No More Learning

i. 12, Ulp. i. 14, Paul. iv. 12, 6) as well as the kindred libtrti Latini luniani. But the dediticii nevertheless were destitute of rights as respected the Roman state, in so far as by Roman state-law every deditio was necessarily unconditional (Polyb. xxi. 1 ; comp. xx. 9, 10, xxxvi. 3) and all the privileges expressly or tacitly conceded to them were conceded only precario and therefore revocable at pleasure (Appian, Hisp. 44) ; so that the Roman state, what-
Secondary
Doiitical prosecu-
528 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book it
Toting gave the deeper offence, that it was — as the comitia were then constituted —politically absurd, and the hypo critical care of the government for the unstained purity of the electors appeared to every unprejudiced person ridicu lous ; but all these restrictions were dangerous, inasmuch as they invited every demagogue to carry his ulterior objects by taking up the more or less just demands of the new burgesses and of the Italians excluded from the franchise. While accordingly the more clear-seeing of the aristocracy cou'd not but find these partial and grudging concessions as inadequate as did the new burgesses and the excluded themselves, they further painfully felt the absence from their ranks of the numerous and excellent men whom the Varian commission of high treason had exiled, and whom it was the more difficult to recall because they had been condemned by the verdict not of the people but of the jury- courts ; for, while there was little hesitation as to cancelling a decree of the people even of a judicial character by means of a second, the cancelling of a verdict of jurymen by the people appeared to the better portion of the
ever it might immediately or afterwards decree regarding its dediticii, could never perpetrate as respected them a violation of rights. This destitution of rights only ceased on the conclusion of a treaty of alliance (Liv. xxxiv. 57). Accordingly dcditio and foedus appear in constitutional law as contrasted terms excluding each other (Liv. iv. 30, xxviii. 34 ; Cod. Theod. vii. 13, 16 and Gothofr. thereon), and of precisely the same nature is the distinction current among the jurists between the quasi- dedilicii and the quasi latini, for the Latins are just thefotderati In an eminent sense (Cic. pro Balb. 24, 54).
According to the older constitutional law there were, with the exception of the not numerous communities that were declared to have forfeited their treaties in consequence of the Hannibalic war (p. 24), no Italian dediticii: in
90-89. the Plautian law of 664-5 the description : qui foederatis civitatibus ad- scripti fuerunt (Cic. pro Arch. 4, 7) still included in substance all Italians.
87. But as the dediticii who received the franchise supplementary in 667 cannot reasonably be understood as embracing merely the Bruttii and Picentes, we may assume that all the insurgents, so far as they had laid down their arms and had not acquired the franchise under the Plautio- Papirian law, were treated as dediticii, or — which is the same thing —that their treaties cancelled as a matter of course by the insurrection (hence qui fotderati fuerunt in the passage of Cicero cited) were not legally renewed to them on their surrender.
chap, vn AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
529
aristocracy as a very dangerous precedent. Thus neither
the ultras nor the moderates were content with the issue of
the Italian crisis. But still deeper indignation swelled the Mariui. heart of the old man, who had gone forth to the Italian
war with freshened hopes and had come back from it reluctantly, with the consciousness of having rendered new services and of having received in return new and most
severe mortifications, with the bitter feeling of being no
longer dreaded but despised by his enemies, with that gnawing spirit of vengeance in his heart, which feeds on its
own poison. It was true of him also, as of the new burgesses and the excluded ; incapable and awkward as he
had shown himself to be, his popular name was still a formidable weapon in the hand of a demagogue.
