Extracts from "Cæsar, a Sketch," by JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, LL.D.
(164-133, 153-121 B.C.)
[Illustration: The Gracchi.]
Tiberius Gracchus was born about the year 164 B.C. He was one of twelve
children, nine of whom died in infancy, himself, his brother Caius, and
his sister Cornelia being the only survivors. His family was plebeian,
but of high antiquity, his ancestors for several generations having held
the highest offices in the Republic. On the mother's side he was the
grandson of Scipio Africanus. His father, after a distinguished career
as a soldier in Spain and Sardinia, had attempted reforms at Rome. He
had been censor, and in this capacity he had ejected disreputable
senators from the Curia; he had degraded offending Equites; he had
rearranged and tried to purify the Comitia. But his connections were
aristocratic. His wife was the daughter of the most famous of them,
Scipio Africanus the Younger. He had been himself in antagonism with the
tribunes, and had taken no part, at any time, in popular agitations.
[Illustration: The Mother of the Gracchi.]
The father died when Tiberius was still a boy, and the two brothers grew
up under the care of their mother, a noble and gifted lady. They early
displayed remarkable talents. Tiberius, when old enough, went into the
army, and served under his brother-in-law in the last Carthaginian
campaign. He was first on the walls of the city in the final storm. Ten
years later he went to Spain as quæstor, when he carried on his father's
popularity, and by taking the people's side in some questions, fell into
disagreement with his brother-in-law. His political views had perhaps
already inclined to change. He was still of an age when indignation
at oppression calls out a practical desire to resist it. On his journey
home from Spain he witnessed scenes which confirmed his conviction and
determined him to throw all his energies into the popular cause. His
road lay through Tuscany, where he saw the large estate system in full
operation--the fields cultivated by the slave gangs, the free citizens
of the Republic thrust away into the towns, aliens and outcasts in their
own country, without a foot of soil which they could call their own. In
Tuscany, too, the vast domains of the landlords had not even been fairly
purchased. They were parcels of the _ager publicus_, land belonging to
the state, which, in spite of a law forbidding it, the great lords and
commoners had appropriated and divided among themselves. Five hundred
acres of state land was the most which by statute any one lessee might
be allowed to occupy. But the law was obsolete or sleeping, and avarice
and vanity were awake and active. Young Gracchus, in indignant pity,
resolved to rescue the people's patrimony. He was chosen tribune in the
year 133. His brave mother and a few patricians of the old type
encouraged him, and the battle of the revolution began. The Senate, as
has been said, though without direct legislative authority, had been
allowed the right of reviewing any new schemes which were to be
submitted to the Assembly. The constitutional means of preventing
tribunes from carrying unwise or unwelcome measures lay in a consul's
veto, or in the help of the College of Augurs, who could declare the
auspices unfavorable and so close all public business. These resources
were so awkward that it had been found convenient to secure beforehand
the Senate's approbation, and the encroachment, being long submitted to,
was passing by custom into a rule. But the Senate, eager as it was, had
not yet succeeded in engrafting the practice into the constitution. On
the land question the leaders of the aristocracy were the principal
offenders.
Disregarding usage, and conscious that the best men of all ranks were
with him, Tiberius Gracchus appealed directly to the people to revive
the Agrarian law. His proposals were not extravagant. That they should
have been deemed extravagant was a proof of how much some measure of the
kind was needed. Where lands had been enclosed and money laid out on
them, he was willing that the occupants should have compensation. But
they had no right to the lands themselves. Gracchus persisted that the
_ager publicus_ belonged to the people, and that the race of yeomen, for
whose protection the law had been originally passed, must be
re-established on their farms. No form of property gives to its owners
so much consequence as land, and there is no point on which in every
country an aristocracy is more sensitive. The large owners protested
that they had purchased their interests on the faith that the law was
obsolete. They had planted and built and watered with the sanction of
the government, and to call their titles in question was to shake the
foundations of society. The popular party pointed to the statute. The
monopolists were entitled in justice to less than was offered them. They
had no right to a compensation at all. Political passion awoke again
after the sleep of a century. The oligarchy had doubtless connived at
the accumulations. The suppression of the small holdings favored their
supremacy, and placed the elections more completely in their control.
Their military successes had given them so long a tenure of power that
they had believed it to be theirs in perpetuity; and the new sedition,
as they called it, threatened at once their privileges and their
fortunes. The quarrel assumed the familiar form of a struggle between
the rich and the poor, and at such times the mob of voters becomes less
easy to corrupt. They go with their order, as the prospect of larger
gain makes them indifferent to immediate bribes. It became clear that
the majority of the citizens would support Tiberius Gracchus, but the
constitutional forms of opposition might still be resorted to. Octavius
Cæcina, another of the tribunes, had himself large interests in the land
question. He was the people's magistrate, one of the body appointed
especially to defend their rights, but he went over to the Senate, and,
using a power which undoubtedly belonged to him, he forbade the vote to
be taken.
