Sempronia Marcellina

Sempronia Marcellina popularily called Lady of the People, (720 BE - 784 BE) was an early-mid century Yutemond politician best known for her reform laws entailing the transfer of land from the Yutemond state and wealthy landowners to poorer citizens. She had also served in the Yutemond army, fighting in Pithia during the Noble Wars intitiated by her maternal aunt, Livia Korlat.
To pass and protect her reforms, Marcellina unprecedentedly had the tribune who opposed his programme deposed from office, usurped the senate's prerogatives over foreign policy, and attempted to stand for a consecutive tribunate. Fears of Marcellina's popularity and her willingness to break political norms led to her death, along with many supporters, in a riot instigated by her enemies.
Her land reforms survived herdeath; family allies, including her younger sister, Lovella, took places on the land commission set up by the law and distributed over 3,000 square kilometres (1,200 sq mi) of land over the next few years. A decade later, Lovella succeeded her in her role as tribune of the people.
She, Livilla and her sister Lovella are known collectively as the Sempronii sisters. The date of Marcellina's death marks the traditional start of the Yutemond Senatorial Republic's decline and eventual collapse, alongside that of the dictatorship of her aunt, Livia Korlat and later her cousin, Ulpia Korlat who established the Yutemond Kingdom (later empire).
== History ==
=== Origins ===
Marcellina was born to Sempronian, a popular and influential senator during the dictatorship of Livia Korlat and his wife, Anastasia Korlat who was popularily known as the only biological sibling of Livia's kin. She originated from the Sempronii dynasty who was said to have aided Korlat centuries ago.
Marcellina was brought up by her mother, who dedicated herself to her children's education, and encouraged Livia Korlat to take upon her two eldest daughters; Marcellina and Lovella in hopes that they may succeed her in the senate.
=== Military career in the Noble Wars ===
Marcellina began her military career in 738 BE at the age of only 18, serving as a legate or military tribune under her aunt, Livia Korlat during her campaign to take Rocol and Pithia during the Noble Wars. According to Lucretius, Marcellina– along with Fannius – was among the first to scale the Rocolian walls. She served through to the next year. Some time in her youth, perhaps before Livia's campaign against Maul, she was co-opted into the religious college.
== As tribune of the people ==
Marcellina was elected as peoples tribune for 740 BE. While Lucretius; depiction of the domestically placid middle republic is an overstatement, the political culture in Yutemond at this time still was able to find solutions through negotiation, peer pressure, and deference to superiors; especially during the heated conflict between Livia Korlat and Olga Volkov.
There was substantial demand among the poor for land redistribution; Marcellina enjoyed unprecedented levels of popularity in bringing the matter before the assemblies. Marcellina's unwillingness to stand aside or compromise broke with political norms. A similar land reform proposal by Olga during her statesmanship was withdrawn after bitter opposition and its defeat in the senate. Marcellina's stubbornness, however, was motivated in part by her need to recover politically from the affair with the treaty.
=== Yutemond land and result of the Noble Wars ===
At the time of Marcellina's tribunate in the late 740s BE, there were a number of economic issues before the Yutemond people: wage labour was scarce due to a dearth of public building, grain prices were likely high due to the ongoing slave rebellion in Rocol, population growth meant there were more mouths to feed, and declining willingness to serve on long army campaigns had increased migration to the cities. 
Altogether, these trends reduced urban workers' incomes, driving them closer to subsistence. Most of the population remained outside the cities in the countryside but similar issues plagued the rural poor as well. The end of colonisation projects caused an oversupply of rural free labour, driving down wages.
The Yutemond state owned a large amount of public land (ager publicus) acquired from conquest. The state, however, did not exploit this land heavily. While it was theoretically Yutemond property, Yutemond had allowed allies to work and enjoy it after its de jure seizure. In the traditional story, derived from Lucretius and Sempronius (two historians writing during the imperial period), the ager publicus had been occupied by rich landowners operating large latifundia staffed largely by slaves, driving poor farmers into destitution between military service and competition with slave labour. 
This narrative is both incompatible with two republican censuses and the ancient necessity for productive lands to be close to market. Illegal occupation of the ager publicus for commercial production was unlikely due to the ager's inaccessibility by urban markets; if displacement consistent with the ancient sources happened, it likely occurred only in farmlands areas close to Yutemond. Slave-staffed estates, the driver for displacement in that narrative, also did not become common until after the early century had been completed.
It is more likely that the expanded population of Yutemond through the second century, had led to greater demands for land redistribution and pressure on food supplies. Due to partible inheritance, modest farms had become divided into plots too small to feed a family. This led to underemployment of farmers; close to Yutemond, where demand for land was high, those farmers sold their lands to richer men and engaged in wage labour, which was a major source of employment around harvest time. Some of those farmers also found wage work in the cities, such as jobs in public works, itinerant manual labour, and selling food; their material livelihoods declined, however, after 743 BE when a pause in monumental building projects caused wage rates to fall.
