CHAPTER IV

Rome had lived for nine years in a feverish atmosphere of projected

reform; yet not a single question raised by her bolder spirits had

received its final answer. The agrarian legislation had indeed run a

successful course; yet the very hindrance to its operation at a critical

moment had, in the eyes of the discontented, turned success into failure

and left behind a bitter feeling of resentment at the treacherous

dexterity of the government. The men, in whose imagined interests the

people had been defrauded of their coveted land, had by a singular irony

of fortune been driven ignominiously from Rome and were now the victims

of graver suspicions on the part of the government than on that of the

Roman mob. The effect of the late senatorial diplomacy had been to

create two hostile classes instead of one. From both these classes the

aristocrats drew their soldiers for the constant campaigns that the

needs of Empire involved: and both were equally resentful of the burdens

and abuses of military service, for which no one was officially directed

to suggest a cure. The poorest classes had been given the ballot when

they wanted food and craved a less precarious sustenance than that

afforded by the capricious benevolence of the rich. The friction between

the senatorial government and the upper middle class was probably

increasing. The equites must have been casting hungry eyes at the new

province of Asia and asking themselves whether commercial interests were

always to be at the mercy of the nobility as represented by the senate,

the provincial administrators and the courts of justice. It was believed

that governors, commissioners and senators were being bought by the gold

of kings, and that mines of wealth were being lost to the honest

capitalist through the utter corruption of the governing few. The final

threats of Tiberius Gracchus were still in the air, and a vast unworked

material lay ready to the hand of the aspiring agitator. In an ancient

monarchy or aristocracy of the feudal type, where abuses have become

sanctified by tradition, or in a modern nation or state with its

splendid capacity for inertia due to the habitual somnolence of the

majority of its electors, such questions may vaguely suggest themselves

for half a century without ever receiving an answer. But Rome could only

avoid a revolution by discarding her constitution. The sovereignty of

the people was a thesis which the senate dared not attack; and this

sovereignty had for the first time in Roman history become a stern

reality. The city in its vastness now dominated the country districts:

and the sovereign, now large, now small, now wild, now sober, but ever

the sovereign in spite of his kaleidoscopic changes, could be summoned

at any moment to the Forum. Democratic agitation was becoming habitual.

It is true that it was also becoming unsafe. But a man who could hold

the wolf by the ears for a year or two might work a revolution in Rome

and perhaps be her virtual master.

It was no difficult task to find the man, for there was one who was

marked out by birth, traditions, temperament and genius as the fittest

exponent of a cause which, in spite of its intricate complications that

baffled the analysis of the ordinary mind, could still in its essential

features be described as the cause of the people. It is indeed singular

that, in a political civilisation so unkind as the Roman to the merits

of youth, hopes should be roused and fear inspired by a man so young and

inexperienced as Caius Gracchus. But the popular fancy is often caught

by the immaturity that is as yet unhampered by caution and undimmed by

disillusion, and by the fresh young voice that has not yet been attuned

to the poor half-truths which are the stock-in-trade of the worldly

wise. And those who were about Gracchus must soon have seen that the

traces of youth were to be found only in his passion, his frankness, his

impetuous vigour; no discerning eye could fail to be aware of the cool,

calculating, intellect which unconsciously used emotion as its mask, of

a mind that could map and plan a political campaign in perfect

self-confident security, view the country as a whole and yet master

every detail, and then leave the issue of the fight to burning words and

passionate appeals. This supreme combination of emotional and artistic

gifts, which made Gracchus so irresistible as a leader, was strikingly

manifested in his oratory. We are told of the intensity of his mien, the

violence of his gestures, the restlessness that forced him to pace the

Rostra and pluck the toga from his shoulder, of the language that roused

his hearers to an almost intolerable tension of pity or

indignation.[568] Nature had made him the sublimest, because the most

unconscious of actors; eyes, tone, gesture all answered the bidding of

the magic words.[569] Sometimes the emotion was too highly strung; the

words would become coarser, the voice harsher, the faultless sentences

would grow confused, until the soft tone of a flute blown by an

attendant slave would recall his mind to reason and his voice to the

accustomed pitch.[570] Men contrasted him with his gentle and stately

brother Tiberius, endowed with all the quiet dignity of the Roman

orator, and diverging only from the pure and polished exposition of his

cause to awake a feeling of commiseration for the wrongs which he

unfolded.[571] Tiberius played but on a single chord; Caius on many.

Tiberius appealed to noble instincts, Caius appealed to all and his

Protean manifestations were a symbol of a more complex creed, a wider

knowledge of humanity, a greater recklessness as to his means, and of

that burning consciousness, which Tiberius had not, that there were

personal wrongs to be avenged as well as political ideas to be realised.

To a narrow mind the vendetta is simply an act of justice; to an

intellectual hater such as Gracchus it is also a work of reason. The

folly of crime but exaggerates its grossness, and the hatred for the

criminal is merged in an exalting and inspiring contempt. Yet the man

thus attuned to passion was, what every great orator must be, a painful

student of the most delicate of arts. The language of the successful

demagogue seldom becomes the study of the schools; yet so it was with

Gracchus. The orators of a later age, whose critical appreciation was

purer than their practice, could find no better guide to the aspirant

for forensic fame than the speeches of the turbulent tribune. Cicero

dwells on the fulness and richness of his flow of words, the grandeur

and dignity of the expression, the acuteness of the thought.[572] They

seemed to some to lack the finishing touch;[573] which is equivalent to

saying that with him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few

fragments that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous

simplicity and clearness: then, for the dexterous perfection of their

form. The balance of the rhythmic clauses never obscures or overloads

the sense. Gracchus could tell a tale, like that of the cruel wrongs

inflicted on the allies, which could arouse a thrill of horror without

also awakening the reflection that the speaker was a man of great

sensibility and had a wonderful command of commiserative terminology. He

could ask the crowd where he should fly, whether to the Capitol dripping

with a brother's blood, or to the home where the widowed mother sat in

misery and tears;[574] and no one thought that this was a mere figure of

speech. It all seemed real, because Gracchus was a true artist as well

as a true man, and knew by an unerring instinct when to pause. This type

of objective oratory, with its simple and vivid pictures, its brilliant

but never laboured wit, its capacity for producing the illusion that the

man is revealed in the utterance, its suggestion of something deeper

than that which the mere words convey--a suggestion which all feel but

only the learned understand--is equally pleasing to the trained and the

unlettered mind. The polished weapon, which dazzled the eyes of the

crowd, was viewed with respect even by the cultured nobles against whom

it was directed.

