No account of the heroes of Roman History would be complete or truthful
which left out the women. Although the Roman woman was not supposed to
take any share in public affairs, although she was, until she married,
subject to the authority of her father, and afterwards to that of her
husband, there are innumerable stories which show how great was the real
part played by women in Roman life, even in quite early times. They were
often as well educated as the men, sometimes better.
This was clearly the case with Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio
Africanus, and wife of Tiberius Gracchus the elder. Left a widow when
the eldest of her three children, named Tiberius after his father, was
but a lad, she conducted their training herself. From her her sons and
daughter learned to be simple and hardy in their habits, truthful and
upright in their minds, and to care for things of the spirit rather than
of the body, as she did herself. When her friends boasted to her of the
rich furnishing of their houses, of their robes of silk, their ornaments
and jewels, Cornelia would turn to her children and say, 'These are my
treasures.' She taught Tiberius and Caius and their sister that what
mattered was not what a man had but what he was. They were rich. They
bore an honoured name. But these things would not give honour unless
they had the soul of honour in themselves. They must strive not for
their own pleasure or comfort or even for their own personal glory, but
to live a life of true service to their fellow citizens. And that meant
that they must see things as they were, and not be contented with the
names people gave them. They wanted to see Rome great and to help it to
grow greater. She taught them that a city, like a man, was great only
when it strove for right and justice. Mere wealth and power did not make
it so.
These thoughts sank into the minds of the young Gracchi. As they grew up
they cared for Greek learning, art, and literature, poetry, and all the
things that make life beautiful, as Scipio Aemilianus and Laelius did;
but it troubled them, as it had not troubled Scipio, that these good
things reached only the few, while the great body of the people had no
share in them at all. To them, as once to Caius Flaminius, it seemed
wrong as well as dangerous that Rome should be made up, as they saw that
it was, of two sorts of people, ever more and more separated from each
other; the few who had everything and the many who had nothing. They
could not feel, as Coriolanus had done, as Fabius had done, as Cato did,
and as Scipio Aemilianus, it seemed to them, was doing more and more,
that all good was to be found among the well-to-do and cultured few, and
that what happened to the many did not matter. It seemed to them that it
did matter if the many were poor, ignorant, stupid. It was not necessary
that they should be so. They were ignorant and stupid because they were
poor. If their lot were less hard they might be clever and good, or at
any rate better than at present.
So it seemed to Tiberius Gracchus and later to his younger brother
Caius, as they looked at what they saw in the light of what Cornelia had
taught them. They could not find life beautiful while so many people
were wretched, or feel that Rome was the city of their dreams, however
rich and powerful it might be, however many lands across the seas owned
its sway, so long as the ordinary men who served as soldiers in Rome's
armies, the ordinary women who kept their homes and brought up their
children, were miserable.
The great wars which brought glory to generals and wealth and pride to
Rome actually made the poor more miserable, for many reasons, and for
two in particular. One was the growing number of slaves in the city.
After every campaign thousands of prisoners were taken and these
prisoners were not given back at the end of the war; they became the
slaves of the conqueror. There were so many slaves in Rome after the
wars with Sicily, Carthage, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, that it was by no
means easy for the ordinary Roman to get work. The other reason was the
difficulty of getting land. Once, before the long wars, Italy had been a
country of small farmers and peasants who lived on a little piece of
land, sometimes rented and sometimes their own, and cultivated it. There
were very few of these happy farmers now. The men had been called away
to the wars; many never came back. What happened was this. While the man
was away at the wars, his wife, with children to look after, and less
strong than he, could seldom cultivate the land fully. Even if she
managed to keep the children fed, she had no money or produce over with
which to pay the rent. Then the landlord would turn her out and take the
plot and add it to his own estate. This was happening all over Italy. If
the owner were not turned out, the land went to rack and ruin from
neglect. Thus many a soldier, when he did come back, found his home
gone. Others, weary, worn, and perhaps disabled after long years of the
hardships of war, had neither the strength nor energy to set to the
heavy work of digging and preparing land that had been neglected for
years. At the same time the common lands, which were supposed to belong
to the whole people, who might graze their cattle or cut wood on them,
were taken in bit by bit by the big landlords in the war years. Thus men
who wanted land could not get it. Big estates grew bigger, and they were
run largely by slave-labour. The independent husbandman, who had been
the backbone of the Roman army, was vanishing. A few people began, in
Scipio's day, to be worried about this question of the land, because
they saw that if the peasants and farmers disappeared, the best soldiers
would disappear also.
