THE REVOLUTION: ACT I
Enough was said in the last chapter to show that the age we are now
coming to, the last century before Christ, was one full of great
issues—not only for Rome, but for all western civilisation. The perils
threatening, both internal and external, were so real as to call for
statesmen and soldiers of the highest quality; and as we shall see, this
call was answered. It was this century that produced most of the famous
Romans whose names are familiar to us: the two Gracchi, Marius, Sulla,
Pompey, Cicero, Cæsar, and finally Augustus, all of whom helped in
various ways to save Italy and the Empire from premature dissolution. It
was, in fact, an age of great personalities, and one, too, in which
personal character became as deeply interesting to the men of the time
as it is even now to us. For as the disciplinary force of the State
waned, the individual was left freer to make his own force felt; and so
great was that force at times, that we are tempted to fix our attention
on the man, and to forget the complicated motives and interests of the
world in which he was acting. Undoubtedly we should be wrong in doing
so; for a very small acquaintance with the facts would show us these
great men struggling incessantly with difficulties, and carried out of
their own natural course by adverse currents. But none the less it is
true that hardly any other period of history shows so much, for good and
evil alike, depending on individual character. So as the last chapter
dealt mainly with perils and problems, our next two will be occupied
with the efforts of these famous men to meet the perils and solve the
problems.
Depopulation and the decline of agriculture were the first of the perils
to be considered seriously. This was done in the year 133 B.C., not by
the Senate, whose business it really was, but by a young and
enthusiastic noble, in some ways one of the finest characters in Roman
history. Tiberius Gracchus had the right instinct of the old Roman for
duty, and for a Roman he had an unusually tender and generous nature;
but he had not the experience and knowledge necessary for one who would
take this difficult problem in hand, which in our day would be prepared
for legislation by careful inquiry about facts, conducted by authorised
experts. His education had been mainly Greek, and a study of hard facts
did not form a part of it.
Still, he was able to enlist the help of some capable men, and produced
and finally carried a bill which may be called a Small Holdings Act. No
one was henceforward to hold more than 500 _jugera_ (about 300 acres) of
_public land_, or if he had sons, 250 more for each of two. Public land
was land owned by the State, but occupied by private men who paid (or
ought to have paid) rent for it in some form. Land owned as well as
occupied by private men could not be touched; but there was abundance of
the other, for the State had retained its hold on a large part of the
land of Italy acquired by Rome. This land was now to be divided up in
allotments, the State retaining its ownership and forbidding sale, a
futile attempt to keep the settlers on the land, even against their
will. This courageous plan for bringing the people back to the land was
put in action at once, and we still have a few of the inscribed boundary
stones set up by the commissioners chosen to carry it out. And there is
reason to believe that it did some good in regard both to depopulation
and agriculture. The Senate made no serious attempt to interfere with it
when once it was passed, and it continued in force for many years.
But unluckily the Senate had done all it could to prevent the bill
passing; they would have nothing to say to it, and they put up a tribune
to veto it. The veto of the tribune of the plebs was an essential part
of the constitution, and could not be disregarded; but Gracchus, also a
tribune, had but one year of office, and if he could not get his bill
through during that year, he must give up the attempt for a long while.
Enthusiasm got the better of prudence; he deliberately broke with law
and usage; he defied the Senate and its prerogative, and he carried a
bill deposing the tribune who acted for the Senate. He also proposed to
offer himself as a candidate for re-election, contrary to the custom if
not the law of the constitution. With the highest motives he thus laid
himself open to the charge of making himself master of the State, by
violating the custom of its forefathers (_mos majorum_). It had always
been a maxim of Roman law that the man who aimed at tyranny might be
slain by any one; and now that even the best aristocrats believed
Gracchus guilty, this was the fate that overtook him. He was killed on
the Capitol, and the cowardly rabble made no attempt to save him.
The story is perhaps the saddest in Roman history. A little more
patience and practical wisdom, a little more of the spirit of compromise
on either side, might have saved the situation. The old Roman discipline
had avoided violence, and got over constitutional difficulties by
consent; now Gracchus laid a violent hand on the constitution, and was
repaid with violence by its unworthy defenders. Intending only reform,
he ended with starting revolution.
