Its object was to
withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which
they had unjustly seized.
withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which
they had unjustly seized.
Napoleon - History of Julius Caesar - a
Notwithstanding her abasement, Carthage still existed, the eternal
object of hatred and distrust. She was accused of connivance with the
Macedonians, ever impatient of their yoke; and to her was imputed the
resistance of the Celtiberian hordes. In 603, Masinissa and the
Carthaginians engaged in a new struggle. As, according to their
treaties, these last could not make war without authorisation, the
Senate deliberated on the course it was to take. Cato desired war
immediately. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, obtained the appointment of
a new embassy, which succeeded in persuading Masinissa to evacuate the
territory in dispute; on its part, the Senate of Carthage consented to
submit to the wisdom of the ambassadors, when the populace at Carthage,
excited by those men who in troublous times speculate on the passions of
the mob, breaks out in insurrection, insults the Roman envoys, and
expels the chief citizens. [605] A fatal insurrection; for in moments of
external crisis all popular movements ruin a nation,[606] as all
political change is fatal in the presence of a foreigner invading the
soil of the fatherland. However, the Roman Senate judged it best to
temporise, because of the war in Spain, where Scipio Æmilianus then
served in the capacity of tribune. Ordered to Africa (603), to obtain
from Masinissa elephants for the war against the Celtiberians, he
witnessed a sanguinary defeat of the Carthaginian army. This event
decided the question of Roman intervention; the Senate, in fact, had no
intention of leaving the entire sovereignty of Africa to the Numidian
king, whose possessions already extended from the ocean to Cyrene. [607]
In vain did Carthage send ambassadors to Rome to explain her conduct.
They obtained no satisfaction. Utica yielded to the Romans (604), and
the two consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Manlius Nepos, arrived
there at the head of 80,000 men in 605. Carthage sues for peace; they
impose the condition that she shall give up her arms; she delivers them
up, with 2,000 engines of war. But soon exactions increase; the
inhabitants are commanded to quit their city and retire ten miles
inland. Exasperated by so much severity, the Carthaginians recover their
energy; they forge new weapons, raise the populace, fling into the
campaign Hasdrubal, who has soon collected 70,000 men in his camp at
Nepheris, and gives the consuls reason to fear the success of their
enterprise. [608]
The Roman army met with a resistance it was far from expecting.
Endangered by Manlius, it was saved by the tribune, Scipio Æmilianus, on
whom all eyes were turned. On his return to Rome, he was in 607 elected
consul at the age of thirty-six years, and charged with the direction of
the war, which henceforth took a new aspect. Carthage is soon inclosed
by works of prodigious labour; on land, trenches surround the place and
protect the besiegers; by sea, a colossal bar interrupts all
communication, and gives up the city to famine; but the Carthaginians
build a second fleet in their inner port, and excavate a new
communication with the sea. During the winter Scipio goes and forces the
camp at Nepheris, and on the return of spring makes himself master of
the first enclosure; finally, after a siege which lasted for three
years, with heroic efforts on both sides, the town and its citadel Byrsa
are carried, and entirely razed to the ground. Hasdrubal surrendered,
with fifty thousand inhabitants, the remains of an immense population;
but on a fragment of the wall which had escaped the fire, the wife of
the last Carthaginian chief, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, was
seen to curse her husband, who had not had the courage to die; then,
after having slain her two children, she flung herself into the flames.
A mournful image of a nation which achieves her own ruin, but which does
not fall ingloriously.
When the vessel laden with magnificent spoils, and adorned with laurels,
entered the Tiber, bearer of the grand news, all the citizens rushed out
into the streets embracing and congratulating each other on so joyful a
victory. Now only did Rome feel herself free from all fear, and the
mistress of the world. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was a
crime which Caius Gracchus, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus sought to repair.
[Sidenote: Greece, Macedonia, Numantia, and Pergamus reduced to
Provinces. ]
XIII. The same year saw the destruction of the Greek autonomy. Since the
war with Persia, the preponderance of Roman influence had maintained
order in Achaia; but on the return of the hostages, in 603, coincident
with the troubles of Macedonia, party enmities were re-awakened.
Dissensions soon broke out between the Achæan league and the cities of
the Peloponnesus, which it coveted, and the resistance of which it did
not hesitate to punish by destruction and pillage.
Sparta soon rebelled, and Peloponnesus was all in flames. The Romans
made vain efforts to allay this general disturbance. The envoys of the
Senate carried a decree to Corinth, which detached from the league
Sparta, Argos, Orchomenus, and Arcadia. On hearing this, the Achæans
massacred the Lacedæmonians then at Corinth, and loaded the Roman
commissioners with insults. [609] Before using severity, the Roman
Senate resolved to make one appeal to conciliation; but the words of the
new envoys were not listened to.
The Achæan league, united with Eubœa and Bœotia, then dared to
declare war against Rome, which they knew to be occupied in Spain and
Africa. The league was soon vanquished at Scarphia, in Locris, by
Metellus, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, by Mummius. The towns of the
Achæan league were treated rigorously; Corinth was sacked; and Greece,
under the name of Achaia, remained in subjection to the Romans
(608). [610]
However, Mummius, as Polybius himself avows,[611] showed as much
moderation as disinterestedness after the victory. He preserved in their
places the statues of Philopœmen, kept none of the trophies taken in
Greece for himself, and remained so poor that the Senate conferred a
dowry upon his daughter from the public treasury.
About the same time the severity of the Senate had not spared Macedonia.
During the last Punic war, a Greek adventurer, Andriscus, pretending to
be the son of Perseus, had stirred up the country to rebellion, with an
army of Thracians. Driven out of Thessaly by Scipio Nasica, he returned
there, slew the prætor Juventius Thalna, and formed an alliance with the
Carthaginians. Beaten by Metellus, he was sent to Rome loaded with
chains. Some years later, a second impostor having also endeavoured to
seize the succession of Perseus, the Senate reduced Macedonia to a
Roman province (612). It was the same with Illyria after the submission
of the Ardæi (618). Never had so many triumphs been seen. Scipio
Æmilianus had triumphed over Africa, Metellus over Macedonia, Mummius
over Achaia, and Fulvius Flaccus over Illyria.
Delivered henceforth from its troubles in the east and south, the Senate
turned its attention towards Spain. This country had never entirely
yielded: its strength hardly restored, it took up arms again. After the
pacification which Scipio Africanus and Sempronius Gracchus successively
induced, new insurrections broke forth; the Lusitanians, yielding to the
instigations of Carthage, had revolted in 601, and had gained some
advantages over Mummius and his successor Galba (603). But this last, by
an act of infamous treachery, massacred thirty thousand prisoners.
Prosecuted for this act at Rome by Cato, he was acquitted. Subsequently,
another consul showed no less perfidy: Licinius Lucullus, having entered
the town of Cauca, which had surrendered, slew twenty thousand of its
inhabitants, and sold the rest. [612]
So much cruelty excited the indignation of the peoples of Northern
Spain, and, as always happens, the national feeling brought forth a
hero. Viriathus, who had escaped the massacre of the Lusitanians, and
from a shepherd had become a general, began a war of partisans, and, for
five years, having vanquished the Roman generals, ended by rousing the
Celtiberians. Whilst these occupied Metellus the Macedonian, Fabius,
left alone against Viriathus, was hemmed into a defile by him, and
constrained to accept peace. The murder of Viriathus left the issue of
the war no longer doubtful. This death was too advantageous to the
Romans not to be imputed to Cæpio, successor to his brother Fabius. But
when the murderers came to demand the wages of their crime, they were
told that the Romans had never approved of the massacre of a general by
his soldiers. [613] The Lusitanians, however, submitted, and the legions
penetrated to the ocean.
