COMITIAL LEGISLATION FROM THE GRACCHI TO SULLA 134-82
I. _The Gracchi_
134-122
The work of agrarian reform, after the feeble attempt of Laelius,[2240]
was taken up in a more determined spirit by Ti. Sempronius Gracchus,
who early in his tribunate, upon which he entered December 10, 134,
promulgated his famous lex agraria. It was a repetition, with some
modifications and additions, of those articles of the Licinian-Sextian
statute which related to the same subject. The last instance of the
prosecution of trespassers against the earlier law given in our imperfect
records belongs to 193,[2241] and it must still have been in force in
167 when Cato[2242] recited its terms in his “Oration in behalf of the
Rhodians.” Probably about the time of Flaminius the agrarian provisions
of this statute were renewed with the addition of articles, (a) providing
that a specified proportion of free laborers should be employed on public
lands held in possession. (b) requiring holders to take an oath to obey
the law. (c) increasing the penalty for violations.[2243]
Tiberius had matured his plan before entering office. Assisted by
experienced friends, among whom were P. Licinius Crassus, P. Mucius
Scaevola, the most eminent jurist of his generation, consul designate
for 133, and Appius Claudius Pulcher, his father-in-law, he expressed
the articles of his rogation in the most careful terms and with especial
regard for vested interests.[2244] Its chief provisions were—
(1) No one shall hold more than five hundred iugera of the public land,
excepting that in case the holder has sons he may occupy an additional
two hundred and fifty iugera for each of two sons.[2245]
(2) The occupier shall receive compensation for improvements on the lands
which the law compels him to surrender.[2246]
(3) The five hundred to one thousand iugera retained by the occupier
shall be granted to him by the state in perpetuity and free from all
dues.[2247]
(4) The lands thus accruing to the state shall be divided among the
needy[2248] in lots, the maximal size of which seems to have been set at
thirty iugera,[2249] to be held not as private property but as permanent,
heritable leaseholds inalienable and subject to a specified rent.[2250]
The Latins and Italians are to be included among the beneficiaries of
this provision.[2251]
(5) Certain specified parts of the public domain shall not be subject to
assignment—the same parts which are afterward reserved from assignment by
the agrarian law of 111:[2252]
a. Land granted by law or by a senatorial decree to a colony, a
municipium, or a Latin town, with the exception of any tracts of such
land which this law may expressly order to be sold, assigned, or
restored.[2253] Public domain granted by a lex or a senatus consultum can
be withdrawn by the same, but the modification of a treaty requires the
consent of both parties.[2254]
b. The trientabula—portions of public land granted by the government for
a quit rent to its creditors as security for any part of a loan.[2255]
c. The ager compascuus—public land on which a specified group of
neighbors have a right to pasture free of charge ten large domestic
animals—cattle, horses, mules, and asses—and a fixed number of small
animals, unknown to us on account of a lacuna in the inscription but most
probably fifty.[2256] As the unit was doubtless the individual, much of
the land of this description must have remained undivided.[2257]
d. Public roads.[2258]
e. Other portions of the public domain specifically designated as exempt
from distribution, including the Campanian lands, which are leased out by
the censors.[2259]
f. Certain pasture lands let out to any who wish to feed their live stock
thereon, who pay a tax (scriptura) for the privilege.[2260]
(6) The distribution of the lands shall be effected by a standing
magistracy elected annually by the tribes[2261]—the triumviri agris
dandis adsignandis.[2262]
(7) As all available public land is to be utilized in the various ways
described above, and as the holders of lands once public are to be
guaranteed in their possession, further occupation of land is thereby
precluded.[2263]
Afterward as Tiberius found it impossible to reconcile the optimates
to his measure, he withdrew the second article and proposed to eject
illegal holders without compensation.[2264] When the nobles induced
Octavius, a colleague in the tribunate, to veto the bill, Tiberius had
him deposed by a vote of the tribes, and then passed the agrarian law
without further opposition, unauthorized however by the senate.[2265]
The triumviri elected to take charge of the work of distribution were
the author of the law, his brother Gaius, and his father-in-law Appius
Claudius Pulcher.[2266] As the election of these persons was a violation
of the Licinian and Aebutian plebiscites,[2267] a dispensation was
probably granted by vote of the people.[2268] When the commission found
itself hampered by legal inability to distinguish between public and
private land, Tiberius carried a second agrarian law which invested the
triumviri with the necessary judicial power for determining what land was
public and what private.[2269] It was by virtue of this second enactment
that the word iudicandis was introduced into the phrase descriptive
of their functions—“iudicandis adsignandis” or “dandis adsignandis
iudicandis.”[2270] In the year 129, probably at the time of the election
to this office, Publius Scipio Aemilianus brought about the transfer of
the judicial function to the consuls. Appian,[2271] our sole authority
for the latter act, speaks only of its discussion in the senate, implying
that this body rather than the people passed the resolution. In that
case the senate must have annulled the second agrarian law on the ground
that it was illegally passed; for in no other way could it set aside a
comitial statute.[2272] Some land, already delimited, may still have been
subject to distribution; but as the consuls avoided the disagreeable
function received from the commissioners, the work of assignment came
speedily to an end. The agrarian law of Ti. Gracchus fell thus into
disuse till it was revived by his brother.[2273]
The deposition of Octavius[2274] requires especial consideration. In
136 the proconsular imperium had been abrogated, probably by a popular
vote[2275]; but no instance of the abrogation of an actual magistracy had
thus far occurred. Most scholars consider the act unconstitutional.[2276]
It did indeed involve a sweeping departure from long-established custom;
but in favor of its legality may be urged the fact that nearly all the
powers ever possessed by the assembly are known to have been acquired in
the way in which Tiberius was attempting to establish for it the right
to remove from office—by precedent rather than by law. A statute of the
Twelve Tables declared that whatever the people voted last should be
law and valid[2277]; and through the ages preceding the Gracchi they
had often applied this principle to the extension of their power at the
expense of the senate and magistrates. They were sovereign; and if they
chose to introduce the custom of deposing a magistrate whom they regarded
as the betrayer of their dearest interests, they had the legal right. The
wisdom of the proceeding may be questioned, but he who has followed the
history of the assemblies thus far must regard the measure as merely one
of the many steps by which the people advanced toward the realization of
their sovereignty.
Tiberius attempted to apply the same principle to securing his election
to the tribunate. His motive was not a purely selfish desire to save his
life; it required no superhuman wisdom to discover that his downfall
would mean the collapse of the great reform on which he had set his
heart. The continued ascendancy of a popular champion necessarily
involved the overthrow of the senatorial government. This idea, which
he now clearly grasped, found expression in his new political platform,
(1) to shorten the period of military service, (2) by means of a law of
appeal to vest the supreme jurisdiction solely in the people, so as to
deprive the senate of its extra-constitutional judicial power,[2278]
(3) to give the equites equal representation with the senators in the
juries, or possibly as Dio Cassius states, to transfer the courts from
the senate to the knights.[2279] When the day of election came, his
peasant supporters were busy with their harvests, and his platform
did not strongly appeal to the city plebs, on whom he had chiefly to
rely for votes. Had the people insisted, as they twice did in favor of
Scipio,[2280] they would have prevailed either with or without an act
of dispensation passed by the senate or by themselves[2281]; but the
weakness of his supporters rather than any illegality in the proceeding
proved his ruin. To free the future reformer from this limitation,
however, a rogation of C. Papirius Carbo, tribune of the plebs in 131,
proposed that a tribune should be eligible to reëlection as many times
as he chose to offer himself as a candidate. This rogation failed[2282];
but before the tribunate of C. Gracchus, 123, “a certain law had already
been enacted,” as Appian[2283] obscurely informs us, “that if a tribune
should be wanting on the announcement (of the votes), the people might
elect one from the whole body of citizens.” The statute, which Appian has
evidently failed to understand clearly, seems to have provided that if
the returns showed the election of only nine tribunes from the candidates
proposed, the people could proceed to elect a tenth from the whole body
of citizens, including the existing tribunician college; or equivalently,
if for the tenth place the tribes cast a majority of votes for one who
was not a candidate, he would be considered legally elected.[2284] The
object was to enable the people to continue in office an especially
popular tribune, and was therefore a notable stride in the direction of
monarchy.
