text:
Gracchi brothers

The Gracchi brothers were two brothers who lived during the beginning of the late Roman Republic: Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus. They served in the plebeian tribunates of 133 BC and 122–121 BC, respectively. They have been received as well-born and eloquent advocates for social reform who were both killed by a reactionary political system; their terms in the tribunate precipitated a series of domestic crises which are viewed as unsettling the Roman Republic and contributing to its collapse.

Tiberius Gracchus passed legislation which established a commission to survey Roman public land, reassert state claims to it, and redistribute it to poor rural farmers. These reforms were a reaction to a perceived decline in Italy's rural population. A decade later, Gaius Gracchus' reforms, among other things, attempted to buttress Tiberius' land commission and start Roman colonisation outside of Italy. They also were far more broad, touching on many topics such as assignment of provincial commands, composition of juries for the permanent courts, and letting of state tax farming contracts. Both brothers were killed during or shortly after the conclusion of their respective tribunician terms.

More recent scholarship on the Roman economy has viewed the Gracchi agrarian reforms as less impactful than claimed in the ancient sources. It is also clear that the vast majority of their reformist legislation was left intact rather than repealed. Some modern scholars also connect the agrarian reforms to degrading Rome's relations with its Italian allies and the Social War, as the reforms were a reassertion of Roman claims on public land that had been for decades largely occupied without title by Rome's Italian allies. Gracchan claims of Italian rural depopulation also are contradicted by archaeological evidence. The impact of the violent reaction to the two brothers, however, is of substantial import: it set a dangerous precedent that violence was an acceptable tool against political enemies.

The Gracchi exerted a substantial influence on later politics. They were viewed alternately as popular martyrs or dangerous demagogues through the late republic. They were also portrayed as social revolutionaries and proto-socialists during the French Revolution and afterwards; in that vein, they motivated social revolutionaries such as François-Noël "Gracchus" Babeuf and opposition to enclosure in Britain. Scholars today view these socialist comparisons as unapt.

Background
It used to be standard view that through the second century BC, the number of free farmers in rural Italy suffered a precipitous decline. This traditional view, transmitted from the ancient sources, "has been much overstated"; the narrative connecting military service to the decline of the yeomanry, moreover, "has to be rejected". The main driver for this reevaluation is archaeological evidence of Italian settlement patterns from the 1980s onwards: "impressive methodological advances that have been achieved in survey archaeology have ... done much to undermine the credibility of earlier claims concerning the spread of slave-staffed estates and the survival or otherwise of subsistence-oriented smallholders".

Rural conditions, 159–33 BC
Through the second century, there is documented some difficulty in raising men and some resistance against levies. This starts in the Third Macedonian War and continues through Roman campaigns in Spain from 151 BC. Roman censuses – which were conducted largely to tally men for conscription – starting in 159 BC also began to note a reduction in the free population of Italy, falling from 328,316 in 159–58 BC down to a low of 317,933 in the census of 136–35 BC. Politicians reacted to these constraints by securing volunteers for service; the reforms of the Gracchi were related to solving this problem and also minimising the impacts of conscription.

However, state difficulties in raising men for war did not mean that there were actual quantitative reductions in the populations of rural Italy. While the census reported a reduction in the republic's citizen population through the 130s BC, these population reductions were not at the time connected to unwillingness to serve in Rome's unpopular campaigns in Spain. Because the easiest way to dodge the draft was to avoid registration by the censors, no actual decline in population is necessary to explain censorial reports thereto. The later results of the censuses of 125–24 BC and 115–14 BC, indicate large increases which are incompatible with any actual decline in Italian rural populations.

Archaeological evidence of small farms attested all over Italy in the second century and the general need for free labour during harvest time has led scholars to conclude that "there are no good grounds for inferring a general decline of the small independent farmer in the second century". The Gracchan narrative of rural population decline through 133 BC – "long since... shown to be false" – likely emerged not from a general and actual decline in rural free-holding, but rather, generalisation from a local decline in coastal Etruria where commercial slave plantations were dominant. And while Gracchan observations of rural poverty were likely true; this, however, was not a result of slave-dominated plantations crowding out poor farmers, but overpopulation under Malthusian conditions.

In rural areas closer to Rome, expanding population and partible inheritance led to the splitting of previously modest farms into plots too small to support families. Many of these small farms were not economically viable. Coupled with the high price of land near Rome, many of these farmers sold their lands to rich men and engaged instead in wage labour. "There is ample evidence to show that the temporary labour of free men was very important to large estates" especially around harvest-time. In the years before 133 BC, a pause in construction of large public monuments also reduced demand for urban labour, triggering a prolonged period of poor labour market conditions. This general economic downturn was likely compounded by years of high food prices due to the ongoing slave revolt in Sicily, an island from which substantial amounts of grain were shipped to Rome.

Public land

Through the conquests of Italy in the fourth and third centuries BC, the Roman state had acquired legal rights to large amounts of land ceded by the subjugated Italian allies. Their former lands, the ager publicus, were not heavily exploited by the Roman state. Rather, the land "had been regarded as a sort of beneficium to the allies, who had been allowed to continue to work the land which had been confiscated from them". Through Roman conquests, the Italians who were allied to Rome were de facto confirmed in their lands and also gained substantially from the influx of booty and wealth from Roman conquest.

The traditional narratives in the ancient sources which described the emergence of commercial latifundia (enormous slave-staffed plantations owned by the elite) on the public land itself is also largely unattested to by the archaeological evidence in this period. Moreover, evidence indicates that the ager publicus was largely located outside of the traditional farmlands close to Rome and instead located in non-Roman Italy closer to the Italian allies. Public land redistribution was therefore necessarily at the expense of the allies, who would be evicted from ancestral lands still occupied.

Early life of the Gracchi
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was born c. 163 BC. His younger brother Gaius was born c.  154 BC. They were the sons of the Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus who had been consul 177 and 163 BC as well as  censor in 169 BC. He had triumphed twice in 178 and 175 BC. Their mother was Cornelia, the daughter of the renowned general Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War. Their sister Sempronia also was the wife of Scipio Aemilianus, another important general and politician. Later Roman historians painted Cornelia as an "archetypical Roman matron", "heavily idealised and inevitably quite distance from the historical Cornelia", which may be a product of her son Gaius' own political presentation.

Tiberius' military career started in 147 BC, serving as a legate or military tribune under his brother-in-law, Scipio Aemilianus during his campaign to take Carthage during the Third Punic War. Tiberius, along with Gaius Fannius, was among the first to scale Carthage's walls, serving through to the next year. A decade later, in 137 BC, he was quaestor under the consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus in Hispania Citerior. The campaign was part of the Numantine War and was unsuccessful; Mancinus and his army lost several skirmishes outside the city before a confused night-time retreat that led them to the site of a camp from a former consular campaign in 153 BC where they were surrounded. Tiberius negotiated a treaty of surrender, aided in part by his father's positive reputation built during a praetorship in 179–78 BC; Tiberius' treaty, however, was later humiliatingly rejected by the senate after his return to Rome.