The war, ended in the west, became concentrated round Numantia,[614]
where, in the course of five years, several consuls were defeated. When,
in 616, Mancinus, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, was reduced to
save his army by a shameful capitulation, like that of the Furculæ
Caudinæ, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up the consul
loaded with chains. The same fate was reserved for Tiberius Gracchus,
his questor, who had guaranteed the treaty; but, through the favour of
the people, he remained at Rome. The Numantines still resisted for a
long time with rare energy. The conqueror of Carthage himself had to go
to direct the siege, which required immense works; and yet the town was
taken only by famine (621). Spain was overcome, but her spirit of
independence survived for a great number of years.
Although the fall of the kingdom of Pergamus was posterior to the events
we have just related, we will speak of it here because it is the
continuation of the system of reducing all peoples to subjection.
Attalus III. , a monster of cruelty and folly, had, when dying,
bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, who sent troops to take
possession of it; but a natural son of Eumenes, Aristonicus, raised the
inhabitants, and defeated the consul Licinius Crassus, soon avenged by
one of his successors. Aristonicus was taken, and the kingdom, pacified,
passed by the name of Asia under Roman domination (625).
[Sidenote: Summary. ]
XIV. The more the Republic extended its empire, the more the number of
the high functions increased, and the more important they became. The
consuls, the proconsuls, and the prætors, governed not only foreign
countries, but Italy itself. In fact, Appian tells us that the
proconsuls exercised their authority in certain countries of the
peninsula. [615]
The Roman provinces were nine in number:--1. Cisalpine Gaul. 2. Farther
Spain. 3. Nearer Spain. 4. Sardinia and Corsica. 5. Sicily. 6. Northern
Africa. 7. Illyria. 8. Macedonia and Achaia. 9. Asia. The people
appointed yearly two consuls and seven prætors to go and govern these
distant countries; but generally these high offices were attainable only
by those who had been questors or ediles. Now, the edileship required a
large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes
and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to
this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the
aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position,
where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies
of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices
closed against new men. From 535 to 621--eighty-six years--nine families
alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of
the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years
(630-642. )[616] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when,
addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is
regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and
infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the
multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put
all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling
together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or
two orders. ”[617]
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a
Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the
comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility
preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only
after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in. [618]
The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in
proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence
what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate
aspirations towards a better future.
Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in
its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to
restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all
the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second
came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which
consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law
interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten
years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,[619] and immediately abandoned,
renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which
threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote,
revived at three different epochs;[620] now the measures against
solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into
force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by
turn, refused or granted to the people. [621] By the Portian laws of 557
and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman
citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio
Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with
sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks. [622] At the beginning of the
seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all
elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the
decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes
on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent
tribunals (_quæstiones perpetuæ_), established from 605, it was sought
to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions,
successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society.
The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then
maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices
were soon to shake it to its foundations.
We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and
thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no
nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she
has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the
Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has
conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of
Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east,
the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians,
the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a
tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the
Danube. [623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of
barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles,
Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of
civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia
receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of
the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her
tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a
Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms.
But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within
exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA.
(621-676. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic. ]
I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had
lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism
created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to
sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good
sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from
the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at
every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but
sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of
a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline
began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who
had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi,
acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to
decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of
the best cause.
As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a
dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and
wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece
subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held
by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited
power. [625]
Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When,
freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give
themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides
troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful
men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a
veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at
other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no
longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all
were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition
to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of
things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the
ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the
depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such
a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a
generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could
neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it. ”[626]
The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the
introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense
riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in
causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had
taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one
hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues,
in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had
felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on
the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into
Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt
for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence
which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true,
superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice
is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit,
and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were
loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had
taken possession of all classes.
Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and
sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two
periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain
peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty
and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly
of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his
cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s
conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in
leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a
purchaser! ”[628]
Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions:
for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural
population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified;
the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of
proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the
place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by
the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that
fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly,
the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire,
without participating in the rights of Roman citizens. [629] There were,
as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies
and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state
of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the
metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected
to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were
exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation,
followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It
was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity
and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as
equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited
territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged
class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand
citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only
belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it
is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of
several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were
deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still
remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and
Norba. [631]
The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed
of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had
finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by
purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and
this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy. [632] At a later time,
when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received,
either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense
quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of
wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into
pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer
hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only
did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the
knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many
had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general
(_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the
whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the
provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance
was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made
the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.
Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the
patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly
in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there
were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the
soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a
degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of
619. [634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to
furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been
carried away for slaves by Roman collectors. [635] In the great market of
Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy. [636]
The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause
of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in
regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but
without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally
attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they
were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of
forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or
of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes
admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable
mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore
always the stigma of their origin. [638] Confined to the urban tribes,
they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population
of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a
veritable disdain: “Silence! ” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does
not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he
proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not
frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken. ”[639] When the
people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the
rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all
seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the
candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were
also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when,
crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by
their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.
On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal
families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to
preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves
worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made
them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that
there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a
democracy without people.
There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and
abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against
solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to
cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of
Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give
more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of
Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed
property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and
thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.
All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius
Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at
his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms,
but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles. [641]
[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621). ]
II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous
initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages
as well as eloquence,[642] he was son of the Gracchus who was twice
consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus. [643] At the
age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his
brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the
first to mount to the assault. [644] Questor of the Consul Mancinus in
Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the
love of virtue,[645] far from being dazzled by the splendour of the
moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them
while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the
tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of
eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been
entertained by Scipio Æmilianus[646] to distribute the public domain
among the poor. [647] The people themselves demanded the concession with
great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with
inscriptions calling for it. [648]
Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the
germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the
deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy
without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war,
after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting
examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused
innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts. [649]
He then spoke with contempt of the slaves, of that restless, uncertain
class, invading the rural districts, useless for the recruitment of the
armies, dangerous to society, as the last insurrection in Sicily clearly
proved. He ended by proposing a law, which was simply a reproduction of
that of Licinius Stolo, that had fallen into disuse.
Its object was to
withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which
they had unjustly seized. No landholder should retain more than five
hundred _jugera_ for himself and two hundred and fifty for each of his
sons. These lands should belong to them for ever; the part confiscated
should be divided into lots of thirty _jugera_ and farmed hereditarily,
either to Roman citizens, or to Italiote auxiliaries, on condition of a
small rent to the treasury, and with an express prohibition to alienate.
