The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gracchi Marius and Sulla, by A.H. Beesley

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: The Gracchi Marius and Sulla
       Epochs Of Ancient History

Author: A.H. Beesley

Release Date: January 29, 2004 [EBook #10860]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GRACCHI MARIUS AND SULLA ***




Produced by Stan Goodman, Ted Garvin, C. Markus and PG Distributed
Proofreaders





EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY

       *       *       *       *       *


THE GRACCHI MARIUS AND SULLA

BY

A.H. BEESLEY

WITH MAPS

1921




PREFACE


It would be scarcely possible for anyone writing on the period
embraced in this volume, to perform his task adequately without making
himself familiar with Mr. Long's 'History of the Decline of the Roman
Republic' and Mommsen's 'History of Rome.' To do over again (as though
the work had never been attempted) what has been done once for all
accurately and well, would be mere prudery of punctiliousness. But
while I acknowledge my debt of gratitude to both these eminent
historians, I must add that for the whole period I have carefully
examined the original authorities, often coming to conclusions widely
differing from those of Mr. Long. And I venture to hope that from
the advantage I have had in being able to compare the works of two
writers, one of whom has well-nigh exhausted the theories as the
other has the facts of the subject, I have succeeded in giving a more
consistent and faithful account of the leaders and legislation of the
revolutionary era than has hitherto been written. Certainly there
could be no more instructive commentary on either history than the
study of the other, for each supplements the other and emphasizes
its defects. If Mommsen at times pushes conjecture to the verge of
invention, as in his account of the junction of the Helvetii and
Cimbri, Mr. Long, in his dogged determination never to swerve from
facts to inference, falls into the opposite extreme, resorting to
somewhat Cyclopean architecture in his detestation of stucco. But
my admiration for his history is but slightly qualified by such
considerations, and to any student who may be stimulated by the
volumes of this series to acquire what would virtually amount to an
acquaintance first-hand with the narratives of ancient writers, I
would say 'Read Mr. Long's history.' To do so is to learn not only
knowledge but a lesson in historical study generally. For the writings
of a man with whom style is not the first object are as refreshing as
his scorn for romancing history is wholesome, and the grave irony with
which he records its slips amusing.

A.H.B.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.

ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION.

Previous history of the Roman orders--The Ager Publicus--Previous
attempts at agrarian legislation--Roman slavery--The first Slave
War--The Nobiles, Optimates, Populares, Equites--Classification of the
component parts of the Roman State--State of the transmarine provinces


CHAPTER II.

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.

Scipio Aemilianus--Tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus--His agrarian
proposals--Wisdom of them--Grievances of the possessors--Octavius
thwarts Gracchus--Conduct of Gracchus defended--His other intended
reforms--He stands again for the tribunate--His motives--His murder


CHAPTER III.

CAIUS GRACCHUS.

Blossius spared--The law of T. Gracchus carried out--Explanation
of Italian opposition to it--Attitude of Scipio Aemilianus--His
murder--Quaestorship of Caius Gracchus--The Alien Act of
Pennus--Flaccus proposes to give the Socii the franchise--Revolt and
extirpation of Fregellae--Tribunate of Caius Gracchus--Compared to
Tiberius--His aims--His Corn Law defended--His Lex Judiciaria--His law
concerning the taxation of Asia--His conciliation of the equites--His
colonies--He proposes to give the franchise to the Italians--Other
projects--Machinations of the nobles against him--M. Livius Drusus
outbids him--Stands again for the tribunate, but is rejected--His
murder--Some of his laws remain in force--The Maria Lex--Reactionary
legislation of the Senate--The Lex Thoria--All offices confined to a
close circle


CHAPTER IV.

THE JUGURTHINE WAR.

Legacy of Attalus--Aristonicus usurps his kingdom--Settlement of
Asia--Jugurtha murders Hiempsal and attacks Adherbal--His intrigues
at Rome and the infamy of M. Aemilius Scaurus and the other Roman
nobles--Three commissions bribed by Jugurtha--Adherbal murdered--Rome
declares war and Jugurtha bribes the Roman generals, Bestia and
Scaurus--Memmius denounces them at Rome--Jugurtha summoned to Rome,
where he murders Massiva--He defeats Aulus Albinos--Metellus sent
against him Jugurtha defeated on the Muthul--Keeps up a guerilla
warfare--Marius stands for the consulship, and succeeds
Metellus--Bocchus betrays Jugurtha to Sulla--Settlement of Numidia


CHAPTER V.

THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.

Recommencement of the Social struggle at Rome--Marius the popular
hero--Incessant frontier-warfare of the Romans--The Cimbri defeat
Carbo and Silanus--Caepio and 'The Gold of Tolosa'--The Cimbri defeat
Scaurus and Caepio--Marius elected consul--The Cimbri march towards
Spain--Their nationality--Their plan of operations--Plan of
Marius--Battle of Aquae Sextiae--Battle of Vercellae


CHAPTER VI.

THE ROMAN ARMY.

Second Slave War--Aquillius ends it--Changes in the Roman
army--Uniform equipment of the legionary--Mariani muli--The cohort
the tactical unit--The officers--Numbers of the legion--The pay--The
praetorian cohort--Dislike to service--The army becomes professional


CHAPTER VII.

SATURNINUS AND DRUSUS.

Saturninus takes up the Gracchan policy, in league with Glaucia and
Marius--The Lex Servilia meant to relieve the provincials, conciliate
the equites, and throw open the judicia to all citizens--Agrarian law
of Saturninus--His laws about grain and treason--Murder of Memmius,
Glaucia's rival--Saturninus is attacked and deserted by Marius--The
Lex Licinia Minucia heralds the Social War--Drusus attempts
reform--Obliged to tread in the steps of the Gracchi--His proposals
with regard to the Italians, the coinage, corn, colonies and the
equites--Opposed by Philippus and murdered


CHAPTER VIII.

THE SOCIAL WAR.

Interests of Italian capitalists and small farmers opposed--The Social
War breaks out at Asculum--The insurgents choose Corfinium as their
capital--In the first year they gain everywhere--Then the Lex Julia is
passed and in the second year they lose everywhere--The star of Sulla
rises, that of Marius declines--The Lex Plautia Papiria--First year
of the war--The confederates defeat Perperna, Crassus, Caesar,
Lupus, Caepio, and take town after town--The Umbrians and Etruscans
Revolt--Second year--Pompeius triumphs in the north, Cosconius in
the south-east, Sulla in the south-west--Revolution at Rome--The
confederates courted by both parties--The rebellion smoulders on till
finally quenched by Sulla after the Mithridatic War


CHAPTER IX.

SULPICIUS.

Financial crisis at Rome--Sulpicius Rufus attempts to reform the
government, and complete the enfranchisement of the Italians--His laws
forcibly carried by the aid of Marius--Sulla driven from Rome flies to
the army at Nola, and marches at their head against Marius--Sulpicius
slain--Marius outlawed--Sulla leaves Italy after reorganizing the
Senate and the comitia


CHAPTER X.

MARIUS AND CINNA.

Flight of Marius--His romantic adventures at Circeii, Minturnae,
Carthage--Cinna takes up the Italian cause--Driven from Rome by
Octavius, he flies to the army in Campania and marches on Rome--Marius
lands in Etruria--Octavius summons Pompeius from Etruria and
their armies surround the city--Marius and Cinna enter Rome--The
proscriptions--Seventh consulship and death of Marius--Cinna supreme


CHAPTER XI.

THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR.

Sertorius in Spain--Cyrene bequeathed to Rome--Previous history of
Mithridates--His submission to Aquillius--Aquillius forces on a
war--He is defeated and killed by Mithridates--Massacre of Romans in
Asia--Mithridates repulsed at Rhodes


CHAPTER XII.

SULLA IN GREECE AND ASIA.

Aristion induces Athens to revolt--Sulla lands in Epirus, and besieges
Athens and the Piraeus--His difficulties--He takes Athens and the
Piraeus, and defeats Archelaus at Chaeroneia and Orchomenus--Terms
offered to Mithridates--Tyranny of the latter--Flaccus comes to Asia
and is murdered by Fimbria, who is soon afterwards put to death by
Sulla


CHAPTER XIII.

SULLA IN ITALY.

Sulla lands at Brundisium and is joined by numerous adherents--Battle
of Mount Tifata--Sertorius goes to Spain--Sulla in 83 is master of
Picenum, Apulia, and Campania--Battle of Sacriportus--Sulla blockades
young Marius in Praeneste--Indecisive war in Picenum between Carbo
and Metellus--Repeated attempts to relieve Praeneste--Carbo flies
to Africa--His lieutenants threaten Rome--Sulla comes to the rescue
--Desperate attempt to take the city by Pontius--Battle of the
Colline Gate--Sulla's danger--Death of Carbo, of Domitius
Ahenobarbus--Exploits of Pompeius in Sicily and Africa--His
vanity--Murena provokes the second Mithridatic War--Sertorius in
Spain--His successes and ascendency over the natives


CHAPTER XIV.

PERSONAL RULE AND DEATH OF SULLA.

The Sullan proscriptions--Sulla and Caesar--The Cornelii--Sulla's
horrible character--His death and splendid obsequies


CHAPTER XV.

SULLA'S REACTIONARY MEASURES.

The Leges Corneliae--Sulla remodels the Senate, the quaestorship,
the censorship, the tribunate, the comitia, the consulship, the
praetorship, the augurate and pontificate, the judicia--Minor laws
attributed to him--Effects of his legislation the best justification
of the Gracchi


LIST OF PHRASES

INDEX

MAPS.

MARCH OF SULLA AND ARCHELAUS BEFORE CHAERONEIA

BATTLE OF CHAERONEIA




THE

GRACCHI, MARIUS AND SULLA.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER I.

ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION.


During the last half of the second century before Christ Rome was
undisputed mistress of the civilised world. A brilliant period of
foreign conquest had succeeded the 300 years in which she had overcome
her neighbours and made herself supreme in Italy. In 146 B.C. she had
given the death-blow to her greatest rival, Carthage, and had annexed
Greece. In 140 treachery had rid her of Viriathus, the stubborn
guerilla who defied her generals and defeated her armies in Spain.
In 133 the terrible fate of Numantia, and in 132 the merciless
suppression of the Sicilian slave-revolt, warned all foes of the
Republic that the sword, which the incompetence of many generals had
made seem duller than of old, was still keen to smite; and except
where some slave-bands were in desperate rebellion, and in Pergamus,
where a pretender disputed with Rome the legacy of Attalus, every land
along the shores of the Mediterranean was subject to or at the mercy
of a town not half as large as the London of to-day. Almost exactly a
century afterwards the Government under which this gigantic empire had
been consolidated was no more.

Foreign wars will have but secondary importance in the following
pages. [Sidenote: The history will not be one of military events.] The
interest of the narrative centres mainly in home politics; and though
the world did not cease to echo to the tramp of conquering legions,
and the victorious soldier became a more and more important factor in
the State, still military matters no longer, as in the Samnite and
Punic wars, absorb the attention, dwarfed as they are by the great
social struggle of which the metropolis was the arena. In treating of
the first half of those hundred years of revolution, which began
with the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus and ended with the battle of
Actium, it is mainly the fall of the Republican and the foreshadowing
of the Imperial system of government which have to be described.
[Sidenote: In order to understand the times of the Gracchi it is
necessary to understand the history of the orders at Rome.] But, in
order to understand rightly the events of those fifty years, some
survey, however brief, of the previous history of the Roman orders is
indispensable.

[Sidenote: The patres.] When the mists of legend clear away we see a
community which, if we do not take slaves into account, consisted
of two parts--the governing body, or patres, to whom alone the term
Populus Romanus strictly applied, and who constituted the Roman State,
and the governed class, or clientes, who were outside its pale. The
word patrician, more familiar to our ear than the substantive from
which it is formed, came to imply much more than its original meaning.
[Sidenote: The clients.] In its simplest and earliest sense it was
applied to a man who was sprung from a Roman marriage, who stood
towards his client on much the same footing which, in the mildest form
of slavery, a master occupies towards his slave. As the patronus was
to the libertus, when it became customary to liberate slaves, so in
some measure were the Fathers to their retainers, the Clients. That
the community was originally divided into these two sections is known.
What is not known is how, besides this primary division of patres and
clientes, there arose a second _political_ class in the State, namely
the plebs. The client as client had no political existence. [Sidenote:
The plebeians.] But as a plebeian he had. Whether the plebs was formed
of clients who had been released from their clientship, just as slaves
might be manumitted; or of foreigners, as soldiers, traders, or
artisans were admitted into the community; or partly of foreigners and
partly of clients, the latter being equalised by the patres with the
former in self-defence; and whether as a name it dated from or was
antecedent to the so-called Tullian organization is uncertain. But we
know that in one way or other a second political division in the State
arose and that the constitution, of which Servius Tullius was the
reputed author, made every freeman in Rome a citizen by giving him a
vote in the Comitia Centuriata. Yet though the plebeian was a citizen,
and as such acquired 'commercium,' or the right to hold and devise
property, it was only after a prolonged struggle that he achieved
political equality with the patres. [Sidenote: Gradual acquisition
by the plebs of political equality with the patres.] Step by step he
wrung from them the rights of intermarriage and of filling offices of
state; and the great engine by which this was brought about was the
tribunate, the historical importance of which dates from, even though
as a plebeian magistracy it may have existed before, the first
secession of the plebs in 494 B.C. [Sidenote: Character of the
tribunate.] The tribunate stood towards the freedom of the Roman
people in something of the same relation which the press of our time
occupies towards modern liberty: for its existence implied free
criticism of the executive, and out of free speech grew free action.
[Sidenote: The Roman government transformed from oligarchy into a
plutocracy.]

