No More Learning

When evening had come on, the bodies
were thrown into the Tiber; Gaius vainly entreated that
the corpse of his brother might be granted to him for
^ burial. Such a day had never before been seen by Rome.
The party-strife lasting for more than a century during the first social crisis had led to no such catastrophe as that with which the second began. The better portion of the aristocracy might shudder, but they could no longer recede. They had no choice save to abandon a great number of their most trusty partisans to the vengeance of the multi tude, or to assume collectively the responsibility of the outrage : the latter course was adopted. They gave official sanction to the assertion that Gracchus had wished to seize the crown, and justified this latest crime by the primitive precedent of Ahala 376); in fact, they even committed the duty of further investigation as to the accomplices of Gracchus to special commission and made its head, the consul Publius Popillius, take care that sort of legal stamp should be supplementarily impressed on the murder of Gracchus bloody sentences directed against large
182. number of inferior persons (622). Nasica, against whom above all others the multitude breathed vengeance, and who had at least the courage openly to avow his deed before the people and to defend was under honourable
ISO. pretexts despatched to Asia, and soon afterwards (624) in
it, .
a by
a
a
(i.
chap, H AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
3*7
vested, during his absence, with the office of Pontifex Maximus. Nor did the moderate party dissociate them selves from these proceedings of their colleagues. Gaius Laelius bore a part in the investigations adverse to the partisans of Gracchus ; Publius Scaevola, who had attempted to prevent the murder, afterwards defended it in the senate ; when Scipio Aemilianus, after his return from Spain (62 a), was challenged publicly to declare whether he did or did not approve the killing of his brother-in-law, he gave the at least ambiguous reply that, so far as Tiberius had aspired to the crown, he had been justly put to death.
188.
Let us endeavour to form a judgment regarding these momentous events. The appointment of an official com- mission, which had to counteract the dangerous diminution
of the farmer-class by the comprehensive establishment of Itselt new small holdings from the whole Italian landed property
at the disposal of the state, was doubtless no sign of a healthy condition of the national economy; but it was, under the existing circumstances political and social, suited to its purpose. The distribution of the domains, moreover, was in itself no political party-question ; it might have been carried out to the last sod without changing the existing constitution or at all shaking the government of the aristocracy. As little could there be, in that case, any complaint of a violation of rights. The state was con fessedly the owner of the occupied land ; the holder as a possessor on mere sufferance could not, as a rule, ascribe to himself even a bond fide proprietary tenure, and, in the exceptional instances where he could do so, he was con fronted by the fact that by the Roman law prescription did not run against the state. The distribution of the domains was not an abolition, but an exercise, of the right of property ; all jurists were agreed as to its formal legality. But the attempt now to carry out these legal claims of the state was far from being politically warranted by the
The
d°m^n viewed it
328
THE REFORM MOVEMENT book iv
circumstance that the distribution of the domains neither infringed the existing constitution nor involved a violation of right. Such objections as have been now and then raised in our day, when a great landlord
suddenly begins to assertj in all their' compass^ claims belonging to him in law but suffered for a long period to lie dormant in practice, might with equal and better right be advanced against the
rogation of Gracchus. These occupied domains had been undeniably in heritable private possession, some of them for three hundred years ; the state's proprietorship of the soil, which from its very nature loses more readily than that of the burgess the character of a private right, had in the case of these lands become virtually extinct, and the present holders had universally come to their possessions by purchase or other onerous acquisition. The jurist might say what he would ; to men of business the measure appeared to be an ejection of the great landholders for the benefit of the agricultural proletariate; and in fact no statesman could give it any other name. That the leading men of the Catonian epoch formed no other judgment, is very clearly shown by their treatment of a similar case that occurred in their time. The territory of Capua and the
211. neighbouring towns, which was annexed as domain in 543, had for the most part practically passed into private posses sion during the following unsettled times. In the last years of the sixth century, when in various respects, especially through the influence of Cato, the reins of government were drawn tighter, the burgesses resolved to resume the Campanian territory and to let it out for the
172. benefit of the treasury (582). The possession in this instance rested on an occupation justified not by previous invitation but at the most by the connivance of the authorities, and had continued in no case much beyond a generation ; but the holders were not dispossessed except in consideration of a compensatory sum disbursed under
chap. II AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
329
the orders of the senate by the urban praetor Publius Lentulus 589). 1 Less objectionable perhaps, but still 165. not without hazard, was the arrangement by which the new allotments bore the character of heritable leaseholds and were inalienable. The most liberal principles in regard to freedom of dealing had made Rome great and was very little consonant to the spirit of the Roman institutions, that these new farmers were peremptorily bound down to cultivate their portions of land in definite manner, and that their allotments were subject to rights of revocation
and all the cramping measures associated with commercial restriction.