With these elements of political convulsion was com-
bined the rapidly spreading decay of decorous soldierly ^T^? habits and of military discipline. The seeds, which were
sown by the enrolment of the proletariate in the army, developed themselves with alarming rapidity during the demoralizing insurrectionary war, which compelled Rome
to admit to the service every man capable of bearing arms without distinction, and which above all carried political partisanship directly into the headquarters and into the soldiers' tent. The effects soon appeared in the slackening
of all the bonds of the military hierarchy. During the
siege of Pompeii the commander of the Sullan besieging
corps the consular Aulus Postumius Albinus, was put to
death with stones and bludgeons by his soldiers, who believed themselves betrayed by their general to the enemy ; and Sulla the commander-in-chief contented him
self with exhorting the troops to efface the memory of that occurrence by their brave conduct in presence of the
enemy. The authors of that deed were the marines, from
of old the least respectable of the troops. A division of legionaries raised chiefly from the city populace soon
VOL. Ill
99
Decay of
Economic crisis.
530 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book iv
followed the example thus given. Instigated by Gaius Titius, one of the heroes of the market-place, it laid hands on the consul Cato. By an accident he escaped death on this occasion ; Titius was arrested, but was not punished. When Cato soon afterwards actually perished in a combat, his own officers, and particularly the younger Gaius Marius, were —whether justly or unjustly, cannot be ascertained — designated as the authors of his death.
To the political and military crisis thus beginning fell to be added the economic crisis—perhaps still more terrible —which set in upon the Roman capitalists in consequence of the Social war and the Asiatic troubles. The debtors, unable even to raise the interest due and yet inexorably pressed by their creditors, had on the one hand entreated from the proper judicial authority, the urban praetor Asellio, a respite to enable them to dispose of their possessions, and on the other hand had searched out once more the old obsolete laws as to usury 389) and, according to the rule established in olden times, had sued their creditors for fourfold the amount of the interest paid to them contrary to the law. Asellio lent himself to bend the actually existing law into conformity with the letter, and put into shape in the usual way the desired actions for interest whereupon the offended creditors assembled in the Forum under the leadership of the tribune of the people Lucius
Murder of Cassius, and attacked and killed the praetor in front of the
Asellio.
temple of Concord, just as in his priestly robes he was
presenting sacrifice — an outrage which was not even 89 made subject of investigation (665). On the other hand was said in the circles of the debtors, that the suffering multitude could not be relieved otherwise than by "new
account-books," that by legally cancelling the claims
all creditors against all debtors. Matters stood again exactly as they had stood during the strife of the orders once more the capitalists in league with the prejudiced
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chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
531
aristocracy made war against, and prosecuted, the oppressed multitude and the middle party which advised a modifica tion of the rigour of the law ; once more Rome stood on the verge of that abyss into which the despairing debtor drags his creditor along with him. Only, since that time the simple civil and moral organization of a great agricultural city had been succeeded by the social antagonisms of a
of many nations, and by that demoralization in which the prince and the beggar meet; now all incon gruities had come to be on a broader, more abrupt, and fearfully grander scale. When the Social war brought all the political and social elements fermenting among the citizens into lollision with each other, it laid the foundation for a new resolution. An accident led to its outbreak.
It was the tribune of the people Publius Sulpicius Rufus The
who in 666 proposed to the burgesses to declare that every
senator, who owed more than 2000 denarii (^82), should
forfeit his seat in the senate ; to grant to the burgesses condemned by non-free jury courts liberty to return home ;
to distribute the new burgesses among all the tribes, and
likewise to allow the right of voting in all tribes to the freedmen. They were proposals which from the mouth of
such a man were at least somewhat surprising. Publius Sulptcius Sulpicius Rufus (born in 630) owed his political importance fnl0*" not so much to his noble birth, his important connections,
and his hereditary wealth, as to his remarkable oratorical talent, in which none of his contemporaries equalled him. His powerful voice, his lively gestures sometimes bordering
on theatrical display, the luxuriant copiousness of his flow
of words arrested, even if they did not convince, his hearers.
