No More Learning

That was time to break off, was no doubt disputed at the moment even well-meaning men but the fact that Gaius Gracchus did not seriously recur to those possessions which might have been, and yet were not, distributed under the law of his brother, tells very much in favour of the belief that Scipio hit substantially the right moment Both measures were extorted from the parties—the first from the aristocracy, the second from the friends of reform for each its author paid with his life. It was Scipio's lot to fight for his country on many battle-field and to return home uninjured, that he might perish there by the hand of
an assassin but in his quiet chamber he no less died for Rome than he had fallen before the walls of Carthage.
if ;
it
a
;
a by
it ;
It it it
it
;
it,
Demo cratic agitation trader Carbo and Flaccns.
The distribution of land was at an end ; the revolution went on. The revolutionary party, which possessed in the allotment -com mission as it were a constituted leadership, had even in the lifetime of Scipio skirmished now and then with the existing government Carbo, in particular, one of the most distinguished men of his time in oratorical talent,
340
THE REVOLUTION AND BOOK IV
Ml. Bad as tribune of the people in 623 given no small trouble to the senate ; had carried voting by ballot in the burgess- assemblies, so far as it had not been introduced already
and had even made the significant proposal to leave the tribunes of the people free to reappear as candi dates for the same office in the year immediately following, and thus legally to remove the obstacle by which Tiberius Gracchus had primarily been thwarted. The scheme had been at that time frustrated the resistance of Scipio some years later, apparently after his death, the law was reintroduced and carried through, although with limiting clauses. 1 The principal object of the party, however, was to revive the action of the allotment-commission which had been practically suspended the leaders seriously talked of removing the obstacles which the Italian allies interposed
to the scheme by conferring on them the rights of citizen
ship, and the agitation assumed mainly that direction. In 1M. order to meet the senate in 628 got the tribune of the people Marcus Junius Pennus to propose the dismissal of all non-burgesses from the capital, and in spite of the
resistance of the democrats, particularly of Gaius Gracchus, and of the ferment occasioned by this odious measure in the Latin communities, the proposal was carried. Marcus
126. Fulvius Flaccus retorted in the following year (629) as consul with the proposal to facilitate the acquisition of
The restriction, that the continuance should only be allowable there was a want of other qualified candidates (Appian, B. C. 21), was not difficult of evasion. The law itself seems not to have belonged to the
older regulations (Staatsrethi, i*. 473), but to have been introduced Cor the first time by the Gracchans.
300)
i.
1
(p. ;
if
it,
;
by
;
chap, ill GAIUS GRACCHUS
341
burgess-rights by the burgesses of the allied communities, and to concede even to those who had not acquired them
an appeal to the Roman comitia against penal judgments. ' But he stood almost alone—Carbo had meanwhile changed \ his colours and was now a zealous aristocrat, Gaius Gracchus \ was absent as quaestor in Sardinia —and the project was / frustrated by the resistance not of the senate merely, but / also of the burgesses, who were but little inclined to extend-' their privileges to still wider circles. Flaccus left Rome to undertake the supreme command against the Celts ; by his Transalpine conquests he prepared the way for the great schemes of the democracy, while he at the same time with drew out of the difficulty of having to bear arms against the allies instigated by himself.
Fregellae, situated on the borders of Latium and Destruction Campania at the principal passage of the Liris in the midst p-reeellae. of a large and fertile territory, at that time perhaps the
second city of Italy and in the discussions with Rome the
usual mouthpiece of all the Latin colonies, began war
against Rome in consequence of the rejection of the
proposal brought in by Flaccus —the first instance which
had occurred for a hundred and fifty years of a serious insurrection, not brought about by foreign powers, in Italy
against the Roman hegemony. But on this occasion the
/ire was successfully extinguished before it had caught hold
of other allied communities. Not through the superiority
of the Roman arms, but through the treachery of a
Fregellan Quintus Numitorius Pullus, the praetor Lucius
Opimius quickly became master of the revolted city, which
lost its civic privileges and its walls and was converted like
Capua into a village. The colony of Fabrateria was
founded on a part of its territory in 630 ; the remainder 124.
and the former city itself were distributed among the surrounding communities. This rapid and fearful punish
ment alarmed the allies, and endless impeachments for high
342
THE REVOLUTION AND book it
treason pursued not only the Fregellans, but also the leaders of the popular party in Rome, who naturally were regarded by the aristocracy as accomplices in this insurrection. Meanwhile Gaius Gracchus reappeared in Rome. The aristocracy had first sought to detain the object of their dread in Sardinia by omitting to provide the usual relief, and then, when without caring for that point he returned, had brought him to trial as one of the authors of the
125-124. Fregellan revolt (629-30). But the burgesses acquitted him ; and now he too threw down the gauntlet, became a candidate for the tribuneship of the people, and was
128. nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly attended by unusual numbers. War was thus declared. The democratic party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity remained virtually at rest for nine years ; now the truce was at an end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect called to take the lead.
158-121. Gracchus,
Gaius Gracchus (601-633) was very different from his brother, who was about nine years older. Like the latter, he had no relish for vulgar pleasures and vulgar pursuits ; he was a man of thorough culture and a brave soldier ; he had served with distinction before Numantia under his brother-in-law, and afterwards in Sardinia. But in talent, in character, and above all in passion he was decidedly superior to Tiberius. The clearness and self-possession, which the young man afterwards displayed amidst the
pressure of all the varied labours requisite for the practical carrying out of his numerous laws, betokened his genuine statesmanly talent; as the passionate devotedness faithful even to death, with which his intimate friends clung to him, evinced the loveable nature of that noble mind. 'The discipline of suffering which he had undergone, and his compulsory reserve during the last nine years, augmented
crap, ill GAIUS GRACCHUS
34]
his energy of purpose and action ; the indignation repressed within the depths of his breast only glowed there with an intensified fervour against the party which had disorganized his country and murdered his brother. By virtue of this fearful vehemence of temperament he became the foremost orator that Rome ever had ; without we should probably have been able to reckon him among the first statesmen of all times. Among the few remains of his recorded orations several are, even in their present condition, of heart-stirring
and we can well understand how those who heard or even merely read them were carried away the
power
torrent of his words. Yet, great master as he was of speech, he was himself not unfrequently mastered
so that the utterance of the brilliant speaker became confused or faltering. was the true image of his political acting and suffering. In the nature of Gaius there was no vein, such as his brother had, of that somewhat sentimental but very short-sighted and confused good-nature, which would have desired to change the mind of political opponent by entreaties and tears with full assurance he entered on the career of revolution and strove to reach the goal of vengeance. " To me too," his mother wrote to him, " nothing seems finer and more glorious than to retaliate on an enemy, so far as can be done without the country's ruin. But this not possible, then may our enemies continue and remain what they are, thousand times rather than that our country should perish. " Cornelia knew her son his creed was just the reverse. Vengeance he would wreak on the wretched government, vengeance at any price,
Such are the words spoken on the announcement of his projects of law — " If were to speak to you and ask of you —seeing that am of noble descent and have lost my brother on your account, and that there now no survivor of the descendants of Publius Africanus and Tiberius Gracchus excepting only myself and boy—to allow me to take rest for the present, in order that our stock may not be extirpated and that an offset of this family may still survive you would perhaps readily grant me such a request. "
impetuous
anger,
;
a
I is
by
:
1
by
; I
;
1
a
if
is it
;
It
a
it,
Alterations on the con stitution by Gaiui Gracchui.
though he himself and even the commonwealth were to be| ruined by it—the presentiment, that fate would overtake him as certainly as his brother, drove him only to make haste,1 like a man mortally wounded who throws himself on the foe. The mother thought more nobly ; but the son —with his deeply provoked, passionately excited, thoroughly Italian nature — has been more lamented than blamed by posterity, and posterity has been right in its judgment
Tiberius Gracchus had come before the burgesses with a single administrative reform. What Gaius introduced in a series of separate proposals was nothing else than an entirely new constitution; the foundation-stone of which was fur nished by the innovation previously carried through, that a tribune of the people should be at liberty to solicit re-election for the following year 340). While this step enabled the popular chief to acquire permanent position and one which protected its holder, the next object was to secure for him material power or, in other words, to attach the multitude of the capital — for that no reliance was to be placed on the country people coming only from time to time to the city, had been sufficiently apparent — with its interests steadfastly to its leader. This purpose was served, first of all, by intro ducing distributions of corn in the capital. The grain ac cruing to the state from the provincial tenths had already been frequently given away at nominal prices to the burgesses
Gracchus enacted that every burgess who should personally present himself in the capital should thenceforth be allowed monthly definite quantity —apparently modit (i\ bushel) —from the public stores, at asses (3d. ) for the modius, or not quite the half of low average price 78,
for which purpose the public corn-stores were enlarged by the construction of the new Sempronian granaries. This distribution — which consequently excluded the burgesses living out of the capital, and could not but attract to Rome the whole mass of the burgess-proletariate —was designed to
Distribu tion of grain.