Side by side with those external events which made Rome mistress first
of her neighbours, then, of Italy, and lastly of the world, there went
on a succession of internal changes, which first transformed a pure
oligarchy into a plutocracy, and secondly overthrew this modified form
of oligarchy, and substituted Caesarism. With the earlier of these
changes we are concerned here but little. The political revolution was
over when the social revolution which we have to record began. But the
roots of the social revolution were of deep growth, and were in fact
sometimes identical with those of the political revolution. [Sidenote:
Parallel between Roman and English history.] Englishmen can understand
such an intermixture the more readily from the analogies, more or less
close, which their own history supplies. They have had a monarchy.
They have been ruled by an oligarchy, which has first confronted and
then coalesced with the moneyed class, and the united orders have been
forced to yield theoretical equality to almost the entire nation,
while still retaining real authority in their own hands. They have
seen a middle class coquetting with a lower class in order to force
an upper class to share with it its privileges, and an upper class
resorting in its turn to the same alliance; and they may have noted
something more than a superficial resemblance between the tactics
of the patres and nobiles of Rome and our own magnates of birth and
commerce. Even now they are witnessing the displacement of political
by social questions, and, it is to be hoped, the successful solution
of problems which in the earlier stages of society have defied the
efforts of every statesman. Yet they know that, underlying all the
political struggles of their history, questions connected with
the rights and interests of rich and poor, capitalist and toiler,
land-owner and land-cultivator, have always been silently and
sometimes violently agitated. Political emancipation has enabled
social discontent to organize itself and find permanent utterance, and
we are to-day facing some of the demands to satisfy which the Gracchi
sacrificed their lives more than 2,000 years ago. [Sidenote: The
struggle between the orders chiefly agrarian.] With us indeed the
wages question is of more prominence than the land question, because
we are a manufacturing nation; but the principles at stake are much
the same. At Rome social agitation was generally agrarian, and the
first thing necessary towards understanding the Gracchan revolution is
to gain a clear conception of the history of the public land.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Ager Publicus.] The ground round a town like
Rome was originally cultivated by the inhabitants, some of whom, as
more food and clothing were required, would settle on the soil. From
them the ranks of the army were recruited; and, thus doubly oppressed
by military service and by the land tax, which had to be paid in coin,
the small husbandman was forced to borrow from some richer man in the
town. Hence arose usury, and a class of debtors; and the sum of debt
must have been increased as well as the number of the debtors by the
very means adopted to relieve it. [Sidenote: Fourfold way of dealing
with conquered territory.] When Rome conquered a town she confiscated
a portion of its territory, and disposed of it in one of four ways.
[Sidenote: Colonies.] 1. After expelling the owners, she sent some of
her own citizens to settle upon it. They did not cease to be Romans,
and, being in historical times taken almost exclusively from the
plebs, must often have been but poorly furnished with the capital
necessary for cultivating the ground. [Sidenote: Sale.] 2. She sold
it; and, as with us, when a field is sold, a plan is made of its
dimensions and boundaries, so plans of the land thus sold were made on
tablets of bronze, and kept by the State. [Sidenote: Occupation.] 3.
She allowed private persons to 'occupy' it on payment of 'vectigal,'
or a portion of the produce; and, though not surrendering the title to
the land, permitted the possessors to use it as their private property
for purchase, sale, and succession. [Sidenote: Commons.] 4. A portion
was kept as common pasture land for those to whom the land had been
given or sold, or by whom it was occupied and those who used it paid
'scriptura,' or a tax of so much per head on the beasts, for whose
grazing they sent in a return. This irregular system was fruitful in
evil. It suited the patres with whom it originated, for they were
for a time the sole gainers by it. Without money it must have been
hopeless to occupy tracts distant from Rome. The poor man who did so
would either involve himself in debt, or be at the mercy of his richer
neighbours, whose flocks would overrun his fields, or who might oust
him altogether from them by force, and even seize him himself and
enroll him as a slave. The rich man, on the other hand, could use
such land for pasture, and leave the care of his flocks and herds
to clients and slaves. [Sidenote: This irregular system the germ of
latifundia.] So originated those 'latifundia,' or large farms, which
greatly contributed to the ruin of Rome and Italy. The tilled land
grew less and with it dwindled the free population and the recruiting
field for the army. Gangs of slaves became more numerous, and were
treated with increased brutality; and as men who do not work for their
own money are more profuse in spending it than those who do, the
extravagance of the Roman possessors helped to swell the tide of
luxury, which rose steadily with foreign conquest, and to create in
the capital a class free in name indeed, but more degraded, if less
miserable, than the very slaves, who were treated like beasts through
Italy. It is not certain whether anyone except a patrician could claim
'occupation' as a right; but, as the possessors could in any case
sell the land to plebeians, it fell into the hands of rich men,
to whichever class they belonged, both at Rome, and in the Roman
colonies, and the Municipia; and as it was never really their
property--'dominium'--but the property of the State, it was a constant
source of envy and discontent among the poor.

[Sidenote: Why complaints about the Public Land became louder at the
close of the second century B.C.] As long as fresh assignations of
land and the plantations of colonies went on, this discontent could
be kept within bounds. But for a quarter of a century preceding our
period scarcely any fresh acquisitions of land had been made in Italy,
and, with no hope of new allotments from the territory of their
neighbours, the people began to clamour for the restitution of their
own. [Sidenote: Previous agrarian legislation. Spurius Cassius.] The
first attempt to wrest public land from possessors had been made long
before this by Spurius Cassius; and he had paid for his daring with
his life. [Sidenote: The Licinian Law.] More than a century later the
Licinian law forbade anyone to hold above 500 'jugera' of public land,
for which, moreover, a tenth of the arable and a fifth of the grazing
produce was to be paid to the State. The framers of the law are said
to have hoped that possessors of more than this amount would shrink
from making on oath a false return of the land which they occupied,
and that, as they would be liable to penalties for exceeding the
prescribed maximum, all land beyond the maximum would be sold at a
nominal price (if this interpretation of the [Greek: kat' oligon] of
Appian may be hazarded) to the poor. It is probable that they did not
quite know what they were aiming at, and certain that they did not
foresee the effects of their measure. In a confused way the law
may have been meant to comprise sumptuary, political, and agrarian
objects. It forbade anyone to keep more than a hundred large or five
hundred small beasts on the common pasture-land, and stipulated for
the employment of a certain proportion of free labour. The free
labourers were to give information of the crops produced, so that
the fifths and tenths might be duly paid; and it may have been
the breakdown of such an impossible institution which led to the
establishment of the 'publicani.' [Sidenote: Composite nature of the
Licinian law.] Nothing, indeed, is more likely than that Licinius and
Sextius should have attempted to remedy by one measure the specific
grievance of the poor plebeians, the political disabilities of the
rich plebeians and the general deterioration of public morals; but,
though their motives may have been patriotic, such a measure could no
more cure the body politic than a man who has a broken limb, is blind,
and in a consumption can be made sound at every point by the heal-all
of a quack. Accordingly the Licinian law was soon, except in its
political provisions, a dead letter. Licinius was the first man
prosecuted for its violation, and the economical desire of the nation
became intensified. [Sidenote: The Flaminian law.] In 232 B.C.
Flaminius carried a law for the distribution of land taken from the
Senones among the plebs. Though the law turned out no possessors, it
was opposed by the Senate and nobles. Nor is this surprising, for any
law distributing land was both actually and as a precedent a blow to
the interests of the class which practised occupation. What is at
first sight surprising is that small parcels of land, such as must
have been assigned in these distributions, should have been so
coveted. [Sidenote: Why small portions of land were so coveted.] The
explanation is probably fourfold. Those who clamoured for them were
wretched enough to clutch at any change; or did not realise to
themselves the dangers and drawbacks of what they desired; or intended
at once to sell their land to some richer neighbour; or, lastly,
longed to keep a slave or two, just as the primary object of the 'mean
white' in America used to be to keep his negro. [Sidenote: Failure
of previous legislation.] On the whole, it is clear that legislation
previous to this period had not diminished agrarian grievances, and it
is clear also why these grievances were so sorely felt. The general
tendency at Rome and throughout Italy was towards a division of
society into two classes--the very rich and the very poor, a tendency
which increased so fast that not many years later it was said that out
of some 400,000 men at Rome only 2,000 could, in spite of the city
being notoriously the centre to which the world's wealth gravitated,
be called really rich men. To any patriot the progressive extinction
of small land-owners must have seemed piteous in itself and menacing
to the life of the State. On the other hand, the poor had always one
glaring act of robbery to cast in the teeth of the rich. A sanguine
tribune might hope permanently to check a growing evil by fresh
supplies of free labour. His poor partisan again had a direct
pecuniary interest in getting the land. Selfish and philanthropic
motives therefore went hand in hand, and in advocating the
distribution of land a statesman would be sure of enlisting
the sympathies of needy Italians, even more than those of the
better-provided-for poor of Rome.

[Sidenote: Roman slavery.] Incidental mention has been made of the
condition of the slaves in Italy. It was the sight of the slave-gangs
which partly at least roused Tiberius Gracchus to action, and some
remarks on Roman slavery follow naturally an enquiry into the nature
of the public land. The most terrible characteristic of slavery is
that it blights not only the unhappy slaves themselves, but their
owners and the land where they live. It is an absolutely unmitigated
evil. As Roman conquests multiplied and luxury increased, enormous
fortunes became more common, and the demand for slaves increased also.
Ten thousand are said to have been landed and sold at Delos in one
day. What proportion the slave population of Italy bore to the free at
the time of the Gracchi we cannot say. It has been placed as low as 4
per cent., but the probability is that it was far greater. [Sidenote:
Slave labour universally employed.] In trades, mining, grazing,
levying of revenue, and every field of speculation, slave-labour
was universally employed. If it is certain that even unenfranchised
Italians, however poor, could be made to serve in the Roman army, it
was a proprietor's direct interest from that point of view to employ
slaves, of whose services he could not be deprived.

