CHAPTER II

A cause never lacks a champion, nor a great cause one whom it may render

great. Failure is in itself no sign of lack of spirit and ability, and

when a vast reform is the product of a mean personality, the individual

becomes glorified by identification with his work. From this point of

view it mattered little who undertook the task of the economic

regeneration of the Roman world. Any senator of respectable antecedents

and moderate ability, who had a stable following amongst the ruling

classes, might have succeeded where Tiberius Gracchus failed; it was a

task in which authority was of more importance than ability, and the

sense that the more numerous or powerful elements of society were united

in the demand for reform, of more value than individual genius or

honesty of purpose. This was the very circumstance that foreshadowed

failure, for the men of wide connections and established fame had shrunk

from an enterprise with which they sympathised in various degrees. In

the proximate history of the Republic there had been three men who

showed an unwavering belief in the Italian farmer and the blessings of

agriculture. These were M. Porcius Cato, P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti.

Sempronius Gracchus. But the influence of Cato's house had become

extinct with its first founder. The elder son, an amiable man and an

accomplished jurist, had not out-lived his father; the second still

survived, but seems to have inherited little of the fighting qualities

of the terrible censor. The traditions of a Roman house needed to be

sustained by the efforts of its existing representative, and the

"newness" of the Porcii might have necessitated generations of vigorous

leaders to make them a power in the land. Scipionic traditions were now

represented by Aemilianus, and the glow of the luminary was reflected in

paler lights, who received their lustre from moving in that charmed

orbit. One of these, the indefatigable henchman Laelius, had risen to

the rank of consul, and stimulated by the vigorous theorisings of his

hellenised environment, he contemplated for a moment the formation of a

plan which should deal with some of the worst evils of the agrarian

question. But he looked at the problem only to start back in affright.

The strength and truculency of the vested interests with which he would

have to deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by

philosophy and experience, and Laelius by his retreat justified, if he

did not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his "sapience".[299] But

why was Scipio himself idle? The answer is to be found both in his

temperament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, he

was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted him in

his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its cruelties, he

gloried in its excitement, and the discipline of the camp was more to

his mind than the turbulence of an assembly. His mind, too, belonged to

that class which finds it almost impossible to emancipate itself from

traditional politics. His vast knowledge of the history of other

civilisations may have taught him, as it taught Polybius, that Rome was

successful because she was unique.[300] Here there was to be no break

with the past, no legislator posing as a demi-god, no obedience to the

cries of the masses who, if they once got loose, might turn and rend the

enlightened few, and reproduce on Italian soil the shocking scenes of

Greek socialistic enterprise. As things were, to be a reformer was to be

a partisan, and Scipio loved the prospect of his probable supporters as

little as that of his probable opponents. The fact of the Empire, too,

must have weighed heavily with a man who was no blind imperialist. Even

though economic reform might create an added efficiency in the army,

Scipio must have known, as Polybius certainly knew, that soldiers are

but pawns in the great game, and that the controlling forces were the

wisdom of the conservative senator, the ambition of the wealthy noble,

and the capital of the enterprising knight. The wisdom of disturbing

their influence, and awakening their resentment, could scarcely appeal

to a mind so perfectly balanced and practical as Scipio's.

Circumstances, too, must have had their share in determining his

quiescence. The Scipios had been a power in Rome in spite of the

nobility. They were used because they were needed, not because they were

loved, and the necessary man was never in much favour with the senate.

Although there was no tie of blood between Aemilianus and the elder

Scipio, they were much alike both in fortune and in temperament. They

had both been called upon to save military situations that were thought

desperate; their reputation had been made by successful war; and though

neither was a mere soldier, they lacked the taste and the patience for

the complicated political game, which alone made a man a power amidst

the noble circles and their immediate dependants at Rome.

But the last generation had seen in Tiberius Gracchus a man whose

political influence had been vast, a noble with but scant respect for

the indefeasible rights of the nobility and as stern as Cato in his

animadversions on the vices of his order, a man whose greatest successes

abroad had been those of diplomacy rather than of war, one who had

established firm connections and a living memory of himself both in West

and East, whose name was known and loved in Spain, Sardinia, Asia and

Egypt. It would have been too much to hope that this honest old

aristocrat would attempt to grapple with the evils which had first

become manifest during his own long lifetime; but it was not unnatural

that people should look to a son of his for succour, especially as this

son represented the blood of the Scipios as well as of the Gracchi. The

marriage of the elderly Gracchus with the young Cornelia had marked the

closing of the feud, personal rather than political, which had long

separated him from the elder Scipio: and a further link between the two

families was subsequently forged by the marriage of Sempronia, a

daughter of Cornelia, to Scipio Aemilianus. The young Tiberius Gracchus

may have been born during one of his father's frequent absences on the

service of the State.[301] Certainly the elder Gracchus could have seen

little of his son during the years of his infancy. But the closing years

of the old man's life seem to have been spent uninterruptedly in Italy,

and Tiberius must have been profoundly influenced by the genial and

stately presence that Rome loved and feared. But he was little more than

a boy when his father died, and the early influences that moulded his

future career seem to have been due mainly to his mother. Cornelia would

have been the typical Roman matron, had she lived a hundred years

earlier; she would then have trained sons for the battlefield, not for

the Forum. As it was, the softening influences of Greek culture had

tempered without impairing her strength of character, had substituted

rational for purely supernatural sanctions, and a wide political outlook

for a rude sense of civic duty. Herself the product of an education such

as ancient civilisations rarely bestowed upon their women, she wrote and

spoke with a purity and grace which led to the belief that her sons had

learnt from her lips and from her pen their first lessons in that

eloquence which swayed the masses and altered the fortunes of Rome.[302]

But her gifts had not impaired her tenderness. Her sons were her

"Jewels," and the successive loss of nine of the children which she had

borne to Gracchus must have made the three that remained doubly dear.

The two boys had a narrow escape from becoming Eastern princes: for the

hand of the widow Cornelia was sought in marriage by the King of

Egypt.[303] Such an alliance with the representative of the two houses

of the Gracchi and the Scipios might easily seem desirable to a

protected king, although the attractions of Cornelia may also have

influenced his choice. She, however, had no aspirations to share the

throne of the Lagidae, and the hellenism of Tiberius and of his younger

brother Caius, though deep and far-reaching, was of a kind less violent

than would have been gained by transportation to Alexandria. They were

trained in rhetoric by Diophanes an exile from Mitylene, and in

philosophy by Blossius of Cumae, a stoic of the school of Antipater of

Tarsus.[304] Many held the belief that Tiberius was spurred to his

political enterprise by the direct exhortation of these teachers; but,

even if their influence was not of this definite kind, there can be

little doubt that the teaching of the two Greeks exercised a powerful

influence on the political cast of his mind. Ideals of Greek liberty,

speeches of Greek statesmen who had come forward as champions of the

oppressed, stories of social ruin averted by the voice and hand of the

heaven-sent legislator, pictures of self-sacrifice and of resigned

submission to a standard of duty--these were lessons that may have been

taught both by rhetorician and philosopher. Nor was the teaching of

history different. In the literary environment in which the Gracchi

moved, ready answers were being given to the most vital questions of

politics and social science. Every one must have felt that the

approaching struggle had a dual aspect, that it was political as well as

social. For social conservatism was entrenched behind a political

rampart: and if reform, neglected by the senate, was to come from the

people, the question had first to be asked, Had the people a legal right

to initiate reform? The historians of that and of the preceding

generation would have answered this question unhesitatingly in the

affirmative. The _de facto_ sovereignty of the senate had not even

received a sanction in contemporary literature, while to that of the

immediate past it was equally unknown. The Roman annalists from the time

of the Second Punic War had revealed the sovereignty of the people as

the basis of the Roman constitution,[305] and the history of the long

struggle of the Plebs for freedom made the protection of the commons the

sole justification of the tribunate. From the lips of Polybius himself

Tiberius may have heard the impression which the Roman polity made on

the mind of the educated Greek: and the fact that this was a Greek

picture did not lessen its validity; for the Greek was moulding the

orthodox history of Rome, and the victims of his genius were the best

Roman intellects of the day. He might have learnt how in this mixed

constitution the people still retained their inalienable rights, how

they elected, ratified, and above all how they punished.[306] He might

have gathered that the identification of the tribunate with the

interests of the nobility was a perversion of its true and vital

function: that the tribune exists but to assist the commons and can be

subject to no authority but the people's will, whether expressed

directly by them or indirectly through his colleagues.[307] The history

of the Punic wars did indeed reveal, in the fate of a Varro or a

Minucius, how popular insubordination might be punished, when its end

was wrong. Polybius's own voice was raised in prophetic warning against

a possible demagogy of the future.[308] But that history showed the

healthy discipline of a healthy people--a people that had vanquished

genius through subordination, a peasant class whose loyalty and tenacity

were as great as those of its leaders, and without whom those leaders

would have been helpless. Where was such a class to be found now? Change

the subject or turn the page, and the Greek statesman and historian

could point to the dreadful reverse of this picture.[309] He could show

a Greek nation, gifted with political genius but doomed to political

decay--a nation whose sons accumulated money, lived in luxury with

little forethought for the future, and refused to beget children for the

State: a nation with a wealthy and cultured upper class, but one that

was literally perishing for the lack of men.[310] Was this the fate in

store for Rome? A temperament that was merely vigorous and keen might

not have been affected by such reflections. One that was merely

contemplative might have regarded them only as a subject for curious

study. But Tiberius's mind ran to neither of these two extremes. He was

a thoughtful and sensitive man of action. Sweet in temper, staid in

deportment, gentle in language, he attracted from his dependants a

loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did

not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished

oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the

harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and

restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the

stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral

and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that of the man who

burdens society with the impression that he has a solemn mission to

perform. Such men are rarely taken as seriously as they take themselves;

they do not win aged men of experience to support their cause; the

demeanour that wearies their friends is even likely to be found irksome

by the mob.