As a partisan he was from the outset on the side of the senate, and his first public appearance (659) had been the K. impeachment of Norbanus who was mortally hated by the government party (p. 478). Among the conservatives he belonged to the section of Crassus and Drusus. We do
capital
SulP1C1^"
53a THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book rt
not know what primarily gave occasion to his soliciting the 88. tribuneship of the people for 666, and on its account
renouncing his patrician nobility; but he seems to have been by no means rendered a revolutionist through the fact that he, like the whole middle party, had been persecuted as revolutionary by the conservatives, and to have by no means intended an overthrow of the constitution in the sense of Gaius Gracchus. It would rather seem that, as the only man of note belonging to the party of Crassus and Drusus who had come forth uninjured from the storm of the Varian prosecutions, he felt himself called on to complete the work . of Drusus and finally to set aside the still subsisting disabilities of the new burgesses— for which purpose he needed the tribunate. Several acts of his even during his tribuneship are mentioned, which betray the very opposite of demagogic designs. For instance, he prevented by his veto one of his colleagues from cancelling through a decree of the people the sentences of jurymen issued under the Varian law; and when the late aedile Gaius Caesar, passing over the praetorship, unconstitutionally
87. became a candidate for the consulship for 667, with the design, it was alleged, of getting the charge of the Asiatic war afterwards entrusted to him, Sulpicius opposed him more resolutely and sharply than any one else. Entirely in the spirit of Drusus, he thus demanded from himself as from others primarily and especially the maintenance of the constitution. But in fact he was as little able as was Drusus to reconcile things that were incompatible, and to carry out in strict form of law the change of the constitution which he had in view—a change judicious in itself, but never to be obtained from the great majority of the old burgesses by amicable means. His breach with the powerful family of the Julii — among whom in particular the consular Lucius Caesar, the brother of Gaius, was very influential in the senate —and with the section of the
chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
533
aristocracy adhering to beyond doubt materially co operated and carried the irascible man through personal exasperation beyond his original design.
Yet the proposals brought in by him were of such
nature as to be by no means out of keeping with the ofthes# personal character and the previous party-position of their
author. The equalization of the new burgesses with the
old was simply partial resumption of the proposals drawn
up by Drusus in favour of the Italians and, like these, only
carried out the requirements of sound policy. The recall
of those condemned the Varian jurymen no doubt sacrificed the principle of the inviolability of such
sentence, in defence of which Sulpicius himself had just practically interposed but mainly benefited in the first instance the members of the proposer's own party, the moderate conservatives, and may be very well conceived
that so impetuous man might when first coming forward decidedly combat such measure and then, indignant at
the resistance which he encountered, propose himself.
The measure against the insolvency of senators was doubt
less called forth by the exposure of the economic condition
of the ruling families — so deeply embarrassed notwith
standing all their outward splendour —on occasion of the last financial crisis. was painful doubtless, but yet of itself conducive to the rightly understood interest of the aristocracy, as could not but be the effect of the Sulpician proposal, all individuals should withdraw from the senate who were unable speedily to meet their liabilities, and the coterie-system, which found its main support in the insolvency of many senators and their consequent dependence on their wealthy colleagues, should be checked by the removal of the notoriously venal pack of the senators. At the same time, of course, we do not mean to deny that such purification of the senate-house so abruptly and invidiously exposing the senate, as Rufus proposed, would
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534 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book n
certainly never have been proposed without his personal quarrels with the ruling coterie-heads. Lastly, the regula tion in favour of the freedmen had undoubtedly for its primary object to make its proposer master of the street ; but in itself it was neither unwarranted nor incompatible with the aristocratic constitution. Since the freedmen had begun to be drawn upon for military service, their demand for the right of voting was so far justified, as the right of voting and the obligation of service had always gone hand in hand. Moreover, looking to the nullity of the comitia, it was politically of very little moment whether one sewer more emptied itself into that slough. The difficulty which the oligarchy felt in governing with the comitia was lessened rather than increased by the unlimited admission of the freedmen, who were to a very great extent personally and financially dependent on the ruling families and, if rightly used, might quite furnish the government with a means of controlling the elections more thoroughly than before. This measure certainly, like every other political favour
shown to the proletariate, ran counter to the tendencies of the aristocracy friendly to reform ; but it was for Rufus hardly anything else than what the corn-law had been for Drusus—a means of drawing the proletariate over to his side and of breaking down with its aid the opposition against the truly beneficial reforms which he meditated. It was easy to foresee that this opposition would not be slight ; that the narrow-minded aristocracy and the narrow- minded bourgeoisie would display the same stupid jealousy after the subduing of the insurrection as they had displayed before its outbreak; that the great majority of all parties would secretly or even openly characterize the partial con cessions made at the moment of the most formidable danger as unseasonable compliances, and would passion ately resist every attempt to extend them. The example of
Drusus had shown what came of undertaking to carry
chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
535
conservative reforms solely in reliance on the majority of the senate ; it was a course quite intelligible, that his friend who shared his views should attempt to carry out kindred designs in opposition to that majority and under the forms of demagogism. Rufus accordingly gave himself no trouble to gain the senate over to his views by the bait of the jury courts. He found a better support in the freedmen and above all in the armed retinue—consisting, according to the report of his opponents, of 3000 hired men and an "opposition -senate" of 600 young men from the better class—with which he appeared in the streets and in the Forum.
