The reform-party was deeply indignant. Even men like Publius Mucius

and Quintus Metellus disapproved of the intervention of Scipio. Other

circles were not content with expressing disapproval. Scipio had

announced for one of the following days an address respecting the

relations of the Latins; on the morning of that day he was found dead

in his bed. He was but fifty-six years of age, and in full health

and vigour; he had spoken in public the day before, and then in the

evening had retired earlier than usual to his bedchamber with a view

to prepare the outline of his speech for the following day. That he

had been the victim of a political assassination, cannot be doubted;

he himself shortly before had publicly mentioned the plots formed

to murder him. What assassin's hand had during the night slain

the first statesman and the first general of his age, was never

discovered; and it does not become history either to repeat the

reports handed down from the contemporary gossip of the city, or

to set about the childish attempt to ascertain the truth out of such

materials. This much only is clear, that the instigator of the deed

must have belonged to the Gracchan party; the assassination of Scipio

was the democratic reply to the aristocratic massacre at the temple

of Fidelity. The tribunals did not interfere. The popular party,

justly fearing that its leaders Gaius Gracchus, Flaccus, and Carbo,

whether guilty or not, might be involved in the prosecution, opposed

with all its might the institution of an inquiry; and the aristocracy,

which lost in Scipio quite as much an antagonist as an ally, was not

unwilling to let the matter sleep. The multitude and men of moderate

views were shocked; none more so than Quintus Metellus, who had

disapproved of Scipio's interference against reform, but turned away

with horror from such confederates, and ordered his four sons to carry

the bier of his great antagonist to the funeral pile. The funeral

was hurried over; with veiled head the last of the family of the

conqueror of Zama was borne forth, without any one having been

previously allowed to see the face of the deceased, and the flames

of the funeral pile consumed with the remains of the illustrious

man the traces at the same time of the crime.

The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio

Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter

absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country,

and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.

Conscious of the best intentions and of no common abilities, he was

doomed to see the ruin of his country carried out before his eyes,

and to repress within him every earnest attempt to save it, because

he clearly perceived that he should only thereby make the evil worse;

doomed to the necessity of sanctioning outrages like that of Nasica,

and at the same time of defending the work of the victim against

his murderers. Yet he might say that he had not lived in vain.

It was to him, at least quite as much as to the author of the

Sempronian law, that the Roman burgesses were indebted for an increase

of nearly 80,000 new farm-allotments; he it was too who put a stop to

this distribution of the domains, when it had produced such benefit

as it could produce. That it was time to break it off, was no doubt

disputed at the moment even by well-meaning men; but the fact that

Gaius Gracchus did not seriously recur to those possessions which

might have been, and yet were not, distributed under the law of his

brother, tells very much in favour of the belief that Scipio hit

substantially the right moment. Both measures were extorted from

the parties--the first from the aristocracy, the second from the

friends of reform; for each its author paid with his life. It was

Scipio's lot to fight for his country on many a battle-field and to

return home uninjured, that he might perish there by the hand of an

assassin; but in his quiet chamber he no less died for Rome than if

he had fallen before the walls of Carthage.

Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

The distribution of land was at an end; the revolution went on.

The revolutionary party, which possessed in the allotment-commission

as it were a constituted leadership, had even in the lifetime of Scipio

skirmished now and then with the existing government. Carbo, in

particular, one of the most distinguished men of his time in oratorical

talent, had as tribune of the people in 623 given no small trouble to

the senate; had carried voting by ballot in the burgess-assemblies, so

far as it had not been introduced already;(5) and had even made the

significant proposal to leave the tribunes of the people free to

reappear as candidates for the same office in the year immediately

following, and thus legally to remove the obstacle by which Tiberius

Gracchus had primarily been thwarted. The scheme had been at that

time frustrated by the resistance of Scipio; some years later,

apparently after his death, the law was reintroduced and carried

through, although with limiting clauses.(6) The principal object

of the party, however, was to revive the action of the allotment-

commission which had been practically suspended; the leaders seriously

talked of removing the obstacles which the Italian allies interposed

to the scheme by conferring on them the rights of citizenship, and the

agitation assumed mainly that direction. In order to meet it, the

senate in 628 got the tribune of the people Marcus Junius Pennus to

propose the dismissal of all non-burgesses from the capital, and

in spite of the resistance of the democrats, particularly of Gaius

Gracchus, and of the ferment occasioned by this odious measure in the

Latin communities, the proposal was carried. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus

retorted in the following year (629) as consul with the proposal to

facilitate the acquisition of burgess-rights by the burgesses of the

allied communities, and to concede even to those who had not acquired

them an appeal to the Roman comitia against penal judgments. But he

stood almost alone--Carbo had meanwhile changed his colours and was

now a zealous aristocrat, Gaius Gracchus was absent as quaestor in

Sardinia--and the project was frustrated by the resistance not of the

senate merely, but also of the burgesses, who were but little inclined

to extend their privileges to still wider circles. Flaccus left Rome

to undertake the supreme command against the Celts; by his Transalpine

conquests he prepared the way for the great schemes of the democracy,

while he at the same time withdrew out of the difficulty of having to

bear arms against the allies instigated by himself.

Destruction of Fregallae

Fregellae, situated on the borders of Latium and Campania at the

principal passage of the Liris in the midst of a large and fertile

territory, at that time perhaps the second city of Italy and in the

discussions with Rome the usual mouthpiece of all the Latin colonies,

began war against Rome in consequence of the rejection of the proposal

brought in by Flaccus--the first instance which had occurred for a

hundred and fifty years of a serious insurrection, not brought about

by foreign powers, in Italy against the Roman hegemony. But on this

occasion the fire was successfully extinguished before it had caught

hold of other allied communities. Not through the superiority of

the Roman arms, but through the treachery of a Fregellan Quintus

Numitorius Pullus, the praetor Lucius Opimius quickly became master

of the revolted city, which lost its civic privileges and its walls

and was converted like Capua into a village. The colony of Fabrateria

was founded on a part of its territory in 630; the remainder and

the former city itself were distributed among the surrounding

communities. This rapid and fearful punishment alarmed the

allies, and endless impeachments for high treason pursued not only

the Fregellans, but also the leaders of the popular party in Rome,

who naturally were regarded by the aristocracy as accomplices in

this insurrection. Meanwhile Gaius Gracchus reappeared in Rome.

The aristocracy had first sought to detain the object of their dread

in Sardinia by omitting to provide the usual relief, and then, when

without caring for that point he returned, had brought him to trial

as one of the authors of the Fregellan revolt (629-30). But the

burgesses acquitted him; and now he too threw down the gauntlet,

became a candidate for the tribuneship of the people, and was

nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly

attended by unusual numbers. War was thus declared. The democratic

party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity

remained virtually at rest for nine years; now the truce was at an

end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty

than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect

called to take the lead.

Gaius Gracchus

Gaius Gracchus (601-633) was very different from his brother, who

was about nine years older. Like the latter, he had no relish for

vulgar pleasures and vulgar pursuits; he was a man of thorough

culture and a brave soldier; he had served with distinction before

Numantia under his brother-in-law, and afterwards in Sardinia.

But in talent, in character, and above all in passion he was decidedly

superior to Tiberius. The clearness and self-possession, which the

young man afterwards displayed amidst the pressure of all the varied

labours requisite for the practical carrying out of his numerous laws,

betokened his genuine statesmanly talent; as the passionate devotedness

faithful even to death, with which his intimate friends clung to

him, evinced the loveable nature of that noble mind. The discipline

of suffering which he had undergone, and his compulsory reserve during

the last nine years, augmented his energy of purpose and action; the

indignation repressed within the depths of his breast only glowed there

with an intensified fervour against the party which had disorganized

his country and murdered his brother. By virtue of this fearful

vehemence of temperament he became the foremost orator that Rome ever

had; without it, we should probably have been able to reckon him among

the first statesmen of all times. Among the few remains of his

recorded orations several are, even in their present condition, of

heart-stirring power;(7) and we can well understand how those who heard

or even merely read them were carried away by the impetuous torrent

of his words. Yet, great master as he was of speech, he was himself

not unfrequently mastered by anger, so that the utterance of the

brilliant speaker became confused or faltering. It was the true image

of his political acting and suffering. In the nature of Gaius there was

no vein, such as his brother had, of that somewhat sentimental but very

short-sighted and confused good-nature, which would have desired to

change the mind of a political opponent by entreaties and tears; with

full assurance he entered on the career of revolution and strove to

reach the goal of vengeance. "To me too," his mother wrote to him,

"nothing seems finer and more glorious than to retaliate on an enemy,

so far as it can be done without the country's ruin. But if this is

not possible, then may our enemies continue and remain what they are,

a thousand times rather than that our country should perish."

Cornelia knew her son; his creed was just the reverse. Vengeance he

would wreak on the wretched government, vengeance at any price, though

he himself and even the commonwealth were to be ruined by it--the

presentiment, that fate would overtake him as certainly as his brother,

drove him only to make haste like a man mortally wounded who throws

himself on the foe. The mother thought more nobly; but the son--

with his deeply provoked, passionately excited, thoroughly Italian

nature--has been more lamented than blamed by posterity, and posterity

has been right in its judgment.

Alterations on the Constituion by Gaius Gracchus

Distribution of Grain

Change in the Order of Voting

Tiberius Gracchus had come before the burgesses with a single

administrative reform. What Gaius introduced in a series of separate

proposals was nothing else than an entirely new constitution; the

foundation-stone of which was furnished by the innovation previously

carried through, that a tribune of the people should be at liberty to

solicit re-election for the following year.(8) While this step enabled

the popular chief to acquire a permanent position and one which

protected its holder, the next object was to secure for him material

power or, in other words, to attach the multitude of the capital--for

that no reliance was to be placed on the country people coming only

from time to time to the city, had been sufficiently apparent--with its

interests steadfastly to its leader. This purpose was served, first of

all, by introducing distributions of corn in the capital. The grain

accruing to the state from the provincial tenths had already been

frequently given away at nominal prices to the burgesses.(9) Gracchus

enacted that every burgess who should personally present himself in the

capital should thenceforth be allowed monthly a definite quantity--

apparently 5 -modii- (1 1/4 bushel)--from the public stores, at 6 1/3

-asses- (3d.) for the -modius-, or not quite the half of a low average

price;(10) for which purpose the public corn-stores were enlarged by the

construction of the new Sempronian granaries. This distribution--which

consequently excluded the burgesses living out of the capital, and

could not but attract to Rome the whole mass of the burgess-

proletariate--was designed to bring the burgess-proletariate of the

capital, which hitherto had mainly depended on the aristocracy, into

dependence on the leaders of the movement-party, and thus to supply

the new master of the state at once with a body-guard and with a firm

majority in the comitia. For greater security as regards the latter,

moreover, the order of voting still subsisting in the -comitia

centuriata-, according to which the five property-classes in each

tribe gave their votes one after another,(11) was done away; instead

of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously in an

order of succession to be fixed on each occasion by lot. While these

enactments were mainly designed to procure for the new chief of the

state by means of the city-proletariate the complete command of the

capital and thereby of the state, the amplest control over the comitial

machinery, and the possibility in case of need of striking terror into

the senate and magistrates, the legislator certainly at the same

time set himself with earnestness and energy to redress the

existing social evils.

