In the Roman Republic a veto by a Tribune of the Plebes could not be countermanded.
There was, however, an instance in which the Tribune who vetoed the reading of a proposed law faced a “recall election” and was voted out of office and the reading of the law alhttps://thedeathofcarthage.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1885&action=editlowed to proceed.
In 134 B.C., Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, Tribune of the Plebes, proposed a strong land reform law which would distribute land from the ager publica to landless Roman citizens, The proposal threatened the interests of a number of wealthy Roman Senators who were using the Ager Publica for their own financial benefit. These Senators prevailed upon one of Gracchus’ fellow tribunes, Gaius Octavius, to veto the reading of the bill. No amount of persuasion by Gracchus and his faction would get Octavius to back down.
Gracchus then proposed a special election to oust Octavius from his office. Gracchus addressed the assembly saying “The person of a Tribune, I acknowledge, is sacred and inviolable, because he is consecrated to the people and takes their interests under his protection. But when he deserts these interests and becomes an oppressor of the people, when he retrenches their privileges, and takes away their liberty of voting: by those acts he deprives himself, for he no longer keeps to the intention of his employment. Otherwise, if a tribune should demolish the Capitol, and burn the docks and the naval stores, his person could not be touched. A man who should do such things as these, might still be called a Tribune, though a vile one, but he who diminishes the privileges of the people, ceases to be a Tribune of the people.
“What is there in Rome so sacred and venerable as the Vestal Virgins who keep the perpetual fire? Yet if any of them transgresses the rules of her order, she is buried alive. For they who are guilty of impiety against the gods lose that sacred character, which they had only for the sake of the gods. So, a Tribune who injures the people can be no longer sacred and inviolable on the people’s account. He destroys that power in which alone his strength lay. If it is just for him to be invested with the tribunal authority by a majority of tribes, is it not more just for him to be deposed by the suffrages of them all?”
An election was held in which the Tribune Octavius was dismissed from his office. The land reform bill was then voted upon and passed by all of the centuries. It did not end well for Tiberius Gracchus and his faction, however. A year later the offended Senators banded together and attacked Gracchus and his followers killing him and three hundred others. This was the first time Rome experienced large scale civil bloodletting. It would not be the last.
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