Caius's qualities had been tested for some years before he attained the

tribunate, and the promise given by his name, his attitude and his

eloquence was strengthened by the fact that he had no rival in the

popular favour. Carbo was probably on his way to the Optimates, and

Flaccus's failure was too recent to make him valuable in any other

quality than that of an assistant. But Caius had risen through the

opportunities given by the agitation which these men had sustained,

although his advance to the foremost place seemed more like the work of

destiny than of design. When a youth of twenty-one, he had found himself

elevated to the rank of a land commissioner;[575] but this accidental

identification with Tiberius's policy was not immediately followed by

any action which betrayed a craving for an active political career. He

is said to have shunned the Forum, that training school and advertising

arena where the aspiring youth of Rome practised their litigious

eloquence, and to have lived a life of calm retirement which some

attributed to fear and others to resentment. It was even believed by a

few that he doubted the wisdom of his brother's career.[576] But It was

soon found that the leisure which he cultivated was not that of easy

enjoyment and did not promise prolonged repose. He was grappling with

the mysteries of language, and learning by patient study the art of

finding the words that would give to thought both form and wings. The

thought, too, must have been taking a clearer shape: for Tiberius had

left a heritage of crude ideas, and men were trying to introduce some of

these into the region of practical politics. The first call to arms was

Carbo's proposal for legalising re-election to the tribunate. It drew

from Gracchus a speech in its support, which contained a bitter

indictment of those who had been the cause of the "human sacrifice"

fulfilled in his brother's murder.[577] Five years later he was amongst

the foremost of the opponents of the alien-act of Pennus, and exposed

the dangerous folly involved in a jealous policy of exclusion. But the

courts of law are said to have given him the first great opportunity of

revealing his extraordinary powers to the world. As an advocate for a

friend called Vettius, he delivered a speech which seemed to lift him to

a plane unapproachable by the other orators of the day. The spectacle of

the crowd almost raving with joy and frantically applauding the

new-found hero, showed that a man had appeared who could really touch

the hearts of the people, and is said to have suggested to men of

affairs that every means must be used to hinder Gracchus's accession to

the tribunate.[578] The chance of the lot sent him as quaestor with the

consul Orestes to Sardinia. It was with joyful hearts that his enemies

saw him depart to that unhealthy clime,[579] and to Caius himself the

change to the active life of the camp was not unpleasing. He is said

still to have dreaded the plunge into the stormy sea of politics, and in

Sardinia he was safe from the appeals of the people and the entreaties

of his friends.[580] Yet already he had received a warning that there

was no escape. While wrestling with himself as to whether he should seek

the quaestorship, his fevered mind had conjured up a vision. The phantom

of his brother had appeared and addressed him in these words "Why dost

thou linger, Caius? It is not given thee to draw back. One life, one

death is fated for us both, as defenders of the people's rights." His

belief in the reality of this warning is amply attested;[581] but the

sense that he was predestined and foredoomed, though it may have given

an added seriousness to his life, left him as calm and vigorous as

before. Like Tiberius he was within a sphere of his father's influence,

and this memory must have stimulated his devotion to his military and

provincial duties. He won distinction in the field and a repute for

justice in his dealings with the subject tribes, while his simplicity of

life and capacity for toil suggested the veteran campaigner, not the

tyro from the most luxurious of cities.[582] The extent of the services

in Sardinia and neighbouring lands which his name and character enabled

him to render to the State, has been perhaps exaggerated, or at least

faultily stated, by our authority; but, in view of the unquestioned

confidence shown by the Numantines in his brother when as young a man,

there is no reason to doubt their reality. It is said that, when the

treacherous winter of Sardinia had shaken the troops with chills, the

commander sent to the cities asking for a supply of clothing. These

towns, which were probably federate communities and exempt by treaty

from the requisitions of Rome, appealed to the senate. They feared no

doubt the easy lapse of an act of kindness into a burden fixed by

precedent. The senate, as in duty bound, upheld their contention; and

suffering and disease would have reigned in the Roman camp, had not

Gracchus visited the cities in person and prevailed on them to send the

necessary help.[583] On another occasion envoys from Micipsa of Numidia

are said to have appeared at Rome and offered a supply of corn for the

Sardinian army. The request had perhaps been made by Gracchus. To the

Numidian king he was simply the grandson of the elder Africanus: And the

envoys in their simplicity mentioned his name as the Intermediary of the

royal bounty. The senate, we are told, rejected the Proffered help. The

curious parallelism between the present career of Caius and the early

activities of his brother must have struck many; to the senate these

proofs of energy and devotion seemed but the prelude to similar

ingenious attempts to capture public favour at home: and their fears are

said to have helped them to the decision to keep Orestes for a further

year as proconsul in Sardinia.[584] It is possible that the resolution

was partly due to military exigencies; the fact that the troops were

relieved was natural in consideration of the sufferings which they had

undergone, but the retention of the general to complete a desultory

campaign which chiefly demanded knowledge of the country, was a wise and

not unusual proceeding. It was, however, an advantage that, as custom

dictated, the quaestor must remain in the company of his commander.

