During the mid-second century BC, Rome was enjoying the spoils of war, with slaves, treasure and art pouring into the republic. However, not everyone was reaping the benefit and as the gap widened between the poor and the privileged, resentment was mounting.
Larry traces the journey of Tiberius Gracchus, a man from Rome's elite ruling classes who eventually came to champion the cause of the common citizen farmer. Along the way, Larry literally dives into the world of the rich by snorkelling through the submerged ruins at Baiae. On the seabed he sees for himself how farmed oysters led to the development of the hypocaust, Rome's famous central heating system.
Amid the ruins of a villa at Settefinestra, Larry explains how unbridled greed and the massive slave-run vineyards of the rich threatened the livelihood of smaller citizen farmers, who found themselves landless and forced into a life of poverty and hopelessness in the city. He also visits Rome's only surviving insula – cheap, multi-storey tenement housing where hundreds of poor and dispossessed citizens faced poverty and disease.
Tiberius Gracchus took a remarkable political path to right these wrongs. Pitting himself against the all-powerful Senate, he used his impressive skills as an orator to become Tribune of the People and force through a controversial land reform bill. This triggered a chain of events that led to a violent climax when Rome's senators resorted to murder. It was the first time that Rome's political arena had been stained with blood and, for the Roman Republic, this marked the beginning of the end.