Reforms
Various reforms had been attempted in the years prior to 133 BC. One of the ones that was successful was the establishment of a secret ballot in 139 BC by the tribune Aulus Gabinius. The circumstances of the reform are no longer known: it was probably presented as an expansion of public liberty and a check against corruption (no longer would those who bribed be able to ensure that recipients voted as instructed). Legislation extending the secret ballot was passed in 137, the lex Cassia, extending the secret ballot to capital cases after Scipio Aemilianus convinced an opposing tribune to heed the people and withdraw his veto.

The introduction of secret ballot was probably one of the necessary conditions for the later Gracchan programme since it insulated the popular assemblies from elite control. For this reason, the historian Harriet Flower, in the 2010 book Roman republics, demarcates a political watershed and new phase of the Roman republic at 139 BC. Shortly before Gabinius' law, in 140 BC, agrarian reforms were proposed by the consul Gaius Laelius Sapiens; but he withdrew his proposals after an invasion (he was assigned as consul to lead the response) and the opposition of the senate, earning him the cognomen Sapiens.

The ancient historians, especially Plutarch, viewed the Gracchan reforms and brothers as a single unit. Modern scholars have started to view them separately and in their own political contexts.

Tiberius
Views on Gracchus' motives differ. Favourable ancient sources attribute his reforms to spirited advocacy for the poor. Less favourable ancient sources, such as Cicero, instead attribute his actions to an attempt to win back dignitas and standing after the embarrassing treaty he was forced to negotiate after defeat in Spain. It cannot be doubted that, even if he was a true believer in the need for reform, Tiberius hoped to further his fame and political standing among the elite.

Agrarian reforms

The main goal of Tiberius' agrarian proposal was three-fold:
 * establish a commission to investigate, survey, and catalogue the land owned by the state,
 * limit the amount of public land any one possessor could hold to about 500 jugera, possibly up to 1,000 jugera for those with two children, and
 * privatise all remaining land by distributing it to poor Roman citizens (Italians were excluded).

The purpose of the reform was to stimulate population growth and expand the number of people who would meet the property qualifications for service in the Roman army. The inclusion of the limit of 500 jugera was for the purpose of painting the law as a return to mos maiorum and the Sextian-Licinian rogations so to avoid any charges of novelty. Whether the Sextian-Licinian rogations in fact had such a clause is unclear; what mattered to Tiberius and his allies was that they believed it did.

Land distributed was likely done so with a prohibition on alienation and a vectigal (rent). Alienation was prohibited to prevent recipients from simply reselling the land. The vectigal served to allow the land to revert to the state if a citizen walked away from the allotment; reversion would then allow the state to settle someone else on the land. The veteres possessores (old possessors) also would receive security of tenure over their lands, up to the 500 or 1,000 jugera limit.

Tiberius was supported in his endeavour by likeminded aristocrats who also viewed the perceived problem of rural depopulation seriously – among those in support of the proposal were the consul of 133 BC, Publius Mucius Scaevola, and Scaevola's brother, Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, – he may have been put up to pass the proposals by those allied statesmen. He was also successful in rallying large numbers of rural plebs to Rome to vote in favour of the plan. The proposals were likely not appealing to the urban plebs, who would not have had the agricultural skills necessary to capitalise on the programme.

He was opposed in the assembly by one of the other tribunes, Marcus Octavius. There were largely three grounds for opposition: first, the dispossession would harm the ruling classes of both Rome and the Italian allies; second, the law unfairly dispossessed people who had put money into the improvement of the land; third, that dispossession also would unsettle dowries pledged against the land and inheritances made under the assumption tenure was secure. When the vote arrived and Octavius interposed his tribunician veto, the matter was brought before the senate, but no settlement was reached. Unwilling to back down, Tiberius – unprecedentedly – had the assembly depose Octavius from office and vote the legislation through.

Death
Violent opposition to Tiberius' agrarian policy did not come to a head until he moved legislation to use the inheritance of Attalus III of Pergamon for the land commission. The ancient sources differ on the question of what Attalus' bequest was to be dedicated: Plutarch claims it was to be used to help land recipients purchase farm equipment; Livy, via epitome, claims that it was to be used to purchase more land for distribution after there turned out to be little land available.

This second proposal infringed on senatorial prerogatives over foreign policy and public finances. Senators also feared that these financial handouts would give Tiberius substantial personal political power. Tiberius then announced his intention to stand for re-election; according to Livy, this was illegal, due to a law which forbade holding the same magistracy within ten years. The sources allege that Tiberius also announced plans for a significantly more broad set of reforms, but these may be retrojections of his brother Gaius' later-consummated proposals. On the day of the election, Tiberius seized the Capitoline hill, possibly to intimidate the voters; Tiberius' opponents accused him of having kingly aspirations and attempted to induce the consul in the senate to use force to stop his re-election. The consul refused to act extralegally, but one of the other senators, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, found this reply unacceptable and led an impromptu military levy of senators, which included one of Tiberius' colleagues in the plebeian tribunate; with Nasica, who was pontifex maximus, reenacting an archaic sacrificial ritual, they then stormed the Capitoline and bludgeoned Tiberius and a number of his supporters to death.

It was largely constitutional issues which impelled the violent reaction, not the agrarian laws. The reaction was motivated in part by Greek constitutional thought which created a narrative of popular mobilisation leading inexorably to popular tyranny. Such beliefs were compounded by the recent example of tyranny in Sparta, led by Nabis, which had come to power with a reform programme of cancelling debts and redistributing lands.

Effects
Tiberius' lex agraria and the commission survived his death. Opposition was to Tiberius' methods rather than his policies; it is likely that most senators agreed with the reform programme in principle. Archaeologists have recovered the commission's boundary stones (cippi), which largely name the three commissioners from 133–30 BC. The boundary locations and descriptions imply the distribution over just a few years of some 3,268 square kilometres of land to Roman citizens, concentrated in southern Italy and benefitting some 15,000 households.

The cippi largely name Tiberius' younger brother Gaius, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and Publius Licinius Crassus. Tiberius appointed himself to the commission, but after his death, Crassus was elected in his place. After the natural deaths of Appius Claudius and Crassus by 130 BC, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius Papirius Carbo were elected in their place.

Because one of the commission's goals was in reasserting Roman claims to land which by that time had long been occupied by the Italian allies, the allies started to complain of unfairness and inaccurate rushed surveying. In 129, those complaints were heard by the senate, who also took the opportunity to limit the agrarian commission's powers. Scipio Aemilianus proposed and received from the senate a decree which assigned the power to determine contested ownership to the consuls. By 129 BC, the commission had over some three years already distributed all the available uncontested land. Archaeological finds of Gracchan cippi largely stop after 129 BC.

