I Gracchi - Grandi Delitti nella Storia


Author: Paola Lambrini
Rating: 4/5

I quite liked this one;
it is the first book I read in 2021 and the first one I came across from the collection of “Grandi Delitti della Storia” (that translates into: Great Murders of History), a curated series by Corriere della Sera.

I’ve always been fascinated by famous murders as they often are breakpoints in the ebb and flow of History and become catalysts of change.

They are also surprisingly often well documented, either because of the morbidity inherent to human nature or maybe because the are a nice break from the apparent plainness of History.
One thing is reading about an historical trend, an overarching process that is the sum of many little changes accrued during many years, or even decades; another matter entirely is the sudden shift that happens in the polarizing moments after a famous murder.

I find the juxtaposition that lies behind such events very interesting.
Those people are at the same time the idea that the past has passed down to us (look at Caesar for example, whose name has become the very concept of power) and the inescapably human vessel of the idea, with its own merits, flaws, affections, idea, habits, tastes, feelings and worries.

One moment a king is advocating its agenda or its political program, invested with all the “implicit” meaning and significance of its role (the idea), and the next there is nothing more left other than a lifeless corpse (the human vessel) and turmoil (the change).

And yet, this triple twine is nothing but a construct because History is really what we made of it; a never ending reinterpretation of events from both the “colored glasses” of the sources of the past and those of the readers of the present.

Without romanticizing much, all those people who’s fate and misfortunes we read today, stripped of the ideal vest they inevitably fall into, in the end were just, well, people.
The same parallel can be made for any human really (even those alive today): the Pope, the president of the United States, the Chairman of the Library Association of Japan.

And so, every figure of significance in the whole course of History, in the end is very much an ordinary human being that traversed Time facing, at some point in its life, the very same hustles and problems that you and me and billions of others have had to face.

In the end I think I liked more the idea that the book represents rather than the book itself.

The author presents a parallel between the lives of the two Gracchi brother’s Tiberius and Caius because both advocated for better rights for the Roman people (opposed to the aristocracy) and both died a violent death in very similar circumstances, roughly a decade apart.

Would definitely recommend this book to begin a journey into the tragic events that lead into famous murders.
I have especially appreciated the final section of the book that aims at providing the reader with useful information and sources with which expand further on the subject.

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