I've been re-reading some good books that remind me that Caesar inherited what had been, by the time he was born, a 30-year prequel to civil war, with all of the problems that he and others would deal with already well established, the battle lines drawn, etc.

And it ALL seems to boil down, more or less, to the Gracchi, as if they flipped the flaming match into the pool of oil that, until their careers, had been quietly slurping in a corner.

So, it being about 6 years since I did my own Caesar site, with a brief summary of the importance of the Gracchi, I went looking for a new web site that would really give not only a history of their amazing lives (and deaths - daggers in the Forum, indeed!) but put it in the context of the changing Republic. And Google and I couldn't find diddly! (I am one of those who avoids Wikipedia if possible).

Not only that, I then went to Amazon to look for books about the Gracchi - ditto. For some reason, they are WAAAAAY out of fashion academically, apparently. And yet, how can they be, when just about everyone dates the Roman Revolution from them?

Anyway, does anyone know a good book to read about this remarkable pair? What has always fascinated me is that the reforms Caesar pushed through in the end, when as dictator he could avoid Optimate gridlock, were almost word for word identical to those measures introduced by the Gracchi 70 years before!