Scipio Aemilianus, sent as consul to Hispania…

The Syrians again attempt the reconquest of southern Syria in 135, during which Antiochus himself besieges the coastal city of Dor, the name of which has been Hellenized to Dora. (I Maccabees 15:12-13, 25).

Antiochus VII Sidetes personally leads the siege of Jerusalem in 135 BCE/134 BCEwithin a year of Simon’s death.

Aided by the internal dissension among the leaders of Judah, he captures Jerusalem and razes its walls.

Rejecting suggestions to exterminate the Jews, he makes John Hyrcanus his vassal, appointing him high priest and allowing religious autonomy.

According to Josephus, John opens King David's sepulcher and removes three thousand talents, which he pays as tribute to spare the city.

He remains as governor as a Seleucid vassal.

For the next two decades of his reign, Hyrcanus will continue, like his father, to rule semi-autonomously from the Seleucids.

Eunus had been employed by his master when still a slave as an entertainer at symposia, where he would put on a sleight-of-hand magic show that included breathing fire.

During the performance he kept up a patter—thought humorous by his listeners—saying that Sicilian society would experience a role-reversal, in which his aristocratic audience would be killed or enslaved and he would become king.

To those who gave him tips he promised that they would be spared once he came into his kingdom.

During the revolt he does spare the lives of at least some of those individuals.

One of the prophetic predictions of Eunus had been that the rebel slaves would successfully capture Enna, situated in the center of Sicily.

Eunus participates in the storming of the fortress-like city (Diodorus Siculus provides a description of him standing in the front ranks of the assault, blowing fire from his mouth).

Upon the capture of Enna, Eunus is crowned king.

He subsequently takes the name Antiochus, a name used by the Seleucids who rule Syria, and calls his followers, who number around seventy thousand, his Syrians.

Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Minor remains popular, obtaining exemption for a second consulship for 134 and winning the command against Numantia.

Tiberius Gracchus, with the support of his father-in-law, Africanus' rival Appius Claudius Pulcher, is elected tribune for 134 on a platform of redistribution of the land to the poor; upon his election, he sponsors legislation to redistribute public lands held by the rich to poorer citizens.

Opposition from rivals and vested landholding interests, however, forces him into blatant violation of political customs.

Antiochus III the Great had had to give up Asia (today’s Asia Minor, or Anatolia) when the Romans crushed his army at the historic battle of Magnesia, in 190 BCE.

After the Treaty of Apamea (188 BCE), the entire territory had been surrendered to Rome and placed under the control of a client king at Pergamon.

Attalus III, of whose reign little is known, is he son of Eumenes II and nephew of Attalus II Philadelphus, who he had succeeded in 138.

Attalus III is said to have behaved tyrannically at first, but evidently settled down to a quiet and studious life, devoting his time the study of medicine, botany, gardening, and other pursuits.

He dies in 133 without male issue, bequeathing Pergamon to the Roman people.

Rome has always been very reluctant to involve itself in matters to the east, typically relying on allies to arbitrate in the case of a conflict.

Very rarely does Rome send delegations to the east, much less have a strong governmental presence.

This apathy does not change much even after the gift from Attalus, whose motives for this odd, though perhaps realistic bequest, are obscure.

It arouses opposition, led by a pretender named Aristonicus, who is driven by a combination of personal ambition, nationalist resentment, and utopian idealism.

Because the Romans are slow in securing their claim, Aristonicus, who claims to be the illegitimate son of the earlier Pergamene King Eumenes II, fills the power vacuum, claiming the throne and taking the dynastic name Eumenes III.

The Romans establish the city of Valentia Edetanorum on the site of a former Iberian town, by the river Turia.

Situated in eastern Spain about one hundred and ninety miles (three hundred kilometers) southeast of present Madrid in a fertile plain, the new city is cut off from the rest of Spain by the mountainous rim of the Meseta.

About two thousand Roman colonists are settled there in 138 BCE during the rule of consul Decimus Junius Brutus Galaico, who, according to the Roman historian Florus, transferred the soldiers who had fought under him to this province, Edetania.

This is a typically Roman city in its conception, strategically located near the sea on a river island crossed by the Via Augusta, the imperial road which connects the province to Rome, the capital of the empire.

Modern Valencia is today the third largest city in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona.

Tiberius, elected to the office of tribune in 133 BCE, immediately begins pushing for a program of land reform, partly by invoking an old Licinian law that limits the amount of land that could be owned by a single individual.

Using the powers of Lex Hortensia, Tiberius establishes an agrarian commission to oversee the redistribution of land holdings from patricians to peasants.

The commission consists of himself, his father-in-law Appius, and his brother Gaius.

Their post allows them to survey the ager publicus, publicly owned land that Tiberius wants to distribute among veterans of the Punic War.

Another faction in the Senate opposes them, as does the city’s conservative Optimate faction.

Even liberal senators are agitated, fearing their own lands would be confiscated.

Senators arranged for other tribunes to oppose the reforms.

The Senate gives trivial funds to the commission.

However, late in 133 BCE, Attalus III of Pergamon having died and left his entire fortune (including the whole kingdom of Pergamon) to Rome, Tiberius sees his chance and immediately uses his tribunician powers to allocate the fortune to fund the new law.

This is a direct attack on Senatorial power, since it is traditionally responsible for the management of the treasury and for decisions regarding overseas affairs.

The opposition of the Senate to Gracchus increases.

His overruling of the tribunician veto is considered illegal, and his opponents are determined to prosecute him at the end of his one year term, since he is regarded as having violated the constitution and having used force against a tribune.

Tiberius now appeals to the people, and argues that a tribune who opposes the will of the people in favor of the rich is not a true tribune.

The senators are left with only one constitutional response – to threaten prosecution after Tiberius's term as a tribune ends.

To protect himself further, Tiberius Gracchus seeks reelection to the tribunate, promising to shorten the term of military service, abolish the exclusive right of senators to act as jurors, and admit allies to Roman citizenship.

As the voting proceeds, violence breaks out on both sides.

Tiberius' cousin, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, saying that Tiberius wishes to make himself king, leads the senators down towards Tiberius.

In the resulting confrontation, Tiberius is beaten to death with the chairs of the senators and thrown into the Tiber.

They also had gathered an ad hoc force, with several of them personally marching to the Forum.

Some three hundred of Tiberius’ followers, who were waiting outside the senate, perish with him, clubbed to death.

This is the first open bloodshed in Roman politics for nearly four centuries.

Plutarch says, "Tiberius' death in the senate was short and quick.

Although he was armed, it did not help him against the many senators of the day."

Eunus, the chief of Sicily’s rebellious enslaved population, has at one time two hundred thousand men and women as his followers, probably including children.

Little is known about Eunus's actual participation in the war.

Only his enemies leave accounts of him, and they give credit for his victories to his general, Cleon, but Eunus must have been a man of considerable ability to have maintained his leadership position throughout the war and to have commanded the services of those said to have been his superiors.

Archaeologists have found a small bronze coin, minted at Enna, which bears the inscription "King Antiochus."

It is likely that the Antiochus in question is Eunus.

Aristonicus, as Eumenes III, initially tries to gain support by promising freedom to the Greek cities of the coast.

When this fails he seeks support in the interior promising freedom to both slaves and serfs.

To what extent he is a social revolutionary or simply a dynastic contender to the throne is uncertain.

He is joined by Blossius of Cumae, the Stoic who had been a supporter of the failed reforms of the Gracchi in Rome and promises to found a state called Heliopolis, its capital a utopian “City of the Sun,” in which all are to be free.

The movement spreads among the oppressed.