344
THE REVOLUTION AND BOOK IT
note)
76).
;
a
\6
5 (p.
a
(p.
a (p.
chap, in GAIUS GRACCHUS
345
bring the burgess-proletariate of the capital, which hitherto
had mainly depended on the aristocracy, into dependence
on the leaders of the movement-party, and thus to supply
the new master of the state at once with a body-guard and
with a firm majority in the comitia. For greater security as Change In regards the latter, moreover, the order of voting still subsist- of TOtiDg, ing in the comitia anturiata, according to which the five property-classes in each tribe gave their votes one after
another 51), was done away; instead of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously in an order of succession to be fixed on each occasion by lot. While these enactments were mainly designed to procure for the new chief of the state by means of the city-proletariate the complete command of the capital and thereby of the state, the amplest control over the comitial machinery, and the possibility in case of need of striking terror into the senate and magistrates, the legislator certainly at the same time set himself with earnestness and energy to redress the existing social evils.
true that the Italian domain question was in Agrarian
**"
and even the allotment-commission still continued
in force the agrarian law carried by Gracchus can have enacted nothing new save the restoration to the commis sioners of the jurisdiction which they had lost. That the object of this step was only to save the principle, and that
the distribution of lands, resumed at all, was resumed only
to very limited extent, shown the burgess-roll, which gives exactly the same number of persons for the years 629 125. and 639. Gaius beyond doubt did not proceed further in 115. this matter, because the domain-land taken into possession
by Roman burgesses was already in substance distributed,
and the question as to the domains enjoyed the Latins could only be taken up anew in connection with the very difficult question as to the extension of Roman citizenship.
On the other hand he took an important step beyond the
certain sense settled. The agrarian law of Tiberius
legally
by
a
It is
is if by
;
a
(p.
Colony of Capua.
346 THE REVOLUTION AND BOOK IV
agrarian law of Tiberius, when he proposed the establishment of colonies in Italy—at Tarentum, and more especially at Capua —and by that course rendered the domain-land, which had been let on lease by the state and was hitherto excluded from distribution, liable to be also parcelled out, not, how ever, according to the previous method, which excluded the founding of new communities (p. 335), but according to the colonial system. Beyond doubt these colonies were also designed to aid in permanently defending the revolution to which they owed their existence. Still more significant and momentous was the measure, by which Gaius Gracchus first proceeded to provide for the Italian proletariate in the transmarine territories of the state. He despatched to the site on which Carthage had stood 6000 colonists selected perhaps not merely from'Roman burgesses but also from the Italian allies, and conferred on the new town Junonia the rights of a Roman burgess-colony. The foundation was important, but still more important was the principle of transmarine emigration thereby laid down. It opened up for the Italian proletariate a permanent outlet, and a relief in fact more than provisional ; but it certainly abandoned the principle of state-law hitherto in force, by which Italy was regarded as exclusively the governing, and the provincial territory as exclusively the governed, land.
To these measures having immediate reference to the great question of the proletariate there was added a series of enactments, which arose out of the general tendency to introduce principles milder and more accordant with the spirit of the age than the antiquated severity of the existing constitution. To this head belong the modifications in the military system. As to the length of the period of service there existed under the ancient law no other limit, except that no citizen was liable to ordinary service in the field before completing his seventeenth or after completing his forty-sixth year. When, in consequence of the occupation
Trans marine colonisa tion.
Modifica tions of the penal law.
chap, ill GAIUB GRACCHUS
of Spain, the service began to become permanent
seems to have been first legally enacted that any one
who had been in the field for six successive years acquired thereby right to discharge, although this discharge did not protect him from being called out again afterwards. At later period, perhaps about the beginning of this century, the rule arose, that service of twenty years in the infantry or ten years in the cavalry gave exemption from further military service. 1 Gracchus renewed the rule—which pre sumably was often violently infringed—that no burgess should be enlisted in the army before the commencement of his eighteenth year and also, apparently, restricted the number of campaigns requisite for full exemption from military duty. Besides, the clothing of the soldiers, the value of which had hitherto been deducted from their pay, was henceforward furnished gratuitously the state.
To this head belongs, moreover, the tendency which on various occasions apparent the Gracchan legislation, not to abolish capital punishment, at any rate to restrict still further than had been done before— tendency, which to some extent made itself felt even in military jurisdiction. From the very introduction of the republic the magistrate had lost the right of inflicting capital punishment on the burgess without consulting the community, except under martial law 320 68) this right of appeal the burgess appears soon after the period of the Gracchi avail able even in the camp, and the right of the general to inflict capital punishments appears restricted to allies and
Thus the statement of Appian (Hisp. 78) that six years' service entitled man to demand his discharge, may perhaps be reconciled with the better known statement of Polybius (vi. 19), respecting which Marquardt (Hand- buch, vi. 381) has farmed a correct judgment. The time, at which the two alterations were introduced, cannot be determined further, than that the first
was probably in existence as early as 603 (Nitzsch, Gracchen, p. 231), and 151, the second certainly as early as the time of Polybius. That Gracchus re
duced the number of the legal years of service, seems to follow from Asoonius in Cornel, p. 68 comp. Plutarch, Ti. Gracch. 16 Dio, Ft. 83,
7, Bckk.
347
389),
;
a
1
it a
(i. ;;a
ii.
;
; if
in
by
is
a
by
it if
a
(ii.
142.
subjects, the source of the change is probably to be sought in the law of Gaius Gracchus de provocation. But the right of the community to inflict or rather to confirm sentence of death was indirectly yet essentially limited by the fact, that Gracchus withdrew the cognizance of those public crimes which most frequently gave occasion to capital sentences— poisoning and murder generally — from the burgesses, and en trusted it to permanent judicial commissions. These could not, like the tribunals of the people, be broken up by the intercession of a tribune, and there not only lay no appeal from them to the community, but their sentences were as little subject to be annulled by the community as those of the long-established civil jurymen. In the burgess-tribunals it had, especially in strictly political processes, no doubt long been the rule that the accused remained at liberty during his trial, and was allowed by surrendering his burgess- rights to save at least life and freedom ; for the fine laid on property, as well as the civil condemnation, might still affect even the exiled. But preliminary arrest and complete execution of the sentence remained in such cases at least legally possible, and were still sometimes carried into effect even against persons of rank ; for instance, Lucius Hostilius Tubulus, praetor of 6 1 2, who was capitally impeached for a heinous crime, was refused the privilege of exile, arrested, and executed. On the other hand the judicial commissions, which originated out of the civil procedure, probably could not at the outset touch the liberty or life of the citizen, but at the most could only pronounce sentence of exile ; this, which had hitherto been a mitigation of punishment accorded to one who was found guilty, now became for the first time a formal penalty This involuntary exile however, like the voluntary, left to the person banished his property, so far as it was not exhausted in satisfying claims for compensation and money-fines.