Papirius was more successful with his lex tabellaria, which extended the
ballot to legislation, 131.[2285] Trials of perduellio alone retained the
oral vote. Doubtless this improvement greatly strengthened the rising
popular party. A plebiscite passed about 129, requiring a knight on
entering the senate to sell his public horse, deprived the senators of
their votes in the eighteen centuries, and completed the separation of
the governing aristocracy from the commercial class begun by the Claudian
statute of 219.[2286]
At some unknown time before the tribunate of C. Gracchus a plebiscite of
M. Junius modified the lex Calpurnia concerning extortion,[2287] in what
way we are not informed. The act is with a high degree of probability
attributed to M. Junius Pennus, tribune of the plebs in 126.[2288] If the
Junian lex repetundarum was indeed his work, it could have been dictated
by no sympathy with the unprivileged classes, for it was this Junius
whose plebiscite ordered the expulsion of all aliens from Rome—a measure
which Cicero condemns as inhuman.[2289] The act last mentioned was the
response of the senate and rabble to the effort of the more enlightened
Romans to grant the citizenship to the Latins and Italians. The new idea
was embodied in a rogation of M. Fulvius Flaccus, consul in 125, which
offered the citizenship, or as an alternative the right of appeal, to
the Italians, with the purpose of buying off their opposition to the
Sempronian agrarian law; but the measure was so vehemently opposed in the
senate that the author withdrew it.[2290] The idea however lived in the
minds of the reformers till it was finally realized.
Ten years after the tribunate of Ti. Gracchus his brother Gaius entered
upon the same office. Since the beginning of the decennium the leaders
of the popular party had made various proposals but had accomplished
little. The agrarian law was still nominally in force, though its
execution was effectually blocked. The plan of extending the franchise
had found its most bitter opponents in the men of the street, on whom
the tribunes had chiefly to depend. The ballot in legislation, the
possibility of continuous reëlection to the tribunate, and the increase
of discontent with the plutocracy were the only gains. Extraordinary
progress was now to be made under the leadership of a great creative
statesman. The chronological succession of his comitial enactments cannot
be determined with absolute certainty. We do not in every instance know
whether a given proposal was carried in his first or second year. This
much, however, is clear, that most of his measures belong to 123 and to
the early part of 122. The execution of the laws, including the seventy
days’ journey to Carthage,[2291] consumed much of the second year, and
after his defeat for the third term—about July, 122—he carried no more
plebiscites.[2292] Among his first thoughts was that of strengthening
the legality of the deposition of Octavius[2293] by a rogation which
provided that a person so deposed should thereby be debarred forever
from office. He probably meant it more as an enunciation of a principle
than as a legislative project. The measure was never offered to vote,
but was withdrawn, we are told, at the request of his mother.[2294] Far
more serious, and of lasting importance, was his lex de provocatione,
which, carrying into effect the idea of his brother,[2295] forbade the
establishment of a special court or the placing of the state under
martial law without an act of the people.[2296] Further judicial
legislation was postponed in the interest of more pressing matters.
While colonization and the assignment of land individually to citizens,
which Gaius planned on an extensive scale, as will soon be noticed, were
to provide for the agricultural population at the expense of the state,
and while the nobles and knights continued to reap an unfailing harvest
of wealth in the administration of the provinces, the democratic reformer
could think it only just and expedient to subsidize the populace of the
capital. The artificial growth of Rome as a political centre, with no
sound economic basis but with a most unfavorable geographical situation,
rendered the problem of living difficult for the masses even in time
of prosperity; and recently circumstances had so diminished the grain
supply that relief from the government seemed the only resource against
threatening famine.[2297] Before the time of the Gracchi on occasions of
especial scarcity or of especial plenty the state had sold grain at a
reduced rate; and the aediles, we know not how often, had made similar
reductions at their own expense.[2298] There can be no doubt, too, that
individual nobles in a private capacity often distributed free or cheap
grain among the poor to secure their support in elections. Attached by
such means to the nobles and the senate, the rabble had been in the
main conservative. There was a certain degree of justice in giving the
populace a share in the profits of empire and some wisdom in substituting
system for the existing irregularity. A political result, we may also
say aim, of the frumentarian plebiscite of Gaius was to disattach the
city populace from its conservative moorings and to enlist it in the
service of reform. His measure, the first frumentarian law in Roman
history, provided for the monthly sale to every citizen who applied for
it—practically to those only who resided in or near Rome—of a fixed
number of modii of wheat at six and a third asses a modius,[2299] which
was probably about half the average market price. The law won for him
the good will of the populace,[2300] but his opponents complained that
it depleted the treasury and excited the mob to seditions.[2301] It set
an example for further reductions at the expense of the state. Hence
notwithstanding some good features the effect of the law was pernicious,
as it tended to increase the number of idlers, to make the populace
improvident, and to encourage demagogism. It must be said, on the other
hand, that had Gaius lived to carry out his wide scheme of colonization,
he would have so relieved the capital of its semi-pauper population as to
render frumentations unnecessary, whereupon the law would naturally have
been repealed.[2302]
After providing in the frumentarian act an expedient which, we
may believe, he looked upon as temporary, he resumed the work of
construction[2303] by reviving his brother’s agrarian law.[2304] The
continuance of the assignations as long as there remained any public
land that could be distributed was a most essential element of his plan.
Among the articles retained were those which subjected the holders of
assigned lots to a tax[2305] and exempted from distribution the Campanian
territory not set apart for his colony at Capua,[2306] as well as various
other lands excepted both by the agrarian law of Tiberius and by that
of 111.[2307] Doubtless it also reinvested the three commissioners with
judicial power, without which they could accomplish nothing. Through
this agrarian law, or possibly through a subsequent lex viaria, the
triumviri were empowered to build roads for the accommodation of the
new peasantry.[2308] Though introducing no new principle,[2309] his
lex agraria was not a simple reaffirmation of his brother’s law with
amendments and additions; but “a comprehensive statute, so completely
covering the ground of the earlier Sempronian law that later legislation
cites the law of Gaius, not that of Tiberius Gracchus, as the authority
for the regulations which had revolutionized the tenure of the public
land.”[2310]
These measures were passed before the tribunician elections of the
year,[2311] which took place as usual in midsummer.[2312] It was his
frumentarian law, together with the hope aroused by the long array of
promulgated measures, which secured his reëlection. Soon afterward,
though still in 123, he brought before the comitia a rogation concerning
the qualification of iudices. As the quaestiones extraordinariae from the
earliest times were made up of senators, it was natural that the standing
courts also from the time of their institution should be similarly
composed.[2313] Under such conditions the judicial authority afforded
no efficient check upon maladministration; and this immunity from the
law, together with the temptations to the misuse of power especially in
provincial commands, tended in the course of generations to make of the
senate, with individual exceptions, a class of grand criminals. To remedy
this evil and at the same time to remove from the senate the strongest
foundation of its political power,[2314] Ti. Sempronius Gracchus had
proposed his rogatio iudiciaria either for transferring the courts
entirely to the knights, or more probably for making up the juries of an
equal number of senators and knights.[2315] It failed to become a law;
but Gaius now took up the matter, and after experimenting unsuccessfully
with one or two projects,[2316] he finally, 122, carried a plebiscite
which substituted knights for senators in the alba iudicum,[2317] from
which not only standing courts but also special commissions were to
be filled.[2318] It is uncertain whether mention was made of equites
or whether the result was reached merely by exclusion and definition.