The proprietors were to be indemnified for the part of their lands which
they so lost. This project, which all the old writers judged to be just
and moderate, raised a tempest among the aristocracy. The Senate
rejected it, and, when the people were on the point of adopting it, the
tribune Octavius, gained over by the rich citizens,[650] opposed to it
his inflexible veto. Suddenly interrupted in his designs, Tiberius
embraced the resolution, as bold as it was contrary to the laws, of
obtaining a vote of the tribes to depose the tribune. These having
pronounced accordingly, the new law was published, and three triumvirs
appointed for carrying it into execution: they were, Tiberius, his
brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Upon another
proposition, he obtained a decision that the money left by the King of
Pergamus to the Roman people should be employed for the expenses of
establishing those who were to receive the lands. [651]
The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the
country tribes. [652] Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm,
carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of
one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.
The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests,
were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted
to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the
assassination of Tiberius. [653] In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value
riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman
aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have
recourse to extremities. ”[654]
The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune
Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of
the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so
far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of
purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty. [655] The
latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by
the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle
became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to
secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of
his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies.
The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius
failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey
the call. [656]
Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a
revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary
qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained
the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his
adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation
than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to
give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius
that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their
slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a
considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance
demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head
to explain by signs the danger which threatened him. [657] Then his
enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to
his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate,
preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the
Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain,
with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred
inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same
fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.
The man had succumbed, but the cause remained standing, and public
opinion forced the Senate to discontinue its opposition to the execution
of the agrarian law, to substitute for Tiberius, as commissioner for the
partition of lands, Publius Crassus, an ally of the Gracchi; the people
commiserated the fate of the victims and cursed the murderers. Scipio
Nasica gained nothing by his triumph; to withdraw him from the general
resentment he was sent to Asia, where he died miserably.
The execution of the law encountered, nevertheless, many obstacles. The
limits of the _ager publicus_ had never been well defined; few
title-deeds existed, and those which could be produced were often
unintelligible. The value of this property, too, had changed
prodigiously. It was necessary to indemnify those who had cleared
uncultivated grounds or made improvements. Most of the lots contained
religious buildings and sepulchres. According to the antique notions, it
was a sacrilege to give them any other destination. The possessors of
the _ager publicus_, supported by the Senate and the equestrian order,
made the most of all these difficulties. The Italiotes showed no less
ardour in protesting against the partition of the lands, knowing well
that it would be less favourable to them than to the Romans.
The struggles which had preceded had so excited men’s passions, that
each party, as the opportunity occurred, presented laws the most
opposite to each other. At one time, on the motion of the tribune Junius
Pennus, it is a question of expelling all foreigners from Rome (628), in
order to deprive the party of the people of auxiliaries; at another, on
that of M. Fulvius, the right of city is claimed in favour of the
Italiotes (629). This demand leads to disturbances: it is rejected, and
the Senate, to rid itself of Fulvius, sends him against the Salluvii,
who were threatening Massilia. But already the allies themselves,
impatient at seeing their rights incessantly despised, were attempting
to secure them by force, and the Latin colony of Fregellæ revolts first;
but it is soon destroyed utterly by the prætor M. Opimius (629). The
rigour of this act of repression was calculated to intimidate the other
towns; but there are questions which must be resolved, and cannot be put
down. The cause which has been vanquished ten years is on the point of
finding in the brother of Tiberius Gracchus a new champion.
[Sidenote: Caius Gracchus (631). ]
III. Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred
deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After
serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the
tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his
ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of
Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of
his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of
Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not
hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs. [658] Invested
with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the
sanction of the people several laws; some directed merely against the
enemies of his brother;[659] others, of great political meaning, which
require more particular notice.
First, the importance of the tribunes was increased by the faculty of
being re-elected indefinitely,[660] which tended to give a character of
permanence to functions which were already so preponderant. Next, the
law _frumentaria_, by turn carried into effect and abandoned,[661]
gained him adherents by his granting without distinction, to all the
poor citizens, the monthly distribution of a certain quantity of wheat;
and for this purpose vast public granaries were constructed. [662] The
shortening of the time of service of the soldiers,[663] the prohibition
to enrol them under seventeen years of age, and the payment by the
treasury of their equipment, which was previously deducted from their
pay, gained him the favour of the army. The establishment of new tolls
(_portoria_) augmented the resources of the State; new colonies were
founded,[664] not only in Italy, but in the possessions out of the
peninsula. [665] The agrarian law, which was connected with the
establishment of these colonies, was confirmed, probably with the view
of restoring to the commissioners charged with its execution their
judicial powers, which had fallen into disuse. [666] Long and wide roads,
starting from Rome, placed the metropolis in easy communication with the
different countries of Italy. [667]
Down to this time, the appointments to the provinces had taken place
after the consular elections, which allowed the Senate to distribute
the great commands nearly according to its own convenience; it was now
arranged, in order to defeat the calculations of ambition and cupidity,
that the Senate should assign, before the election of the consuls, the
provinces which they should administrate. [668] To elevate the title of
Roman citizen, the dispositions of the law Porcia were put in force
again, and it was forbidden not only to pronounce capital
punishment[669] on a Roman citizen, except in case of high treason
(_perduellio_), but even for this offence to apply it without the
ratification of the people. It was equivalent to repealing the law of
provocation, the principle of which had been inscribed in the laws of
the Twelve Tables.
C. Gracchus attempted still more in the cause of equality. He proposed
to confer the right of city on the allies who enjoyed the Latin law, and
even to extend this benefit to all the inhabitants of Italy. [670] He
wished that in the comitia all classes should be admitted without
distinction to draw lots for the century called _prærogativa_, or which
had precedency in voting;[671] this “prerogative” had in fact a great
influence, because the suffrage of the first voters was regarded as a
divine presage; but these propositions were rejected. Desirous of
diminishing the power of the Senate, Gracchus resolved to oppose to it
the knights, whose importance he increased by new attributes. He caused
a law to be passed which authorised the censor to let to farm, in Asia,
the lands taken from the inhabitants of the conquered towns. [672] The
knights then took in farm the rents and tithes of those countries, of
which the soil belonged of right to the Roman people;[673] the old
proprietors were reduced to the condition of simple tenants. Finally,
Caius gave the knights a share in the judiciary powers, exercised
exclusively by the Senate, the venality of which had excited public
contempt. [674] Three hundred knights were joined with three hundred
senators, and the cognisance of all actions at law thus devolved upon
six hundred judges. [675] These measures gained for him the good-will of
an order which, hostile hitherto to the popular party, had contributed
to the failure of the projects of Tiberius Gracchus.
The tribune’s success was immense; his popularity became so great that
the people surrendered to him the right of naming the three hundred
knights among whom the judges were to be chosen, and his simple
recommendation was enough to secure the election of Fannius, one of his
partisans, to the consulship. Desiring further to show his spirit of
justice towards the provinces, he sent back to Spain the wheat
arbitrarily carried away from the inhabitants by the proprætor Fabius.
The tribunes had thus, at that epoch, a veritable omnipotence: they had
charge of the great works; disposed of the public revenues; dictated, so
to say, the election of the consuls; controlled the acts of the
governors of provinces; proposed the laws, and saw to their execution.