Roman society must have seen much promise in his youth, for honours came

early. A seat at the augural board was regarded as a tribute to his

merit rather than his birth;[312] and indeed the Roman aristocrats, who

dispensed such favours, were too clever to be the slaves of a name, when

political manipulation was in question and talent might be diverted to

the true cause. His marriage was a more important determinant in his

career. The bride who was offered him was the daughter of Appius

Claudius Pulcher, a man of consular and censorian rank and now Princeps

of the senate,[313] a clever representative of that brilliant and

eccentric house, that had always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius

had already displayed some of the restless individuality of his

ancestors. When the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with

the Salassi, he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his

daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the importunate

tribune who attempted to drag him off.[314] A similar unconventionality

was manifested in the present betrothal. The story runs that Appius

broached the question to Tiberius at an augural banquet. The proposition

was readily accepted, and Appius in his joy shouted out the news to his

wife as he entered his own front door. The lady was more surprised than

annoyed. "What need for all this haste," she said, "unless indeed you

have found Tiberius Gracchus for our girl?" [315] Appius, hasty as he

was, was probably in this case not the victim of a sudden inspiration.

The restless old man doubtless pined for reform; but he was weighed down

by years, honours and familiarity with the senate. He could not be the

protagonist in the coming struggle; but in Tiberius he saw the man of

the future.

The chances of the time favoured a military even more than a political

career; the chief spheres of influence were the province and the camp,

and it was in these that the earliest distinctions of Tiberius were won.

When a lad of fifteen he had followed his brother-in-law Scipio to

Africa, and had been the first to mount the walls of Carthage in the

vain assault on the fortress of Megara.[316] He had won the approval of

the commander by his discipline and courage, and left general regret

amongst the army when he quitted the camp before the close of the

campaign. But an experience as potent for the future as his first taste

of war, must have been those hours of leisure spent in Scipio's

tent.[317] If contact with the great commander aroused emulation, the

talk on political questions of Scipio and his circle must have inspired

profound reflection. Here he could find aspirations enough; all that was

lacking was a leader to translate them into deeds. The quaestorship, the

first round of the higher official ladder, found him attached to the

consul Mancinus and destined for the ever-turbulent province of Spain.

It was a fortunate chance, for here was the scene of his father's

military and diplomatic triumphs. But the sequel was unexpected. He had

gone to fulfil the duties of a subordinate; he suddenly found himself

performing those of a commander-in-chief or of an accredited

representative of the Roman people. The Numantines would treat only with

a Gracchus, and the treaty that saved Roman lives but not Roman honour

was felt to be really his work. In a moment he was involved in a

political question that agitated the whole of Rome. The Numantine treaty

was the topic of the day. Was it to be accepted or, if repudiated,

should the authors of the disaster, the causes of the breach of faith,

be surrendered in time-honoured fashion to the enemy as an expiation for

the violated pledge? On the first point there was little hesitation; the

senate decided for the nullity of the treaty, and it was likely that

this view would be accepted by the people, if the measures against the

ratifying officials were not made too stringent. For on this point there

was a difference of opinion. The poorer classes, whose sons and brothers

had been saved from death or captivity by the treaty, blamed Mancinus as

the cause of the disaster, but were grateful to Tiberius as the author

of the agreement. Others who had less to lose and could therefore afford

to stand on principle, would have enforced the fullest rigour of the

ancient rules and have delivered up the quaestor and tribunes with the

defaulting general.[318] It was thought that the influence of Scipio,

always great with the agricultural voters, might have availed to save

even Mancinus, nay that, if he would, he might have got the peace

confirmed.[319] But his efforts were believed to have been employed in

favour of Tiberius. The matter ended in an illogical compromise. The

treaty was repudiated, but it was decreed that the general alone should

be surrendered.[320] A breach in an ancient rule of religious law had

been made in favour of Tiberius.

But, in spite of this mark of popular favour, the experience had been

disheartening and its effect was disturbing. Although it is impossible

to subscribe to the opinion of later writers, who, looking at the matter

from a conservative and therefore unfavourable aspect, saw in this early

check the key to Tiberius's future action,[321] yet anger and fear leave

their trace even on the best regulated minds. The senate had torn up his

treaty and placed him for the moment in personal peril. It was to the

people that he owed his salvation. If circumstances were to develop an

opposition party in Rome, he was being pushed more and more into its

ranks. And a coolness seems to have sprung up at this time between him

and the man who had been his great _exemplar_. Tiberius took no counsel

of Scipio before embarking on his great enterprise; support and advice

were sought elsewhere. He may have already tested Scipio's lack of

sympathy with an active propaganda; shame might have kept back the hint

of a plan that might seem to imply a claim to leadership. But it is

possible that there was some feeling of resentment against the warrior

now before Numantia, who had done nothing to save the last Numantine

treaty and the honour of the name of Gracchus.

His reticence could scarcely have been due to ignorance of his own

designs; for his brother Caius left it on record that it was while

journeying northward from Rome on his way to Numantia that Tiberius's

eyes were first fully opened to the magnitude of the malady that cried

aloud for cure.[322] It was in Etruria, the paradise of the capitalist,

that he saw everywhere the imported slave and the barbarian who had

replaced the freeman. It was this sight that first suggested something

like a definite scheme. A further stimulus was soon to be found in

scraps of anonymous writing which appeared on porches, walls and

monuments, praying for his succour and entreating that the public land

should be recovered for the poor.[323] The voiceless Roman people was

seeking its only mode of utterance, a tribune who should be what the

tribune had been of old, the servant of the many not the creature of the

few. To Gracchus's mother his plans could hardly have been veiled. She

is even said to have stimulated a vague craving for action by the

playful remark that she was still known as the mother-in-law of Scipio,

not as the mother of the Gracchi.[324]

But there was need of serious counsel. Gracchus did not mean to be a

mere demagogue, coming before the people with a half-formed plan and

stirring up an agitation which could end merely in some idle resolution.

There were few to whom he could look for advice, but those few were of

the best. Three venerable men, whose deeds and standing were even

greater than their names, were ready with their support. There was the

chief pontiff, P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the man who was said to

combine in a supreme degree the four great blessings of wealth, birth,

eloquence and legal lore;[325] there was the brother of Crassus, P.

Mucius Scaevola,[326] the greatest lawyer of his age and already

destined to the consulship for the following year; lastly there was

Tiberius's father-in-law, the restless Appius, now eagerly awaiting the

fulfilment of a cherished scheme by the man of his own choice.[327]

Thus fortified, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his tribunate, and

formulated the measure which was to leave large portions of the public

domain open for distribution to the poor. In the popular gatherings with

which he opened his campaign, he dwelt on the nature of the evils which

he proposed to remedy. It was the interest of Italy, not merely of the

Roman proletariate, that was at stake.[328] He pointed out how the

Italian peasantry had dwindled in numbers, and how that portion of it

which still survived had been reduced to a poverty that was irremediable

by their own efforts. He showed that the slave gangs which worked the

vast estates were a menace, not a help, to Rome. They could not be

enlisted for service in the legions; their disaffection to their masters

was notorious; their danger was being proved even now by the horrible

condition of Sicily, the fate of its slave-owning landlords, the long,

difficult and eventful war which had not even yet been brought to a

close.[329] Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of reason in

his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the Rostra. "The beasts

that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking-places where they may make

their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy but the blessings of

air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you

wander to and fro with your wives and children. Our generals are in the

habit of inspiring their soldiers to the combat by exhorting them to

repel the enemy in defence of their tombs and ancestral shrines. The

appeal is idle and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar, you have

no ancestral tomb. No! you fight and die to give wealth and luxury to

others. You are called the masters of the world; yet there is no clod of

earth that you can call your own." [330]

The proposal, which was ushered in by these stirring appeals, seemed at

first sight to be of a moderate and somewhat conservative character. It

professed to be the renewal of an older law, which had limited the

amount of domain land which an individual might possess to five hundred

_jugera_;[331] it professed, that is, to reinforce an injunction which

had been persistently disobeyed, for this enactment restricting

possession had never been repealed. The extent to which a proposal of

this kind is a re-enactment, in the spirit as well as in the letter,

depends entirely on the length of time which has elapsed since the

original proposal has begun to be violated. A political society, which

recognises custom as one of the bases of law, must recognise desuetude

as equally valid. A law, which has not been enforced for centuries,

would, by the common consent of the courts of such nations as favour

progressive legislation, be regarded as no law at all. Again, the age of

an ordinance determines its suitability to present conditions. It may be

justifiable to revive an enactment that is centuries old; but the

revival should not necessarily dignify itself with that name. It must be

regarded as a new departure, unless the circumstances of the old and the

new enactment can be proved to be approximately the same. Our attempts

to judge the Gracchan law by these considerations are baffled by our

ignorance of the real date of the previous enactment, the stringency of

whose measures he wished to renew. If it was the Licinian law of the

middle of the fourth century,[332] this law must have been renewed, or

must still have continued to be observed, at a period not very long

anterior to the Gracchan proposal; for Cato could point his argument

against the declaration of war with Rhodes by an appeal to a provision

attributed to this measure[333]--an appeal which would have been

pointless, had the provision fallen into that oblivion which persistent

neglect of an enactment must bring to all but the professed students of

law. We can at least assert that the charge against Gracchus of reviving

an enactment so hoary with age as to be absurdly obsolete, is not one of

the charges to be found even in those literary records which were most

unfriendly to his legislation.[334]