There was no precedent for the removal of either consul, prætor, or
tribune, except under circumstances very different from any which could
as yet be said to have arisen. The magistrates held office for a year
only, and the power of veto had been allowed them expressly to secure
time for deliberation and to prevent passionate legislation. But
Gracchus was young and enthusiastic. Precedent or no precedent, the
citizens were omnipotent, he invited them to declare his colleague
deposed. They had warmed to the fight, and complied. A more experienced
statesman would have known that established constitutional bulwarks
cannot be swept away by a momentary vote. He obtained his Agrarian law.
Three commissioners were appointed, himself, his younger brother, and
his father-in-law, Appius Claudius, to carry it into effect; but the
very names showed that he had alienated his few supporters in the higher
circles, and that a single family was now contending against the united
wealth and distinction of Rome. The issue was only too certain. Popular
enthusiasm is but a fire of straw. In a year Tiberius Gracchus would be
out of office. Other tribunes would be chosen more amenable to
influence, and his work could then be undone. He evidently knew that
those who would succeed him could not be relied on to carry on his
policy. He had taken one revolutionary step already; he was driven on to
another, and he offered himself illegally to the Comitia for
re-election. It was to invite them to abolish the constitution, and to
make him virtual sovereign; and that a young man of thirty should have
contemplated such a position for himself as possible, is of itself a
proof of his unfitness for it. The election day came. The noble lords
and gentlemen appeared in the Campus Martius with their retinues of
armed servants and clients; hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain for
demagogues, and meaning to read a lesson to sedition which it would not
easily forget. Votes were given for Gracchus. Had the hustings been left
to decide the matter, he would have been chosen; but as it began to
appear how the polling would go, sticks were used and swords; a riot
rose, the unarmed citizens were driven off, Tiberius Gracchus himself
and three hundred of his friends were killed, and their bodies were
flung into the Tiber.
Thus the first sparks of the coming revolution were trampled out. But
though quenched and to be again quenched with fiercer struggles, it was
to smoulder and smoke and burst out time after time, till its work was
done. Revolution could not restore the ancient character of the Roman
nation, but it could check the progress of decay by burning away the
more corrupted parts of it. It could destroy the aristocracy and the
constitution which they had depraved, and under other forms preserve for
a few more centuries the Roman dominion. Scipio Africanus, when he heard
in Spain of the end of his brother-in-law, exclaimed "May all who act as
he did perish like him!" There were to be victims enough and to spare
before the bloody drama was played out. Quiet lasted for ten years, and
then, precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius Gracchus
came forward to avenge him, and carry the movement through another
stage. Young Caius had been left one of the commissioners of the land
law; and it is particularly noticeable that, though the author of it had
been killed, the law had survived him, being too clearly right and
politic in itself to be openly set aside. For two years the
commissioners had continued to work, and in that time forty thousand
families were settled on various parts of the _ager publicus_, which the
patricians had been compelled to resign. This was all which they could
do. The displacement of one set of inhabitants and the introduction of
another could not be accomplished without quarrels, complaints, and
perhaps some injustice. Those who entered on possession were not always
satisfied. The commissioners became unpopular. When the cries against
them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was then
quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over the Assembly,
and had a further opportunity of showing its recovered ascendency when,
two years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends
introduced a bill to make the tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius
Gracchus actively supported the change, but it had no success; and,
waiting till times had altered, and till he had arrived at an age when
he could carry weight, the young brother retired from politics, and
spent the next few years with the army in Africa and Sardinia, he served
with distinction; he made a name for himself, both as a soldier and an
administrator. Had the Senate left him alone, he might have been
satisfied with a regular career, and have risen by the ordinary steps to
the consulship. But the Senate saw in him the possibilities of a second
Tiberius; the higher his reputation, the more formidable he became to
them. They vexed him with petty prosecutions, charged him with crimes
which had no existence, and at length, by suspicion and injustice, drove
him into open war with them. Caius Gracchus had a broader intellect than
his brother, and a character considerably less noble. The land question
he perceived was but one of many questions. The true source of the
disorders of the commonwealth was the Senate itself. The administration
of the empire was in the hands of men totally unfit to be trusted with
it, and there he thought the reform must commence. He threw himself on
the people, he was chosen tribune in 123, ten years exactly after
Tiberius. He had studied the disposition of parties. He had seen his
brother fall because the Equites and the senators, the great commoners
and the nobles, were combined against him. He revived the Agrarian law
as a matter of course, but he disarmed the opposition to it by throwing
an apple of discord between the two superior orders. The high judicial
functions in the commonwealth had been hitherto a senatorial monopoly.
All cases of importance, civil or criminal, came before courts of sixty
or seventy jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be necessarily senators.
The privilege had been extremely lucrative. The corruption of justice
was already notorious, though it had not yet reached the level of infamy
which it attained in another generation. It was no secret that in
ordinary causes jurymen had sold their verdicts, and, far short of
taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many ways in
which they could let themselves be approached, and their favor
purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in
the sale of justice is alike hateful to those who abhor iniquity on
principle, and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But
this was not the worst. The governors of the provinces, being chosen
from those who had been consuls or prætors, were necessarily members of
the Senate. Peculation and extortion in these high functions were
offences, in theory, of the gravest kind; but the offender could only be
tried before a limited number of his peers, and a governor who had
plundered a subject state, sold justice, pillaged temples, and stolen
all that he could lay hands on, was safe from punishment if he returned
to Rome a millionnaire and would admit others to a share in his spoils.