There can be no doubt that the qualifications were identical with those
described in the extant lex repetundarum,[2319] attributed by scholars
to M’. Acilius Glabrio, a colleague of Gaius, and adopted accordingly
soon after the Sempronian judiciary law. The terms of the Acilian statute
excluded tribunes of the plebs, quaestors, tresviri capitales, military
tribunes of the first four legions, tresviri for assigning lands, persons
who had fought in the arena for pay or had been condemned by a quaestio
or by the people. It excluded further all under thirty or over sixty
years of age, and all who had their domicile more than a mile from Rome,
the fathers, brothers, and sons of those who held the offices above
enumerated, senators, and their fathers, brothers and sons, as well as
persons living beyond the sea. A part of the statute missing from the
inscription may have contained a minimal property qualification, which
could have been no other than four hundred thousand sesterces; or it may
have restricted jury service to those who “possess a public horse.”[2320]
According to Plutarch Gaius was allowed the privilege of selecting
the jurors. Had he remained in power and continued in this function,
he doubtless could have compelled the courts of his choosing to do
justice. But the privilege seems to have been restricted to the first
list; thereafter, as provided by the lex repetundarum of Acilius the
praetor qui inter peregrinos ius dicit was to attend to the matter.[2321]
The relation between the Sempronian lex iudiciaria and the lex Acilia
repetundarum has not been precisely determined.[2322] If the Sempronian
statute preceded the Acilian,[2323] as is not unlikely, it was the
intention of Gaius to pass a general law regarding the qualifications
and mode of appointment of jurors, to be superseded in large part by a
succession of laws, which dealing with individual courts, should regulate
the qualification and appointment of their several juries as well as the
procedure and the penalties. This policy indicates a conviction that he
could give the reformed judicial system greater stability by making the
separate laws here referred to entirely independent of his original lex
iudiciaria.[2324]
The lex Acilia, described above as a plebiscite of M’. Acilius Glabrio,
colleague of C. Gracchus in 122,[2325] took the place of the lex
Iunia of 126,[2326] and is to be identified with a lex repetundarum
extensive fragments of which are preserved in an inscription.[2327]
Whereas earlier laws on the subject rendered governors of provinces, and
perhaps administrative officers in Italy, alone liable to punishment,
the Acilian statute includes magistrates and senators and the sons of
both as well as the holders of promagisterial imperium.[2328] The crime
consists in taking in any one year from those whom the law is designed
to protect—from the allies, Latins, provincials, and exterior nations
under the sway or in the friendship of the Roman people[2329]—by gift,
seizure, compulsion, or other illegal means money or property exceeding
a specified sum, which a lacuna in the inscription leaves unknown,
but which is supposed to be four thousand sesterces.[2330] Holders of
magistracies and imperia cannot be brought to trial for the crime till
after the expiration of their terms,[2331] on the general principle which
exempts from prosecution those who are engaged in the service of the
state.[2332] The praetor qui inter peregrinos ius dicit within ten days
after the passage of the statute, and in future within ten days after
entering upon his office, is to choose for this court four hundred and
fifty persons with the qualifications for jury service described above in
connection with the Sempronian judiciary law. From this group the accused
is to reject under oath his kinsmen within a specified degree and his
sodales. The accuser is to draw from the remainder a hundred persons,
taking oath that he has chosen no kinsman within a specified degree or
sodalis. The accused rejects fifty of the hundred, and the remaining
fifty constitute the jury for trying the case.[2333] The rules of
procedure in the trial and the amount of liability of the accused in the
event of conviction are given. The accuser, if an alien, is granted as
a reward for a successful prosecution the Roman citizenship for himself
and his born sons and grandsons. If he is a Latin and does not want the
citizenship, he is given instead the right of appeal.[2334] Probably the
law contained provisions for the punishment of corruption in the patrons
of the accusers and in the praetor and jurors.[2335]
It is certain that Gaius carried a law also for reconstituting the
quaestio inter sicarios et veneficos,[2336] which had originally been
established shortly before 141.[2337] The Sempronian law on this subject
contained a provision for the punishment of bribery or conspiracy
committed in trials of the kind. The article referred to included the
words “Ne quis iudicio circumveniretur,”[2338] a principle repeated as
“Qui coisset, quo quis condemnaretur”[2339] in the corresponding article
of the Cornelian law which superseded the Sempronian. There was no
quaestio for dealing especially with judicial corruption and conspiracy,
but the accused was brought to trial before the very court in relation to
which his crime was alleged to have been committed.[2340] The provision
was directed against the accuser, against magistrates and senators who
presided over such courts, and presumably against equestrian jurors who
accepted bribes.[2341]
We have in an inscription the concluding articles of a criminal law[2342]
of this period. It is on a bronze tablet found on the site of the ancient
Italian city Bantia, and is called the Latin Lex Bantina to distinguish
it from another lex in Oscan on the opposite face.[2343] A reference
to the triumviri agris dandis adsignandis, who seem to have been those
elected under the Sempronian agrarian law, places the document between
133 and 118. It is concerned with a quaestio.[2344] An attempt has been
made to identify it with the lex Iunia repetundarum and to assign it
accordingly to 126.[2345] The circumstance, however, that it was passed
without the authorization of the senate, and that its whole spirit is
anti-senatorial, would lead us rather to the conclusion that it was the
work of C. Gracchus at the time of his most bitter struggle with the
optimates yet before he had lost control of the comitia. The fragment
contains no more than the sanctio—provisions for enforcement of the
statute. The beginning of the first extant article is lost, but it must
have described the class of offenders to which the article applies, and
the nature of the offence. It speaks merely of disabilities imposed on
the offender, among which are the following: he must not address the
senate or vote in a public trial (poplico ioudicio) or in comitia or
receive or give testimony in court or wear the praetexta and soleae in
public or be chosen into the senate or remain in it if already a member.
The second article provides that if a tribune of the plebs, a quaestor, a
triumvir capitalis, a triumvir for assigning lands, or a index appointed
under the law itself, or a senator shall with knowledge and malice
prepense violate the law or hinder its operation, he shall be liable to
a fine, the amount of which a lacuna in the text leaves unknown. The
third article provides that a consul, praetor, aedile, tribune of the
plebs, quaestor, triumvir capitalis, or triumvir for the assignment of
lands now in office shall, within the next five days after ascertaining
that the law has been enacted, swear in the manner described below: also
that the dictator, consul, praetor, master of horse, censor, aedile,
and other officials as above enumerated, and the index appointed under
this law shall in future take the oath within five days after entering
upon their magistracies or imperia. They shall give oath to the urban
quaestor publicly in front of the temple of Castor, swearing by Jupiter
and the di Penates that they will do as the law requires and will not
with knowledge and malice prepense violate the law or by intercession or
otherwise hinder its administration. He who fails to swear shall not be
candidate for a magistracy or imperium, or manage or retain either, or
address the senate or be chosen into it; and the quaestor shall keep a
list of those who have taken the oath. The fourth article provides that
whoever is or shall be a senator, or shall have the right of addressing
the senate after this law has been passed, shall within the next ten
days after ascertaining the fact of its enactment take an oath like that
described in article 3. The penalty for failure to swear is not mentioned
in the extant fragment, but must at the mildest have been expulsion from
the senate.