Lastly, in the matter of debt Gaius Gracchus made no
348
THE REVOLUTION AND rook iv
chap, in GAIUS GRACCHUS
349
alteration ; but very respectable authorities assert that he held out to those in debt the hope of a diminution or remis sion of claims — which, if it is correct, must likewise be reckoned among those radically popular measures.
While Gracchus thus leaned on the support of the multi- Elevation
tude, which partly expected, partly received from him a of the
order, material improvement of its position, he laboured with equestrian
equal energy at the ruin of the aristocracy. Perceiving clearly how insecure was the rule of the head of the state built merely on the proletariate, he applied himself above all to split the aristocracy and to draw a part of it over to his interests. The elements of such a rupture were already in existence. The aristocracy of the rich, which had risen as one man against Tiberius Gracchus, consisted in fact of two essentially dissimilar bodies, which may be in some measure compared to the peerage and the city aristocracy of England. The one embraced the practically closed circle of the governing senatorial families who kept aloof from direct speculation and invested their immense capital partly in landed property, partly as sleeping partners in the great associations. The core of the second class was composed of the speculators, who, as managers of these companies, or on their own account, conducted the large mercantile and pecuniary transactions throughout the range of the Roman hegemony. We have already shown (p. 93 ff. ) how the latter class, especially in the course of the sixth century, gradually took its place by the side of the senatorial aristo cracy, and how the legal exclusion of the senators from mercantile pursuits by the Claudian enactment, suggested by Gaius Flaminius the precursor of the Gracchi, drew an outward line of demarcation between the senators and the mercantile and moneyed men. In the present epoch the mercantile aristocracy began, under the name of the equites, to exercise a decisive influence in political affairs. This appellation, which originally belonged only to the burgess-
35°
THE REVOLUTION AND book iv
cavalry on service, came gradually to be transferred, at any rate in ordinary use, to all those who, as possessors of an estate of at least 400,000 sesterces, were liable to cavalry service in general, and thus comprehended the whole of the upper society, senatorial and non-senatorial, in Rome. But not long before the time of Gaius Gracchus the law had declared a seat in the senate incompatible with service in the cavalry 300), and the senators were thus eliminated from those qualified to be equites; and accordingly the equestrian order, taken as whole, might be regarded as representing the aristocracy of speculators in contradistinc tion to the senate. Nevertheless those members of sena torial families who had not entered the senate, especially the younger members, did not cease to serve as equites and con sequently to bear the name; and, in fact, the burgess-cavalry properly so called — that the eighteen equestrian centuries —in consequence of being made up by the censors con tinued to be chiefly filled up from the young senatorial aristocracy —
This order of the equites that to say, substantially, of the wealthy merchants—in various ways came roughly into contact with the governing senate. There was natural antipathy between the genteel aristocrats and the men to whom money had brought rank. The ruling lords, especially the better class of them, stood just as much aloof from speculations, as the men of material interests were indifferent to political questions and coterie- feuds. The two classes had already frequently come into sharp collision, particularly in the provinces; for, though in general the provincials had far more reason than the Roman capitalists had to complain of the partiality of the Roman magistrates, yet the ruling lords of the senate did not lend countenance to the greedy and unjust doings of the moneyed men, at the expense of the subjects, so thoroughly and absolutely as those capitalists desired. In spite of their
a
is
(p. 1
(p.
1).
is,
a
chap, in GA1US GRACCHUS
35«
concord in opposing a common foe such as was Tiberius Gracchus, a deep gulf lay between the nobility and the moneyed aristocracy ; and Gaius, more adroit than his brother, enlarged it till the alliance was broken up and the mercantile class ranged itself on his side.
That the external privileges, through which afterwards Insignia of
the men of equestrian census were distinguished from the rest of the multitude —the golden finger-ring instead of the ordinary ring of iron or copper, and the separate and better place at the burgess-festivals — were first conferred on the equites by Gaius Gracchus, is not certain, but is not im probable. For they emerged at any rate about this period, and, as the extension of these hitherto mainly senatorial privileges (pp. 5, 16) to the equestrian order which he brought into prominence was quite in the style of Gracchus, so it was in very truth his aim to impress on the equites the stamp of an order, similarly close and privileged, inter mediate between the senatorial aristocracy and the common multitude ; and this same aim was more promoted by those class-insignia, trifling though they were in themselves and though many qualified to be equites might not avail them selves of them, than by many an ordinance far more intrinsically important. But the party of material interests, though it by no means despised such honours, was yet not to be gained through these alone. Gracchus perceived well that it would doubtless duly fall to the highest bidder, but that it needed a high and substantial bidding ; and so he offered to it the revenues of Asia and the jury courts.
•* tes"
The system of Roman financial administration, under Taxation which the indirect taxes as well as the domain-revenues 0*A,ia• were levied by means of middlemen, in itself granted to
the Roman capitalist-class the most extensive advantages at
the expense of those liable to taxation. But the direct taxes consisted either, as in most provinces, of fixed sums of money payable by the communities —which of itself
Juit courts.
excluded the intervention of Roman capitalists —or, as in Sicily and Sardinia, of a ground-tenth, the levying of which for each particular community was leased in the provinces themselves, so that wealthy provincials regularly, and the tributary communities themselves very frequently, farmed the tenth of their districts and thereby kept at a distance the dangerous Roman middlemen. Six years before, when the province of Asia had fallen to the Romans, the senate had organized it substantially according to the first system (p. 280). Gaius Gracchus1 overturned this arrangement by a decree of the people, and not only burdened the pro vince, which had hitherto been almost free from taxation, with the most extensive indirect and direct taxes, particularly the ground-tenth, but also enacted that these taxes should be exposed to auction for the province as a whole and in Rome — a rule which practically excluded the provincials from participation, and called into existence in the body of middlemen for the decumae, scriptura, and vectigalia of the province of Asia an association of capitalists of colossal magnitude. A significant indication, moreover, of the endeavour of Gracchus to make the order of capitalists independent of the senate was the enactment, that the entire or partial remission of the stipulated rent was no longer, as hitherto, to be granted by the senate at discretion, but was under definite contingencies to be accorded by law.
While a gold mine was thus opened for the mercantile class, and the members of the new partnership constituted a great financial power imposing even for the govern ment — a "senate of merchants" — a definite sphere of public action was at the same time assigned to them in the jury courts. The field of the criminal procedure, which by
1 That he, and not Tiberius, was the author of this law, now appears bom Fronto in the letters to Verus, init. Comp. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi. 10 ; Cic. de. Sep. iii. 39, and Verr. iii. 6, 12 ; Vellei.
35*
THE REVOLUTION AND book it
it. 6.
chap. Hi GAIUS GRACCHUS
353
right came before the burgesses, was among the Romans from the first very narrow, and was, as we have already stated 348), still further narrowed Gracchus; most processes —both such as related to public crimes, and civil causes —were decided either single jurymen [iudices], or by commissions partly permanent, partly extraordinary. Hitherto both the former and the latter had been ex clusively taken from the senate Gracchus transferred the functions of jurymen —both in strictly civil processes, and in the case of the standing and temporary commissions— to the equestrian order, directing new list of jurymen to be annually formed after the analogy of the equestrian centuries from all persons of equestrian rating, and ex cluding the senators directly, and the young men of senatorial families by the fixing of certain limit of age, from such judicial functions. 1 not improbable that the selection of jurymen was chiefly made to fall on the same men who played the leading part in the great mercantile associations, particularly those farming the revenues in Asia and elsewhere, just because these had very close personal interest in sitting in the courts and, the lists of jurymen and the societies of publicum thus coincided as regards their chiefs, we can all the better understand the significance of the counter-senate thus
constituted. The substantial effect of this was, that, while hitherto there had been only two authorities in the state— the government as the administering and controlling, and the burgesses as the legislative, authority — and the courts had been divided between them, now the moneyed aris tocracy was not only united into compact and privileged class on the solid basis of material interests, but also, as
judicial and controlling power, formed part of the state and
We still possess a great portion of the new judicial ordinance —primarily occasioned by this alteration in the personnel of the judges — for the standing commission regarding extortion known under the name of the Servilian, or rather Acilian, law de repetundis.