Gracchus's reappearance in Rome was postponed for a year. It was a

slight grace, but much might happen in the time.

It was in this latter sense that the move was interpreted by the

quaestor. A trivial wrong inflamed the impetuous and resentful nature

which expectation and entreaty had failed to move. Stung by the belief

that he was the victim of a disgraceful subterfuge, Gracchus immediately

took ship to Rome. His appearance in the capital was something of a

shock even to his friends.[585] Public sentiment regarded a quaestor as

holding an almost filial relation to his superior; the ties produced by

their joint activity were held to be indissoluble,[586] and the

voluntary departure of the subordinate was deemed a breach of official

duty. Lapses in conduct on the part of citizens engaged in the public

service, which fell short of being criminal, might be visited with

varying degrees of ignominy by the censorship: and it happened that this

court of morals was now in existence in the persons of the censors Cn.

Servilius Caepio and L. Cassius Longinus, who had entered office in the

previous year. The censorian judgments, although arbitrary and as a rule

spontaneous, were sometimes elicited by prosecution: and an accuser was

found to bring the conduct of Gracchus formally before the notice of the

magistrates. Had the review of the knights been in progress after his

arrival, his case would have been heard during the performance of this

ceremony; for he was as yet but a member of the equestrian order, and

the slightest disability pronounced against him, had he been found

guilty, would have assumed the form of the deprivation of his public

horse and his exclusion from the eighteen centuries. But it is possible

that, at this stage of the history of the censorship, penalties could be

inflicted upon the members of all classes at any date preceding the

lustral sacrifice, that the usual examination of the citizen body had

been completed, and that Gracchus appeared alone before the tribunal of

the censors. His defence became famous;[587] its result is unknown. The

trial probably ended in his acquittal,[588] although condemnation would

have exercised little influence on his subsequent career, for the

ignominy pronounced by the censors entailed no disability for holding a

magistracy. But, whatever may have been the issue, Gracchus improved the

occasion by an harangue to the people,[589] in which he defended his

conduct as one of their representatives in Sardinia. The speech was

important for its caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility

when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he

worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a

scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the

self-seeking, the luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of

the average provincial despot. His auditors learnt the details of a

commander's environment--the elaborate cooking apparatus, the throng of

handsome favourites, the jars of wine which, when emptied, returned to

Rome as receptacles of gold and silver mysteriously acquired. Gracchus

must have delighted his audience with a subject on which the masses love

to dwell, the vices of their superiors. The luridness of the picture

must have given it a false appearance of universal truth. It seemed to

be the indictment of a class, and suggested that the speaker stood aloof

from his own order and looked only to the pure judgment of the people.

His enemies tried a new device. They knew that one flaw in his armour

was his sympathy with the claims of the allies. Could he be compromised

as an agent in that dark conspiracy which had prompted the impudent

Italian claims and ended in open rebellion, his credit would be gone,

even if his career were not closed by exile. He was accordingly

threatened with an impeachment for complicity in the movement which had

issued in the outbreak at Fregellae. It is uncertain whether he was

forced to submit to the judgment of a court; but we are told that he

dissipated every suspicion, and surmounted the last and most dangerous

of the obstacles with which his path was blocked.[590] Straightway he

offered himself for the tribunate, and, as the day of the election

approached, every effort was made by the nobility to secure his defeat.

Old differences were forgotten; a common panic produced harmony amongst

the cliques; it even seems as if his opponents agreed that no man of

extreme views should be advanced against him, for Gracchus in his

tribunate had to contend with no such hostile colleague as Octavius. The

candidature of an extremist might mean votes for Gracchus: and it was

preferable to concentrate support on neutral men, or even on men of

liberal views who were known to be in favour with the crowd. The great

_clientèle_ of the country districts was doubtless beaten up; and we

know that, on the other side, the hopes of the needy agriculturist, and

the gratitude of the newly established peasant farmer, brought many a

supporter to Gracchus from distant Italian homesteads. The city was so

flooded by the inrush of the country folk that many an elector found

himself without a roof to shelter him, and the place of voting could

accommodate only a portion of the crowd. The rest climbed on roofs and

tiles, and filled the air with discordant party cries until space was

given for a descent to the voting enclosures. When the poll was

declared, it was found that the electoral manoeuvres of the nobility had

been so far successful that Gracchus occupied but the fourth place on

the list.[591] But, from the moment of his entrance on office, his

predominance was assured. We hear nothing of the colleagues whom he

overshadowed. Some may have been caught in the stream of Gracchus's

eloquence; others have found it useless or dangerous to oppose the

enthusiasm which his proposals aroused, and the formidable combination

which he created by the alluring prospects that he held out to the

members of the equestrian order. The collegiate character of the

magistracy practically sank into abeyance, and his rule was that of a

single man. First he gave vent to the passions of the mob by dwelling,

as no one had yet dared to do, on the gloomy tragedy of his brother's

fall and the cruel persecution which had followed the catastrophe. The

blood of a murdered tribune was wholly unavenged in a state which had

once waged war with Falerii to punish a mere insult to the holy office,

and had condemned a citizen to death because he had not risen from his

place while a tribune walked through the Forum. "Before your very eyes,"

he said, "they beat Tiberius to death with cudgels; they dragged his

dead body from the Capitol through the midst of the city to cast it into

the river; those of his friends whom they seized, they put to death

untried. And yet think how your constitution guards the citizen's life!

If a man is accused on a capital charge and does not immediately obey

the summons, it is ordained that a trumpeter come at dawn before his

door and summon him by sound of trumpet; until this is done, no vote may

be pronounced against him. So carefully and watchfully did our ancestors

regulate the course of justice." [592] A cry for vengeance is here

merged in a great constitutional principle; and these utterances paved

the way for the measure immediately formulated that no court should be

established to try a citizen on a capital charge, unless such a court

had received the sanction of the people.[593] The power of the Comitia

to delegate its jurisdiction without appeal is here affirmed; the right

of the senate to institute an inquisition without appeal is here denied.