[Sidenote: Whence the slaves came. Their treatment.] A vast impetus
had been given to the slave-trade at the time of the conquest of
Macedonia, about thirty-five years before our period. The
great slave-producing countries were those bordering on the
Mediterranean--Africa, Asia, Spain, &c. An organized system of
man-hunting supplied the Roman markets, and slave-dealers were part of
the ordinary retinue of a Roman army. When a batch of slaves reached
its destination they were kept in a pen till bought. Those bought
for domestic service would no doubt be best off, and the cunning,
mischievous rogue, the ally of the young against the old master of
whom we read in Roman comedy, if he does not come up to our ideal
of what a man should be, does not seem to have been physically very
wretched. Even here, however, we see how degraded a thing a slave was,
and the frequent threats of torture prove how utterly he was at the
mercy of a cruel master's caprice. We know, too, that when a master
was arraigned on a criminal charge, the first thing done to prove his
guilt was to torture his slaves. But just as in America the popular
figure of the oily, lazy, jocular negro, brimming over with grotesque
good-humour and screening himself in the weakness of an indulgent
master, merely served to brighten a picture of which the horrible
plantation system was the dark background; so at Rome no instances of
individual indulgence were a set-off against the monstrous barbarities
which in the end brought about their own punishment, and the ruin
of the Republic. [Sidenote: Dread inspired by the prospect of Roman
slavery.] Frequent stories attest the horrors of Roman slavery felt
by conquered nations. We read often of individuals, and sometimes of
whole towns, committing suicide sooner than fall into the conquerors'
hands. Sometimes slaves slew their dealers, sometimes one another. A
boy in Spain killed his three sisters and starved himself to avoid
slavery. Women killed their children with the same object. If, as it
is asserted, the plantation-system was not yet introduced into Italy,
such stories, and the desperate out-breaks, and almost incredibly
merciless suppression of slave revolts, prove that the condition of
the Roman slave was sufficiently miserable. [Sidenote: The horrors of
slavery culminated in Sicily.] But doubtless misery reached its climax
in Sicily, where that system was in full swing. Slaves not sold for
domestic service were there branded and often made to work in chains,
the strongest serving as shepherds. Badly fed and clothed, these
shepherds plundered whenever they found the chance. Such brigandage
was winked at, and sometimes positively encouraged, by the owners,
while the governors shrank from punishing the brigands for fear of
offending their masters. As the demand for slaves grew, slave-breeding
as well as slave-importation was practised. No doubt there were as
various theories as to the most profitable management of slaves then
as in America lately. Damophilus had the instincts of a Legree: a
Haley and a Cato would have held much the same sentiments as to the
rearing of infants. Some masters would breed and rear, and try to get
more work from the slave by kindness than harshness. Others would work
them off and buy afresh; and as this would be probably the cheapest
policy, no doubt it was the prevalent one. And what an appalling vista
of dumb suffering do such considerations open to us! Cold, hunger,
nakedness, torture, infamy, a foreign country, a strange climate, a
life so hard that it made the early death which was almost inevitable
a comparative blessing--such was the terrible lot of the Roman
slave. At last, almost simultaneously at various places in the Roman
dominions, he turned like a beast upon a brutal drover. [Sidenote:
Outbreaks in various quarters.] At Rome, at Minturnae, at Sinuessa,
at Delos, in Macedonia, and in Sicily insurrections or attempts at
insurrections broke out. They were everywhere mercilessly suppressed,
and by wholesale torture and crucifixion the conquerors tried to
clothe death, their last ally, with terror which even a slave dared
not encounter. In the year when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune (and the
coincidence is significant), it was found necessary to send a consul
to put down the first slave revolt in Sicily. It is not known when it
broke out. [Sidenote: Story of Damophilus.] Its proximate cause was
the brutality of Damophilus, of Enna, and his wife Megallis. His
slaves consulted a man named Eunous, a Syrian-Greek, who had long
foretold that he would be a king, and whom his master's guests had
been in the habit of jestingly asking to remember them when he came
to the throne. [Sidenote: The first Sicilian slave war.] Eunous led a
band of 400 against Enna. He could spout fire from his mouth, and his
juggling and prophesying inspired confidence in his followers. All the
men of Enna were slain except the armourers, who were fettered and
compelled to forge arms. Damophilus and Megallis were brought with
every insult into the theatre. He began to beg for his life with some
effect, but Hermeias and another cut him down; and his wife, after
being tortured by the women, was cast over a precipice. But their
daughter had been gentle to the slaves, and they not only did not harm
her, but sent her under an escort, of which this Hermeias was one, to
Catana. Eunous was now made king, and called himself Antiochus. He
made Achaeus his general, was joined by Cleon with 5,000 slaves, and
soon mustered 10,000 men. Four praetors (according to Florus) were
defeated; the number of the rebels rapidly increased to 200,000; and
the whole island except a few towns was at their mercy. In 134 the
consul Flaccus went to Sicily; but with what result is not known.
In 133 the consul L. Calpurnius Piso captured Messana, killed 8,000
slaves, and crucified all his prisoners. In 132 P. Rupilius captured
the two strongholds of the slaves, Tauromenium and Enna (Taormina and
Castragiovanni). Both towns stood on the top ledges of precipices, and
were hardly accessible. Each was blockaded and each was eventually
surrendered by a traitor. But at Tauromenium the defenders held out,
it is said, till all food was gone, and they had eaten the children,
and the women, and some of the men. Cleon's brother Comanus was taken
here; all the prisoners were first tortured, and then thrown down the
rocks. At Enna Cleon made a gallant sally, and died of his wounds.
Eunous fled and was pulled out of a pit with his cook, his baker, his
bathman, and his fool. He is said to have died in prison of the same
disease as Sulla and Herod. Rupilius crucified over 20,000 slaves, and
so quenched with blood the last fires of rebellion.

Besides the dangers threatening society from the discontent of the
poor, the aggressions of the rich, the multiplication and ferocious
treatment of slaves, and the social rivalries of the capital, the
condition of Italy and the general deterioration of public morality
imperatively demanded reform. It has been already said that we do
not know for certain how the plebs arose. But we know how it wrested
political equality from the patres, and, speaking roughly, we may date
the fusion of the two orders under he common title 'nobiles,' from
the Licinian laws. [Sidenote: The 'nobiles' at Rome.] It had been a
gradual change, peaceably brought about, and the larger number having
absorbed the smaller, the term 'nobiles,' which specifically meant
those who had themselves filled a curule office, or whose fathers had
done so, comprehended in common usage the old nobility and the new.
The new nobles rapidly drew aloof from the residuum of the plebs, and,
in the true _parvenu_ spirit, aped and outdid the arrogance of the old
patricians. Down to the time of the Gracchi, or thereabouts, the two
great State parties consisted of the plebs on the one hand, and these
nobiles on the other. [Sidenote: The 'optimates' and 'populares.']
After that date new names come into use, though we can no more fix the
exact time when the terms optimates and populares superseded previous
party watchwords than we can when Tory gave place to Conservative, and
Whig to Liberal. Thus patricians and plebeians were obsolete terms,
and nobles and plebeians no longer had any political meaning, for each
was equal in the sight of the law; each had a vote; each was eligible
to every office. But when the fall of Carthage freed Rome from all
rivals, and conquest after conquest filled the treasury, increased
luxury made the means of ostentation more greedily sought. Office
meant plunder; and to gain office men bribed, and bribed every day
on a vaster scale. If we said that 'optimates' signified the men
who bribed and abused office under the banner of the Senate and its
connections, and that 'populares' meant men who bribed and abused
office with the interests of the people outside the senatorial pale
upon their lips, we might do injustice to many good men on both sides,
but should hardly be slandering the parties. Parties in fact they were
not. They were factions, and the fact that it is by no means easy
always to decide how far individuals were swayed by good or bad
motives, where good motives were so often paraded to mask base
actions, does not disguise their despicable character. Honest
optimates would wish to maintain the Senate's preponderance from
affection to it, and from belief in its being the mainstay of the
State. Honest populares, like the Gracchi, who saw the evils of
senatorial rule, tried to win the popular vote to compass its
overthrow. Dishonest politicians of either side advocated conservatism
or change simply from the most selfish personal ambition; and in time
of general moral laxity it is the dishonest politicians who give the
tone to a party. The most unscrupulous members of the ruling ring, the
most shameless panderers to mob prejudice, carry all before them. Both
seek one thing only--personal ascendency, and the State becomes the
bone over which the vilest curs wrangle.

[Sidenote: Who the equites were.] In writing of the Gracchi reference
will be made to the Equites. The name had broadened from its original
meaning, and now merely denoted all non-senatorial rich men. An
individual eques would lean to the senatorial faction or the faction
of men too poor to keep a horse for cavalry service, just as his
connexions were chiefly with the one or the other. How, as a body, the
equites veered round alternately to each side, we shall see hereafter.
Instead of forming a sound middle class to check the excesses of both
parties, they were swayed chiefly by sordid motives, and backed up
the men who for the time seemed most willing or able to gratify their
greed. What went on at Rome must have been repeated over again with
more or less exactitude throughout Italy, and there, in addition to
this process of national disintegration, the clouds of a political
storm were gathering. The following table will show at a glance the
classification of the Roman State as constituted at the outbreak of
the Social War.

  _Cives Romani_:
  1. Rome
  2. Roman Colonies
  3. Municipia

  Roman Colonies and Municipia are Praefectura.

  _Peregrini_:
  1. Latini or Nomen Latinum
     a. Old Latin towns except such as had been made Municipia
     b. Colonies of old Latin towns
     c. Joint colonies (if any) of Rome and old Latin towns
     d. Colonies of Italians from all parts of Italy founded by Rome
        under the name of Latin Colonies
  2. Socii, i.e. Free inhabitants of Italy
  3. Provincials, i.e. Free subjects of Rome out of Italy

[Sidenote: Rights of Cives Romani.] The Cives Romani in and out of
Rome had the Jus Suffragii and the Jus Honorum, i.e. the right to vote
and the right to hold office. [Sidenote: The Roman Colony.] A _Roman
Colony_ was in its organization Rome in miniature, and the people
among whom it had been planted as a garrison may either have retained
their own political constitution, or have been governed by a
magistrate sent from Rome. They were not Roman citizens except as
being residents of a Roman city, but by irregular marriages with
Romans the line of demarcation between the two peoples may have grown
less clearly defined. [Sidenote: The Praefectura.] _Praefectura_ was
the generic name for Roman colonies and for all Municipia to which
prefects were sent annually to administer justice. [Sidenote:
Municipia] _Municipia_ are supposed to have been originally those
conquered Italian towns to which Connubium and Commercium, i.e. rights
of intermarriage and of trade, were given, but from whom Jus Suffragii
and Jus Honorum were withheld. These privileges, however, were
conferred on them before the Social War. Some were governed by Roman
magistrates and some were self-governed. They voted in the Roman
tribes, though probably only at important crises, such as the
agitation for an agrarian law. They were under the jurisdiction of the
Praetor Urbanus, but vicarious justice was administered among them by
an official called _Praefectus juri dicundo_, sent yearly from Rome.

[Sidenote: The Latini.] The Latini had no vote at Rome, no right of
holding offices, and were practically Roman subjects. A Roman who
joined a Latin colony ceased to be a Roman citizen. Whether there was
any difference between the internal administration of a Latin colony
and an old Latin town is uncertain. The Latini may have had Commercium
and Connubium, or only the former. They certainly had not Jus
Suffragii or Jus Honorum, and they were in subjection to Rome. A Latin
could obtain the Roman franchise, but the mode of doing so at this
time is a disputed point. Livy mentions a law which enabled a Latin to
obtain the franchise by migrating to Rome and being enrolled in the
census, provided he left children behind him to fill his place. There
is no doubt that either legally or irregularly Latini did migrate to
Rome and did so obtain the citizenship, but we know no more. Others
say that the later right by which a Latin obtained the citizenship in
virtue of filling a magistracy in his native town existed already.

[Sidenote: The Socii.] Of the Socii, all or many of them had treaties
defining their relations to Rome, and were therefore known as
Foederatae Civitates. They had internal self-government, but were
bound to supply Rome with soldiers, ships, and sailors.

[Sidenote: Grievances of the Latins and allies.] At the time of the
Gracchi discontent was seething among the Latins and allies. There
were two classes among them--the rich landlords and capitalists, who
prospered as the rich at Rome prospered, and the poor who were weighed
down by debt or were pushed out of their farms by slave-labour, or
were hangers-on of the rich in the towns and eager for distributions
of land. The poor were oppressed no doubt by the rich men both of
their own cities and of Rome. The rich chafed at the intolerable
insolence of Roman officials. It was not that Rome interfered with
the local self-government she had granted by treaty, but the Italians
laboured under grievous disabilities and oppression. So late as the
Jugurthine war, Latin officers were executed by martial law, whereas
any Roman soldier could appeal to a civil tribunal. Again, while the
armies had formerly been recruited from the Romans and the allies
equally, now the severest service and the main weight of wars fell
on the latter, who furnished, moreover, two soldiers to every Roman.
Again, without a certain amount of property, a man at Rome could not
be enrolled in the army; but the rule seems not to have applied
to Italians. Nor was the civil less harsh than the military
administration. A consul's wife wished to use the men's bath at
Teanum; and because the bathers were not cleared out quickly enough,
and the baths were not clean enough, M. Marius, the chief magistrate
of the town, was stripped and scourged in the market-place. A free
herdsman asked in joke if it was a corpse that was in a litter passing
through Venusia, and which contained a young Roman. Though not even an
official, its occupant showed that, if lazy, he was at least alive, by
having the peasant whipped to death with the litter straps. In short,
the rich Italians would feel the need of the franchise as strongly as
the old plebeians had felt it, and all the more strongly because the
Romans had not only ceased to enfranchise whole communities, but were
chary of giving the citizenship even to individuals. The poor also had
the ordinary grievances against their own rich, and were so far likely
to favour the schemes of any man who assailed the capitalist class,
Roman or Italian, as a whole; but they none the less disliked Roman
supremacy, and would be easily persuaded to attribute to that
supremacy some of the hardships which it did not cause.

[Sidenote: State of the transmarine provinces.] While such fires were
slowly coming to the surface in Italy, and were soon to flame out in
the Social War, the state of the provinces out of the peninsula was
not more reassuring. The struggle with Viriathus and the Numantine war
had revealed the fact that the last place to look for high martial
honour or heroic virtue was the Roman army. If a Scipio sustained the
traditions of Roman generalship, and a Gracchus those of republican
rectitude, other commanders would have stained the military annals
of any nation. [Sidenote: Deterioration of Roman generalship.] Roman
generals had come to wage war for themselves and not for the State.
They even waged it in defiance of the State's express orders. If they
found peace in the provinces, they found means to break it, hoping to
glut their avarice by pillage or by the receipt of bribes, which it
was now quite the exception not to accept, or to win sham laurels and
cheap triumphs from some miserable raid on half-armed barbarians.
Often these carpet-knights were disgracefully beaten, though infamy in
the provinces sometimes became fame at Rome, and then they resorted
to shameful trickery repeated again and again. [Sidenote: and of the
Army.] The State and the army were worthy of the commanders. The
former engaged in perhaps the worst wars that can be waged. Hounded on
by its mercantile class, it fought not for a dream of dominion, or
to beat back encroaching barbarism, but to exterminate a commercial
rival. The latter, which it was hard to recruit on account of the
growing effeminacy of the city, it was harder still to keep under
discipline. It was followed by trains of cooks, and actors, and the
viler appendages of oriental luxury, and was learning to be satisfied
with such victories as were won by the assassination of hostile
generals, or ratified by the massacre of men who had been guaranteed
their lives. The Roman fleet was even more inefficient than the army;
and pirates roved at will over the Mediterranean, pillaging this
island, waging open war with that, and carrying off the population as
slaves. A new empire was rising in the East, as Rome permitted the
Parthians to wrest Persia, Babylonia, and Media from the Syrian kings.
The selfish maxim, _Divide et impera_, assumed its meanest form as it
was now pursued. It is a poor and cowardly policy for a great nation
to pit against each other its semi-civilised dependencies, and to fan
their jealousies in order to prevent any common action on their part,
or to avoid drawing the sword for their suppression. Slave revolts,
constant petty wars, and piracy were preying on the unhappy
provincials, and in the Roman protectorate they found no aid. All
their harsh mistress did was to turn loose upon them hordes of
money-lenders and tax-farmers ('negotiatores,' and 'publicani'), who
cleared off what was left by those stronger creatures of prey, the
proconsuls. Thus the misery caused by a meddlesome and nerveless
national policy was enhanced by a domestic administration based on
turpitude and extortion.

