tribune, to which he had been elected, and pledged himself to the
abolition of crying abuses. His first movement was in the direction of
agrarian legislation. He proposed to vest all public lands in the hands
of three commissioners [triumviri], who were to distribute the public
lands, at that time largely monopolized by the wealthy, to all citizens
in needy circumstances. The bill met with bitter opposition from the
rich landholders, but was eventually passed, and Gracchus rose to the
summit of popular power. He also brought forward a measure limiting the
necessary period of military service; a second bill was drawn up by him
for the reformation of the law courts, and a third established a right
of appeal from the law courts to the popular assembly. These measures
were afterward carried by his brother Caius. Tiberius Gracchus was
killed in a tumult which was raised in the Forum by the nobles and their
partisans, and three hundred of his followers lost their lives in the
fray.
Caius Gracchus, his brother, returned to Rome B.C. 124 from Sardinia,
where he had been engaged in subduing the mountaineers. For ten years he
had kept aloof from public life, but was at once elected tribune, in the
discharge of which office he showed distinguished powers as an orator.
He brought forth the important measures known as the Sempronian Laws,
the provisions of which were quite revolutionary in character. The first
of these laws renewed and extended the agrarian laws of his brother and
instituted new colonies in Italy and the provinces. By the second
Sempronian law the State undertook to furnish corn at a low price to all
Roman citizens.
Other measures aimed at diminishing the great administrative power of
the senate, which had so far monopolized all judicial offices. By the
law of Gracchus the administration of justice was entirely transferred
to a body of three hundred persons who possessed the equestrian rate of
property. The Sempronian law for the assignment of consular provinces,
which hitherto had been left to the senate, made the allotment of two
designated provinces to be decided by the newly elected consuls
themselves. The power of the senate was also crippled by the law of
Gracchus in which he transferred to the tribunes the burden of improving
the roads of Italy, contracts for which had hitherto been awarded by the
censor under the approval of the senate. These movements were all in the
direction of increasing popular and democratic power, and the work of
the Gracchi tended to the extension of political freedom. In the history
of politics these social struggles are among the most important events
illustrative of the gradual dawn of civil liberty among a people which
had been dominated and oppressed by a selfish aristocracy.)
The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile class and the
proletariat; primarily on the latter, which in this conflict--wherein
neither side had any military reserve--acted, as it were, the part of an
army. It was clear that the senate was not powerful enough to wrest
either from the merchants or from the proletariat their new privileges;
any attempt to assail the corn laws or the new jury arrangement would
have led under a somewhat grosser or somewhat more civilized form to a
street riot, in presence of which the senate was utterly defenceless.
But it was no less clear that Gracchus himself and these merchants and
proletarians were only kept together by mutual advantage, and that the
men of material interests were ready to accept their posts, and the
populace, strictly so called, its bread, quite as well from any other as
from Caius Gracchus.
The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least, immovably
firm, with the exception of a single one--his own supremacy. The
weakness of the latter lay in the fact that in the constitution of
Gracchus there was no relation of allegiance subsisting at all between
the chief and the army; and, while the new constitution possessed all
other elements of vitality, it lacked one--the moral tie between ruler
and ruled, without which every state rests on a pedestal of clay. In the
rejection of the proposal to admit the Latins to the franchise it had
been demonstrated with decisive clearness that the multitude in fact
never voted for Gracchus, but always simply for itself. The aristocracy
conceived the plan of offering battle to the author of the corn
largesses and land assignations on his own ground.
As a matter of course the senate offered to the proletariat not merely
the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and
otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate, the
tribune of the people, Marcus Livius Drusus, proposed to relieve those
who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent imposed on
them, and to declare their allotments to be free and alienable property;
and, further, to provide for the proletariat not in transmarine, but in
twelve Italian, colonies, each of three thousand colonists, for the
planting of which the people might nominate suitable men; only Drusus
himself declined--in contrast with the family complexion of the Gracchan
commission--to take part in this honorable duty. Presumably the Latins
were named as those who would have to bear the costs of the plan, for
there does not appear to have existed then in Italy other occupied
domain land of any extent save that which was enjoyed by them.
We find isolated enactments of Drusus--such as the regulation that the
punishment of scourging might only be inflicted on the Latin soldier by
the Latin officer set over him, and not by the Roman officer--which were
to all appearance intended to indemnify the Latins for other losses. The
plan was not the most refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear; the
endeavor to draw the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariat
still closer by their exercising jointly a tyranny over the Latins was
too transparent; the inquiry suggested itself too readily.