These measures taken together, from the circumstance that they were
favourable to a great number of interests, calmed for some time the
ardour of the opposition, and reduced it to silence. Even the Senate
became reconciled in appearance with Caius Gracchus; but under the
surface the feeling of hatred still existed, and another tribune was
raised up against him, Livius Drusus, whose mission was to propose
measures destined to restore to the Senate the affection of the people.
C. Gracchus had designed that the allies enjoying Latin rights should be
admitted to the right of city. Drusus caused it to be declared that,
like the Roman citizens, they should no longer be subject to be beaten
with rods. According to the law of the Gracchi, the lands distributed to
the poor citizens were burdened with a small rent for the profit of the
public treasury; Drusus freed them from it. [676] In rivalry to the
agrarian law, he obtained the creation of twelve colonies of three
thousand citizens each. Lastly, it was thought necessary to remove Caius
Gracchus himself out of the way, by appointing him to lead to Carthage,
to raise it from its ruins, the colony of six thousand individuals,
taken from all parts of Italy,[677] of which he had obtained the
establishment.
During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one
hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the
other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal,
compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter
enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of
these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a
third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected
consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the
nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the
town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation
of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of
deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.
The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in
the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with
extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate
tyrants--a treacherous qualification always employed against the
defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph,
they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of
a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly.
Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius
underwent a similar fate. The head of the tribune was carried in
triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The
agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to
torment the Senate.
Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the
laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and
prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,[678]
“because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent
measure. ”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected
for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them
faithfully, or to have an army at command.
Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws
continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part,
inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions
of lands which had been taken from them,[680] and its effects were only
destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of
corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak,
the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less
miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a
sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred
and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they
combated with arms ideas which arms could not destroy. When, in the
midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root
in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them;
but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and
imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent
repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again
incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a
hundred others grow up in its place.
[Sidenote: War of Jugurtha (637). ]
IV. An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party:
will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman
name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on
the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men
who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their
ancestors.
Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine,
had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia.
Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the
inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children,
Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in
spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman
commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him
and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon
master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death
also. The Senate sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius,
who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful
peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul,
on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to
come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of
reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the
scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:--
“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the
nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed
to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius
Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not
caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law,
but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I
acknowledge that _to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to
the kingly power_; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance
obtained by the blood of the citizens. . . . In these last years you
groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free
people made the tributaries of a few nobles--of those who alone are in
possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is
too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they
have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the
dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and
men. . . . But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic?
Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity, the most
criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good
faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic.
Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced
unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and
these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the
course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety. . . . Ah!
could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to
rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you
resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your
enemies as allies. ”[681]
He then reminded his audience of all Jugurtha’s crimes. The latter rose
to justify himself; but the tribune C. Bæbius, with whom he was in
league, ordered the king to keep silence. The Numidian was on the point
of gathering the fruit of such an accumulation of corruptions, when,
having caused a dangerous rival, Massiva, the grandson of Masinissa, to
be assassinated at Rome, he became the object of public reprobation, and
was compelled to return to Africa. War then re-commences; the consul
Albinus lets it drag on in length. Recalled to Rome to hold the comitia,
he entrusts the command to his brother, the proprætor Aulus, whose army,
soon seduced by Jugurtha, lets itself be surrounded, and is under the
necessity of making a dishonourable capitulation. The indignation at
Rome is at its height. On the proposal of a tribune, an inquiry is
opened against all the presumed accomplices in the misdeeds of
Jugurtha; they were punished, and, as often happens under such
circumstances, the vengeance of the people passed the limits of justice.
At last, after warm debates, an honourable man is chosen, Metellus,
belonging to the faction of the nobles, and he is charged with the war
in Africa. Public opinion, by forcing the Senate to punish corruption,
had triumphed over bad passions; and “it was the first time,” says
Sallust, “that the people put a bridle on the tyrannical pride of the
nobility. ”[682]
[Sidenote: Marius (647). ]
V. The Gracchi had made themselves, so to say, the civil champions of
the popular cause: Marius became its stern soldier. Born of an obscure
family, bred in camps, having arrived by his courage at high grades, he
had the roughness and the ambition of the class which feels itself
oppressed. A great captain, but a partisan in spirit, naturally inclined
to good and to justice, he became, towards the end of his life, through
love of power, cruel and inexorable. [683]
After having distinguished himself at the siege of Numantia, he was
elected tribune of the people, and displayed in that office a great
impartiality. [684] It was the first step of his fortune. Having become
the lieutenant of Metellus, in the war against Jugurtha he sought to
supplant his general; and, at a later period, succeeded in allying
himself to an illustrious family by marrying Julia, paternal aunt of the
great Cæsar. Guided by his instinct or intelligence, he had learnt that
beneath the official people there existed a people of proletaries and of
allies which demanded a consideration in the State.
Having reached the consulship through his high military reputation,
backed by intrigues, he was charged with the war of Numidia, and, before
his departure, expressed with energy, in an address to the people, the
rancours and principles of the democratic party of that time.
“You have charged me,” he said, “with the war against Jugurtha; the
nobility is irritated at your choice: but why do you not change your
decree, by going to seek for this expedition a man among that crowd of
nobles, of old lineage, who counts many ancestors, but not a single
campaign? . . . It is true that he would have to take among the people an
adviser who could teach him his business. With these proud patricians
compare Marius, a new man. What they have heard related by others, what
they have read of, I have seen in part, I have in part done. . . . They
reproach me with the obscurity of my birth and fortune; I reproach them
with their cowardice and personal infamy. Nature, our common mother, has
made all men equal, and the bravest is the most noble. . . . If they think
they are justified in despising me, let them also despise their
ancestors, ennobled like me by their personal merits. . . . And is it not
more worthy to be oneself the author of his name than to degrade that
which has been transmitted to you?
“I cannot, to justify your confidence, make a display of images, nor
boast of the triumphs or consulships of my ancestors; but I can produce,
if necessary, javelins, a standard, the trappings of war, twenty other
military gifts, besides the scars which furrow my breast. These are my
images, these my nobility, not left by inheritance, but won for myself
by great personal labours and perils. ”[685]
After this oration, in which is revealed the legitimate ardour of those
who, in all aristocratic countries, demand equality, Marius, contrary to
the ancient system, enrolled more proletaries than citizens. The
veterans also crowded under his standards. He conducted the war of
Africa with skill; but he was robbed of part of his glory by his
questor, P. Cornelius Sylla. This man, called soon afterwards to play so
great a part, sprung from an illustrious patrician family, ambitious,
ardent, full of boldness and confidence in himself, recoiled before no
obstacle. The successes, which cost so many efforts to Marius, seemed to
come of themselves to Sylla. Marius defeated the Numidian prince, but,
by an adventurous act of boldness, Sylla received his submission, and
ended the war. From that time began, between the proconsul and his young
questor, a rivalry which, in time, was changed into violent hatred. They
became, one, the champion of the democracy; the other, the hope of the
oligarchic faction. So the Senate extolled beyond measure Metellus and
Sylla, in order that the people should not consider Marius as the first
of the generals. [686] The gravity of events soon baffled this
manœuvre.