[Sidenote: Universal degeneracy of the Government, and decay of the
nation.] Everywhere Rome was failing in her duties as mistress of the
civilised world. Her own internal degeneracy was faithfully reflected
in the abnegation of her imperial duties. When in any country the
small-farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers
are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to
pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man's lips, but ideas
of true beauty in very few men's souls; when the business-sharper is
the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts;
when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice
according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into
great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief
gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is
increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing
impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation;
when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out
the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon
which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely
light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply
replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any
number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in
robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the footpad or
burglar'--when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before
which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.

A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined. A mob, a moneyed
class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other,
and hated by the rest of the world; Italians bitterly jealous of
Romans, and only in better plight than the provinces beyond the sea;
more miserable than either, swarms of slaves beginning to brood
over revenge as a solace to their sufferings; the land going out of
cultivation; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the
population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a
speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to
organized pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, whole sale
luxury, and monstrous vice. The hour for reform was surely come. Who
was to be the man?

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER II.

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.


[Sidenote: Scipio Aemilianius.] General expectation would have pointed
to Scipio Aemilianus, the conqueror of Numantia and Carthage, and the
foremost man at Rome. He was well-meaning and more than ordinarily
able, strict and austere as a general, and as a citizen uniting Greek
culture with the old Roman simplicity of life. He was full of scorn of
the rabble, and did not scruple to express it. 'Silence,' he cried,
when he was hissed for what he said about his brother-in-law's death,
'you step-children of Italy!' and when this enraged them still more,
he went on: 'Do you think I shall fear you whom I brought to Italy
in fetters now that you are loose?' He showed equal scorn for such
pursuits as at Rome at least were associated with effeminacy and vice,
and expressed in lively language his dislike of singing and dancing.
'Our children are taught disgraceful tricks. They go to actors'
schools with sambucas and psalteries. They learn to sing--a thing
which our ancestors considered to be a disgrace to freeborn children.
When I was told this I could not believe that men of noble rank
allowed their children to be taught such things. But being taken to a
dancing school I saw--I did upon my honour--more than fifty boys and
girls in the school; and among them one boy, quite a child, about
twelve years of age, the son of a man who was at that time a candidate
for office. And what I saw made me pity the Commonwealth. I saw the
child dancing to the castanets, and it was a dance which one of our
wretched, shameless slaves would not have danced.' On another occasion
he showed a power of quick retort. As censor he had degraded a man
named Asellus, whom Mummius afterwards restored to the equites.
Asellus impeached Scipio, and taunted him with the unluckiness of his
censorship--its mortality, &c. 'No wonder,' said Scipio, 'for the man
who inaugurated it rehabilitated you.'

Such anecdotes show that he was a vigorous speaker. He was of a
healthy constitution, temperate, brave, and honest in money matters;
for he led a simple life, and with all his opportunities for extortion
did not die rich. Polybius, the historian, Panaetius, the philosopher,
Terence and Lucilius, the poets, and the orator and politician
Laelius were his friends. From his position, his talents, and his
associations, he seemed marked out as the one man who could and
would desire to step forth as the saviour of his country. But such
self-sacrifice is not exhibited by men of Scipio's type. Too able to
be blind to the signs of the times, they are swayed by instincts too
strong for their convictions. An aristocrat of aristocrats, Scipio was
a reformer only so far as he thought reform might prolong the reign of
his order. From any more radical measures he shrank with dislike,
if not with fear. The weak spot often to be found in those cultured
aristocrats who coquet with liberalism was fatal to his chance of
being a hero. He was a trimmer to the core, who, without intentional
dishonesty, stood facing both ways till the hour came when he was
forced to range himself on one side or the other, and then he took the
side which he must have known to be the wrong one. Palliation of the
errors of a man placed in so terribly difficult a position is only
just; but laudation of his statesmanship seems absurd. As a statesman
he carried not one great measure, and if one was conceived in his
circle, he cordially approved of its abandonment. To those who claim
for him that he saw the impossibility of those changes which his
brother-in-law advocated, it is sufficient to reply that Rome did
not rest till those changes had been adopted, and that the hearty
co-operation of himself and his friends would have gone far to turn
failure into success. But his mind was too narrow to break through the
associations which had environed him from his childhood. When Tiberius
Gracchus, a nobler man than himself, had suffered martyrdom for the
cause with which he had only dallied, he was base enough to quote from
Homer [Greek: os apoloito kai allos hotis toiaita ge hoezoi]--'So
perish all who do the like again.'

[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus.] But the splendid peril which Scipio
shrank from encountering, his brother-in-law courted with the fire
and passion of youth. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was, according to
Plutarch, not quite thirty when he was murdered. Plutarch may have
been mistaken, and possibly he was thirty-five. His father, whose
name he bore, had been a magnificent aristocrat, and his mother
was Cornelia, daughter of Hannibal's conqueror, the first Scipio
Africanus, and one of the comparatively few women whose names are
famous in history. He had much in common with Scipio Aemilianus, whom
he resembled in rank and refinement, in valour, in his familiarity
with Hellenic culture, and in the style of his speeches. Diophanes, of
Mitylene, taught him oratory. The philosopher, Blossius, of Cumae, was
his friend. He belonged to the most distinguished circle at Rome. He
had married the daughter of Appius, and his brother had married the
daughter of Mucianus. He had served under Scipio, and displayed
striking bravery at Carthage; and, as quaestor of the incompetent
Mancinus, had by his character for probity saved a Roman army from
destruction; for the Numantines would not treat with the consul, but
only with Gracchus. No man had a more brilliant career open to him
at Rome, had he been content only to shut his eyes to the fate that
threatened his country. But he had not only insight but a conscience,
and cheerfully risked his life to avert the ruin which he foresaw.
His character has been as much debated as his measures, and the most
opposite conclusions have been formed about both, so that his name
is a synonym for patriot with some, for demagogue with others. Even
historians of our own day are still at variance as to the nature of
his legislation. But from a comparison of their researches, and an
independent examination of the authorities on which they are based,
something like a clear conception of the plans of Gracchus seems
possible. What has never, perhaps, as yet been made sufficiently plain
is, who it was that Gracchus especially meant to benefit. Much of the
public land previously described lay in the north and south of Italy
from the frontier rivers Rubicon and Macra to Apulia. It formed, as
Appian says, the largest portion of the land taken from conquered
towns by Rome. [Sidenote: Agrarian proposals of Gracchus.] What
Gracchus proposed was to take from the rich and give to the poor some
of this land. It was, in fact, merely the Licinian law over again with
certain modifications, and the existence of that law would make the
necessity for a repetition of it inexplicable had it not been a
curious principle with the Romans that a law which had fallen into
desuetude ceased to be binding. But it actually fell short of the law
of Licinius, for it provided that he who surrendered what he held over
and above 500 jugera should be guaranteed in the permanent possession
of that quantity, and moreover might retain 250 jugera in addition for
each of his sons. Some writers conjecture that altogether an occupier
might not hold more than 1,000 jugera.

Now the first thing to remark about the law is that it was by no
means a demagogue's sop tossed to the city mob which he was courting.
Gracchus saw slave labour ruining free labour, and the manhood
and soil of Italy and the Roman army proportionately depreciated.
[Sidenote: Nothing demagogic about the proposal.] To fill the vacuum
he proposed to distribute to the poor not only of Rome but of the
Municipia, of the Roman colonies, and, it is to be presumed, of the
Socii also, land taken from the rich members of those four component
parts of the Roman State. This consideration alone destroys at once
the absurd imputation of his being actuated merely by demagogic
motives; but in no history is it adequately enforced. No demagogue at
that epoch would have spread his nets so wide. At the same time it
gives the key to the subsequent manoeuvres by which his enemies strove
to divide his partisans. Broadly, then, we may say that Gracchus
struck boldly at the very root of the decadence of the whole
peninsula, and that if his remedy could not cure it nothing else
could. [Sidenote: The Socii--land-owners.] How the Socii became
possessors of the public land we do not know. Probably they bought it
from Cives Romani, its authorised occupiers, with the connivance of
the State. We now see from whom the land was to be taken, namely, the
rich all over Italy, and to whom it was to be given, the poor all over
Italy; and also the object with which it was to be given, namely,
to re-create a peasantry and stop the increase of the slave-plague.
[Sidenote: Provision against evasions of the law.] In order to prevent
the law becoming a dead letter like that of Licinius, owing to poor
men selling their land as soon as they got it, he proposed that the
new land-owners should not have the right to dispose of their land to
others, and for this, though it would have been hard to carry out, we
cannot see what other proviso could have been substituted. Lastly, as
death and other causes would constantly render changes in the holdings
inevitable, he proposed that a permanent board should have the
superintendence of them, and this too was a wise and necessary
measure.

[Sidenote: Provision for the administration of the law.] We can
understand so much of the law of Gracchus, but it is hard thoroughly
to understand more. It has been urged as a difficulty not easily
explained that few people, after retaining 500 jugera for themselves
and 250 for each of their sons, would have had much left to surrender.
But this difficulty is imaginary rather than real; for Appian says
that the public land was 'the greater part' of the land taken by Rome
from conquered states, and the great families may have had vast
tracts of it as pasture land. [Sidenote: Things about the law hard to
understand.] There are, however, other things which with our meagre
knowledge of the law we cannot explain. For instance, was a hard
and fast line drawn at 500 jugera as compensation whether a man
surrendered 2 jugera or 2,000 beyond that amount? Again, considering
the outcry made, it is hard to imagine that only those possessing
above 500 jugera were interfered with. But this perhaps may be
accounted for by recollecting that in such matters men fight bravely
against what they feel to be the thin end of the wedge, even if they
are themselves concerned only sympathetically. What Gracchus meant to
do with the slaves displaced by free labour, or how he meant to decide
what was public and what was private land after inextricable confusion
between the two in many parts for so many years, we cannot even
conjecture. The statesmanlike comprehensiveness, however, of his main
propositions justifies us in believing that he had not overlooked such
obvious stumbling-blocks in his way. [Sidenote: Appian's criticism of
the law.] When Appian says he was eager to accomplish what he thought
to be a good thing, we concur in the testimony Appian thus gives to
Gracchus having been a good man. But when he goes on to say he was so
eager that he never even thought of the difficulty, we prefer to judge
Gracchus by his own acts rather than by Appian's criticism or the
similar criticisms of modern writers. [Sidenote: Speeches of Gracchus
explaining his motives.] The speeches ascribed to him, which are
apparently genuine, seem to show that he knew well enough what he was
about. 'The wild beasts of Italy,' he said, 'have their dens to retire
to, but the brave men who spill their blood in her cause have nothing
left but air and light. Without homes, without settled habitations,
they wander from place to place with their wives and children; and
their generals do but mock them when at the head of their armies they
exhort their men to fight for their sepulchres and the gods of their
hearths, for among such numbers perhaps there is not one Roman who has
an altar that has belonged to his ancestors or a sepulchre in which
their ashes rest. The private soldiers fight and die to advance the
wealth and luxury of the great, and they are called masters of the
world without having a sod to call their own.' Again, he asked, 'Is
it not just that what belongs to the people should be shared by the
people? Is a man with no capacity for fighting more useful to his
country than a soldier? Is a citizen inferior to a slave? Is an alien
or one who owns some of his country's soil the best patriot? You have
won by war most of your possessions, and hope to acquire the rest of
the habitable globe. But now it is but a hazard whether you gain the
rest by bravery or whether by your weakness and discords you are
robbed of what you have by your foes. Wherefore, in prospect of such
acquisitions, you should if need be spontaneously and of your own free
will yield up these lands to those who will rear children for the
service of the State. Do not sacrifice a great thing while striving
for a small, especially as you are to receive no contemptible
compensation for your expenditure on the land, in free ownership of
500 jugera secure for ever, and in case you have sons, of 250 more for
each of them.