Closely connected with the transfer of the iudicia from the senators to
the knights is the statute of Gaius concerning the taxation of Asia. It
ordered the censors to let out the taxes of this province to the highest
bidders; and it limited the right of the senate to lessen the sum agreed
upon.[2346] Under such an arrangement, however, no sufficient guarantee
could be provided for the security of the provincials from publican
exactions.[2347] The political result of this legislation in favor of
the knights was to invest them not only with an important share in the
administration, but through the courts with a superiority even over the
senate.[2348] The opposition of the poorer class to the aristocracy could
never be otherwise than uncertain and fitful; but the knights with their
immense wealth and their efficient organization were to be henceforth
an ever present rival of the senate. The author of the law had given
the state a double head,[2349] which was to prove the source of civil
discord; or nearly in his own words, he had thrust into the body of the
senate a sword which nothing could withdraw.[2350] For a few months their
benefactor may have cherished the delusion that he could depend upon
their grateful support; he lived to discover that they cared not for him
or his reforms but only for their immediate interests. In his work of
construction the statesman found them slightly more serviceable than the
proletariate.
The right which the senate had hitherto possessed of assigning the
provinces to the magistrates and promagistrates according to its pleasure
gave a great opportunity for favoritism and partisanship; it could thwart
the will of the people by assigning a popular consul to an insignificant
province. To deprive the senate of a power which could be so easily
perverted to wrong use, C. Gracchus proposed and carried an act which
ordered the senate before the election to name the provinces that were to
be consular.[2351] An article forbade tribunician intercession against
such action of the senate.[2352] Far from improving the administration,
however, this statute tended to foster that routine which was one of the
most marked defects of oligarchic rule.[2353]
As under the government of the nobility military affairs were in the
hands of the magistrates and senate, this field was closed to comitial
legislation.[2354] One of the most notable indications of growing
democracy was the project of Ti. Gracchus, 133, for shortening the period
of service. It was not brought to vote;[2355] but his brother Gaius
succeeded in passing a plebiscite, 123, which ordered that the state
should bear the cost of clothing soldiers, and forbade the enlistment
of boys before the close of their seventeenth year.[2356] The pay of
the soldiers, which since the war with Hannibal had remained five and a
third asses a day, had under new conditions become wholly inadequate;
and certainly insistence on the legal age limitation was prudent as well
as humane. There is no ground, then, for imagining with Diodorus[2357]
that in this salutary measure Gaius was catering for the support of the
soldiers by inciting them to disobedience and lawlessness.
His greatest constructive work he aimed to achieve through colonization
and through the extension of the franchise. His colonial law, 123,
proposed to establish many settlements in Italy,[2358] two of which at
least should be made up of men of the best character, not the neediest
but traders and workmen of moderate means.[2359] The two actually founded
were Scolacium and Neptunia,[2360] both in situations favorable for
commerce. Several other settlements in Italy are attributed to his
colonial or agrarian statute.[2361] As his colonies were exclusively
citizen,[2362] if any aliens took part, they must by virtue of the
colonial law have obtained the Roman rights. The statute of his colleague
Rubrius the same year (123) provided for the founding of Junonia on the
site of Carthage.[2363] But the most liberal and statesmanlike measure
was reserved for his second tribunate, 122. It was a proposal to grant
full citizenship to the Latins and the ius Latii to the remaining
allies.[2364] The rejection of the bill by a popular vote proved the
leader far too liberal and too progressive for his supporters. Deceived
by the spurious proposals of M. Livius Drusus,[2365] a colleague of
Gaius, for the founding of twelve colonies, the members of which
were to hold their lots by fee simple and consequently exempt from
rents, and for depriving the Roman magistrates of the right to inflict
corporal punishment on Latins even when in military service under their
commands,[2366] the populace, readily accepting the new proposals,[2367]
turned against their true champion, and defeated him in the election
for the tribunate for the ensuing year.[2368] It was probably the same
measure of Gaius for extending the citizenship which alienated from him
the equites, who in every crisis pursued their own selfish ends.[2369] In
the ensuing struggle between the senate and Gaius they took the side of
the former.[2370]
In the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus the life of the comitia reached the
highest point of intensity. The two years of his administration afford
evidence of what the assembly could accomplish when directed by the
personality of a great statesman.[2371] The sum total of the measures
adopted should be estimated not as a completed work, but as a foundation
to be strengthened at defective points and to be built upon till the
whole structure of the state and empire should be reconstituted and
freshly vitalized. These results might have been achieved, had Gaius
lived out his natural life and retained the support of the populace
and the knights.[2372] His failure proved the comitia a weak, unsafe
instrument for constructive statesmanship.
II. _The Aristocratic Reaction and the Popular Recovery_
122-103
The optimates waited only for the expiration of the tribunate of Gaius
Gracchus to begin undoing his work, and they found the comitia ready to
aid in the demolition. In 121 a plebiscite of M. Minucius Rufus repealed
the Rubrian law for the colonization of Junonia (Carthage).[2373] Soon
afterward, certainly not later than 118, a plebiscite, whose author is
unknown, permitted the beneficiaries of the Sempronian agrarian laws to
sell the lots they had received.[2374] This enactment was followed in 118
by a plebiscite which Appian[2375] assigns to Spurius Borius (?), a name
not otherwise known.[2376] It put an end to the distributions, and must
therefore have abolished the agrarian triumvirate. The same law confirmed
all holders of the ager publicus in their possession, without converting
any of this land into private property, and it continued the imposition
of rents. We may assume that the lands here referred to included those
recently distributed in small lots as well as those retained by the
occupiers. Lastly it enacted that the revenues accruing from the rents
should be used for distributions—probably of cheap grain.[2377] In 111
another tribune, whom Cicero[2378] names Sp. Thorius, through a law which
has partially survived in an inscription, aimed to settle definitely and
for all time in the interest of the nobles the questions raised by the
Sempronian agrarian legislation.