The provincials might send deputations to complain, but these complaints
came before men who had themselves governed provinces, or else aspired
to govern them. It had been proved in too many instances that the law
which professed to protect them was a mere mockery.
Caius Gracchus secured the affections of the knights to himself, and
some slightly increased chance of an improvement in the provincial
administration, by carrying a law in the Assembly disabling the senators
from sitting on juries of any kind from that day forward, and
transferring the judicial functions to the Equites. How bitterly must
such a measure have been resented by the Senate, which at once robbed
them of their protective and profitable privileges, handed them over to
be tried by their rivals for their pleasant irregularities, and stamped
them at the same time with the brand of dishonesty! How certainly must
such a measure have been deserved when neither consul nor tribune could
be found to interpose his vote! Supported by the grateful knights, Caius
Gracchus was for the moment all-powerful. It was not enough to restore
the Agrarian law. He passed another aimed at his brother's murderers,
which was to bear fruit in later years, that no Roman citizen might be
put to death by any person, however high in authority, without legal
trial, and without appeal, if he chose to make it, to the sovereign
people. A blow was thus struck against another right claimed by the
Senate, of declaring the Republic in danger, and the temporary
suspension of the constitution. These measures might be excused, and
perhaps commended; but the younger Gracchus connected his name with
another change less commendable, which was destined also to survive and
bear fruit. He brought forward and carried through, with enthusiastic
clapping of every pair of hands in Rome that were hardened with labor, a
proposal that there should be public granaries in the city, maintained
and filled at the cost of the state, and that corn should be sold at a
rate artificially cheap to the poor free citizens. Such a law was purely
socialistic. The privilege was confined to Rome, because in Rome the
elections were held, and the Roman constituency was the one depositary
of power. The effect was to gather into the city a mob of needy
unemployed voters, living on the charity of the state, to crowd the
circus and to clamor at the elections, available no doubt immediately to
strengthen the hands of the popular tribune, but certain in the long run
to sell themselves to those who could bid highest for their voices.
Excuses could be found, no doubt, for this miserable expedient, in the
state of parties, in the unscrupulous violence of the aristocracy, in
the general impoverishment of the peasantry through the land monopoly,
and in the intrusion upon Italy of a gigantic system of slave labor. But
none the less it was the deadliest blow which had yet been dealt to the
constitution. Party government turns on the majorities at the polling
places, and it was difficult afterward to recall a privilege which, once
conceded, appeared to be a right. The utmost that could be ventured in
later times, with any prospect of success, was to limit an intolerable
evil, and if one side was ever strong enough to make the attempt, their
rivals had a bribe ready in their hands to buy back the popular support.
Caius Gracchus, however, had his way, and carried all before him. He
escaped the rock on which his brother had been wrecked. He was elected
tribune a second time. He might have had a third term if he had been
contented to be a mere demagogue. But he, too, like Tiberius, had
honorable aims. The powers which he had played into the hands of the mob
to obtain, he desired to use for high purposes of statesmanship, and his
instrument broke in his hands. He was too wise to suppose that a Roman
mob, fed by bounties from the treasury, could permanently govern the
world. He had schemes for scattering Roman colonies, with the Roman
franchise, at various points of the empire.
Carthage was to be one of them. He thought of abolishing the distinction
between Romans and Italians, and enfranchising the entire peninsula.
These measures were good in themselves--essential, indeed, if the Roman
conquests were to form a compact and permanent dominion. But the object
was not attainable on the road on which Gracchus had entered. The
vagabond part of the constituency was well contented with what it had
obtained, a life in the city, supported at the public expense, with
politics and games for its amusements. It had not the least inclination
to be drafted off into settlements in Spain or Africa, where there would
be work instead of pleasant idleness. Carthage was still a name of
terror. To restore Carthage was no better than treason. Still less had
the Roman citizens an inclination to share their privileges with
Samnites and Etruscans, and see the value of their votes watered down.
Political storms are always cyclones. The gale from the east to-day is a
gale from the west to-morrow. Who and what were the Gracchi, then?--the
sweet voices began to ask--ambitious intriguers, aiming at dictatorship,
or perhaps the crown. The aristocracy were right, after all; a few
things had gone wrong, but these had been amended. The Scipios and
Metelli had conquered the world: the Scipios and Metelli were alone fit
to govern it. Thus, when the election time came round, the party of
reform was reduced to a minority of irreconcilable radicals, who were
easily disposed of. Again, as ten years before, the noble lords armed
their followers. Riots broke out and extended day after day. Caius
Gracchus was at last killed, as his brother had been, and under cover of
the disturbance three thousand of his friends were killed along with
him. The power being again securely in their hands, the Senate proceeded
at their leisure, and the surviving patriots who were in any way
notorious or dangerous were hunted down in legal manner, and put to
death or banished.