died, and with him the race of Philetærus became extinct. The first
kings of Pergamus whom the Romans had raised to greatness, were on the
whole clever men and mild princes; and under their rule the country
flourished: this state of things was a desirable one, although, if
looked upon in a moral point of view, much might be said against it.
But the last Attalus was a tyrant and a wicked wretch, such as is
only to be met with in the East, where a certain perversity reaches
its highest pitch, and takes delight in what is most unnatural and
revolting: in a word, he was an incarnate fiend, like Sultan Ibrahim.
The only art in which he employed himself, was that of cultivating
deadly plants and of preparing poison: it was sport to him, to get
those who were his nearest kindred out of the world. He bequeathed
the whole of his kingdom to the Romans; and indeed he could not well
have done otherwise, as every one of his dispositions had still to be
approved of by the Romans, who would hardly have acknowledged the rule
of any one else. They took it as a property which of right belonged
to them, very much as a master might take the goods of one of his
freedmen who had not been fully emancipated, and had died without
leaving a will. Thus Rome had a new province, which, however, was to
be won by the sword, as Aristonicus, a bastard son of Eumenes, laid
claim to the throne. According to the notions of the East, this defect
of birth was not a bar to the succession, so that, but for the will of
Attalus, he would have been the lawful heir. He had very little trouble
in getting hold of the diadem soon after the death of his brother;
for the people had a horror of the Roman rule, and they had learned
to know the tyranny and rapacity of the Roman prætors and proconsuls
who made their appearance every year: many towns declared for him;
others, like Ephesus, which had lately gained their freedom by the
help of Rome, took up arms against him. How he came to believe that
he could hold out, is quite inconceivable. He had no aid whatever: in
his neighbourhood were Pontus, Cappadocia, and Bithynia, all three
of which were only small kingdoms, and the two last quite unwarlike;
the Syrian kings were likewise tottering to their fall, and their
whole attention was turned to the East, where the Parthian empire was
spreading farther and farther, and Babylon was already conquered.
There was not a soul in the world who could help Andronicus; and yet
he would engage in the mad undertaking of raising war against the
Romans. But the struggle lasted longer than one would have thought: not
only did the womanish inhabitants of Lydia and Ionia, countries which
are an earthly paradise, carry it on with great resolution, but the
pretender had likewise many Thracians in his pay. The Romans, on the
other hand, were badly commanded: their leaders thought of nothing but
enriching themselves; they were very glad when wealthy towns rebelled,
as they could then plunder them. Rome had not only a consular army,
but also troops from Bithynia and Pontus; a Roman general, P. Licinius
Crassus, was even defeated and taken prisoner. This man has some name
in history; and yet, his rapacity was so abominable, that the Asiatics
ill-treated his dead body because of it: so cheap was it at that time
to be deemed a man of honour. He died, however, a noble death, himself
asking to be killed. At length, M. Perperna overcame Aristonicus, and
took him prisoner; but M. Aquillius snatched the triumph from him. This
is of later date than the tribuneship of Tib. Gracchus (619); that is
to say, in 622.[63]
The province of Asia was now regularly formed, but within narrower
limits. Rome was generous to the native princes: Nicomedes had his
territory enlarged, and Great Phrygia was given to Mithridates
of Pontus. But in the latter case, this was not done before the
tribuneship of C. Gracchus, who, however, seems to have spoken against
it, Mithridates having perhaps gotten this quite unnecessary cession of
land by bribing the Roman commissioners.
The changes in the constitution of Rome in those days, are most of them
unimportant, as the distinction between patrician and plebeian was
now at an end. In 622, for the first time, two plebeians are censors;
in 580 already, both the consuls were from the same order. Here we
find this entry in the Capitoline Fasti, _ambo primi de plebe_: Livy
makes no remark whatever about it, circumstances having become so ripe
for the change, that no one even thought any longer of putting any
obstacle in the way of a plebeian. Dionysius says, that in his time
not more than fifty patrician families were still left, which is to
be understood of actual families, and not of _gentes_, of which there
may have been only about fifteen. As _gentes_, they are no longer held
in any account: these had lost their importance together with the
curies. In a _gens_, moreover, all the families were not ennobled:
of the Claudia, there was only one; of the Valeria, the Messalæ; the
Cornelia consisted of Scipiones, Lentuli, Cethegi, Sullæ (these last
being added but of late); in the Æmilia, were the Lepidi, and perhaps
also the Scauri. But of the plebeian _familiæ nobiles_ there was a very
great number, and they were still ever increasing. Of the senate, by
far the larger part belonged to them; ever since the end of the war
with Hannibal, most of the prætors were likewise plebeians, scarcely
one out of six being a patrician: nor does it seem as if any stress
had been laid on it; it was merely the effect of time. In the troubles
of the Gracchi, we find the families quite indiscriminately in both
parties. Appius Claudius, sprung from a family which in former times
had headed the patricians against the plebeians, was the father-in-law
of Tib. Gracchus, and sided with him, and carried through all the laws
put forth by him; whilst, on the other hand, those, who were the most
enraged against the Gracchi, and the most interested in withstanding
them, were, with the exception of Scipio Nasica, all of them plebeians.