It will be granted that these objections to the Sempronian agrarian law were of no small weight Yet they are not decisive. Such practical eviction of the holders of the domains was certainly great evil; yet was the only means of checking, at least for long time, an evil much greater still and in fact directly destructive to the state— the decline of the Italian farmer-class. We can well under stand therefore why the most distinguished and patriotic men even of the conservative party, headed by Gaius
Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus, approved and desired the distribution of the domains viewed in itself.
But, the aim of Tiberius Gracchus probably appeared The
to the great majority of the discerning friends of their question country good and salutary, the method which he adopted, before the
on the other hand, did not and could not meet with the approval of single man of note and of patriotism. Rome about this period was governed by the senate. Any one who carried measure of administration against the majority
This fact, hitherto only partially known from Cicero (Di L. Agr. 31, 82 com p. Liv. zlii. a, 19), now more fully established by the fragments of Licinianus, p. 4. The two accounts are to be combined to this effect, that Lentulus ejected the possessors in consideration of a com pensatory sum fixed by him, but accomplished nothing with real land owners, as he was not entitled to dispossess them and they would not consent to sell.
urgesses-
1 ;
is
ii.
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a
;
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330
THE REFORM MOVEMENT book iv
of the^senate made a revolution. It was revolution against the spirit of the constitution, when Gracchus submitted the domain question to the people ; and revolution also against the letter, when he destroyed not only for the moment but for all time coming the tribunician veto—the corrective of the state machine, through which the senate constitutionally got rid of interferences with its government—by the de position of his colleague, which he justified with unworthy sophistry. But it was not in this step that the moral and political mistake of the action of Gracchus lay. There are no set forms of high treason in history ; whoever provokes one power in the state to conflict with another is certainly a revolutionist, but he may be at the same time a discerning and praiseworthy statesman. The essential defect of the Gracchan revolution lay in a fact only too frequently overlooked —in the nature of the then existing burgess-
assemblies. The agrarian law of Spurius Cassius
and that of Tiberius Gracchus had the main the same tenor and the same object but the enterprises of the two men were as different, as the former Roman burgess-body which shared the Volscian spoil with the Latins and Hernici was different from the present which erected the provinces of Asia and Africa. The former was an urban community, which could meet together and act together; the latter was great state, as to which the attempt to unite those belonging to one and the same primary assembly, and to leave to this assembly the decision, yielded result as lamentable as was ridiculous — 38). The fundamental defect of the policy of antiquity that never fully advanced from the urban form of constitution to that of state or, which the same thing, from the
system of primary assemblies to parliamentary system — in this case avenged itself The sovereign assembly of Rome was what the sovereign assembly in England would be, instead of sending representatives all the electors
361)
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;
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chap, n AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
331
of England should meet together as a parliament—an unwieldy mass, wildly agitated by all interests and all passions, in which intelligence was totally lost; a body, which was neither able to take a comprehensive view of things nor even to form a resolution of its own ; a body above all, in which, saving in rare exceptional cases, a couple of hundred or thousand individuals accidentally picked up from the streets of the capital acted and voted in name of the burgesses. , The burgesses found them selves, as a rule, nearly as satisfactorily represented by their de facto representatives in the tribes and centuries as by the thirty lictors who dejure represented them in the curies ; and just as what was called the decree of the curies was nothing but a decree of the magistrate who convoked the lictors, so the decree of the tribes and centuries at this time was in substance simply a decree of the proposing magistrate, legalised by some consentients indispensable for the occasion. But while in these voting-assemblies, the comitia, though they were far from dealing strictly in the matter of qualification, it was on the whole burgesses alone that appeared, in the mere popular assemblages on the other hand —the contiones — every one in the shape of a man was entitled to take his place and to shout, Egyptians and Jews, street-boys and slaves. Such a "meeting" certainly had no significance in the eyes of the law; it could neither vote nor decree. But it practically ruled the street, and already the opinion of the street was a power in Rome, so that it was of some importance whether this confused mass received the communications made to it with silence or shouts, whether it applauded and rejoiced or hissed and howled at the orator. Not many had the courage to lord it over the populace as Scipio Aemilianus did, when they hissed him on account of his expression as to the death of his brother-in-law. "Ye," he said, "to whom Italy is not mother but step-mother, ought to keep