Gaius
Discontent among the Italian allies had grown between Tiberius' land commission and the later 120s BC. One of the land commissioners elected in the early 120s BC, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus had served as consul in 125 BC and – according to Appian – proposed a compromise giving the allies Roman citizenship in exchange for acquiescence to Roman reassertion of claims to the ager publicus. This proposal, however, fell through when Flaccus was dispatched to war in Transalpine Gaul; relations with the allies were also not helped by the revolt and destruction of the Latin colony of Fregellae when Flaccus' proposals were withdrawn.

Gaius positioned himself politically as the inheritor of Tiberius' popularity and political programme. After a quaestorship, he was elected fourth in the tribunician elections of 124 BC; after his election, he cast his brother's death as "a failure by the plebeians to maintain their tradition of defending their tribunes". Unlike his brother, Gaius' proposals largely did not relate to land. Over two years, he proposed broad legislation touching all parts of Roman government, from tax collection to senatorial provincial assignments.

Reforms

During his first tribunate, he proposed a number of laws. First, he proposed legislation to bar anyone who the people had deposed from office from further office. This was, however, dropped at the instigation of his mother Cornelia. The proposal was likely meant to intimidate the other tribunes so they would not exercise their vetoes. He then passed legislation reaffirming provocatio rights and retroactively extending them to the sentences of exile which the consular commission in 132 BC had passed against Tiberius' supporters. Publius Popillius Laenas, the consul who had led the commission and was thereby opened to prosecution for violating those rights, immediately left the city for exile in Campania.

Gaius also moved legislation which would benefit the rich equestrians, especially those who served as Rome's public contractors (the publicani):
 * Gaius changed the bidding location of public tax farming contracts from the provinces to Rome, which increased oversight and favoured high-ranking equites in the capital rather than provincial elites.
 * He also passed legislation to build roads, which he would oversee, with contracts let out to the equestrians.
 * He also made equites the dominant body for juries for the permanent court on corruption. After, however, the acquittal of a corrupt consul that year, Gaius, with the support of an allied tribune, made the equites the sole class staffing the juries.

Gaius also recognised the weakness of Tiberius' coalition, which relied only on the rural plebs, and therefore sought to expand it. To do so, he courted the urban plebs with legislation establishing Roman colonies both in Italy and abroad at Carthage. He also carried legislation to stop deduction of soldier pay for equipment and to establish a minimum age for conscription at 17. In this package, Gaius also introduced the grain subsidy which allowed all citizens to purchase grain at a subsidised price of six and two-thirds sesterces per modius.

Further legislation also regulated the magistrates and the senate. Even though the ancient sources generally cast these reforms as part of "an elaborate plot against the authority of the senate... he showed no sign of wanting to replace the senate in its normal functions". Nor were his reforms meant to undermine the senate indirectly or establish a democracy. Rather, Gaius was seeking to have the senators act more in the public interest rather than in their own private interests. To that end, with an ally in the tribunate, Manlius Acilius Glabrio, he also moved legislation reforming the provincial corruption laws. Also importantly, he passed the lex Sempronia de provinciis consularibus, which required the senate to assign consular provinces prior to the elections of the consuls and insulated this decision from tribunician veto.

Some ancient sources claim that Gaius wanted to change voting procedures in the timocratic comitia centuriata to make it more democratic. However, this claim is dubious and largely rejected.

Gaius made an extremely controversial proposal to improve the state of the Latins and the other Italian allies: the Latins would receive full Roman citizenship with the Italians upgraded to Latin rights. Doing so further extended to Italians, via Latin rights, the right to vote if present in Rome during elections. This proposal died: the specifics are not entirely clear, it may have been vetoed or otherwise simply withdrawn; recent scholarship now trends towards a veto from Livius Drusus. Gaius, after taking some leave to set up a colony near Carthage, attempted to stand for a third tribunate, but was unsuccessful. It is said that he had sufficient popular support to have been elected, but was not returned because the ten tribunician offices had already been filled.

Death
Early in the year 121 BC, attempts were made to repeal portions of Gaius' legislation. The main point of repeal, however, was not agrarian legislation or his subsidised grain bill, but the comparatively minor question of the proposed colony at Carthage. After an attendant was killed in the streets by Gaius' supporters, Gaius and his ally Flaccus were summoned to defend themselves before the senate; they refused and barricaded themselves with armed followers on the Aventine hill. Their refusal was tantamount to rebellion. A senatus consultum ultimum was then moved, instructing the consul Lucius Opimius to ensure the state came to no harm and urging him to suppress Gaius and Flaccus on the Aventine. With a force of militia and Cretan archers, Opimius stormed the Aventine, killing Flaccus and his sons; Gaius was either killed or forced to commit suicide. Opimius then presided over drumhead courts investigating and executing many of Gaius and Flaccus' supporters.

In the end, most of Gaius' reforms were preserved; archaeology has discovered evidence of Gracchan land colonial activities in Africa c. 119 BC and the land commission remained in operation until 111 BC. By that point, almost all land available to distribute had already been distributed. In the whole, "the aristocracy's reaction resembled that of a general dealing with a mutiny, who accedes to most of the demands but executes the ringleaders to preserve discipline".

Gracchan leges agrariae
Tiberius' reforms were focused on the rural peasantry. They were not, however, "so much oppressed as eager (quite justifiably) to share in the increased economic prosperity brought by Roman imperialism". In general, more recent scholarship has stressed that the ancient sources have exaggerated the extent to which the Roman yeoman farmers were in fact in decline. Tiberius' reform law was not revolutionary, but his tactics in pursuit of it were, especially when they mobilised the assemblies which gave some genuine expression of the popular will. Those tactics threatened "to break the oligarchic stranglehold on Rome's political system, thus leading to his demise". This was exacerbated by Tiberius' use of social justice rhetoric, which further set him aside from his aristocratic brethren.

While substantial acreage was distributed as a whole, more than 3,268 square kilometres in the first few years of operation, there is some debate to the extent to which the Gracchan land allotments were actually economically viable for the families placed atop them. However, there are some indications that the lands distributed were used for pasture rather than intensive agriculture, even if they were suitable for farming.

Gaius' role in land reform is more obscure; the sources are largely unclear on it except in mentioning offhandedly that he brought legislation on the matter. By the time of his tribunate, the census results of 125–24 BC had been published and belief in a depopulation crisis had disappeared. His agrarian reforms likely did little more than grant the agrarian commission – of which he was still a member – the necessary jurisdiction stripped in 129 BC. He was, however, sufficiently visionary to see that further land exactions from Rome's allies would seriously damage their interests (and be politically infeasible). This led him, "one of the first to realise that the amount of land in Italy was insufficient to provide for all inhabitants of the peninsula", to pursue extra-Italian colonisation. This change in scope proved long-lasting and by the time of Caesar, it would be standard policy to establish citizen colonies outside the Italian peninsula, which "would in time prove the only adequate method of finding enough land" for Italy's growing populations.