The feuds had long been settled, and they had passed to the _novi
homines_ and _nobiles_, the latter of whom were in the last century
very incorrectly called patricians, especially by foreigners (the
French). This change has been known ever since the revival of learning.
The censorship remained forty years longer than the consulship in the
possession of the patricians; for as the elections for this were only
every five years, there were still men enough to fill it.
About the same time, the holding the ædileship by turns must have been
done away with; and certainly this office must of late have been a
heavy burthen upon the patricians, as it entailed considerable expense.
The tribuneship of the people had quite changed character; the tribune
holding arbitrary sway just like any tyrant. A tribune (C. Atinius
Labeo), a few years after Gracchus, wanted to have the censor Metellus
thrown from the Tarpeian rock for having excluded him from the senate;
and it was only with difficulty that his family succeeded in getting
another tribune to intercede for him. Such instances are not unseldom
met with, as the tribunes themselves no longer knew what their office
meant. It was very likely the same Atinius, who brought in the law that
the tribunes were _eo ipso_ senators, and could only be excluded by the
same rules as other senators.
TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS.
There was a time when the name of the Gracchi was cried down, when they
were looked upon as the leaders of a tyrannical onslaught upon the
property of others; and there was another time, when they had a renown
which would have certainly been most hateful to themselves. Both of
these opinions are now entirely exploded; and, although the complicated
system of the _ager publicus_ is not yet understood everywhere, still
I do not believe that any one in Germany--unless indeed it be in some
corner of Austria--holds the old views with regard to the Gracchi. The
French still cling a little to their false prejudices; but in America
my account of the matter is already the one generally received, as a
reviewer of my history in a North American periodical has especially
pointed out.
Tiberius Gracchus was the son of Tiberius Gracchus the elder who had
made the peace with the Celtiberians, and of Cornelia, the daughter of
the first Scipio Africanus, who was given in marriage to her husband,
not, as Livy says, by her father, but, after his death, by her family:
both of these were, even in the midst of the thorough corruption of
that age, acknowledged to have been people of the highest virtue,
in whom the olden times were living again. Of their many children,
few only remained alive--in fact, out of twelve not more than three,
namely the two brothers, Tiberius and Caius, and the daughter, who was
married to the younger Scipio (_Paulli fil._). The sons were brought
up under the eye of the mother by distinguished Greeks, and by a
Campanian, C. Blossius, who was a perfect Grecian, writing Greek, and
even composing poetry in Greek: he was, as we now know, the author of
Rhintonian comedies,[64] a proof of the flourishing state of Greek
literature at that time in Italy, of which Cicero also informs us. He
was the teacher and friend of Tiberius of whom he was somewhat the
elder, and a follower of Stoic philosophy, a system which in those
days was congenial to the aspirations of all generous minds, and was
particularly welcome to a nation like the Romans. When Tiberius, owing
to the great favour which he had with the people, had been raised step
by step to honours, and he had gained glory already at Carthage, where
with C. Fannius he was the first to mount the wall, he became a quæstor
and made the peace with Numantia. Its not being ratified greatly
exasperated him. Unfortunately, we have for this period only desultory
works from second or third hand, such as those of Appian and Plutarch:
the latter of these wrote the lives of the Gracchi with much feeling,
but without any knowledge of the true state of affairs, the moral part
in him, being, however, really beautiful; moreover, like Appian, he is
led astray by the gossip of any writer. Thus Plutarch allows himself
to be beguiled into the belief that the vanity of Tiberius had been
hurt by the repudiation of the peace; but of a soul such as that of
Tiberius, we may safely say that its motives for anger were different.
He had concluded the peace as an honest man, and to see it trampled
upon in defiance of all good faith, embittered him against the men who
then were in power. How a character like Gracchus in such times as
those must have felt bound to take in hand these dangerous πολιτεύματα,
may best be shown from the Servile war in Sicily, where the real canker
which lay at the root of the whole state of society is laid bare.