His proposals accordingly met with the most decided Resbtanc* resistance from the majority of the senate, which first, to „„„. gain time, induced the consuls Lucius Cornelius Sulla and meat.
Pompeius Rufus, both declared opponents of demagogism, to enjoin extraordinary religious observances,
during which the popular assemblies were suspended.
Sulpicius replied by a violent tumult, in which among
other victims the young Quintus Pompeius, son of the one
and son-in-law of the other consul, met his death and the
lives of both consuls themselves were seriously threatened
—Sulla is said even to have escaped only by Marius
opening to him his house. They were obliged to yield;
Sulla agreed to countermand the announced solemnities,
and the Sulpician proposals now passed without further
difficulty. But this was far from determining their fate.
Though the aristocracy in the capital might own its defeat,
there was now —for the first time since the commencement
of the revolution —yet another power in Italy which could
not be overlooked, viz. the two strong and victorious armies
of the proconsul Strabo and the consul Sulla. The Position of political position of Strabo might be ambiguous, but Sulla,
although he had given way to open violence for the
moment, was on the best terms with the majority of the
Quintus
Riot*.
A
Marias nominated com mander-in- chief in Sulla's stead.
536 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book it
senate; and not only so, but he had, immediately after countermanding the solemnities, departed for Campania to join his army. To terrify the unarmed consul by bludgeon- men or the defenceless capital by the swords of the legions, amounted to the same thing in the end : Sulpicius assumed that his opponent, now when he could, would requite violence with violence and return to the capital at the head of his legions to overthrow the conservative demagogue and his laws along with him. Perhaps he was mistaken. Sulla was just as eager for the war against Mithradates as he was probably averse to the political exhalations of the capital ; considering his original spirit of indifference and his unrivalled political nonchalance, there is great proba bility that he by no means intended the coup d'etat which Sulpicius expected, and that, if he had been let alone, he would have embarked without delay with his troops for Asia so soon as he had captured Nola, with the siege of which he was still occupied.
But, be this as it might, Sulpicius, with a view to parry the presumed blow, conceived the scheme of taking the supreme command from Sulla ; and for this purpose joined with Marius, whose name was still sufficiently popular to make a proposal to transfer to him the chief command in the Asiatic war appear plausible to the multitude, and whose military position and ability might prove a support in the event of a rupture with Sulla. Sulpicius probably did not overlook the danger involved in placing that old man—not less incapable than vengeful and ambitious —at the head of the Campanian army, and as little the scandalous irregularity of entrusting an extraordinary supreme command by decree of the people to a private man ; but the very tried incapacity of Marius as a statesman gave a sort of guarantee that he would not be able seriously to endanger the constitution, and above all the personal position of Sulpicius, if he formed a correct estimate of Sulla's designs,
chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
537
was one of so imminent peril that such considerations could hardly be longer heeded. That the worn-out hero himself readily met the wishes of any one who would employ him as a condottiere, was a matter of course ; his heart had now for many years longed for the command in an Asiatic war, and not less perhaps for an opportunity of once settling accounts thoroughly with the majority of the senate. Accordingly on the proposal of Sulpicius Gaius Marius was by decree of the people invested with extra ordinary supreme, or as it was called proconsular, power, and obtained the command of the Campanian army and the superintendence of the war against Mithradates ; and two tribunes of the people were despatched to the camp at Nola, to take over the army from Sulla.