Agrarian Laws

Colony of Capua

Transmarine Colonialization

It is true that the Italian domain question was in a certain sense

settled. The agrarian law of Tiberius and even theallotment-commission

still continued legally in force; the agrarian law carried by Gracchus

can have enacted nothing new save the restoration to the commissioners

of the jurisdiction which they had lost. That the object of this step

was only to save the principle, and that the distribution of lands,

if resumed at all, was resumed only to a very limited extent, is

shown by the burgess-roll, which gives exactly the same number of

persons for the years 629 and 639. Gaius beyond doubt did not

proceed further in this matter, because the domain-land taken

into possession by Roman burgesses was already in substance distributed,

and the question as to the domains enjoyed by the Latins could only

be taken up anew in connection with the very difficult question as

to the extension of Roman citizenship. On the other hand he took an

important step beyond the agrarian law of Tiberius, when he proposed

the establishment of colonies in Italy--at Tarentum, and more

especially at Capua--and by that course rendered the domain-land,

which had been let on lease by the state and was hitherto excluded

from distribution, liable to be also parcelled out, not, however,

according to the previous method, which excluded the founding of new

communities,(12) but according to the colonial system. Beyond doubt

these colonies were also designed to aid in permanently defending the

revolution to which they owed their existence. Still more significant

and momentous was the measure, by which Gaius Gracchus first proceeded

to provide for the Italian proletariate in the transmarine territories

of the state. He despatched to the site on which Carthage had stood

6000 colonists selected perhaps not merely from Roman burgesses but

also from the Italian allies, and conferred on the new town Junonia

the rights of a Roman burgess-colony. The foundation was important,

but still more important was the principle of transmarine emigration

thereby laid down. It opened up for the Italian proletariate a

permanent outlet, and a relief in fact more than provisional; but

it certainly abandoned the principle of state-law hitherto in force,

by which Italy was regarded as exclusively the governing, and the

provincial territory as exclusively the governed, land.

Modifications of the Penal Law

To these measures having immediate reference to the great question of

the proletariate there was added a series of enactments, which arose

out of the general tendency to introduce principles milder and more

accordant with the spirit of the age than the antiquated severity of

the existing constitution. To this head belong the modifications in

the military system. As to the length of the period of service there

existed under the ancient law no other limit, except that no citizen

was liable to ordinary service in the field before completing his

seventeenth or after completing his forty-sixth year. When, in

consequence of the occupation of Spain, the service began to become

permanent,(13) it seems to have been first legally enacted that any

one who had been in the field for six successive years acquired thereby

a right to discharge, although this discharge did not protect him from

being called out again afterwards. At a later period, perhaps about

the beginning of this century, the rule arose, that a service of

twenty years in the infantry or ten years in the cavalry gave exemption

from further military service.(14) Gracchus renewed the rule--which

presumably was often violently infringed--that no burgess should be

enlisted in the army before the commencement of his eighteenth year;

and also, apparently, restricted the number of campaigns requisite

for full exemption from military duty. Besides, the clothing of the

soldiers, the value of which had hitherto been deducted from their pay,

was henceforward furnished gratuitously by the state.

To this head belongs, moreover, the tendency which is on various

occasions apparent in the Gracchan legislation, if not to abolish

capital punishment, at any rate to restrict it still further than had

been done before--a tendency, which to some extent made itself felt even

in military jurisdiction. From the very introduction of the republic

the magistrate had lost the right of inflicting capital punishment on

the burgess without consulting the community, except under martial

law;(15) if this right of appeal by the burgess appears soon after

the period of the Gracchi available even in the camp, and the right

of the general to inflict capital punishments appears restricted to

allies and subjects, the source of the change is probably to be sought

in the law of Gaius Gracchus -de provocatione- But the right of the

community to inflict or rather to confirm sentence of death was

indirectly yet essentially limited by the fact, that Gracchus withdrew

the cognizance of those public crimes which most frequently gave

occasion to capital sentences--poisoning and murder generally--

from the burgesses, and entrusted it to permanent judicial commissions.

These could not, like the tribunals of the people, be broken up by

the intercession of a tribune, and there not only lay no appeal from

them to the community, but their sentences were as little subject to

be annulled by the community as those of the long-established civil

jurymen. In the burgess-tribunals it had, especially in strictly

political processes, no doubt long been the rule that the accused

remained at liberty during his trial, and was allowed by

surrendering his burgess-rights to save at least life and freedom;

for the fine laid on property, as well as the civil condemnation,

might still affect even the exiled. But preliminary arrest and

complete execution of the sentence remained in such cases at least

legally possible, and were still sometimes carried into effect even

against persons of rank; for instance, Lucius Hostilius Tubulus,

praetor of 612, who was capitally impeached for a heinous crime,

was refused the privilege of exile, arrested, and executed. On the

other hand the judicial commissions, which originated out of the civil

procedure, probably could not at the outset touch the liberty or

life of the citizen, but at the most could only pronounce sentence

of exile; this, which had hitherto been a mitigation of punishment

accorded to one who was found guilty, now became for the first time a

formal penalty This involuntary exile however, like the voluntary, left

to the person banished his property, so far as it was not exhausted

in satisfying claims for compensation and money-fines. Lastly, in

the matter of debt Gaius Gracchus made no alteration; but very

respectable authorities assert that he held out to those in debt the

hope of a diminution or remission of claims--which, if it is correct,

must likewise be reckoned among those radically popular measures.

Elevation of the Equestrian Order

While Gracchus thus leaned on the support of the multitude, which

partly expected, partly received from him a material improvement

of its position, he laboured with equal energy at the ruin of the

aristocracy. Perceiving clearly how insecure was the rule of the

head of the state built merely on the proletariate, he applied himself

above all to split the aristocracy and to draw a part of it over to

his interests. The elements of such a rupture were already in

existence. The aristocracy of the rich, which had risen as one man

against Tiberius Gracchus, consisted in fact of two essentially

dissimilar bodies, which may be in some measure compared to the

peerage and the city aristocracy of England. The one embraced the

practically closed circle of the governing senatorial families who

kept aloof from direct speculation and invested their immense capital

partly in landed property, partly as sleeping partners in the great

associations. The core of the second class was composed of the

speculators, who, as managers of these companies, or on their own

account, conducted the large mercantile and pecuniary transactions

throughout the range of the Roman hegemony. We have already shown(16)

how the latter class, especially in the course of the sixth century,

gradually took its place by the side of the senatorial aristocracy,

and how the legal exclusion of the senators from mercantile pursuits

by the Claudian enactment, suggested by Gaius Flaminius the precursor

of the Gracchi, drew an outward line of demarcation between the senators

and the mercantile and moneyed men. In the present epoch the mercantile

aristocracy began, under the name of the -equites-, to exercise a

decisive influence in political affairs. This appellation, which

originally belonged only to the burgess-cavalry on service, came

gradually to be transferred, at any rate in ordinary use, to all

those who, as possessors of an estate of at least 400,000 sesterces,

were liable to cavalry service in general, and thus comprehended the

whole of the upper society, senatorial and non-senatorial, in Rome.

But not long before the time of Gaius Gracchus the law had declared

a seat in the senate incompatible with service in the cavalry,(17) and

the senators were thus eliminated from those qualified to be equites;

and accordingly the equestrian order, taken as a whole, might be regarded

as representing the aristocracy of speculators in contradistinction

to the senate. Nevertheless those members of senatorial families who

had not entered the senate, especially the younger members, did not

cease to serve as equites and consequently to bear the name; and,

in fact, the burgess-cavalry properly so called--that is, the

eighteen equestrian centuries--in consequence of being made up

by the censors continued to be chiefly filled up from the young

senatorial aristocracy.(18)

This order of the equites--that is to say, substantially, of the

wealthy merchants--in various ways came roughly into contact with

the governing senate. There was a natural antipathy between the

genteel aristocrats and the men to whom money had brought rank.

The ruling lords, especially the better class of them, stood just

as much aloof from speculations, as the men of material interests

were indifferent to political questions and coterie-feuds. The two

classes had already frequently come into sharp collision, particularly

in the provinces; for, though in general the provincials had far more

reason than the Roman capitalists had to complain of the partiality of

the Roman magistrates, yet the ruling lords of the senate did not lend

countenance to the greedy and unjust doings of the moneyed men, at

the expense of the subjects, so thoroughly and absolutely as those

capitalists desired. In spite of their concord in opposing a common

foe such as was Tiberius Gracchus, a deep gulf lay between the nobility

and the moneyed aristocracy; and Gaius, more adroit than his brother,

enlarged it till the alliance was broken up and the mercantile class

ranged itself on his side.

Insignia of the Equites

That the external privileges, through which afterwards the men of

equestrian census were distinguished from the rest of the multitude--

the golden finger-ring instead of the ordinary ring of iron or copper,

and the separate and better place at the burgess-festivals--were first

conferred on the equites by Gaius Gracchus, is not certain, but is not

improbable. For they emerged at any rate about this period, and, as

the extension of these hitherto mainly senatorial privileges(19) to

the equestrian order which he brought into prominence was quite in

the style of Gracchus, so it was in very truth his aim to impress on

the equites the stamp of an order, similarly close and privileged,

intermediate between the senatorial aristocracy and the common multitude;

and this same aim was more promoted by those class-insignia, trifling

though they were in themselves and though many qualified to be equites

might not avail themselves of them, than by many an ordinance far

more intrinsically important. But the party of material interests,

though it by no means despised such honours, was yet not to be

gained through these alone. Gracchus perceived well that it would

doubtless duly fall to the highest bidder, but that it needed a high

and substantial bidding; and so he offered to it the revenues of Asia

and the jury courts.

Taxation of Asia

The system of Roman financial administration, under which the indirect

taxes as well as the domain-revenues were levied by means of

middlemen, in itself granted to the Roman capitalist-class the most

extensive advantages at the expense of those liable to taxation.

But the direct taxes consisted either, as in most provinces, of fixed

sums of money payable by the communities--which of itself excluded

the intervention of Roman capitalists--or, as in Sicily and Sardinia,

of a ground-tenth, the levying of which for each particular community

was leased in the provinces themselves, so that wealthy provincials

regularly, and the tributary communities themselves very frequently,

farmed the tenth of their districts and thereby kept at a distance

the dangerous Roman middlemen. Six years before, when the province

of Asia had fallen to the Romans, the senate had organized it

substantially according to the first system.(20) Gaius Gracchus(21)

overturned this arrangement by a decree of the people, and not only

burdened the province, which had hitherto been almost free from

taxation, with the most extensive indirect and direct taxes,

particularly the ground-tenth, but also enacted that these taxes

should be exposed to auction for the province as a whole and in Rome--

a rule which practically excluded the provincials from participation,

and called into existence in the body of middlemen for the -decumae-,

-scriptura-, and -vectigalia- of the province of Asia an association of

capitalists of colossal magnitude. A significant indication, moreover,

of the endeavour of Gracchus to make the order of capitalists

independent of the senate was the enactment, that the entire or

partial remission of the stipulated rent was no longer, as hitherto,

to be granted by the senate at discretion, but was under definite

contingencies to be accorded by law.

Jury Courts

While a gold mine was thus opened for the mercantile class, and the

members of the new partnership constituted a great financial power

imposing even for the government--a "senate of merchants"-a definite

sphere of public action was at the same time assigned to them in

the jury courts. The field of the criminal procedure, which by right

came before the burgesses, was among the Romans from the first very

narrow, and was, as we have already stated,(22) still further narrowed

by Gracchus; most processes--both such as related to public crimes, and

civil causes--were decided either by single jurymen [-indices-], or by

commissions partly permanent, partly extraordinary. Hitherto both the

former and the latter had been exclusively taken from the senate;

Gracchus transferred the functions of jurymen--both in strictly civil

processes, and in the case of the standing and temporary commissions--

to the equestrian order, directing a new list of jurymen to be

annually formed after the analogy of the equestrian centuries from

all persons of equestrian rating, and excluding the senators

directly, and the young men of senatorial families by the fixing of

a certain limit of age, from such judicial functions.(23) It is not

improbable that the selection of jurymen was chiefly made to fall

on the same men who played the leading part in the great mercantile

associations, particularly those farming the revenues in Asia and

elsewhere, just because these had a very close personal interest in

sitting in the courts; and, if the lists of jurymen and the societies

of -publicani- thus coincided as regards their chiefs, we can all

the better understand the significance of the counter-senate thus

constituted. The substantial effect of this was, that, while hitherto

there had been only two authorities in the state--the government as the

administering and controlling, and the burgesses as the legislative,

authority--and the courts had been divided between them, now the moneyed

aristocracy was not only united into a compact and privileged class on

the solid basis of material interests, but also, as a judicial and

controlling power, formed part of the state and took its place almost

on a footing of equality by the side of the ruling aristocracy. All

the old antipathies of the merchants against the nobility could not

but thenceforth find only too practical an expression in the sentences

of the jurymen; above all, when the provincial governors were called

to a reckoning, the senator had to await a decision involving his

civic existence at the hands no longer as formerly of his peers,

but of great merchants and bankers. The feuds between the Roman

capitalists and the Roman governors were transplanted from the

provincial administration to the dangerous field of these processes

of reckoning. Not only was the aristocracy of the rich divided, but

care was taken that the variance should always find fresh nourishment

and easy expression.

