Transgressions of religious norms and the processes of
social interaction in which they are treated as Deviance can best be observed
in situations of crisis - this thesis of the sociologist Kai Erikson goes back
to his (quantitative) assumption that phases of social uncertainty are show an increased
amount of deviance. For the last nearly one hundred years of the Roman Republic
- an epoch that as “Late Republic” or “crisis of the Republic” has long been
connected to the decline of a political system - this can easily be confirmed: the
contemporaries themselves explained the political- and social dysfunctions with
violations against or neglect of religion.
This part of my
dissertation is the qualifying interactionist study of a discourse of religious
deviance associated with the event which supposedly triggered the phase of
decline of the Republic: the violent death of the tribune of the plebs and
social reformer Ti(berius) Sempronius Gracchus in the year 133 B.C. If, at
first glance, the religious component seems to be evident in the sacrosanctitas
which made the tribune inviolable in a sacred way, the discourse nevertheless developed
in much more complex ways. The legal reaction had a clear direction and is
negligible: it was considered not to be an unlawful act and trials were rather
carried against the followers of Gracchus. Nevertheless, the topic remained a
long-term issue and was perpetuated by other cases of murdered tribunes, and
involved further questions such as the Senate's authority to claim extralegal
and religious interpretations. In short: this tribunicide-discourse was firmly
linked to the political developments of the Republic and developed enormous
exemplary effectiveness. Although it has always been highly political, the
complex political background will only be dealt with insofar it is necessary
for the direct understanding of the actors and their positions.
In the first part, a
research question (also of relevance to the history of scholarship) is taken
up: The "correspondence" of Ernst Badian and Jerzy Linderski, who
have considered the circumstances of Ti Gracchus’ death from the view of sacral
law, has to be seen as symptomatic for the legalistic approach to the subject
and highlights what is NOT in the interest of this paper. The question of the
pro-Gracchian view, which is underrepresented in the sources, is discussed in
this chapter only with regard to the literary agency of the younger brother of
Tiberius, C(aius) Gracchus. The following chapter is devoted to the
conspicuously irreligious tradition of Cicero, which according to the thesis is
due to the dominance of the pro-Gracchian religious interpretation. For this
reason Cicero is hardly mentioned as a participant in the "negotiation"
of the tribunicide in this chapter. The focus is on those who are directly
involved, such as Ti. Gracchus, his murderer Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio
and C. Gracchus, who act as claim-makers with different audiences (Plebs,
Senate, each other) in order to present and embody their religious interpretations. However, some
of the most informative sources (above all Appian and Plutarch, both Greek) are
from the advanced imperial period. They can no longer be treated under the same
conditions as the republican sources. On the one hand, their authors must, of
course, be regarded as part of the discursive development of the tribunicide
but because of the temporal and cultural distance to their historical content,
they are also understood as recipients and interpreters who were confronted with
complex, contradictory material and whose doubts and reflected observations can
tell us a lot about how Roman constructions of religious norm and deviance
worked.
The purpose of this
chapter is not to elaborate a discourse chronologically or analyse the
religious reception on the Gracchi, but to treat the tribunicide for a better
understanding of 1. the social interaction processes in which religious
transgressions can be negotiated and deviance can arise, 2. the participants
which advance prejudices but also definitions or religious deviance and must continually wager their prestige, their claim
to religious-moral integrity, and 3. their appropriation of (sometimes innovative)
modes to represent their own claims or to make accusations, to imbue their role
as a claim-maker with religious capital and to contribute to their own social
distinction - even through their own religious transgressions.