The striking point in the last extract is his remark about a 'small
thing.' It is likely, enough that the losses of the proprietors as a
body would not be overwhelming, and that the opposition was rendered
furious almost as much by the principle of restitution, and
interference with long-recognised ownership, as by the value of what
they were called on to disgorge. Five hundred jugera of slave-tended
pasture-land could not have been of very great importance to a rich
Roman, who, however, might well have been alarmed by the warning of
Gracchus with regard to the army, for in foreign service, and not in
grazing or ploughing, the fine gentleman of the day found a royal road
to wealth. [Sidenote: Grievances of the possessors.] On the other hand
it is quite comprehensible both that the possessors imagined that they
had a great grievance, and that they had some ground for their belief.
A possessor, for instance, who had purchased from another in the full
faith that his title would never be disturbed, had more right to be
indignant than a proprietor of Indian stock would have, if in case of
the bankruptcy of the Indian Government the British Government should
refuse to refund his money. There must have been numbers of such cases
with every possible complexity of title; and even if the class that
would be actually affected was not large, it was powerful, and every
landowner with a defective title would, however small his holding
(provided it was over 30 jugera, the proposed allotment), take the
alarm and help to swell the cry against the Tribune as a demagogue and
a robber. This is what we can state about the agrarian law of Tiberius
Gracchus. It remains to be told how it was carried.

[Sidenote: How the law was carried.] Gracchus had a colleague named
Octavius, who is said to have been his personal friend. Octavius had
land himself to lose if the law were carried, and he opposed it.
Gracchus offered to pay him the value of the land out of his own
purse; but Octavius was not to be so won over, and as Tribune
interposed his veto to prevent the bill being read to the people that
they might vote on it. Tiberius retorted by using his power to suspend
public business and public payments. One day, when the people were
going to vote, the other side seized the voting urns, and then
Tiberius and the rest of the Tribunes agreed to take the opinion of
the Senate. The result was that he came away more hopeless of success
by constitutional means, and doubtless irritated by insult. He then
proposed to Octavius that the people should vote whether he or
Octavius should lose office--a weak proposal perhaps, but the proposal
of an honest, generous man, whose aim was not self-aggrandisement but
the public weal. Octavius naturally refused. Tiberius called together
the thirty-five tribes, to vote whether or no Octavius should
be deprived of his office. [Sidenote: Octavius deprived of the
Tribunate.] The first tribe voted in the affirmative, and Gracchus
implored Octavius even now to give way, but in vain. The next sixteen
tribes recorded the same vote, and once more Gracchus interceded with
his old friend. But he spoke to deaf ears. The voting went on, and
when Octavius, on his Tribunate being taken from him, would not go
away, Plutarch says that Tiberius ordered one of his freedmen to drag
him from the Rostra.

These acts of Tiberius Gracchus are commonly said to have been the
beginning of revolution at Rome; and the guilt of it is accordingly
laid at his door. And there can be no doubt that he was guilty in the
sense that a man is guilty who introduces a light into some chamber
filled with explosive vapour, which the stupidity or malice of others
has suffered to accumulate. But, after all, too much is made of this
violation of constitutional forms and the sanctity of the Tribunate.
[Sidenote: Defence of the conduct of Gracchus.] The first were effete,
and all regular means of renovating the Republic seemed to be closed
to the despairing patriot, by stolid obstinacy sheltering itself
under the garb of law and order. The second was no longer what it had
been--the recognised refuge and defence of the poor. The rich, as
Tiberius in effect argued, had found out how to use it also. If all
men who set the example of forcible infringement of law are criminals,
Gracchus was a criminal. But in the world's annals he sins in good
company; and when men condemn him, they should condemn Washington
also. Perhaps his failure has had most to do with his condemnation.
Success justifies, failure condemns, most revolutions in most men's
eyes. But if ever a revolution was excusable this was; for it
was carried not by a small party for small aims, but by national
acclamation, by the voices of Italians who flocked to Rome either to
vote, or, if they had not votes themselves, to overawe those who had.
How far Gracchus saw the inevitable effect of his acts is open to
dispute. [Sidenote: Gracchus not a weak sentimentalist.] But probably
he saw it as clearly as any man can see the future. Because he was
generous and enthusiastic, it is assumed that he was sentimental and
weak, and that his policy was guided by impulse rather than reason.
There seems little to sustain such a judgment other than the desire of
writers to emphasise a comparison between him and his brother. If
his character had been what some say that it was, his speeches would
hardly have been described by Cicero as acute and sensible, but not
rhetorical enough. All his conduct was consistent. He strove hard
and to the last to procure his end by peaceable means. Driven into
a corner by the tactics of his opponents, he broke through the
constitution, and once having done so, went the way on which his acts
led him, without turning to the right hand or the left. There seems
to be not a sign of his having drifted into revolution. Because a
portrait is drawn in neutral tints, it does not follow that it is
therefore faithful, and those writers who seem to think they must
reconcile the fact of Tiberius having been so good a man with his
having been, as they assert, so bad a citizen, have blurred the
likeness in their anxiety about the chiaroscuro. No one would affirm
that Tiberius committed no errors; but that he was a wise as well as
a good man is far more in accordance with the facts than a more
qualified verdict would be.

[Sidenote: Mean behaviour of the Senate.] The Senate showed its spite
against the successful Tribune by petty annoyances, such as allowing
him only about a shilling a day for his official expenditure, and, as
rumour said, by the assassination of one of his friends. But, while
men like P. Scipio Nasica busied themselves with such miserable
tactics, Tiberius brought forward another great proposal supplementary
to his agrarian law. [Sidenote: Proposal of Gracchus to distribute the
legacy of Attalus.] Attalus, the last king of Pergamus, had just died
and left his kingdom to Rome. Gracchus wished to divide his treasures
among the new settlers, and expressed some other intention of
transferring the settlement of the country from the Senate to the
people. As to the second of these propositions it would be unsafe
as well as unfair to Gracchus to pronounce judgment on it without
a knowledge of its details. The first was both just and wise and
necessary, for previous experience had shown that the first temptation
of a pauper land-owner was to sell his land to the rich, and, as the
law of Gracchus forbade this, he was bound to give the settler a fair
start on his farm. [Sidenote: Retort of the Senate.] The Senate took
fresh alarm, and it found vent again in characteristically mean
devices. One senator said that a diadem and a purple robe had been
brought to Gracchus from Pergamus. Another assailed him because men
with torches escorted him home at night. Another twitted him with the
deposition of Octavius. To this last attack, less contemptible than
the others, he replied in a bold and able speech, which practically
asserted that the spirit of the constitution was binding on a citizen,
but that its letter under some circumstances was not.

[Sidenote: Other intended reforms of Gracchus.] He was also engaged in
meditating other important reforms, all directed against the Senate's
power. Plutarch says that they comprised abridgment of the soldier's
term of service, an appeal to the people from the judices, and the
equal partition between the Senate and equites of the privilege of
serving as judices, which hitherto belonged only to the former.
According to Velleius, Tiberius also promised the franchise to all
Italians south of the Rubicon and the Macra, which, if true, is
another proof of his far-seeing statesmanship. To carry out such
extensive changes it was necessary to procure prolongation of office
for himself, and he became a candidate for the next year's tribunate.
[Sidenote: Gracchus stands again for the Tribunate. His motives.] To
say that considerations of personal safety dictated his candidature
is a very easy and specious insinuation, but is nothing more. It is
indeed a good deal less, for it is utterly inconsistent with the other
acts of an unselfish, dauntless career. At election-time the first
two tribes voted for Tiberius. Then the aristocracy declared his
candidature to be illegal because he could not hold office two years
running. It may have been so, or the law may have been so violated
as to be no more valid than the Licinian law, which, though never
abrogated, had never much force. [Sidenote: Tactics of the Senate.]
To fasten on some technical flaw in his procedure was precisely in
keeping with the rest of the acts of the opposition. But those writers
who accuse Tiberius of being guilty of another illegal act in standing
fail to observe the force of the fact, that it was not till the first
two tribes had voted that the aristocracy interfered. This shows that
their objection was a last resort to an invalid statute, and a deed
of which they were themselves ashamed. However, the president of the
tribunes, Rubrius, hesitated to let the other tribes vote; and when
Mummius, Octavius's substitute, asked Rubrius to yield to him the
presidency, others objected that the post must be filled by lot, and
so the election was adjourned till the next day.

It was clear enough to what end things were tending, and Tiberius,
putting on mourning committed his young son to the protection of the
people. It need hardly be said that the father's affection and the
statesman's bitter dismay at finding the dearest object of his life
about to be snatched from him by violence need not have been tinged
with one particle of personal fear. A man of tried bravery like
Gracchus might guard his own life indeed, but only as be regarded it
as indispensable to a great cause. That evening he told his partisans
he would give them a sign next day if he should think it necessary to
use force at his election. It has been assumed that this proves he was
meditating treason. But it proves no more than that he meant to repel
force forcibly if, as was only too certain, force should be used, and
this is not treason. No other course was open to him. The one weak
spot in his policy was that he had no material strength at his back.
Even Sulla would have been a lost man at a later time, if he had not
had an army at hand to which he could flee for refuge, just as without
the army Cromwell would have been powerless. But it was harvest-time
now, and the rural allies of Gracchus were away from home in the
fields. [Sidenote: Murder of Gracchus.] The next day dawned, and with
it occurred omens full of meaning to the superstitious Romans. The
sacred fowls would not feed. Tiberius stumbled at the doorway of his
house and broke the nail of his great toe. Some crows fought on the
roof of a house on the left hand, and one dislodged a tile, which
fell at his feet. But Blossius was at his side encouraging him, and
Gracchus went on to the Capitol and was greeted with a great cheer
by his partisans. [Sidenote: Different accounts given by Appian and
Plutarch.] Appian says that when the rich would not allow the election
to proceed, Tiberius gave the signal. Plutarch tells us that Fulvius
Flaccus came and told him that his foes had resolved to slay him, and,
having failed to induce the consul Scaevola to act, were arming their
friends and slaves, and that Gracchus gave the signal then. As Appian
agrees with Plutarch in his account of Nasica's conduct in the Senate,
the last is the more probable version of what occurred. Nasica called
on Scaevola to put down the tyrant. Scaevola replied that he would not
be the first to use force. Then Nasica, calling on the senators to
follow him, mounted the Capitol to a position above that of Gracchus.
Arming themselves with clubs and legs of benches, his followers
charged down and dispersed the crowd. Gracchus stumbled over some
prostrate bodies, and was slain either by a blow from P. Satyreius, a
fellow-tribune, or from L. Rufus, for both claimed the distinction. So
died a genuine patriot and martyr; and so foul a murder fitly heralded
the long years of bloodshed and violence which were in store for the
country which he died to save.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER III.

CAIUS GRACCHUS.


[Sidenote: Revenge of the aristocracy.] Over three hundred of the
people were killed and thrown into the Tiber, and the aristocracy
followed up their triumph as harshly as they dared. They banished
some, and slew others of the tribune's partisans. Plutarch says that
they fastened up one in a chest with vipers. When Blossius was brought
before his judges he avowed that he would have burned the Capitol if
Gracchus had told him to do it, so confident was he in his leader's
patriotism--an answer testifying not only to the nobleness of the two
friends, but to the strong character of one of them. Philosophers are
not so impressed by weak, impulsive men. Blossius was spared, probably
because he had connexions with some of the nobles rather than because
his reply inspired respect. But while the aristocracy was making war
on individuals, the work of the dead man went on, as if even from the
grave he was destined to bring into sharper relief the pettiness of
their projects by the grandeur of his own.

[Sidenote: The law of Gracchus remains in force.] The allotment of
land was vigorously carried out; and when Appius Claudius and Mucianus
died, the commissioners were partisans of Tiberius--his brother Caius,
M. Fulvius Flaccus, and C. Papirius Carbo. [Sidenote: Its beneficial
effects.] In the year 125, instead of another decrease in the
able-bodied population, we find an increase of nearly 80,000. It seems
probable that this increase was solely in consequence of what the
allotment commissioners did for the Roman burgesses. Nor, if the
Proletarii and Capite Censi were not included in the register of those
classed for military service, is the increase remarkable, for it would
be to members of those classes that the allotments would be chiefly
assigned. Moreover, the poor whom the rich expelled from their lands
did not give in their names to the censors, and did not attend to the
education of their children. These men would, on receiving allotments,
enrol themselves. The consul of the year 132 inscribed on a public
monument that he was the first who had turned the shepherds out of
the domains, and installed farmers in their stead; and these farmers
became, as Gracchus intended, a strong reinforcement to the Roman
soldier-class, as well as a check to slave labour. What was done at
Rome was done also, it is said, throughout Italy, and if on the same
scale, it must have been a really enormous measure of relief to the
poor, and a vast stride towards a return to a healthier tenure of the
land. [Sidenote: Difficulties and hardships in enforcing it.] But it
is not hard to imagine what heart-burnings the commissioners must have
aroused. Some men were thrust out of tilled land on to waste land.
Some who thought that their property was private property found to
their cost that it was the State's. Some had encroached, and their
encroachments were now exposed. Some of the Socii had bought parcels
of the land, and found out now that they had no title. Lastly, some
land had been by special decrees assigned to individual states, and
the commissioners at length proceeded to stretch out their hands
towards it.