There was another enemy within the gates beside depopulation, one not
less to be feared, but less easy to realise as an enemy; I mean
slave-labour. Gracchus may be pardoned for making no direct attempt to
attack it, though just before his tribunate there had been a rising of
slaves in Sicily which showed the military as well as the economic
danger of the situation. It is said that 200,000 slaves were in
rebellion there at one time, and the war was only ended after a long
struggle. These risings, more of which followed at intervals, and
finally a most formidable one in Italy sixty years later, were symptoms
of a disease calling for a very skilful physician; but no physician was
to be found until Cæsar tried to make a beginning. As yet the Romans had
not had time to realise this danger; living in an atmosphere of
slave-labour, they believed that they throve on it. And as this was in
one sense true, owing to the decrease of the free labouring population,
the evil was too subtle for an uncritical people to discern. In spite of
all these dangerous risings, there is no sign in the copious literature
of this last century of the Republic of any consciousness of the poison
at work.
Nine years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, his younger brother
Gaius, elected tribune, took up his work and went far beyond his
designs. In this most interesting and able man we come at last upon a
Roman statesman of the highest order; a practical man, no mere idealist
of the new Greek school, and yet a man of genius and a born leader of
men. We possess a picture of him, evidently drawn from the life by one
who knew him, which shows these gifts at a glance.[9] When he was at the
height of his activity, busy with a multitude of details, he seems to
have given that eyewitness the impression that he was almost a monarch.
But a close study of all we are told about him seems to prove that he
was in reality one of those rare men, like Cæsar later on, who
profoundly believe that they can do the work needed by the State better
than any other man, and who are justified in that belief. He would see
to the carrying out of his own measures with astonishing speed, sparing
no pains, amazing even his enemies by the unflagging energy with which
he worked, and by the way he contrived to get work out of others.
Perhaps the secret was that he was a gentleman in the best and noblest
sense of that word; for Plutarch says that in his dealings with men he
was _always_ _dignified, yet always courteous_, invariably giving to
every man his due.
In fact, the personality of this man is the real explanation of his
work. If it had been possible for him to retain that personal influence
which Plutarch emphasises, and to keep his legislative power even for a
few years, as a modern statesman may expect to keep it, it is quite
possible that Rome might have escaped an era of danger and degeneracy.
But that could not be. A triple-headed Cerberus was guarding the path
that led to effectual reform: the forms of the old constitution, out of
date many of them, and unsuited to the needs of a great empire: the
narrow spirit of the oligarchical faction, opposed, for self-regarding
reasons, to all change: and lastly, the mean and fickle temper of the
mongrel city populace, whose power was sovereign in legislation and
elections. In the effort to overcome this Cerberus Gracchus lost his
precious personal influence, and found his original designs warped from
their true bearing. He survived through two tribunates, in the course of
which he did much valuable work, but in the third year he was brutally
and needlessly slain by his political enemies. Already Rome had put to
death two of the most valuable men she ever produced, and in the coming
century she was to put to death many more.
He had begun his work by a noble effort so to mend the constitution that
a reformer might be able to pass his laws without breaking it, as
Tiberius had been tempted to do. He tried to increase the numbers of the
Senate, so as to leaven that great council, which he rightly looked on
as the working centre of the constitution, with new ideas and wider
interests. And he sought, too, to solve the great problem of
citizenship, by giving the Italians some effectual share in it, and so
at least the chance of making their voice heard in Roman politics. But
for such measures of real progress neither Senate nor people were ready:
the Senate was the stronghold of old prejudices, and the people were not
pleased to admit Italians to its privileges. Both these great projects,
which show how far-reaching Gracchus’s views as a statesman were, proved
complete failures.
To conciliate the Senate became more and more hopeless as Gracchus lost
his personal influence, and he gave up the attempt. Instead, he dealt
the senatorial oligarchy a heavy blow by depriving senators of the right
to sit in judgment on ex-provincial governors accused of extortion (a
crime now becoming only too common), and giving it to the class below,
the Equites, or men of business. Thus he made a split between the two
upper classes of society, which had very unfortunate results. Not less
unhappy was another measure, meant to conciliate the hungry free
population of the city, on which he must depend for the passing of his
laws. There had long been a difficulty in feeding this population: for
its number had increased beyond all expectation, the corn-supply was not
properly organised, and the price of grain was constantly fluctuating.