Sulla was not the man to yield to such a summons. If Sulla's any one had a vocation to the chief command in the Asiatic recaU- war, it was Sulla. He had a few years before commanded
with the greatest success in the same theatre of war; he
had contributed more than any other man to the subjuga
tion of the dangerous Italian insurrection ; as consul of the
year in which the Asiatic war broke out, he had been invested with the command in it after the customary way
and with the full consent of his colleague, who was on friendly terms with him and related to him by marriage.
It was expecting a great deal to suppose that he would, in accordance with a decree of the sovereign burgesses of Rome, give up a command undertaken in such circum
stances to an old military and political antagonist, in whose hands the army might be turned to none could tell what violent and preposterous proceedings. Sulla was neither good-natured enough to comply voluntarily with such an
order, nor dependent enough to need to do so. His army was—partly in consequence of the alterations of the military
system which originated with Marius, partly from the
moral laxity and the military strictness of its discipline in
Sulla's march OQ Rom*.
538 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book it
the hands of Sulla —little more than a body of mercenaries absolutely devoted to their leader and indifferent to political affairs. Sulla himself was a hardened, cool, and clear headed man, in whose eyes the sovereign Roman burgesses were a rabble, the hero of Aquae Sextiae a bankrupt swindler, formal legality a phrase, Rome itself a city with out a garrison and with its walls half in ruins, which could be far more easily captured than Nola.
On these views he acted. He assembled his soldiers — there were six legions, or about 35,000 men — and explained to them the summons that had arrived from Rome, not forgetting to hint that the new commander-in-chief would un doubtedly lead to Asia Minor not the army as it stood, but another formed of fresh troops. The superior officers, who still had more of the citizen than the soldier, kept aloof, and only one of them followed the general towards the capital ; but the soldiers, who in accordance with earlier experiences 42) hoped to find in Asia an easy war and
endless booty, were furious in moment the two tribunes that had come from Rome were torn in pieces, and from all sides the cry arose that the general should lead them to Rome. Without delay the consul started, and forming junction with his like-minded colleague by the way, he arrived by quick marches — little troubling himself about the deputies who hastened from Rome to meet and attempted to detain him —beneath the walls of the capital. Suddenly the Romans beheld columns of Sulla's army take their station at the bridge over the Tiber and at the Colline and Esquiline gates and then two legions in battle array, with their standards at their head, passed the sacred ring-wall within which the law had forbidden war to enter. Many worse quarrel, many an important feud had been brought to settlement within those walls, without any need
for Roman army breaking the sacred peace of the city that step was now taken, primarily for the sake of the
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chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
539
miserable question whether this or that officer was called to command in the east
The entering legions advanced as far as the height of Rome
the Esquiline ; when the missiles and stones descending in showers from the roofs made the soldiers waver and they began to give way, Sulla himself brandished a blazing torch, and with firebrands and threats of setting the houses on fire the legions cleared their way to the Esquiline market-place (not far from S. Maria Maggiore). There the force hastily collected by Marius and Sulpicius awaited them, and by its superior numbers repelled the first invading columns. But reinforcements came up from the gates ; another division of the Sullans made preparations for turning the defenders by the street of the Subura; the latter were obliged to retire. At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius attempted once more to make a stand ; he adjured the senate and equites and all the citizens to throw themselves across the path of the legions. But he himself had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries; his own work turned against him : they obeyed not the government, but their general. Even when the slaves were summoned to arm under the promise of freedom, not more than three of them appeared. Nothing remained for the leaders but to escape in all haste through the still unoccupied gates ; after a few hours Sulla was absolute master of Rome. That night the watchfires of the legions blazed in the great market-place of the capital.
occup
The first military intervention in civil feuds had made First
it quite evident, not only that the political struggles had r<^torat;OB reached the point at which nothing save open and direct
force proves decisive, but also that the power of the
bludgeon was of no avail against the power of the sword.