In what part of the peninsula, now that the Italian domains had been
mainly given away already--even granting that the whole domains assigned
to the Latins were confiscated--was the occupied domain land requisite
for the formation of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess
communities to be discovered? Lastly, the declaration of Drusus that he
would have nothing to do with the execution of his law was so dreadfully
prudent as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite
suited to the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the
additional and perhaps decisive consideration that Gracchus, on whose
personal influence everything depended, was just then establishing the
Carthaginian colony in Africa, and that his lieutenant in the capital,
Marcus Flaccus, played into the hands of his opponents by his vehement
and maladroit acts. The "people" accordingly ratified the Livian laws as
readily as it had before ratified the Sempronian. It then as usual
repaid its latest by inflicting a gentle blow on its earlier benefactor,
declining to reëlect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate
for the tribunate for the year B.C. 120. On this occasion, however,
there are alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the
tribune presiding at the election, who had been offended by Gracchus.
Thus the foundation of his despotism gave way beneath him. A second blow
was inflicted on him by the consular elections, which not only proved,
in a general sense, adverse to the democracy, but which placed at the
head of the State Lucius Opimius, one of the least scrupulous chiefs of
the strict aristocratic party and a man firmly resolved to get rid of
their dangerous antagonist at the earliest opportunity. Such an
opportunity soon occurred. On the 10th of December, B.C. 121, Gracchus
ceased to be tribune of the people. On the 1st of January, B.C. 120,
Opimius entered upon his office.
The first attack, as was fair, was directed against the most useful and
the most unpopular measure of Gracchus, the reëstablishment of Carthage,
while the transmarine colonies had hitherto been only indirectly
assailed through the greater allurements of the Italian. African hyenas,
it was now alleged, dug up the newly placed boundary stones of Carthage,
and the Roman priests when requested certified that such signs and
portents ought to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site
accursed by the gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience
compelled to have a law proposed which prohibited the planting of the
colony of Sunonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to
establish it was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day
of voting at the Capitol, whither the burgesses were convoked, with a
view to procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law.
He wished to shun acts of violence that he might not himself supply his
opponents with the pretext which they sought, but he had not been able
to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans--who remembered the
catastrophe of Tiberius, and were well acquainted with the designs of
the aristocracy--from appearing in arms, fearing that, amid the immense
excitement on both sides, quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul
Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the
Capitoline temple, one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony.
Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hands, haughtily
ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he
would lay hands on Caius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his
sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly
sought to address the people and to disclaim the responsibility for the
sacreligious murder; he only furnished his antagonists with a further
formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in the
confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking to the
people--an offence for which an obsolete statute, originating at the
time of the old dissensions between the orders (I. 353), had prescribed
the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to put
down by force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the
republican constitution, as they were fond of designating the events of
this day. He himself passed the night in the temple of Castor in the
Forum. At early dawn the Capitol was filled with Cretan archers, the
senate house and Forum with the men of the government party (the
senators and that section of the _equites_ adhering to them), who by
order of the consul had all appeared in arms, each attended by two armed
slaves. None of the aristocracy was absent; even the aged and venerable
Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with shield and
sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in the Spanish
wars, Decimus Brutus, was intrusted with the command of the armed force;
the senate assembled in the senate house. The bier with the corpse of
Antullius was deposited in front of it, the senate as if surprised
appeared _en masse_ at the door in order to view the dead body, and then
retired to determine what should be done.
The leaders of the democracy had gone from the Capitol to their houses;
Marcus Flaccus had spent the night in preparing for the war in the
streets, while Gracchus apparently disdained to strive with destiny.
Next morning when they learned of the preparations made by their
opponents at the Capitol and the Forum, both proceeded to the Aventine,
the old stronghold of the popular party in the struggles between the
patricians and the plebeians. Gracchus went thither silent and unarmed.
Flaccus called the slaves to arms and intrenched himself in the temple
of Diana, while he at the same time sent his younger son Quintus to the
enemy's camp in order if possible to arrange a compromise. The latter
returned with the announcement that the aristocracy demanded
unconditional surrender. At the same time he brought a summons from the
senate to Gracchus and Flaccus to appear before it and to answer for
their violation of the majesty of the tribunes.
Gracchus wished to comply with the summons, but Flaccus prevented him
from doing so, and repeated the equally weak and mistaken attempt to
move such antagonists to a compromise. When instead of the two cited
leaders the young Quintus Flaccus once more presented himself alone, the
consul treated their refusal to appear as the beginning of open
insurrection against the Government. He ordered the messenger to be
arrested and gave the signal for attack on the Aventine, while at the
same time he caused proclamations to be made in the streets that the
Government would give to whomsoever should bring the head of Gracchus or
of Flaccus its literal weight in gold; and that they would guarantee
complete indemnity to everyone who should leave the Aventine before the
beginning of the conflict. The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned;
the valiant nobility in conjunction with the Cretans and the slaves
stormed the almost undefended mount, and killed all whom they
found--about two hundred and fifty persons, mostly of humble rank.
Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of concealment, where
they were soon afterward hunted out and put to death. Gracchus had at
the beginning of the conflict retired into the temple of Minerva and was
there about to pierce himself with his sword when his friend Publius
Laetorius seized his arm and besought him to preserve himself, if
possible, for better times.
Gracchus was induced to make an attempt to escape to the other bank of
the Tiber, but when hastening down the hill he fell and sprained his
foot. To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned, and
facing his pursuers allowed themselves to be cut down. As Marcus
Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine; Publius Laetorius
at the bridge over the Tiber--where Horatius Cocles was said to have
once withstood, singly, the Etruscan army--so Gracchus, attended only by
his slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber.
There, in the grove of Furrina, afterward were found the two dead
bodies. It seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master, and
then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over to
the Government as required. The stipulated price, and more, was paid to
Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of
Gracchus; while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were
sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into the
river, and the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of
the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of
Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as three thousand of them
are said to have been strangled in prison, among whom was Quintus
Flaccus, eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict,
and was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable
disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol, where the altar
consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace (I.
382), and other shrines--erected on similar occasions to Concord--were
situated, the small chapels were pulled down, and out of the property of
the killed or condemned traitors--which was confiscated, even to the
portions of their wives--a new and splendid temple of Concord, with the
basilica belonging to it, was erected in accordance with a decree of the
senate by the consul Lucius Opimius.
Certainly it was an act in accordance with the spirit of the age to
remove the memorials of the old and to inaugurate a new Concord over the
remains of the three grandsons of Zama, all of whom--first, Tiberius
Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the
mightiest, Caius Gracchus--had now been engulfed by the revolution. The
memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was not
allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son; but the
passionate attachment which very many had felt toward the two noble
brothers, and especially toward Caius, during their life, was touchingly
displayed also after their death, in the almost religious veneration
which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of the police,
continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where they had fallen.
CAESAR CONQUERS GAUL[68]
B.C. 58-50
NAPOLEON III
[Footnote 68: From Louis Napoleon's Julius Caesar, by permission of
Harper & Brothers.]
(In Caesar's military performances the Gallic war plays the most
important part, as shown in his _Commentaries_, his sole extant literary
work and almost the only authority for this part of Roman history.
Cisalpine Gaul--that portion lying on the southern or Italian side of
the Alps--came partly under the dominion of Rome as early as B.C. 282,
when a Roman colony was founded at Sena Gallica. This division of Gaul
was wholly conquered by B.C. 191; and in B.C. 43, having been made a
Roman province, it became a part of Italy.
Transalpine Gaul--that part lying north and northwest of the Alps from
Rome--comprised in Caesar's day three divisions: Aquitaine to the
southwest, Celtic Gaul in the middle, and Belgic Gaul to the northwest.
The region was inhabited by various tribes having neither unity of race
nor of customs whereby nationality becomes distinguished. Toward the
close of the second century B.C. the Romans made their first settlements
in Transalpine Gaul, in the southeastern part. At the time when Caesar
became proconsul in Gaul, B.C. 58, the province was in a state of
tranquillity, but Fortune seemed determined that he should have great
opportunities for the display of his military genius, and, when Asia had
been subdued by Pompey, "conferred what remained to be done in Europe
upon Caesar." The attempt of the Helvetii to leave their homes in the
Alps for new dwelling-places in Gaul served him as an occasion for war.
As they were crossing the Arar [now Saone] he attacked and routed them,
later defeated them again, and at last drove them back to their own
country.
The story of the long war, with its various campaigns, has become
familiar to the world's readers through the masterly account of Caesar
himself, known to "every schoolboy" who advances to the dignity of
classical studies. In the end the country between the Pyrenees and the
Rhine was subjugated, and for several centuries it remained a Roman
province.
At the time when the history is taken up in the following narrative by
Napoleon III, the great rebellion, B.C. 52, had sustained a heavy blow
in the surrender of Alesia, and the capture of the heroic chief and
leader of the insurrection, Vercingetorix, whom Caesar exhibited in his
triumph at Rome, B.C. 46, and then caused to be put to death.
