In Our Time: The Gracchi

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, whose names are entwined with the end of Rome's Republic and the rise of the Roman Emperors. As tribunes, they brought popular reforms to the Roman Republic at the end of the Second Century BC. However, elite rivals saw the reforms as such a threat that they had the brothers killed. An increase in political violence destabilised the Republic, forever tying the Gracchi to the question of why Rome's Republic gave way to the Rome of Emperors