"oi- in 88
1
;ita Ita is is a
;
by
a if a
;
(p.
by
men^0Tenx" of'tho
354
THE REVOLUTION AND book iv
took its place almost on a footing of equality by the side of the ruling aristocracy. All the old antipathies of the merchants against the nobility could not but thenceforth find only too practical an expression in the sentences of the jurymen ; above all, when the provincial governors were called to a reckoning, the senator had to await a decision involving his civic existence at the hands no longer as formerly of his peers, but of great merchants and bankers. The feuds between the Roman capitalists and
the Roman governors were transplanted from the provincial administration to the dangerous field of these processes of reckoning. Not only was the aristocracy of the rich divided, but care was taken that the variance should always find fresh nourishment and easy expression.
With his weapons—the proletariate and the mercantile class — thus prepared, Gracchus set about his main work, substituted the overthrow of the ruling aristocracy. The overthrow of
tne senate meant, on the one hand, the depriving it of its essential functions by legislative alterations; and on the other hand, the ruining of the existing aristocracy by measures of a more personal and transient kind. Gracchus did both. The function of administration, in particular, had hitherto belonged exclusively to the senate ; Gracchus took
Monarch! -
it away, partly by settling the most important administra tive questions by means of comitial laws or, in other words, practically through tribunician dictation, partly by restricting the senate as much as possible in current affairs,
partly by taking business after the most comprehensive fashion into his own hands. The measures of the former kind have been mentioned already : the new master of the state without consulting the senate dealt with the state-chest, by
imposing a permanent and oppressive burden on the public finances in the distribution of corn ; dealt with the domains, by sending out colonies not as hitherto by decree of the senate and people, but by decree of the people alone; and
chap, ill GAIUS GRACCHUS
35$
dealt with the provincial administration, by overturning through a law of the people the financial constitution given by the senate to the province of Asia and substituting for it one altogether different. One of the most important of the current duties of the senate —that of fixing at its pleasure the functions for the time being of the two consuls—was not withdrawn from it; but the indirect pressure hitherto exercised in this way over the supreme magistrates was limited by directing the senate to fix these functions before the consuls concerned were elected. With unrivalled activity, lastly, Gaius concentrated the most varied and most complicated functions of government in his own person. He himself watched over the distribution of grain, selected the jurymen, founded the colonies in person not withstanding that his magistracy legally chained him to the city, regulated the highways and concluded building-con tracts, led the discussions of the senate, settled the consular elections—in short, he accustomed the people to the fact that one man was foremost in all things, and threw the lax and lame administration of the senatorial college into the shade by the vigour and versatility of his personal rule.
Gracchus interfered with the judicial omnipotence, still more energetically than with the administration, of the senate. We have already mentioned that he set aside the senators as jurymen ; the same course was taken with the jurisdiction which the senate as the supreme administrative board allowed to itself in exceptional cases. Under severe penalties he prohibited —apparently in his renewal of the law de provocation1 —the appointment of extraordinary commissions of high treason by decree of the senate, such as that which after his brother's murder had sat in judgment on his adherents. The aggregate effect of these measures was, that the senate wholly lost the power of control, and
1 This and the law iu quis indicia circumvcniatur may have been identical
356
THE REVOLUTION AND book iv
retained only so much of administration as the head of
the state thought fit to leave to it. But these constitutive
measures were not enough ; the governing aristocracy for the time being was also directly assailed. It was a mere
act of revenge, which assigned retrospective effect to the last-mentioned law and thereby compelled Publius Popillius —the aristocrat who after the death of Nasica, which had occurred in the interval, was chiefly obnoxious to the democrats—to go into exile. It is remarkable that this proposal was only carried by 1 8 to 17 votes in the assembly of the tribes — a sign how much the influence of the aristocracy still availed with the multitude, at least in questions of a personal interest. A similar but far less justifiable decree —the proposal, directed against Marcus Octavius, that whoever had been deprived of his office by decree of the people should be for ever incapable of filling a public post — was recalled by Gaius at the request of his mother; and he was thus spared the disgrace of openly mocking justice by legalizing a notorious violation of the constitution, and of taking base vengeance on a man of honour, who had not spoken an angry word against Tiberius and had only acted constitutionally and in accordance with what he conceived to be his duty. But of very different importance from these measures was the scheme of Gaius —which, it is true, was hardly carried into effect —to strengthen the senate by 300 new members, that
by just about as many as hitherto had contained, and to have them elected from the equestrian order by the comitia — creation of peers after the most comprehensive style, which would have reduced the senate into the most complete dependence on the chief of the state.
This was the political constitution which Gaius Gracchus projected and, in its most essential points, carried out
123. 122. during the two years of his tribunate (631, 632), without, so far as we can see, encountering any resistance worthy
a
is,
it
chap, in GAIUS GRACCHUS
357
of mention, and without requiring to apply force for the Character attainment of his ends. The order of sequence in which stj^fo^of
these measures were carried can no longer be recognized Gains in the confused accounts handed down to us, and various
that suggest themselves have to remain un answered. But it does not seem as in what missing, many elements of material importance have escaped us for as to the principal matters we have quite trustworthy infor mation, and Gaius was by no means, like his brother, urged on further and further by the current of events, but evidently had well-considered and comprehensive plan, the sub stance of which he fully embodied in series of special laws.
Now the Sempronian constitution itself shows very clearly to every one who able and willing to see, that Gaius Gracchus did not at all, as many good-natured people in ancient and modern times have supposed, wish to place the Roman republic on new democratic bases, but that on the contrary he wished to abolish and to introduce in its stead tyrannis —that in modern language, monarchy not of the feudal or of the theocratic, but of the Napoleonic absolute, type—in the form of magistracy continued for life by regular re-election and rendered absolute an unconditional control over the formally sovereign comitia, an unlimited tribuneship of the people for life. In fact Gracchus, as his words and still more his works plainly testify, aimed at the overthrow of the government of the senate, what other political organization but the tyrannis remained possible, after overthrowing the aristocratic government, in commonwealth which had outgrown primary assemblies and for which parliamentary
questions
did not exist? Dreamers such as was his predecessor, and knaves such as after-times produced,
government
call this in question; but Gaius Gracchus was statesman, and though the formal shape, which that great man had inwardly projected for his great work, has not
might
m.
a
aa
if
by
a
it a
is,
is
a
if,
a
is ;
358
THE REVOLUTION AND book it
been handed down to us and may be conceived of very variously, yet he was beyond doubt aware of what he was doing. Little as the intention of usurping monarchical power can be mistaken, as little will those who survey the whole circumstances on this account blame Gracchus. An absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a nation, but it is a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy ; and history cannot censure one who imposes on a nation the lesser suffering instead of the greater, least of all in the case of a nature so vehemently earnest and so far aloof from all that is vulgar as was that of Gaius Gracchus.
Nevertheless it may not conceal the fact that his whole legislation was pervaded in a most pernicious way by conflicting aims; for on the one hand it aimed at the public good, while on the other hand it ministered to the personal objects and in fact the personal vengeance of the ruler. Gracchus earnestly laboured to find a remedy for social evils, and to check the spread of pauperism ; yet he at the same time intentionally reared up a street proletariate of the worst kind in the capital by his distributions of corn, which were designed to be, and became, a premium to all the lazy and hungry civic rabble. Gracchus censured in
the bitterest terms the venality of the senate, and '*n particular laid bare with unsparing and just severity the scandalous traffic which Manius Aquillius had driven with the provinces of Asia Minor;1 yet it was through the
1 A considerable fragment of a speech of Gracchus, st'U extant, relates to this trafficking about the possession of Phrygia, which lfter the annexa tion of the kingdom of Attalus was offered for sale by Manius Aquillius to the kings of Bithynia and of Pontus, and was bought by the latter as the highest bidder (p. 280). In this speech he observes that no senator troubled himself about public affairs for nothing, and adds that with reference to the law under discussion (as to tne bestowal of Phrygia on
king Mithradates) the senate was divisible into three classes, viz. those who were in favour of it, those who were against and those who were silent that the first were bribed by kiag Mithradates, the second by king Nicomedes, while the third were the most cunning, for they accepted money from the envoys of both kings and made each party believe that they were silent in its interest.
