Ti. Gracchus' transgression was not that he wanted to distribute Attalus' fortune as part of the lex agraria, it was that he violated normal procedure in doing so. The senatorial class did not have the right, nor was the suggestion ever raised, of appropriating Attalus' lands and fortune. That was not at stake. Rather, one of the senate's few legal powers was oversight of the public treasury and establishment of the various treaties that had to be put in place in provincial and free cities. Ti., assuming that the state would accept Attalus' will before they actually had done so, violated these rights by exercising tribunician power to bring a bill straight to the tribal assembly without allowing the senate even to see it. While there was technically nothing saying that the tribal assembly could not enact bills pertaining to the treasury and provincial organization it was highly irregular and a direct affront to mos maiorum. This particular incident was a relatively minor one (Appian ignores it altogether), pretty much totally overshadowed by Ti.'s irregular (though not unprecedented) passage of the lex agraria and by his abrogation of Octavius' magistracy, of questionable legality and accompanied probably by physical violence. In combination with these it showed a troubling tendency on Ti.'s part to ignore normal state processes and refuse to negotiate on the one hand, and to resort to violence and violation of the laws when things did not go his way, a tactic with which he was soon met in turn.

If any citizen of Pergamum or a Pergamene-controlled city ever commented on the establishment of the Asian province in writing, I have never heard of it. You yourself may find it difficult to understand how a peaceful transition of regimes could be made in the region, but you live in a society in which nationalism and the nation-state are thoroughly integrated. To you such a transfer is one of translating countries and nations--to the ancient observer it was not necessarily so. The cities of Asia Minor had changed hands many times, peacefully and not, during the various squabbles of Hellenistic potentates, who directed particular attention to the Asiatic coast and its domination of the eastern Aegean. The Romans, like the Attalids before them, were the next in a long series of masters, and generally speaking so long as the rights and freedoms of individual cities were respected there appears to have been little unrest. Moreover, Attalus' will did not simply hand over the kingdom to the Romans. It established that most of the important cities of the kingdom were to become free cities (including Pergamum and Ephesus), which ensured their individual civic rights, as they were legally outside the province--that Ti. Gracchus intended to institute the series of treaties necessary with these free cities unilaterally and outside of normal tribunician rights was an issue. Some decades later the cities of Asia Minor became quite upset at the Romans for exacting a tributary rate of on-tenth of the province's agricultural production, but in 133 this was not yet an issue (it was C. Gracchus who established by the lex Sempronia of 123 the means by which tribute in the province would be assessed and sold). Attalus' will essentially provided that what legally fell into Roman hands was the kingdom treasury and the unused agricultural land unclaimed by his newly-established free cities, which themselves fell under Roman domination naturally but occupied that bizarre legal grey space of the free city. There was little unrest against the Romans in the cities of the province in the immediate aftermath of Attalus' death. And why should there be? They had traded one master for another, and gained a certain degree of political freedom in the process. Moreover, Romanization was never (certainly not in 133) a policy, and even after Roman settlements and culture were introduced to the east late in the first century they were within a few generations overwhelmed and absorbed by the titanic juggernaut of Greek. Outside the cities was a somewhat different story. Aristonicus, half-brother to the dead king, disputed the will and claimed the throne, assuming the title Eumenes III. His appeal to the cities of Asia Minor fell on deaf ears, and neither Pergamum nor Ephesus, nor any of the important cities of the former kingdom came over to his side. The Ephesians defeated him at sea at Cyme, driving him either entirely or mostly from the coast. Strabo remarks that Aristonicus was forced inland and, unable to rely on the cities of Asia for support, recruited mainly from the free and enslaved inhabitants of the inland farming communities. He had some short-lived initial successes, taking strongholds at Thyateira and Appolonis--both somewhat inland, near Sardis--before being driven off by the coastal cities and their Cappadocian and Bithynian allies. The Romans sent forces into the province, starting in 131. In 130 P. Crassus, a consul, was attacked and defeated near Leucae--the only coastal settlement, not much more than a town, that Strabo mentions as going over to Aristonicus--but M. Perperna defeated and captured Aristonicus. Aristonicus' attempted coup is not easy to categorize, however. The apparent reliance on freed slaves and agricultural workers and the staunch opposition of the large Greek settlements in the province suggest essentially a native uprising, as the inland areas were populated more thickly with non-Greeks than the coastland. But at the same time Aristonicus' claim complicates that view, as does Strabo's comment that Aristonicus called his supporters Ἡλιοπολῖται, "citizens of the sun," as if they had no civic identities of their own.