332
THE REFORM MOVEMENT book iv
silence I " and when their fury grew still louder, " Surely you do not think that I will fear those let loose, whom I have sent in chains to the slave-market ? "
That the rusty machinery of the comitia should be made use of for the elections and for legislation, was already bad enough. But when those masses —the comitia primarily, and practically also the contiones — were permitted to interfere in the administration, and the instrument which the senate employed to prevent such interferences was wrested out of its hands ; when this so-called burgess-body was allowed to decree to itself lands along with all their appurtenances out of the public purse ; when any one, whom circumstances and his influence with the proletariate enabled to command the streets for a few hours, found it possible to impress on his projects the legal stamp of the sovereign people's will, Rome had reached not the beginning, but the end of popular freedom — had arrived not at democracy, but at monarchy. For that reason in the previous period Cato and those who shared his views never brought such questions before the burgesses, but discussed them solely in the senate (p. 59). For that reason contemporaries of
Gracchus, the men of the Scipionic circle, described the 232. Flaminian agrarian law of 522—the first step in that fatal
career—as the beginning of the decline of Roman greatness. For that reason they allowed the author of the domain- distribution to fall, and saw in his dreadful end, as it were, a rampart against similar attempts in future, while yet they maintained and turned to account with all their energy the domain-distribution itself which he had carried through —so sad was the state of things in Rome, that honest patriots were forced into the horrible hypocrisy of abandoning the evil-doer and yet appropriating the fruit of the evil deed. For that reason too the opponents of Gracchus were in a certain sense not wrong, when they accused him of aspiring to the crown. For him it is a fresh impeachment rather
chap, II AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
333
than a justification, that he himself was probably a stranger to any such thought. The aristocratic government was so thoroughly pernicious, that the citizen, who was able to depose the senate and to put himself in its place, might perhaps benefit the commonwealth more than he injured
But such bold player Tiberius Gracchus was not. He Result* was tolerably capable, thoroughly well-meaning, conserva
tive patriot, who simply did not know what he was doing
who in the fullest belief that he was calling the people
evoked the rabble, and grasped at the crown without being himself aware of until the inexorable sequence of events urged him irresistibly into the career of the demagogue- tyrant until the family commission, the interferences with the public finances, the further " reforms " exacted by necessity and despair, the bodyguard from the pavement, and the conflicts in the streets betrayed the lamentable usurper more and more clearly to himself and others until at length the unchained spirits of revolution seized and
devoured the incapable conjurer. The infamous butchery, through which he perished, condemns itself, as condemns the aristocratic faction whence issued but the glory of martyrdom, with which has embellished the name of Tiberius Gracchus, came in this instance, as usually, to the wrong man. The best of his contemporaries judged other wise. When the catastrophe was announced to Scipio Aemilianus, he uttered the words of Homer
"fit diriXoiTo rat dXXoj, Stu TOULvrd ye }>i$oi'
and when the younger brother of Tiberius seemed disposed to come forward in the same career, his own mother wrote to him " Shall then our house have no end of madness where shall be the limit have we not yet enough to be ashamed of, in having confused and disorganized the state? " So spoke not the anxious mother, but the daughter of the conqueror of Carthage, who knew and experienced mis fortune yet greater than the death of her children.
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it
:
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;
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:
;
;
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it,
a
334 THE REVOLUTION AND book iv
CHAPTER III
THE REVOLUTION AND GAIUS GRACCHUS
The com- Tiberius Gracchus was dead ; but his two works, the dis- Sstiibut-0' tr'bution of land and the revolution, survived their author.
teg the i^"""
181.