I. This epigraphic lex agraria converts into private property the
following classes of lands.[2379]
(1) Land assigned to a colony or in any way made public, and afterward
restored to the original owners (domneis). It is to be private optuma
lege.[2380]
(2) Land assigned to a colony and afterward restored to its former
occupier (veteri possessori).[2381]
(3) Land within the legal limit (of five hundred iugera) left to the
occupier by the three commissioners.[2382]
(4) Land assigned after 133 to colonies of Roman citizens.[2383]
(5) Land given and assigned by the three commissioners after 133.[2384]
(6) Land which has been occupied after 133 (not assigned by the
commissioners) to the extent of not more than thirty iugera to the
occupier.[2385]
(7) Land which by the provision of this law is to be sold, granted, or
restored.[2386]
All the lands above enumerated are declared private and free from
vectigal and scriptura.[2387]
II. The lands which the law declares public are those reserved from
distribution by the law of Ti. Gracchus.[2388] It retains further as
public all lands along public roads which have been granted by the
commissioners on condition that the recipients (viasieis vicaneis) in
return for the use of the land undertake the duty of keeping the roads in
repair. Though heritable and alienable, they remain subject to the burden
here described.[2389]
III. In the regulation of the agrarian conditions of Africa the statute
deals with three kinds of land, (1) private ex iure quiritium,[2390] (2)
private ex iure peregrino,[2391] (3) public domain of the Roman people
of various sub-classes.[2392] Lastly the statute aims to settle the
status of the lands of Corinth.[2393] As regards the Latins and aliens,
whatever has already been permitted them by treaty or law is allowed them
by this statute, provided the same thing is allowed a Roman citizen; but
it is forbidden them if forbidden a citizen. Rights granted the citizens
which up to this time are not enjoyed by aliens are not by this law
communicated to aliens.[2394]
Through this series of reactionary laws, from the Minucian (121) to the
Thorian (111), the optimates succeeded in nullifying the good results of
the Sempronian agrarian reforms. It was while the Minucian rogation[2395]
was under discussion that the senate took advantage of a disturbance
in the concilium to arm the consul Opimius with absolute power for
putting down C. Gracchus and his followers.[2396] The failure of an
attempt in the following year (120) to call Opimius to account for these
proceedings established the right of the senate to the appointment of
special commissions and to the decretum ultimum[2397]—a right on which
the optimates continued to insist to the end of the republic. Through
the plebiscite of L. Calpurnius Bestia (also 120)[2398] they put the
stamp of legitimacy upon the murder of the followers of Ti. Gracchus by
recalling from exile P. Popillius Laenas, who as consul in 132 and head
of a special court was chiefly responsible for that judicial crime.[2399]
An attempt was made by Q. Servilius Caepio, consul in 106, to restore
the courts to the senate,[2400] or possibly to compromise by providing
for an album composed of both senators and equites.[2401] The sources
imply that the measure was accepted by the comitia; but if so, it must
have been immediately annulled, as it was not carried into effect.[2402]
Within this period of reaction, and perhaps as a part of it, falls the
lex de libertinorum suffragiis of the consul M. Aemilius Scaurus, 115.
Although nothing certain is known of it, we may suppose that it attempted
again[2403] to restrict the libertini to the four city tribes.[2404]
About this time, too, several acts seem to have been passed for
diminishing the pay of soldiers, probably undoing the Sempronian law on
the subject.[2405]
A glance at these reactionary measures alone would leave the impression
that the senate was recovering its entire supremacy. This result might
have been reached had it not been on the one hand for the lasting
inspiration of the Gracchan spirit in the plebs and their leaders, and
on the other the new position of the equites. In 119 C. Marius, at once
a representative of the knights[2406] and of the peasants, opposed as
tribune of the plebs the senatorial aristocracy, which now had to depend
for immediate support upon the populace.[2407] The optimates had greatly
impaired the value of the secret ballot through the custodes tabellarum,
who stood on the pontes as well as by the boxes (cistae) to keep watch
over the voting. They were often influential men[2408]—in elections
selected by the candidates[2409]—who used their influence with the
voters, especially of the principium or of the prerogative century,[2410]
thereby maintaining for the aristocrats a high degree of control over the
comitia in spite of the ballot laws.[2411] For this reason C. Marius when
tribune of the plebs carried an act for making the pontes narrower that
there might be room on them for the voters only.[2412] The politicians,
however, soon found means of circumventing this law as well as the use
of the ballot.[2413] The populares could expect little therefore from the
plebiscite of C. Caelius, 107, which by extending the ballot to trials of
perduellio, completed the abolition of oral voting in the comitia.[2414]
We find another sign of popular recovery in the assembly’s resumption of
the appointment of special judiciary commissions.[2415] One of the most
remarkable courts of the kind was that created in 113 for the trial of
three Vestal virgins on a charge of incest. The pontifex maximus, who
possessed absolute authority over the Vestals, had already pronounced
judgment, condemning one and acquitting the other two, when a plebiscite
of Sex. Peducaeus, taking the case out of his hands, transferred it
to a quaestio extraordinaria.[2416] To such an extent did the tribune
apply the theory of popular sovereignty.[2417] The plebiscite of C.
Mamilius, 109, ordered the appointment of a court for the detection and
punishment of those who had accepted money from Jugurtha for aid rendered
him against the decrees of the senate and the interests of Rome. As it
was a blow aimed at the nobility, the people in the hatred they then
cherished against the governing class voted it with great spirit.[2418]
In 105 the tribal comitia abrogated the proconsular imperium of Q.
Servilius Caepio,[2419] and in the following year, they not only
appointed a special court to try him for embezzlement of the gold found
at Tolosa,[2420] but through the plebiscite of L. Cassius Longinus, they
disqualified for membership of the senate any person whom the people
had judicially condemned or whose imperium they had abrogated.[2421]
These acts confirmed and applied the principles underlying the deposition
of Octavius and the rogation of C. Gracchus concerning persons deposed
from office (abacti). In theory the people indirectly chose the senators
through their function of electing magistrates; and they were only
claiming this right when they insisted that he should be prohibited from
membership whom they had condemned in either of the two ways described
by the statute. It must have seemed to the people, on the other hand,
that the tribunes, who were once more their true representatives, had
as good a right as any other magistrates to seats in the senate. This
feeling found expression in the Atinian plebiscite, enacted between 122
and 102,[2422] which gave the tribunes the ius sententiae dicendae in the
senate with the same right to censorial enrolment as that enjoyed by the
curule magistrates.[2423]
The growing strength of the people and at the same time the increasing
dependence of the optimates on religion for the control of politics are
indicated by a law of 103 concerning the election of sacerdotes. More
than a hundred years earlier[2424] was instituted the custom of electing
the supreme pontiff and the chief curio in comitia of seventeen tribes
designated by lot. Toward the end of the plutocratic régime C. Licinius
Crassus in the interest of the people attempted in vain to pass a law
for extending the principle to all the members of the more important
sacerdotal colleges.[2425] The proposal was defeated by the eloquence of
C. Laelius,[2426] but at length it was passed as the lex de sacerdotiis
of Cn. Domitius, tribune of the plebs in 103. The statute affected the
pontifical and augural colleges, the decemviri sacris faciundis, and the
epulones.[2427] According to the new arrangement when a place became
vacant in any one of these colleges, the members of the college drew up
a list of eligible candidates from whom the comitia sacerdotum, composed
as above described, made a choice.[2428] In spite of this law religion
remained a political tool of the optimates.
Meantime the popular party succeeded in enacting economic laws. A
Porcian statute concerning interest, which may well have aimed to
benefit the poor, seems to be the work of M. Porcius Cato, consul in
118. The author had to defend the act against several attempts to repeal
it.[2429] In 109 under the stress of the Cimbric war the consul M.
Junius Silanus passed an act for repealing several earlier laws which
had diminished the pay of soldiers. We may reasonably believe that it
restored the Sempronian law on the subject.[2430] His immediate object
was to encourage enlistments.[2431] An agrarian rogation was offered by
L. Marcius Philipus, tribune of the plebs in 104. As the author was at
heart a democrat, his measure was doubtless inspired with the spirit
of the Gracchi. Perhaps it aimed to restore their law; but lacking
determination, the proposer readily allowed it to be voted down.[2432]
The monetary lex Clodia, which probably belongs to the same year, has no
political significance.[2433]
III. _The Appuleian Legislation and the Rule of the Moderate Optimates_
103-88
Through the legislative acts above described we can trace the speedy
restoration of the democracy and of comitial legislative power after
the overthrow of C. Sempronius Gracchus. We are now approaching a
second crisis in which the aristocracy had to struggle for existence.