Historians, while recording such things, have failed to explain why
the chief opposition to the commissioners arose from the country which
had furnished the chief supporters of Tiberius, and what was the exact
attitude assumed by Scipio Aemilianus. It is lost sight of that as at
Rome there were two classes, so there were two classes in Italy. It
is absurd constantly to put prominently forward the sharp division of
interests in the capital, and then speak of the country classes as
if they were all one body, and their interests the same. [Sidenote:
Divisions in Italy similar to those in Rome.] The natural and
apparently the only way of explaining what at first sight seems the
inconsistency of the country class is to conclude, that the men who
supported Tiberius were the poor of the Italian towns and the small
farmers of the country, while the men who called on Scipio to save
them from the commissioners were the capitalists of the towns and the
richer farmers--some of them voters, some of them non-voters--with
their forces swollen, it may be, by not a few who, having clamoured
for more land, found now that the title to what they already had was
called in question. Though this cannot be stated as a certainty, it at
least accounts for what historians, after many pages on the subject,
have left absolutely unexplained, and it presents the conduct of
Scipio Aemilianus in quite a different light from the one in which it
has commonly been regarded. He is usually extolled as a patriot who
would not stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden
honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once
stepped into the arena as their champion. [Sidenote: Attitude of
Scipio Aemilianus.] In reality he was a reactionist who, when the
inevitable results of those liberal ideas which had been broached in
his own circle stared him in the face, seized the first available
means of stifling them. The world had moved too fast for him. As
censor, instead of beseeching the gods to increase the glory of the
State, he begged them to preserve it. And no doubt he would have
greatly preferred that the gods should act without his intervention.
Brave as a man, he was a pusillanimous statesman; and when confronted
by the revolutionary spirit which he and his friends had helped to
evoke, he determined at all costs to prop up the senatorial power.
[Sidenote: His unpopularity with the Senate.] But the Senate hated
him, partly as a trimmer, and partly because by his personal character
he rebuked their baseness. He had just impeached Aurelius Cotta, a
senator, and the judices, from spite against him, had refused to
convict. So he turned to the Italian land-owners, and became
the mouthpiece of their selfishness, for a selfish or at best a
narrow-minded end. The nobles must have, at heart, disliked his
allies; but they cheered him in the Senate, and he succeeded in
practically strangling the commission by procuring the transfer of its
jurisdiction to the consuls. The consul for the time being immediately
found a pretext for leaving Rome, and a short time afterwards Scipio
was found one morning dead in his bed. [Sidenote: His death.] He had
gone to his chamber the night before to think over what he should say
next day to the people about the position of the country class, and,
if he was murdered, it is almost as probable that he was murdered by
some rancorous foe in the Senate as by Carbo or any other Gracchan. It
was well for his reputation that he died just then. Without Sulla's
personal vices he might have played Sulla's part as a politician, and
his atrocities in Spain as well as his remark on the death of Tiberius
Gracchus--words breathing the very essence of a narrow swordsman's
nature--showed that from bloodshed at all events he would not have
shrunk. It is hard to respect such a man in spite of all his good
qualities. Fortune gave him the opportunity of playing a great part,
and he shrank from it. When the crop sprang up which he had himself
helped to sow, he blighted it. But because he was personally
respectable, and because he held a middle course between contemporary
parties, he has found favour with historians, who are too apt to
forget that there is in politics, as in other things, a right course
and a wrong, and that to attempt to walk along both at once proves a
man to be a weak statesman, and does not prove him to be a great or
good man.

[Sidenote: The early career of Caius Gracchus.] In B.C. 126 Caius
Gracchus, seven years after he had been made one of the commissioners
for the allotment of public land, was elected quaestor. Sardinia was
at that time in rebellion, and it fell by lot to Caius to go there as
quaestor to the consul Orestes. It is said that he kept quiet when
Tiberius was killed, and intended to steer clear of politics. But
one of those splendid bursts of oratory, with which he had already
electrified the people, remains to show over what he was for ever
brooding. 'They slew him,' he cried, 'these scoundrels slew Tiberius,
my noble brother! Ah, they are all of one pattern.' He said this in
advocating the Lex Papiria, which proposed to make the re-election of
a tribune legal. But Scipio opposed the law, and it was defeated then,
to be carried, however, a few years later. Again, in the year of his
quaestorship, he spoke against the law of M. Junius Pennus, which
aimed at expelling all Peregrini from Rome. They were the very men by
whose help Tiberius had carried his agrarian law, and when Caius spoke
for them he was clearly treading in his brother's steps. At a later
time he declared that he dreamt Tiberius came to him and said, 'Why do
you hesitate? You cannot escape your doom and mine--to live for the
people and die for them.' Such a story would be effective in a speech,
and particularly effective when told to a superstitious audience; but
his day-dreams we may be sure were the cause and not the consequence
of his visions of the night. For there can be no doubt that the
younger brother had already one purpose and one only--to avenge the
death of Tiberius and carry out his designs.

Such omens as Roman credulity fastened on when the political air was
heavy with coming storm abounded now. With grave irony the historian
records: 'Besides showers of oil and milk in the neighbourhood of
Veii, a fact of which some people may doubt, an owl, it is said, was
seen on the Capitol, which may have been true.' Fulvius Flaccus, the
friend of Gracchus, made the first move. [Sidenote: Proposition of
Fulvius Flaccus. Its significance.] In order to buy off the opposition
of the Socii to the agrarian law, he proposed to give them the
franchise, just as Licinius, when he had offered the poor plebeians a
material boon, offered the rich ones a political one, so as to secure
the united support of the whole body. The proposal was significant,
and it was made at a critical time. The poor Italians were chafing, no
doubt, at the suspension of the agrarian law. The rich were indignant
at the carrying of the law of Pennus. Other and deeper causes of
irritation have been mentioned above. In the year of the proposal of
Flaccus, and very likely in consequence of its rejection, Fregellae--a
Latin colony--revolted. [Sidenote: Revolt and punishment of
Fregellae.] The revolt was punished with the ferocity of panic. The
town was destroyed; a Roman colony, Fabrateria, was planted near its
site; and for the moment Italian discontent was awed into sullen
silence. No wonder the Senate was panic-stricken. Here was a real
omen, not conjured up by superstition, that one of those towns, which
through Rome's darkest fortunes in the second Punic War had remained
faithful to her, should single-handed and in time of peace raise the
standard of rebellion. Was Fregellae indeed single-handed? The Senate
suspected not, and turned furiously on the Gracchan party, and, it is
alleged, accused Caius of complicity with the revolt. [Sidenote: Caius
Gracchus accused of treason. He stands for the tribunate.] It was rash
provocation to give to such a man at such a time. If he was accused,
he was acquitted, and he at once stood for the tribunate. Thus the
party which had slain his brother found itself again at death-grips
with an even abler and more implacable foe.

[Sidenote: Prominence of Gracchus at home and abroad.] There is no
doubt that for some time past Caius Gracchus, young as he was, and
having as yet filled none of the regular high offices, had had the
first place in all men's thoughts. His first speech had been received
by the people with wild delight. He was already the greatest orator in
Rome. His importance is shown by the Senate's actually prolonging the
consul's command, in order to keep his quaestor longer abroad. But his
friends were consoled for his absence by the stories they heard of
the respect shown to him by foreign nations. The Sardinians would not
grant supplies to Orestes, and the Senate approved their refusal. But
Gracchus interposed, and they voluntarily gave what they had before
appealed against. Micipsa, son of Masinissa, also sent corn to
Orestes, but averred that it was out of respect to Gracchus. The
Senate's fears and the esteem of foreigners were equally just. What
the life of Gracchus was in Sardinia he has himself told us; and from
the implied contrast we may judge what was the life of the nobles of
the time. [Sidenote: His description of the life of a noble.] 'My
life,' he said to the people, 'in the province was not planned to suit
my ambition, but your interests. There was no gormandising with me,
no handsome slaves in waiting, and at my table your sons saw more
seemliness than at head-quarters. No man can say without lying that
I ever took a farthing as a present or put anyone to expense. I was
there two years; and if a single courtesan ever crossed my doors, or
if proposals from me were ever made to anyone's slave-pet, set me down
for the vilest and most infamous of men. And if I was so scrupulous
towards slaves, you may judge what my life must have been with your
sons. And, citizens, here is the fruit of such a life. I left Rome
with a full purse and have brought it back empty. Others took out
their wine jars full of wine, and brought them back full of money.'

Such was the man who now came back to Rome to demand from the
aristocracy a reckoning for which he had been yearning with undying
passion for nearly ten years. An exaggerated contrast between him and
Tiberius at the expense of the latter has been previously condemned.
The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who
imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. He was not
greater than but only like his brother in his bravery, in his culture,
in the faculty of inspiring in his friends strong enthusiasm and
devotion, in his unswerving pursuit of a definite object, and, as his
sending the son of Fulvius Flaccus to the Senate just before his
death proves in the teeth of all assertions to the contrary, in his
willingness to use his personal influence in order to avoid civil
bloodshed. [Sidenote: Caius compared with Tiberius.] The very dream
which Caius told to the people shows that his brother's spell was
still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory
and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius
was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason.
But no doubt he profited by experience of the past. He had learned how
to bide his time, and to think generosity wasted on the murderous crew
whom he had sworn to punish. Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a
death to which he considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one
fervent passion, he took up his brother's cause with a double portion
of his brother's spirit, because he had thought more before action,
because he had greater natural eloquence, and because being forewarned
he was forearmed.

In spite of the labours of recent historians, the legislation of Caius
Gracchus is still hard to understand. Where the original authorities
contradict each other, as they often do, probable conjecture is the
most which can be attained, and no attempt will be made here to
specify what were the measures of the first tribunate of Caius and
what of the second. [Sidenote: The general purpose of the legislation
of Caius.] The general scope and tendency of his legislation is clear
enough. It was to overthrow the senatorial government, and in the
new government to give the chief share of the executive power to the
mercantile class, and the chief share of the legislative power to the
country class. These were his immediate aims. Probably he meant to
keep all the strings he thus set in motion in his own hands, so as to
be practically monarch of Rome. But whether he definitely conceived
the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own requirements,
pictured to himself a successor at some future time inheriting the
authority which he had established, no one can say. In such vast
schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative. But had
he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire
would have been established a century earlier than it was.

[Sidenote: Date of the tribunate of Caius, December 10, B.C. 124.]
Rome was thronged to overflowing by the country class, and the nobles
strained every nerve in opposition when Caius was elected tribune. He
was only fourth on the list out of ten, and entered on his office on
December 10, B.C. 124. With a fixed presentiment of his own fate, he
felt that, even if he wished to remain passive, the people would not
permit him to be so. He might, he said, have pleaded that he and his
young child were the last representatives of a noble line--of P.
Africanus and Tiberius Gracchus--and that he had lost a brother in the
people's cause; but the people would not have listened to the plea. It
has been said that his mother dissuaded him from his intentions. But
the fragments on which the statement is based are as likely as not
spurious; and Cornelia's fortitude after she had lost both her sons
would hardly have been shown by one capable of subordinating public to
private interests.

[Sidenote: Story of his mother's sentiments.] It is far more likely
that when in his stirring speeches he spoke of his home as no place
for him to visit, while his mother was weeping and in despair, he was
influenced by her adjurations to avenge his brother, and not by any
craven warnings against sharing his fate. However this may have been,
no timid influences could be traced in the fiery passion of his first
speeches. [Sidenote: Story of the means by which he modulated his
voice when speaking.] He was, in fact, so carried away by his feelings
that he had to resort to a curious device in order to keep his voice
under control. A man with a musical instrument used, it is said, to
stand near him, and warn him by a note at times if he was pitching his
voice too high or too low. It was now that he told his stories of the
flogging of the magistrate of Teanum and the murder of the Venusian
herdsman, and we can imagine how they would incense his hearers
against the nobles. Against one of them, Octavius, he specially
directed a law, making it illegal for any magistrate previously
deposed by the people to be elected to office; but this, at Cornelia's
suggestion it is said, he withdrew. Another law also had special
reference to the fate of Tiberius. It made illegal the trial of any
citizen for an offence which involved the loss of his civic rights
without the consent of the people. [Sidenote: Caius procures the
banishment of Popillius Laenas.] This law, if in force, would have
prevented the ferocity with which Popillius Laenas hunted down the
partisans of Tiberius; and Caius followed it up according to the
oration De Domo, by procuring against Popillius a sentence of
outlawry. One of the fragments from his speeches was probably spoken
at this time. In it he told the people that they now had the chance
they had so long and so passionately desired; and that, if they did
not avail themselves of it, they would lay themselves open to the
charge of caprice or of ungoverned temper. Popillius anticipated the
sentence by voluntary retirement from Rome.

