“…the senators were barred from foreign trade by law…”.

That’s so misleading as to be wrong despite being technically accurate. They were barred from all trade (not just foreign), but they weren’t barred from investing in it less directly.

“Gracchus proposed that the government procure an adequate supply of wheat to be sold at a low and fixed price to everyone who was willing to stand in line once a month at a warehouse… Anyone willing to stand in the bread line could take advantage of the low price”.

No, only Roman citizens could benefit (and, in practice, just those in Rome itself). Large segments of the population, like freedmen, were left out.

“The idea that the state should tax its richer citizens to take care of the unfortunate on a permanent basis was shocking to the old Roman ideas of self-reliance”.

That was never contemplated at all. In fact, apart from a tax in support of the temples (kept to maintain a personal connection to religion), all taxes on citizens had been abolished by then anyway. No, what was proposed involved using the funds flowing from the conquered, which would have left less of that for those who used to get it.

“Presumably the unemployed were able to get occasional odd jobs and they could sponge on the rich. But undoubtedly low-price wheat was a great help.”

In particular, it allowed for more such employment by allowing people to settle for lower pay. But the effect was limited: these people had to rent housing in Rome to be able to benefit. Not only did the Rome-based assistance encourage higher rents in response, but also those rents largely clawed back the putative gains for the land owners.

“The fact that as a result of these measures some ninety thousand persons were left unprovided for and that there are no reports that any of them starved may have a certain significance. It is a fair assumption that people were going to the government for relief who might have got on without it.”

Wrong. Poor statistics, remember? Also, people could sell themselves or their children into slavery. It is unlikely that anyone starved in Rome as a consequence – because if all else failed they could leave for rural areas, and if they couldn’t make a go of it there they would have starved there. (However, there was an additional if rudimentary support system anyway, with people being fed the surplus of sacrifices by the temples – a practice mentioned obliquely in Paul’s Epistles.)

“The chief policies in which the business group was interested had to do with territorial expansion and the exploitation of the conquered provinces. The conservative senators shrank from the annexation of additional territory. This presented governmental problems which they were not ready to undertake.”

Annexation was hardly ever an issue, administration was. For until part way into the Empire, Rome simply did not annex territory but rather set up a tributary client state relationship, or in the worst case set up autonomous colonies. Within that, however, there were land transfers to directly ruled Roman public lands – but those presented no new problems and were actually actively desired by the land owners. (They did, however, aggravate existing inequalities within Roman society.)

“The evil reputation of the oppressive tax collectors, the puhlicani [sic - typo], has come down to us from the New Testament… With the backing of troops tax collecting frequently became organized plundering. These conditions were not universal. There were parts of the Empire in western Europe and northern Africa where taxes were not farmed.”

Also, there were at times areas where taxes were farmed but properly regulated, e.g. when and where the practice first started, in Sicily while there was still a client state with an interest in preventing abuse and the power to prevent it.

“It was in the judicial proceedings for trying provincial governors for extortion that one of the Gracchan laws proved an instrument of oppression, wholly contrary to the purposes of the reformer who obtained its adoption… But an unforeseen evil developed. If an honest governor tried to protect the provincials from exactions from a tax-collecting syndicate, its stockholders could frame up charges against him and have him tried by a jury whose members might be financially interested in the syndicate that he had antagonized.”

This was not unforeseen but was one of the objections to the proposal made at the time; it cannot have been contrary to Gracchus’s overall purposes but must have been consistent with them, since he went ahead anyway (after all, no Roman would have got hurt if the governors had simply rolled over).

What this article completely omits is the fact of the influence of Greek thought and practice on the Gracchi, and the way in which they applied it inappropriately under very different circumstances rather than merely drawing on it for inspiration to be suitably worked up.