entering the fray on behalf of the Italians were varied and not wholly magnanimous. First, it would boost his own prestige enormously. His aristocratic disdain for the fate of Tiberius had estranged him from the populace of Rome, so he now positioned himself to broaden his base of political support. Second, by pushing back against the land commission, Aemilianus hoped to reconcile with his colleagues in the Senate. He had spent his life thumbing his nose at their traditions, but Aemilianus would earn back much goodwill if he killed the despised land commission. Finally, there may have been a collective desire on the part of the Senate to at least appear to take the complaints of the Italians seriously. Full integration of Italy was not what the Senate desired, but by positioning themselves as sympathetic to the Italians, they might buy enough support to permanently avoid calls for more drastic reform.45
In 129, Aemilianus delivered a speech in the Senate arguing that the commissioners were violating treaties, and that because borders with Allied land was a matter of foreign policy and not domestic affairs, disputes between the commission and the Italians should be arbitrated by a consul. The Senate agreed and passed a decree supporting Aemilianus’s recommendation. This decree did not have the literal force of law, but now that the land commission was run by three relatively junior politicians, the weight of the Senate’s opinion prevailed. But by now nearly all available land bordered Italian property, so the senatorial decree brought the work of the land commission to a grinding halt. The commission was not formally abolished, but its ability to act was fatally curtailed.46
Aemilianus then moved the debate into the Forum where he held forth in front of the crowds, laying the groundwork for either significantly amending, or outright repealing, the
After his friends saw him safely home, Aemilianus told them that he planned to spend the evening working on a major speech that he would deliver the following day. But the next morning Aemilianus failed to emerge from his house. Concerned friends soon found his lifeless body in his bed. Only fifty-six years old and still in the prime of his political life, Scipio Aemilianus was dead.48
Given the atmosphere that surrounded his sudden death it would have been impossible not to suspect foul play, and over the years the list of suspects has included the entire Gracchi family: Gaius, his sister Sempronia, and their mother Cornelia Africana. All three had good reason to now consider their erstwhile kin an enemy. But also suspected were the two other land commissioners Flaccus and Carbo—both of whom had clashed with Aemilianus in the past. But for whatever reason, the Senate did not care to pry too deeply into the affair: “Great man though [Aemilianus] was, no inquest was held concerning the manner of his death.” It may well be that Aemilianus’s death was natural and that the timing of his demise mere coincidence. We will never know.49