The general principle of the measure was, therefore, the limitation to

five hundred _jugera_ of the amount of public land that could be

"possessed" by an individual. The very definition of the tenure

immediately exempted large portions of the State's domain from the

operation of this rule.[335] The Campanian land was leased by the State

to individuals, not merely possessed by them as the result of an

occupation permitted by the government; it, therefore, fell outside the

scope of the measure;[336] but, as it was technically public land and

its ownership was vested in the State, it would have been hazardous to

presume its exemption; it seems, therefore, to have been specifically

excluded from the operation of the bill, and a similar exception was

probably made in favour of many other tracts of territory held under a

similar tenure.[337] Either Gracchus declined to touch any interest that

could properly describe itself as "vested," even though it took merely

the form of a leasehold, or he valued the secure and abundant revenue

which flowed into the coffers of the State from these domains. There

were other lands strictly "public" where the claim of the holders was

still stronger, and where dispossession without the fullest compensation

must have been regarded as mere robbery. We know from later legislation

that respect was had to such lands as the Trientabula, estates which had

been granted by the Roman government at a quit rent to its creditors, as

security for that portion of a national debt which had never been

repaid. It is less certain what happened in the case of lands of which

the usufruct alone had been granted to communities of Roman citizens or

Latin colonists. Ownership in this case still remained vested in the

Roman people, and if the right of usufruct had been granted by law, it

could be removed by law. In the case of Latin communities, however, it

was probably guaranteed by treaty, which no mere law could touch: and so

similar were the conditions of Roman and Latin communities in this

particular, that it is probable that the land whose use was conferred on

whole communities by these ancient grants, was wholly spared by the

Gracchan legislation. In the case of those commons which were possessed

by groups of villagers for the purposes of pasturage (_ager

compascuus_),[338] it is not likely that the group was regarded as the

unit: and therefore, even in the case of such an aggregate possessing

over five hundred _jugera_, their occupation was probably left

undisturbed.

All other possessors must vacate the land which exceeded the prescribed

limit. Such an ordinance would have been harsh, had no compensation been

allowed, and Gracchus proposed certain amends for the loss sustained. In

the first place, the five hundred _jugera_ retained by each possessor

were to be increased by half as much again for each son that he might

possess: although it seems that the amount retained was not to exceed

one thousand _jugera_.[339] Secondly, the land so secured to existing

possessors was not to be held on a merely precarious tenure, and was not

to be burdened by the payment of dues to the State; even if ownership

was not vested in its holders, they were guaranteed gratuitous

undisturbed possession in perpetuity.[340] Thirdly, the bill as

originally drafted even suggested some monetary compensation for the

land surrendered.[341] This compensation was probably based on a

valuation of stock, buildings, and recent permanent improvements, which

were to be found on the territory now reverting to the State. It must

have applied for the most part only to arable land, and practically

amounted to a purchase by the State of items to which it could lay no

legal claim; for it was the soil alone, not the buildings on the soil,

over which its lordship could properly be asserted.

The object of reclaiming the public land was its future distribution

amongst needy citizens. This distribution might have taken either of two

forms. Fresh colonies might have been planted, or the acquired land

might merely be assigned to settlers who were to belong to the existing

political organisations. It was the latter method of simple assignation

that Gracchus chose. There was felt to be no particular need for new

political creations; for the pacification of Italy seemed to be

accomplished, and the new farming class would perform their duty to the

State equally well as members of the territory of Rome or of that of the

existing municipia and coloniae of Roman citizens. There is some

evidence that the new proprietors were not all to be attached to the

city of Rome itself, but that many, perhaps most, were to be attributed

to the existing colonies and municipia, in the neighbourhood of which

their allotments lay.[342] The size of the new allotments which Gracchus

projected is not known; it probably varied with the needs and status of

the occupier, perhaps with the quality of the land, and there is some

indication that the maximum was fixed at thirty _jugera_.[343] This is

an amount that compares favourably with the two, three, seven or ten

_jugera_ of similar assignments in earlier times, and is at once a proof

of the decrease in the value of land--a decrease which had contributed

to the formation of the large estates--and of the large amount of

territory which was expected to be reclaimed by the provisions of the

new measure. The allotments thus assigned were not, however, to be the

freehold property of their recipients. They were, indeed, heritable and

to be held on a perfectly secure tenure by the assignees and their

descendants; but a revenue was to be paid to the State for their use:

and they were to be inalienable--the latter provision being a desperate

expedient to check the land-hunger of the capitalist, and to save the

new settlers from obedience to the economic tendencies of the

times.[344]

It is doubtful whether the social object of Gracchus could have been

fully accomplished, had he confined his attention wholly to the existing

citizens of Rome. The area of economic distress was wider than the

citizen body, and it was the salvation of Italy as a whole that Gracchus

had at heart.[345] There is much reason for supposing that some of the

Italian allies were to be recipients of the benefits of the

measure.[346] In earlier assignations the Latins had not been excluded,

and it is probable that at least these, whether members of old

communities or of colonies, were intended to have some share in the

distribution. There could be no legal hindrance to such participation.

With respect to rights in land, the Latins were already on a level with

Roman citizens, and their exclusion from the new allotments would have

been due to a mere political prejudice which is not characteristic

either of Gracchus or his plans.

The ineffectiveness of laws at Rome was due chiefly to the apathy of the

executive authority. Gracchus saw clearly that his measure would, like

other social efforts of the past, become a mere pious resolution, if its

execution were entrusted to the ordinary officials of the State.[347]

But a special commission, which should effectually carry out the work

which he contemplated, must be of a very unusual kind. The magnitude of

the task, and the impossibility of assigning any precise limit of time

to its completion, made it essential that the Triumvirate which he

established should bear the appearance of a regular but extraordinary

magistracy of the State. The three commissioners created by the bill

were to be elected annually by the Comitia of the Tribes.[348]

Re-election of the same individuals was possible, and the new magistracy

was to come to an end only with the completion of its work. Its

occupants, perhaps, possessed the Imperium from the date of the first

institution of the office; they certainly exercised it from the moment

when, as we shall see, their functions of assignment were supplemented

by the addition of judicial powers. Gracchus was doubtless led to this

new creation purely by the needs of his measure; but he showed to later

politicians the possibility of creating a new and powerful magistracy

under the guise of an agrarian law.

Such was the measure that seemed to its proposer a reasonable and

equitable means of remedying a grave injustice and restoring rather than

giving rights to the poor. He might, if he would, have insisted on

simple restitution. Had he pressed the letter of the law, not an atom of

the public domain need have been left to its present occupiers. The

possessor had no rights against the State; he held on sufferance, and

technically he might be supposed to be always waiting for his summons to

ejectment. To give such people something over and above the limit that

the laws had so long prescribed, to give them further a security of

tenure for the land retained which amounted almost to complete

ownership--were not these unexpected concessions that should be received

with gratitude? And even up to the eve of the polling the murmurs of the

opposition were sometimes met by appeals to its nobler sentiments. The

rich, said Gracchus, if they had the interests of Italy, its future

hopes and its unborn generations at heart, should make this land a free

gift to the State; they were vexing themselves about small issues and

refusing to face the greater problems of the day.[349]

But personal interests can never seem small, and the average man is more

concerned with the present than with the future. The opposition was

growing in volume day by day, and the murmurs were rising into shrieks.

The class immediately threatened must have been numerically small; but

they made up in combination and influence what they lacked in numbers.

It was always easy to startle the solid commercial world of Rome by the

cry of "confiscation". A movement in this direction might have no

limits; the socialistic device of a "re-division of land," which had so

often thrown the Greek commonwealths into a ferment, was being imported

into Roman politics. All the forces of respectability should be allied

against this sinister innovation. It is probable that many who

propagated these views honestly believed that they exactly fitted the

facts of the case. The possessors did indeed know that they were not

owners. They were reminded of the fact whenever they purchased the right

of occupation from a previous possessor, for such a title could not pass

by mancipation; or whenever they sued for the recovery of an estate from

which they had been ejected, for they could not make the plea before the

praetor that the land was theirs "according to the right of the

Quirites," but could rely only on the equitable assistance of the

magistrate tendered through the use of the possessory interdicts; or,

more frequently still, whenever they paid their dues to the Publicanus,

that disinterested middle-man, who had no object in compromising with

the possessors, and could seldom have allowed an acre of land to escape

his watchful eye. But, in spite of these reminders, there was an

impression that the tenure was perfectly secure, and that the State

would never again re-assert its lordship in the extreme form of

dispensing entirely with its clients. Gracchus might talk of

compensation, but was there any guarantee that it would be adequate,

and, even supposing material compensation to be possible, what solace

was that to outraged feelings? Ancestral homes, and even ancestral

tombs, were not grouped on one part of a domain, so that they could be

saved by an owner when he retained his five hundred _jugera_; they were

scattered all over the broad acres. Estates that technically belonged to

a single man, and were therefore subject to the operation of the law,

had practically ceased to confer any benefit on the owner, and were

pledged to other purposes. They had been divided as the _peculia_ of his

sons, they had been promised as the dowry of his daughters. Again those

former laws may have rightly forbidden the occupation of more than a

certain proportion of land; but much of the soil now in possession had

not been occupied by its present inhabitant; he had bought the right to

be there in hard cash from the former tenant. And think of the invested

capital! Dowries had been swallowed up in the soil, and the Gracchan law

was confiscating personal as well as real property, taking the wife's

fortune as well as the husband's. Nay, if the history of the public land

were traced, could it not be shown that such value as it now possessed

had been given it by its occupiers or their ancestors? The land was not

assigned in early times, simply because it was not worth assignation. It

was land that had been reclaimed for use, and of this use the authors of

its value were now to be deprived.[350]

Such was the plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and,

therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business

men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found

their own personal interests at stake. So good had the tenure seemed,

that it had been accepted as security for debt,[351] and the Gracchan

attack united for once the usually hostile ranks of mortgagers and

mortgagees. The alarm spread from Rome to the outlying municipalities.