Recognising the fact that any legislator was in peril who could not make
it impossible that the price should rise suddenly, he fixed a permanent
price, more than half below the normal, to be maintained at State cost,
whether or no the State were a loser. But here he went too far, and gave
later and less scrupulous demagogues the chance of making still more
serious mischief. No doubt he thought that the State need not be a
loser, if production, transport, warehousing and finance were organised
as he meant to organise them; but there is also little doubt that he was
mistaken, and that henceforward the “people” were really being fed
largely at the expense of the State, and lapsing into a condition of
semi-pauperism.
I have said enough to show how sad was the failure of the first real
statesman produced by Rome. Yet Gracchus was able to do some useful work
which survived. Under his auspices was passed a great law, of the text
of which we still possess about one-third, for the trial of provincial
governors accused of extortion: and we know of another, bearing his own
name, which regulated the succession to these governorships with justice
and wisdom. Also he took up his brother’s land bill, and carried it on
with that practical persistency which is reflected, as we saw, in
Plutarch’s life of him. But in spite of high aims and some successes,
his story is a sad one; and the loss to Italy and the Empire at that
moment of a man of righteous aims and practical genius was simply
incalculable.
Whatever else the Gracchi did, or failed to do, they undoubtedly
succeeded, both in their lives and in their deaths, in shaking the power
and prestige of the senatorial government; and nothing had been put in
its place, nor had it even been reformed. Henceforward for a long period
there was no constitution that could claim an honest man’s loyalty or
devotion; the idea of the State was growing dim, and the result was
inefficiency in every department. The governing class was corrupt and
the army undisciplined, and this at a time when there was coming upon
Rome, and upon the civilised world, a period of extreme peril from
foreign enemies. This corruption and inefficiency became obvious a few
years after the death of the younger Gracchus in a long struggle with a
Numidian chief in the province of Africa, who contrived to outwit and
defy Roman envoys and Roman armies, by taking advantage of the
corruptibility of the one and the indiscipline of the other. Luckily for
Rome this war produced a great soldier in Gaius Marius, a “new man” of
Italian birth, and another in L. Cornelius Sulla, a man of high
patrician family; and these two, though destined to be the bitterest
foes, brought the war to a successful end.
But a far greater peril was threatening Italy herself. As we look at the
map of Italy, or better still (if we have the chance) as we look up at
the huge rampart of the Alps from the plain of the Po, we are tempted to
think of this great barrier as impenetrable. But mountain ranges are
always weak lines of defence, and history, ancient and modern alike, has
abundantly proved that Italy is open to invasion from the north.
Hannibal and his brother had pierced the western flank of the range,
where later on there were regular thoroughfares between Rome and her
western provinces; and at the eastern end, where the passes gradually
lessen in height, access was easy into Italy from the north-east. Beyond
this mountain barrier, at the time we have now reached, there was much
disturbance going on: hungry masses of population were moving about in
search of fertile land to settle in, themselves pressed on by other
peoples in the same restless condition. In 113 B.C. a great migrating
host, apparently of Germans, but probably gathering other peoples as it
advanced, seemed to threaten the weak point of the eastern Alps.
A consul with an army was in Illyria, and tried to stop them in the
country now called Carinthia, but was badly beaten. If there had been a
man of genius at their head, the enemy might have penetrated into Italy;
as happened again just a century later, there was nothing to stop them
between the Alps and Rome. But the great host was not tempted, and
pursued its way westward. In 109 they suddenly appeared beyond the
western Alps, where they destroyed another consular army, and yet
another fell before the Gauls of that region. Then in 105, at Orange, in
Roman territory, while trying to cover the road to Massilia and so into
Italy, the Romans experienced a defeat almost as terrible as that of
Cannæ and half the Empire lay open to the victors. But once again they
left their prey untouched, and passed westwards in search of easier
conquests.
Rome had a breathing-time of nearly three years, and she also had the
right man to save her. Marius remodelled the army, revolutionising it in
equipment, tactics, and discipline. For material he was driven hard, and
had to find recruits as best he could, drawing them from all parts of
the Empire: but he had time to drill them into fine soldiers, and to lay
the foundation of a marvellously perfect human defence for Mediterranean
civilisation. The result was one great victory near Marseilles, and
another at the eastern end of north Italy, into which the barbarians had
at last penetrated: and Italy was once more secure.