Monarchical Government Substituted for That of the Senate

With his weapons--the proletariate and the mercantile class--thus

prepared, Gracchus set about his main work, the overthrow of the

ruling aristocracy. The overthrow of the senate meant, on the one

hand, the depriving it of its essential functions by legislative

alterations; and on the other hand, the ruining of the existing

aristocracy by measures of a more personal and transient kind.

Gracchus did both. The function of administration, in particular,

had hitherto belonged exclusively to the senate; Gracchus took it away,

partly by settling the most important administrative questions by means

of comitial laws or, in other words, practically through tribunician

dictation, partly by restricting the senate as much as possible

in current affairs, partly by taking business after the most

comprehensive fashion into his own hands. The measures of the

former kind have been mentioned already: the new master of the state

without consulting the senate dealt with the state-chest, by imposing

a permanent and oppressive burden on the public finances in the

distribution of corn; dealt with the domains, by sending out colonies

not as hitherto by decree of the senate and people, but by decree of

the people alone; and dealt with the provincial administration, by

overturning through a law of the people the financial constitution given

by the senate to the province of Asia and substituting for it one

altogether different. One of the most important of the current duties

of the senate--that of fixing at its pleasure the functions for the

time being of the two consuls--was not withdrawn from it; but the

indirect pressure hitherto exercised in this way over the supreme

magistrates was limited by directing the senate to fix these functions

before the consuls concerned were elected. With unrivalled

activity, lastly, Gaius concentrated the most varied and most

complicated functions of government in his own person. He himself

watched over the distribution of grain, selected the jurymen, founded

the colonies in person notwithstanding that his magistracy legally

chained him to the city, regulated the highways and concluded building-

contracts, led the discussions of the senate, settled the consular

elections--in short, he accustomed the people to the fact that one man

was foremost in all things, and threw the lax and lame administration

of the senatorial college into the shade by the vigour and versatility

of his personal rule. Gracchus interfered with the judicial

omnipotence, still more energetically than with the administration,

of the senate. We have already mentioned that he set aside the

senators as jurymen; the same course was taken with the jurisdiction

which the senate as the supreme administrative board allowed to itself

in exceptional cases. Under severe penalties he prohibited--

apparently in his renewal of the law -de provocatione-(24)--the

appointment of extraordinary commissions of high treason by decree

of the senate, such as that which after his brother's murder had sat

in judgment on his adherents. The aggregate effect of these measures

was, that the senate wholly lost the power of control, and retained

only so much of administration as the head of the state thought fit

to leave to it. But these constitutive measures were not enough; the

governing aristocracy for the time being was also directly assailed.

It was a mere act of revenge, which assigned retrospective effect to

the last-mentioned law and thereby compelled Publius Popillius--the

aristocrat who after the death of Nasica, which had occurred in the

interval, was chiefly obnoxious to the democrats--to go into exile.

It is remarkable that this proposal was only carried by 18 to 17

votes in the assembly of the tribes--a sign how much the influence

of the aristocracy still availed with the multitude, at least in

questions of a personal interest. A similar but far less justifiable

decree--the proposal, directed against Marcus Octavius, that whoever

had been deprived of his office by decree of the people should be

for ever incapable of filling a public post--was recalled by Gaius

at the request of his mother; and he was thus spared the disgrace

of openly mocking justice by legalizing a notorious violation of

the constitution, and of taking base vengeance on a man of honour,

who had not spoken an angry word against Tiberius and had only acted

constitutionally and in accordance with what he conceived to be

his duty. But of very different importance from these measures was

the scheme of Gaius--which, it is true, was hardly carried into effect--

to strengthen the senate by 300 new members, that is, by just about as

many as it hitherto had contained, and to have them elected from the

equestrian order by the comitia--a creation of peers after the most

comprehensive style, which would have reduced the senate into the most

complete dependence on the chief of the state.

Character of the Constitution of Gaius Gracchus

This was the political constitution which Gaius Gracchus projected

and, in its most essential points, carried out during the two years

of his tribunate (631, 632), without, so far as we can see,

encountering any resistance worthy of mention, and without requiring

to apply force for the attainment of his ends. The order of sequence

in which these measures were carried can no longer be recognized in

the confused accounts handed down to us, and various questions that

suggest themselves have to remain unanswered. But it does not seem

as if, in what is missing, many elements of material importance have

escaped us; for as to the principal matters we have quite trustworthy

information, and Gaius was by no means, like his brother, urged on

further and further by the current of events, but evidently had a well-

considered and comprehensive plan, the substance of which he fully

embodied in a series of special laws. Now the Sempronian constitution

itself shows very clearly to every one who is able and willing to

see, that Gaius Gracchus did not at all, as many good-natured

people in ancient and modern times have supposed, wish to place

the Roman republic on new democratic bases, but that on the contrary

he wished to abolish it and to introduce in its stead a -tyrannis---

that is, in modern language, a monarchy not of the feudal or of the

theocratic, but of the Napoleonic absolute, type--in the form of a

magistracy continued for life by regular re-election and rendered

absolute by an unconditional control over the formally sovereign

comitia, an unlimited tribuneship of the people for life. In fact

if Gracchus, as his words and still more his works plainly testify,

aimed at the overthrow of the government of the senate, what other

political organization but the -tyrannis- remained possible, after

overthrowing the aristocratic government, in a commonwealth which

had outgrown primary assemblies and for which parliamentary government

did not exist? Dreamers such as was his predecessor, and knaves such

as after-times produced, might call this in question; but Gaius

Gracchus was a statesman, and though the formal shape, which that great

man had inwardly projected for his great work, has not been handed

down to us and may be conceived of very variously, yet he was beyond

doubt aware of what he was doing. Little as the intention of

usurping monarchical power can be mistaken, as little will those

who survey the whole circumstances on this account blame Gracchus.

An absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a nation, but it is

a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy; and history cannot

censure one who imposes on a nation the lesser suffering instead

of the greater, least of all in the case of a nature so vehemently

earnest and so far aloof from all that is vulgar as was that of Gaius

Gracchus. Nevertheless it may not conceal the fact that his whole

legislation was pervaded in a most pernicious way by conflicting

aims; for on the one hand it aimed at the public good, while on the

other hand it ministered to the personal objects and in fact the

personal vengeance of the ruler. Gracchus earnestly laboured to find

a remedy for social evils, and to check the spread of pauperism; yet

he at the same time intentionally reared up a street proletariate of

the worst kind in the capital by his distributions of corn, which were

designed to be, and became, a premium to all the lazy and hungry civic

rabble. Gracchus censured in the bitterest terms the venality of

the senate, and in particular laid bare with unsparing and just

severity the scandalous traffic which Manius Aquillius had driven with

the provinces of Asia Minor;(25) yet it was through the efforts of

the same man that the sovereign populace of the capital got itself

alimented, in return for its cares of government, by the body of its

subjects. Gracchus warmly disapproved the disgraceful spoliation of

the provinces, and not only instituted proceedings of wholesome

severity in particular cases, but also procured the abolition of the

thoroughly insufficient senatorial courts, before which even Scipio

Aemilianus had vainly staked his whole influence to bring the most

decided criminals to punishment. Yet he at the same time, by the

introduction of courts composed of merchants, surrendered the

provincials with their hands fettered to the party of material

interests, and thereby to a despotism still more unscrupulous than

that of the aristocracy had been; and he introduced into Asia a

taxation, compared with which even the form of taxation current after

the Carthaginian model in Sicily might be called mild and humane--

just because on the one hand he needed the party of moneyed men,

and on the other hand required new and comprehensive resources to

meet his distributions of grain and the other burdens newly imposed

on the finances. Gracchus beyond doubt desired a firm administration

and a well-regulated dispensing of justice, as numerous thoroughly

judicious ordinances testify; yet his new system of administration

rested on a continuous series of individual usurpations only formally

legalized, and he intentionally drew the judicial system--which every

well-ordered state will endeavour as far as possible to place, if not

above political parties, at any rate aloof from them--into the midst

of the whirlpool of revolution. Certainly the blame of these

conflicting tendencies in Gaius Gracchus is chargeable to a very great

extent on his position rather than on himself personally. On the

very threshold of the -tyrannis- he was confronted by the fatal

dilemma, moral and political, that the same man had at one and the

same time to maintain his ground, we may say, as a robber-chieftain

and to lead the state as its first citizen--a dilemma to which

Pericles, Caesar, and Napoleon had also to make dangerous sacrifices.

But the conduct of Gaius Gracchus cannot be wholly explained from

this necessity; along with it there worked in him the consuming

passion, the glowing revenge, which foreseeing its own destruction

hurls the firebrand into the house of the foe. He has himself

expressed what he thought of his ordinance as to the jurymen and similar

measures intended to divide the aristocracy; he called them daggers

which he had thrown into the Forum that the burgesses--the men of

rank, obviously--might lacerate each other with them. He was a

political incendiary. Not only was the hundred years' revolution which

dates from him, so far as it was one man's work, the work of Gaius

Gracchus, but he was above all the true founder of that terrible

urban proletariate flattered and paid by the classes above it, which

through its aggregation in the capital--the natural consequence of

the largesses of corn--became at once utterly demoralized and aware

of its power, and which--with its demands, sometimes stupid, sometimes

knavish, and its talk of the sovereignty of the people--lay like

an incubus for five hundred years upon the Roman commonwealth and

only perished along with it And yet--this greatest of political

transgressors was in turn the regenerator of his country. There is

scarce a structural idea in Roman monarchy, which is not traceable

to Gaius Gracchus. From him proceeded the maxim--founded doubtless

in a certain sense in the nature of the old traditional laws of war,

but yet, in the extension and practical application now given to it,

foreign to the older state-law--that all the land of the subject

communities was to be regarded as the private property of the state;

a maxim, which was primarily employed to vindicate the right of the

state to tax that land at pleasure, as was the case in Asia, or to

apply it for the institution of colonies, as was done in Africa,

and which became afterwards a fundamental principle of law under the

empire. From him proceeded the tactics, whereby demagogues and

tyrants, leaning for support on material interests, break down the

governing Aristocracy, but subsequently legitimize the change of

constitution by substituting a strict and efficient administration

for the previous misgovernment. To him, in particular, are traceable

the first steps towards such a reconciliation between Rome and the

provinces as the establishment of monarchy could not but bring in its

train; the attempt to rebuild Carthage destroyed by Italian rivalry

and generally to open the way for Italian emigration towards the

provinces, formed the first link in the long chain of that momentous

and beneficial course of action. Right and wrong, fortune and

misfortune were so inextricably blended in this singular man

and in this marvellous political constellation, that it may well

beseem history in this case--though it beseems her but seldom--

to reserve her judgment.

The Question As to the Allies

When Gracchus had substantially completed the new constitution

projected by him for the state, he applied himself to a second and

more difficult work. The question as to the Italian allies was still

undecided. What were the views of the democratic leaders regarding

it, had been rendered sufficiently apparent.(26) They naturally

desired the utmost possible extension of the Roman franchise, not

merely that they might bring in the domains occupied by the Latins for

distribution, but above all that they might strengthen their body of

adherents by the enormous mass of the new burgesses, might bring the

comitial machine still more fully under their power by widening the

body of privileged electors, and generally might abolish a distinction

which had now with the fall of the republican constitution lost all

serious importance. But here they encountered resistance from their

own party, and especially from that band which otherwise readily gave

its sovereign assent to all which it did or did not understand.