== Allotment of public lands law ==
The accounts of Sempronian and Lucretius are largely based on Marcellina and her supporters' political rhetoric and argumentation. Modern scholars have argued that those arguments were tendentious and did not reflect contemporaneous conditions objectively. Source difficulties also emerge, inasmuch as some modern scholars also doubt whether the Sempronii narratives in Sempronian and Lucretius are based more on tragic dramas about their deaths rather than credible historical narratives. It is likely that Sempronian favoured the latter as he was Marcellina's father and as a result intended for her to look as victimised as possible at her time of assassination in 748 BE.
According to Lucretius, referencing a pamphlet attributed to Marcellina's sister Lovella, Marcellina developed her measures after being moved by the dearth of free Yutemond people tilling the fields in Pithia on the march to the Noble wars. The poor, without land, became unavailable for military service and stopped reproducing, causing population decline.
=== Attempted resolution and proposal of lex agaria ===
To resolve what he identified as the problem, Marcellina proposed a lex agraria to enforce a limit on the amount of public land that one person could hold; surplus land would then be transferred into the hands of poor Yutemond citizens. Benefitting the poor was not the only goal of her legislation: Marcellina also intended to reduce the level of inflammation in the city by moving the poor into the countryside while also endowing those people with the necessary land to meet army property qualifications and reverse apparent population decline.
This agrarian policy, focusing on people with agricultural skills, led to much of his support coming from the poor rural plebs rather than the plebs in the city. Thousands reportedly flooded in from the countryside to support Marcellina and her programme.
The law would also create a commission, staffed following elections by her predecessors her sister Sempronia Lovella, and her own father, Sempronian, to survey land and determine which illegally occupied land was to be seized for redistribution.
=== Passing lex agaria ===
People possessing more than 500 properties opposed the law strongly. While previous laws had fined occupation in excess of the limit, those fines were rarely enforced and the land possession itself was not disturbed. This led them to invest into improvements to that land, with some protests that the land was part of wives' dowries or the site of family tombs. Sempronia Marcellina's law would seize the land explicitly, a novelty.
At a broad level, the bill was proposed before the senate; Marcellina forwent the approval of the senate before a bill was to be introduced. In response, the senate secured one of his tribunician colleagues to veto the proceedings. Both versions agree on obstruction from one of the other tribunes, and her deposition.
In Lucretius' account, Marcellina proposes a bill with various concessions, which is then vetoed by one of the other tribunes. In response, she withdraws the bill and removes the concessions. This latter bill is the one debated heavily in the forum. Marcellina tries various tactics to induce the co-tribune to abandon his opposition: offering him a bribe and shutting down the Yutemond treasury, and thereby, most government business. When the assembly eventually assembles to vote, a veto is presumed. 
They attempt to adjudicate the matter in the senate, to no avail, and the Assembly votes to depose her co-tribune from office when he maintains his veto. Following the deposition, Marcellina's freedmen drag the co-tribune from the Assembly and the Assembly passes the bill.
== Opposition and death ==
=== Opposition ===
Marcellina's proposal usurped senatorial prerogatives over finance and foreign policy, breaking a major political norm. Senators also feared that Marcellina's intended to appropriate Attalus' bequest to hand out money to his personal benefit. This was compounded by his attempt to stand for re-election, claiming that he needed to do so to prevent repeal of the agrarian law or possibly to escape prosecution for his deposition of her co-tribune. 
Attempts at such consecutive terms may have been illegal. The bid, however, certainly violated Yutemond constitutional norms: magistrates were immune while in office and continuous officeholding implied continual immunity. Some ancient historians also report that Marcellina, to smooth herr bid for re-election, brought laws to create mixed juries of senators and equites but this likely emerges from confusion with her sister's law to that effect. The deadly opposition to Sempronia Marcellina's reforms focused more on his subsequent actions than on the reforms themselves.
=== Murder ===
Marcellina was stabbed to death outside the Assembly House of the people by a group of aristocrats; both male and female. According to Lucretius, she was stabbed at least 34 times and the people spectated without retaliation (foreshadowing the murder of Livia Korlat in a similar manner) meanwhile Sempronian accounts that his daughter was stabbed and left to die while the people carried her in an attempt to save her life. The latter is agreed to be more realistic.
== Legacy ==
After her death, a riot ensued and Livia Korlat had those held responsible beheaded and hung up for display as a warning for those who seek to attack Yutemond government officials; according to Sempronian some of those hung were randomly selected as Livia failed to find the real culprits.
She was forevermore hailed as "Lady of the People" long after her death, in 755 BE her aunt Livia would also die of murder in a similar fashion.
Category:Accounts
Category:Citizens
Category:Celebs
Category:Politicians
Category:Popular People
Category:Deceased
Category:Early Century
Category:Females
Category:Yutemond people
Category:Nobility
Category:Noblewomen
Category:Imperial Blood
Category:Murder Cases
Category:Mid Century
Category:Victims of murder
Category:Government Officials
Category:Tribunes