The measure was a development of a suggestion which had been made by

Tiberius Gracchus, who had himself probably called attention to the fact

that the establishment of capital commissions by the senate was a

violation of the principle of the _provocatio_ Caius Gracchus, however,

did not attempt to ordain that an appeal should be possible from the

judgment of the standing commissions (_quaestiones perpetuae_); for,

though the initiative in the creation of these courts had been taken by

the senate, they had long received the sanction of law, and their

self-sufficiency was perhaps covered by the principle that the people,

in creating a commission, waived its own powers of final jurisdiction.

But there were other technical as well as practical disadvantages in

instituting an appeal from these commissions. The _provocatio_ had

always been the challenge to the decision of a magistrate; but in these

standing courts the actions of the president and of the _judices_ who

sat with him were practically indistinguishable, and the sentence

pronounced was in no sense a magisterial decision. The courts had also

been instituted to avoid the clumsiness of popular jurisdiction; but

this clumsiness would be restored, if their decision was to be shaken by

a further appeal to the Comitia. Gracchus, in fact, when he proposed

this law, was not thinking of the ordinary course of jurisdiction at

all. He had before his mind the summary measures by which the senate

took on itself to visit such epidemics of crime as were held to be

beyond the strength of the regular courts, and more especially the

manner in which this body had lately dealt with alleged cases of

sedition or treason. The investigation directed against the supporters

of his brother was the crucial instance which he brought before the

people, and it is possible that, at a still later date, the inquiry

which followed the fall of Fregellae had been instituted on the sole

authority of the senate and had found a certain number of victims in the

citizen body. Practically, therefore, Gracchus in this law wholly

denied, either as the result of experience or by anticipation, the

legality of the summary jurisdiction which followed a declaration of

martial law.

In the creation of these extraordinary commissions the senate never took

upon itself the office of judge, nor was the commission itself composed

of senators appointed by the house. The jurisdiction was exercised by a

magistrate at the bidding of the senate, and the court thus constituted

selected its assessors, who formed a mere council for advice, at its own

discretion. It was plain that, if the law was to be effective, its chief

sanction must be directed, not against the corporation which appointed,

but against the judge. The responsibility of the individual is the

easiest to secure, and no precautions against martial law can be

effective if a division of authority, or even obedience to authority, is

once admitted. Gracchus, therefore, pronounced that criminal proceedings

should be possible against the magistrate who had exercised the

jurisdiction now pronounced illegal.[594] The common law of Rome went

even further, and pronounced every individual responsible for illegal

acts done at the bidding of a magistrate. The crime which the magistrate

had committed by the exercise of this forbidden jurisdiction was

probably declared to be treason: and, as there was no standing court at

Rome which took cognisance of this offence, the jurisdiction of the

Comitia was ordained. The penalty for the crime was doubtless a capital

one, and by ancient prescription such a punishment necessitated a trial

before the Assembly of the Centuries. It is, however, possible that

Gracchus rendered the plebeian assembly of the Tribes competent to

pronounce the capital sentence against the magistrate who had violated

the prescriptions of his law. But, although the magistrate was the

chief, he appears not to have been the sole offender under the

provisions of this bill. In spite of the fact that the senate as a whole

was incapable of being punished for the advice which had prompted the

magistrate to an illegal course of action, it seems that the individual

senator who moved, or perhaps supported, the decree which led to the

forbidden jurisdiction, was made liable to the penalties of the

law.[595] The operation of the enactment was made retrospective, or was

perhaps conceived by its very nature to cover the past abuses which had

called it into being; for in a sense it created no new crime, but simply

restated the principle of the appeal in a form suited to the proceedings

against which it wished to guard. It might have been argued that

customary law protected the consul who directed the proceedings of the

court which doomed the supporters of Tiberius Gracchus; but the

argument, if used, was of no avail. Popillius was to be the witness to

all men of the reality of this reassertion of the palladium of Roman

liberty. An impeachment was framed against him, and either before or

after his withdrawal from Rome, Caius Gracchus himself formulated and

carried through the Plebs the bill of interdiction which doomed him to

exile.[596] It was in vain that Popillius's young sons and numerous

relatives besought the people for mercy.[597] The memory of the outrage

was too recent, the joyful sense of the power of retaliation too novel

and too strong. All that was possible was a counter demonstration which

should emphasise the sympathy of loyalists with the illustrious victim,

and Popillius was escorted to the gates by a weeping crowd.[598] We know

that condemnation also overtook his colleague Rupilius,[599] and it is

probable that he too fell a victim to the sense of vengeance or of

justice aroused by the Gracchan law.

A less justifiable spirit of retaliation is exhibited by another

enactment with which Gracchus inaugurated his tribunate, although in

this, as in ail his other acts, the blow levelled at his enemies was not

devoid of a deep political significance. He introduced a proposal that a

magistrate who had been deposed by the people should not be allowed to

hold any further office.[600] Octavius was the obvious victim, and the

mere personal significance of the measure does not necessarily imply

that Gracchus was burning with resentment against a man, whose

opposition to his brother had rapidly been forgotten in the degradation

which he had experienced at that brother's hands. Hatred to the injured

may be a sentiment natural to the wrongdoer, but is not likely to be

imparted even to the most ardent supporter of the author of the

mischief. It were better to forget Octavius, if Octavius would allow

himself to be forgotten; but the sturdy champion of the senate, still in

the middle of his career, may have been a future danger and a present

eyesore to the people: Gracchus's invectives probably carried him and

his auditors further than he intended, and the rehabilitation of his

brother's tribunate in its integrity may have seemed to demand this

strong assertion of the justice of his act. But the legality of

deposition by the people was a still more important point. Merely to

assert it would be to imply that Tiberius had been wrong. How could it

be more emphatically proclaimed than by making its consequences

perpetual and giving it a kind of penal character? But the personal

aspect of the measure proved too invidious even for its proposer. A

voice that commanded his respect was raised against it: and Gracchus in

withdrawing the bill confessed that Octavius was spared through the

intercession of Cornelia.[601]