Now we have to see how this peril, or rather the effort made to escape
it, led to changes of the most far-reaching character in the Roman power
and polity. Italy had not been saved by Roman armies or the Roman
government, but by Marius and the army which he had created. For five
successive years Marius was consul, contrary to all precedent, away from
Rome; and the army he created looked to him, not to Rome, for pay,
promotion, and discharge. We may call that host of his a Mediterranean
army under the command of an Italian. It was far more like Hannibal’s
army than like the old Roman citizen armies that had won the supremacy
in Italy; it was a professional army devoted to its general, but with
little thought of the Roman State whose servant he was. And
henceforward, until Augustus restored the sense of duty to the State,
the Roman armies, excellent now as fighting machines, and destined to
secure effective frontiers for the Empire, were the men of Marius,
Sulla, Pompey, Cæsar, and a constant source of anxiety and danger for
the State whom they were supposed to serve.
This “long-service army” brought Rome face to face with another
difficulty, and led indirectly to another great peril. When the soldiers
returned home after many years of service in distant regions, what was
to be done with them? Many, perhaps most of them, had no homes to go to.
The veterans might naturally demand some permanent settlement, but the
Senate showed no sign of appreciating the problem, and in this matter
the general was helpless without the Senate. So it happened that many of
them lapsed into the crowded city, to pick up a living we know not how,
with the help of the distribution of cheap corn. Among them were beyond
doubt numbers of non-citizens, who could not legally vote in elections
or legislation, and were inadequately protected in regard to person and
property, in spite of all the long service they had gone through. These
men began to offer themselves as voters, and to exercise the rights of
citizenship illegally; yet the confusion of the registers was such that
they could not be detected. At last the adulteration of the Roman
citizen body became so obvious that the consuls of 95 B.C. passed a law
with the object of making it clear who was a citizen and who was not,
and of eliminating those who were not really privileged.
But it was now too late to take such a step. News of it spread over all
Italy, and it was construed as a deliberate attempt to exclude Italians
from the citizenship. Five years later another vain attempt was made by
a noble tribune to do as Gracchus had wished to do, to extend the
citizenship and to enlarge the Senate: but he was assassinated before
his laws were passed, and then at last there followed the inevitable
outbreak, perhaps long meditated. The social war, as it is called, in
reality a civil war, was a crisis in the history of European
development. When it was over, the ancient city-state of the Greeks and
Italians had vanished in Italy, and in its place arose a new form of
polity, for which there was then no name.
The sturdy peoples of central Italy entered on the desperate venture of
setting up a rival power against Rome; a plan which, if successful,
would have paralysed Rome’s work in the world whether for good or evil.
They chose the city of Corfinium, in the heart of the Apennines, some
hundred miles east of Rome, gave it the new significant name Italica,
and made it, as Washington is now, the city-centre of a federation,
where deputies from the various members should meet and deliberate under
the presidency of consuls. But now was seen the value of the strategical
position of Rome. She could strike in any direction from inner lines,
while safe from attack or blockade by sea; but Corfinium had no such
natural strategic advantage, nor any unifying power. Yet the Italians
were for some time successful in the field, and Rome was for a whole
year in the utmost peril. At the end of that year (90 B.C.) the
Etruscans and Umbrians to north and east joined the confederates, and
then for the first time Rome was likely to be put on the defensive, with
enemies on her left flank, as well as on her right and in front. So a
law was hastily passed giving the precious citizenship to all who had
not taken up arms; and this was the beginning of a process by which, in
some few years, the whole of Italy became Roman in the eye of the law,
while, on the other hand, it might be said not untruly that Rome became
Italian. Henceforward we have to think of the whole peninsula as forming
the material support of Mediterranean civilisation.
With this great change one might have expected that peace and harmony
would return to Italy. But, on the contrary, she is now about to enter
on the most terrible time that she has ever known; even her miserable
feuds of the late Middle Ages never quite reached the horror of those of
Marius and Sulla. It is hard to explain this; but looking back at what
was said in the last chapter about the causes of demoralisation, it is
possible to make a guess. We have to think of a vast slave State, worn
out in the struggle with dangers within and without, enfeebled by
constant warfare, and now given over into the hands of powerful military
masters, with hosts of veterans at their beck and call. The State seemed
to have lost its claim to loyalty, even to consideration: and in its
place were rival generals, leaders also of political factions—in these
years two, Marius the self-seeking champion of the Italians and the
Roman plebs, and Sulla the self-seeking champion of the old aristocracy.
All principles were lost on either side in the intensely bitter hatred
of the parties and the personal rivalry of the leading men. It happened
that a war was threatening in the East, of which we shall hear more in
the next chapter; and the command in this war, the great prize of the
moment, became a bone of contention outweighing all interest of the
State.
