Who were the Gracchus Brothers from the Roman Republic?
The Gracchi were dead before Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Julius Caesar were born. They were a generation ahead of Gaius Marius. The Gracchi were two brothers who felt that the Roman Republic was treating its citizens poorly, and sought election in an effort to enact legislation that would broaden the franchise and protect the plebians from debt slavery and other social evils. Both were killed by their conservative political opponents. In the next generation Gaius Marius, an outsider in Roman political terms as he had no ancestors who had ever held office, led the legions to a series of stunning victories over the German tribes who had previously massacred all the armies Rome had sent against them, thereby becoming such a national hero that he was elected consul an unprecedented number of times. He was a bit of a reformer in the political sense, particularly in the matter of army recruitment and rewarding the veterans wuth grants of public land. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who