In presence of the starving agricultural proletariate the senate might venture on a murder, but it could not make use of that murder to annul the Sempronian agrarian law ; the law itself had been far more strengthened than shaken by the frantic outbreak of party fury. The party of the aristocracy friendly towards reform, which openly favoured the distribution of the domains — headed
by
Metellus, just about this time (623) censor, and Publius
Scaevola—in concert with the party of Scipio Aemilianus, which was at least not disinclined to reform, gained the upper hand for the time being even in the senate ; and a decree of the senate expressly directed the triumvirs to begin their labours. According to the Sempronian law these were to be nominated annually by the community, and this was probably done : but from the nature of their task it was natural that the election should fall again and again on the same men, and new elections in the proper sense occurred only when a place became vacant through death. Thus in the place of Tiberius Gracchus there was appointed the father-in-law of his brother Gaius, Publius Crassus
130. Mucianus; and after the fall of Mucianus in 624 (p. 279) and the death of Appius Claudius, the business of distribu
Quintus
chap, ill GAIUS GRACCHUS
tion was managed in concert with the
Gracchus by two of the most active leaders of the move
ment party, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius
Carbo. The very names of these men are vouchers that
the work of resuming and distributing the occupied domain-
land was prosecuted with zeal and energy ; and, in fact, proofs to that effect are not wanting. As early as 622 the uj. consul of that year, Publius Popillius, the same who directed the prosecutions of the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded on a public monument that he was " the
first who had turned che shepherds out of the domains and installed farmers in their stead " ; and tradition otherwise affirms that the distribution extended over all Italy, and
that in the formerly existing communities the number of farms was everywhere augmented —for it was the design of
the Sempronian agrarian law to elevate the farmer-class not
by the founding of new communities, but by the strength ening of those already in existence. The extent and the comprehensive effect of these distributions are attested by
the numerous arrangements in the Roman art of land- measuring that go back to the Gracchan assignations of land ; for instance, a due placing of boundary-stones so as
to obviate future mistakes appears to have been first called
into existence by the Gracchan courts for demarcation and
the land-distributions. But the numbers on the burgess-
rolls give the clearest evidence. The census, which was published in 623 and actually took place probably in the 181. beginning of 622, yielded not more than 319,000 burgesses 182. capable of bearing arms, whereas six years afterwards (629) 128. in place of the previous falling-off (p. 314) the number rises
to 395,000, that is 76,000 of an increase — beyond all doubt solely in consequence of what the allotment-com mission did for the Roman burgesses. Whether it multi plied the farms among the Italians in the same proportion may be doubted; at any rate what it did accomplish yielded
young Gaius
Papirius
335
Its
a great and beneficent result It is true that this result was not achieved without various violations of respectable interests and existing rights. The allotment-commission, composed of the most decided partisans, and absolute judge in its own cause, proceeded with its labours in a reck less and even tumultuary fashion ; public notices summoned every one, who was able, to give information regarding the extent of the domain-lands; the old land -registers were inexorably referred to, and not only was occupation new and old revoked without distinction, but in various cases real private property, as to which the holder was unable satisfactorily to prove his tenure, was included in the con fiscation. Loud and for the most part well founded as were the complaints, the senate allowed the distributors to pursue their course; it was clear that, if the domain question was to be settled at all, the matter could not be carried through without such unceremonious vigour of action.