Against it was formed a combination of three powerful men, C. Marius,
supported by the knights and the municipes,[2434] C. Servilius Glaucia,
and L. Appuleius Saturninus. It is almost certain that this Servilius
is to be identified with the author of the lex repetundarum of 111
or thereabout, probably a plebiscite, which repealed the Acilian law
on the same subject.[2435] In important respects his statute was an
improvement on earlier regulations of the crime. “Glaucia’s alteration
in procedure was thorough and permanent. He introduced the system of the
‘second hearing’—an obligatory renewal of the trial, which rendered it
possible for counsel to discuss evidence which had already been given,
and for jurors to get a grasp of the mass of scattered data which had
been presented to their notice[2436]—and he also made it possible to
recover damages, not only from the chief malefactor, but from all who
had dishonestly shared his spoils.”[2437] These principles were taken up
into the Cornelian law which superseded it in 81.[2438] The circumstance
that the man whom the optimates regarded as merely a vulgar demagogue
was the author of so statesmanlike a measure ought to militate against
their opinion, not only of him, but also of his associates. He, too,
represented the knights,[2439] whereas Appuleius was a champion of the
rural plebs against the senate and the populace. As tribune of the
plebs in 103 the latter proposed a law for the assignment of lands in
the province of Africa to the retiring veterans of Marius in lots of a
hundred iugera each. When Baebius, a colleague, interceded, the people
pelted him with stones and drove him from the assembly. Thus the law
was violently carried, but we hear nothing more of it. Probably it was
not enforced.[2440] This act marks an epoch in the history of Roman
colonization; through it the government first expressed its intention to
provide discharged soldiers with farms, a departure made necessary by the
Marian policy of filling the army with capite censi.[2441] Either to this
tribunate or more probably to his second belongs the lex de maiestate
(minuta),[2442] the first of the kind in Roman history. It defined the
crime and made general provisions for the prosecution of those who were
accused of it.[2443] The same statute provided for the establishment of a
court which seems to have been standing rather than special.[2444]
In his second tribunate, 100, supported by Marius, consul a sixth time,
and by Servilius, Appuleius proposed and carried a law for the founding
of settlements of the Marian veterans in Sicily, Corsica, Achaia, and
Macedonia.[2445] Marius was to be a commissioner for conducting these
colonies, and was to have the right to enroll as citizens in each
settlement a specified number of aliens.[2446] The object of the latter
clause was doubtless to provide for the Italian veterans in his army.
He proposed further that certain Transpadane lands which the Cimbri had
taken from the Gauls and which Marius had recovered should be distributed
among the citizens and the Italians.[2447] Another proposal was for the
monthly sale of a specified number of modii of grain to every citizen
resident of Rome who desired it at five-sixths of an as to the modius—a
merely nominal price.[2448] It is not known whether the colonial,
agrarian, and frumentarian measures were separate enactments or articles
of one statute; or the colonial and agrarian provisions may alone have
been combined. However that may be, we are informed by Appian[2449]
that attached to the agrarian measure—whether to the others also is
nowhere stated—was an article which provided that if the bill should
become a law, the senators within five days should swear to uphold it,
or if any senator refused to take the oath, he should be expelled from
the senate and should be liable to a fine of twenty talents, the Greek
equivalent of about five hundred thousand sesterces.[2450] The rural
plebs, including many discharged soldiers of Marius, swarmed into the
comitia at the call of the tribune and violently passed the law. Marius,
who as a consul and a knight disapproved of such illegality, set for
the senators the example of swearing to the law, “in so far as it was a
law,” which left them a loophole of escape from its provisions should
they afterward so determine. Metellus, who alone of the senators refused
the oath, was forced into exile and an interdict from fire and water
was passed against him by the tribes on the motion of Saturninus.[2451]
Soon afterward an election riot gave the senate a pretext for martial
law. Placed under custody, Saturninus and some fellow officials were
stoned to death by a mob. His measures were then annulled by the senate
on the ground that they had been violently passed;[2452] nevertheless
Mariana was founded by Marius in Corsica, apparently under the colonial
provision.[2453] The import of the agrarian law of Sex. Titius, tribune
of the plebs in 99, is unknown.[2454] It may have been merely a
reënactment of the Appuleian measure. At all events before it could be
put into force it was annulled by the senate on the ground that it had
been passed by violence and against the intercession of colleagues.[2455]
The optimates, having again triumphed over the democracy, adopted a
policy of moderation. Their consuls of 98, Q. Caecilius Metellus and T.
Didius, attempted by a mild statute to check the most flagrant abuses
of tribunician legislation, (1) the combination of various dissimilar
provisions in one bill (lex satura) for the purpose of drawing the
votes of all parties, (2) the passing of bills through the assembly
by surprise. Their law accordingly, reviving usages once in force but
recently neglected, forbade such combinations[2456] and ordered that the
promulgation should precede the voting by at least a trinum nundinum—an
interval which included three market days.[2457] Similarly in 95 their
consuls, L. Licinius Crassus and Q. Mucius Scaevola, aimed by an equally
moderate law to check the usurpation of the citizenship on the part of
aliens. It forbade peregrini to perform the functions of citizens, though
it did not order the innocent among them to leave Rome.[2458] It provided
for the appointment of a special commission to discover and punish
usurpers of the citizenship.[2459] Those found guilty were sent back to
their communities.[2460] Though the authors were eminent in justice and
cherished the best intentions, their law proved to be not merely useless
but most pernicious to the state,[2461] as it helped drive the Italians
to revolt.[2462]
The next attempt at reform proceeded from the inmost circle of the
aristocracy.[2463] M. Livius Drusus, tribune of the plebs in 91, was a
man of the highest nobility, wealthy, eloquent, and upright at heart,
the son of that Livius who had opposed C. Gracchus.[2464] Regarding his
aims and the quality of his statesmanship conflicting opinions have
been expressed by modern scholars. The sources intimate that he wished
primarily to strengthen the senate by breaking away from its hide-bound
conservatism and undertaking various pressing reforms. His agrarian
measure was conceived in the Gracchan spirit but was more radical.[2465]
Appian[2466] states that it proposed the founding of colonies voted long
ago but not yet established. Reference must be to the twelve colonies
planned by his father.[2467] It probably abolished the statute of 111
and ordered the division not only of the Campanian lands,[2468] but also
of those public domains which were held by the allied communities—in
brief, of all the public land remaining in Italy and Sicily;[2469] and it
established a board of ten for making the assignments.[2470] Livy[2471]
attributes to the author a frumentarian proposal, though we are not
informed of its character. The aim must have been to win the support of
the populace for his other measures.[2472]
He further proposed to mix with the silver coinage an eighth part of
copper,[2473] the proceeds of this gain to be applied perhaps to the
execution of his frumentarian project.[2474] There is much controversy
as to the intent of his judiciary reform. Appian[2475] supposes that
he wished to add three hundred knights to the senate and to draw the
jurors from that body thus enlarged. Velleius[2476] is of the opinion
that his aim was to transfer the iudicia to the senate; whereas the
epitomator of Livy[2477] directly states that he provided for making up
the iudicia of senators and knights in equal numbers. We may partially
reconcile these conflicting statements by supposing that he planned to
compose the jurors’ album of six hundred senators and knights in equal
numbers, by which expedient he hoped to bring these two hostile orders
back to their former harmony,[2478] while serving the interests of the
senate and ridding the state of the corrupt and tyrannical rule of the
knights.[2479] By a special article of the rogation a quaestio, probably
perpetua, was to be appointed to inquire into the cases of bribery
of jurors and to punish the guilty.[2480] His most radical measure,
introduced after opposition to his other reforms began to develop,[2481]
was for extending the citizenship to the Latins[2482] and to all the
Italians.[2483] This group of proposals, designed for the benefit of
all parties, proved distasteful to all. The senators found a ground
for complaint in the circumstance that the knights would have equal
power with them in the courts; the knights were unwilling to surrender
their judicial control or to grant the franchise to the Italians; the
wealthy Italians feared they might lose the public lands which they
still held. Only the poor among the Romans and allies supported the
proposal in the hope of profiting by the distribution of lands.[2484] The
agrarian, frumentarian, monetary, and judiciary measures were combined
in one statute, and passed with violence[2485] and contrary to the
omens.[2486] On these grounds and furthermore because they violated the
article of the Caecilian-Didian statute forbidding the passing of a lex
satura, they were annulled by the senate.[2487] Although Drusus might
have interposed his veto against this decree, he preferred rather to
disregard it, most probably on the theory that the senatorial authority
did not avail against the sovereign will of the people.[2488] Aware that
his intercession would but postpone the annulment to another year, he
contented himself with informing his opponents that his measures were
absolutely necessary for the security of the state, and that those who
offended against them did it at their peril. He proceeded to carry
his statute into immediate effect.[2489] A plebiscite of Saufeius, a
colleague, established a commission of five in addition to the ten
provided for by the Livian statute; and Livius was elected a member of
both commissions.[2490] After his murder the Livian and Saufeian statutes
were both considered null and void.[2491]
The lex Remmia de calumniatoribus, which was enacted before 80, may
belong to the year of the Livian attempt at reform, 91;[2492] and in
that case it would be most natural to regard it as a piece of counter
legislation to offset the proposal for establishing a court for the trial
of jurors accused of bribery. The complainant who was proved malicious it
rendered liable to trial and punishment with the loss of citizenship and
the branding of his forehead with the letter K (for Kalumniator).[2493]
This we may believe was the defiance offered by the knights to those who
were attempting to bring them to account for their conduct as judges.