It was the conservative party which first drew the sword,
and which accordingly in due time experienced the truth of
540 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS boo* tv
the ominous words of the Gospel as to those who first have recourse to it. For the present it triumphed completely and might put the victory into formal shape at its pleasure. As a matter of course, the Sulpician laws were characterized as legally null. Their author and his most notable adher ents had fled; they were, twelve in number, proscribed by the senate for arrest and execution as enemies of their country.
Death of Publius Sulpicius was accordingly seized at Laurentum
Sulpicius.
Flight of Marius.
and put to death ; and the head of the tribune, sent to Sulla, was by his orders exposed in the Forum at the very rostra where he himself had stood but a few days before in the full vigour of youth and eloquence. The rest of the proscribed were pursued ; the assassins were on the track of even the old Gaius Marius. Although the general might have clouded the memory of his glorious days by a succes sion of pitiful proceedings, now that the deliverer of his country was running for his life, he was once more the victor of Vercellae, and with breathless suspense all Italy listened to the incidents of his marvellous flight At Ostia he had gone on board a transport with the view of sailing for Africa ; but adverse winds and want of provisions com pelled him to land at the Circeian promontory and to wander at random. With few attendants and without trusting himself under a roof, the grey-haired consular, often suffering from hunger, found his way on foot to the neigh bourhood of the Roman colony of Minturnae at the mouth of the Garigliano. There the pursuing cavalry were seen in the distance ; with great difficulty he reached the shore, and a trading-vessel lying there withdrew him from his
pursuers ; but the timid mariners soon put him ashore again and made off, while Marius stole along the beach.
His pursuers found him in the salt-marsh of Minturnae sunk to the girdle in the mud and with his head concealed amidst a quantity of reeds, and delivered him to the civic authorities of Minturnae. He was placed in prison, and
chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
541
the town-executioner, a Cimbrian slave, was sent to put him to death ; but the German trembled before the flashing eyes of his old conqueror and the axe fell from his hands, when the general with his powerful voice haughtily demanded whether he dared to kill Gaius Marius. When they learned this, the magistrates of Minturnae were ashamed that the deliverer of Rome should meet with greater reverence from slaves to whom he had brought bondage than from his fellow-citizens to whom he had brought freedom ; they loosed his fetters, gave him a vessel and money for travelling expenses, and sent him to Aenaria (Ischia). The proscribed with the exception of Sulpicius gradually met in those waters; they landed at Eryx and at what was formerly Carthage, but the Roman magistrates both in Sicily and in Africa sent them away. So they escaped to Numidia, whose desert sand-dunes gave them a place of refuge for the winter. But the king Hiempsal II. , whom they hoped to gain and who had seemed for a while willing to unite with them, had only done so to lull them into security, and now attempted to seize their persons. With great difficulty the fugitives escaped from his cavalry, and found a temporary refuge in the little island of Cercina (Kerkena) on the coast of Tunis. We know not whether Sulla thanked his fortunate star that he had been spared the odium of putting to death the victor of the Cimbrians ; at any rate it does not appear that the magistrates of Minturnae were punished.
With a view to remove existing evils and to prevent Legislation future revolutions, Sulla suggested a series of new legislative enactments. For the hard-pressed debtors nothing seems
to have been done, except that the rules as to the maximum
of interest were enforced ; l directions moreover were given
1 It is not clear, what the lex unciaria of the consuls Sulla and Rufui
in the year 666 prescribed in this respect ; but the simplest hypothesis is 88. that which regards it as a renewal of the law of 397 364), so that the 857. highest allowable rate of interest was again ^th of the capital for the year
of ten months or 10 per cent for the year of twelve months.
(i.
1*1.