For the simple reason that Roman citizenship seemed to these people,

so to speak, like a partnership which gave them a claim to share in

sundry very tangible profits, direct and indirect, they were not at

all disposed to enlarge the number of the partners. The rejection

of the Fulvian law in 629, and the insurrection of the Fregellans

arising out of it, were significant indications both of the obstinate

perseverance of the fraction of the burgesses that ruled the comitia,

and of the impatient urgency of the allies. Towards the end of his

second tribunate (632) Gracchus, probably urged by obligations which

he had undertaken towards the allies, ventured on a second attempt.

In concert with Marcus Flaccus--who, although a consular, had again

taken the tribuneship of the people, in order now to carry the law

which he had formerly proposed without success--he made a proposal

to grant to the Latins the full franchise, and to the other Italian

allies the former rights of the Latins. But the proposal encountered

the united opposition of the senate and the mob of the capital.

The nature of this coalition and its mode of conflict are clearly and

distinctly seen from an accidentally preserved fragment of the speech

which the consul Gaius Fannius made to the burgesses in opposition to

the proposal. "Do you then think," said the Optimate, "that, if you

confer the franchise on the Latins, you will be able to find a place

in future--just as you are now standing there in front of me--in the

burgess-assembly, or at the games and popular amusements? Do you not

believe, on the contrary, that those people will occupy every spot?"

Among the burgesses of the fifth century, who on one day conferred

the franchise on all the Sabines, such an orator might perhaps have

been hissed; those of the seventh found his reasoning uncommonly clear

and the price of the assignation of the Latin domains, which was

offered to it by Gracchus, far too low. The very circumstance, that

the senate carried a permission to eject from the city all non-

burgesses before the day for the decisive vote, showed the fate in

store for the proposal. And when before the voting Livius Drusus,

a colleague of Gracchus, interposed his veto against the law, the

people received the veto in such a way that Gracchus could not

venture to proceed further or even to prepare for Drusus the fate

of Marcus Octavius.

Overthrow of Gracchus

It was, apparently, this success which emboldened the senate to

attempt the overthrow of the victorious demagogue. The weapons of

attack were substantially the same with which Gracchus himself had

formerly operated. The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile

class and the proletariate; primarily on the latter, which in this

conflict, wherein neither side had any military reserve, acted as

it were the part of an army. It was clear that the senate was not

powerful enough to wrest either from the merchants or from the

proletariate their new privileges; any attempt to assail the corn-

laws or the new jury-arrangement would have led, under a somewhat

grosser or somewhat more civilized form, to a street-riot in presence

of which the senate was utterly defenceless. But it was no less

clear, that Gracchus himself and these merchants and proletarians were

only kept together by mutual advantage, and that the men of material

interests were ready to accept their posts, and the populace strictly so

called its bread, quite as well from any other as from Gaius Gracchus.

The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least,

immoveably firm with the exception of a single one--his own supremacy.

The weakness of the latter lay in the fact, that in the constitution of

Gracchus there was no relation of allegiance subsisting at all between

the chief and the army; and, while the new constitution possessed all

other elements of vitality, it lacked one--the moral tie between ruler

and ruled, without which every state rests on a pedestal of clay.

In the rejection of the proposal to admit the Latins to the franchise

it had been demonstrated with decisive clearness that the multitude

in fact never voted for Gracchus, but always simply for itself.

The aristocracy conceived the plan of offering battle to the author

of the corn-largesses and land-assignations on his own ground.

Rival Demagogism of the Senate

The Livian Laws

As a matter of course, the senate offered to the proletariate not merely

the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and

otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate,

the tribune of the people Marcus Livius Drusus proposed to relieve

those who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent

imposed on them,(27) and to declare their allotments to be free and

alienable property; and, further, to provide for the proletariate

not in transmarine, but in twelve Italian, colonies, each of 3000

colonists, for the planting of which the people might nominate

suitable men; only, Drusus himself declined--in contrast with the

family-complexion of the Gracchan commission--to take part in this

honourable duty. Presumably the Latins were named as those who would

have to bear the costs of the plan, for there does not appear to have

now existed in Italy other occupied domain-land of any extent save that

which was enjoyed by them. We find isolated enactments of Drusus--

such as the regulation that the punishment of scourging might only be

inflicted on the Latin soldier by the Latin officer set over him, and

not by the Roman officer--which were to all appearance intended to

indemnify the Latins for other losses. The plan was not the most

refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear; the endeavour to draw

the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariate still closer

by their exercising jointly a tyranny over the Latins was too

transparent; the inquiry suggested itself too readily, In what part of

the peninsula, now that the Italian domains had been mainly given away

already--even granting that the whole domains assigned to the Latins

were confiscated--was the occupied domain-land requisite for the

formation of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess-communities to

be discovered? Lastly the declaration of Drusus, that he would have

nothing to do with the execution of his law, was so dreadfully prudent

as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite suited

for the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the

additional and perhaps decisive consideration, that Gracchus,

on whose personal influence everything depended, was just then

establishing the Carthaginian colony in Africa, and that his

lieutenant in the capital, Marcus Flaccus, played into the hands of

his opponents by his vehement and maladroit actings. The "people"

accordingly ratified the Livian laws as readily as it had before

ratified the Sempronian. It then, as usual, repaid its latest, by

inflicting a gentle blow on its earlier, benefactor, declining to

re-elect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate for the

tribunate for the year 633; on which occasion, however, there are

alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the tribune

presiding at the election, who had been formerly offended by

Gracchus. Thus the foundation of his despotism gave way beneath

him. A second blow was inflicted on him by the consular elections,

which not only proved in a general sense adverse to the democracy,

but which placed at the head of the state Lucius Opimius, who as

praetor in 629 had conquered Fregellae, one of the most decided

and least scrupulous chiefs of the strict aristocratic party,

and a man firmly resolved to get rid of their dangerous antagonist

at the earliest opportunity.

Attack on the Transmarine Colonialization

Downfall of Gracchus

Such an opportunity soon occurred. On the 10th of December, 632,

Gracchus ceased to be tribune of the people; on the 1st of January,

633, Opimius entered on his office. The first attack, as was fair,

was directed against the most useful and the most unpopular measure of

Gracchus, the re-establishment of Carthage. While the transmarine

colonies had hitherto been only indirectly assailed through the

greater allurements of the Italian, African hyaenas, it was now alleged,

dug up the newly-placed boundary-stones of Carthage, and the Roman

priests, when requested, certified that such signs and portents ought

to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site accursed by the

gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience compelled to

have a law proposed, which prohibited the planting of the colony of

Junonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to establish it

was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day of voting

at the Capitol whither the burgesses were convoked, with a view to

procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law. He wished

to shun acts of violence, that he might not himself supply his

opponents with the pretext which they sought; but he had not been able

to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans, who remembered

the catastrophe of Tiberius and were well acquainted with the designs

of the aristocracy, from appearing in arms, and amidst the immense

excitement on both sides quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul

Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the

Capitoline temple; one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony,

Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hand, haughtily

ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he

would lay hands on Gaius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his

sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly

sought to address the people and to disclaim the responsibility for

the sacrilegious murder; he only furnished his antagonists with a

further formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in

the confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking to

the people--an offence, for which an obsolete statute, originating at

the time of the old dissensions between the orders,(28) had prescribed

the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to

put down by force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the

republican constitution, as they were fond of designating the events

of this day. He himself passed the night in the temple of Castor in

the Forum; at early dawn the Capitol was filled with Cretan archers,

the senate-house and Forum with the men of the government party--the

senators and the section of the equites adhering to them--who by order

of the consul had all appeared in arms and each attended by two

armed slaves. None of the aristocracy were absent; even the aged and

venerable Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with

shield and sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in

the Spanish wars, Decimus Brutus, was entrusted with the command of

the armed force; the senate assembled in the senate-house. The bier

with the corpse of Antullius was deposited in front of it; the senate,

as if surprised, appeared en masse at the door in order to view

the dead body, and then retired to determine what should be done.

The leaders of the democracy had gone from the Capitol to their

houses; Marcus Flaccus had spent the night in preparing for the war

in the streets, while Gracchus apparently disdained to strive with

destiny. Next morning, when they learned the preparations made by

their opponents at the Capitol and the Forum, both proceeded to the

Aventine, the old stronghold of the popular party in the struggles

between the patricians and the plebeians. Gracchus went thither

silent and unarmed; Flaccus called the slaves to arms and entrenched

himself in the temple of Diana, while he at the same time sent his

younger son Quintus to the enemy's camp in order if possible to arrange

a compromise. The latter returned with the announcement that the

aristocracy demanded unconditional surrender; at the same time he

brought a summons from the senate to Gracchus and Flaccus to appear

before it and to answer for their violation of the majesty of the

tribunes. Gracchus wished to comply with the summons, but Flaccus

prevented him from doing so, and repeated the equally weak and

mistaken attempt to move such antagonists to a compromise. When

instead of the two cited leaders the young Quintus Flaccus once more

presented himself alone, the consul treated their refusal to appear

as the beginning of open insurrection against the government; he

ordered the messenger to be arrested and gave the signal for attack

on the Aventine, while at the same time he caused proclamation to be

made in the streets that the government would give to whosoever should

bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold,

and that they would guarantee complete indemnity to every one who

should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict.

The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned; the valiant nobility in

union with the Cretans and the slaves stormed the almost undefended

mount, and killed all whom they found, about 250 persons, mostly of

humble rank. Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of

concealment, where they were soon afterwards hunted out and put to

death. Gracchus had at the beginning of the conflict retired into

the temple of Minerva, and was there about to pierce himself with his

sword, when his friend Publius Laetorius seized his arm and besought

him to preserve himself if possible for better times. Gracchus was

induced to make an attempt to escape to the other bank of the Tiber;

but when hastening down the hill he fell and sprained his foot.

To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned to face

his pursuers and allowed themselves to be cut down, Marcus Pomponius

at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine, Publius Laetorius at

the bridge over the Tiber where Horatius Cocles was said to have once

singly withstood the Etruscan army; so Gracchus, attended only by his

slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber.

There, in the grove of Furrina, were afterwards found the two dead

bodies; it seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master

and then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over

to the government as required; the stipulated price and more was paid

to Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of

Gracchus, while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were

sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into

the river; the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of

the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of

Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as 3000 of them are said

to have been strangled in prison, amongst whom was Quintus Flaccus,

eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict and

was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable

disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol where the altar

consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace(29) and

other shrines erected on similar occasions to Concord were situated,

these small chapels were pulled down; and out of the property of the

killed or condemned traitors, which was confiscated even to the

portions of their wives, a new and splendid temple of Concord with

the basilica belonging to it was erected in accordance with a decree

of the senate by the consul Lucius Opimius. Certainly it was an act

in accordance with the spirit of the age to remove the memorials of

the old, and to inaugurate a new, concord over the remains of the three

grandsons of the conqueror of Zama, all of whom--first Tiberius

Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the

mightiest, Gaius Gracchus--had now been engulfed by the revolution.

The memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was

not allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son;

but the passionate attachment, which very many had felt towards the two

noble brothers and especially towards Gaius during their life, was

touchingly displayed also after their death in the almost religious

veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of

police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where

they had fallen.

CHAPTER IV

The Rule of the Restoration

Vacancy in the Government

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on

his death a ruin. His death indeed, like that of his brother, was

primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at the same time a very

material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when

the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as

it was on the point of being established. It was all the more so in

the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping

and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment

absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen

chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself

warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place. Gaius

had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius

had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular

party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be

named as leader. The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress

without a commander; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but

the general was wanting, and there was no one to take possession of

the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.