The Gracchan leges agrariae continued in operation through their deaths until 111 BC, which again overhauled Roman policy with public lands. Much of this law survives to the present. Building upon those laws, it abolished the rents that Tiberius' law passed, making the lands fully private and alienable. By 111 BC, most of the lands that could be distributed already had been; what was left over was "mostly pasture or land which had been assigned to specific people" through long-term leases or set aside for the purpose of providing money for road maintenance. The continuing increase of the Italian population, however, would trigger later proposals for land redistribution; especially notable is Caesar's lex agraria during his consulship in 59 BC, which gave away the ager Campanus to some 20,000 settlers, albeit on less generous terms. After this, it became increasingly clear that there was simply insufficient land in Italy to accommodate demand.

Reassessments of the causes of the Social War have also trended toward viewing the lex agraria as a major contributing factor. Land holdings in Roman-dominated Italy gave the Roman state a latent title to large swaths of land which had never been formally surveyed. While the Gracchan land commission quickly parcelled and redistributed lands in southern Italy that had been confiscated from the allies that had defected to Hannibal during the Second Punic War, the older lands had been occupied for centuries. Attempts, through to the start of the Social War, to press Roman claims on those lands – which "the allies assumed that they would be able to keep... as long as they did not rebel" – may have greatly undermined allied support for Roman hegemony.

Gaius' urban and administrative reforms
Gaius' reforms were broad and covered large portions of the republic's administration. Their main purpose was to advance the quality of Roman government, reducing extortion and corruption among the senatorial governors while acting within the bounds of what his contemporaries would have considered due process.

One of the elements best attested to is Gaius' lex repetundarum, which reformed the quaestio perpetua on provincial corruption with an equestrian jury to check senatorial governors. The law is preserved on a bronze tablet once owned by Cardinal Pietro Bembo. While, in the long run, the equestrian jury would prove a political issue for the next half century, these reforms were not meant to set the senate and equites into conflict. Nor were they some kind of programme at true popular oversight, as moving the jury from the senators to the equites "merely reallocated influence from one section of the elite to another". Ernst Badian, writing in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, gave the assessment:

"A proud aristocrat, [Gaius] wanted to leave the senate in charge of directing policy and the magistrates in charge of its execution, subject to constitutional checks and removed from financial temptation, with the people sharing in the profits of empire without excessive exploitation of the subjects. The ultimate result of his legislation was to set up the publicani as a new exploiting class, not restrained by a tradition of service or by accountability at law. But this did not become clear for a generation, and he cannot be blamed for not foreseeing it."

His lex frumentaria, which created a subsidised grain supply at around what he considered to be a "normal" price, set up an influential model for welfare in Rome. It was a reaction to corn disruptions in recent times that likely developed from army service, but his idea to have the Roman state smooth much of the variability of agriculture put the population less at the mercy of speculators and less dependent on magisterial largesse. The lowered incentives for magistrates giving food away for popularity at home had the added effect of reducing their proclivity to extort corn from provincials. These provisions continued in force after the death of Gaius, suggesting an emerging consensus at Rome that there was a "right of the people to enjoy the rewards of the empire [and that] frumentationes [were useful] to divert the interest and support of the urban plebs from the prospect of agrarian reform". After a period of abrogation by Sulla, the dole in the future would expand, however, both in cost and generosity, as later generations of politicians acted with or without senatorial support to do so.

Gaius' lex de provinciis consularibus was a similar policy to reduce senatorial corruption and was "far from being revolutionary": his purpose with the law "was to prevent sitting consuls from using their position to influence provincial assignments improperly (and perhaps to Rome’s detriment)" by requiring provinces to be assigned before the consuls took office. To further insulate such decisions from political meddling, he even made senatorial decisions on consular provinces immune from tribunician veto.

Political violence
The impact of Tiberius' murder started a cycle of increased political violence: "the oligarchy had introduced violence into the political system with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus and over the years the use of violence became increasingly acceptable as various political disputes in Rome led to more and more bloody discord". The use of force to suppress reform also suggested that the republic itself was temperamentally unsuited for producing the types of economic reforms wanted or needed, as in the Gracchi's framing, by the people.

In terms of periodisation, the death of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC is widely viewed as the start of the "late republic" and the beginning of the republic's eventual collapse. For example, in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg writes:

"It was Tiberius' assassination that made the year 133 BC a turning point in Roman history and the beginning of the crisis of the Roman Republic."

Even in ancient times, Cicero remarked as much in saying "the death of Tiberius Gracchus, and even before that the whole rationale behind his tribunate, divided a united people into two distinct groups". However, scholars such as Mary Beard also warn that Cicero is exaggerating for rhetorical effect and that "the idea there had been a calm consensus at Rome between rich and poor until [133 BC] is at best a nostalgic fiction".

The death of Gaius as well inaugurated a new tool for the senate in upholding the current order by force: the so-called senatus consultum ultimum. Opimius was prosecuted in 120 BC for violating Gaius' law against extralegal punishment. The ex-consul, however, was able to successfully defend himself by appealing to the senate's decree and by arguing that Gaius and Flaccus deserved to be treated as seditious enemies rather than citizens. Opimius' acquittal set the precedent that the senatus consultum ultimum – which was merely advice from the senate: "the senate could pass any decree it liked, it was the magistrate who was responsible for any illegal actions" – was an acceptable ground to vitiate citizen rights extralegally.

Reception and historiography

Views of the Gracchi have changed over time. In the ancient world, the two brothers were largely viewed as an organised force acting in concert. During the early modern period, the Gracchan land programme was widely misconstrued as a socialistic restructuring of Roman society where public and private land ownership would be capped. Modern historians, however, largely view the two brothers' political activities as separate and dismiss their identification as social revolutionaries.

Ancient reception
There was a positive and a negative tradition related to the Gracchi brothers. Many of the ancient sources are late – there is a lack of contemporary sources – and are coloured by the positive tradition: many scholars believe that Plutarch's biographies of the two men, along with Appian's Civil wars, are largely based on Gaius Gracchus and his supporters' narratives; in this, most of what is known of Tiberius is filtered through his brother's self-presentation. Plutarch's narrative, guided by his literary agenda, "drastically simplifies the [complex] history of this period". On the whole, Appian's narrative is more reliable, but is still marred with significant anachronisms, clear inaccuracies, and schematic features – that the agrarian reform eventually fails and that Tiberius and Gaius pursued the same objectives – which emerge from Appian's historiographical agenda.

Some modern scholars speculate that these Gracchan narratives were transmitted through the centuries to the imperial authors by plays which dramatised the tragedy of their deaths. Two major themes stand out. First, the specifics of Gaius' death are "a dog's breakfast" of varying details and involve a Lucius Vitellius, which was a common name during the republic for traitors (according to legend, the Vitellii were the first to betray the republic to the Tarquins shortly after the expulsion of the kings). Second, the stress on friendship and betrayal in these last hours is seen as replacing a more anodyne political drama for heightened pathos. Other scholars, however, disagree, arguing that the hypothesis of lost tragedies is too speculative and instead credit Plutarch or his sources with the dramatisation of the narrative. Regardless, in later generations, the death of the Gracchi became a common rhetorical topos in Roman oratorical schools.

