Anyone who knew the Gracchi family personally knew Saturninus was spinning a transparent fiction. Sempronia—the Gracchi’s still-living sister—refused to receive this alleged nephew, whom she had never met. But this was an age when a lie was not a lie if a man had the audacity to keep asserting the lie was true. For Saturninus the only thing that mattered was planting a seed in the minds of potential supporters that a son of the Gracchi sat in Saturninus’s inner circle.4
But the presentation of this lost Gracchi was also a trap for Saturninus’s optimate enemies, especially Metellus Numidicus. After being stripped of the Numidian command Metellus had returned to Rome and spent the next five years registering his disapproval of all populare measures. But though his name was sneered at in the streets, Metellus still commanded a large following, and his reputation among his fellow optimates was unimpeachable. So in the same election for 102 BC that returned Marius to his third consecutive consulship, Metellus was elected censor. The sudden appearance of “Tiberius Gracchus the Younger” shortly after Metellus entered office cannot have been a coincidence.5
The principal job of the censor was to maintain the citizen rolls, and Metellus predictably refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Gracchan imposter, setting off a firestorm in the streets. Then Metellus went even further: accusing Saturninus and Glaucia of crimes against the public morality, he announced his intention to expel both from the Senate. In no time, Saturninus and Glaucia organized a mob to protest Metellus’s conduct. The proud Metellus tried to stand firm against this angry rabble but was eventually forced to take refuge in a temple on the Capitoline Hill to escape the insults and bricks spewing from the crowd. After the mob dispersed, Metellus’s cousin and fellow censor convinced him to stop flagrantly poking the hornet’s nest and leave Saturninus and Glaucia in the Senate. But despite this concession, both censors refused to recognize Tiberius Gracchus the Younger. But that hardly mattered—the damage was done.6
Shortly after this incident, emissaries representing King Mithridates of Pontus arrived in Rome. Pontus was a far-off kingdom on the Black Sea coast, and Mithridates had recently slit the throat of the king of neighboring Cappadocia and placed his son on the throne. The Pontic envoys requested the Senate recognize the transfer of power. As would befit a delegation of this kind, the Pontic ambassadors arrived in Rome loaded with gifts, and Saturninus was able to revive that old antisenatorial theme of elite corruption by foreign powers. Reminding everyone of Jugurtha’s scandalous bribes, Saturninus lambasted both the Senate and the Pontic ambassadors for corruption and tried to physically intimidate the ambassadors into leaving the city.7
The physical intimidation was too much for the Senate to bear, and Saturninus was brought up on charges of violating the sanctity of a foreign embassy. Facing a capital charge, Saturninus used exaggerated theatrics to mobilize sympathy in the streets. “Throwing off his rich apparel, putting on poor and sordid clothes, and allowing his beard to grow, he ran up and down to the tumultuous throngs of people throughout the city… begging with tears that they would assist him in his present calamities.” Saturninus claimed the charges were trumped up and he was really being prosecuted for “the good will he bore the people.” When the day of the trial finally arrived, an angry mob packed the Assembly, making it difficult—even unsafe—to continue. Saturninus was released before the trial even began.8
The Gracchi are often pointed to as the arch-masterminds of mob tactics and unscrupulous populist politics. But their activities had mostly been driven by a genuine desire to reform the Republic. The violence that surrounded their lives came unexpectedly, without prior forethought, and was an unwelcome intrusion. Saturninus, on the other hand, was the first to show the demagogues of the future generations just how far cynically manipulated mob violence could push a man’s career forward. And Saturninus was only getting started—his powerful new political ally, Gaius Marius, was about to return home in complete triumph.
