Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

R
OMAN
 V
IRTUES …
Roman plebeian tribune Tiberius Gracchus was clubbed to death in
133 
BC
by Roman senators and his body was thrown unceremoniously
into the Tiber. His murderers were aristocrats like Tiberius himself,
and the assassination was masterminded by his cousin Publius
Cornelius Scipio Nasica. Tiberius Gracchus had an impeccable
aristocratic pedigree as a descendant of some of the more illustrious
leaders of the Roman Republic, including Lucius Aemilius Paullus,
hero of the Illyrian and Second Punic wars, and Scipio Africanus, the
general who defeated Hannibal in the Second Punic War. Why had
the powerful senators of his day, even his cousin, turned against him?
The answer tells us much about the tensions in the Roman Republic
and the causes of its subsequent decline. What pitted Tiberius against
these powerful senators was his willingness to stand against them in a
crucial question of the day: the allocation of land and the rights of
plebeians, common Roman citizens.
By the time of Tiberius Gracchus, Rome was a well-established
republic. Its political institutions and the virtues of Roman citizen-
soldiers—as captured by Jacques-Louis David’s famous painting Oath
of the Horatii, which shows the sons swearing to their fathers that
they will defend the Roman Republic to their death—are still seen by
many historians as the foundation of the republic’s success. Roman
citizens created the republic by overthrowing their king, Lucius
Tarquinius Superbus, known as Tarquin the Proud, around 510 
BC
.
The republic cleverly designed political institutions with many
inclusive elements. It was governed by magistrates elected for a year.
That the office of magistrate was elected, annually, and held by
multiple people at the same time reduced the ability of any one
person to consolidate or exploit his power. The republic’s institutions
contained a system of checks and balances that distributed power
fairly widely. This was so even if not all citizens had equal
representation, as voting was indirect. There was also a large number
of slaves crucial for production in much of Italy, making up perhaps
one-third of the population. Slaves of course had no rights, let alone

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political representation.
All the same, as in Venice, Roman political institutions had
pluralistic elements. The plebeians had their own assembly, which
could elect the plebeian tribune, who had the power to veto actions
by the magistrates, call the Plebeian Assembly, and propose
legislation. It was the plebeians who put Tiberius Gracchus in power
in 133 
BC
. Their power had been forged by “secession,” a form of
strike by plebeians, particularly soldiers, who would withdraw to a
hill outside the city and refuse to cooperate with the magistrates until
their complaints were dealt with. This threat was of course