1. TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS, consul in 238 B.C., carried on successful operations against the Ligurian mountaineers, and, at the conclusion of the Carthaginian mercenary war, was in command of the fleet which at the invitation of the insurgents took possession of the island of Sardinia.
2. TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS, probably the son of (1), distinguished himself during the second Punic war. Consul in 215, he defeated the Capuans who had entered into an alliance with Hannibal, and in 214 gained a signal success over Hanno near Beneventum, chiefly owing to the _volones_ (slave-volunteers), to whom he had promised freedom in the event of victory. In 213 Gracchus was consul a second time and carried on the war in Lucania; in the following year, while advancing northward to reinforce the consuls in their attack on Capua, he was betrayed into the hands of the Carthaginian Mago by a Lucanian of rank, who had formerly supported the Roman cause and was connected with Gracchus himself by ties of hospitality. Gracchus fell fighting bravely; his body was sent to Hannibal, who accorded him a splendid burial.
3. TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS (c. 210-151 B.C.), father of the tribunes, and husband of Cornelia, the daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus, was possibly the son of a Publius Sempronius Gracchus who was tribune in 189. Although a determined political opponent of the two Scipios (Asiaticus and Africanus), as tribune in 187 he interfered on their behalf when they were accused of having accepted bribes from the king of Syria after the war. In 185 he was a member of the commission sent to Macedonia to investigate the complaints made by Eumenes II. of Pergamum against Philip V. of Macedon. In his curule aedileship (182) he celebrated the games on so magnificent a scale that the burdens imposed upon the Italian and extra-Italian communities led to the official interference of the senate. In 181 he went as praetor to Hither Spain, and, after gaining signal successes in the field, applied himself to the pacification of the country. His strict sense of justice and sympathetic attitude won the respect and affection of the inhabitants; the land had rest for a quarter of a century. When consul in 177, he was occupied in putting down a revolt in Sardinia, and brought back so many prisoners that _Sardi venales_ (Sardinians for sale) became a proverbial expression for a drug in the market. In 169 Gracchus was censor, and both he and his colleague (C. Claudius Pulcher) showed themselves determined opponents of the capitalists. They deeply offended the equestrian order by forbidding any contractor who had obtained contracts under the previous censors to make fresh offers. Gracchus stringently enforced the limitation of the freedmen to the four city tribes, which completely destroyed their influence in the comitia. In 165 and 161 he went as ambassador to several Asiatic princes, with whom he established friendly relations. Amongst the places visited by him was Rhodes, where he delivered a speech in Greek, which he afterwards published. In 163 he was again consul.