Exulting in their victory over Drusus, they expressed their antipathy to
the Italian movement in a lex de maiestate of Q. Varius, tribune of the
plebs in 90. They stood round the Rostra with drawn daggers and forced it
through the comitia in spite of tribunician intercession. It supplanted
the Appuleian law on the subject by a severe provision against those
who encouraged the Italians to demand the citizenship or in any way to
conspire or to revolt against the Roman people. It must have contained an
article, too, concerning seditions.[2494] The court which it established
was to sit on all ordinary dies fasti, undisturbed by iustitia,[2495] and
was to be a quaestio perpetua.[2496] Now that two attempts, the Appuleian
and the Livian, to substitute more popular measures for the Sempronian
frumentarian law had failed, the optimates found themselves strong
enough to supersede the Sempronian act by one less popular. This was the
Octavian law,[2497] the contents of which are unknown, but which received
the praise of Cicero for its moderation.[2498]
The Social War, following close upon the murder of Livius Drusus,
compelled the Romans to grant the citizenship to the Italians. This
result was brought about by a succession of statutes. A law of the consul
L. Julius Caesar, 90, bestowed the citizenship upon the Latins[2499]
and on all the Italians who had not taken arms against Rome[2500] and
who were willing to accept the gift.[2501] The same statute probably
regulated the assignment of these new citizens to the tribes.[2502]
In the following year a law of L. Calpurnius Piso, probably a tribune,
granted the commanding general power, apparently absolute, to bestow
the right of the city upon the soldiers under his orders.[2503] Another
statute of 89, carried by M. Plautius Silvanus and C. Papirius Carbo,
tribunes of the plebs, granted the citizenship to all members of allied
communities who were domiciled in Italy at the time the statute was
passed and who within sixty days should signify to the praetor at Rome
their willingness to accept the offer.[2504] The object of this measure
was not only to expedite the reconciliation, but also to make the work
of the next censors practicable. The citizenship thus granted involved
the right of suffrage, though in new tribes which voted after the others.
Many Italians, especially the Lucanians and the Samnites, took no notice
of the offer.[2505] In the same year Cn. Pompeius Strabo, a consul,
proposed and carried a law which seems to have empowered himself at his
discretion to invest with full citizenship those Transpadani who already
enjoyed the Latin rights, and to confer upon the rest the ius Latii.[2506]
The question as to the composition of the courts, still left unsettled,
was taken up by M. Plautius Silvanus, the tribune referred to above. His
statute transferred the filling of the album from the urban praetor to
the tribes, which were to elect each fifteen members. The law made the
qualifications of the iudices independent of the social classes. Under it
accordingly senators and a few common plebeians in addition to equites
served as jurors, so that the equestrian control of the courts was
partially checked.[2507]
Mommsen[2508] supposes that these jurors were for the quaestio de
maiestate only. For this opinion he depends upon the assertion of
Cicero[2509] that the equites remained till Sulla’s legislation in
uninterrupted possession of the courts. The authority of Cicero, however,
would allow us to assume that while the equites lost the legal monopoly
they retained practical control. However that may be, it is hardly
possible that this reactionary measure survived the proletarian uprising
under Marius and Cinna. The lex agraria of the same Plautius seems to
have been intended for supplying the veterans of the Social War with
farms.[2510] The lex Papiria, which introduced the semiuncial _as_, is
doubtless to be assigned to C. Papirius Carbo, the colleague of Plautius
above mentioned. If so, the object was to relieve slightly the financial
embarrassment caused by the war, and more particularly to bring the small
coins of Rome into correspondence with those of Italy.[2511]
IV. _The Political Equalization of Italy_
88-83
With many Italians still in revolt and the others smarting under the
inferior citizenship eked out to them, and with Mithridates threatening
the existence of the empire, Rome should have adopted a policy of
domestic conciliation. Under these circumstances Sulla, consul in 88,
showed a lamentable want of tact in expressing the sentiment that there
could be no peace in Italy as long as a single Samnite lived[2512]—a
curiously antiquated frame of mind for a statesman of his shrewdness.
The cause of the new citizens was taken up by P. Sulpicius Rufus, a
patrician who had forsaken his rank to qualify himself for the plebeian
tribunate.[2513] A man of marvellous eloquence, he had been an adherent
of Drusus, though more inclined to the equestrian interests. As tribune
of the plebs, 88, he seems to have tried to win the support of the senate
and of the equestrian order to his policy; but failing in the attempt,
he looked for aid to the commons and to a small band of knights who were
faithful to him. His rogation contained the following articles: (1)
that the new citizens and the libertini should be distributed among all
the tribes,[2514] with a view to completing the plan of Livius Drusus
for the political equalization of Italy; (2) that those who had been
driven from the state by violence should be recalled.[2515] This article
was probably for the benefit of those knights against whom the Varian
law had been turned.[2516] His rogation provided further, (3) that no
one who owed more than two thousand denarii should be a senator.[2517]
Money was scarce because of the war;[2518] and Sulpicius must have felt
that if the senators, most of whom were abundantly able, should pay
their debts, it would go far toward relieving the stringency, and that
if any were ejected because of failure to pay, an opportunity would be
afforded of promoting equites to the vacant places. The consuls of the
year, L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus, attempted to prevent a
vote on these radical measures by interposing a cessation of business
for many days through the proclamation of a festival.[2519] With his
armed followers Sulpicius forced the consuls to recall the proclamation,
whereupon Sulla fled for safety to his army at Nola. Sulpicius then
added to his statute a fourth article to the effect that the imperium
of Sulla should be abrogated and that the province of Asia, involving
the conduct of the war against Mithridates, should be given to Marius
as proconsul,[2520] although the latter was now but a private citizen.