54a THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book it
for the sending out of a number of colonies. The senate which had been greatly thinned by the battles and prosecu tions of the Social war was filled up by the admission of 300 new senators, who were naturally selected in the interest of the Optimates. Lastly, material changes were adopted in respect to the mode of election and the initiative of legisla tion. The old Servian arrangement for voting in the cen- turiate comitia, under which the first class, with an estate of
100,000 sesterces (^1000) or upwards, alone possessed almost half of the votes, again took the place of the arrange- ments introduced in 513 to mitigate the preponderance of the first class $<>/. ). Practically there was thus introduced for the election of consuls, praetors, and censors, census which really excluded the non-wealthy from exercising the suffrage. The legislative initiative in the case of the tribunes of the people was restricted by the rule, that every proposal had henceforth to be submitted by them in the first instance to the senate and could only come before the people in the event of the senate approving
These enactments which were called forth the Sulpician attempt at revolution from the man who then came forward as the shield and sword of the constitutional party—the consul Sulla —bear an altogether peculiar character. Sulla ventured, without consulting the burgesses or jurymen, to pronounce sentence of death on twelve of the most distin guished men, including magistrates actually office and the most famous general of his time, and publicly to defend these proscriptions violation of the venerable and sacred laws of appeal, which met with severe censure even from very conservative men, such as Quintus Scaevola. He ven tured to overthrow an arrangement as to the elections which had subsisted for century and half, and to re-establish
the electoral census which had been long obsolete and
He ventured practically to withdraw the right of legislation from its two primitive factors, the magistrates
proscribed.
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chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
543
and the comitia, and to transfer it to a board which had at no time possessed formally any other privilege in this respect than that of being asked for its advice 408). Hardly had any democrat ever exercised justice in forms so tyran nical, or disturbed and remodelled the foundations of the constitution with so reckless an audacity, as this conservative reformer. But we look at the substance instead of the form, we reach very different results. Revolutions have no where ended, and least of all in Rome, without demanding
certain number of victims, who under forms more or less borrowed from justice atone for the fault of being vanquished as though were crime. Any one who recalls the suc cession of prosecutions carried on by the victorious party after the fall of the Gracchi and Saturninus (pp. 326, 369, 475) will be inclined to yield to the victor of the Esquiline market the praise of candour and comparative moderation, in so far as, first he without ceremony accepted as war what was really such and proscribed the men who were defeated
as enemies beyond the pale of the law, and, secondly, he limited as far as possible the number of victims and allowed at least no offensive outbreak of fury against inferior persons.
similar moderation appears in the political arrangements. The innovation as respects legislation —the most important and apparently the most comprehensive—in fact only brought the letter of the constitution into harmony with its
The Roman legislation, under which any consul, praetor, or tribune could propose to the burgesses any measure at pleasure and bring to the vote without debate, had from the first been irrational and had become daily more so with the growing nullity of the comitia was only tolerated, because in practice the senate had claimed for itself the right of previous deliberation and regularly crushed any proposal, put to the vote without such previous de liberation, means of the political or religious veto
The revolution had swept away these barriers; and in
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544 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS book iv
consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow the state in due form of law. What was under such circumstances more natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect had been hitherto given by a circuitous process? Something similar may be said of the renewal of the electoral census. The earlier constitution was throughout based on it ; even the reform
Ml. of 5 1 3 had merely restricted the privileges of the men of wealth. But since that year there had occurred an immense financial revolution, which might well justify a raising of the electoral census. The new timocracy thus changed the letter of the constitution only to remain faithful to its spirit, while it at the same time in the mildest possible form attempted at least to check the disgraceful purchase of votes with all the evils therewith connected. Lastly, the regula tions in favour of debtors and the resumption of the schemes of colonization gave express proof that Sulla, although not
disposed to approve the impetuous proposals of Sulpicius, was yet, like Sulpicius and Drusus and all the more far- seeing aristocrats in general, favourable to material reforms in themselves ; as to which we may not overlook the circum stance, that he proposed these measures after the victory and entirely of his own free will. If we combine with such considerations the fact, that Sulla allowed the principal foundations of the Gracchan constitution to stand and
disturbed neither the equestrian courts nor the largesses of
grain, we shall find warrant for the ©pinion that the Sullan •8. arrangement of 666 substantially adhered to the status quo subsisting since the fall of Gaius Gracchus ; he merely, on
the one hand, altered as the times required the traditional rules that primarily threatened danger to the existing govern
ment, and, on the other hand, sought to remedy according to his power the existing social evils, so far as either could
chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
545
be done without touching ills that lay deeper. Emphatic contempt for constitutional formalism in connection with a vivid appreciation of the intrinsic value of existing arrange ments, clear perceptions, and praiseworthy intentions mark this legislation throughout. But it bears also a certain frivolous and superficial character ; it needed in particular a great amount of good nature to believe that the fixing a maximum of interest would remedy the confused relations of credit, and that the right of previous deliberation on the part of the senate would prove more capable of resisting future demagogism than the right of veto and religion had previously been.