:
it,
CHaP. Ill GAIUS GRACCHUS
35»
efforts of the same man that the sovereign populace of the capital got itself alimented, in return for its cares of govern ment, by the body of its subjects. Gracchus warmly disapproved the disgraceful spoliation of the provinces, and not only instituted proceedings of wholesome severity in particular cases, but also procured the abolition of the thoroughly insufficient senatorial courts, before which even Scipio Aemilianus had vainly staked his whole influence to bring the most decided criminals to punishment. Yet he at the same time, by the introduction of courts composed of merchants, surrendered the provincials with their hands fettered to the party of material interests, and thereby to a despotism still more unscrupulous than that of the aristocracy had been ; and he introduced into Asia a taxation, compared with which even the form of taxation current after the Carthaginian model in Sicily might be called mild and humane — just because on the one hand he needed the party of moneyed men, and on the other hand required new and comprehensive resources to meet his distributions of grain and the other burdens imposed on the finances. Gracchus beyond doubt desired a firm administration and a well-regulated dispensing of justice, as numerous thoroughly judicious ordinances testify; yet his new system of administration rested on a continuous series of individual usurpations only formally legalized, and he intentionally drew the judicial system — which every well-ordered state will endeavour as far as possible to place, if not above political parties, at any rate aloof from them — into the midst of the whirlpool of revolution. Certainly the blame of these conflicting tendencies in Gaius Gracchus is chargeable to a very great extent on his position rather than on himself personally. On the very threshold of the tyrannis he was confronted by the fatal dilemma, moral and political, that the same man had at one and the same time to maintain his ground,
newly
360
THE REVOLUTION AND book it
we may say, as a robber-chieftain and to lead the state as its first citizen — a dilemma to which Pericles, Caesar, and Napoleon had also to make dangerous sacrifices. But the conduct of Gaius Gracchus cannot be wholly explained from this necessity ; along with it there worked in him the consuming passion, the glowing revenge, which foreseeing its own destruction hurls the firebrand into the house of the foe. He has himself expressed what he thought of his ordinance as to the jurymen and similar measures intended to divide the aristocracy ; he called them daggers which he had thrown into the Forum that the burgesses—the men of rank, obviously —might lacerate each other with them. He was a political incendiary. Not only was the hundred years' revolution which dates from him, so far as it was one man's work, the work of Gaius Gracchus, but he was above all the true founder of that terrible urban proletariate flattered and paid by the classes above which through its aggregation in the capital—the natural consequence of the largesses of corn — became at once utterly demoralized and aware of its power, and which —with its demands, sometimes stupid, sometimes knavish, and its talk of the sovereignty of the people — lay like an incubus for five hundred y«ars upon the Roman commonwealth and only perished along with And yet—this greatest of political transgressors was in turn the regenerator of his country. There scarce structural idea in Roman monarchy, which not traceable to Gaius Gracchus. From him
the maxim — founded doubtless in certain sense in the nature of the old traditional laws of war, but yet, the extension and practical application now given to
foreign to the older state-law —that all the land of the subject communities was to be regarded as the private property of the state; maxim, which was primarily employed to vindicate the right of the state to tax that land at pleasure, as was the case in Asia, or to apply for
proceeded
it
a
it,
in
is is
a
a
it
it,
CHAP, ill GAIUS GRACCHUS
361
the institution of colonies, as was done in Africa, and which became afterwards a fundamental principle of law under the empire. From him proceeded the tactics, whereby demagogues and tyrants, leaning for support on material interests, break down the governing iristocracy, but subsequently legitimize the change of constitution by sub stituting a strict and efficient administration for the previous misgovern ment. To him, in particular, are traceable the first steps towards such a reconciliation between Rome and the provinces as the establishment of monarchy could not but bring in its train; the attempt to rebuild Carthage destroyed by Italian rivalry and generally to open the way for Italian emigration towards the provinces, formed the first link in the long chain of that momentous and beneficial course of action. Right and wrong, fortune and misfortune were so inextricably blended in this singular man and in this marvellous political constellation, that it may well beseem history in this case—though it beseems her but seldom —to reserve her judgment.
When Gracchus had substantially completed the new The constitution projected by him for the state, he applied ^the"11
himself to a second and more difficult work
as to the Italian allies was still undecided.
views of the democratic leaders regarding
rendered sufficiently apparent 340). They naturally desired the utmost possible extension of the Roman franchise, not merely that they might bring in the domains occupied the Latins for distribution, but above all that they might strengthen their body of adherents the enormous mass of the new burgesses, might bring the comitial machine still more fully under their power widening the body of privileged electors, and generally might abolish distinction which ha now with the fall of the republican constitution lost all serious importance. But here they encountered resistance from their own party,
The question allies. What were the
had been
,
a
J
by by
by
(p.
it,
36a
THE REVOLUTION AND BOOK IT
and especially from that band which otherwise readily give its sovereign assent to all which it did or did not under stand. For the simple reason that Roman citizenship seemed to these people, so to speak, like a partnership which gave them a claim to share in sundry very tangible profits, direct and indirect, they were not at all disposed to enlarge the number of the partners. The rejection of
126. the Fulvian law in 629, and the insurrection of the Fregel- lans arising out of were significant indications both of the obstinate perseverance of the fraction of the burgesses that ruled the comitia, and of the impatient urgency of
122. the allies. Towards the end of his second tribunate (632) Gracchus, probably urged by obligations which he had undertaken towards the allies, ventured on second attempt. In concert with Marcus Flaccus—who, although
consular, had again taken the tribuneship of the people, in order now to carry the law which he had formerly pro posed without success —he made proposal to grant to the Latins the full franchise, and to the other Italian allies the former rights of the Latins. But the proposal encountered the united opposition of the senate and the mob of the capital. The nature of this coalition and its mode of conflict are clearly and distinctly seen from an accidentally preserved fragment of the speech which the consul Gaius Fannius made to the burgesses in opposition to the proposal. "Do you then think," said the Optimate, "that, you confer the franchise on the Latins, you will be able to find
place in future — just as you are now standing there in front of me—in the burgess-assembly, or at the games and popular amusements Do you not believe, on the contrary, that those people will occupy every spot? " Among the burgesses of the fifth century, who on one day conferred the franchise on all the Sabines, such an orator might perhaps have been hissed those of the seventh found his reasoning uncommonly clear and the price of the assignation
;
?
it,
aa
if
a
a
chap, in GAIUS GRACCHUS
363
of the Latin domains, which was offered to it by Gracchus, far too low. The very circumstance, that the senate carried a permission to eject from the city all non-burgesses before the day for the decisive vote, showed the fate in store foi the proposal. And when before the voting Livius Drusus, a colleague of Gracchus, interposed his veto against the law, the people received the veto in such a way that Gracchus could not venture to proceed further or even to prepare for Drusus the fate of Marcus Octavius.