[Sidenote: His Lex Frumentaria.] Having satisfied his conscience by
the performance of what no doubt seemed to him sacred duties, Caius
at once set to work to build up his new constitution. It is commonly
represented that in order to gain over the people to his side he
cynically bribed them by his Lex Frumentaria. Now if this were true,
and Caius were as clear-sighted as the same writers who insist on the
badness of the law describe him to have been, it is hard to see how
they can in the same breath eulogise his goodness and nobleness. To
gain his ends he would have been using vile means, and would have been
a vile man. [Sidenote: The common criticism on it unjust.] Looking,
however, more closely into the law, we are led to doubt whether it was
bad, or, at all events, even granting that eventually it led to evil,
whether it would have appeared likely to do so to Caius. The public
land, it must be remembered, was liable to an impost called vectigal.
This vectigal went into the Aerarium, which the nobles had at their
disposal. Now the law of Caius appears to have fixed a nominal price
for corn to all Roman citizens, and if the market price was above this
price the difference would have to be made good from the Aerarium. We
at once see the object of Caius, and how the justice of it might have
blinded him to the demoralising effects of his measure. 'The public
land,' he said in effect, 'belongs to all Romans and so does the
vectigal. If you take that to which you have no right, you shall give
it back again in cheap corn.' In short, it was a clever device for
partially neutralising the long misappropriation of the State's
property by the nobles, and for giving to the people what belonged
to the people--to each man, as it were, so many ears of corn from
whatever fraction would be his own share of the land. [Sidenote:
Contrast between the just proposal of Caius and the demagogy of
Drusus.] When Drusus was afterwards set up to outbid Caius, he
proposed that the vectigal should be remitted, and that the land that
had been assigned might be sold by the occupier. How this would catch
the farmer's fancy is as obvious as is its odious dishonesty. It was
dishonest to the State because it was only fair that each occupier
should contribute to its funds, and because it did away with the
hope of filling Italy with free husbandmen. It was dishonest to the
occupier himself, because it put in his way the worst temptation to
unthriftiness. When Caius renewed his brother's laws he purposely
charged the land distributed to the poor with a yearly vectigal.
How different was this from the mere demagogic trick of Drusus!
It appears, then, that the Lex Frumentaria of Caius is not the
indefensible measure which modern writers, filled with modern notions,
have called it. It has, moreover, been well said that it was a kind
of poor-law; and, even if bad in itself, may have been the least bad
remedy for the pauperism which not Caius, but senatorial misgovernment
had brought about. No doubt it conferred popularity on Caius, and no
doubt his popularity was acceptable to him; but there is no ground for
believing that his noble nature deliberately stooped to demoralise the
mob for selfish motives.

[Sidenote: His Lex Judiciaria.] One great party, however, he had thus
won over to his side. The Lex Judiciaria gained over the equites
also. It has been before explained that the equites at this time were
non-senatorial rich men. Senators were forbidden by law to mix in
commerce, though no doubt they evaded the law. Between the senatorial
and moneyed class there was a natural ill-will, which Caius proceeded
to use and increase. His exact procedure we do not know for certain.
According to some authorities he made the judices eligible from the
equites only, instead of from the Senate. In the epitome of Livy it is
stated that 600 of the equites were to be added to the number of the
senators, so that the equites should have twice as much power as the
Senate itself. This at first sight seems nonsense. But Caius may have
proposed that for judicial purposes 600 equites should form, as it
were, a second chamber, which, being twice as numerous, would permit
two judices for every senatorial judex. In form he may have devised
that 'counter-senate,' which, as it has been shown, he in fact
created. [Sidenote: The effects of it. The Senate abased, the equites
exalted.] But whether Caius provided that all the judices or only
two-thirds of them should be chosen from the equites, and in whatever
way he did so, he did succeed in exalting the moneyed class and
abasing the Senate. In civil processes, and in the permanent and
temporary commissions for the administration of justice, the equites
were henceforth supreme. Even the senators themselves depended on
their verdict for acquittal or condemnation, and the chief power in
the State had changed hands. Of course the change would not be felt
at once to the full; but this was the most trenchant stroke which
Gracchus aimed at the Senate's power. Here, again, it is customary to
write of his actions as if they were governed solely by feeling, quite
apart from all considerations of right and wrong. But Cicero declares
that for nearly fifty years, while the equites discharged this office,
there was not even the slightest suspicion of a single eques being
bribed in his capacity as judex; and after every allowance has been
made for Ciceronian exaggeration, the statement may at least warrant
us in believing that Gracchus had some reason for hoping that his
change would be a change for the better, even if, as Appian declares,
it turned out in the end just the opposite. Indeed, it is beyond
question that, as the provinces were governed by the senatorial class,
judices who had to decide cases like those of Cotta would be more
fairly chosen from the equites than from the class to which Cotta
belonged.

[Sidenote: The taxation of Asia.] We know little of the arrangements
for the taxation of Asia made by Gracchus. He provided that the taxes
should be let by auction at Rome, which would undoubtedly be a boon
to the Roman capitalists and a check to provincial competition. He is
said also to have substituted the whole system of direct and indirect
taxes for the previously existing system of fixed payments by the
various states. There was a certain narrowness about the conceptions
of both the Gracchi with regard to the transmarine world, which was
common to all Romans; to which, for instance, Tiberius gave expression
when he spoke of the conquest of the whole world as a thing which his
audience had a right to expect; and this sentiment may have in this
instance influenced Caius to use harshness. [Sidenote: The common
criticism on the measure of Caius unjust.] But even here to condemn
without more knowledge of his measures would be unjust. Fixed payments
it must be remembered were not always preferable to tithes of the
produce. In a sterile year the payers of vectigalia would be best off.
Again, if a rich province like Asia did not pay tribute in proportion
to other provinces, a re-adjustment of its taxes would not seem to the
Romans unfair; and perhaps auction at Rome would after all be less
mischievous than a hole-and-corner arrangement in the provinces. If
the sheep were to be fleeced, they would not be shorn closest in the
capital. [Sidenote: Measure for the relief of publicani.] To another
of his provisions at all events no one could object--the one which
gave relief to such publicani as had suffered loss in collecting the
revenue.

[Sidenote: Alleged privileges conferred on the equites.] Gracchus had
thus raised the equites above the Senate at Rome in the courts of
justice, and opened a golden harvest to them in the provinces. It
is conjectured that he also gave them the distinction of a golden
finger-ring and reserved seats at the public spectacles. Two classes
were thus gratified, the city poor and the city rich. [Sidenote:
Caius attempts to conciliate the farmer class and the Italians.] But
Gracchus had to deal also with those of the country class in whose
favour his brother's agrarian law had been passed, and with those
who had resented the law. To provide for the former he renewed the
operation of his brother's law, which had been suspended by Scipio's
intervention, and probably took away its administrations from
the consuls and restored it to triumvirs; and as that might be
insufficient, he began the establishment of many colonies in various
parts of the peninsula; and even beyond it at Carthage, to which he
invited colonists from all parts of Italy. To compensate and benefit
the latter he proposed to give them the franchise, so as to secure
them from such outrages as that of Teanum. For though such of them
as belonged to Roman colonies or municipia possessed the franchise
already, the mass of the Latins and Italians did not possess it. There
are different accounts of this measure; but Appian says that he wished
to give the Latini the Jus Suffragii and Jus Honorum, and to the rest
of the Italians the Jus Suffragii only. But here he reckoned without
his host. [Sidenote: Feeling at Rome.] The boons of colonies and cheap
bread, and the prospect of a slice out of the public land occupied by
Italians, were all not strong enough to overcome the deep, ingrained
prejudice against extending the franchise. Rich and poor Romans met
here on the common ground of narrow pride, and the offence caused by
this wise project probably paved the way for the tribune's fall.

In speaking of the motives which induced Tiberius to seek the
tribunate a second time (p. 33) it has been said that he was not
influenced by personal considerations, but wanted time to carry out
his measures. This view is confirmed by what Appian says about Caius,
namely, that he was elected a second time; for already a law had been
enacted to this effect, that if a tribune could not find time for
executing in his tribunate what he had promised, the people might give
the office to him again in preference to anyone else. This has been
pronounced to be a blunder on Appian's part, but without adequate
reason. It was in fact the natural and inevitable law which Caius
would insist on first, and he would plead for it precisely on the
grounds which Appian states. It is also clear that such a law once
passed made virtual monarchy at Rome possible. [Sidenote: Other
measures of Caius.] In fact the other measures of Caius were both
worthy of a great and wise monarch, and might with good reason
be thought to be designed to lead to monarchy. [Sidenote: Roads.
Granaries. Soldiers' uniform. Age for service.] He constructed
magnificent roads--along which, it would be whispered, his voters
might come more easily to Rome. He built public granaries. He gave
the soldiers clothing at the cost of the State. He made seventeen the
minimum age for service in the army. He himself superintended the
plantation of his own colonies. Everywhere he made his finger felt;
but whether this was of set purpose or only from his constitutional
energy it is hard to decide. His chief object, however, was to
overthrow the Senate; and we have not yet exhausted the list of his
assaults upon it. [Sidenote: Change in nomination to provinces.]
Hitherto it had been the custom for the Senate to name the consular
provinces for the next year after the election of the consuls, which
meant that if a favourite was consul a rich province was given to him,
and if not, a poor one. Caius enacted that the consular provinces
should be named before the election of the consuls. By way, perhaps,
of softening this restriction he took away from the tribunes their
veto on the naming of the consular provinces. [Sidenote: Alleged
change in the order of voting.] He is further supposed, though on
slender evidence, to have changed the order of voting in the Comitia
Centuriata. Formerly the first class voted first. Now the order of
voting first was to be settled by lot, and so the influence of the
rich would be diminished.

[Sidenote: General criticism of his schemes.] Such, in outline, was
the grand scheme of Caius Gracchus. If he was less single-minded in
his aims than his brother, he could hardly help being so; and, having
to reconcile so many conflicting interests, he may have swerved from
what would have been his own ideal. But that his main purpose was to
break down a rotten system, and establish a sound one on its ruins,
and that no petty motive of expediency guided him, but only the one
principle, 'salus populi suprema lex,' is incontrovertible. When we
think of him so eloquent, resolute, and energetic, conceiving such
great projects and executing them in person, making the regeneration
of his country his lodestar in spite of his ever-present belief that
he would, in the end, fall by the same fate as his brother, we think
of him as one of the noblest figures in history--a purer and less
selfish Julius Caesar.

[Sidenote: Machinations of the nobles.] As the petty acts of the
nobles had brought out into relief the large policy of Tiberius, so
it was now. They resorted to even lower tricks than accusations of
tyranny, and found in the fatuity or dishonesty of Drusus a tool even
more effective than Nasica's brutality. The plantation of a colony at
Carthage was looked at askance by many Romans. It was the first
colony planted out of Italy, and the superstitious were filled with
forebodings which the Senate eagerly exaggerated. Such colonies had
repeatedly out-grown and overtopped the parent state. The ground had
been solemnly cursed, and the restoration of the town forbidden. When
the first standard was set up by the colonists a blast of wind, it is
said, blew it down, and scattered the flesh of the victims; and wolves
had torn up the stakes that marked out the site. Such malicious
stories met with readier credence, because, if it is true that Caius
had called for colonists from all Italy, and Junonia was to be a Roman
colony, he was evading the decree of the people against extending the
franchise; and he was thus admitting to it, by a side-wind, those to
whom it had just in the harshest manner been refused. For, when the
vote had been taken, every man not having a vote had been expelled
from the city, and forbidden to come within five miles of it till the
voting was over. Caius had come to live in the Forum instead of on the
Palatine when he returned to Rome, among his friends as he thought;
and still even in little matters he stood forward as the champion of
the poor against the rich. There was going to be a show of gladiators
in the Forum, and the magistrates had enclosed the arena with benches,
which they meant to hire out. Caius asked them to remove the benches,
and, on their refusal, went the night before the show and took them
all away. Anyone who has witnessed modern athletic sports, and
observed how a crowd will hem in the competitors so that only a few
spectators can see, although an equally good view can be obtained by
a great number if the ring is enlarged, will perceive Caius's object,
and be slow to admit that he spoiled the show. But though such acts
pleased the people, all of them had not forgiven him the proposition
about the franchise; and his popularity was on the wane. [Sidenote:
Drusus outbids Caius.] The Senate had suborned one of his colleagues,
M. Livius Drusus, to outbid him. Either Drusus thought he was guiding
the Senate into a larger policy when he was himself merely the
Senate's puppet, and this his son's career makes probable, or he was
cynically dishonest and unscrupulous.

Caius had meditated, it may be, many colonies, but, according to
Plutarch, had at this time only actually settled two. Drusus proposed
to plant twelve, each of 3,000 citizens. Caius had superintended
the settlement himself, and employed his friends. With virtuous
self-denial Drusus washed his hands of all such patronage. Caius had
imposed a yearly tax on those to whom he gave land; Drusus proposed to
remit it. Caius had wished to give the Latins the franchise; Drusus
replied by a comparatively ridiculous favour, which, however, might
appeal more directly to the lower class of Latins. No Latin, he said,
should be liable to be flogged even when serving in the army. Drusus
could afford to be liberal. His colonies were sham colonies. His
remission of the vectigal was a thin-coated poison. His promise to the
Latins was at best a cheap one, and was not carried out. But none the
less his treachery or imbecility served its purpose, and the greedier
and baser of the partisans of Gracchus began to look coldly on their
leader. [Sidenote: Caius rejected for the tribunate.] It is stated,
indeed, that on his standing for the tribunate a third time he was
rejected by fraud, his colleagues having made a false return of the
names of the candidates. In any case he was not elected, and one of
the consuls for the year 121 was L. Opimius, his mortal foe.