But this acquiescence had its limit. The Italian domain- land was not solely in the hands of Roman burgesses ; large tracts of it had been assigned in exclusive usufruct to particular allied communities by decrees of the people or senate, and other portions had been occupied with or without permission by Latin burgesses. The allotment- commission at length attacked these possessions also. The resumption of the portions simply occupied by non-burgesses was no doubt allowable in formal law, and not less presum ably the resumption of the domain-land handed over by decrees of the senate or even by resolutions of the burgesses to the Italian communities, since thereby the state by no means renounced its ownership and to all appearance gave its grants to communities, just as to private persons, subject to revocation. But the complaints of these allied or subject communities, that Rome did not keep the settlements that were in force, could not be simply disregarded like the
^fg^j°n Aemili-
336
THE REVOLUTION AND book rv
CHAP. Hi GAIUS GRACCHUS
337
complaints of the Roman citizens injured by the action of
the commissioners. Legally the former might be no better founded than the latter ; but, while in the latter case the matter at stake was the private interests of members of the state, in reference to the Latin possessions the question arose, whether it was politically right to give fresh offence
to communities so important in a military point of view
and already so greatly estranged from Rome by numerous disabilities de jure and de facto (ii. 352 et seq. ) through this keenly-felt injury to their material interests. The decision
lay in the hands of the middle party; it was that party which after the fall of Gracchus had, in league with his adherents, protected reform against the oligarchy, and it alone was now able in concert with the oligarchy to set a limit to reform. The Latins resorted personally to the most prominent man of this party, Scipio Aemilianus, with
a request that he would protect their rights. He promised
to do so; and mainly through his influence,1 in 625, a 12fc decree of the people withdrew from the commission its jurisdiction, and remitted the decision respecting what were domanial and what private possessions to the censors and,
as proxies for them, the consuls, to whom according to the general principles of law it pertained. This was simply a suspension of further domain-distribution under a mild form. The consul Tuditanus, by no means Gracchan in his views and little inclined to occupy himself with the difficult task of agrarian definition, embraced the opportunity of going off to the Illyrian army and leaving the duty entrusted to him unfulfilled. The allotment-commission no doubt continued to subsist, but, as the judicial regulation of the domain-land was at a standstill, it was compelled to remain inactive.
1 To this occasion belongs his oration contra legem iuiiciariam Ti. Gracchi — which we are to understand as referring not, as has been asserted, to a law as to the indicia fubliea, but to the supplementary law annexed to his agrarian rogation : ut triumviri iudicarent, qua publicTM ager, qua
frivatus estet (Liv. Ep. lviii. ; see p. 330 above). VOL. Ill
87
Assassin*-
Aemili- mm.
The reform-party was deeply indignant Even men u^e Publius Mucius and Quintus Metellus disapproved of the intervention of Scipio. Other circles were not content with expressing disapproval. Scipio had announced for one of the following days an address respecting the relations of the Latins ; on the morning of that day he was found dead in his bed. He was but fifty-six years of age, and in full health and vigour ; he had spoken in public the day before, and then in the evening had retired earlier than usual to
his bedchamber with a view to prepare the outline of his speech for the following day. That he had been the victim of a political assassination, cannot be doubted ; he himself shortly before had publicly mentioned the plots formed to murder him. What assassin's hand had during the night slain the first statesman and the first general of his age, was never discovered; and it does not become history either to repeat the reports handed down from the contemporary gossip of the city, or to set about the childish attempt to ascertain the truth out of such materials. This much only is clear, that the instigator of the deed must have belonged to the Gracchan party ; the assassination of Scipio was the democratic reply to the aristocratic massacre at the temple of Fidelity. The tribunals did not interfere. The popular party, justly fearing that its leaders Gaius Gracchus, Flaccus, and Carbo, whether guilty or not, might be involved in the prosecution, opposed with all its might the institution of an inquiry ; and the aristocracy, which lost in Scipio quite as much an antagonist as an ally, was not unwilling to let the matter sleep. The multitude and men of moderate views were shocked ; none more so than Quintus Metellus, who had disapproved of Scipio's interference against reform, but turned away with horror from such confederates, and ordered his four sons to carry the bier of his great antagonist to the funeral pile. The funeral was hurried over; with veiled
head the last of the family of the conqueror of Zama was
338
THE REVOLUTION AND book iv
chap, in GAIUS GRACCHUS
339
borne forth, without any one having been previously allowed to see the face of the deceased, and the flames of the funeral pile consumed with the remains of the illustrious man the traces at the same time of the crime.
The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country, and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part. Conscious of the best intentions and of no common abilities, he was doomed to see the ruin of his country carried out before his eyes, and to repress within him every earnest attempt to save because he clearly perceived that he should only thereby make the evil worse doomed to the necessity of sanctioning outrages like that of Nasica, and at the same time of defend ing the work of the victim against his murderers. Yet he might say that he had not lived in vain. was to him, at least quite as much as to the author of the Sempronian law, that the Roman burgesses were indebted for an increase of nearly 80,000 new farm-allotments; he was too who put stop to this distribution of the domains, when had produced such benefit as could produce. 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 ;
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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. "
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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)
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
:
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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.