While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger
threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had
moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia
(in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all
their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and
adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls. [687] In their
passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged
with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul;
returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they
demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to
meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The
Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew
the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was
only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri,
followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites
the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable
of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger,
sought no longer to seize the power.
object of hatred and distrust. She was accused of connivance with the
Macedonians, ever impatient of their yoke; and to her was imputed the
resistance of the Celtiberian hordes. In 603, Masinissa and the
Carthaginians engaged in a new struggle. As, according to their
treaties, these last could not make war without authorisation, the
Senate deliberated on the course it was to take. Cato desired war
immediately. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, obtained the appointment of
a new embassy, which succeeded in persuading Masinissa to evacuate the
territory in dispute; on its part, the Senate of Carthage consented to
submit to the wisdom of the ambassadors, when the populace at Carthage,
excited by those men who in troublous times speculate on the passions of
the mob, breaks out in insurrection, insults the Roman envoys, and
expels the chief citizens. [605] A fatal insurrection; for in moments of
external crisis all popular movements ruin a nation,[606] as all
political change is fatal in the presence of a foreigner invading the
soil of the fatherland. However, the Roman Senate judged it best to
temporise, because of the war in Spain, where Scipio Æmilianus then
served in the capacity of tribune. Ordered to Africa (603), to obtain
from Masinissa elephants for the war against the Celtiberians, he
witnessed a sanguinary defeat of the Carthaginian army. This event
decided the question of Roman intervention; the Senate, in fact, had no
intention of leaving the entire sovereignty of Africa to the Numidian
king, whose possessions already extended from the ocean to Cyrene. [607]
In vain did Carthage send ambassadors to Rome to explain her conduct.
They obtained no satisfaction. Utica yielded to the Romans (604), and
the two consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Manlius Nepos, arrived
there at the head of 80,000 men in 605. Carthage sues for peace; they
impose the condition that she shall give up her arms; she delivers them
up, with 2,000 engines of war. But soon exactions increase; the
inhabitants are commanded to quit their city and retire ten miles
inland. Exasperated by so much severity, the Carthaginians recover their
energy; they forge new weapons, raise the populace, fling into the
campaign Hasdrubal, who has soon collected 70,000 men in his camp at
Nepheris, and gives the consuls reason to fear the success of their
enterprise. [608]
The Roman army met with a resistance it was far from expecting.
Endangered by Manlius, it was saved by the tribune, Scipio Æmilianus, on
whom all eyes were turned. On his return to Rome, he was in 607 elected
consul at the age of thirty-six years, and charged with the direction of
the war, which henceforth took a new aspect. Carthage is soon inclosed
by works of prodigious labour; on land, trenches surround the place and
protect the besiegers; by sea, a colossal bar interrupts all
communication, and gives up the city to famine; but the Carthaginians
build a second fleet in their inner port, and excavate a new
communication with the sea. During the winter Scipio goes and forces the
camp at Nepheris, and on the return of spring makes himself master of
the first enclosure; finally, after a siege which lasted for three
years, with heroic efforts on both sides, the town and its citadel Byrsa
are carried, and entirely razed to the ground. Hasdrubal surrendered,
with fifty thousand inhabitants, the remains of an immense population;
but on a fragment of the wall which had escaped the fire, the wife of
the last Carthaginian chief, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, was
seen to curse her husband, who had not had the courage to die; then,
after having slain her two children, she flung herself into the flames.
A mournful image of a nation which achieves her own ruin, but which does
not fall ingloriously.
When the vessel laden with magnificent spoils, and adorned with laurels,
entered the Tiber, bearer of the grand news, all the citizens rushed out
into the streets embracing and congratulating each other on so joyful a
victory. Now only did Rome feel herself free from all fear, and the
mistress of the world. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was a
crime which Caius Gracchus, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus sought to repair.
[Sidenote: Greece, Macedonia, Numantia, and Pergamus reduced to
Provinces. ]
XIII. The same year saw the destruction of the Greek autonomy. Since the
war with Persia, the preponderance of Roman influence had maintained
order in Achaia; but on the return of the hostages, in 603, coincident
with the troubles of Macedonia, party enmities were re-awakened.
Dissensions soon broke out between the Achæan league and the cities of
the Peloponnesus, which it coveted, and the resistance of which it did
not hesitate to punish by destruction and pillage.
Sparta soon rebelled, and Peloponnesus was all in flames. The Romans
made vain efforts to allay this general disturbance. The envoys of the
Senate carried a decree to Corinth, which detached from the league
Sparta, Argos, Orchomenus, and Arcadia. On hearing this, the Achæans
massacred the Lacedæmonians then at Corinth, and loaded the Roman
commissioners with insults. [609] Before using severity, the Roman
Senate resolved to make one appeal to conciliation; but the words of the
new envoys were not listened to.
The Achæan league, united with Eubœa and Bœotia, then dared to
declare war against Rome, which they knew to be occupied in Spain and
Africa. The league was soon vanquished at Scarphia, in Locris, by
Metellus, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, by Mummius. The towns of the
Achæan league were treated rigorously; Corinth was sacked; and Greece,
under the name of Achaia, remained in subjection to the Romans
(608). [610]
However, Mummius, as Polybius himself avows,[611] showed as much
moderation as disinterestedness after the victory. He preserved in their
places the statues of Philopœmen, kept none of the trophies taken in
Greece for himself, and remained so poor that the Senate conferred a
dowry upon his daughter from the public treasury.
About the same time the severity of the Senate had not spared Macedonia.
During the last Punic war, a Greek adventurer, Andriscus, pretending to
be the son of Perseus, had stirred up the country to rebellion, with an
army of Thracians. Driven out of Thessaly by Scipio Nasica, he returned
there, slew the prætor Juventius Thalna, and formed an alliance with the
Carthaginians. Beaten by Metellus, he was sent to Rome loaded with
chains. Some years later, a second impostor having also endeavoured to
seize the succession of Perseus, the Senate reduced Macedonia to a
Roman province (612). It was the same with Illyria after the submission
of the Ardæi (618). Never had so many triumphs been seen. Scipio
Æmilianus had triumphed over Africa, Metellus over Macedonia, Mummius
over Achaia, and Fulvius Flaccus over Illyria.
Delivered henceforth from its troubles in the east and south, the Senate
turned its attention towards Spain. This country had never entirely
yielded: its strength hardly restored, it took up arms again. After the
pacification which Scipio Africanus and Sempronius Gracchus successively
induced, new insurrections broke forth; the Lusitanians, yielding to the
instigations of Carthage, had revolted in 601, and had gained some
advantages over Mummius and his successor Galba (603). But this last, by
an act of infamous treachery, massacred thirty thousand prisoners.
Prosecuted for this act at Rome by Cato, he was acquitted. Subsequently,
another consul showed no less perfidy: Licinius Lucullus, having entered
the town of Cauca, which had surrendered, slew twenty thousand of its
inhabitants, and sold the rest. [612]
So much cruelty excited the indignation of the peoples of Northern
Spain, and, as always happens, the national feeling brought forth a
hero. Viriathus, who had escaped the massacre of the Lusitanians, and
from a shepherd had become a general, began a war of partisans, and, for
five years, having vanquished the Roman generals, ended by rousing the
Celtiberians. Whilst these occupied Metellus the Macedonian, Fabius,
left alone against Viriathus, was hemmed into a defile by him, and
constrained to accept peace. The murder of Viriathus left the issue of
the war no longer doubtful. This death was too advantageous to the
Romans not to be imputed to Cæpio, successor to his brother Fabius. But
when the murderers came to demand the wages of their crime, they were
told that the Romans had never approved of the massacre of a general by
his soldiers. [613] The Lusitanians, however, submitted, and the legions
penetrated to the ocean.