So far his legislation had but given an outlet to the justifiable

resentment of the people, and a guarantee for the security of their most

primitive rights. This was to be followed by an appeal to their

interests and a measure for securing their permanent comfort. The

wonderful solidarity of Gracchus and his supporters, the crowning

triumph of the demagogue which is to make each man feel that he is an

agent in his own salvation, have been traced to this constructive

legislation for the benefit of classes, which ancient authors, writing

under aristocratic prepossessions, have described by the ugly name of

bribery.[602] The poor of Rome, if we include in this designation those

who lived on the margin as well as those who were sunk in the depths of

destitution, probably included the majority of the inhabitants of the

town. The city had practically no organised industries. The retail

trader and the purveyor of luxuries doubtless flourished; but, in the

scanty manufactures which the capital still provided, the army of free

labour must have been always worsted by the cruel competition of the

cheaper and more skilful slave or freedman. But the poor of Rome did not

form the cowed and shivering class that are seen on the streets of a

northern capital. They were the merry and vivacious lazzaroni of the

pavement and the portico, composite products of many climes, with all

the lively endurance of the southerner and intellects sharpened by the

ingenious devices requisite for procuring the minimum sustenance of

life. Could they secure this by the desultory labour which alone was

provided by the economic conditions of Rome, their lot was far from

unhappy. As in most ancient civilisations, the poor were better provided

with the amenities than with the bare necessities of existence. Although

the vast provision for the pleasures of the people, by which the Caesars

maintained their popularity, was yet lacking, and even the erection of a

permanent theatre was frowned on by the senate,[603] yet the capital

provided endless excitement for the leisured mind and the observant eye.

It was for their benefit that the gladiatorial show was provided by the

rich, and the gorgeous triumph by the State; but it was the antics of

the nobility in the law courts and at the hustings that afforded the

more constant and pleasing spectacle. Attendance at the Contiones and

the Comitia not only delighted the eye and ear, but filled the heart

with pride, and sometimes the purse with money. For here the units,

inconsiderable in themselves, had become a collective power; they could

shout down the most dignified of the senators, exalt the favourite of

the moment, reward a service or revenge a slight in the perfect security

given by the secrecy of the ballot. Large numbers of the poorer class

were attached to the great houses by ancestral ties; for the descendants

of freedmen, although they could make no legal claim on the house which

represented the patron of their ancestors, were too valuable as voting

units to be neglected by its representatives, even when the sense of the

obligations of wealth, which was one of the best features of Roman

civilisation, failed to provide an occasional alleviation for the misery

of dependants. From a political point of view, this dependence was

utterly demoralising; for it made the recipients of benefits either

blind supporters of, or traitors to, the personal cause which they

professed. It was on the whole preferable that, if patronage was

essential, the State should take over this duty; the large body of the

unattached proletariate would be placed on a level with their more

fortunate brethren, and the latter would be freed from a dependence

which merely served private and selfish interests. A semi-destitute

proletariate can only be dealt with in three ways. They may be forced to

work, encouraged to emigrate, or partially supported by the State. The

first device was impossible, for it was not a submerged fraction with

which Rome had to deal, but the better part of the resident sovereign

body; the second, although discredited by the senate, had been tried in

one form by Tiberius Gracchus and was to be attempted in another shape

by Caius; but it is a remedy that can never be perfect, for it does not

touch the class, more highly strung, more intelligent, and at the same

time more capable of degradation, which the luxury of the capital

enthrals. The last device had not yet been attempted. It remained for

Gracchus to try it. We have no analysis of his motives; but many

provocatives to his modest attempt at state socialism may be suggested.

There was first the Hellenic ideal of the leisured and independent

citizen, as exemplified by the state payments and the "distributions"

which the great leaders of the old world had thought necessary for the

fulfilment of democracy. There was secondly the very obvious fact that

the government was reaping a golden harvest from the provinces and

merely scattering a few stray grains amongst its subjects. There was

thirdly the consideration that much had been done for the landed class

and nothing for the city proletariate. Other considerations of a more

immediate and economic character were doubtless present. The area of

corn production was now small. Sicily was still perhaps beggared by its

servile war, and the granary of Rome was practically to be found in

Africa. The import of corn from this quarter, dependent as it was on the

weather and controlled purely by considerations of the money-market, was

probably fitful, and the price must have been subject to great

variations. But, at this particular time, the supply must have been

diminished to an alarming extent, and the price proportionately raised,

by the swarm of locusts which had lately made havoc of the crops of

Africa.[604] Lastly, the purely personal advantage of securing a

subsidised class for the political support of the demagogue of the

moment--a consideration which is but a baser interpretation of the

Hellenic ideal--must have appealed to the practical politician in

Gracchus as the more impersonal view appealed to the statesman. He would

secure a permanent and stable constituency, and guard against the

danger, which had proved fatal to his brother, of the absence from Rome

of the majority of his supporters at some critical moment.