The distinguished author of the article says he wrote "for the purpose
of proving that when Providence raises up such men as Caesar,
Charlemagne, and Napoleon it is to trace out to peoples the path they
ought to follow, to stamp with the seal of their genius a new era, and
to accomplish in a few years the work of many centuries." The work was
prepared [_vide Manual of Historical Literature_: Adams] with the utmost
care--a care which extended in some instances to special surveys, to
insure perfect accuracy in the descriptions, etc.)
The capture of Alesia and that of Vercingetorix, in spite of the united
efforts of all Gaul, naturally gave Caesar hopes of a general
submission; and he therefore believed that he could leave his army
during the winter to rest quietly in its quarters from the hard labors
which had lasted without interruption during the whole of the past
summer. But the spirit of insurrection was not extinct among the Gauls;
and convinced by experience that whatever might be their number they
could not in a body cope with troops inured to war, they resolved, by
partial insurrections raised on all points at once, to divide the
attention and the forces of the Romans as their only chance of resisting
them with advantage.
Caesar was unwilling to leave them time to realize this new plan, but
gave the command of his winter quarters to his quaestor, Mark Antony;
quitted Bibracte on the day before the Calends of January (the 25th of
December) with an escort of cavalry, joined the Thirteenth legion, which
was in winter quarters among the Bituriges, not far from the frontier of
the Aldui, and called to him the Eleventh legion, which was the nearest
at hand. Having left two cohorts of each legion to guard the baggage, he
proceeded toward the fertile country of the Bituriges, a vast territory,
where the presence of a single legion was insufficient to put a stop to
the preparations for insurrection.
His sudden arrival in the midst of men without distrust, who were spread
over the open country, produced the result which he expected. They were
surprised before they could enter into their _oppidae_--for Caesar had
strictly forbidden everything which might have raised their suspicion;
especially the application of fire, which usually betrays the sudden
presence of an enemy. Several thousands of captives were made. Those who
succeeded in escaping sought in vain a refuge among the neighboring
nations. Caesar, by forced marches, came up with them everywhere and
obliged each tribe to think of its own safety before that of others.
This activity held the populations in their fidelity, and through fear
engaged the wavering to submit to the conditions of peace. Thus the
Bituriges, seeing that Caesar offered them an easy way to recover his
protection, and that the neighboring states had suffered no other
chastisement than that of having to deliver hostages, did not hesitate
in submitting.
The soldiers of the Eleventh and Thirteenth legions had, during the
winter, supported with rare constancy the fatigues of very difficult
marches in intolerable cold. To reward them he promised to give by way
of prize-money two hundred _sestertii_ to each soldier and two thousand
to each centurion. He then sent them into their winter quarters and
returned to Bibracte after an absence of forty days. While he was there,
dispensing justice, the Bituriges came to implore his support against
the attacks of the Carnutes. Although it was only eighteen days since he
returned, he marched again at the head of two legions--the Sixth and the
Fourteenth--which had been placed on the Saone to insure the supply of
provisions.
On his approach the Carnutes, taught by the fate of others, abandoned
their miserable huts--which they had erected on the site of their burgs
and oppida destroyed in the last campaign--and fled in every direction.
Caesar, unwilling to expose his soldiers to the rigor of the season,
established his camp at Genabum (Gien), and lodged them partly in the
huts which had remained undestroyed, partly in tents under penthouses
covered with straw. The cavalry and auxiliary infantry were sent in
pursuit of the Carnutes, who, hunted down everywhere, and without
shelter, took refuge in the neighboring counties.
After having dispersed some rebellious meetings and stifled the germs of
an insurrection, Caesar believed that the summer would pass without any
serious war. He left therefore at Genabum the two legions he had with
him, and gave the command of them to C. Trebonius.
Nevertheless, he learned by several intimations from the Remi that the
Bellovaci and neighboring peoples, with Correus and Commius at their
head, were collecting troops to make an inroad on the territory of the
Suessiones, who had been placed--since the campaign of 697--under the
dependence of the Remi.
He considered that he regarded his interest as well as his dignity in
protecting allies who had deserved so well of the republic. He again
drew the Eleventh legion from its winter quarters, sent written orders
to C. Fabius, who was encamped in the country of the Remi, to bring into
that of the Suessiones the two legions under his command, and demanded
one of his legions from Labienus, who was at Besançon. Thus without
taking any rest himself he shared the fatigues among the legions by
turns, as far as the position of the winter quarters and the necessities
of the war permitted.
When this army was assembled he marched against the Bellovaci,
established his camp on their territory, and sent cavalry in every
direction in order to make some prisoners and learn from them the
designs of the enemy. The cavalry reported that the emigration was
general, and that the few inhabitants who were to be seen were not
remaining behind in order to apply themselves to agriculture, but to act
as spies upon the Romans.