It was, apparently, this success which emboldened the Overthrow senate to attempt the overthrow of the victorious dema- ^^
gogue. The weapons of attack were substantially the same with which Gracchus himself had formerly operated. The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile class and the proletariate ; primarily on the latter, which in this conflict, wherein neither side had any military reserve, acted as it were the part of an army. It was clear that the senate was not powerful enough to wrest either from the merchants or from the proletariate their new privileges ; any attempt to assail the corn-laws or the new jury-arrangement would have led, under a somewhat grosser or somewhat more civilized form, to a street-riot in presence of which the senate was utterly defenceless. But it was no less clear, that Gracchus himself and these merchants and proletarians were only kept together by mutual advantage, and that the men of material interests were ready to accept their posts, and the populace strictly so called its bread, quite as well from any other as from Gaius Gracchus. The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least, immoveably firm witli the exception of a single one—his own supremacy. The weakness of the latter lay in the fact, that in the constitu tion of Gracchus there was no relation of allegiance subsist ing at all between the chief and the army ; and, while the new constitution possessed all other elements of vitality, it lacked one — the moral tie between ruler and ruled, without
Rtral dema- gogism of the senate. The Livian
which every state rests on a pedestal of clay. In the rejection of the proposal to admit the Latins to the franchise it had been demonstrated with decisive clearness that the multitude in fact never voted for Gracchus, but always simply for itself. The aristocracy conceived the plan of offering battle to the author of the corn-largesses and land- assignations on his own ground.
As a matter of course, the senate offered to the prole tariate not merely the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate, the tribune of the people Marcus Livius Drusus proposed to relieve those who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent imposed on them 320), and to declare their allot ments to be free and alienable property and, further, to provide for the proletariate not in transmarine, but twelve Italian, colonies, each of 3000 colonists, for the planting of which the people might nominate suitable men only, Drusus himself declined —in contrast with the family- complexion of the Gracchan commission —to take part in this honourable duty. Presumably the Latins were named
as those who would have to bear the costs of the plan, for there does not appear to have now existed in Italy other
domain-land of any extent save that which was enjoyed by them. We find isolated enactments of Drusus —such as the regulation that the punishment of scourging might only be inflicted on the Latin soldier by the Latin officer set over him, and not the Roman officer—which were to all appearance intended to indemnify the Latins for other losses. The plan was not the most refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear the endeavour to draw the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariate still closer by their exercising jointly tyranny over the Latins
was too transparent the inquiry suggested itself too readily, In what part of the peninsula, now that the Italian domains
3«4
THE REVOLUTION AND BOOK IV
occupied
;
; by a
;
in
;
(p.
chap, in GAIUS GRACCHUS
365
had been mainly given away already — even granting that
the whole domains assigned to the Latins were confiscated —was the occupied domain-land requisite for the formation
of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess-communities
to be discovered ? Lastly the declaration of Drusus, that
he would have nothing to do with the execution of his law,
was so dreadfully prudent as to border on sheer folly. But
the clumsy snare was quite suited for the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the additional
and perhaps decisive consideration, that Gracchus, on whose personal influence everything depended, was just
then establishing the Carthaginian colony in Africa, and
that his lieutenant in the capital, Marcus Flaccus, played
into the hands of his opponents by his vehement and maladroit actings. The "people" accordingly ratified the Livian laws as readily as it had before ratified the Sempronian. It then, as usual, repaid its latest, by inflict
ing a gentle blow on its earlier, benefactor, declining to re-elect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate
for the tribunate for the year 633; on which occasion, 111. however, there are alleged to have been unjust proceedings
on the part of the tribune presiding at the election, who
had been formerly offended by Gracchus. Thus the foundation of his despotism gave way beneath him. A second blow was inflicted on him by the consular elections, which not only proved in a general sense adverse to the democracy, but which placed at the head of the state Lucius Opimius, who as praetor in 629 had conquered 188b Fregellae, one of the most decided and least scrupulous chiefs of the strict aristocratic party, and a man
firmly resolved to get rid of their dangerous antagonist at the
earliest opportunity.
Such an opportunity soon occurred. On the 10th of De
cember, 632, Gracchus ceased to be tribune of the people ; 122. on the 1st of January, 633, Opimius entered on his office. 121.
the trans marine coloniza tion. Downfall of Gracchus.
useful and the most unpopular measure of Gracchus, the re- establishment of Carthage. While the transmarine colonies had hitherto been only indirectly assailed through the greater allurements of the Italian, African hyaenas, it was now alleged, dug up the newly-placed boundary-stones of Carthage, and the Roman priests, when requested, certified that such signs and portents ought to form an express warn ing against rebuilding on a site accursed by the gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience compelled to have a law proposed, which prohibited the planting of the colony of Junonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to establish it was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day of voting at the Capitol whither the burgesses were convoked, with a view to procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law. He wished to shun acts of violence, that he might not himself supply his opponents with the pretext which they sought; but he had not been able to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans, who remembered the catastrophe of Tiberius and were well acquainted with the designs of the aristocracy, from appearing in arms, and amidst the immense excite ment on both sides quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the Capitoline temple; one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony, Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hand, haughtily ordered the " bad citizens " to quit the porch, and seemed as though he would lay hands on Gaius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly sought to address the people and to dis claim the responsibility for the sacrilegious murder; he
only furnished his antagonists with a further formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in the confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking
366
THE REVOLUTION AND BOOK IV
Attack on The first attack, as was fair, was directed against the most
chap, Ill GAIUS GRACCHUS
367
to the people—an offence, for which an obsolete statute, originating at the time of the old dissensions between the orders 353), had prescribed the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to put down force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the republican constitution, as they were fond of designating the events of this day. He himself passed the night in the temple of Castor in the Forum at early dawn the Capitol was filled with Cretan archers, the senate-house and Forum with the men of the government party — the senators and the section of the equites adhering to them—who by order of the consul had all appeared in arms and each attended
two armed slaves. None of the aristocracy were absent even the aged and venerable Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with shield and sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in the Spanish wars, Decimus Brutus, was entrusted with the command of the armed force; the senate assembled in the senate-house. The bier with the corpse of Antullius was deposited in front of the senate, as surprised, appeared en masse at the door in order to view the dead body, and then retired to determine what should be done. The leaders of the demo
cracy had gone from the Capitol to their houses; Marcus Flaccus had spent the night in preparing for the war in the streets, while Gracchus apparently disdained to strive with
Next morning, when they learned the preparations made by their opponents at the Capitol and the Forum, both proceeded to the Aventine, the old stronghold of the popular party in the struggles between the patricians and the plebeians. Gracchus went thither silent and unarmed Flaccus called the slaves to arms and entrenched himself in the temple of Diana, while he at the same time sent his younger son Quintus to the enemy's camp in order pos sible to arrange a compromise. The latter returned with the announcement that the aristocracy demanded unconditional
destiny.
if
it ;
by
if
; ; by
;
(i.
368
THE REVOLUTION AND book it
surrender ; at the same time he brought a summons from the senate to Gracchus and Flaccus to appear before it and to answer for their violation of the majesty of the tribunes. Gracchus wished to comply with the summons, but Flaccus prevented him [from doing so, and repeated the equally weak and mistaken attempt to move such antagonists to a compromise. When instead of the two cited leaders the young Quintus Flaccus once more presented himself alone, the consul treated their refusal to appear as the beginning of open insurrection against the government ; he ordered the messenger to be arrested and gave the signal for attack on the Aventine, while at the same time he caused proclama tion to be made in the streets that the government would give to whosoever should bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold, and that they would gua rantee complete indemnity to every one who should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict. The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned ; the valiant nobility in union with the Cretans and the slaves stormed the almost undefended mount, and killed all whom they found, about 350 persons, mostly of humble rank. Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of concealment, where they were soon afterwards hunted out and put to Gracchus had at the beginning of the conflict retired into the temple of Minerva, and was there about to pierce him self with his sword, when his friend Publius Laetorius seized his arm and besought him to preserve himself if possible for better times. Gracchus was induced to make an attempt
to escape to the other bank of the Tiber; but when hasten ing down the hill he fell and sprained his foot. To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned to face his pursuers and allowed themselves to be cut down, Marcus Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine, Publius Laetorius at the bridge over the Tiber where Hora- tius Codes was said to have once singly withstood the
death.
chap, in GAIUS GRACCHUS
369
Etruscan army ; so Gracchus, attended only by his slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber. There, in the grove of Furrina, were afterwards found the two dead bodies ; it seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master and then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over to the government as required ; the stipulated price and more was paid to Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of Gracchus, while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into the river ; the houses of
the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of Gracchus began on the grandest scale ; as many as 3000 of them are said to have been strangled in prison, amongst whom was Quintus Flaccus, eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict and was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol where the altar consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace 382) and other shrines erected on similar occasions to Concord were situated, these small chapels were pulled down and out of the property of the killed or condemned traitors, which was confiscated even to the portions of their wives, new and splendid temple of Concord with the basilica belonging to
was erected in accordance with decree of the senate by the consul Lucius Opimius. Certainly was an act in accordance with the spirit of the age to remove the memo rials of the old, and to inaugurate new, concord over the remains of the three grandsons of the conqueror of Zama, all of whom — first Tiberius Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the mightiest, Gaius Gracchus —had now been engulfed by the revolution. The memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed Cornelia was not allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her
VOL. Ill
89
;
a
it
a
it
; a
(i.