[352] Even in the city itself a very imperfect view of the scope of the

bill was probably taken by the proletariate. We may imagine the

distorted form in which it reached the ears of the occupants of the

country towns. "Was it true that the land which had been given them in

usufruct was to be taken away?" was the type of question asked in the

municipia and in the colonies, whether Roman or Latin. The needier

members of these towns received the news with very different feelings.

They had every chance of sharing in the local division of the spoils,

and their voices swelled the chorus of approval with which the poorer

classes everywhere received the Gracchan law. Amidst this proletariate

certain catch-words--well-remembered fragments of Gracchus's speeches--

had begun to be the familiar currency of the day. "The numberless

campaigns through which this land has been won," "The iniquity of

exclusion from what is really the property of the State," "The disgrace

of employing the treacherous slave in place of the free-born citizen"--

such was the type of remark with which the Roman working-man or idler

now entertained his fellow. All Roman Italy was in a blaze, and there

must have been a sense of insecurity and anxiety even in those allied

towns whose interest in Roman domain-land was remote. Might not State

interests be as lightly violated as individual interests by a sovereign

people: and was not the example of Rome almost as perilous as her action?

The opponents of Gracchus had no illusions as to the numerical strength

which he could summon to his aid. If the battle were fought to a finish

in the Comitia, there could be no doubt as to his triumphant victory.

Open opposition could serve no purpose except to show what a remnant it

was that was opposing the people's wishes. But there was a means of at

least delaying the danger, of staving off the attack as long as Gracchus

remained tribune, perhaps of giving the people an opportunity of

recovering completely from their delirium. When the college of tribunes

moved as a united body, its force was irresistible; but now, as often

before, there was some division in its ranks. It was not likely that ten

men, drawn from the order of the nobility, should view with equal favour

such a radical proposal as that of Tiberius Gracchus. But the popular

feeling was so strong that for a time even the unsympathetic members of

the board hesitated to protest, and no colleague of Tiberius is known to

have opposed the movement in its initial stages. Even the man who was

subsequently won over to the capitalist interest hesitated long before

taking the formidable step: It was believed, however, that the hesitancy

of Marcus Octavius was due more to his personal regard for Tiberius than

to respect for the people's wishes.[353] The tribune who was to scotch

the obnoxious measure was an excellent instrument for a dignified

opposition. He was grave and discreet, a personal friend and intimate of

Tiberius.[354] It is true that he was a large holder on the public

domain, and that he would suffer by the operation of the new agrarian

law. But it was fitting that the landlord class should be represented by

a landlord, and, if there had been the least suspicion of sordid

motives, it would have been removed by Octavius's refusal to accept

private compensation for himself from the slender means of Tiberius

Gracchus.[355] The offer itself reads like an insult, but it was

probably made in a moment of passionate and unreflecting fervour.

Neither the profferer nor the refuser could have regarded it in the

light of a bribe. Even when the veto had been pronounced, the daily

contest between the two tribunes in the Forum never became a scene of

unseemly recrimination. The war of words revolved round the question of

principle. Both disputants were at white heat; yet not a word was said

by either which conveyed a reflection on character or motive.[356]

These debates followed the first abortive meeting of the Assembly. As

the decisive moment approached, streams of country folk had poured into

Rome to register their votes in favour of the measure.[357] The Contio

had given way to the Comitia, the people had been ready to divide, and

Gracchus had ordered his scribe to read aloud the words of the bill.

Octavius had bidden the scribe to be silent;[358] the vast meeting had

melted away, and all the labours of the reformer seemed to have been in

vain. To accept a temporary defeat under such circumstances was in

accordance with the constitutional spirit of the times. The veto was a

mode of encouraging reflection; it might yield to a prolonged campaign,

but it was regarded as a barrier against a hasty popular impulse which,

if unchecked, might prove ruinous to some portion of the community.

Gracchus, however, knew perfectly well that it was now being used in the

interest of a small minority, and he held the rights which it protected

to be non-existent; he believed the question of agrarian reform to be

bound up with his own personality, and its postponement to be equivalent

to its extinction; he had no intention of allowing his own political

life to be a failure, and, instead of discarding his weapons of attack,

he made them more formidable than before. Perhaps in obedience to

popular outcries, he redrafted his bill in a form which rendered it more

drastic and less equitable.[359] It is possible that some of the

_douceurs_ given to the possessors by his original proposal were not

really in accordance with his own judgment. They were meant to disarm

opposition. Now that opposition had not been disarmed, they could be

removed without danger. The stricter measure had the same chance of

success or failure as the less severe. We do not know the nature of the

changes which were now introduced; but it is possible that the pecuniary

compensation offered for improvements on the land to be resumed was

either abolished or rendered less adequate than before.

But even the form of the law was unimportant in comparison with the

question of the method by which the new opposition was to be met. The

veto, if persisted in by Octavius, would suspend the agrarian measure

during the whole of Tiberius's year of office. It could only be

countered by a device which would make government so impossible that the

opposition would be forced to come to terms. The means were to be found

in the prohibitive power of the tribunes, that right, which flowed from

their _major potestas_, of forbidding under threat of penalties the

action of all other magistrates. It was now rarely used except at the

bidding of the senate and for certain specified purposes. It had become,

in fact, little more than the means of enforcing obedience to a

temporary suspension of business life decreed by the government. But

recent events suggested a train of associations that brought back to

mind the great political struggles of the past, and recalled the mode in

which Licinius and Sextius had for five years sustained their anarchical

edict for the purpose of the emancipation of the Plebs. The difference

between the conditions of life in primitive Rome and in the cosmopolitan

capital of to-day did not appeal to Tiberius. The Justitium was as

legitimate a method of political warfare as the Intercessio. He issued

an edict which forbade all the other magistracies to perform their

official functions until the voting on the agrarian law should be

carried through; he placed his own seals on the doors of the temple of

Saturn to prevent the quaestors from making payments to the treasury or

withdrawing money from it; he forbade the praetors to sit in the courts

of justice and announced that he would exact a fine from those who

disobeyed. The magistrates obeyed the edict, and most of the active life

of the State was in suspense.[360] The fact of their obedience showed

the overwhelming power which Tiberius now had behind him; for an

ill-supported tribune, who adopted such an obsolete method of warfare,

would have been unable to enforce his decrees and would merely have

appeared ridiculous. The opponents of the law were now genuinely

alarmed. Those who would be the chief sufferers put on garments of

mourning, and paced the silent Forum with gloom and despair written on

their faces, as though they were the innocent victims of a great wrong.

But, while they took this overt means of stirring the commiseration of

the crowd, it was whispered that the last treacherous device for

averting the danger was being tried. The cause would perish with the

demagogue, and Tiberius might be secretly removed. Confidence in this

view was strengthened when it was known that the tribune carried a

dagger concealed about his person.[361]