The _ager publicus_[65] was the land taken in war, of which the
ownership belonged to the commonwealth, but the possession was given
up to Roman citizens, or to foreigners, on the payment of certain
outgoings, such as the tithes on the produce of the arable land and
of the live stock; a _scriptura_ on the pasture land according to the
number of the cattle; and other things of the kind. By the Licinian
law[66] it had been enacted that no one should possess more than five
hundred _jugera_ of the _ager publicus_, but that he might transfer
the occupancy as if it were his property: yet the possessor was, after
all, only a precarious occupant, _a tenant at will_,[67] whom the real
owner might turn out, whenever he liked. If he possessed more than was
allowed by law, he was liable to punishment, and what was above the
quantity was to be confiscated: the state, however, might, of course,
at any time take back the whole.
The way in which the Licinian law was kept, was just what might be
expected under such circumstances: one or two incidents give us
light enough to see this. P. Postumius Megillus, for instance, was
fined for having employed the soldiers of the legion in converting a
large forest into arable land; Licinius Stolo himself was accused of
having tried by emancipating his son to evade his own law, as under
his name he held more than its clauses would have allowed him. The
amount of land was everywhere exceeded; and the very fact of these
estates being no freeholds, as they had the authority of the prætor
for their only title, so that, where they were situated, there existed
no jurisdiction, gave to those who wished to enrich themselves a great
means of driving out the small farmers, which was now done more and
more. Whilst in Germany, as well as in France and in England, the small
estates are worth much more taken singly, than when combined in large
masses; in the South, particularly in Italy, the larger properties are
more profitable, and thus the small estates go on decaying, and all
the land keeps falling into the hands of a few owners. Until the war
with Pyrrhus, an immense deal of land had been won, and so likewise
after the war with Hannibal: part of it was taken up for colonies, and
another share was left to the Latin allies, whose claims were thereby
satisfied, though even in this case also, the right of ownership seems
to have been reserved to the Roman commonwealth. Only in Samnium
and Apulia, and I believe also in Lucania,[68] had an extraordinary
distribution been made to the veterans of Scipio’s army; but besides
this, no general assignment had been made to the plebeians _viritim_,
as in olden times.
It is in the nature of things, that the husbandman is able to pay a
far higher rent for a piece of land, than we could, who do not till
it ourselves, provided, however, that no capital is needed for it. We
have to pay the labourer, whereas the other gets the double gain of the
labourer and of the farmer. I know the farming in Italy well, having
taken much trouble to become acquainted with all kinds of land-owners
and farmers there, particularly with the larger ones, who understand
husbandry very well. The latter manage their farms in an excellent
style, and yet they are a curse to the country: on the other hand, I
quite love the poor peasants. Among others, I knew of a small farmer
at Tivoli, who did his very utmost to get himself out of the clutches
of the usurers, and to free his bit of ground; on which occasion I
fully learnt how great the value of labour is in Italy, and what an
advantage it is there for a man to farm his own land. But as the money
is in very few hands, only indeed in those of the men of rank, the
small proprietor, if any ill luck befalls him, is unable to keep his
freehold, and therefore this class of men dwindles faster and faster
every year. The poor man, for instance, lived near the rich one; the
former in hard times had taxes to pay, but, having had losses owing
to murrain among the cattle and other visitations, he could not raise
the money: thus he borrowed from his wealthy neighbour, and as he had
no other pledge to offer but his farm, he had to pay a heavy rate of
interest. Nor was this the whole of his troubles: his son, perhaps,
served in a legion, in which case, if the father was taken ill and
had to keep labourers, he could not pay the interest; and now, if
his neighbour called upon him for the principal and interest, he must
needs give up to him the possession of his land at a low price. He
who is once in the fangs of the large proprietors, will never get out
again. And so Tib. Gracchus found the many small allotments on which
the soldiers had settled, either burthened with debt after the long
series of disasters during the late campaigns (in which the war-taxes
moreover were most heavily felt), or already fallen into the hands
of the rich. Such a change of property goes on increasing like an
avalanche. In Tivoli, the number of land-owners is now perhaps not a
fifth of what it was forty years back, and not one-fiftieth of what it
was four hundred years ago; as I have learned from an old survey of
the fifteenth century. I made inquiries to know what became of many
of the olive-yards there, which (in former times) belonged to certain
families in the town, and one by one have been got hold of by the rich.