From the imperfect records of Gracchus's proposal we gather that a

certain amount of corn was to be sold monthly at a reduced price to any

citizen who offered himself as a purchaser.[605] The rate was fixed at

6-1/3 asses the modius, which is calculated to have been about half the

market-price.[606] The monthly distribution would practically have

excluded all but the urban proletariate, and would thus have both

limited the operation of the relief to the poor of the city and invited

an increase in its numbers. But the details of the measure, which would

be decisive as to its economic character, are unknown to us. We are not

told what proportion the monthly quantity of grain sold at this cheap

rate bore to the total amount required for the support of a family;

whether the relief was granted only to the head of a house or also to

his adult sons; whether any one who claimed the rights of citizenship

could appear at the monthly sale, or only those who had registered their

names at some given time. The fact of registration, if it existed, might

have been regarded as a stigma and might thus have limited the number of

recipients. Some of the economic objections to his scheme were not

unknown to Gracchus; indeed they were pressed home vigorously by his

opponents. It was pointed out that he was enervating the labourer and

exhausting the treasury, The validity of the first objection depends to

a large extent on the unknown "data" which we have just mentioned.

Gracchus may have maintained that a greater standard of comfort would be

secured for the same amount of work. The second objection he was so far

from admitting that he asserted that his proposal would really lighten

the burdens of the Aerarium.[607] He may have taken the view that a

moderate, steady and calculable loss on corn purchased in large

quantities, and therefore presumably at a reduced price, would be

cheaper in the end than the cost entailed by the spasmodic attempts

which the State had to make in times of crisis to put grain upon the

market; and there may have been some truth in the idea that, when the

State became for the first time a steady purchaser, competition between

the publicans of Sicily or the proprietors of Africa might greatly

reduce the normal market price. He does not seem to have been disturbed

by the consideration that the sale of corn below the market price at

Rome was hardly the best way of helping the Italian farmer. The State

would certainly buy in the cheapest market, and this was not to be found

in Italy. But it is probable that under no circumstances could Rome have

become the usual market for the produce of the recently established

proprietors, and that, except at times of unusual scarcity in the

transmarine provinces, imported corn could always have undersold that

which was grown in Italy. Under the new system the Italian husbandman

would find a purchaser in the State, if Sicily and Africa were visited

by some injury to their crops. A vulnerable point in the Gracchan system

of sale was exhibited in the fact that no inquiry was instituted as to

the means of the applicants. This blemish was vigorously brought home to

the legislator when the aged noble, Calpurnius Piso surnamed "the

Frugal," the author of the first law that gave redress to the

provincials, and a vigorous opponent of Gracchus's scheme, gravely

advanced on the occasion of the first distribution and demanded his

appropriate share.[608] The object lesson would be wasted on those who

hold that the honourable acceptance of relief implies the universality

of the gift: that the restraining influences, if they exist, should be

moral and not the result of inquisition. But neither the possibility nor

the necessity of discrimination would probably have been allowed by

Gracchus. It would have been resented by the people, and did not appeal

to the statesmanship, widely spread in the Greek and not unknown in the

Roman world, which regarded it as one of the duties of a State to

provide cheap food for its citizens. The lamentations of a later day

over a pauperised proletariate and an exhausted treasury[609] cannot

strictly be laid to the account of the original scheme, Except in so far

as it served as a precedent; they were the consequence of the action of

later demagogues who, instructed by Gracchus as to the mode in which an

easy popularity might be secured, introduced laws which sanctioned an

almost gratuitous distribution of grain. The Gracchan law contained a

provision for the building of additional store-houses for the

accumulation of the great reserve of corn, which was demanded by the new

system of regular public sales, and the Sempronian granaries thus

created remained as a witness of the originality and completeness of the

tribune's work.[610]

The Roman citizen was still frequently summoned from his work, or roused

from his lethargy, by the call of military service; and the practice of

the conscription fostered a series of grievances, one of which had

already attracted the attention of Tiberius Gracchus. Caius was bound to

deal with the question: and the two provisions of his enactment which

are known to us, show a spirit of moderation which neither justifies the

belief that the demagogue was playing to the army, nor accredits the

view that his interference relaxed the bonds of discipline amongst the

legions.[611] The most scandalous anomaly in the Roman army-system was

the miserable pittance earned by the conscript when the legal deductions

had been made from his nominal rate of pay. His daily wage was but

one-third of the denarius, or five and one-third asses a day, as it had

remained unaltered from the times of the Second Punic War, in spite of

the fact that the conditions of service were now wholly different and

that garrison duty in the provinces for long periods of years had

replaced the temporary call-to-arms which the average Italian campaign

alone demanded; and from this quota was deducted the cost of the

clothing which he wore and, as there is every reason to believe, of the

whole of the rations which he consumed. We should have expected a

radical reformer to have raised his pay or at least to have given him

free food. But Gracchus contented himself with enacting that the

soldier's clothing should be given him free of charge by the State.[612]

Another military abuse was due to the difficulty which commanders

experienced in finding efficient recruits. The young and adventurous

supplied better and more willing material than those already habituated

to the careless life of the streets, or already engaged in some settled

occupation: and, although it is scarcely credible that boys under the

age of eighteen were forced to enlist, they were certainly permitted and

perhaps encouraged to join the ranks. The law of Gracchus forbade the

enlistment of a recruit at an age earlier than the completion of the

seventeenth year.[613] These military measures, slight in themselves,

were of importance as marking the beginning of the movement by which the

whole question of army reform, utterly neglected by the government, was

taken up and carried out by independent representatives of the people.

But a Roman army was to a large extent the creation of the executive

power; and it required a military commander, not a tribune, to produce

the radical alterations which alone could make the mighty instrument,

which had won the empire, capable of defending it.