The Restored Aristocracy

So it accordingly happened. After the decease of Gaius Gracchus

without heirs, the government of the senate as it were spontaneously

resumed its place; and this was the more natural, that it had not

been, in the strict sense, formally abolished by the tribune, but

had merely been reduced to a practical nullity by his exceptional

proceedings. Yet we should greatly err, if we should discern in

this restoration nothing further than a relapse of the state-machine

into the old track which had been trodden and worn for centuries.

Restoration is always revolution; but in this case it was not so

much the old government as the old governor that was restored.

The oligarchy made its appearance newly equipped in the armour of

the -tyrannis- which had been overthrown. As the senate had beaten

Gracchus from the field with his own weapons, so it continued in the

most essential points to govern with the constitution of the Gracchi;

though certainly with the ulterior idea, if not of setting it aside

entirely, at any rate of thoroughly purging it in due time from the

elements really hostile to the ruling aristocracy.

Prosecutions of the Democrats

At first the reaction was mainly directed against persons. Publius

Popillius was recalled from banishment after the enactments relating

to him had been cancelled (633), and a warfare of prosecution was

waged against the adherents of Gracchus; whereas the attempt of

the popular party to have Lucius Opimius after his resignation of

office condemned for high treason was frustrated by the partisans

of the government (634). The character of this government of

the restoration is significantly indicated by the progress of the

aristocracy in soundness of sentiment. Gaius Carbo, once the ally

of the Gracchi, had for long been a convert,(1) and had but recently

shown his zeal and his usefulness as defender of Opimius. But he

remained the renegade; when the same accusation was raised against him

by the democrats as against Opimius, the government were not unwilling

to let him fall, and Carbo, seeing himself lost between the two

parties, died by his own hand. Thus the men of the reaction showed

themselves in personal questions pure aristocrats. But the reaction

did not immediately attack the distributions of grain, the taxation

of the province of Asia, or the Gracchan arrangement as to the jurymen

and courts; on the contrary, it not only spared the mercantile

class and the proletariate of the capital, but continued to render

homage, as it had already done in the introduction of the Livian

laws, to these powers and especially to the proletariate far more

decidedly than had been done by the Gracchi. This course was not

adopted merely because the Gracchan revolution still thrilled for

long the minds of its contemporaries and protected its creations;

the fostering and cherishing at least of the interests of the populace

was in fact perfectly compatible with the personal advantage of

the aristocracy, and thereby nothing further was sacrificed than

merely the public weal.

The Domain Question under the Restoration

All those measures which were devised by Gaius Gracchus for the

promotion of the public welfare--the best but, as may readily be

conceived, also the most unpopular part of his legislation--were

allowed by the aristocracy to drop. Nothing was so speedily and so

successfully assailed as the noblest of his projects, the scheme of

introducing a legal equality first between the Roman burgesses and

Italy, and thereafter between Italy and the provinces, and--inasmuch

as the distinction between the merely ruling and consuming and the

merely serving and working members of the state was thus done away--

at the same time solving the social question by the most comprehensive

and systematic emigration known in history. With all the determination

and all the peevish obstinacy of dotage the restored oligarchy

obtruded the principle of deceased generations--that Italy must

remain the ruling land and Rome the ruling city in Italy--afresh

on the present. Even in the lifetime of Gracchus the claims of

the Italian allies had been decidedly rejected, and the great idea of

transmarine colonization had been subjected to a very serious attack,

which became the immediate cause of Gracchus' fall. After his

death the scheme of restoring Carthage was set aside with little

difficulty by the government party, although the individual allotments

already distributed there were left to the recipients. It is true

that they could not prevent a similar foundation by the democratic

party from succeeding at another point: in the course of the conquests

beyond the Alps which Marcus Flaccus had begun, the colony of Narbo

(Narbonne) was founded there in 636, the oldest transmarine burgess-

city in the Roman empire, which, in spite of manifold attacks by the

government party and in spite of a proposal directly made by the

senate to abolish it, permanently held its ground, protected, as it

probably was, by the mercantile interests that were concerned. But,

apart from this exception--in its isolation not very important--the

government was uniformly successful in preventing the assignation

of land out of Italy.

The Italian domain-question was settled in a similar spirit.

The Italian colonies of Gaius, especially Capua, were cancelled,

and such of them as had already been planted were again broken up;

only the unimportant one of Tarentum was allowed to subsist in the

form of the new town Neptunia placed alongside of the former Greek

community. So much of the domains as had already been distributed

by non-colonial assignation remained in the hands of the recipients;

the restrictions imposed on them by Gracchus in the interest of the

commonwealth--the ground-rent and the prohibition of alienation--had

already been abolished by Marcus Drusus. With reference on the other

hand to the domains still possessed by right of occupation--which,

over and above the domain-land enjoyed by the Latins, must have mostly

consisted of the estates left with their holders in accordance with

the Gracchan maximum(2)--it was resolved definitively to secure them to

those who had hitherto been occupants and to preclude the possibility

of future distribution. It was primarily from these lands, no doubt,

that the 36,000 new farm-allotments promised by Drusus were to have

been formed; but they saved themselves the trouble of inquiring where

those hundreds of thousands of acres of Italian domain-land were to

be found, and tacitly shelved the Livian colonial law, which had

served its purpose;--only perhaps the small colony of Scolacium

(Squillace) may be referred to the colonial law of Drusus. On the

other hand by a law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius

carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment-commission

was abolished in 635, and there was imposed on the occupants of the

domain-land a fixed rent, the proceeds of which went to the benefit

of the populace of the capital--apparently by forming part of the fund

for the distribution of corn; proposals going still further, including

perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted by the

judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius. The final step was

taken eight years afterwards (643), when by a new decree of the

people(3) the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the

rent-free private property of the former occupants. It was added,

that in future domain-land was not to be occupied at all, but was

either to be leased or to lie open as public pasture; in the latter

case provision was made by the fixing of a very low maximum of ten

head of large and fifty head of small cattle, that the large herd-

owner should not practically exclude the small. In these judicious

regulations the injurious character of the occupation-system, which

moreover was long ago given up,(4) was at length officially recognized,

but unhappily they were only adopted when it had already deprived the

state in substance of its domanial possessions. While the Roman

aristocracy thus took care of itself and got whatever occupied land

was still in its hands converted into its own property, it at the same

time pacified the Italian allies, not indeed by conferring on them the

property of the Latin domain-land which they and more especially their

municipal aristocracy enjoyed, but by preserving unimpaired the rights

in relation to it guaranteed to them by their charters. The opposite

party was in the unfortunate position, that in the most important

material questions the interests of the Italians ran diametrically

counter to those of the opposition in the capital; in fact the

Italians entered into a species of league with the Roman government,

and sought and found protection from the senate against the

extravagant designs of various Roman demagogues.

The Proletariate and the Equestrian Order under the Restoration

While the restored government was thus careful thoroughly to eradicate

the germs of improvement which existed in the Gracchan constitution,

it remained completely powerless in presence of the hostile powers

that had been, not for the general weal, aroused by Gracchus.

The proletariate of the capital continued to have a recognized title

to aliment; the senate likewise acquiesced in the taking of the jurymen

from the mercantile order, repugnant though this yoke was to the

better and prouder portion of the aristocracy. The fetters which

the aristocracy wore did not beseem its dignity; but we do not find

that it seriously set itself to get rid of them. The law of Marcus

Aemilius Scaurus in 632, which at least enforced the constitutional

restrictions on the suffrage of freedmen, was for long the only

attempt--and that a very tame one--on the part of the senatorial

government once more to restrain their mob-tyrants. The proposal,

which the consul Quintus Caepio seventeen years after the introduction

of the equestrian tribunals (648) brought in for again entrusting the

trials to senatorial jurymen, showed what the government wished; but

showed also how little it could do, when the question was one not

of squandering domains but of carrying a measure in the face of

an influential order. It broke down.(5) The government was not

emancipated from the inconvenient associates who shared its power;

but these measures probably contributed still further to disturb the

never sincere agreement of the ruling aristocracy with the merchant-

class and the proletariate. Both were very well aware, that the

senate granted all its concessions only from fear and with reluctance;

permanently attached to the rule of the senate by considerations

neither of gratitude nor of interest, both were very ready to render

similar services to any other master who offered them more or even as

much, and had no objection, if an opportunity occurred, to cheat or

to thwart the senate. Thus the restoration continued to govern with

the desires and sentiments of a legitimate aristocracy, and with

the constitution and means of government of a -tyrannis-. Its rule

not only rested on the same bases as that of Gracchus, but it was

equally ill, and in fact still worse, consolidated; it was strong,

when in league with the populace it overthrew serviceable

institutions, but it was utterly powerless, when it had to face the

bands of the streets or the interests of the merchants. It sat on

the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, indignant

at the institutions of the state which it ruled and yet incapable of

even systematically assailing them, vacillating in all its conduct

except where its own material advantage prompted a decision, a picture

of faithlessness towards its own as well as the opposite party, of

inward inconsistency, of the most pitiful impotence, of the meanest

selfishness--an unsurpassed ideal of misrule.

The Men of the Restoration

It could not be otherwise; the whole nation was in a state of

intellectual and moral decline, but especially the upper classes.

The aristocracy before the period of the Gracchi was truly not over-

rich in talent, and the benches of the senate were crowded by a pack

of cowardly and dissolute nobles; nevertheless there sat in it Scipio

Aemilianus, Gaius Laelius, Quintus Metellus, Publius Crassus, Publius

Scaevola and numerous other respectable and able men, and an observer

favourably predisposed might be of opinion that the senate maintained

a certain moderation in injustice and a certain decorum in

misgovernment. This aristocracy had been overthrown and then

reinstated; henceforth there rested on it the curse of restoration.

While the aristocracy had formerly governed for good or ill, and for

more than a century without any sensible opposition, the crisis which

it had now passed through revealed to it, like a flash of lightning

in a dark night, the abyss which yawned before its feet. Was it any

wonder that henceforward rancour always, and terror wherever they

durst, characterized the government of the lords of the old

nobility? that those who governed confronted as an united and compact

party, with far more sternness and violence than hitherto, the non-

governing multitude? that family-policy now prevailed once more, just

as in the worst times of the patriciate, so that e. g. the four

sons and (probably) the two nephews of Quintus Metellus--with a

single exception persons utterly insignificant and some of them called

to office on account of their very simplicity--attained within fifteen

years (631-645) all of them to the consulship, and all with one

exception also to triumphs--to say nothing of sons-in-law and so

forth? that the more violent and cruel the bearing of any of their

partisans towards the opposite party, he received the more signal

honour, and every outrage and every infamy were pardoned in the

genuine aristocrat? that the rulers and the ruled resembled two

parties at war in every respect, save in the fact that in their

warfare no international law was recognized? It was unhappily only

too palpable that, if the old aristocracy beat the people with rods,

this restored aristocracy chastised it with scorpions. It returned

to power; but it returned neither wiser nor better. Never hitherto

had the Roman aristocracy been so utterly deficient in men of

statesmanly and military capacity, as it was during this epoch

of restoration between the Gracchan and the Cinnan revolutions.

Marcus Aemilius Scaurus

A significant illustration of this is afforded by the chief of the

senatorial party at this time, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. The son of

highly aristocratic but not wealthy parents, and thus compelled to

make use of his far from mean talents, he raised himself to the

consulship (639) and censorship (645), was long the chief of the

senate and the political oracle of his order, and immortalized his

name not only as an orator and author, but also as the originator

of some of the principal public buildings executed in this century.