All this was well known; it had been going on for long. People talked,
but nothing was done. Sometimes, however, there comes a man who has the
power to see and be moved to action by a thing which most people, out of
habit or laziness, take as a matter of course. Tiberius Gracchus was
such a man. In his young manhood he was quiet, rather shy, and very
silent; he thought a great deal and said little about it. Some people
regarded him as slow. His was the slowness of a mind that takes a long
time to be sure of a thing but, once sure, never lets go. When he did
speak, men observed that his remarks were just and well considered and
went to the heart of the matter. His devotion to duty was obvious; as a
soldier he won the respect and love of his men by his unvarying fairness
of temper and the fact that he never asked them to take a risk or bear a
hardship that he did not share himself. And he acquired, too,
a reputation for integrity which was, as Plutarch tells us, of infinite
value.
_Tiberius Gracchus. The Value of a Reputation for Integrity_
After the Libyan expedition Gracchus was elected quaestor, and it
was his lot to serve against the Numantines under the Consul Gaius
Mancinus, who had some good qualities, but was the most
unfortunate of Roman generals. Thus unexpected situations and
reverses in the field brought more clearly into light, not only
the ability and courage of Tiberius, but--what was more
remarkable--his respect and regard for his superior, who was so
crushed by disaster that he hardly knew whether he was in command
or not. After some decisive defeats Mancinus left his camp and
attempted to retire by night, but the Numantines, being aware of
his movements, at once occupied the camp, fell upon his troops as
they fled, made havoc of the rear, and drove the whole army on to
difficult ground, from which it was impossible to escape.
Whereupon, in despair of forcing a way into safety, he sent envoys
with proposals for a truce and conditions of peace. The enemy
replied that they trusted no one except Tiberius and insisted that
he should be sent to them. This attitude was partly due to their
high opinion of Tiberius, whose reputation was familiar to all,
partly to the memory of his father, who after fighting against the
Spanish tribes and subduing many of them settled terms of peace
with the Numantines and persuaded the Roman people strictly to
confirm and keep them. Thus it came about that Tiberius was sent;
and after some give and take in negotiations he made a treaty, and
beyond question saved twenty thousand Roman citizens, besides
attendants and camp followers.
Plutarch, liii. 5.
As Tiberius travelled through Italy on his way to the wars in Spain he
looked at the condition of the people of his own country, thought of the
fortunes of his own soldiers, and was moved to indignation and distress
by what he saw. On the banners carried into battle, above the public
buildings, at the head of the laws and decrees issued by the Government,
there stood the letters 'S.P.Q.R.'--the Senate and People of Rome. The
senators, he knew, were rich and growing richer. The name of Rome was
carried far and wide. But what of the people? As Tiberius himself said,
'The wild beasts of Italy have their lairs and hiding places, but those
who fight and die for Italy wander homeless with their wives and
children and have nothing that they can call their own except the air
and sunlight.'
Tiberius saw and felt. But seeing and feeling were not enough. He
determined to act. The land question, the homelessness and poverty of
the people, and the army question were, as he saw it, really part of the
same. He resolved to deal with them together.
When he came back from his second term of service in Spain (134) he got
himself elected as one of the tribunes of the people. Almost at once he
introduced his Land Bill. The idea of this Bill was simple. All over
Italy the State of Rome owned great estates. But for years back the
estates had either been let to or occupied by the big landowners or
wealthy men of Rome. They were in possession. But the lands did not
belong to them. There was no reason in law or justice why the Republic
should not take back and use what was its own. These lands, cut up into
small holdings, would provide a means of livelihood to hundreds of
thousands of peasant proprietors. The miserable poverty of Rome could be
swept away. A new race would grow up.