The end was drawing near. Sadly Caius must have recognised that his
presentiments would soon be fulfilled, and that he must share his
brother's fate. [Sidenote: Preparations for civil strife.] His foes
proposed to repeal the law for the settlement of Junonia, and,
according to Plutarch, others of his laws also. Warned by the past,
his friends armed. Men came disguised as reapers to defend him. It is
likely enough that they were really reapers, who would remember why
Tiberius lost his life, and that their support would have saved him.
Fulvius was addressing the people about the law when Caius, attended
by some of his partisans, came to the Capitol. He did not join the
meeting, but began walking up and down under a colonnade to wait its
issue. Here a man named Antyllus, who was sacrificing, probably in
behalf of Opimius the consul, either insulted the Gracchans and was
stabbed by them, or caught hold of Caius's hand, or by some other
familiarity or importunity provoked some hasty word or gesture from
him, upon which he was stabbed by a servant. As soon as the deed
was done the people ran away, and Caius hastened to the assembly to
explain the affair. But it began to rain heavily; and for this, and
because of the murder, the assembly was adjourned. Caius and Fulvius
went home; but that night the people thronged the Forum, expecting
that some violence would be done at daybreak. Opimius was not slow to
seize the opportunity. He convoked the Senate, and occupied the temple
of Castor and Pollux with armed men. The body of Antyllus was placed
on a bier, and with loud lamentations borne along the Forum; and as
it passed by the senators came out and hypocritically expressed their
anger at the deed. Then, going indoors, they authorised the consul,
by the usual formula, to resort to arms. He summoned the senators and
equites to arm, and each eques was to bring two armed slaves. The
equites owed much to Gracchus, but they basely deserted him now.
Fulvius, on his side, armed and prepared for a struggle. All the night
the friends of Caius guarded his door, watching and sleeping by turns.
[Sidenote: Fighting in Rome.] The house of Fulvius was also surrounded
by men, who drank and bragged of what they would do on the morrow, and
Fulvius is said to have set them the example. At daybreak he and his
men, to whom he distributed the arms which he had when consul taken
from the Gauls, rushed shouting up to the Aventine and seized it.
Caius said good-bye to his wife and little child, and followed, in his
toga, and unarmed. He knew he was going to his death, but

  For his country felt alone,
  And prized her blood beyond his own.

One effort he made to avert the struggle. He induced Fulvius to send
his young son to the Senate to ask for terms. The messenger returned
with the Senate's reply that they must lay down their arms, and the
two leaders must come and answer for their acts. Caius was ready to
go. But Fulvius was too deeply committed, and sent his son back again,
upon which Opimius seized him, and at once marched to the Aventine.
There was a fight, in which Fulvius was beaten, and with another son
fled and hid himself in a bath or workshop. His pursuers threatened
to burn all that quarter if he was not given up; so the man who had
admitted him told another man to betray him, and father and son were
slain.

[Sidenote: Murder of Caius.] Meanwhile Caius, who had neither armed
nor fought, was about to kill himself in the temple of Diana, when his
two friends implored him to try and save himself for happier
times. Then it is said he invoked a curse on the people for their
ingratitude, and fled across the Tiber. He was nearly overtaken; but
his two staunch friends, Pomponius and Laetorius, gave their lives for
their leader--Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina below the Aventine,
Laetorius in guarding the bridge which was the scene of the feat of
Horatius Cocles. As Caius passed people cheered him on, as if it was
a race in the games. He called for help, but no one helped him--for a
horse, but there was none at hand. One slave still kept up with him,
named Philocrates or Euporus. Hard pressed by their pursuers the two
entered the grove of Furina, and there the slave first slew Caius
and then himself. A wretch named Septimuleius cut off the head of
Gracchus; for a proclamation had been made that whosoever brought
the heads of the two leaders should receive their weight in gold.
Septimuleius, it is said, took out the brains and filled the cavity
with lead; but if he cheated Opimius, Opimius in his turn cheated
those who brought the head of Fulvius, for as they were of the lower
class he would pay them nothing. The story may be false; but Opimius
was subsequently convicted of selling his country's interests to
Jugurtha for money, so that with equal likelihood it may be true. In
the fight and afterwards he put to death 3,000 men, many of whom were
innocent, but whom he would not allow to speak in their defence. The
houses of Caius and Fulvius were sacked, and the property of the slain
was confiscated. Then the city was purified, and the ferocious knave
Opimius raised a temple to Concord, on which one night was found
written 'The work of Discord makes the temple of Concord.' That year
there was a famous vintage, and nearly two centuries afterwards there
was some wine which had been made at the time that Caius Gracchus
died. The wine, says the elder Pliny, tasted like and had the
consistency of bitterish honey. But the memory of the great tribune
has lasted longer than the wine, and will be honoured for ever by all
those who revere patriotism and admire genius. He for whom at the
last extremity friend and slave give their lives does not fall
ingloriously. Even for a life so noble such deaths are a sufficient
crown.

[Sidenote: The mother of the Gracchi.] The child of Caius did not long
survive him. The son of Tiberius died while a boy. Only Cornelia, the
worthy mother of the heroic brothers, remained. She could (according
to the purport of Plutarch's pathetic narrative) speak of them without
a sigh or tear; and those who concluded from this that her mind was
clouded by age or misfortune, were too dull themselves to comprehend
how a noble nature and noble training can support sorrow, for though
fate may often frustrate virtue, yet 'to bear is to conquer our fate.'

[Sidenote: Position of the nobles after the murder. Lex Maria.] The
nobles no doubt thought that, having got rid of Gracchus, they had
renewed their own lease of power. But they had only placed themselves
at the mercy of meaner men. The murderous scenes just related happened
in 121 B.C., and in 119 we read of a Lex Maria, the first law, that is
to say, promulgated by the destined scourge of the Roman aristocracy.
Every Roman could vote, and voted by ballot, and was eligible to
every office. The first law of Marius was to protect voters from the
solicitations of candidates for office. It is significant that the
nobles opposed it, though in the end it was carried. Stealthy intrigue
was now their safest weapon, but their power was tottering to its
fall. Too jealous of each other to submit to the supremacy of one, it
only remained for them to be overthrown by some leader of the popular
party, and the Republic was no more. Yet, as if smitten by judicial
blindness, they proceeded to hasten on their own ruin by reactionary
provocations to their opponents. [Sidenote: Gracchan laws remain in
force.] They dared not interfere with the corn law of Caius, for now
that every man had a vote, which he could give by ballot, they were
dependent on the suffrages of the mob. Neither dared they till
seventeen years later make an attempt to interfere with the selection
of the judices from the equestrian order, and even then the attempt
failed. The scheme of taxation in the province of Asia was also left
untouched. But what they dared to do they did. They prosecuted the
adherents of Gracchus. They recalled Popillius from exile. When
Opimius was arraigned for 'perduellio,' or misuse of his official
power to compass the death of a citizen, they procured his acquittal.
But when Carbo was accused of the same crime, they remembered that he
had been a partisan of Tiberius, though since a renegade, and would
not help him. So while Opimius got off, the champion of Opimius was
driven to commit suicide--a fitting close to a contemptible career.

[Sidenote: Reactionary legislation.] But they soon assailed measures
as well as men. The Lex Baebia appears to have secured those who had
actually established themselves at Carthage in their allotments; but
the Senate annulled the colonies which Caius had planned in Italy,
and, with one exception, Neptunia, broke up those already settled.
[Sidenote: The agrarian law annulled.] Then by three successive
enactments it got rid of the agrarian law, and plunged Italy again
into the decline from which by the help of that law she was emerging.
1. The occupiers were allowed again to sell their land. Tiberius had
expressly forbidden this, and now the rich at once began to buy out
the small owners, whom they often evicted by means more or less
foul. 2. A tribune named Borius, or Thorius, prohibited any further
distribution of land, thus knocking on the head the permanent
commission. These two laws were tantamount to handing over to the
rich in the city and the country the greater part of the public
land, giving them a legal title to it instead of the possession on
sufferance with which the Gracchi had interfered. The mouths of the
farmers were stopped by the pernicious but tempting permission to sell
their land. The people were cajoled by the vectigalia, which Drusus
had abolished, being reimposed, and the proceeds divided among
them. 3. Encouraged by the general acquiescence in these insidious
aggressions they induced a tribune, whose name is conjectured to have
been C. Baebius, to do away with the vectigalia altogether. [Sidenote:
Lex Thoria.] The date of this law, usually called the Thorian law, was
111 B.C. The real Thorian law was probably carried in 118 B.C. Between
these dates the rich would have been getting back the land from the
poor occupiers, and so, when the Senate abolished the vectigalia,
it was really pocketing them, and once for all and by a legal form
turning the public into private land. This law, which is here called
the Baebian law, Cicero ascribes to Spurius Thorius, who, he says,
freed the land from the vectigal. But as Appian says that Spurius
Borius imposed the vectigal, it is assumed that Cicero confused names,
that the Spurius Borius of Appian was Spurius Thorius, and that the
tribune whom Cicero calls Thorius was really quite another person.
However that may be, the law would benefit the rich, because the rich
would be owners of the land. Certain provisions of it were directly
meant to prevent opposition in the country. For if many of the poor
farmers would grumble at being ousted from their land, the land which
had been specially assigned to Latin towns, and of which Tiberius
Gracchus had threatened to dispossess them, was left in the same state
as before his legislation; that is to say, the Senate did not give
the occupiers an indefeasible title, but it did not meddle with
them. Moreover, it amply indemnified the Socii and Latini who had
surrendered land for the colonies of Caius, while some compensation
was given to poor farmers by a clause, that in future a man might only
graze ten large and fifty smaller beasts on the pastures of what still
remained public land. By this law the jurisdiction over land which had
been assigned by the triumvirs was given to the consuls, censors,
and praetors, the jurisdiction over cases in which disputes with the
publicani required settlement being granted to the consuls, praetors,
and, as such cases would occur chiefly in the provinces which were
mostly under propraetors, to propraetors also.

[Sidenote: Pernicious results of the reaction.] The results of this
reactionary legislation are partly summed up by Appian, when he
attributes to it a dearth of citizens, soldiers, and revenue. To our
eyes its effects are clearer still. Slave labour and slave-discontent,
'latifundia,' decrease of population, depreciation of the land,
received a fresh impetus, and the triumphant optimates pushed the
State step by step further down the road to ruin. For the end for
which they struggled was not the good of Italy, much less of the
world, but the supremacy of Rome in Italy, and of themselves in Rome.
Wealth and office were shared by an ever narrowing circle. Ten years
after the passing of the Baebian law, it was said that among all the
citizens there were only 2,000 wealthy families. And between the
years 123 and 109 B.C. four sons and probably two nephews of Quintus
Metellus gained the consulship, five of the six gained triumphs, and
one was censor, while he himself had filled all the highest offices
of the State. Thus, as Sallust says, the nobles passed on the chief
dignities from hand to hand.

There must have been many of the Gracchan party, now left without a
head, who burned for deliverance from such despicable masters. But
they were for the time disorganized and cowed. [Sidenote: Caius
Marius.] There was one man whom Scipio Aemilianus was said to have
pointed out in the Numantine war as capable, if he himself died, of
taking his place; and the rough soldier had already come forward as a
politician, on the one hand checking the optimates by protecting the
secrecy and efficiency of the ballot, and on the other defying the mob
by opposing a distribution of corn; but for the present no one could
tell how far he would or could go, and though he had already been made
praetor, the Metelli could as yet afford to despise him. The death of
Caius prolonged the Senate's misrule for twenty years. Twenty years
of shame at home and abroad--the turpitude of the Jugurthine war--a
second and more stubborn slave revolt in Sicily--the apparition of
the Northern hordes inflicting disaster after disaster upon the Roman
armies, which in 105 B.C. culminated in another and more appalling
Cannae--these things had yet to come about before the cup of the
Senate's infamy was full, and before those who had drawn the sword
against the Gracchi perished by the sword of Marius, impotent,
unpitied, and despised.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER IV.

THE JUGURTHINE WAR.


[Sidenote: Attalus of Pergamus.] Attalus III., the last of that
supple dynasty which had managed to thrive on the jealous and often
treacherous patronage of Rome, left his dominions at his death to
the Republic. He had begun his reign by massacring all his father's
friends and their families, and ended it as an amateur gardener and
dilettante modeller in wax; so perhaps the malice of insanity had
something to do with the bequest, if indeed it was not a forgery.
Aristonicus, a natural son of a previous king, Eumenes II., set it at
naught and aspired to the throne.

[Sidenote: Aristonicus usurps the kingdom of Pergamus.] Attalus died
in 133, the year of the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, when Scipio
was besieging Numantia, and the first slave revolt was raging in
Sicily. The Romans had their hands full, and Aristonicus might have
so established himself as to give them trouble, had not some of the
Asiatic cities headed by Ephesus, and aided by the kings of Cappadocia
and Bithynia, opposed him. He seized Leucae (the modern Lefke) and
was expelled by the Ephesians. But when the Senate found time to send
commissioners, he was already in possession of Thyatira, Apollonia,
Myndus, Colophon, and Samos. Blossius, the friend of Gracchus, had
come to him, and the civil strife at Rome must have raised his
hopes. [Sidenote: Conduct of Crassus, illustrating Roman rule