Sonnino[69] has four thousand inhabitants, and some five or six men own
the whole of the land: all the rest are beggars and robbers.
By the Licinian law it was enacted, that on every five hundred
_jugera_, a certain number of free labourers (_cottagers_)[70] should
be employed, that slaves might not work on them. But the rule had
not been kept: thousands of slaves came in, as was also the case in
Portugal from the sixteenth century to Pombal’s days, when negro slaves
were so very cheap within the kingdom, owing to which indeed so many
mulattoes are found there. The condition of Italy was now this: on the
one hand, the number of Roman citizens had increased, partly--which
was desirable--from the allies, but chiefly in a worse way from the
freedmen, the common run of whom bore the brand of slavery; and on the
other hand, the numbers of the hereditary land-holders and land-owners
were dwindling fast. It is very likely that the first thought of
amending this state of things, came into the mind of Tib. Gracchus on
his return from Spain through Etruria, where he saw large tracts of
country with nothing but slaves, who worked at the ground in chains,
while the free-born men were begging and starving. The population of
Rome had become more and more a true rabble, and in the country the
poor increased at a fearful rate, an evil which alas! is now a growing
one in Europe. The Romans did not blind themselves to the condition in
which they were; they mourned over it, and acknowledged that, if the
Licinian law had been observed and the poor had been allowed to occupy
the land, there never would have been that wretchedness. Every body
wished, like the king[71] in Goethe’s play, that “all were otherwise;”
but no one had the courage to do anything. There is no doubt that just
after the war with Hannibal, it would not have been hard to stop the
mischief, and that was one of those momentous periods which sometimes
follow after great convulsions, and must be taken advantage of, or
else they are irrecoverably lost: one ought then to have created a
magistracy to watch over the way in which the Licinian law was kept,
and to distribute part of the conquered _ager publicus_, and to see
that the occupation was fairly managed. Since that time, seventy years
had passed, and every one must have looked blank at the very mention of
a reform. C. Lælius is said to have thought of it, but to have given
up the plan as impracticable; so that he got the surname of _Sapiens_.
This was either a nickname, or else _sapiens_ here means prudent; for
prudent it is not to stir up a wasp’s nest. There were now but few
great families indeed which did not possess far more than the lawful
quantity, and which did not keep more than a hundred head of cattle,
and five hundred sheep and goats, upon their estates: all these were
sure to be offended, if the Licinian law were carried out in all its
rigour. As our governments have now the right, when a lease is out, of
warning off a tenant on the crown-land, although his forefathers held
it perhaps for many years before him; thus also the Roman government
had never given up its right to the _ager publicus_, although it had
not exercised it for a long time. The law was quite clear; yet as it
had not been enforced for ages, it might be said on the other side,
that it was only common equity not to root out an old abuse at once,
and thus wound many interests. The rich might plead, that “when C.
Flaminius made his agrarian law to apply to the new conquests only,
he thereby tacitly acknowledged what had hitherto been held by right
of possession; moreover when the loan was contracted in the war with
Hannibal the _ager publicus_ was pledged to us, and has thus become
our property.” A hundred years had already passed since then; some of
the estates had also been laid waste during the war; in the full trust
that every one would remain in possession of what belonged to him, they
had planted them anew,[72] they had raised buildings on them, they had
drained fens: and now they were to sacrifice all this, and to be turned
out of what was their own.
Of purer intentions than Tiberius Gracchus, no man could ever have
been: even they have owned it, who a long time after, blinded by party
spirit, have railed against this undertaking; nay, Cicero himself,
whose generous heart always gets the better of him whenever he views
a subject with unprejudiced eyes, calls him _sanctissimus homo_. The
statesmen of old were not such as our fancy would generally lead us to
paint them; but they had the self-same ends in view as those of our
times: Tiberius Gracchus saw clearly, that, if things were to go on in
this way, utter ruin must follow, and Rome would fall into despotism.
Had he now wished to enforce the Licinian rogations to the very letter,
this would indeed have been just in law, but in reality most unfair.
He therefore laid down the rule, that every one should be allowed to
have, and that as freehold property, five hundred _jugera_ for himself,
and two hundred and fifty for every son who was still _in patria
potestate_, though as it seems, not for more than two of these (for
so must the passage in the Epitome of Livy be interpreted according
to the correct reading);[73] and moreover, that buildings erected on
that part of the land which was to be given up, should be valued,
and an indemnity paid to those who had owned them. Thus, instead of
infringing upon vested rights, he, on the contrary, converted a mere
tenure at will into a regular freehold which no man could touch. One
case, however, Gracchus had not considered: many had bought the _ager
publicus_ of the former occupant for ready money, or had taken it at
its value as their share of an inheritance; these could not be expected
to lose their capital. When this had happened, the overplus ought to
have been bought in at a fair price by the state, and then there would
have been nothing to say against the law: the great wealth of the state
would have certainly sufficed for this, as there could not, after all,
have been so many cases of people having more than a thousand _jugera_.