THE REVOLUTION AND GAIUS GRACCHUS book iv
last son ; but the passionate attachment, which very many had felt towards the two noble brothers and especially towards Gaius during their life, was touchingly displayed also after their death in the almost religious veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where they had fallen.
37o
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
371
CHAPTER IV
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, be- Vacancy came on his death a ruin. His death indeed,' like that of govern* his brother, was primarily a mere act of vengeance ; but it
was at the same time a very material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as it was
on the point of being established. It was all the more so in the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen chief of the state or by pre eminent ability, might feel himself warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place. Gaius had
from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius had left behind him died before reaching man hood; the whole popular party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be named as leader. The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress without a commander ; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but the general was wanting, and there was no one to take posses sion of the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.
So it accordingly happened. After the decease of Gaius Gracchus without heirs, the government of the senate as it
departed
37a
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
The were spontaneously resumed its place ; and this was the JJJJJJSwr. mo,,e natural, that it had not been, in the strict sense, formally abolished by the tribune, but had merely been reduced to a practical nullity by his exceptional proceedings. Yet we should greatly err, if we should discern in this restoration nothing further than a relapse of the state-
Phweco-
machine into the old track which had been trodden and worn for centuries. Restoration is always revolution ; but in this case it was not so much the old government as the old governor that was restored. The oligarchy made its appearance newly equipped in the armour of the tyrannis which had been overthrown. As the senate had beaten Gracchus from the field with his own weapons, so it continued in the most essential points to govern with the constitution of the Gracchi ; though certainly with the ulterior idea, if not of setting it aside entirely, at any rate of thoroughly purging it in due time from the elements
really hostile to the ruling aristocracy.
At first the reaction was mainly directed against persons.
democrats. 6
Publius Popillius was recalled from banishment after the 121. enactments relating to him had been cancelled (633), and a warfare of prosecution was waged against the adherents of Gracchus ; whereas the attempt of the popular party to
have Lucius Opimius after his resignation of office con
demned for high treason was frustrated by the partisans of 120. the government (634). The character of this government
of the restoration is significantly indicated by the progress of the aristocracy in soundness of sentiment. Gaius Carbo, once the ally of the Gracchi, had for long been a convert
340), and had but recently shown his zeal and his use fulness as defender of Opimius. But he remained the renegade when the same accusation was raised against him by the democrats as against Opimius, the government were not unwilling to let him fall, and Carbo, seeing himself lost between the two parties, died his own hand. Thus the
by
(p. ;
chap, IT THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
373
men of the reaction showed themselves in personal questions pure aristocrats. But the reaction did not immediately attack the distributions of grain, the taxation of the pro vince of Asia, or the Gracchan arrangement as to the jurymen and courts; on the contrary, it not only spared the mercantile class and the proletariate of the capital, but continued to render homage, as it had already done in the introduction of the Livian laws, to these powers and especially to the proletariate far more decidedly than had been done by the Gracchi. This course was not adopted merely because the Gracchan revolution still thrilled for long the minds of its contemporaries and protected its creations; the fostering and cherishing at least of the interests of the populace was in fact perfectly compatible with the personal advantage of the aristocracy, and thereby
further was sacrificed than merely the public
All those measures which were devised by Gaius The Gracchus for the promotion of the public welfare —the best Jjj^jjjl, but, as may readily be conceived, also the most unpopular under the part of his legislation —were allowed by the aristocracy to restorat 00. drop. Nothing was so speedily and so successfully assailed
as the noblest of his projects, the scheme of introducing a
legal equality first between the Roman burgesses and Italy,
and thereafter between Italy and the provinces, and—inas
much as the distinction between the merely ruling and consuming and the merely serving and working members of
the state was thus done away —at the same time solving the
social question by the most comprehensive and systematic emigration known in history. With all the determination
and all the peevish obstinacy of dotage the restored
oligarchy obtruded the principle of deceased generations —
that Italy must remain the ruling land and Rome the ruling
city in Italy — afresh on the present. Even in the lifetime
of Gracchus the claims of the Italian allies had been
nothing weal.
374
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
decidedly rejected, and the great idea of transmarine colonization had been subjected to a very serious attack, which became the immediate cause of Gracchus' fall. After his death the scheme of restoring Carthage was set aside with little difficulty by the government party, although the individual allotments already distributed there were left to the recipients. It is true that they could not prevent a similar foundation by the democratic party from succeeding at another point : in the course of the conquests beyond the Alps which Marcus Flaccus had begun, the colony of Narbo
118. (Narbonne) was founded there in 636, the oldest trans marine burgess-city in the Roman empire, which, in spite of manifold attacks by the government party and in spite of a proposal directly made by the senate to abolish per manently held its ground, protected, as probably was, by the mercantile interests that were concerned. But, apart from this exception — in its isolation not very important — the government was uniformly successful in preventing the
assignation of land out of Italy.
The Italian domain -question was settled in a similar
spirit. The Italian colonies of Gaius, especially Capua, were cancelled, and such of them as had already been planted were again broken up only the unimportant one of Tarentum was allowed to subsist in the form of the new town Neptunia placed alongside of the former Greek community. So much of the domains as had already been distributed by non- colonial assignation remained in the hands of the recipients the restrictions imposed on them by Gracchus in the interest of the commonwealth — the ground-rent and the prohibition of alienation —had already been abolished by Marcus Drusus. With reference on the
other hand to the domains still possessed by right of occupation —which, over and above the domain -land enjoyed by the Latins, must have mostly consisted of the estates left with their holders in accordance with the
;
;
it
it,
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
375
Gracchan maximum 320) — was resolved definitively to secure them to those who had hitherto been occupants and
to preclude the possibility of future distribution. It was primarily from these lands, no doubt, that the 36,000 new farm-allotments promised by Drusus were to have been formed but they saved themselves the trouble of inquiring where those hundreds of thousands of acres of Italian domain-land were to be found, and tacitly shelved the Livian colonial law, which had served its purpose —only perhaps the small colony of Scolacium (Squillace) may be referred to the colonial law of Drusus. On the other hand
by law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment- commission was abolished in 635, and there was imposed lit. on the occupants of the domain-land fixed rent, the pro ceeds of which went to the benefit of the populace of the capital —apparently by forming part of the fund for the dis tribution of corn proposals going still further, including perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted
by the judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius. The
final step was taken eight years afterwards (643), when by 111.
new decree of the people the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the rent-free private property of the former occupants. was added, that in future domain- land was not to be occupied at all, but was either to be leased or to lie open as public pasture in the latter case provision was made the fixing of very low maximum of ten head of large and fifty head of small cattle, that the large herd-owner should not practically exclude the small. In these judicious regulations the injurious character of the occupation-system, which moreover was long ago given up (ii. 21), was at length officially recognized, but unhappily
in great part still extant and known under the erroneous name, which has now been handed down for three hundred years, of the Thorian agrarian law.