In reality new clouds very soon began to overcast the New com- clear sky of the conservatives. The relations of Asia p caUoiuu assumed daily a more threatening character. The state
had already suffered the utmost injury through the delay
which the Sulpician revolution had occasioned in the departure of the army for Asia ; the embarkation could on
no account be longer postponed. Meanwhile Sulla hoped
to leave behind him guarantees against a new assault on
the oligarchy in Italy, partly in the consuls who would be
elected under the new electoral arrangement, partly and especially in the armies employed in suppressing the
remains of the Italian insurrection.
In the consular
comitia, however, the choice did not fall on the candidates
set up by Sulla, but Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who belonged Cinna.
to the most determined opposition, was associated with
Gnaeus Octavius, a man certainly of strictly Optimate
views. It may be presumed that it was chiefly the
capitalist party, which by this choice retaliated on the
author of the law as to interest. Sulla accepted the unpleasant election with the declaration that he was glad
to see the burgesses making use of their constitutional
liberty of choice, and contented himself with exacting
from both consuls an oath that they would faithfully
vol. in 100
Strabo,
546 THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN SUBJECTS TOOK IV
observe the existing constitution. Of the armies, the one on which the matter chiefly depended was that of the north, as the greater part of the Campanian army was destined to depart for Asia. Sulla got the command of the former entrusted by decree of the people to his devoted colleague Quintus Rufus, and procured the recall of the former general Gnaeus Strabo in such a manner as to spare as far as possible his feelings—the more so, because the latter belonged to the equestrian party and his passive attitude during the Sulpician troubles had occasioned no small anxiety to the aristocracy. Rufus arrived at the army and took the chief command in Strabo's stead ; but a few days afterwards he was killed by the soldiers, and Strabo returned to the command which he had hardly abdicated. He was regarded as the instigator of the murder ; it is certain that he was a man from whom such a deed might be expected, that he reaped the fruits of the crime, and that he punished the well-known originators of it only with words. The removal of Rufus and the commandership of Strabo formed a new and serious danger for Sulla ; yet he did nothing to deprive the latter of his
command. Soon afterwards, when his consulship expired, he found himself on the one hand urged by his successor Cinna to depart at length for Asia where his presence was certainly urgently needed, and on the other hand cited by one of the new tribunes before the bar of the people ; it was clear to the dullest eye, that a new attack on him and his party was in preparation, and that his opponents wished his removal. Sulla had no alternative save either to push the matter to a breach with Cinna and perhaps with Strabo and once more to march on Rome, or to leave Italian affairs to take their course and to remove to another continent. Sulla decided —whether more from patriotism or more from indifference, will never be ascertained—for the latter alternative; handed over the corps left behind
Mia for Asia.
chap, vii AND THE SULPICIAN REVOLUTION
547
in Samnium to the trustworthy and experienced soldier,
Metellus Pius, who was invested in Sulla's stead with the proconsular commandership-in-chief over Lower Italy ; gave the conduct of the siege of Nola to the pro praetor Appius Claudius; and in the beginning of 667 87.