Five hundred _jugera_ are a very good-sized estate, as much as seventy
_rubbii_ are now, which is still looked upon as not a bad property in
Italy. I should not in that country wish for a larger one: one may get
from it in a fruitful district, if well managed, a net income of five
thousand crowns, merely by letting it out in farms. That the money
which was hoarded up in the treasury, could not have been better spent
than for such a purpose, is as clear as day. In this way it might have
become possible to remove from the city the _sentina rei publicæ_, the
disgrace of the Roman people, which weighed like a heavy burthen upon
it, and which always sold its votes in the _comitia_. To this class
allotments ought to have been given, but with the condition that they
should never be alienated, as otherwise they would have fallen again
into the hands of the rich. It is ever to be lamented that Gracchus did
not do this: however great the cost might have been, the state ought to
have borne it. In all likelihood he would have escaped the fate which
befell him, though indeed the hatred against him would always have been
bitter.
Gracchus is said also to have thought of widening the extent of the
Roman franchise; yet this is only dimly hinted at, as, generally
speaking, the accounts which we have of the whole of his undertaking
are so very scanty. He saw clearly that the middle class of the Roman
people had almost entirely disappeared, and that its restoration was
one of the principal wants of the time; and therefore he wished to
open the citizenship to the allies. This regeneration is quite in the
spirit of the old laws: its aim was to infuse fresh blood into the
higher orders, and to enlarge their numbers; just as in former times
the Licinian laws gave new life to the republic which was dwindling to
an oligarchy, and began the second brilliant epoch of Rome. There were
in Italy thirty Latin colonies, and in these there were many citizens
of great respectability, who might vote among the tribes in the Roman
assemblies, and who felt second only to the Romans, if not quite
their equals. These Latins actually now held the same rank which the
plebeians did two hundred and fifty years before: there was even much
more refinement in those towns than in Rome. Tiberius Gracchus wished
therefore to admit these to the full rights of Roman citizens, and he
likewise undoubtedly meant to grant the _suffragium_ to any _municipia
sine suffragio_ which at that time may have still existed.
On the side of Gracchus were many of the most eminent men, who
certainly were owners of large estates as well as the Scipios, but who
gave up their private advantage for the common good. There was even
his father-in-law Appius Claudius, who in other respects was just as
proud as any of his forefathers, but who in this behaved as Appius
Claudius Cæcus had done in his most glorious moments; moreover, there
was the great P. Mucius Scævola who was then consul; there was also
the father-in-law of his brother, P. Licinius Crassus, and others.
The rage which broke out against Tib. Gracchus in the senate, is
difficult to describe; it went beyond all the bounds of decency. Men of
rank, when they are the champions of oligarchy, as soon as ever their
interests are touched, not only display the same greedy covetousness
as the worst bred, but likewise a fury which one could hardly have
believed. Hitherto no one had lost sight of what was due to Gracchus
and his family: he enjoyed the same respect among the Romans, as
among barbarians; every one acknowledged his virtue, and even those
who looked upon all virtue as folly, were forced to own that he was
afflicted with that folly. But now the heroes of triumphs, and the
first men of the state, railed against him as a mutinous fellow who was
actuated by the most detestable motives. P. Cornelius Nasica, he who
was grandson of him who in the war with Hannibal had been declared to
be the most virtuous of men; and son of Scipio Nasica, who was likewise
said to have been an example to the whole nation, and who had tried
hard to bring back the good ways of the olden time; a man who himself
also was deemed to be the very soul of honour, and perhaps deserved
to be so in many respects--became hand and glove with the infamous Q.
Pompeius. From this it does not follow that he was a knave; it may be
that, hardened in his oligarchical notions, he really saw Ti. Gracchus
as he fancied him to be. The senate did not possess the same means
which the patricians once had against the plebeians: it had not the
old negative of the curies, the Hortensian law having conceded to the
tribes the most unbounded power of legislation, so that the senate
could not step in with a senatus consultum. By the strangest anomaly,
the tribunes could now only check each other, since there was no veto
where it would have been most needed: the only means of defeating a law
was the intercession of a tribune.