Doubtless Sulpicius understood that there could be no guarantee for
the execution of his statute as long as Sulla remained in power, and
furthermore that the advancement of Marius would be a great gain for the
knights. The bill was passed by the comitia of tribes; but Sulla, far
from delivering up his command, marched his army into Rome to settle the
question in his own interest by the sword. On his initiative Sulpicius,
Marius, and ten of their associates were declared public enemies by a
decree of the senate ratified by a popular vote.[2521] There is no need
of assuming that the supporters of the tribune turned against him; the
optimates were as clever as their opponents at packing assemblies. The
absurdity of continuing the worn-out comitial machinery as a factor of
government is nowhere more apparent than on this page of history, which
records that the comitia a few days after adopting the measures of
Sulpicius, voted to outlaw him and his friends. Marius fled; Sulpicius
and several adherents were killed. Thereupon the senate annulled the
entire Sulpician statute on the ground that it had been violently
passed.[2522]
No statesman, however opposed to popular government, could think of
abolishing the comitia or even of putting an end to their legislative
function. But the democracy could be effectually checked by reducing
the legislative power of the assemblies to the harmless function of
ratifying decrees of the senate. This result Sulla and Pompeius aimed
to reach by renewing an ancient law[2523] that no measure should ever
again be brought before the people which had not been previously
considered and agreed to by the senate.[2524] A closely related law of
the same consuls ordered that “the voting should not be by tribes but
by centuries, as King Tullius had ordained.”[2525] This statement has
often been interpreted to signify the restoration of the earlier form of
comitia centuriata. But it seems most improbable that, on the point of
setting out for a long, distant war, Sulla should think of restoring an
organization which had been obsolete for more than a century and a half,
and which could have been known to none but antiquarians. With his clear,
practical intelligence he could not have failed to see the insuperable
difficulty of restoring the ancient definitions of the classes in
terms of iugera or even on the later basis of the libral _as_.[2526]
Furthermore no censors were then at hand to undertake the work, and it
was altogether unlikely that during his absence any could be elected who
would be willing to apply themselves to the revitalization of the antique
mummy. Such a measure, too, as Meyer[2527] has pointed out, would place
the control of the assembly in the hands, not of the senate, but of the
knights, his mortal enemies. It is far more reasonable to suppose that
this act transferred the function of ratifying laws from the tribal to
the centuriate comitia, to restore the arrangement supposed to have been
introduced by Servius Tullius.[2528] If this reasoning is correct, the
act under consideration totally abolished the legislative initiative
of the tribunes.[2529] The other Cornelian-Pompeian law mentioned by
Appian must have applied, accordingly, not to the tribunate but to the
other magistracies.[2530] The current interpretation, which involves
the theory of a return to the original centuriate system, requires
further examination. Its chief basis is the statement of Appian that no
law should be brought before the πλῆθος which had not been previously
considered in the senate. It is commonly assumed that he uses δῆμος to
designate the whole citizen body, and πλῆθος the exclusively plebeian
assembly under tribunician presidency. A study of his usage, however,
proves that he makes no such discrimination. Δῆμος is ordinarily the
people in general, especially as distinguished from the βουλή,[2531]
parallel to Livy’s common distinction between plebs and senatus. It
is the technical term for the plebs in their tribal comitia under
tribunician presidency.[2532] Rarely it signifies the state[2533] with
reference to the interest of the people. Πλῆθος, on the other hand,
ordinarily denotes the masses, multitude, rabble,[2534] including the
crowd gathered not only in a tribunician assembly[2535] but also in
the ἐκκλησία (here meaning contio) under the presidency of a patrician
magistrate.[2536] But πλῆθος is never technically or officially used to
denote any assembly either of the populus or of the plebs. In the passage
under discussion Appian’s statement of the Cornelian-Pompeian law is
εἰσηγοῦντό τε μηδὲν ἔτι ἀπροβούλευτον ἐς τὸν δῆμον ἐσφέρεσθαι, in which
he uses δῆμος according to his custom to designate the popular assembly
without specifying whether it is of the populus or of the plebs. In
commenting on it he substitutes πλῆθος for δῆμος for the purpose, not of
defining the assembly as tribunician, but of contrasting the masses in
the assembly with the nobles in the senate: ἐσ τὸ πλῆθος is substantially
equivalent to ἐν τοῖς πένησι καὶ θρασυτάτοις used just below; Sulla
wished nothing to be submitted to the masses in the comitia centuriata
before it had been considered by the senate.
Appian[2537] attributes to Sulla for this early date an attempt to
increase the number of senators. “They (the consuls) enrolled three
hundred nobles in the senate, which had been reduced in numbers and for
that reason had come to be despised.” He does not state, however, by what
authority the consuls made this extraordinary adlectio; and it is in fact
improbable that the senate had so dwindled. However that may be, the
increase did not take permanent effect at this time.[2538] Two other laws
of these consuls are briefly mentioned: (1) for planting colonies,[2539]
of which nothing is known; (2) a lex unciaria.[2540] The latter may have
been a reduction of existing debts by one-twelfth of the principle, or a
lowering of the maximal rate of interest to 8⅓ per cent;[2541] or it may
have been a general insolvency law, providing for the payment of debts in
instalments.[2542] The chief value of these measures, even if we knew
them in detail, would be to reveal the idea of their authors; for they
were all repealed in the following year on the initiative of the consul
L. Cornelius Cinna, probably by a comitial vote.[2543]
Cinna then proposed (1) a renewal of the Sulpician plebiscite for
the enrolment of the new citizens and the libertini among all the
tribes,[2544] (2) a recall of Marius and the other exiles.[2545]
Before these measures could be carried, the consul was driven from
Rome and deposed from office by an act of the senate on the motion
of Cn. Octavius, the other consul.[2546] This is the only certain
instance of the abrogation of the civil imperium known to the history
of the republic. Cinna returned at the head of an army; and after
taking forcible possession of the city, he carried his law concerning
the exiles through the assembly either on his own motion or that of a
tribune.[2547] As the senate, reversing its earlier action,[2548] had
already legalized the Sulpician provision concerning the distribution of
the libertini and the new citizens among the thirty-five tribes,[2549] it
was without reënactment carried into effect in 84.[2550] The execution
of this measure completed the political unification of Italy. Meantime
L. Valerius Flaccus, consul suffectus in 86, to relieve the financial
distress, passed a law which compelled creditors to satisfy themselves
with one-fourth of the amount due.[2551] In 83 M. Junius Brutus, tribune
of the plebs, proposed and carried, as a milder measure of relief, a law
for the colonization of Capua.[2552]
Schulze, C. F., _Volksversammlungen der Römer_, 110-26;
Peter, C., _Epochen der Verfassungsgesch. der röm. Republik_,
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W., _History of Rome_, bk. VII. chs. ii-xix; _Researches
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lex Acilia repetundarum_, in _Zeitschr. f. Rechtsgesch._ v.
(1866). 46-84; Rudorff, A. E., _Ad legem Aciliam de pecuniis
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Ahren, E. A. J., _Die drei Volkstribunen Ti. Gracchus, M.
Drusus, und P. Sulpicius_; Nitzsch, K. W., _Die Gracchen und
ihre nächsten Vorgänger_, bks. iii, iv; Blasel, J., _Die
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