The war, ended in the west, became concentrated round Numantia,[614]
where, in the course of five years, several consuls were defeated. When,
in 616, Mancinus, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, was reduced to
save his army by a shameful capitulation, like that of the Furculæ
Caudinæ, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up the consul
loaded with chains. The same fate was reserved for Tiberius Gracchus,
his questor, who had guaranteed the treaty; but, through the favour of
the people, he remained at Rome. The Numantines still resisted for a
long time with rare energy. The conqueror of Carthage himself had to go
to direct the siege, which required immense works; and yet the town was
taken only by famine (621). Spain was overcome, but her spirit of
independence survived for a great number of years.
Although the fall of the kingdom of Pergamus was posterior to the events
we have just related, we will speak of it here because it is the
continuation of the system of reducing all peoples to subjection.
Attalus III. , a monster of cruelty and folly, had, when dying,
bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, who sent troops to take
possession of it; but a natural son of Eumenes, Aristonicus, raised the
inhabitants, and defeated the consul Licinius Crassus, soon avenged by
one of his successors. Aristonicus was taken, and the kingdom, pacified,
passed by the name of Asia under Roman domination (625).
[Sidenote: Summary. ]
XIV. The more the Republic extended its empire, the more the number of
the high functions increased, and the more important they became. The
consuls, the proconsuls, and the prætors, governed not only foreign
countries, but Italy itself. In fact, Appian tells us that the
proconsuls exercised their authority in certain countries of the
peninsula. [615]
The Roman provinces were nine in number:--1. Cisalpine Gaul. 2. Farther
Spain. 3. Nearer Spain. 4. Sardinia and Corsica. 5. Sicily. 6. Northern
Africa. 7. Illyria. 8. Macedonia and Achaia. 9. Asia. The people
appointed yearly two consuls and seven prætors to go and govern these
distant countries; but generally these high offices were attainable only
by those who had been questors or ediles. Now, the edileship required a
large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes
and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to
this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the
aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position,
where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies
of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices
closed against new men. From 535 to 621--eighty-six years--nine families
alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of
the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years
(630-642. )[616] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when,
addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is
regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and
infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the
multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put
all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling
together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or
two orders. ”[617]
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a
Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the
comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility
preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only
after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in. [618]
The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in
proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence
what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate
aspirations towards a better future.
Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in
its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to
restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all
the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second
came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which
consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law
interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten
years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,[619] and immediately abandoned,
renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which
threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote,
revived at three different epochs;[620] now the measures against
solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into
force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by
turn, refused or granted to the people. [621] By the Portian laws of 557
and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman
citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio
Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with
sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks. [622] At the beginning of the
seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all
elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the
decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes
on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent
tribunals (_quæstiones perpetuæ_), established from 605, it was sought
to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions,
successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society.
The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then
maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices
were soon to shake it to its foundations.
We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and
thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no
nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she
has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the
Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has
conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of
Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east,
the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians,
the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a
tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the
Danube. [623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of
barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles,
Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of
civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia
receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of
the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her
tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a
Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms.
But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within
exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA.
(621-676. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic. ]
I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had
lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism
created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to
sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good
sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from
the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at
every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but
sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of
a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline
began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who
had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi,
acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to
decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of
the best cause.
As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a
dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and
wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece
subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held
by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited
power. [625]
Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When,
freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give
themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides
troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful
men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a
veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at
other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no
longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all
were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition
to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of
things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the
ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the
depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such
a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a
generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could
neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it. ”[626]
The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the
introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense
riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in
causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had
taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one
hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues,
in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had
felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on
the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into
Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt
for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence
which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true,
superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice
is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit,
and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were
loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had
taken possession of all classes.
Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and
sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two
periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain
peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty
and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly
of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his
cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s
conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in
leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a
purchaser! ”[628]
Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions:
for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural
population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified;
the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of
proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the
place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by
the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that
fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly,
the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire,
without participating in the rights of Roman citizens. [629] There were,
as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies
and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state
of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the
metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected
to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were
exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation,
followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It
was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity
and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as
equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited
territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged
class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand
citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only
belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it
is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of
several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were
deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still
remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and
Norba. [631]
The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed
of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had
finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by
purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and
this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy. [632] At a later time,
when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received,
either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense
quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of
wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into
pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer
hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only
did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the
knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many
had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general
(_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the
whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the
provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance
was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made
the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.
Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the
patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly
in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there
were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the
soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a
degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of
619. [634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to
furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been
carried away for slaves by Roman collectors. [635] In the great market of
Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy. [636]
The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause
of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in
regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but
without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally
attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they
were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of
forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or
of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes
admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable
mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore
always the stigma of their origin. [638] Confined to the urban tribes,
they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population
of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a
veritable disdain: “Silence! ” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does
not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he
proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not
frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken. ”[639] When the
people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the
rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all
seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the
candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were
also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when,
crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by
their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.
On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal
families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to
preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves
worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made
them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that
there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a
democracy without people.
There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and
abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against
solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to
cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of
Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give
more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of
Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed
property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and
thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.
All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius
Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at
his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms,
but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles. [641]
[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621). ]
II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous
initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages
as well as eloquence,[642] he was son of the Gracchus who was twice
consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus. [643] At the
age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his
brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the
first to mount to the assault. [644] Questor of the Consul Mancinus in
Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the
love of virtue,[645] far from being dazzled by the splendour of the
moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them
while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the
tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of
eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been
entertained by Scipio Æmilianus[646] to distribute the public domain
among the poor. [647] The people themselves demanded the concession with
great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with
inscriptions calling for it. [648]
Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the
germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the
deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy
without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war,
after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting
examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused
innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts. [649]
He then spoke with contempt of the slaves, of that restless, uncertain
class, invading the rural districts, useless for the recruitment of the
armies, dangerous to society, as the last insurrection in Sicily clearly
proved. He ended by proposing a law, which was simply a reproduction of
that of Licinius Stolo, that had fallen into disuse.
Its object was to
withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which
they had unjustly seized. No landholder should retain more than five
hundred _jugera_ for himself and two hundred and fifty for each of his
sons. These lands should belong to them for ever; the part confiscated
should be divided into lots of thirty _jugera_ and farmed hereditarily,
either to Roman citizens, or to Italiote auxiliaries, on condition of a
small rent to the treasury, and with an express prohibition to alienate.