The negative tradition, however, is transmitted through other sources, such as Cicero and Valerius Maximus. In these narratives, the Gracchi are painted as seditious tribunes who inaugurated the use of force and intimidation which then required the Roman state to use violence to re-establish order. The confluence of these traditions was common in late republican politics. For example, Cicero modulated his opinions on the Gracchi brothers to meet his audience. Before the senate, he spoke of them negatively and focused on their alleged attempts to take over the republic; before the people, he instead praised their good faith, moral virtues, and quality as orators (especially in comparison to the popularis tribunes of his day).

Modern reception
By the 17th and 18th centuries, many books on ancient history repeated a false notion that Rome had limited all men to only 500 jugera of land. The incorrect understanding emerged in 1734 with the publication of Montesquieu's Considerations on the causes of the greatness of the Romans and their decline, which furthered this mistaken notion of large scale land reform rather than redistribution of state-owned lots. This led to the characterisation of the Gracchi as "socialists". Through the later 18th century, the waters became further muddied, until the matter was largely re-cleared by Barthold Georg Niebuhr in his History of Rome.

During the French Revolution, the revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf named himself "Gracchus" after the Gracchi brothers, in an attempt to connect his desire for large scale land redistribution with the Gracchan programme for agrarian reform. Babeuf's plans, however, differed substantially from the Gracchan programme in ways that exemplify how the reception of the Gracchi had deviated from their actual historical policies. First, Babeuf envisioned the nationalisation and communal ownership of lands, which was incompatible with the Gracchan programme of privatising already state-owned lands. Second, Babeuf's choice of name was made under the prevailing assumption at the time that the Gracchi acted to place a limit on private land holdings. Finally, Babeuf's name demonstrated his belief that a comparison was apt, consistent with contemporary beliefs that the Gracchi were revolutionaries. However, "the truth of the matter was otherwise[:] the Gracchi sought to strengthen and uphold the Roman republic; Babeuf wished to overthrow and radicalise the French republic".

During the 19th century, the use of the Gracchi in then-current politics continued. The process of enclosure in England, for example, led to the formation of a large body of poor urban workers; many of their leaders were likened to the Gracchi and proposed reforms were compared with reference to the Roman land crisis as described in the ancient sources.

Some 19th and early 20th century scholarship argued that the Gracchi were to some extent influenced by Greek political philosophy, especially in the extent to which Greek democratic principles could be applied at Rome. These influences are largely attributed to Tiberius' interactions with Stoic egalitarian philosophy through Blossius of Cumae. This is no longer believed, however, as there is little evidence for Tiberius being a Stoic or for Stoicism justfying democratic policies.

Books

 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in
 * Positively reviewed in

Articles

 * Pages not consistently numbered.
 * Pages not consistently numbered.
 * Pages not consistently numbered.
 * Pages not consistently numbered.
 * Pages not consistently numbered.
 * Pages not consistently numbered.
 * Pages not consistently numbered.

title: Gracchi brothers


text:
Gossip

Gossip is idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others; the act is also known as dishing or tattling.

Etymology
The word is from Old English godsibb, from god and sibb, the term for the godparents of one's child or the parents of one's godchild, generally very close friends. In the 16th century, the word assumed the meaning of a person, mostly a woman, one who delights in idle talk, a newsmonger, a tattler. In the early 19th century, the term was extended from the talker to the conversation of such persons. The verb to gossip, meaning "to be a gossip", first appears in Shakespeare.

The term originates from the bedroom at the time of childbirth. Giving birth used to be a social event exclusively attended by women. The pregnant woman's female relatives and neighbours would congregate and idly converse. Over time, gossip came to mean talk of others.

Functions

Gossip can:
 * reinforce – or punish the lack of – morality and accountability
 * reveal passive aggression, isolating and harming others
 * build and maintain a sense of community with shared interests, information, and values
 * begin a courtship that helps one find their desired mate, by counseling others
 * provide a peer-to-peer mechanism for disseminating information

Workplace gossip
Mary Gormandy White, a human resource expert, gives the following "signs" for identifying workplace gossip: White suggests "five tips ... [to] handle the situation with aplomb:
 * Animated people become silent ("Conversations stop when you enter the room")
 * People begin staring at someone
 * Workers indulge in inappropriate topics of conversation.
 * 1) Rise above the gossip
 * 2) Understand what causes or fuels the gossip
 * 3) Do not participate in workplace gossip.
 * 4) Allow for the gossip to go away on its own
 * 5) If it persists, "gather facts and seek help."

Peter Vajda identifies gossip as a form of workplace violence, noting that it is "essentially a form of attack." Gossip is thought by many to "empower one person while disempowering another" (Hafen). Accordingly, many companies have formal policies in their employee handbooks against gossip. Sometimes there is room for disagreement on exactly what constitutes unacceptable gossip, since workplace gossip may take the form of offhand remarks about someone's tendencies such as "He always takes a long lunch," or "Don't worry, that's just how she is."

TLK Healthcare cites as examples of gossip, "tattletaling to the boss without intention of furthering a solution or speaking to co-workers about something someone else has done to upset us." Corporate email can be a particularly dangerous method of gossip delivery, as the medium is semi-permanent and messages are easily forwarded to unintended recipients; accordingly, a Mass High Tech article advised employers to instruct employees against using company email networks for gossip. Low self-esteem and a desire to "fit in" are frequently cited as motivations for workplace gossip.

There are five essential functions that gossip has in the workplace (according to DiFonzo & Bordia):
 * Helps individuals learn social information about other individuals in the organization (often without even having to meet the other individual)
 * Builds social networks of individuals by bonding co-workers together and affiliating people with each other.
 * Breaks existing bonds by ostracizing individuals within an organization.
 * enhances one's social status/power/prestige within the organization.
 * Inform individuals as to what is considered socially acceptable behavior within the organization.

According to Kurkland and Pelled, workplace gossip can be very serious depending upon the amount of power that the gossiper has over the recipient, which will in turn affect how the gossip is interpreted. There are four types of power that are influenced by gossip:
 * Coercive: when a gossiper tells negative information about a person, their recipient might believe that the gossiper will also spread negative information about them. This causes the gossiper's coercive power to increase.
 * Reward: when a gossiper tells positive information about a person, their recipient might believe that the gossiper will also spread positive information about them. This causes the gossiper's reward power to increase.
 * Expert: when a gossiper seems to have very detailed knowledge of either the organization's values or about others in the work environment, their expert power becomes enhanced.
 * Referent: this power can either be reduced OR enhanced to a point. When people view gossiping as a petty activity done to waste time, a gossiper's referent power can decrease along with their reputation. When a recipient is thought of as being invited into a social circle by being a recipient, the gossiper's referent power can increase, but only to a high point where then the recipient begins to resent the gossiper (Kurland & Pelled).