An attempt was now made to discover whether the pressure had been

sufficient and whether the veto would be repeated. Gracchus again

summoned the assembly, the reading of the bill was again commenced and

again stopped at the instance of Octavius.[362] This second

disappointment nearly led to open riot. The vast crowd did not

immediately disperse; it felt its great physical strength and the utter

weakness of the regular organs of government. There were ominous signs

of an appeal to force, when two men of consular rank, Manlius and

Fulvius,[363] intervened as peacemakers. They threw themselves at the

feet of Tiberius, they clasped his hands, they besought him with tears

to pause before he committed himself to an act of violence. Tiberius was

not insensible to the appeal. The immediate future was dark enough, and

the entreaties of these revered men had saved an awkward situation. He

asked them what they held that he should do. They answered that they

were not equal to advise on a matter of such vast import; but that there

was the senate. Why not submit the whole matter to the judgment of the

great council of the State? Tiberius's own attitude to this proposal may

have been influenced by the fact that it was addressed to his colleagues

as well as to himself,[364] and that they apparently thought it a

reasonable means of relieving the present situation. It is difficult to

believe that the man who had never taken the senate into his confidence

over so vital a matter as the agrarian law, could have had much hope of

its sympathy now. But his conviction of the inherent reasonableness of

his proposal,[365] of his own power of stating the case convincingly,

and his knowledge that the senate usually did yield at a crisis, that

its government was only possible because it consistently kept its finger

on the pulse of popular opinion, may have directed his acceptance of its

advice. Immediate resort was had to the Curia. The business of the house

must have been immediately suspended to listen to a statement of the

merits of the agrarian measure, and to a description of the political

situation which it had created. When the debate began, it was obvious

that there was nothing but humiliation in store for the leaders of the

popular movement. The capitalist class was represented by an

overwhelming majority; carping protests and riddling criticism were

heard on every side, and Tiberius probably had never been told so many

home truths in his life. It was useless to prolong the discussion, and

Tiberius was glad to get into the open air of the Forum again. He had

formed his resolution, and now made a proposal which, if carried

through, might remove the deadlock by means that might be construed as

legitimate. The new device was nothing less than the removal of his

colleague Octavius from office. He announced that at the next meeting of

the Assembly two questions would be put before the Plebs, the acceptance

of the law and the continuance by Octavius of his tenure of the

tribunate.[366] The latter question was to be raised on the general

issue whether a tribune who acted contrary to the interests of the

people was to continue in office. At the appointed time[367] Octavius's

constancy was again tested, and he again stood firm. Tiberius broke out

into one of his emotional outbursts, seizing his colleague's hands,

entreating him to do this great favour to the people, reminding him that

their claims were just, were nothing in proportion to their toils and

dangers. When this appeal had been rejected, Tiberius summed up the

impossibility of the situation in terms which contained a condemnation

of the whole growth and structure of the Roman constitution. It was not

in human power, he said, to prevent open war between magistrates of

equal authority who were at variance on the gravest matters of

state;[368] the only way which he saw of securing peace was the

deposition of one of them from office. He did not care in the present

instance which it was. The people would be the arbiter. Let his own

deposition be proposed by Octavius; he would walk quietly away into a

private station, if this were the will of the citizens. The man who

spoke thus had more completely emancipated himself from Roman formulae

than any Roman of the past. To Octavius it must have seemed a mere

outburst of Greek demagogism. The offer too was an eminently safe one to

make under the circumstances. On no grounds could it be accepted. At

this point the proceedings were adjourned to allow Octavius time for

deliberation.

On the following day Gracchus announced that the question of deposition

would be taken first, and a fresh and equally vain appeal was made to

the feelings of the unshaken Octavius.[369] The question was then put,

not as a vague and general resolution, but as a determinate motion that

Octavius be deprived of the tribunate. The thirty-five tribes voted, and

when the votes of seventeen had been handed up and proclaimed,[370] and

the voice of but one was Lacking to make Octavius a private citizen,

Tiberius as the presiding tribune stopped for a moment the machinery of

the election. He again showed himself as a revolutionist unfortunate in

the possession of a political and personal conscience. The people were

witnessing a more passionate scene than ever, one that may appear as the

last effort of reconciliation between the two social forces that were to

meet in terrible conflict. Gracchus's arms were round his opponent's

neck; broken appeals fell from his lips--the old one that he should not

break the heart of the people: the new one that he should not cause his

own degradation, and leave a bitter memory in the mind of the author of

his fall. Observers saw that Octavius's heart was touched; his eyes were

filled with tears, and for some time he kept a troubled silence. But he

soon remembered his duty and his pledge. Tiberius might do with him what

he would. Gracchus called the gods to witness that he would willingly

have saved his colleague from dishonour, and ordered the resumption of

the announcement of the votes. The bill became law and Octavius was

stripped of his office. It was probably because he declined to recognise

the legality of the act that he still lingered on the Rostra. One of the

tribunician _viatores_, a freedman of Gracchus, was commanded to fetch

him down. When he reached the ground, a rush was made at him by the mob;

but his supporters rallied round him, and Tiberius himself rushed from

the Rostra to prevent the act of violence. Soon he was lost in the crowd

and hurried unobserved from the tumult.[371] His place in the

tribunician college was filled up by the immediate election of one

Quintus Mummius.[372]

The members of the assembly that deposed Octavius may have been the

spectators and authors of a new precedent in Roman history, one that was

often followed in the closing years of the Republic, but one that may

have received no direct sanction from the records of the past. The

abrogation of the imperium of a proconsul had indeed been known,[373]

but the deposition of a city magistrate during his year of office seems

to have been a hitherto untried experiment. We cannot on this ground

alone pronounce it to have been illegal; for an act never attempted

before may have perfect legal validity, as the first occasion on which a

legitimate deduction has been made from admitted principles of the

constitution. It had always been allowed that under certain

circumstances (chiefly the neglect of the proper formalities of

election) a magistrate might be invited to abdicate his office; but the

fact of this invitation is itself an evidence for the absence of any

legal power of suspension. Tradition, however, often supplemented the

defects of historical evidence, and one, perhaps the older, tale of the

removal of the first consul Collatinus stated that it was effected by a

popular measure introduced by his colleague.[374] This story was a

fragment of that tradition of popular sovereignty which animated the

historical literature of the age of the Gracchi: and one deduction from

that theory may well have seemed to be that the sovereign people could

change its ministers as it pleased. It was a deduction, however, that

was not drawn even in the best period of democratic Athens; it ran

wholly counter to the Roman conception of the magistracy as an authority

co-ordinate with the people and one that, if not divinely appointed,

received at least something of a sacred character from the fact of

investiture with office. Even the prosecution of a magistrate for the

gravest crime, although technically permissible during his year of

office, had as a rule been relegated to the time when he again became a

private citizen; the tribunician college, in particular, had generally

thrown its protecting shield around its offending members, and had thus

sustained its own dignity and that of the people. But, even if it be

supposed that the sovereign could, at any moment and without any of the

due formalities, proclaim itself a competent court of justice, and even

though removal from office might be improperly represented as a

punishment, there was the question of the offence to be considered. No

crime known to the law had been charged against Octavius. In the

exercise of his admitted right, or, as he might have expressed it, of

his sacred duty, he had offended against the will of a majority. The

analogy of the criminal law was from this point of view hopeless, and

was therefore not pressed on this occasion. From another point of view

it was not quite so remote. The tumultuous popular assemblages that had,

on the bidding of a prosecuting tribune, often condemned commanders for

vague offences hardly formulated in any particular law, scarcely

differed, except in the fact that no previous magisterial inquiry had

been conducted, from the meeting that deposed Octavius. The gulf that

lies between proceedings in a parliament and proceedings in a court of

law, was far less in Rome than it would have been in those Hellenic

communities that possessed a developed system of criminal judicature.

If criminal analogies failed, a purely political ground of defence must

be adduced. This could hardly be based on considerations of abstract

justice, although, as we shall see, an attempt was made by Tiberius

Gracchus to give it even this foundation. Could it be based on

convenience? Obviously, as Gracchus saw, his act was the only effective

means of removing a deadlock created by a constitution which knew only

magistrates and people and had effectively crippled both. So far, it

might be defended on grounds of temporary necessity. But an act of this

kind could not die. To what consequences might not its repetition lead?

Imagine a less serious question, a less representative assembly. Think

of the possibility of a few hundred desperate members of the

proletariate gathering on the Capitoline hill and deposing a tribune who

represented the interests of the vast outlying population of Rome. This

is a consequence which, it is true, was not realised in the future. But

that was only because the tribunate was more than Gracchus conceived it,

and was too strong in tradition and associations of sanctity to be

broken even by his attack. The scruples which troubled him most arose

from the suspicion that the sacred office itself might have been held to

suffer by the deposition of Octavius, and it was to a repudiation of

this view that he subsequently devoted the larger part of his systematic

defence of his action.

At the same meeting at which Octavius was deposed, the agrarian bill was

for the first time read without interruption to the people and

immediately became law. Shortly after, the election of the commissioners

was proceeded with and resulted in the appointment of Tiberius Gracchus

himself, of his father-in-law Appius Claudius and of Gracchus's younger

brother Caius.[375] It was perhaps natural that the people should pin

their faith on the family of their champion; but it could hardly have

increased the confidence of the community as a whole in the wisdom with

which this delicate task would be executed, to find that it was

entrusted to a family party, one of which was a mere boy; and the

mistrust must have been increased when, somewhat later in the course of

the year, the thorny questions which immediately encompassed the task of

distribution led to the introduction by Tiberius of another law, which

gave judicial power to the triumvirs, for the purpose of determining

what was public land and what was private.[376] The fortunes of the

richer classes seemed now to be entrusted to one man, who combined in

his own person the tribunician power and the imperium, whose

jurisdiction must have seriously infringed that of the regular courts,

and who was assisted in issuing his probably inappellable decrees by a

father-in-law and a younger brother. But, although effective protest was

impossible, the senate showed its resentment by acts that might appear

petty and spiteful, did we not remember that they were the only means

open to this body of passing a vote of censure on the recent

proceedings. The senate controlled every item of the expenditure; and

when the commissioners appealed to it for their expenses, it refused a

tent and fixed the limit of supplies at a denarius and a half a day. The

instigator of this decree was the ex-consul Scipio Nasica, a heavy loser

by the agrarian law, a man of strong and passionate temper who was every

day becoming a more infuriated opponent of Tiberius Gracchus.[377]

Meanwhile the latter had celebrated a peaceful triumph which far

eclipsed the military pageants of the imperators of the past. The

country people, before they returned to their farms, had escorted him to

his house; they had hailed him as a greater than Romulus, as the

founder, not of a city nor of a nation, but of all the peoples of

Italy.[378] It is true that his escort was only the poor, rude mob.