The proprietors were to be indemnified for the part of their lands which
they so lost. This project, which all the old writers judged to be just
and moderate, raised a tempest among the aristocracy. The Senate
rejected it, and, when the people were on the point of adopting it, the
tribune Octavius, gained over by the rich citizens,[650] opposed to it
his inflexible veto. Suddenly interrupted in his designs, Tiberius
embraced the resolution, as bold as it was contrary to the laws, of
obtaining a vote of the tribes to depose the tribune. These having
pronounced accordingly, the new law was published, and three triumvirs
appointed for carrying it into execution: they were, Tiberius, his
brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Upon another
proposition, he obtained a decision that the money left by the King of
Pergamus to the Roman people should be employed for the expenses of
establishing those who were to receive the lands. [651]
The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the
country tribes. [652] Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm,
carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of
one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.
The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests,
were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted
to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the
assassination of Tiberius. [653] In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value
riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman
aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have
recourse to extremities. ”[654]
The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune
Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of
the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so
far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of
purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty. [655] The
latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by
the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle
became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to
secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of
his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies.
The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius
failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey
the call. [656]
Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a
revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary
qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained
the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his
adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation
than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to
give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius
that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their
slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a
considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance
demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head
to explain by signs the danger which threatened him. [657] Then his
enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to
his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate,
preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the
Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain,
with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred
inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same
fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.
The man had succumbed, but the cause remained standing, and public
opinion forced the Senate to discontinue its opposition to the execution
of the agrarian law, to substitute for Tiberius, as commissioner for the
partition of lands, Publius Crassus, an ally of the Gracchi; the people
commiserated the fate of the victims and cursed the murderers. Scipio
Nasica gained nothing by his triumph; to withdraw him from the general
resentment he was sent to Asia, where he died miserably.
The execution of the law encountered, nevertheless, many obstacles. The
limits of the _ager publicus_ had never been well defined; few
title-deeds existed, and those which could be produced were often
unintelligible. The value of this property, too, had changed
prodigiously. It was necessary to indemnify those who had cleared
uncultivated grounds or made improvements. Most of the lots contained
religious buildings and sepulchres. According to the antique notions, it
was a sacrilege to give them any other destination. The possessors of
the _ager publicus_, supported by the Senate and the equestrian order,
made the most of all these difficulties. The Italiotes showed no less
ardour in protesting against the partition of the lands, knowing well
that it would be less favourable to them than to the Romans.
The struggles which had preceded had so excited men’s passions, that
each party, as the opportunity occurred, presented laws the most
opposite to each other. At one time, on the motion of the tribune Junius
Pennus, it is a question of expelling all foreigners from Rome (628), in
order to deprive the party of the people of auxiliaries; at another, on
that of M. Fulvius, the right of city is claimed in favour of the
Italiotes (629). This demand leads to disturbances: it is rejected, and
the Senate, to rid itself of Fulvius, sends him against the Salluvii,
who were threatening Massilia. But already the allies themselves,
impatient at seeing their rights incessantly despised, were attempting
to secure them by force, and the Latin colony of Fregellæ revolts first;
but it is soon destroyed utterly by the prætor M. Opimius (629). The
rigour of this act of repression was calculated to intimidate the other
towns; but there are questions which must be resolved, and cannot be put
down. The cause which has been vanquished ten years is on the point of
finding in the brother of Tiberius Gracchus a new champion.
[Sidenote: Caius Gracchus (631). ]
III. Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred
deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After
serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the
tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his
ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of
Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of
his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of
Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not
hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs. [658] Invested
with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the
sanction of the people several laws; some directed merely against the
enemies of his brother;[659] others, of great political meaning, which
require more particular notice.
First, the importance of the tribunes was increased by the faculty of
being re-elected indefinitely,[660] which tended to give a character of
permanence to functions which were already so preponderant. Next, the
law _frumentaria_, by turn carried into effect and abandoned,[661]
gained him adherents by his granting without distinction, to all the
poor citizens, the monthly distribution of a certain quantity of wheat;
and for this purpose vast public granaries were constructed. [662] The
shortening of the time of service of the soldiers,[663] the prohibition
to enrol them under seventeen years of age, and the payment by the
treasury of their equipment, which was previously deducted from their
pay, gained him the favour of the army. The establishment of new tolls
(_portoria_) augmented the resources of the State; new colonies were
founded,[664] not only in Italy, but in the possessions out of the
peninsula. [665] The agrarian law, which was connected with the
establishment of these colonies, was confirmed, probably with the view
of restoring to the commissioners charged with its execution their
judicial powers, which had fallen into disuse. [666] Long and wide roads,
starting from Rome, placed the metropolis in easy communication with the
different countries of Italy. [667]
Down to this time, the appointments to the provinces had taken place
after the consular elections, which allowed the Senate to distribute
the great commands nearly according to its own convenience; it was now
arranged, in order to defeat the calculations of ambition and cupidity,
that the Senate should assign, before the election of the consuls, the
provinces which they should administrate. [668] To elevate the title of
Roman citizen, the dispositions of the law Porcia were put in force
again, and it was forbidden not only to pronounce capital
punishment[669] on a Roman citizen, except in case of high treason
(_perduellio_), but even for this offence to apply it without the
ratification of the people. It was equivalent to repealing the law of
provocation, the principle of which had been inscribed in the laws of
the Twelve Tables.
C. Gracchus attempted still more in the cause of equality. He proposed
to confer the right of city on the allies who enjoyed the Latin law, and
even to extend this benefit to all the inhabitants of Italy. [670] He
wished that in the comitia all classes should be admitted without
distinction to draw lots for the century called _prærogativa_, or which
had precedency in voting;[671] this “prerogative” had in fact a great
influence, because the suffrage of the first voters was regarded as a
divine presage; but these propositions were rejected. Desirous of
diminishing the power of the Senate, Gracchus resolved to oppose to it
the knights, whose importance he increased by new attributes. He caused
a law to be passed which authorised the censor to let to farm, in Asia,
the lands taken from the inhabitants of the conquered towns. [672] The
knights then took in farm the rents and tithes of those countries, of
which the soil belonged of right to the Roman people;[673] the old
proprietors were reduced to the condition of simple tenants. Finally,
Caius gave the knights a share in the judiciary powers, exercised
exclusively by the Senate, the venality of which had excited public
contempt. [674] Three hundred knights were joined with three hundred
senators, and the cognisance of all actions at law thus devolved upon
six hundred judges. [675] These measures gained for him the good-will of
an order which, hostile hitherto to the popular party, had contributed
to the failure of the projects of Tiberius Gracchus.
The tribune’s success was immense; his popularity became so great that
the people surrendered to him the right of naming the three hundred
knights among whom the judges were to be chosen, and his simple
recommendation was enough to secure the election of Fannius, one of his
partisans, to the consulship. Desiring further to show his spirit of
justice towards the provinces, he sent back to Spain the wheat
arbitrarily carried away from the inhabitants by the proprætor Fabius.
The tribunes had thus, at that epoch, a veritable omnipotence: they had
charge of the great works; disposed of the public revenues; dictated, so
to say, the election of the consuls; controlled the acts of the
governors of provinces; proposed the laws, and saw to their execution.
These measures taken together, from the circumstance that they were
favourable to a great number of interests, calmed for some time the
ardour of the opposition, and reduced it to silence. Even the Senate
became reconciled in appearance with Caius Gracchus; but under the
surface the feeling of hatred still existed, and another tribune was
raised up against him, Livius Drusus, whose mission was to propose
measures destined to restore to the Senate the affection of the people.