The last boon of Gracchus to the citizen body as a whole was a new

agrarian law.[614] The necessity of such a measure was chiefly due to

the suspension of the work of the agrarian commission, which had proved

an obstacle to the continued execution of his brother's scheme; and

there is every reason for believing that the new Sempronian law restored

their judicial powers to the commissioners. But experience may have

shown that the substance of Tiberius's enactment required to be

supplemented or modified; and Caius adopted the procedure usually

followed by a Roman legislator when he renewed a measure which had

already been in operation. His law was not a brief series of amendments,

but a comprehensive statute, so completely covering the ground of the

earlier Sempronian law that later legislation cites the law of Caius,

and not that of Tiberius Gracchus, as the authority for the regulations

which had revolutionised the tenure of the public land.[615] The new

provisions seem to have dealt with details rather than with principles,

and there is no indication that they aimed at the acquisition of

territory which had been exempted from the operation of the previous

measure, or even touched the hazardous question of the rights of Rome to

the land claimed by the Italian allies. We cannot attempt to define the

extent to which the executive power granted by the new agrarian law was

either necessary or effective. Certainly the returns of the census

during the next ten years show no increase in the number of registered

citizens;[616] but this circumstance may be due to the steps which were

soon to be taken by the opponents of the Gracchi to nullify the results

of their legislation. It is possible, however, that the new corn law may

have somewhat damped the ardour of the proletariate for a life of

agriculture which would have deprived them of its benefits.

The first tribunate of Caius Gracchus doubtless witnessed the completion

of these four acts of legislation, by which the debt to his supporters

was lavishly paid and their aid was enlisted for causes which could only

indirectly be interpreted as their own. But this year probably witnessed

as well the promulgation of the enactments which were to find their

fulfilment in a second tribunate.[617] Foremost amongst these was one

which dealt with the tenure of the judicial power as exercised, not by

the magistrate, but by the panels of jurors who were interpreters both

of law and fact on the standing commissions which had recently been

created by statute. The interest of the masses in this question was

remote. A permanent murder court seems indeed to have had its place

amongst the commissions; but, even though the corruption of its

president had on one occasion been clearly proved,[618] it is not likely

that senatorial judges would have troubled to expose themselves to undue

influences when pronouncing on the _caput_ of a citizen of the lower

class. The fact that this justice was administered by the nobility may

have excited a certain degree of popular interest; but the question of

the transference of the courts from the hands of the senatorial

_judices_ would probably never have been heard of, had not the largest

item in this judicial competence had a decisively political bearing. The

Roman State had been as unsuccessful as others of the ancient world in

keeping its judicial machinery free from the taint of party influences.

It had been accounted one of the surest signs of popular sovereignty

that the people alone could give judgment on the gravest crimes and

pronounce the capital penalty,[619] and recent political thought had

perhaps wholly adapted itself to the Hellenic view that the government

of a state must be swayed by the body of men that enforces criminal

responsibility in political matters. This vital power was still retained

by the Comitia when criminal justice was concerned with those elemental

facts which are the condition of the existence of a state. The people

still took cognisance of treason in all its degrees--a conception which

to the Roman mind embraced almost every possible form of official

maladministration--and the gloomy record of trials before the Comitia,

from this time onward to the close of the Republic, shows that the

weapon was exercised as the most forcible implement of political

chastisement. But chance had lately presented the opportunity of making

the interesting experiment of assimilating criminal jurisdiction in some

of its branches to that of the civil courts. The president and jurors of

one of the newly established _quaestiones_ formed as isolated a group as

the _judex_ of civil justice with his assessors, or the greater panels

of Centumvirs and Decemvirs. They possessed no authority but that of

jurisdiction within their special department; there seemed no reason why

they should be influenced by considerations arising from issues whether

legislative or administrative. But this appearance of detachment was

wholly illusory, and the well-intentioned experiment was as vain as that

of Solon, when he carefully separated the administrative and judicial

boards in the Athenian commonwealth and composed both bodies of

practically identical individuals. The new court for the trial of

extortion, constituted by the Calpurnian and renewed later by a Junian

law, was controlled by a detachment of the governing body which saw in

each impeachment a libel on its own system of administration, and in

each condemnation a new precedent for hampering the uncontrolled power

exercised in the past or coveted for the future by the individual juror.

This class spirit may have been more powerful than bribery in its

production of suspicious acquittals; and the fact that prosecution was

frankly recognised as the commonest of party weapons, and that speeches

for the prosecution and defence teemed with irrelevant political

allusions, reduced the question of the guilt of the accused to

subordinate proportions in the eyes of all the participants in this

judicial warfare. Charges of corruption were so recklessly hurled at

Rome that we can seldom estimate their validity; but the strong

suspicion of bribery is almost as bad for a government as the proved

offence; and it was certain that senatorial judges did not yield to the

evidence which would have supplied conviction to the ordinary man. Some

recent acquittals furnished an excellent text to the reformer. L.

Aurelius Cotta had emerged successfully from a trial, which had been a

mere duel between Scipio Aemilianus for the prosecution and Metellus

Macedonicus for the defence. The judges had shown their resentment of

Scipio's influence by acquitting Cotta; and few of the spectators of the

struggle seem even to have pretended to believe in the innocence of the

accused.[620] The whole settlement of Asia had been so tainted with the

suspicion of pecuniary influences that, when Manius Aquillius

successfully ran the gauntlet of the courts,[621] it was difficult to

believe that the treasures of the East had not co-operated towards the

result, especially as the senate itself by no means favoured some of the

features of Aquillius's organisation of the province. The legates of

some of the plundered dependencies were still in Rome, bemoaning the

verdict and appealing for sympathy with their helpless fellow

subjects[622] Circumstances favoured the reformer; it was possible to

bring a definite case and to produce actual sufferers before the people;

while the senate, perhaps in consequence of the attitude of some honest

dissentients, was unable to make any effectual resistance to the scandal

and its consequences.

Had Gracchus thought of restoring this jurisdiction to the Comitia, he

would have taken a step which had the theoretical justification that, of

all the powers at Rome, the people was the one which had least interest

in provincial misgovernment. But it would have been a retrograde

movement from the point of view of procedure; it would not necessarily

have abolished senatorial influence, and it would not have attained his

object of holding the government permanently in check by the political

recognition of a class which rivalled the senate in the definiteness of

its organisation and surpassed it in the homogeneity of its interests.