Stately nobles and clanking soldiers were not to be seen in the

procession. But they were better away. This was the true apotheosis of a

real demagogism. And the suspicion of the masses was as readily fired as

their enthusiasm. A friend of Tiberius died suddenly and ugly marks were

seen upon the body. There was a cry of poison; the bier was caught up on

the shoulders of the crowd and borne to the place of burning. A vast

throng stood by to see the corpse consumed, and the ineffectiveness of

the flames was held a thorough confirmation of the truth of their

suspicions.[379] It remained to see how far this protective energy would

serve to save their favourite when the day of reckoning came.

Tiberius could hardly have shared in the general elation. To make

promises was one thing, to fulfil them another. Everything depended on

the effectiveness of the execution of the agrarian scheme; and, although

the mechanism for distribution was excellent, some of the material

necessary for its successful fulfilment was sadly lacking. There were

candidates enough for land, and there was sufficient land for the

candidates. But whence were the means for starting these penniless

people on their new road to virtue and prosperity to be derived? To give

an ardent settler thirty _jugera_ of soil and to withhold from him the

means of sowing his first crop or of making his first effort to turn

pasture into arable land, was both useless and cruel; and we may imagine

that the evicted possessors had not left their relinquished estates in a

very enviable condition. The doors of the Aerarium were closed, for its

key was in the hands of the senate; and Gracchus had to cast an anxious

eye around for means for satisfying the needs of his clients.

The opportunity was presented when the Roman people came into the

unexpected inheritance of Attalus the Third, king of Pergamon. The

testament was brought to Rome by Eudemus the Pergamene, whose first

business was with the senate. But, when Eudemus arrived in the city, he

saw a state of things which must have made him doubt whether the senate

was any longer the true director of the State. It sat passive and

sullen, while an energetic _prostates_ of the Greek type was doing what

he liked with the land of Italy. No sane ambassador could have refused

to neglect Gracchus, and it is practically certain that Eudemus

approached him. This fact we may believe, even if we do not accept the

version that the envoy had taken the precaution of bringing in his

luggage a purple robe and a diadem, as symbols that might be necessary

for a fitting recognition of Tiberius's future position.[380] It is also

possible that suspicion of the rule of senators and capitalists may also

have prompted the Greek to attempt to discover whether a more tolerable

settlement might not be gained for his country through the leader of the

popular party.[381] We cannot say whether Gracchus ever contemplated a

policy with respect to the province as a whole. His mind was probably

full of his immediate needs. He saw in the treasures of Attalus more

than an equivalent for the revenues enclosed in the locked Aerarium, and

he announced his intention of promulgating a plebiscite that the money

left by the king should be assigned to the settlers provided for by his

agrarian law.[382] It is possible that he contemplated the application

of the future revenues of the kingdom of Pergamon to this or some

similar purpose; and it was perhaps partly for this reason, partly in

answer to the objection that the treasure could not be appropriated

without a senatorial decree, that he announced the novel doctrine that

it was no business of the senate to decide the fate of the cities which

had belonged to the Attalid monarchy, and that he himself would prepare

for the people a measure dealing with this question.[383]

This was the fiercest challenge that he had yet flung to the senate.

There might be a difference of opinion as to the right of a magistrate

to put a question to the people without the guidance of a senatorial

decree; the assignment of land was unquestionably a popular right in so

far as it required ratification by the commons; even the deposition of

Octavius was a matter for the people and would avenge itself. But there

were two senatorial rights--the one usurped, the other created--whose

validity had never been questioned. These were the control of finance

and the direction of provincial administration. Were the possibility

once admitted that these might be dealt with in the Comitia, the

magistrates would cease to be ministers of the senate; for it was

chiefly through a system of judicious prize-giving that the senate

attached to itself the loyalty of the official class. There was perhaps

less fear of what Gracchus himself might do than of the spectre which he

was raising for the future. For in Roman history the events of the past

made those of the future; there were few isolated phenomena in its

development.

From this time the attacks of individual senators on Gracchus became

more vehement and direct. They proceeded from men of the highest rank. A

certain Pompeius, in whom we may probably see an ex-consul and a future

censor, was not ashamed of raising the spectre of a coming monarchy by

reference to the story of the sceptre and the purple robe, and is said

to have vowed to impeach Gracchus as soon as his year of magistracy had

expired;[384] the ex-consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, of Macedonian

fame, reproached Tiberius with his rabble escort. He compared the

demeanour of the father and the son. In the censorship of the former the

citizens used to quench their lights at night, as they saw him pass up

the street to his house, that they might impress the censorial mind with

the ideas of early hours and orderly conduct; now the son of this man

might be seen returning home amidst the blaze of torches, held in the

stout arms of a defiant body-guard drawn from the neediest classes.[385]

These arrows may have Missed the mark; the one that hit was winged by an

aged senator, Titus Annius Luscus, who had held the consulship twenty

years before. His wit is said to have been better established than his

character. He excelled in that form of ready altercation, of impaling

his opponent on the horns of a dilemma by means of some innocent

question, which, both in the courts and the senate, was often more

effective than the power of continuous oratory. He now challenged

Tiberius to a wager (_sponsio_), such as in the public life of Rome was

often employed to settle a disputed point of honour or of fact, to

determine the question whether he had dishonoured a colleague, who was

holy in virtue of his office and had been made sacrosanct by the laws.

The proposal was received by the senators with loud cries of

acclamation. A glance at Tiberius would probably have shown that Annius

had found the weak spot, not merely in his defensive armour, but in his

very soul. The deposition of Octavius was proving a very nemesis; it was

a democratic act that was in the highest degree undemocratic, an

assertion and yet a gross violation of popular liberty.[386] The

superstitious masses were in the habit of washing their hands and

purifying their bodies before they entered into the presence of a

tribune.[387] Might there not be a thrill of awe and repentance when the

idea was brought home to them that this holy temple had been violated:

and must not this be followed by a sense of repugnance to the man who

had prompted them to the unhallowed deed? Tiberius sprang to his feet,

quitted the senate-house and summoned the people. The majesty of the

tribunate in his person had been outraged by Annius. He must answer for

his words. The aged senator appeared before the crowd; he knew his

disadvantage if the ordinary weapons of comitial strife were employed.

In power of words and in repute with the masses he stood far behind

Tiberius. But his presence of mind did not desert him. Might he ask a

few questions before the regular proceedings began? The request was

allowed and there was a dead silence. "Now suppose," said Annius, "you,

Tiberius, were to wish to cover me with shame and abuse, and suppose I

were to call on one of your colleagues for help, and he were to come up

here to offer me his assistance, and suppose further that this were to

excite your displeasure, would you deprive that colleague of yours of

his office?" To answer that question in the affirmative was to admit

that the tribunician power was dead; to answer it in the negative was to

invite the retort that the _auxilium_ was only one form of the

_intercessio_. The quick-witted southern crowd must have seen the

difficulty at once, and Tiberius himself, usually so ready and bold in

speech, could not face the dilemma. He remained silent and dismissed the

assembly.[388]

But matters could not remain as they were. This new aspect of Octavius's

deposition was the talk of the town, and there were many troubled

consciences amongst the members of his own following. Something must be

done to quiet them; he must raise the question himself. The situation

had indeed changed rapidly. Tiberius Gracchus was on his defence. Never

did his power of special pleading appear to greater advantage than in

the speech which followed. He had the gift which makes the mighty

Radical, of diving down and seizing some fundamental truth of political

science, and then employing it with merciless logic for the illustration

or refutation of the practice of the present. The central idea here was

one gathered from the political science of the Greeks. The good of the

community is the only test of the rightness of an institution. It is

justified if it secures that end, unjustified if it does not: or, to use

the language of religion, holy in the one case, devoid of sanctity in

the other. And an institution is not a mere abstraction; we must judge

it by its use. We must, therefore, say that when it obeys the common

interest, it is right: when it ceases to obey it, it is wrong. But the

right must be preserved and the wrong plucked out. So Gracchus

maintained that the tribune was holy and sacrosanct because he had been

sanctified to the people's service and was the people's head. If then he

change his character and do the people wrong, cutting down its strength

and silencing its voice as expressed through the suffrage, he has

deprived himself of his office, for he has ceased to conform to the

terms on which he received it. Should we leave a tribune alone who was

pulling down the Capitolium or burning the docks? And yet a tribune who

did these things would remain a tribune, though a bad one. It is only

when a tribune is destroying the power of the people that he is no

longer a tribune at all. The laws give the tribune the power to arrest

the consul. It is a power given against a man elected by the people; for

consul and tribune are equally mandataries of the people. Shall not then

the people have the right of depriving the tribune of his authority,

when he uses this authority in a way prejudicial to the interests of the

giver? What does the history of the past teach us? Can anything have

been more powerful or more sacred than the ancient monarchy of Rome? The

Imperium of the king was unlimited, the highest priestly offices were

his. Yet the city expelled Tarquin for his crimes. The tyranny of a

single man was alone sufficient to bring to an end a government which

had its roots in the most distant past, which had presided over the very

birth of the city. And, if sanctity alone is to be the ground of

immunity, what are we to think of the punishment of a vestal virgin? Is

there anything in Rome more holy and awe-inspiring than the maidens who

tend and guard the eternal flame? Yet their sin is visited by the most

horrible of deaths. They hold their sacrosanct character through the

gods; they lose it, therefore, when they sin against the gods. Should

the same not be true of the tribune? It is on account of the people that

he is sacred; he cannot retain this divine character when he wrongs the

people; he is a man engaged in destroying the very power which is the

source of his strength. If the tribunate can justly be gained by a

favourable vote of the majority of the tribes, can it not with greater

justice be taken away by an adverse vote of all of them? Again, what

should be the limits of our action in dealing with sacred things? Does

sanctity mean immobility? By no means. What are more holy and inviolable

than things dedicated to the gods? Yet this character does not prevent

the people from handling, moving, transferring them as it pleases. In

the case of the tribunate, it is the office, not the man, that is

inviolable; it may be treated as an object of dedication and transferred

to another. The practice of our own State proves that the office is not

inviolable in the sense of being inalienable, for its holders have often

forsworn it and asked to be divested of it.[389]

The strongest part of this utterance was that which dealt with the

sacred character of office; it was a mere emanation from the performance

of certain functions; the protection, not the reality, of the thing.