But, if we look at him more closely, his greatly praised achievements

amount merely to this much, that, as a general, he gained some

cheap village triumphs in the Alps, and, as a statesman, won by his

laws about voting and luxury some victories nearly as serious over

the revolutionary spirit of the times. His real talent consisted

in this, that, while he was quite as accessible and bribable as any

other upright senator, he discerned with some cunning the moment when

the matter began to be hazardous, and above all by virtue of his

superior and venerable appearance acted the part of Fabricius before

the public. In a military point of view, no doubt, we find some

honourable exceptions of able officers belonging to the highest

circles of the aristocracy; but the rule was, that the lords of

quality, when they were to assume the command of armies, hastily

read up from the Greek military manuals and the Roman annals as much

as was required for holding a military conversation, and then, when

in the field, acted most wisely by entrusting the real command to an

officer of humble lineage but of tried capacity and tried discretion.

In fact, if a couple of centuries earlier the senate resembled an

assembly of kings, these their successors played not ill the part of

princes. But the incapacity of these restored aristocrats was fully

equalled by their political and moral worthlessness. If the state

of religion, to which we shall revert, did not present a faithful

reflection of the wild dissoluteness of this epoch, and if the

external history of the period did not exhibit the utter depravity of

the Roman nobles as one of its most essential elements, the horrible

crimes, which came to light in rapid succession among the highest

circles of Rome, would alone suffice to indicate their character.

Administration under the Restoration

Social State of Italy

The administration, internal and external, was what was to be

expected under such a government. The social ruin of Italy spread

with alarming rapidity; since the aristocracy had given itself legal

permission to buy out the small holders, and in its new arrogance

allowed itself with growing frequency to drive them out, the farms

disappeared like raindrops in the sea. That the economic oligarchy

at least kept pace with the political, is shown by the opinion

expressed about 650 by Lucius Marcius Philippus, a man of moderate

democratic views, that there were among the whole burgesses hardly

2000 families of substantial means. A practical commentary on this

state of things was once more furnished by the servile insurrections,

which during the first years of the Cimbrian war broke out annually

in Italy, e. g. at Nuceria, at Capua, and in the territory of

Thurii. This last conspiracy was so important that the urban

praetor had to march with a legion against it and yet overcame

the insurrection not by force of arms, but only by insidious treachery.

It was moreover a suspicious circumstance, that the insurrection was

headed not by a slave, but by the Roman knight Titus Vettius, whom

his debts had driven to the insane step of manumitting his slaves

and declaring himself their king (650). The apprehensions of the

government with reference to the accumulation of masses of slaves in

Italy are shown by the measures of precaution respecting the gold-

washings of Victumulae, which were carried on after 611 on account of

the Roman government: the lessees were at first bound not to employ

more than 5000 labourers, and subsequently the workings were totally

stopped by decree of the senate. Under such a government as the

present there was every reason in fact for fear, if, as was very

possible, a Transalpine host should penetrate into Italy and summon

the slaves, who were in great part of kindred lineage, to arms.

The Provinces

Occupation of Cilicia

The provinces suffered still more in comparison. We shall have an

idea of the condition of Sicily and Asia, if we endeavour to realize

what would be the aspect of matters in the East Indies provided the

English aristocracy were similar to the Roman aristocracy of that

day. The legislation, which entrusted the mercantile class with

control over the magistrates, compelled the latter to make common cause

to a certain extent with the former, and to purchase for themselves

unlimited liberty of plundering and protection from impeachment by

unconditional indulgence towards the capitalists in the provinces.

In addition to these official and semi-official robbers, freebooters

and pirates pillaged all the countries of the Mediterranean. In the

Asiatic waters more especially the buccaneers carried their outrages

so far that even the Roman government found itself under the necessity

in 652 of despatching to Cilicia a fleet, mainly composed of the vessels

of the dependent mercantile cities, under the praetor Marcus Antonius,

who was invested with proconsular powers. This fleet captured a number

of corsair-vessels and destroyed some rock-strongholds and not only so,

but the Romans even settled themselves permanently there, and in order

to the suppression of piracy in its chief seat, the Rugged or western

Cilicia occupied strong military positions--the first step towards the

establishment of the province of Cilicia, which thenceforth appears

among the Roman magistracies.(7) The design was commendable, and the

scheme in itself was suitable for its purpose; only, the continuance

and the increase of the evil of piracy in the Asiatic waters, and

especiallyin Cilicia, unhappily showed with how inadequate means

the pirates were combated from the newly-acquired position.

Revolt of the Slaves

But nowhere did the impotence and perversity of the Roman provincial

administration come to light so conspicuously as in the insurrections

of the slave proletariate, which seemed to have revived on their

former footing simultaneously with the restoration of the aristocracy.

These insurrections of the slaves swelling from revolts into wars--

which had emerged just about 620 as one, and that perhaps the proximate,

cause of the Gracchan revolution--were renewed and repeated with dreary

uniformity. Again, as thirty years before, a ferment pervaded the body

of slaves throughout the Roman empire. We have already mentioned

the Italian conspiracies. The miners in the Attic silver-mines rose

in revolt, occupied the promontory of Sunium, and issuing thence

pillaged for a length of time the surrounding country. Similar

movements appeared at other places.

The Second Sicilian Slave-War

But the chief seat of these fearful commotions was once more Sicily

with its plantations and its hordes of slaves brought thither from

Asia Minor. It is significant of the greatness of the evil, that

an attempt of the government to check the worst iniquities of the

slaveholders was the immediate cause of the new insurrection. That

the free proletarians in Sicily were little better than the slaves,

had been shown by their attitude in the first insurrection;(8)

after it was subdued, the Roman speculators took their revenge and

reduced numbers of the free provincials into slavery. In consequence

of a sharp enactment issued against this by the senate in 650, Publius

Licinius Nerva, the governor of Sicily at the time, appointed a court

for deciding on claims of freedom to sit in Syracuse. The court

went earnestly to work; in a short time decision was given in eight

hundred processes against the slave-owners, and the number of causes in

dependence was daily on the increase. The terrified planters hastened

to Syracuse, to compel the Roman governor to suspend such unparalleled

administration of justice; Nerva was weak enough to let himself be

terrified, and in harsh language informed the non-free persons

requesting trial that they should forgo their troublesome demand for

right and justice and should instantly return to those who called

themselves their masters. Those who were thus dismissed, instead of

doing as he bade them, formed a conspiracy and went to the mountains.

The governor was not prepared for military measures, and even the

wretched militia of the island was not immediately at hand; so that he

concluded an alliance with one of the best known captains of banditti

in the island, and induced him by the promise of personal pardon to

betray the revolted slaves into the hands of the Romans. He thus

gained the mastery over this band. But another band of runaway

slaves succeeded in defeating a division of the garrison of Enna

(Castrogiovanni); and this first success procured for the insurgents--

what they especially needed--arms and a conflux of associates.

The armour of their fallen or fugitive opponents furnished the first

basis of their military organization, and the number of the insurgents

soon swelled to many thousands. These Syrians in a foreign land

already, like their predecessors, seemed to themselves not unworthy

to be governed by kings, as were their countrymen at home; and--

parodying the trumpery king of their native land down to the very

name--they placed the slave Salvius at their head as king Tryphon.

In the district between Enna and Leontini (Lentini) where these bands

had their head-quarters, the open country was wholly in the hands of

the insurgents and Morgantia and other walled towns were already

besieged by them, when the Roman governor with his hastily-collected

Sicilian and Italian troops fell upon the slave-army in front

of Morgantia. He occupied the undefended camp; but the slaves,

although surprised, made a stand. In the combat that ensued the

levy of the island not only gave way at the first onset, but, as the

slaves allowed every one who threw down his arms to escape unhindered,

the militia almost without exception embraced the good opportunity

of taking their departure, and the Roman army completely dispersed.

Had the slaves in Morgantia been willing to make common cause with

their comrades before the gates, the town was lost; but they preferred

to accept the gift of freedom in legal form from their masters, and by

their valour helped them to save the town--whereupon the Roman governor

declared the promise of liberty solemnly given to the slaves by the

masters to be void in law, as having been illegally extorted.

Athenion

While the revolt thus spread after an alarming manner in the interior

of the island, a second broke out on the west coast. It was headed

by Athenion. He had formerly been, just like Cleon, a dreaded

captain of banditti in his native country of Cilicia, and had been

carried thence as a slave to Sicily. He secured, just as his

predecessors had done, the adherence of the Greeks and Syrians

especially by prophesyings and other edifying impostures; but skilled

in war and sagacious as he was, he did not, like the other leaders, arm

the whole mass that flocked to him, but formed out of the men able for

warfare an organized army, while he assigned the remainder to peaceful

employment. In consequence of his strict discipline, which repressed

all vacillation and all insubordinate movement in his troops, and his

gentle treatment of the peaceful inhabitants of the country and even of

the captives, he gained rapid and great successes. The Romans were on

this occasion disappointed in the hope that the two leaders would fall

out; Athenion voluntarily submitted to the far less capable king

Tryphon, and thus preserved unity among the insurgents. These soon

ruled with virtually absolute power over the flat country, where

the free proletarians again took part more or less openly with the

slaves; the Roman authorities were not in a position to take the field

against them, and had to rest content with protecting the towns,

which were in the most lamentable plight, by means of the militia of

Sicily and that of Africa brought over in all haste. The administration

of justice was suspended over the whole island, and force was

the only law. As no cultivator living in town ventured any longer

beyond the gates, and no countryman ventured into the towns, the most

fearful famine set in, and the town-population of this island which

formerly fed Italy had to be supported by the Roman authorities

sending supplies of grain. Moreover, conspiracies of the town-

slaves everywhere threatened to break out within, while the insurgent

armies lay before, the walls; even Messana was within a hair's breadth

of being conquered by Athenion.

Aquillius

Difficult as it was for the government during the serious war with

the Cimbri to place a second army in the field, it could not avoid

sending in 651 an army of 14,000 Romans and Italians, not including

the transmarine militia, under the praetor Lucius Lucullus to the

island. The united slave-army was stationed in the mountains above

Sciacca, and accepted the battle which Lucullus offered. The better

military organization of the Romans gave them the victory; Athenion

was left for dead on the field, Tryphon had to throw himself into the

mountain-fortress of Triocala; the insurgents deliberated earnestly

whether it was possible to continue the struggle longer. But the

party, which was resolved to hold out to the last man, retained the

upper hand; Athenion, who had been saved in a marvellous manner,

reappeared among his troops and revived their sunken courage; above

all Lucullus with incredible negligence took not the smallest step

to follow up his victory; in fact, he is said to have intentionally

disorganized the army and to have burned his field baggage, with a

view to screen the total inefficacy of his administration and not to

be cast into the shade by his successor. Whether this was true or

not, his successor Gaius Servilius (652) obtained no better results;

and both generals were afterwards criminally impeached and condemned

for their conduct in office--which, however, was not at all a certain

proof of their guilt. Athenion, who after the death of Tryphon

(652) was invested with the sole command, stood victorious at the

head of a considerable army, when in 653 Manius Aquillius, who had

during the previous year distinguished himself under Marius in the

war with the Teutones, was as consul and governor entrusted with the

conduct of the war. After two years of hard conflicts--Aquillius is

said to have fought in person with Athenion, and to have killed him

in single combat--the Roman general at length put down the desperate

resistance, and vanquished the insurgents in their last retreats by

famine. The slaves on the island were prohibited from bearing arms

and peace was again restored to it, or, in other words, its recent

tormentors were relieved by those of former use and wont; in fact,

the victor himself occupied a prominent place among the numerous

and energetic robber-magistrates of this period. Any one who still

required a proof of the internal quality of the government of

the restored aristocracy might be referred to the origin and

to the conduct of this second Sicilian slave-war, which,

lasted for five years.

The Dependent States

But wherever the eye might turn throughout the wide sphere of Roman

administration, the same causes and the same effects appeared.

If the Sicilian slave-war showed how far the government was from

being equal to even its simplest task of keeping in check the

proletariate, contemporary events in Africa displayed the skill with

which the Romans now governed the client-states. About the very time

when the Sicilian slave-war broke out, there was exhibited before

the eyes of the astonished world the spectacle of an unimportant

client-prince able to carry out a fourteen years' usurpation and

insurrection against the mighty republic which had shattered the

kingdoms of Macedonia and Asia with one blow of its weighty arm--

and that not by means of arms, but through the pitiful character

of its rulers.