[Illustration: COSTUME. THE ROMAN TOGA,
from a terra-cotta in the British Museum]
The Bill was a reasonable one. It was received with enthusiasm by the
poorer classes. Moderate men saw that it was a sincere effort to tackle
a state of things they knew and deplored. It was necessary to do
something for the poor, they knew; they were glad of any plan which
promised to reduce the luxury and display of the rich. But the big
landowners, whose estates were going to be divided, who were being
called upon to give back what, after all, had never been their own, were
furious. They were ready to go to any lengths to defeat the Bill. To
them Tiberius was a dangerous man, a traitor to his own class. Since
they were in a minority they knew that if the matter came to a vote they
would be defeated. Feeling grew more excited as the voting day drew
near. Tiberius had become the darling of the people; but he had to go
about armed for fear of an attack from the landlords' party. At last the
latter hit on an ingenious device. The tribunes, the magistrates who
represented the poor classes, or plebeians as they were called, were ten
in number, one to represent each of the original ten tribes. If one of
them chose he could stop anything the others wanted to do by saying
'Veto'--I forbid. This power was intended to be used sparingly and only
in times of grave danger. Originally, indeed, the tribune could only say
Veto on religious grounds; because having inspected the omens he saw
something which showed that the gods were unfavourable. The landlords,
however, now persuaded Octavius, one of the colleagues of Tiberius, to
say Veto to his Land Bill. Tiberius understood what had happened. He
tried to persuade Octavius to give way. In vain. Then, as happens with
men who appear very quiet and hard to move, his anger, which had been
slowly mounting, burst out. He went down to the assembly of the people
and made a powerful attack upon Octavius. How could a man be said to
represent the people, he asked, to be a tribune of the people, who was
doing his best to prevent a measure which the people desired and which
was altogether for their good? There was a scene of great excitement.
Tiberius called upon Octavius to resign. Octavius refused. Then Tiberius
called for the election of another tribune in Octavius's place. This was
against all rule and order. Nevertheless it was done. Octavius was
removed. A new tribune was elected in his stead. Amid great rejoicing
the Land Bill was passed.
The landlords were full of a deep bitterness against Tiberius and
accused him of all kinds of things. They said that he wanted to upset
the State and tear up the laws because he had passed a Bill taking from
them a portion of their lands which had never really belonged to them.
He, however, went quietly on with his work. A committee was set up, on
which were both Tiberius and his brilliant young brother Caius, to
divide the common land and give it out in lots to the citizens who
needed and could work it. This was a long task. At the end of the year
Gracchus ceased to be tribune. His work was not finished. The Senate had
refused to give the Land Commission any money for their expenses and was
putting every kind of difficulty in the way of their getting on with
their task. Moreover, in view of the hatred of the landlords Gracchus
himself, as a private person, was hardly safe. Therefore, when the
election time came he asked to be chosen as tribune again.
A great many of the citizens who had come in from the country districts
to vote for the Land Bill had gone back again; others had left Rome to
prepare for or take up the new allotments. The charges made against
Gracchus made timid people afraid; they were worried when it was said
that a man could not legally be elected tribune for two years running.
They were still further alarmed by Gracchus's own speeches. Feeling ran
very high on both sides, and it was plain that the election day would
not go off without some disturbance.
Rioting, indeed, broke out in the Capitol almost before the sun rose and
fighting with sticks and stones between those who wanted Tiberius
elected and those who did not. As always happens, many joined in who
neither knew nor cared what the trouble was all about. When Tiberius
himself appeared he raised his hand to summon his friends to gather
round him. This was reported to the Senate by a man who cried, 'Tiberius
Gracchus has raised his hand to his head: he is asking the citizens to
crown him.' On this Nasica, a senator who hated Gracchus, demanded that
he should be put to death as a traitor. When the consul refused Nasica
rushed out with a body of senators and, charging the people who stood
round Tiberius, broke through and killed him almost at once (133). In
the panic many others were slain and trampled underfoot. The body of
Gracchus was cast into the Tiber. Many of his supporters were
imprisoned. Others had all their property taken away.
The senators doubtless hoped that, Tiberius dead, his work would soon be
forgotten. But the evils he had tried to remedy remained. And abroad
serving in the army was his brother Caius, who did not forget. 'Whither
can I go?' said Caius. 'What place is there for me in Rome? The Capitol
reeks with my brother's blood. In my home my mother sits weeping and
lamenting for her murdered son.' His was a nature very different from
his brother's. Tiberius was quiet, gentle, kindly, naturally rather
dreamy; a man who in happier times would have been content with the
uneventful life of a gentleman. Caius was fiery and passionate, filled
with an energy that must have found some outlet for itself in whatever
circumstances he had lived. He loved his brother and his death filled
his heart with glowing anger and a fixed determination that his work and
life should not be wasted. He would carry out Tiberius's ideals; and
carry them farther than Tiberius had ever dreamed.
Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than Tiberius and a man of more
remarkable character and more brilliant gifts than his brother. The
sense of a great wrong made Tiberius burn with indignation, and in his
indignation he took to politics; Caius had a natural genius for
politics. His mind ranged forward into the future; whereas Tiberius
worked blindly, in the dark, Caius knew where he wanted to go. And he
understood men as his brother had never done. Without any of the shy
aloofness that at times gave Tiberius the appearance of more strength
than he really possessed, Caius made people like him without moving away
by so much as an inch from the purpose he had in mind. That purpose was
a change far more revolutionary than Tiberius had dreamed of.
Only twenty years of age at the time of his brother's murder, Caius
spent the next ten years in public service. Like Aemilianus he held it
every man's duty to work for the Republic. But while Aemilianus thought
that for such work obedience, faithfulness, courage, temperance were all
that were required of a man, Caius, who had these virtues in a high
degree, had also an active questioning mind. It did not seem to him that
the men who ruled the State were wise or just or generous enough to lay
down, once for all, the lines on which it was to move for ever. The
citizen had a duty to the Republic beyond that of loyal and obedient
devotion. He must use not only his arm in its service but his mind also.
He must help it to grow; make Rome worthy of the greatness about which
people talked so lightly and easily. The greatness had been won at a
fearful price. Hundreds of thousands of Roman soldiers had laid down
their lives to make it; hundreds of thousands more had given their best
years to its service, asking no reward but that the Republic should
stand safe. It could, Caius thought, only be safe, only be great in so
far as it became more and more the city of free men in fact as well as
name.
With such thoughts as these moving in his mind he turned in loathing
from the life of the young Roman noble of his own age and class. He had
no use for personal luxury; wine and fine clothes and a gorgeous house
in which to live a life of ease and idleness--these things were nothing
to him. While serving abroad in Spain, Sardinia, and elsewhere, he
shared the hardships of his soldiers, and spent his own money in the
effort to make their hard lot less severe. Such leisure as he had was
occupied in reading. In this way he disciplined and fortified his mind.
Moreover, Caius had before him a fixed purpose, a clearly determined
work in life. For that he was preparing. One of his weapons was to be
the art of speech. He studied, therefore, particularly the works of the
great Greek orators. He wanted to learn, and he did learn, how to use
words to persuade men and impel them to action. He made himself one of
the greatest orators Rome knew. His speeches are lost, but accounts of
them remain, and they tell how Caius could set his hearers on fire, stir
them to tears or anger.
[Illustration: ELABORATE LAMP
to show the luxury of later times]
When, nine years after Tiberius's death, Caius Gracchus came back to
Rome (124), he found that men were waiting eagerly for him. Tiberius had
not been forgotten. The poor hoped, the rich feared that Caius had come
as his avenger. When he stood for the tribuneship the party in the
Senate that had thwarted and finally murdered Tiberius strained every
nerve to prevent Caius's election. They did not wait to hear what his
plans were. They knew that he belonged to the men of the new generation
who wanted far-reaching changes, and they believed that any change must
be at their expense. They at once began attacking Caius. They accused
him of coming home before his time of service abroad was up. They even
declared that he, the most scrupulously honest and disinterested of men,
had made more money than he ought to have done from the various posts he
had held. Caius turned on them. He had already served twelve years in
the army. As for making money: 'I am the only man who went out with a
full purse and returned with an empty one. Others took out casks of wine
for themselves, and when they had emptied them brought the casks back
filled with gold and silver.' He lived not in the rich quarter of Rome
among the high-born and wealthy, but among the poor near the Forum. He
was elected tribune by an overwhelming majority and at once set to work.
His main idea was a really great and original one; nothing less than the
extension of Roman citizenship, in so far as voting rights went, to the
people of Italy. The Italians were called to serve in Rome's armies. The
best soldiers, indeed, had always come from outside the capital. The
Italians paid heavier taxes; they ought to share in the benefits of Rome
and have a voice in its government. Caius Gracchus indeed dreamed of
making the Government of Rome a real democracy. It was a magnificent
dream; but the people were not ready for it. In fact it was only after a
bitter war that the Italians won from the Romans the right to vote.
Gracchus knew that his plan could not be carried through at once; but he
had worked out a series of Bills which would, he believed, pave the way
for it. Until they were through he said nothing of his great scheme.