Gracchus might have added that even a treaty might under certain

circumstances be legitimately broken. The weakest, from a Roman

standpoint or indeed from that of any stable political society, was the

identification of the permanent and temporary character of an

institution, the assumption that a meeting of the people was the people,

that a tribune was the tribune. How far the speech was convincing we do

not know; it certainly did not relieve Tiberius of his embarrassments,

which were now thickening around him.

Tiberius's success had been mainly due to the country voters. It is true

that he had a large following in the city; but this was numerically

inferior to a mass of urban folk, whose attitude was either indifferent

or hostile. They were indifferent in so far as they did not want

agrarian assignments, and hostile in so far as they were clients of the

noble houses which opposed Tiberius's policy. This urban party was now

in the ascendant, for the country voters had scattered to their

homes.[390] The situation demanded that he should work steadily for two

objects, re-election to the tribunate and the support of the city

voters. If, in addition to this support, he could hold out hopes that

would attract the great capitalists to his side, his position would be

impregnable. Hence in his speeches he began to throw out hints of a new

and wide programme of legislation.[391] There was first the military

grievance. Recent regulations, by the large decrease which they made in

the property qualifications required for service,[392] had increased the

liability to the conscription of the manufacturing and trading classes

of Rome. Gracchus proposed that the period of service should be

shortened--his suggestion probably being, not that the years of

liability to service (the seventeenth to the forty-sixth) should be

lessened, but that within these years a limited number of campaigns

should be agreed on, which should form the maximum amount of active

service for every citizen.[393] Two other proposals dealt with the

question of criminal jurisdiction. The first allowed an appeal to the

people from the decision of _judices_. The form in which this proposal

is stated by our authority, would lead us to suppose that the courts to

be rendered appellable were those constituted under standing laws. The

chief of these _quaestiones_ or _judicia publica_ was the court which

tried cases for extortion, established in the first instance by a Lex

Calpurnia, and possibly reconstituted before this epoch by a Junian

law.[394] A permanent court for the trial of murder may also have

existed at this time.[395] The judges of these standing commissions were

drawn from the senatorial order; and Gracchus, therefore, by suggesting

an appeal from their judgment to the people, was attacking a senatorial

monopoly of the most important jurisdiction, and perhaps reflecting on

the conduct of senatorial _judices_, as displayed especially in relation

to the grievances of distressed provincials. But it is probable that he

also meant to strike a blow at a more extraordinary prerogative claimed

by the senate, and to deny the right of that body to establish special

commissions which could decide without appeal on the life and fortunes

of Roman citizens.[396] So far his proposals, whether based on a

conviction of their general utility or not, were a bid for the support

of the average citizen. But when he declared that the qualification for

the criminal judges of the time could not be allowed to stand, and that

these judges should be taken either from a joint panel of senators and

knights, or from the senate increased by the addition of a number of

members of the equestrian order equal to its present strength, he was

holding out a bait to the wealthy middle class, who were perhaps already

beginning to feel senatorial jurisdiction in provincial matters irksome

and disadvantageous to their interests. We are told by one authority

that Gracchus's eyes even ranged beyond the citizen body and that he

contemplated the possibility of the gift of citizenship to the whole of

Italy.[397] This was not in itself a measure likely to aid in his

salvation by the people; if it was not a disinterested effort of

far-sighted genius, it may have been due to the gathering storm which

his experience showed him the agrarian commission would soon be forced

to meet.[398] Certainly, if all these schemes are rightly attributed to

Tiberius Gracchus, it was he more than any man who projected the great

programme of reform that the future had in store.

Unfortunately for Gracchus the time was short for nursing a new

constituency or spreading a new ideal. The time for the tribunician

elections was approaching, an active canvass was being carried on by the

candidates, and the aggrieved landowners were throwing the whole weight

of their influence into the opposite scale.[399] Wild rumours of his

plans were being circulated. The family clique that filled the agrarian

commission was to snatch at other offices; Gracchus's brother, a youth

still unqualified even for the quaestorship,[400] was to be thrust into

the tribunate, and his father-in-law Appius was destined for the

consulate.[401] Rome was to be ruled by a dynasty, and the tyranny of

the commission was to extend to every department of the State. Gracchus

felt that the city-combination against him was too strong, and sent an

earnest summons to his supporters in the country. But practical needs

were stronger than gratitude; the farmers were busy with their harvest;

and it was plain that on this occasion the man of the street was to have

the decisive voice. The result showed that even he was not unmoved by

Gracchus's services, and by his last appeal that a life risked on behalf

of the people should be protected by a renewed investiture with the

tribunate.[402]

The day of the election arrived and the votes were taken. When they came

to be read out, it was found that the two first tribes had given their

voice for Gracchus. Then there was a sudden uproar. The votes were going

against the landlords; a legal protest must be made. Men rose in the

assembly, and shouted out that immediate re-election to the tribunate

was forbidden by the law. They were probably both right and wrong in

their protest, as men so often were who ventured to make a definite

assertion about the fluid public law of Rome. There was apparently no

enactment forbidding the iteration of this office, and appointment to

the tribunate must have been governed by custom. But recent custom seems

to have been emphatically opposed to immediate re-election, and the

appeal was justified on grounds of public practice.[403] It would

probably have been disregarded, had the Gracchan supporters been in an

overwhelming majority, or Gracchus's colleagues unanimous in their

support. But the people were divided, and the president was not

enthusiastic enough in the cause to risk his future impeachment.

Rubrius, to whom the lot had assigned the conduct of the proceedings on

that day, hesitated as to the course which he ought to follow. A bolder

spirit Mummius, the man who had been made by the deposition of Octavius,

asked that the conduct of the assembly should be handed over to him.

Rubrius, glad to escape the difficulty, willingly yielded his place; but

now the other members of the college interposed. The forms of the

Comitia were being violated; a president could not be chosen without the

use of the lot. The resignation of Rubrius must be followed by another

appeal to sortition. The point of order raised, as usual, a heated

discussion; the tribunes gathered on the Rostra to argue the matter out.

Nothing could be gained by keeping the people as the spectators of such

a scene, and Gracchus succeeded in getting the proceedings adjourned to

the following day.[404]

The situation was becoming more desperate; for each delay was a triumph

for the opposition, and could only strengthen the belief in the

illegality of Gracchus's claim. He now resorted to the last device of

the Roman; he ceased to be a protector and became a suppliant. Although

still a magistrate, he assumed the garb of mourning, and with humbled

and tearful mien begged the help of individuals in the market

place.[405]

He led his son by the hand; his children and their mother were to be

wards of the people, for he had despaired of his own life. Many were

touched; to some the tribunate of Gracchus seemed like a rift in a dark

cloud of oppression which would close around them at his fall, and their

hearts sank at the thought of a renewed triumph of the nobility. Others

were moved chiefly by the fears and sufferings of Gracchus. Cries of

sympathy and defiance were raised in answer to his tears, and a large

crowd escorted him to his house at nightfall and bade him be confident

of their support on the following day. During his appeals he had hinted

at the fear of a nocturnal attack by his foes: and this led many to form

an encampment round his house and to remain as its vigilant defenders

throughout the night.[406]

Before day-break he was up and engaged in hasty colloquy with his

friends. The fear of force was certainly present; and definite plans may

have been now made for its repulsion. Some even believed that a signal

for battle was agreed on by Gracchus, if matters should come to that

extreme.[407] With a true Roman's scruples he took the omens before he

left his house. They presaged ill. The keeper of the sacred chickens,

which Gracchus's Imperium now permitted him to consult, could get

nothing from the birds, even though he shook the cage. Only one of the

fowls advanced, and even that would not touch the food. And the unsought

omens were as evil as those invited. Snakes were found to have hatched a

brood in his helmet, his foot stumbled on the threshold with such

violence that blood flowed from his sandal; he had hardly advanced on

his way when crows were seen struggling on his left, and the true object

of the sign was pointed when a stone, dislodged by one of them from a

roof, fell at his own feet. This concourse of ill-luck frightened his

boldest comrades; but his old teacher, Blossius of Cumae, vehemently

urged the prosecution of the task. Was a son of Gracchus, the grandson

of Africanus, chief minister of the Roman people,[408] to be deterred by

a crow from listening to the summons of the citizens? If the disgrace of

his absence amused his enemies, they would keep their laughter to

themselves. They would use that absence seriously, to denounce him to

the people as a king who was already aping the luxury of the tyrant. As

Blossius spoke, men were seen running from the direction of the Capitol;

they came up, they bade him press on, as all was going well. And, in

fact, it seemed as if all might turn out brightly. The Capitoline

temple, and the level area before it, which was to be the scene of the

voting, were filled with his supporters. A hearty cheer greeted him as

he appeared, and a phalanx closed round him to prevent the approach of

any hostile element. Shortly after the proceedings began, the senate was

summoned by the consul to meet in the temple of Fides.[409] A few yards

of sloping ground was all that now separated the two hostile camps.[410]