Numidia

Jugurtha

The kingdom of Numidia stretched from the river Molochath to

the great Syrtis,(9) bordering on the one side with the Mauretanian

kingdom of Tingis (the modern Morocco) and on the other with Cyrene

and Egypt, and surrounding on the west, south, and east the narrow

district of coast which formed the Roman province of Africa.

In addition to the old possessions of the Numidian chiefs, it embraced

by far the greatest portion of the territory which Carthage had possessed

in Africa during the times of its prosperity--including several

important Old-Phoenician cities, such as Hippo Regius (Bona) and Great

Leptis (Lebidah)--altogether the largest and best part of the rich

seaboard of northern Africa. Numidia was beyond question, next to

Egypt, the most considerable of all the Roman client-states. After the

death of Massinissa (605), Scipio had divided the sovereign functions

of that prince among his three sons, the kings Micipsa, Gulussa, and

Mastanabal, in such a way that the firstborn obtained the residency

and the state-chest, the second the charge of war, and the third the

administration of justice.(10) Now after the death of his two brothers

Massinissa's eldest son, Micipsa,(11) reigned alone, a feeble peaceful

old man, who was fond of occupying himself more with the study of

Greek philosophy than with affairs of state. As his sons were not

yet grown up, the reins of government were practically held by an

illegitimate nephew of the king, the prince Jugurtha. Jugurtha was

no unworthy grandson of Massinissa. He was a handsome man and a

skilled and courageous rider and hunter; his countrymen held him

in high honour as a clear and sagacious administrator, and he had

displayed his military ability as leader of the Numidian contingent

before Numantia under the eyes of Scipio. His position in the

kingdom, and the influence which he possessed with the Roman

government by means of his numerous friends and war-comrades, made

it appear to king Micipsa advisable to adopt him (634), and to arrange

in his testament that his own two elder sons Adherbal and Hiempsal,

and his adopted son Jugurtha along with them, should jointly inherit

and govern the kingdom, just as he himself had done with his two

brothers. For greater security this arrangement was placed under

the guarantee of the Roman government.

The War for the Numidian Succession

Soon afterwards, in 636, king Micipsa died. The testament came into

force: but the two sons of Micipsa--the vehement Hiempsal still more

than his weak elder brother--soon came into so violent collision

with their cousin whom they looked on as an intruder into the

legitimate line of succession, that the idea of a joint reign of the

three kings had to be abandoned. An attempt was made to carry out

a division of the heritage; but the quarrelling kings could not agree

as to their quotas of land and treasure, and the protecting power, to

which in this case the decisive word by right belonged, gave itself,

as usual, no concern about this affair. A rupture took place;

Adherbal and Hiempsal were disposed to characterize their father's

testament as surreptitious and altogether to dispute Jugurtha's right

of joint inheritance, while on the other hand Jugurtha came forward

as a pretender to the whole kingdom. While the discussions as to the

partition were still going on, Hiempsal was made away with by hired

assassins; then a civil war arose between Adherbal and Jugurtha, in

which all Numidia took part. With his less numerous but better

disciplined and better led troops Jugurtha conquered, and seized the

whole territory of the kingdom, subjecting the chiefs who adhered to

his cousin to the most cruel persecution. Adherbal escaped to the

Roman province and proceeded to Rome to make his complaint there.

Jugurtha had expected this, and had made his arrangements to meet the

threatened intervention. In the camp before Numantia he had learned

more from Rome than Roman tactics; the Numidian prince, introduced

to the circles of the Roman aristocracy, had at the same time been

initiated into the intrigues of Roman coteries, and had studied at

the fountain-head what might be expected from Roman nobles. Even

then, sixteen years before Micipsa's death, he had entered into

disloyal negotiations as to the Numidian succession with Roman

comrades of rank, and Scipio had been under the necessity of gravely

reminding him that it was becoming in foreign princes to be on terms

of friendship with the Roman state rather than with individual

Roman citizens. The envoys of Jugurtha appeared in Rome, furnished

with something more than words: that they had chosen the right means

of diplomatic persuasion, was shown by the result. The most zealous

champions of Adherbal's just title were with incredible rapidity

convinced that Hiempsal had been put to death by his subjects on

account of his cruelty, and that the originator of the war as to the

succession was not Jugurtha, but Adherbal. Even the leading men in

the senate were shocked at the scandal; Marcus Scaurus sought to

check it, but in vain. The senate passed over what had taken place

in silence, and ordained that the two surviving testamentary heirs

should have the kingdom equally divided between them, and that, for

the prevention of fresh quarrels, the division should be undertaken

by a commission of the senate. This was done: the consular Lucius

Opimius, well known through his services in setting aside the

revolution, had embraced the opportunity of gathering the reward

of his patriotism, and had got himself placed at the head of the

commission. The division turned out thoroughly in favour of Jugurtha,

and not to the disadvantage of the commissioners; Cirta (Constantine)

the capital with its port of Rusicade (Philippeville) was no doubt

given to Adherbal, but by that very arrangement the portion which

fell to him was the eastern part of the kingdom consisting almost

wholly of sandy deserts, while Jugurtha obtained the fertile

and populous western half (what was afterwards Mauretania

Caesariensis and Sitifensis).

Siege of Cirta

This was bad; but matters soon became worse. In order to be able

under the semblance of self-defence to defraud Adherbal of his portion,

Jugurtha provoked him to war; but when the weak man, rendered wiser

by experience, allowed Jugurtha's horsemen to ravage his territory

unhindered and contented himself with lodging complaints at Rome,

Jugurtha, impatient of these ceremonies, began the war even without

pretext. Adherbal was totally defeated in the region of the modern

Philippeville, and threw himself into his capital of Cirta in the

immediate vicinity. While the siege was in progress, and Jugurtha's

troops were daily skirmishing with the numerous Italians who were

settled in Cirta and who took a more vigorous part in the defence of

the city than the Africans themselves, the commission despatched by

the Roman senate on Adherbal's first complaint made its appearance;

composed, of course, of young inexperienced men, such as the

government of those times regularly employed in the ordinary missions

of the state. The envoys demanded that Jugurtha should allow them

as deputed by the protecting power to Adherbal to enter the city,

and generally that he should suspend hostilities and accept their

mediation. Jugurtha summarily rejected both demands, and the envoys

hastily returned home--like boys, as they were--to report to the

fathers of the city. The fathers listened to the report, and

allowed their countrymen in Cirta just to fight on as long as they

pleased. It was not till, in the fifth month of the siege, a

messenger of Adherbal stole through the entrenchments of the enemy

and a letter of the king full of the most urgent entreaties reached

the senate, that the latter roused itself and actually adopted a

resolution--not to declare war as the minority demanded but to send a

new embassy--an embassy, however, headed by Marcus Scaurus, the great

conqueror of the Taurisci and the freedmen, the imposing hero of

the aristocracy, whose mere appearance would suffice to bring the

refractory king to a different mind. In fact Jugurtha appeared, as

he was bidden, at Utica to discuss the matter with Scaurus; endless

debates were held; when at length the conference was concluded, not

the slightest result had been obtained. The embassy returned to Rome

without having declared war, and the king went off again to the

siege of Cirta. Adherbal found himself reduced to extremities and

despaired of Roman support; the Italians in Cirta moreover, weary of

the siege and firmly relying for their own safety on the terror of the

Roman name, urged a surrender. So the town capitulated. Jugurtha

ordered his adopted brother to be executed amid cruel tortures, and

all the adult male population of the town, Africans as well as

Italians, to be put to the sword (642).

Roman Intervention

Treaty between Rome and Numidia

A cry of indignation rose throughout Italy. The minority in the

senate itself and every one out of the senate unanimously condemned

the government, with whom the honour and interest of the country

seemed mere commodities for sale; loudest of all was the outcry of

the mercantile class, which was most directly affected by the sacrifice

of the Roman and Italian merchants at Cirta. It is true that the

majority of the senate still even now struggled; they appealed to

the class-interests of the aristocracy, and set in motion all the

contrivances of collegiate procrastination, with a view to preserve

still longer the peace which they loved. But when Gaius Memmius,

designated as tribune of the people for next year, an active and

eloquent man, brought the matter publicly forward and threatened in

his capacity of tribune to call the worst offenders to judicial account,

the senate permitted war to be declared against Jugurtha (642-3).

The step seemed taken in earnest. The envoys of Jugurtha were dismissed

from Italy without being admitted to an audience; the new consul

Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, who was distinguished, among the members of

his order at least, by judgment and activity, prosecuted the warlike

preparations with energy; Marcus Scaurus himself took the post of a

commander in the African army. In a short time a Roman army was on

African ground, and marching upward along the Bagradas (Mejerdah)

advanced into the Numidian kingdom, where the towns most remote from

the seat of the royal power, such as Great Leptis, already voluntarily

sent in their submission, while Bocchus king of Mauretania, although

his daughter was married to Jugurtha, offered friendship and alliance

to the Romans. Jugurtha himself lost courage, and sent envoys to the

Roman headquarters to request an armistice. The end of the contest

seemed near, and came still more rapidly than was expected. The treaty

with Bocchus broke down, because the king, unacquainted with Roman

customs, had conceived that he should be able to conclude a treaty so

advantageous for the Romans without any gratuity, and therefore had

neglected to furnish his envoys with the usual market price of Roman

alliances. Jugurtha at all events knew Roman institutions better,

and had not omitted to support his proposals for an armistice by a

due accompaniment of money; but he too was deceived. After the first

negotiations it turned out that not an armistice merely but a peace

was purchaseable at the Roman head-quarters. The royal treasury

was still well filled with the savings of Massinissa; the transaction

was soon settled. The treaty was concluded, after it had been for the

sake of form submitted to a council of war whose consent was procured

after an irregular and extremely summary discussion. Jugurtha

submitted at discretion; but the victor was merciful and gave him back

his kingdom undiminished, in consideration of his paying a moderate

fine and delivering up the Roman deserters and the war elephants

(643); the greater part of the latter the king afterwards repurchased

by bargaining with the individual Roman commandants and officers.

On the news of this peace the storm once more broke forth in Rome.

Everybody knew how the peace had been brought about; even Scaurus was

evidently open to bribery, only at a price higher than the ordinary

senatorial average. The legal validity of the peace was seriously

assailed in the senate; Gaius Memmius declared that the king, if he

had really submitted unconditionally, could not refuse to appear in

Rome, and that he should accordingly be summoned before them, with

the view of ascertaining how the matter actually stood as to the

thoroughly irregular negotiations for peace by hearing both the

contracting parties. They yielded to the inconvenient demand: but

at the same time granted a safe-conduct to the king inconsistently

with the law, for he came not as an enemy, but as one who had made

his submission. Thereupon the king actually appeared at Rome and

presented himself to be heard before the assembled people, which was

with difficulty induced to respect the safe-conduct and to refrain

from tearing in pieces on the spot the murderer of the Italians at

Cirta. But scarcely had Gaius Memmius addressed his first question

to the king, when one of his colleagues interfered in virtue of his

veto and enjoined the king to be silent. Here too African gold was

more powerful than the will of the sovereign people and of its

supreme magistrates. Meanwhile the discussions respecting the

validity of the peace so concluded went on in the senate, and the

new consul Spurius Postumius Albinus zealously supported the proposal

to cancel it, in the expectation that in that case the chief command

in Africa would devolve on him. This induced Massiva, a grandson of

Massinissa living in Rome, to assert before the senate his claims

to the vacant Numidian kingdom; upon which Bomilcar, one of the

confidants of king Jugurtha, doubtless under his instructions made

away with the rival of his master by assassination, and, when he was

prosecuted on account of it, escaped with Jugurtha's aid from Rome.

