Plutarch, a Greek writer of the early Roman Empire, wrote Parallel Lives: paired biographies of Greeks and Romans that weigh character as much as events. This life is Tiberius Gracchus, set in the Roman Republic — Rome run by a senate and elected officials, not a king — in Italy in the second century BC. Plutarch pairs him with Agis of Sparta, another young reformer who thought the old constitution could still be used.

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, grandson of the general who beat Hannibal, saw Italy filling with slaves and emptying of free farmers. As tribune of the people — a magistrate with a veto, protected by law from harm — he pushed a land bill to take public fields back from the great estates. He deposed a colleague who blocked him and seized a king's bequest for the people. Senators beat him to death on the Capitol with broken benches. Three hundred of his supporters were dumped in the Tiber. The tribunate would never again be a quiet office.