The interval for reflection had strengthened the belief of some of the

tribunes that Gracchus's candidature was illegal, and they were ready to

support the renewed protests of the rich. The election, however, began;

for the faithful Mummius was now presiding, and he proceeded to call on

the tribes to vote. But the business of filing into their separate

compartments, always complicated, was now impossible. The fringe of the

crowd was in a continual uproar; from its extremities the opponents of

the measure were wedging their way in. As his supporters squared their

shoulders, the whole mass rocked and swayed. There was no hope of

eliciting a decision from this scuffling and pushing throng. Every

moment brought the assembly nearer to open riot. Suddenly a man was seen

at some distance from Tiberius gesticulating with his hand as though he

had something to impart. He was recognised as Fulvius Flaccus, a

senator, a man perhaps already known as a sympathiser with schemes of

reform. Gracchus asked the crowd immediately around him to give way a

little, and Fulvius fought his way up to the tribune. His news was that

in the sitting of the senate the rich proprietors had asked the consul

to use force, that he had declined, and that now they were preparing on

their own motion to slay Tiberius. For this purpose they had collected a

large band of armed slaves and retainers.[411] Tiberius immediately

imparted the news to his friends. Preparations for defence were hastily

made: an improvised body-guard was formed; togas were girt up, and the

staves of the lictors were broken into fragments to serve as clubs. The

Gracchans more distant from the centre of the scene were meanwhile

marvelling at the strange preparations of which they caught but

glimpses, and could be seen asking eager questions as to their meaning.

To reach these distant supporters by his voice was impossible; Tiberius

could but touch his forehead with his hand to indicate that his life was

in danger. Immediately a shout went up from the opposite side "Tiberius

is asking for the diadem," and eager messengers sped with the news to

the senate.[412] There was probably a knowledge that physical support

for their cause would be found in that quarter, and the exodus of these

excited capitalists was apparently assisted by an onslaught from the

mob. A regular tumult was brewing, and the tribunes, instead of striving

to preserve order, or staying to interpose their sacred persons between

the enraged combatants, fled incontinently from the spot. Their fear was

natural, for by remaining they might seem to be identifying themselves

with a cause that was either lost or lawless. With the tribunes vanished

the last trace of legality. The priests closed the temple to keep its

precincts from the mob. The more timorous of the crowd fled in wild

disorder, spreading wilder rumours. Tiberius was deposing the remaining

tribunes from office; he was appointing himself to a further tribunate

without the formalities of election.[413]

Meanwhile the senate was deliberating in the temple of Fides. In the old

days their deliberations might have resulted in the appointment of a

dictator, and one of the historians who has handed down the record of

these facts marvels that this was not the case now.[414] But the

dictatorship had been weakened by submission to the appeal, and long

before it became extinct had lost its significance as a means of

repressing sedition within the city. The Roman constitution had now no

mechanism for declaring a state of siege or martial law. From one point

of view the extinction of the dictatorship was to be regretted. The

nomination of this magistrate would have involved at least a day's

delay;[415] some further time would have been necessary before he had

collected round him a sufficient force in a city which had neither

police nor soldiers. Had it been decided to appoint a dictator, the

outrages of the next hour could never have occurred. As things were, it

seemed as though the senate had to choose between impotence and murder.

There was indeed another way. Such was the respect for members of the

senatorial order, that a deputation of that body, headed by the consul,

would probably have led to the dispersal of the mob. But passions were

inflamed and it was no time for peaceful counsels. The advocate of

summary measures was the impetuous Nasica. He urged the consul to save

the city and to put down the tyrant. He demanded that the sense of the

house should be taken as to whether extreme measures were now necessary.

Even at this time a tradition may have existed that a magic formula by

which the senate advised the magistrates "to see to it that the State

took no harm," [416] could justify any act of violence in an emergency.

The sense of the house was with Nasica, but a resolution could not be

framed unless the consul put the question. The answer of Scaevola was

that of a lawyer. He would commence no act of violence, he would put to

death no citizen uncondemned. If, however, the people, through the

persuasion or compulsion of Tiberius, should come to any illegal

decision, he would see that such a resolution was not observed. Nasica

sprang to his feet. "The consul is betraying the city; those who wish

the salvation of the laws, follow me." [417] With this he drew the hem

of his toga over his head,[418] and rushed from the door in the

direction of the Capitoline temple. He was followed by a crowd of

senators, all wrapping the folds of their togas round their left arms.

Outside the door they were joined by their retainers armed with clubs

and staves.[419]

Meanwhile the proceedings in the Area Capitolii had been becoming

somewhat less turbulent. The turmoil had quieted down with the exclusion

of the more violent members of the opposition. Gracchus had called a

Contio, for the purpose, it was said, of encouraging his supporters and

asserting his own constancy and defiance of senatorial authority. The

gathering had become a mere partisan mass meeting, such as had often

been seen in the course of the current year, and the herald was crying

"Silence," [420] when suddenly the men on the outskirts of the throng

fell back to right and left. A long line of senators had been seen

hastening up the hill. A deputation from the fathers had come. That must

have been the first impression: and the crowd fell back before its

masters. But in a moment it was seen that the masters had come to

chastise, not to plead. With set faces and blazing eyes Nasica and his

following threw themselves on the yielding mass. The unarmed senators

snatched at the first weapons that lay to hand, the fragments of the

shattered furniture of the meeting, severed planks and legs of benches,

while their retinue pressed on with clubs and sticks. The whole column

made straight for Tiberius and his improvised body-guard. Resistance was

hopeless, and the tribune and his friends turned to flee. But the idea

of restoring order occupied but a small place in the minds of the

maddened senators, The accumulated bitterness of a year found its outlet

in one moment of glorious vengeance. The fathers were behaving like a

Greek street mob of the lowest type which had turned against an

oppressive oligarchy. They were clubbing the Gracchans to death.

Tiberius was in flight when some one seized his toga. He slipped it off

and fled, clad only in his tunic, when he stumbled over a prostrate body

and fell. As he rose, a rain of blows descended on his head.[421] The

man who was seen to strike the first blow is said to have been Publius

Saturius, one of his own colleagues. The glory of his death was

vehemently disputed; one Rufus, since he could not claim the first blow,

is said to have boasted of being the author of the second. Tiberius is

said to have fallen by the very doors of the Capitoline temple, not far

from the statues of the Kings.[422] The number of his adherents that

perished was over three hundred, and it was noted that not one of these

was slain by the sword.[423] Their bodies were thrown into the

Tiber--not by the mob but by the magistrates; the hand of an aedile

committed that of Tiberius to the stream.[424]

The murder of a young man, who was still under thirty at the time of his

death,[425] and the slaughter of a few hundreds of his adherents, may

not seem to be an act of very great significance in the history of a

mighty empire. Yet ancient historians regarded the event as

epoch-marking, as the turning point in the history of Rome, as the

beginning of the period of the civil wars.[426] To justify this

conclusion it is not enough to point to the fact that this was the first

blood shed in civic discord since the age of the Kings;[427] for it

might also have been the last. Though the vendetta is a natural

outgrowth of Italian soil, yet masses of men are seldom, like

individuals, animated solely by the spirit of revenge. The blood of the

innocent is a good battle-cry in politics, but it is little more; it is

far from being the mere pretext, but it is equally far from being the

true cause, of future revolution. Familiarity with the use of force in

civic strife is also a fatal cause of its perpetuation; but familiarity

implies its renewed employment: it can hardly be the result of the first

experiment in murder. The repetition of this ghastly phenomenon in Roman

politics can only be accounted for by the belief that the Gracchan

_émeute_ was of its very nature an event that could not be isolated:

that Gracchus was a pioneer in a hostile country, and that his opponents

preserved all their inherent weakness after the first abortive

manifestation of their pretended strength. A bad government may be

securely entrenched. The senate, whether good or bad, had no defences at

all. Its weakness had in the old days been its pride. It ruled by

influencing opinion. Now that it had ceased to influence, it ruled by

initiating a riot in the streets. It had no military support except such

as was given it by friendly magistrates, and this was a dangerous weapon

which it hesitated to use. To ignore militarism was to be at the mercy

of the demagogue of the street, to admit it was found subsequently to be

equivalent to being at the mercy of the demagogue of the camp. In either

case authority must be maintained at the cost of civil war. But the

material helplessness of the senate was only one factor in the problem.

More fatal flaws were its lack of insight to discover that there were

new problems to be faced, and lack of courage in facing them. This moral

helplessness was due partly to the selfishness of individuals, but

partly also to the fixity of political tradition. In spite of the

brilliancy and culture of some of its members, the senate in its

corporate capacity showed the possession of a narrow heart and an

inexpansive intelligence. Its sympathies were limited to a class; it

learnt its new lessons slowly and did not see their bearing on the

studies of the future. Imperialism abroad and social contentment at home

might be preserved by the old methods which had worked so well in the

past. But to the mind of the masses the past did not exist, and to the

mind of the reformer it had buried its dead. The career of Tiberius

Gracchus was the first sign of a great awakening; and if we regard it as

illogical, and indeed impossible, to pause here and estimate the

character of his reforms, it is because the more finished work of his

brother was the completion of his efforts and followed them as

inexorably as the daylight follows the dawn.