‘A fatal effect,’ says M. Mérimée, ‘of the Roman domination was the
impoverishment and depopulation of Italy. At Rome, where commerce and
industry were despised, only one way led to wealth――a career of public
service. On his return from his government, a Roman official bought
lands, built villas, and all at once became a great proprietor. If he
chanced to have in his neighborhood an estate to his taste, he caused
it to be ceded to him; sometimes he seized it while the lawful owner
was fighting far away under the Roman eagles. By degrees all the small
proprietors were despoiled, in order to form vast estates for the
privileged class of public functionaries. Parks, gardens, and
expensive fish-ponds took the place of cultivated fields. Laborers
disappeared, and the country was peopled with slaves, dangerous by
their numbers, and also by their robber habits, which they practised
with impunity. Some masters, it is said, shared the profits of robbery
with these wretches.’
The great social evils of the day――the extinction of the old peasant
proprietors of Italy; and the vast increase of slaves, the danger of
which had been already manifested by several servile revolts in
Sicily; and the congregation in the towns, and especially in Rome, of
vast masses of population, not living as the artisans and traders in
modern towns do, by honest industry, but living in noisy idleness upon
the alms of the provinces and the sums they received for their
votes――these social evils must have struck many generous hearts among
the Romans. The man, however, on whom they produced so decided an
impression as to lead him to devote his life to their removal, was
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the son of a plebeian of rank who had
attained distinction in the Spanish wars, and of Cornelia, the
daughter of the great Scipio. Abandoning, in its first stage, the more
tempting career which led through the quæstorship, edileship, and
prætorship to the consulship, Tiberius chose rather the office of
tribune of the people, which was more suitable for the purposes of
political agitation. Elected to this office B. C. 133, in the
twenty-ninth year of his age, he propounded his schemes of reform. His
grand project was a revival, with some modifications, of the famous
agrarian law of Licinius, which had long fallen into tacit desuetude.
All citizens who were in possession of a larger extent of the state
land than the 500 jugera allowed by the Licinian law (unless in the
case of fathers of two sons, who were to be allowed 250 jugera in
addition for each of them), were to be deprived of the surplus; the
buildings, vine-presses, etc., which were erected on these surplus
lands to be purchased at a fair valuation; and the whole land thus
seized was to constitute a stock out of which the pauper plebeians of
the city were to be furnished with little farms for the honest support
of themselves and families, these farms to be incapable of alienation
by the persons to whom they should be allotted. Utterly revolutionary
as this measure would seem in modern legislation, and sufficiently
sweeping as it was, even in a Roman point of view, considering that
however unjustly the ancestors of many of the large proprietors had
come by their lands, yet long possession and frequent transference had
in many cases sanctified the ownership――still the measure was strictly
in the spirit of Roman law, and one of the supporters of Gracchus in
proposing it was the eminent jurist Mucius Scævola. Tiberius and his
associates probably thought that the ends proposed――the removal of the
venal mob out of Rome, and the restoration in Italy of a population of
hard-working peasant proprietors, instead of the gangs of bandit
slaves――were difficult enough to require, and glorious enough to
justify, somewhat revolutionary means. Accordingly, advocating by his
eloquence in the Forum the scheme which he had matured in private, he
did not cease until, in spite of the most obstinate resistance on the
part of the senators, who used as their instrument against him one of
his own colleagues in the tribuneship, he had gained his end. Three
commissioners were appointed to superintend the execution of the
law――Tiberius himself, his father-in-law Appius Claudius, and his
younger brother Caius. Loud and deep were the vows of vengeance on the
part of the senators; and Tiberius saw that his only chance of life
lay in being reelected to the tribuneship, the dignity of which was an
inviolable protection. To prevent this, the senatorial party mustered
all their strength; and a tumult ensuing on one of the days of
election, Tiberius, along with about 300 of his followers, was killed.
For about ten years the excitement caused by the law of Gracchus
continued, Fulvius Flaccus and Papirius Carbo acting as his successors
in the popular interest, and carrying on the struggle against the
nobles, who raised up obstacles to the execution of the law. But in
the year B. C. 123, Caius Gracchus, who now felt himself old enough to
assume the career which his brother had left him as an inheritance,
claimed and obtained the tribuneship. Caius was a man of more vehement
character and more comprehensive views than his brother, and the
schemes which he proposed embraced a great variety of points, besides
a reënactment of his brother’s agrarian law. In fact, a reformer by
reputation and education, he made it his business to find out abuses,
and either declaim against them or propose remedies for them. Perhaps
the most objectionable of his measures was a law enacting a monthly
distribution of corn among the city population at a nominal price――a
poor-law, for such it may be called, which had the effect of
attracting all the paupers of Italy to Rome. A more valuable measure
was his transference of the judicial power from the senators, who had
hitherto held it, and who had been guilty of great corruption in the
exercise of it, to the _equites_, or wealthy capitalists, intermediate
between the senators and the poorer classes of the community. He also
proposed and carried the establishment or various colonies in
different parts of the empire, which afforded room for enterprise,
thus relieving Rome of part of its overgrown population. More
fortunate so far than his brother, he held the tribuneship for two
years, and thus had time for more extensive action. Deserted, however,
by the people at the end of the second year, in consequence of the
policy of his opponents, who adopted the plan of outbidding him for
popular favor, he lost his office. The senators, having him at their
mercy, spared no means of revenge; and Gracchus, and his friend
Fulvius Flaccus, having recourse to the armed assistance of their
supporters to preserve their lives when they appeared in public, this
was construed into a design of sedition. The consul was empowered to
resort to force against them; a terrible fray occurred in one of the
quarters of the town, 3000, it is said, being slain; and Gracchus was
killed while trying to escape into the country (B. C. 121). He was
then only in the thirty-third year of his age.
The aristocracy thus triumphed for the time, and the recent measures
of reform were suffered to fall into disuse; but certain portions of
the policy of the two brothers had taken full effect, and the
agitation which they had originated was not lulled for many years. The
seeds of much that afterwards appeared in storm and bloodshed, were
sown during these movements of B. C. 133-121; and as long as the world
takes an interest in Roman history, or respects disinterested
political courage, it will remember the Gracchi.