C. Gracchus had designed that the allies enjoying Latin rights should be
admitted to the right of city. Drusus caused it to be declared that,
like the Roman citizens, they should no longer be subject to be beaten
with rods. According to the law of the Gracchi, the lands distributed to
the poor citizens were burdened with a small rent for the profit of the
public treasury; Drusus freed them from it. [676] In rivalry to the
agrarian law, he obtained the creation of twelve colonies of three
thousand citizens each. Lastly, it was thought necessary to remove Caius
Gracchus himself out of the way, by appointing him to lead to Carthage,
to raise it from its ruins, the colony of six thousand individuals,
taken from all parts of Italy,[677] of which he had obtained the
establishment.
During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one
hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the
other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal,
compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter
enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of
these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a
third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected
consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the
nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the
town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation
of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of
deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.
The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in
the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with
extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate
tyrants--a treacherous qualification always employed against the
defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph,
they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of
a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly.
Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius
underwent a similar fate. The head of the tribune was carried in
triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The
agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to
torment the Senate.
Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the
laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and
prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,[678]
“because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent
measure. ”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected
for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them
faithfully, or to have an army at command.
Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws
continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part,
inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions
of lands which had been taken from them,[680] and its effects were only
destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of
corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak,
the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less
miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a
sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred
and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they
combated with arms ideas which arms could not destroy. When, in the
midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root
in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them;
but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and
imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent
repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again
incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a
hundred others grow up in its place.
[Sidenote: War of Jugurtha (637). ]
IV. An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party:
will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman
name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on
the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men
who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their
ancestors.
Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine,
had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia.
Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the
inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children,
Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in
spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman
commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him
and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon
master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death
also. The Senate sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius,
who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful
peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul,
on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to
come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of
reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the
scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:--
“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the
nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed
to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius
Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not
caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law,
but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I
acknowledge that _to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to
the kingly power_; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance
obtained by the blood of the citizens. . . . In these last years you
groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free
people made the tributaries of a few nobles--of those who alone are in
possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is
too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they
have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the
dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and
men. . . . But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic?
Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity, the most
criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good
faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic.
Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced
unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and
these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the
course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety. . . . Ah!
could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to
rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you
resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your
enemies as allies. ”[681]
He then reminded his audience of all Jugurtha’s crimes. The latter rose
to justify himself; but the tribune C. Bæbius, with whom he was in
league, ordered the king to keep silence. The Numidian was on the point
of gathering the fruit of such an accumulation of corruptions, when,
having caused a dangerous rival, Massiva, the grandson of Masinissa, to
be assassinated at Rome, he became the object of public reprobation, and
was compelled to return to Africa. War then re-commences; the consul
Albinus lets it drag on in length. Recalled to Rome to hold the comitia,
he entrusts the command to his brother, the proprætor Aulus, whose army,
soon seduced by Jugurtha, lets itself be surrounded, and is under the
necessity of making a dishonourable capitulation. The indignation at
Rome is at its height. On the proposal of a tribune, an inquiry is
opened against all the presumed accomplices in the misdeeds of
Jugurtha; they were punished, and, as often happens under such
circumstances, the vengeance of the people passed the limits of justice.
At last, after warm debates, an honourable man is chosen, Metellus,
belonging to the faction of the nobles, and he is charged with the war
in Africa. Public opinion, by forcing the Senate to punish corruption,
had triumphed over bad passions; and “it was the first time,” says
Sallust, “that the people put a bridle on the tyrannical pride of the
nobility. ”[682]
[Sidenote: Marius (647). ]
V. The Gracchi had made themselves, so to say, the civil champions of
the popular cause: Marius became its stern soldier. Born of an obscure
family, bred in camps, having arrived by his courage at high grades, he
had the roughness and the ambition of the class which feels itself
oppressed. A great captain, but a partisan in spirit, naturally inclined
to good and to justice, he became, towards the end of his life, through
love of power, cruel and inexorable. [683]
After having distinguished himself at the siege of Numantia, he was
elected tribune of the people, and displayed in that office a great
impartiality. [684] It was the first step of his fortune. Having become
the lieutenant of Metellus, in the war against Jugurtha he sought to
supplant his general; and, at a later period, succeeded in allying
himself to an illustrious family by marrying Julia, paternal aunt of the
great Cæsar. Guided by his instinct or intelligence, he had learnt that
beneath the official people there existed a people of proletaries and of
allies which demanded a consideration in the State.
Having reached the consulship through his high military reputation,
backed by intrigues, he was charged with the war of Numidia, and, before
his departure, expressed with energy, in an address to the people, the
rancours and principles of the democratic party of that time.
“You have charged me,” he said, “with the war against Jugurtha; the
nobility is irritated at your choice: but why do you not change your
decree, by going to seek for this expedition a man among that crowd of
nobles, of old lineage, who counts many ancestors, but not a single
campaign? . . . It is true that he would have to take among the people an
adviser who could teach him his business. With these proud patricians
compare Marius, a new man. What they have heard related by others, what
they have read of, I have seen in part, I have in part done. . . . They
reproach me with the obscurity of my birth and fortune; I reproach them
with their cowardice and personal infamy. Nature, our common mother, has
made all men equal, and the bravest is the most noble. . . . If they think
they are justified in despising me, let them also despise their
ancestors, ennobled like me by their personal merits. . . . And is it not
more worthy to be oneself the author of his name than to degrade that
which has been transmitted to you?
“I cannot, to justify your confidence, make a display of images, nor
boast of the triumphs or consulships of my ancestors; but I can produce,
if necessary, javelins, a standard, the trappings of war, twenty other
military gifts, besides the scars which furrow my breast. These are my
images, these my nobility, not left by inheritance, but won for myself
by great personal labours and perils. ”[685]
After this oration, in which is revealed the legitimate ardour of those
who, in all aristocratic countries, demand equality, Marius, contrary to
the ancient system, enrolled more proletaries than citizens. The
veterans also crowded under his standards. He conducted the war of
Africa with skill; but he was robbed of part of his glory by his
questor, P. Cornelius Sylla. This man, called soon afterwards to play so
great a part, sprung from an illustrious patrician family, ambitious,
ardent, full of boldness and confidence in himself, recoiled before no
obstacle. The successes, which cost so many efforts to Marius, seemed to
come of themselves to Sylla. Marius defeated the Numidian prince, but,
by an adventurous act of boldness, Sylla received his submission, and
ended the war. From that time began, between the proconsul and his young
questor, a rivalry which, in time, was changed into violent hatred. They
became, one, the champion of the democracy; the other, the hope of the
oligarchic faction. So the Senate extolled beyond measure Metellus and
Sylla, in order that the people should not consider Marius as the first
of the generals. [686] The gravity of events soon baffled this
manœuvre.
While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger
threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had
moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia
(in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all
their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and
adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls. [687] In their
passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged
with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul;
returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they
demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to
meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The
Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew
the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was
only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri,
followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites
the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable
of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger,
sought no longer to seize the power.