1
a
It is
;
by It
(p.
a
1
a;a
;
;
it
376
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book it
they were only adopted when it had already deprived the state in substance of its domanial possessions. While the Roman aristocracy thus took care of itself and got whatever occupied land was still in its hands converted into its own property, it at the same time pacified the Italian allies, net indeed by conferring on them the property of the Latin domain-land which they and more especially their municipal aristocracy enjoyed, but by preserving unimpaired the rights in relation to it guaranteed to them by their charters. The opposite party was in the unfortunate position, that in the most important material questions the interests of the Italians ran diametrically counter to those of the opposition in the capital ; in fact the Italians entered into a species of league with the Roman government, and sought and found protection from the senate against the extravagant designs of various Roman demagogues.
While the restored government was thuscareful thoroughly and eques- t0 eradicate the germs of improvement which existed in trian order the Gracchan constitution, it remained completely power- restoration. less in presence of the hostile powers that had been, not
for the general weal, aroused by Gracchus. The prole tariate of the capital continued to have a recognized title to aliment ; the senate likewise acquiesced in the taking of the jurymen from the mercantile order, repugnant though this yoke was to the better and prouder portion of the aristocracy. The fetters which the aristocracy wore did not beseem its dignity ; but we do not find that it seriously set itself to get rid of them. The law of Marcus Aemilius
I22. Scaurus in 632, which at least enforced the constitutional restrictions on the suffrage of freedmen, was for long the only attempt — and that a very tame one — on the part of the senatorial government once more to restrain their mob- tyrants. The proposal, which the consul Quintus Caepio seventeen years after the introduction of the equestrian
1M. tribunals (648) brought in for again entrusting the trials to
The pro-
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
377
senatorial jurymen, showed what the government wished; but showed also how little it could do, when the question was one not of squandering domains but of carrying a measure in the face of an influential order. It broke down. 1 The government was not emancipated from the inconvenient associates who shared its power; but these measures probably contributed still further to disturb the never sincere agreement of the ruling aristocracy with the merchant -class and the proletariate. Both were very well aware, that the senate granted all its concessions only from fear and with reluctance ; permanently attached to the rule of the senate by considerations neither of gratitude nor of interest, both were very ready to render similar services to any other master who offered them more or even as much, and had no objection, if an opportunity occurred, to cheat or to thwart the senate. Thus the restoration continued to govern with the desires and sentiments of a legitimate aristocracy, and with the constitution and means ofgovern ment of a tyrannis. Its rule not only rested on the same bases as that of Gracchus, but it was equally ill, and in fact still worse, consolidated ; it was strong, when in league with the populace it overthrew serviceable institutions, but it was utterly powerless, when it had to face the bands of the streets or the interests of the merchants. It sat on the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, indignant at the institutions of the state which it ruled and yet incapable of even systematically assailing them, vacillat ing in all its conduct except where its own material advan tage prompted a decision, a picture of faithlessness towards its own as well as the opposite party, of inward inconsistency,
1 This is apparent, as is well known, from the further course of emits.
In opposition to this view stress has been laid on the fact that in Valerius Maximus, vi. 9, 13, Quintus Caepio is called patron of the senate ; but on
the one hand this does not prove enough, and on the other hand what is
there narrated does not at all suit the consul of 64S, to that there mat be 106. an error either in the name or in the facts reported.
The men restoration
of the most pitiful impotence, of the meanest selfishness — an unsurpassed ideal of misrule.
It could not be otherwise ; the whole nation was in a state of intellectual and moral decline, but especially the upper classes. The aristocracy before the period of the Gracchi was truly not over-rich in talent, and the benches of the senate were crowded by a pack of cowardly and disso lute nobles; nevertheless there sat in it Scipio Aemilianus, Gaius Laelius, Quintus Metellus, Publius Crassus, Publius Scaevola and numerous other respectable and able men, and an observer favourably predisposed might be of opinion that the senate maintained a certain moderation in injustice
and a certain decorum in misgovernment. This aristocracy had been overthrown and then reinstated ; henceforth there rested on it the curse of restoration. While the aristocracy had formerly governed for good or ill, and for more than a century without any sensible opposition, the crisis which it had now passed through revealed to like flash of lightning in dark night, the abyss which yawned before its feet Was any wonder that henceforward rancour always, and terror wherever they durst, characterized the government of the lords of the old nobility? that those who governed confronted as an united and compact party, with far more sternness and violence than hitherto, the non- governing multitude that family-policy now prevailed once more, just as in the worst times of the patriciate, so that e. g. the four sons and (probably) the two nephews of Quintus Metellus — with single exception persons utterly insignificant and some of them called to office on account of their very simplicity —attained within fifteen years
378
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
128-109. (631-645) all of them to the consulship, and all with one exception also to triumphs —to say nothing of sons-in-law and so forth that the more violent and cruel the bearing of any of their partisans towards the opposite party, he received the more signal honour, and every outrage and
?
a it
? a
it, a
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
379
every infamy were pardoned in the genuine aristocrat? that the rulers and the ruled resembled two parties at war in every respect, save in the fact that in their warfare no international law was recognized? It was unhappily only too palpable that, if the old aristocracy beat the people with rods, this restored aristocracy chastised it with
It returned to power; but it returned neither wiser nor better. Never hitherto had the Roman aristocracy been so utterly deficient in men of statesmanly and military capacity, as it was during this epoch of restoration between the Gracchan and the Cinnan revolutions.
A significant illustration of this is afforded by the chief of Marcus the senatorial party at this time, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. g^Jj^ The son of highly aristocratic but not wealthy parents, and
thus compelled to make use of his far from mean talents,
he raised himself to the consulship (639) and censorship 115. (645), was long the chief of the senate and the political 109. oracle of his order, and immortalized his name not only as
an orator and author, but also as the originator of some of
the principal public buildings executed in this century.
But, if we look at him more closely, his greatly praised achievements amount merely to this much, that, as a
general, he gained some cheap village triumphs in the
Alps, and, as a statesman, won by his laws about voting
and luxury some victories nearly as serious over the revolu
tionary spirit of the times. His real talent consisted in
this, that, while he was quite as accessible and bribable as
any other upright senator, he discerned with some cunning
the moment when the matter began to be hazardous, and
above all by virtue of his superior and venerable appear
ance acted the part of Fabricius before the public. In a
military point of view, no doubt, we find some honourable exceptions of able officers belonging to the highest circles
of the aristocracy ; but the rule was, that the lords of
quality, when they were to assume the command of armies,
scorpions.
Bodal
holders, and in its new arrogance allowed itself with growing frequency to drive them out, the farms disappeared like raindrops in the sea. That the economic oligarchy at least kept pace with the political, is shown by the opinion
3&>
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book IV
hastily read up from the Greek military manuals and the Roman annals as much as was required for holding a mili tary conversation, and then, when in the field, acted most wisely by entrusting the real command to an officer of humble lineage but of tried capacity and tried discretion. In fact, if a couple of centuries earlier the senate resembled an assembly of kings, these their successors played not ill the part of princes. But the incapacity of these restored aristocrats was fully equalled by their political and moral worthlessness. If the state of religion, to which we shall revert, did not present a faithful reflection of the wild dissoluteness of this epoch, and if the external history of the period did not exhibit the utter depravity of the Roman nobles as one of its most essential elements, the horrible crimes, which came to light in rapid succession among the highest circles of Rome, would alone suffice to indicate their character.
The administration, internal and external, was what was to ^e expecte^ under such a government. The social ruin restoration, of Italy spread with alarming rapidity ; since the aristocracy had given itself legal permission to buy out the small
Attaints- uDdertiie
^J'0'
100. expressed about 650 by Lucius Marcius Philippus, a man
of moderate democratic views, that there were among the whole burgesses hardly 2000 families of substantial means.