Negative consequences of the gossip
Some serious negative consequences of gossip may include: Turner and Weed theorize that among the three main types of responders to workplace conflict are attackers who cannot keep their feelings to themselves and express their feelings by attacking whatever they can. Attackers are further divided into up-front attackers and behind-the-back attackers. Turner and Weed note that the latter "are difficult to handle because the target person is not sure of the source of any criticism, nor even always sure that there is criticism."
 * Lost productivity and time wasting
 * Erosion of trust and morale between members of the working community
 * Increased anxiety among employees as rumors circulate without any clear information as to what is fact and what is not
 * Growing divisiveness among employees as people "take sides", risks of "infighting" that may further deteriorate unity
 * Hurt feelings and reputations
 * Jeopardized chances for the gossipers' advancement as they are perceived as unprofessional, and
 * Attrition: good employees tend leave the company due to the unhealthy work atmosphere and lack of trust

It is possible however, that there may be illegal, unethical, or disobedient behavior happening at the workplace and this may be a case where reporting the behavior may be viewed as gossip. It is then left up to the authority in charge to fully investigate the matter and not simply look past the report and assume it to be workplace gossip.

Informal networks through which communication occurs in an organization are sometimes called the grapevine. In a study done by Harcourt, Richerson, and Wattier, it was found that middle managers in several different organizations believed that gathering information from the grapevine was a much better way of learning information than through formal communication with their subordinates (Harcourt, Richerson & Wattier).

Various views
Some see gossip as trivial, hurtful and socially, spiritually and/or intellectually unproductive. Some people view gossip as a lighthearted way of spreading information. Authorities or would-be authorities may have a negative view of gossip as something undesirable or dangerous. Philosophical analysis by Emrys Westacott points to the role of gossip in (for example) cementing friendships and combatting abuses of power. A feminist definition of gossip presents it as "a way of talking between women, intimate in style, personal and domestic in scope and setting, a female cultural event which springs from and perpetuates the restrictions of the female role, but also gives the comfort of validation." (Jones, 1990:243)

In early modern England
In early modern England, the word "gossip" referred to companions in childbirth, not limited to the midwife. It also became a term for women-friends generally, with no necessary derogatory connotations. (OED n. definition 2. a. "A familiar acquaintance, friend, chum", supported by references from 1361 to 1873). It commonly referred to an informal local sorority or social group, who could enforce socially acceptable behavior through private censure or through public rituals, such as "rough music", the cucking stool and the skimmington ride.

In Thomas Harman's Caveat for Common Cursitors 1566 a 'walking mort' relates how she was forced to agree to meet a man in his barn, but informed his wife. The wife arrived with her "five furious, sturdy, muffled gossips" who catch the errant husband with "his hosen [trousers] about his legs" and give him a sound beating. The story clearly functions as a morality tale in which the gossips uphold the social order.

Sir Herbert Maxwell Bart, in The Chevalier of the Splendid Crest [1900] at the end of chapter three portrays the king as referring to his loyal knight "Sir Thomas de Roos" in kindly terms as "my old gossip". Whilst a historical novel of that time the reference implies a continued use of the term "Gossip" as a childhood friend as late as 1900.

In Judaism
Judaism considers gossip spoken without a constructive purpose (known in Hebrew as "evil tongue", lashon hara) to be a sin. Speaking negatively about people, even if retelling true facts, counts as sinful, as it demeans the dignity of man — both the speaker and the subject of the gossip. According to Proverbs 18:8: "The words of a gossip are like choice morsels: they go down to a man's innermost parts."

In Christianity
The Christian perspective on gossip typically aligns with modern cultural assumptions of the phenomenon, especially with the assumption that generally speaking, gossip is negative speech. However, due to the complexity of the phenomenon, biblical scholars have more precisely identified the form and function of gossip, even identifying a socially positive role for the social process as it is described in the New Testament. Of course, this does not mean that there are not numerous texts in the New Testament that see gossip as dangerous negative speech.

Thus, for example, the Epistle to the Romans associates gossips ("backbiters") with a list of sins including sexual immorality and with murder:

 * 28: And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
 * 29: Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
 * 30: Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
 * 31: Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
 * 32: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:28-32)

According to Matthew 18, Jesus also taught that conflict-resolution among church members ought to begin with the aggrieved party attempting to resolve their dispute with the offending party alone. Only if this did not work would the process escalate to the next step, in which another church member would become involved. After that if the person at fault still would not "hear", the matter was to be fully investigated by the church elders, and if not resolved to be then exposed publicly.

Based on texts like these portraying gossip negatively, many Christian authors generalize on the phenomenon. So, in order to gossip, writes Phil Fox Rose, we "must harden our heart towards the 'out' person. We draw a line between ourselves and them; define them as being outside the rules of Christian charity... We create a gap between ourselves and God's Love." As we harden our heart towards more people and groups, he continues, "this negativity and feeling of separateness will grow and permeate our world, and we'll find it more difficult to access God's love in any aspect of our lives."

The New Testament is also in favor of group accountability (Ephesians 5:11; 1st Tim 5:20; James 5:16; Gal 6:1-2; 1 Cor 12:26), which may be associated with gossip.

Gossip as a breach of secrecy has parallels with confession: the medieval Christian church sought to control both from its position as a powerful regulator.

In Islam
Islam regards backbiting as the equivalent of eating the flesh of one's dead brother. According to Muslims, backbiting harms its victims without offering them any chance of defense, just as dead people cannot defend against their flesh being eaten. Muslims are expected to treat others like brothers (regardless of their beliefs, skin-color, gender, or ethnic origin), deriving from Islam's concept of brotherhood amongst its believers.

In the Bahá’í Faith
The Bahá’í Faith aims to promote the unity of humankind and labels backbiting as the "worst human quality and the most great sin..." Therefore, even murder would be considered less reprobate than backbiting. Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá’í Faith stated: "Backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguished the life of the soul." More than affecting one's physical condition, Bahá’ís understands that when someone gossips and finds faults in others it hampers the spiritual development of those involved while also creating disunity among individuals, communities, and society at large.

Evolutionary view
From Robin Dunbar's evolutionary theories, gossip originated to help bond the groups that were constantly growing in size. To survive, individuals need alliances; but as these alliances grew larger, it was difficult if not impossible to physically connect with everyone. Conversation and language were able to bridge this gap. Gossip became a social interaction that helped the group gain information about other individuals without personally speaking to them.

It enabled people to keep up with what was going on in their social network. It also creates a bond between the teller and the hearer, as they share information of mutual interest and spend time together. It also helps the hearer learn about another individual's behavior and helps them have a more effective approach to their relationship. Dunbar (2004) found that 65% of conversations consist of social topics.

