Further Inspiration for Tiberius Gracchus?

Abstract

The force of example is nowhere greater than in the adaptation of institutions observed abroad and modified for local conditions. Is it not possible, that in addition to his Stoic mentors, in addition to the radical ideals of Agis and Cleomenes, Tiberius Gracchus may have had the practical inspiration of a contemporary system of land settlement before him? It is my suggestion that Ptolemaic Egypt offered Roman agrarian reforms in the second century B.C. an example worthy of imitation, either in part or whole, and that such nobiles as M. Aemilius Lepidus, Laelius, Aemilianus and, not least, Tiberius Gracchus himself were attracted by the way the Ptolemies ran the rural sector of their economy.