_Caius Gracchus. The varied Activities of a popular Leader_
When the people had not only passed this law, but actually
commissioned Gracchus to appoint the judges from the Order of the
Knights, he became invested with a kind of royal authority, and
even the senators were ready to listen to his counsel. When he
gave it, he always proposed something to their credit, as, for
example, a most just and honourable decree about the corn which
the proconsul Fabius had sent from Spain. He persuaded the Senate
to sell the corn and return the money to the cities from which it
came, and furthermore to censure Fabius for making his rule
burdensome and unendurable to the inhabitants; and this brought
him great reputation and popularity in the provinces. He proposed,
too, to send out colonies and to make roads and to build
granaries, personally managing and controlling all these
undertakings, never failing in attention to a mass of details, but
with extraordinary quickness and application working out each task
as if it alone engaged his efforts, with the result that even
those who hated and feared him were astounded at his universal
thoroughness and efficiency. Most people on meeting him were
surprised to see him surrounded by contractors, craftsmen,
ambassadors, commanders, soldiers, and scholars. Treating them all
with an easy good nature, being at once kind and dignified, and
suiting himself to the character of the individual, he proved that
it was gross slander to call him dictatorial, or presumptuous, or
violent. Thus his gift for popular leadership was shown rather in
personal association and conduct than in public speeches.
Plutarch, liv. 6.
He was a tremendous worker and all his plans were thought out to the
smallest detail. They were not vague ideas on paper. He began on his
land policy. If it were to have any chance of being carried he must, he
saw, break the solid majority of the landowning classes and their
friends. The most important of these friends were the class known as the
Knights, or Equestrian Order. The Senate was composed of men selected
from among those who had held one of the high offices of State. Senators
might not take part in business, but they alone served as jurors to try
the cases which concerned people who carried it on, and particularly
those who carried on one important kind of business, that of
tax-collecting in the provinces. This was largely in the hands of the
knights. Their name went back to the days of the old constitution when
men of a certain wealth served in the cavalry, and were given votes as
so serving. The so-called Equestrian Order had greatly grown in number.
They were the money-makers, financiers, capitalists of Rome. As against
changes in the land system they might stand with the Senate, but when
Caius Gracchus proposed that the juries which tried people for political
offences should be drawn not from the Senate, but from the knights, he
won their support against it. He then turned to win that of the people
by a new Corn Law which arranged that the Government should buy corn
wholesale and supply it to the Roman people at a fixed low price. From
this he turned to other constructive measures. He revived his brother's
Land Laws; started a great road-building scheme; and worked out a plan
for the reorganization of the army. Over the detailed working out of all
these big plans he watched himself with the eye of a practical man whom
nothing escaped. For Caius, though his ideas were large and
far-reaching, and his mind grasped problems that the ordinary Roman
politician did not begin to see, was no dreamer. He was an organizer of
consummate ability and possessed a remarkable knowledge of facts and of
men. His house became a sort of great Government office, buzzing with
hard work from morning until night.
In the following year he was re-elected and at once moved on to the next
stage in his policy, a big scheme of land settlement and colonization,
very much on the lines now worked by Canada and our other Colonies who
assist intending settlers by giving them cheap passages out and plots of
land in new territories. This done, he launched his plan of granting
Roman citizenship to the Italians.
Here, however, he came into collision with rich and poor at once. The
ordinary Roman citizen was jealous of his rights and did not want to
share them. Caius's popularity began to fall off at once. The idea of
Italy a nation was one for which the Romans were not ready. They had
been angry when Tiberius wanted to give farms to the Italians; Caius's
plan of giving them votes and thereby a share in the games, cheap corn,
and other joys of Roman life, made them far more angry. They despised
the Italians and cared nothing for their grievances. Caius could not
stir them to any sympathy.
The leaders of the Senatorial party realized at once what had happened,
and determined to strike. An outbreak of disorder at a meeting at which
Caius was speaking gave them their chance. The consul declared that the
State was in danger and proclaimed a state of siege in the city. Then he
went out with armed bands and in the streets Caius himself and a number
of his supporters were cut down and slain (121).
Thus both Caius and Tiberius Gracchus perished. Cornelia their mother
left Rome and went to live at Misenum. Of her sons she spoke as of two
heroes who had given their lives for their country. Her pride in them
remained untarnished, for they had died true to the things in which they
believed. Indeed, many years had not passed before statues to the
brothers were set up in the public places in Rome and offerings brought
there by the people who realized, too late, how greatly both Tiberius
and Caius had served them. Had their work been carried through, Rome
might have been spared the terrible disasters that came upon the city in
the next half-century. As it was, the senators breathed with relief that
Caius had followed his brother to a bloody grave; they did not see that
those who opposed reform were preparing the way for revolution and civil
war.