Dunbar (1994) argues that gossip is the equivalent of social grooming often observed in other primate species. Anthropological investigations indicate that gossip is a cross-cultural phenomenon, providing evidence for evolutionary accounts of gossip.

There is very little evidence to suggest meaningful sex differences in the proportion of conversational time spent gossiping, and when there is a difference, women are only very slightly more likely to gossip compared with men. Further support for the evolutionary significance of gossip comes from a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Science Anderson and colleagues (2011) found that faces paired with negative social information dominate visual consciousness to a greater extent than positive and neutral social information during a binocular rivalry task.

Binocular rivalry occurs when two different stimuli are presented to each eye simultaneously and the two percepts compete for dominance in visual consciousness. While this occurs, an individual will consciously perceive one of the percepts while the other is suppressed. After a time, the other percept will become dominant and an individual will become aware of the second percept. Finally, the two percepts will alternate back and forth in terms of visual awareness.

The study by Anderson and colleagues (2011) indicates that higher order cognitive processes, like evaluative information processing, can influence early visual processing. That only negative social information differentially affected the dominance of the faces during the task alludes to the unique importance of knowing information about an individual that should be avoided. Since the positive social information did not produce greater perceptual dominance of the matched face indicates that negative information about an individual may be more salient to our behavior than positive.

Gossip also gives information about social norms and guidelines for behavior, usually commenting on how appropriate a behavior was, and the mere act of repeating it signifies its importance. In this sense, gossip is effective regardless of whether it is positive or negative Some theorists have proposed that gossip is actually a pro-social behavior intended to allow an individual to correct their socially prohibitive behavior without direct confrontation of the individual. By gossiping about an individual's acts, other individuals can subtly indicate that said acts are inappropriate and allow the individual to correct their behavior (Schoeman 1994).

Perception of those who gossip
Individuals who are perceived to engage in gossiping regularly are seen as having less social power and being less liked than those who gossip less frequently. The type of gossip being exchanged also affects likeability, whereby those who engage in negative gossip are less liked than those who engage in positive gossip. In a study done by Turner and colleagues (2003), having a prior relationship with a gossiper was not found to protect the gossiper from less favorable personality-ratings after gossip was exchanged. In the study, pairs of individuals were brought into a research lab to participate. Either the two individuals were friends prior to the study or they were strangers scheduled to participate at the same time. One of the individuals was a confederate of the study, and they engaged in gossiping about the research assistant after she left the room. The gossip exchanged was either positive or negative. Regardless of gossip type (positive versus negative) or relationship type (friend versus stranger) the gossipers were rated as less trustworthy after sharing the gossip.

Walter Block has suggested that while gossip and blackmail both involve the disclosure of unflattering information, the blackmailer is arguably ethically superior to the gossip. Block writes: "In a sense, the gossip is much worse than the blackmailer, for the blackmailer has given the blackmailed a chance to silence him. The gossip exposes the secret without warning." The victim of a blackmailer is thus offered choices denied to the subject of gossip], such as deciding if the exposure of his or her secret is worth the cost the blackmailer demands. Moreover, in refusing a blackmailer's offer one is in no worse a position than with the gossip. Adds Block, "It is indeed difficult, then, to account for the vilification suffered by the blackmailer, at least compared to the gossip, who is usually dismissed with slight contempt and smugness."

Contemporary critiques of gossip may concentrate on or become subsumed in the discussion of social media such as Facebook.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Gossip


text:
G4

G4 or G.IV may refer to:

Places

 * County Route G4 (California), a county highway in Santa Clara County, California, USA
 * G4 Beijing–Hong Kong and Macau Expressway, an expressway in China
 * G4 (Taichung Metro), also known as Songzhu Station or Jiushe Station, a station under construction in the Taichung Metro

Arts, entertainment, games, media

 * G4 (American TV network), an American television channel
 * G4 (Canadian TV channel), a former Canadian television channel
 * G4 (group), a British vocal troupe
 * Grob's attack, an opening move in chess

Groups, organisations, companies

 * G4 nations, four nations that support each other's bids to become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan
 * Big Four (Western Europe), sometimes called 'G4', a group of powerful countries in Europe
 * VIP Protection Unit, a unit of the Hong Kong Police Force (originally Section G, Division 4)
 * Allegiant Air, by IATA airline designator

Electrics, electronics, and computing

 * G4, a type of bi-pin lamp base (socket), a lamp fitting where the pin spacing is 4mm
 * LG G4 smartphone
 * Moto G4, a line of smartphones
 * Group 4 compression, a type of image compression used in fax machines and some image file formats

Apple Computer

 * PowerPC G4, a type of microprocessor by Freescale used by Apple
 * Power Mac G4, a series of personal computers made by Apple Inc in July 1999
 * PowerBook G4, a series of Professional notebooks made by Apple Inc in 2001
 * iMac G4, a series of personal computer made by Apple Inc in January 2002
 * Xserve G4, an Xserve server made by Apple Inc in May 2002
 * iBook G4, an iBook series of consumer notebooks in October 2003
 * Mac Mini G4, a Mac Mini series of ultracompact computer in January 2005

Vehicles

 * AEG G.IV, a German World War I heavy bomber
 * Caudron G.4, a 1915 French biplane
 * Friedrichshafen G.IV, a 1918 German medium bomber
 * Gotha G.IV, a 1916 German heavy bomber
 * Gulfstream IV, a family of private jet aircraft
 * Mitsubishi G4M "Betty", a World War II Japanese fast bomber
 * Soko G-4 Super Galeb, a jet trainer/light attack jet of Yugoslav origin
 * USS G4 (SS-26), a 1914 G-class submarine of the United States Navy
 * G4-class freighter, a cargo ship design
 * LNER Class G4, a class of British steam locomotives
 * Pontiac G4, a compact car sold in Mexico

Other uses

 * G4 EA H1N1, a strain of influenza
 * G-quadruplex, a DNA secondary structure
 * Group 4 element, a class of elements on the Periodic Table
 * ATC code G04 Urologicals, a subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System
 * Galactic 04 (G04), a Virgin Galactic suborbital tourist spaceflight in October 2023, the first spaceflight of a Pakistani

title: G4


text:
Garbage collection (disambiguation)

Garbage collection, or waste collection, is part of municipal waste management.

Garbage collection may also refer to:

 * Garbage collection (computer science), in automatic memory management
 * Garbage collection (SSD), in flash memory

title: Garbage collection (disambiguation)


text:
Guitarist

A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar by singing or playing the harmonica, or both.

Techniques
The guitarist may employ any of several methods for sounding the guitar, including finger-picking, depending on the type of strings used (either nylon or steel), and including strumming with the fingers, or a guitar pick made of bone, horn, plastic, metal, felt, leather, or paper, and melodic flatpicking and finger-picking.

The guitarist may also employ various methods for selecting notes and chords, including fingering, thumbing, the barre (a finger lying across many or all strings at a particular fret), and guitar slides, usually made of glass or metal. These left- and right-hand techniques may be intermixed in performance.