Cancelling of the Treaty

Declaration of War

Capitulation of the Romans

Second Peace

This new outrage perpetrated under the eyes of the Roman government

was at least so far effectual, that the senate now cancelled the

peace and dismissed the king from the city (winter of 643-644).

The war was accordingly resumed, and the consul Spurius Albinus was

invested with the command (644). But the African army down to its

lowest ranks was in a state of disorganization corresponding to such

a political and military superintendence. Not only had discipline

ceased and the spoliation of Numidian townships and even of the

Roman provincial territory become during the suspension of hostilities

the chief business of the Roman soldiery, but not a few officers

and soldiers had as well as their generals entered into secret

understanding with the enemy. It is easy to see that such an army

could do nothing in the field; and if Jugurtha on this occasion

bribed the Roman general into inaction, as was afterwards judicially

asserted against the latter, he did in truth what was superfluous.

Spurius Albinus therefore contented himself with doing nothing.

On the other hand his brother who after his departure assumed the

interim command--the equally foolhardy and incapable Aulus Postumius--

in the middle of winter fell on the idea of seizing by a bold coup de

main the treasures of the king, which were kept in the town of Suthul

(afterwards Calama, now Guelma) difficult of access and still more

difficult of conquest. The army set out thither and reached the

town; but the siege was unsuccessful and without prospect of result,

and, when the king who had remained for a time with his troops in

front of the town went into the desert, the Roman general preferred

to pursue him. This was precisely what Jugurtha intended in a

nocturnal assault, which was favoured by the difficulties of the

ground and the secret understanding which Jugurtha had with some in

the Roman army, the Numidians captured the Roman camp, and drove

the Romans, many of whom were unarmed, before them in the most

complete and disgraceful rout. The consequence was a capitulation,

the terms of which--the marching off of the Roman army under the yoke,

the immediate evacuation of the whole Numidian territory, and the

renewal of the treaty cancelled by the senate--were dictated by

Jugurtha and accepted by the Romans (in the beginning of 645).

Dissatisfaction in the Capital

This was too much to be borne. While the Africans were exulting and

the prospect--thus suddenly opened up--of such an overthrow of the

alien domination as had been reckoned scarcely possible was bringing

numerous tribes of the free and half-free inhabitants of the desert

to the standards of the victorious king, public opinion in Italy was

vehemently aroused against the equally corrupt and pernicious governing

aristocracy, and broke out in a storm of prosecutions which, fostered

by the exasperation of the mercantile class, swept away a succession

of victims from the highest circles of the nobility. On the proposal

of the tribune of the people Gaius Mamilius Limetanus, in spite of the

timid attempts of the senate to avert the threatened punishment, an

extraordinary jury-commission was appointed to investigate the high

treason that had occurred in connection with the question of the

Numidian succession; and its sentences sent the two former commanders-

in-chief Gaius Bestia and Spurius Albinus as well as Lucius Opimius,

the head of the first African commission and the executioner withal

of Gaius Gracchus, along with numerous other less notable men of the

government party, guilty and innocent, into exile. That these

prosecutions, however, were only intended to appease the excitement

of public opinion, in the capitalist circles more especially, by the

sacrifice of some of the persons most compromised, and that there was

in them not the slightest trace of a rising of popular indignation

against the government itself, void as it was of right and honour,

is shown very clearly by the fact that no one ventured to attack

the guiltiest of the guilty, the prudent and powerful Scaurus; on

the contrary he was about this very time elected censor and also,

incredible as it may seem, chosen as one of the presidents of the

extraordinary commission of treason. Still less was any attempt even

made to interfere with the functions of the government, and it was

left solely to the senate to put an end to the Numidian scandal in a

manner as gentle as possible for the aristocracy; for that it was

time to do so, even the most aristocratic aristocrat probably began

to perceive.

Cancelling of the Second Treaty

Metellus Appointed to the Command

Renewal of the War

The senate in the first place cancelled the second treaty of peace--

to surrender to the enemy the commander who had concluded it, as was

done some thirty years before, seemed according to the new ideas of

the sanctity of treaties no longer necessary--and determined, this

time in all earnest, to renew the war. The supreme command in Africa

was entrusted, as was natural, to an aristocrat, but yet to one of

the few men of quality who in a military and moral point of view were

equal to the task. The choice fell on Quintus Metellus. He was,

like the whole powerful family to which he belonged, in principle a

rigid and unscrupulous aristocrat; as a magistrate, he, no doubt,

reckoned it honourable to hire assassins for the good of the state and

would presumably have ridiculed the act of Fabricius towards Pyrrhus

as unpractical knight errantry, but he was an inflexible administrator

accessible neither to fear nor to corruption, and a judicious and

experienced warrior. In this respect he was so far free from the

prejudices of his order that he selected as his lieutenants not men

of rank, but the excellent officer Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was

esteemed in military circles for his exemplary discipline and as the

author of an altered and improved system of drill, and the brave Latin

farmer's son Gaius Marius, who had risen from the pike. Attended by

these and other able officers, Metellus presented himself in the course

of 645 as consul and commander-in-chief to the African army, which he

found in such disorder that the generals had not hitherto ventured

to lead it into the enemy's territory and it was formidable to none

save the unhappy inhabitants of the Roman province. It was

sternly and speedily reorganized, and in the spring of 646.(12)

Metellus led it over the Numidian frontier. When Jugurtha

perceived the altered state of things, he gave himself up as lost,

and, before the struggle began, made earnest proposals for an

accommodation, requesting ultimately nothing more than a guarantee for

his life. Metellus, however, was resolved and perhaps even instructed

not to terminate the war except with the unconditional subjugation and

execution of the daring client-prince; which was in fact the only

issue that could satisfy the Romans. Jugurtha since the victory over

Albinus was regarded as the deliverer of Libya from the rule of the

hated foreigners; unscrupulous and cunning as he was, and unwieldy

as was the Roman government, he might at any time even after a peace

rekindle the war in his native country; tranquillity would not be

secured, and the removal of the African army would not be possible,

until king Jugurtha should cease to exist. Officially Metellus gave

evasive answers to the proposals of the king; secretly he instigated

the envoys to deliver their master living or dead to the Romans. But,

when the Roman general undertook to compete with the African in the

field of assassination, he there met his master; Jugurtha saw

through the plan, and, when he could not do otherwise, prepared

for a desperate resistance.

Battle on the Muthul

Beyond the utterly barren mountain-range, over which lay the route of

the Romans into the interior, a plain of eighteen miles in breadth

extended as far as the river Muthul, which ran parallel to the

mountain-chain. The plain was destitute of water and of trees except

in the immediate vicinity of the river, and was only intersected by

a hill-ridge covered with low brushwood. On this ridge Jugurtha

awaited the Roman army. His troops were arranged in two masses;

the one, including a part of the infantry and the elephants, under

Bomilcar at the point where the ridge abutted on the river, the

other, embracing the flower of the infantry and all the cavalry,

higher up towards the mountain-range, concealed by the bushes.

On debouching from the mountains, the Romans saw the enemy in a

position completely commanding their right flank; and, as they could

not possibly remain on the bare and arid crest of the chain and were

under the necessity of reaching the river, they had to solve the

difficult problem of gaining the stream through the entirely open plain

of eighteen miles in breadth, under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen and

without light cavalry of their own. Metellus despatched a detachment

under Rufus straight towards the river, to pitch a camp there;

the main body marched from the defiles of the mountain-chain in an

oblique direction through the plain towards the hill-ridge, with a

view to dislodge the enemy from the latter. But this march in the

plain threatened to become the destruction of the army; for, while

Numidian infantry occupied the mountain defiles in the rear of the

Romans as the latter evacuated them, the Roman attacking column found

itself assailed on all sides by swarms of the enemy's horse, who

charged down on it from the ridge. The constant onset of the

hostile swarms hindered the advance, and the battle threatened to

resolve itself into a number of confused and detached conflicts;

while at the same time Bomilcar with his division detained the corps

under Rufus, to prevent it from hastening to the help of the hard-

pressed Roman main army. Nevertheless Metellus and Marius with a

couple of thousand soldiers succeeded in reaching the foot of the

ridge; and the Numidian infantry which defended the heights, in

spite of their superior numbers and favourable position, fled almost

without resistance when the legionaries charged at a rapid pace

up the hill. The Numidian infantry held its ground equally ill

against Rufus; it was scattered at the first charge, and the

elephants were all killed or captured on the broken ground. Late

in the evening the two Roman divisions, each victorious on its

own part and each anxious as to the fate of the other, met between

the two fields of battle. It was a battle attesting alike the

uncommon military talent of Jugurtha and the indestructible solidity

of the Roman infantry, which alone had converted their strategical

defeat into a victory. Jugurtha sent home a great part of his troops

after the battle, and restricted himself to a guerilla warfare, which

he likewise managed with skill.

Numidia Occupied by the Romans

The two Roman columns, the one led by Metellus, the other by Marius--

who, although by birth and rank the humblest, occupied since the

battle on the Muthul the first place among the chiefs of the staff--

traversed the Numidian territory, occupied the towns, and, when any

place did not readily open its gates, put to death the adult male

population. But the most considerable among the eastern inland

towns, Zama, opposed to the Romans a serious resistance, which the

king energetically supported. He was even successful in surprising

the Roman camp; and the Romans found themselves at last compelled to

abandon the siege and to go into winter quarters. For the sake of

more easily provisioning his army Metellus, leaving behind garrisons

in the conquered towns, transferred it into the Roman province, and

employed the opportunity of suspended hostilities to institute fresh

negotiations, showing a disposition to grant to the king a peace on

tolerable terms. Jugurtha readily entered into them; he had at

once bound himself to pay 200,000 pounds of silver, and had even

delivered up his elephants and 300 hostages, as well as 3000 Roman

deserters, who were immediately put to death. At the same time,

however, the king's most confidential counsellor, Bomilcar--who not

unreasonably apprehended that, if peace should ensue, Jugurtha would

deliver him up as the murderer of Massiva to the Roman courts--was

gained by Metellus and induced, in consideration of an assurance of

impunity as respected that murder and of great rewards, to promise

that he would deliver the king alive or dead into the hands of the

Romans. But neither that official negotiation nor this intrigue

led to the desired result. When Metellus brought forward the

suggestion that the king should give himself up in person as a

prisoner, the latter broke off the negotiations; Bomilcar's

intercourse with the enemy was discovered, and he was arrested and

executed. These diplomatic cabals of the meanest kind admit of no

apology; but the Romans had every reason to aim at the possession of

the person of their antagonist. The war had reached a point, at which

it could neither be carried farther nor abandoned. The state of

feeling in Numidia was evinced by the revolt of Vaga,(13) the most

considerable of the cities occupied by the Romans, in the winter of

646-7; on which occasion the whole Roman garrison, officers and men,

were put to death with the exception of the commandant Titus Turpilius

Silanus, who was afterwards--whether rightly or wrongly, we cannot

tell--condemned to death by a Roman court-martial and executed for

having an understanding with the enemy. The town was surprised

by Metellus on the second day after its revolt, and given over to

all the rigour of martial law; but if such was the temper of the

easy to be reached and comparatively submissive dwellers on the

banks of the Bagradas, what might be looked for farther inland and

among the roving tribes of the desert? Jugurtha was the idol of

the Africans, who readily overlooked the double fratricide in the

liberator and avenger of their nation. Twenty years afterwards a

Numidian corps which was fighting in Italy for the Romans had to

be sent back in all haste to Africa, when the son of Jugurtha

appeared in the enemy's ranks; we may infer from this, how great

was the influence which he himself exercised over his people.

What prospect was there of a termination of the struggle in regions

where the combined peculiarities of the population and of the soil

allowed a leader, who had once secured the sympathies of the

nation, to protract the war in endless guerilla conflicts, or even

to let it sleep for a time in order to revive it at the right moment

with renewed vigour?

War in the Desert

Mauretanian Complications