The prize fell to Sulla; but no sooner was his back turned on Italy than
the Marian faction fell on their political enemies and sought to destroy
them by wholesale murder. Compromise was utterly forgotten; all the
brutality of unbridled human nature was let loose. And when Sulla
returned from the East, after driving the enemy out of Roman territory,
the massacres were revenged by more massacres. The loss to Italy of many
thousands of her best men, and among them scores who might have done
good work in the world, was a calamity never to be repaired.
Where, one may ask, was the old Roman _gravitas_ and _pietas_, the
self-restraint and sense of duty that had won an empire? It would seem
as if the capacity for discipline were entirely lost, except in the
long-service army. But the mere fact that in the army this survived is
one not to be neglected, even if it were exercised less on behalf of the
State than in the interest of the individual commander. For if there
could be found a statesman-soldier who could identify himself with the
true interest of the State, and so bring back not only the army, but the
people to a right idea of Rome’s position and duty in the world, the
Empire and civilisation might yet be saved. Without the army these could
not be defended; and the one thing wanting was to make the army loyal to
the State as well as to its general. Only the general himself could
secure this loyalty, by making himself the true servant of the State.
But the man into whose hands Rome had now fallen was one who could not
possibly identify himself with the best interests of the State, because
an unsympathetic nature had denied him the power of discerning what
those interests were. Sulla has been compared to Napoleon, and in one or
two points the comparison holds good; but the two were utterly unlike in
the main point, the power of sympathetic discernment. Napoleon, cruel
and unscrupulous as he often was, showed plainly, when he organised the
institutions of France, or Switzerland, or Egypt, that he understood the
needs of those nations: he divined what would enable them to advance out
of stagnation to some better form of life, social and political. But
Sulla, though he saw that the call of the moment was for order at almost
any price, for peace, strong government, and reform, went about his work
in a way which proved that he did not delight in it, or care for the
people for whom he was legislating. He did what was necessary for the
moment, but did it with force ill concealed under constitutional forms.
So no wise man rejoiced in his work, and the Roman people as a whole
felt no loyalty towards him. He provided in many State departments an
excellent machinery, but not the motive force to work it.
Nothing in history shows better how much in remedial legislation depends
on the spirit in which it is undertaken. Sulla saw that the great
council, the Senate, must be the central point and pivot of government,
unless indeed there were a master at hand, like himself, to undertake
it; that the popular assemblies, untrained in discussion and affairs,
could not do the work of administration. Though the theory of the
constitution had always been that the people were sovereign, he
contrived that the Senate, which had so long practically governed under
an unwritten constitution, should now rule without let or hindrance on a
basis of statute law; and here we see an unwritten constitution growing
into a written one, as with us Britons at this moment. By a great law of
treason, the first on the Roman statute book, he made it almost
impossible to defy the Senate without the risk of political effacement.
This may be called reactionary, but under the circumstances it was not a
reaction to be complained of. The pity was that this master legislator
had really none to be grateful or loyal to him but his own army and
followers. His constitutional legislation was for the most part swept
away soon after his death, and there was no one to lament. On the other
hand, all that he did that was not strictly political, and in particular
his reorganisation of what we may call the civil service, and of the
criminal law and procedure, was so obviously progressive and valuable
that no one ever attempted to destroy it; and some of his laws of this
kind held good throughout Roman history.
Sulla attained his power in 81 B.C., resigned it in 79, and died next
year at his villa on the warm Campanian coast, where he had gone to
enjoy himself in self-indulgence and literary dilettantism. Here he
wrote that autobiography of which some few fragments have come down to
us in Plutarch’s _Life_ of him—a life which will repay the reader, even
in translation. One of these fragments has always seemed to me to throw
real light on the man’s strange nature, and on the imperfection of his
work. “All my most happy resolutions,” he wrote, “have been the result,
not of reasoning, but of momentary inspiration.” In other words, Sulla
did not believe in thinking over a problem, and herein he was a true
Roman. He hoped to do the right thing on the spur of the moment. Thus it
was that no one ever knew what he would do; no one could trust him nor
believe in him. Like so many in that and succeeding ages he believed
profoundly in Fortune: he called himself Sulla the Fortunate, and gave
like names to his two children. What exactly he meant by Fortuna we
cannot say; but we may be sure that it was no such conception of a power
ruling the world as might guide a statesman’s feet out of the path of
self-seeking into a more bracing region of high endeavour.