Rock, metal, jazz, country and blues
Several magazines and websites have compiled what they intend as lists of the greatest guitarists—for example The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine, or 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by Guitar World magazine.

Rolling Stone
The first in this list is the American guitarist Jimi Hendrix, introduced by Pete Townshend, guitarist for the Who, who was, in his turn, ranked at #10 in the list.

In describing the list to readers, Paul MacInnes from British newspaper The Guardian wrote, "Surprisingly enough for an American magazine, the top 10 is fair jam-packed with Yanks", though he also noted three exceptions in the top 10. The online magazine Blogcritics criticized the list for introducing some allegedly undeserving guitarists while forgetting some artists the writer considered perhaps more worthy, such as Johnny Marr, Al Di Meola, Phil Keaggy or John Petrucci.

In 2011, Rolling Stone updated the list, which this time was chosen by a panel of guitarists and other experts with the top 100 consisting of Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Keith Richards and Tony Iommi. Artists who had not been included in the previous list were added. Rory Gallagher, for example, was ranked in 57th place.

The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time is mentioned in many biographies about artists who appear in the list.

Guitar World
Guitar World, a monthly music magazine devoted to the guitar, also published their list of 100 greatest guitarists in the book Guitar World Presents the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time from the Pages of Guitar World Magazine. Different from the Rolling Stone list, which listed guitarists in descending order, Guitar World divided guitarists by music genre—such as "Lords of Hard Rock" for hard rock artists or "Jazzmen" for jazz players. Despite the appearance in other magazines like Billboard, this publication by Guitar World was criticized for including no female musicians within its selection. However, Guitar World recently published a list of "Eight Amazing Female Acoustic Players", including Kaki King, Muriel Anderson and Sharon Isbin.

Time and others
Following the death of Les Paul, Time website presented their list of 10 greatest artists in electric guitar. As in Rolling Stone magazine's list, Jimi Hendrix was chosen as the greatest guitarist followed by Slash from Guns N' Roses, B.B. King, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton. Gigwise.com, an online music magazine, also ranks Jimi Hendrix as the greatest guitarist ever, followed by Jimmy Page, B.B. King, Keith Richards and Kirk Hammett.

Other genres
The classical guitar is strung with gut or nylon strings on top and wound basses for the lower strings. It was often ornately decorated with mother of pearl. Many early classical guitarists played with their finger tips only but later guitarists play with a combination of finger nail and flesh to project a clear sound and allowing for many different changes in sound quality (or timbre). This guitar tradition dates back at least to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when a four course instrument was popular among aristocrats. In the early nineteenth century there the guitar enjoyed a surge of popularity when composer/performers such as Fernando Sor, Napoléon Coste, Mauro Giuliani, and many others published thousands of pieces for the concert hall and home gatherings. The classical guitar enjoyed another period of popularity in the twentieth century when recordings amplified the relatively quiet instrument. There are many classical guitarists listed as "notable" in their respective epochs.

One of the most renowned flamenco guitarists in recent decades was Paco de Lucía. Flamenco music is a popular traditional music associated with the Andalucia region of southern Spain. It is characterized by intricate syncopated rhythms intimately informed by a gypsy dance style. Flamenco guitarists also often accompany flamenco singers performing "cante jondo" (deep song). De Lucía was also one of the first to have successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz.

The cuatro guitar is a family of Latin American string instruments played in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and other Latin American countries. It is derived from the Spanish guitar. Although some have viola-like shapes, most cuatros resemble a small to mid-sized classical guitar. In Puerto Rico and Venezuela, the cuatro is an ensemble instrument for secular and religious music, and is played at parties and traditional gatherings. Christian Nieves is a Puerto Rican cuatro player and is recognized by the Institute of Puerto Rican culture as the most talented young of their national instrument, the Puerto Rican cuatro.

title: Guitarist


text:
Talk:Garbage collection (disambiguation)

''This page needs to be moved to a less misleading title, such as Garbage collection in memory management, or something like that. See naming conventions. --LMS''

Just because you think Garbage collection as a civic service is more important than Garbage collection as a memory management strategy? Obviously there is a context and bias problem, but I came to this page and found what I expected (I used to write garbage collectors for a living). I assume you did not? --drj Hmm. My comments were clearly written too hastily. I don't mean to be that harsh, but the fence has two sides, and people live on both sides of it. --drj

I used to be employed collecting trash, and I assume you did not :-)   But that is irrelevant. Rather, what is relevant is that there are many people using Wikipedia, with many different backgrounds and scopes of preconceived contexts. Garbage collection as a civic service should not go in as Garbage collection either. Garbage collection should be a short pointer page to both topics, each under separate articles.  They need clearly unambiguous terms to the general public in them. "Computer" should be in the title of the one (perhaps  Computer memory garbage collection) and something clear like "civic" or "municipal" in the other.  --Alan Millar

Split. --drj.

Requested move 5 April 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. We have consensus that waste collection is the primary topic, so the dab page will be moved. Cúchullain t/ c 15:35, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Garbage collection → Garbage collection (disambiguation) – Move to make way to redirect this title to its primary title topic, Waste collection. Garbage redirects to its primary topic, Municipal waste. Garbage collection, as a subtopic of Garbage, should point to the corresponding article about the collection of municipal waste. In terms of society and the scope of human history, of course, waste collection is also the much more important topic. bd2412 T 13:16, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Support Waste collection is clearly the primary topic and so it is logical that this page should become a redirect to it. Bazonka (talk) 17:58, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Support, good find and RM, per nom. Randy Kryn 18:36, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Goldenshimmer (talk) 00:35, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose – other meanings are very prominent, too. Disambiguation is good.  Dicklyon (talk) 02:30, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually it's not if it will tend to bring people to something other than what they are likely to be looking for. In the long run, this will have that effect. Also, there is only one other meaning on the page that is an actual title match to the concept of collecting garbage (the other one redirecting to Write amplification, an article with a different title). bd2412  T 03:35, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Per Dick. If I Google for "garbage collection" in a private session, then half the hits are about garbage collection (computer science) and half about waste collection. Both Garbage collection (computer science) and Waste collection have about 350 incoming links from mainspace. (Galaxy has over 4000, Samsung Galaxy less than 400.) Garbage collection (computer science) gets 568 page views per day, Waste collection 83. —Ruud 12:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Support due to obvious long-term significance. The concept of collecting trash has a long (if not particularly glamorous) history across many cultures and civilizations. It plays an important role in sanitation, which is a critical aspect of modern society. The relatively obscure computer science concept... less so. No doubt, to those who travel in circles with many computer programmers and engineers, it will seem like a thing that many people care about, but to the general public, this is not the case. Also, if I Google "galaxy" in a private session, at least half of the hits are about cell phones, which is a good example of why Google hits are such a poor guide for determining primary topics. Egsan Bacon (talk) 14:17, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * support Per the significance. Nohomersryan (talk) 13:47, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.