The body of capitalists who had assumed the titular designation of

knights, had long been chafing at the complete subjection of their

commercial interests to the caprice of the provincial governor and the

arbitrary dispositions of the home government. Tiberius Gracchus, when

he revealed the way to the promised land, had probably reflected rather

than suggested the ambition of the great business men to have a more

definite place in the administration assigned them. His appeal had come

too late, or seemed too hopeless of success, to win their support for a

reformer who had outraged their feelings as capitalists; but since his

death ten years for reflection had elapsed, and they were years which

witnessed a vast extension of their potential activity, and aroused an

agonised feeling of helplessness at the subordinate part which they

played both to senate and people when the disposal of kingdoms was in

question. The suggestions for giving them a share in the control of the

provincial world may have been numerous, and their variety is reflected

in the different plans which Caius Gracchus himself advanced. The system

at which his brother had hinted was that of a joint board composed of

the existing senators with the addition of an equal number of equites;

and we have already suggested the possibility that this House of Six

Hundred was intended to be the senate of the future, efficient for all

purposes and not exclusively devoted to the work of criminal

jurisdiction. The same significance may attach to the scheme, which

seems to have been propounded by Caius Gracchus during, or perhaps even

before, his first tenure of the tribunate, and appears at intervals in

proposals made by reformers down to the time of Sulla. Gracchus is said

to have suggested the increase of the senate by the addition of three,

or, as one authority states, six hundred members of the equestrian

order.[623] The proposal, if it was one for an enlarged senate, and not

for a joint panel of _judices_, in which a changing body of equites

would act as a check on the permanent senatorial jurors, must soon have

been seen to be utterly unsuited to its purpose. It is a scheme

characteristic of the aristocrat who is posing as a friend of the

mercantile class and hopes to deceive the vigilance of that keen-sighted

fraternity. To give the senate a permanent infusion of new blood would

be simply to strengthen its authority, while completely cutting away the

links which bound the new members to their original class. Even the

swamping of the existing body by a two-thirds majority of new members

would have been transitory in its effects. The new member of the Curia

would soon have shed his old equestrian views and assumed the outlook of

his older peers. It might indeed have been possible to devise a system

by which the senate would, at the recurring intervals of the _lustra_,

have been filled up in equal proportions from ex-magistrates and

knights: and in this way a constant supply of middle-class sentiment

might have been furnished to the governing body. But even this scheme

would have secured to the elected a life-long tenure of power, and this

was a fatal obstacle both to the intentions of the reformer and the

aspirations of the equestrian order. While the former desired a balance

of power, the latter wished that the interests of their class should be

enforced by its genuine representatives. Both knew that a participation

in the executive power was immaterial, and that all that was needed

might be gained by the possession of judicial authority alone.

Gracchus's final decision, therefore, was to create a wholly new panel

of _judices_ which should be made up exclusively from the members of the

titular class of knights.[624]

It was not necessary or desirable that the judiciary law should make any

mention of a class, or employ the courtesy title of _equites_ to

designate the new judges. The effect might be less invidiously secured

by demanding qualifications which were practically identical with the

social conditions requisite for the possession of titular knighthood.

One of the determining factors was a property qualification, and this

was possibly placed at the modest total of four hundred thousand

sesterces.[625] This was the amount of capital which seems at this

period to have given its possessor the right of serving on horseback in

the army and therefore the claim to the title of _eques_, but it was a

sum that did not convey alarming suggestions of government by

millionaires, but rather pointed to the upper middle class as the

fittest depositaries of judicial power. Not only were magistrates and

ex-magistrates excluded from the Bench, but the disqualification

extended to the fathers, brothers and sons of magistrates and of past or

present senators. The ostensible purpose of these provisions was

doubtless to ensure that the selected jurors should be bound by no tie

of kindred to the individuals who would appear before their judgment

seat; but they must have had the effect of excluding from the new panel

many of the true knights belonging to the eighteen centuries; for this

select corps was largely composed of members of the noble families. A

similar effect would have been produced by the age qualification. The

Gracchan jurors were to be over thirty and under sixty, while a large

number of the military _equites_ were under the former limit of age, in

consequence of the practice of retiring from the corps after the

attainment of the quaestorship or selection into the senate. The

aristocratic element in the equestrian order, if this latter expression

be used in its widest sense to include both the military and civilian

knights, was thus rigorously excluded: and there remained but the men

whose business interests were in no way complicated by respect for

senatorial traditions. The official list of the new jurors _(album

judicum)_ was probably to be made out annually; and there is every

reason to suppose that there was a considerable change of personnel at

each revision, since one of the conditions of membership of the

panel--residence within a mile of Rome--could hardly have been observed

by business men with world-wide interests for any extended period. The

conception which still prevailed that judicial service was a burden

_(munus)_, would alone have led the revising authority to free past

jurors from the service: and the practice must have been welcome to the

capitalists themselves, many of whom may well have desired the share of

power and perhaps of profit which jurisdiction over their superiors

conferred. We are told that the selection of the first panel was

entrusted to the legislator himself;[626] for the future the Foreign

Praetor was to draw up the annual list of four hundred and fifty who

were qualified to hear cases of extortion.[627] It is not known whether

this was the full number of the new jurors, or whether there were

additional members selected by a different authority for the trial of

other offences. It is not probable that the judiciary law of Gracchus

imposed the new class of _judices_ directly on the civil courts. The

_judex_ of private law still retained his character of an arbitrator

appointed by the consent of the parties, and it would have been improper

to restrict this choice to a class defined by statute. But the practical

monopoly of jurisdiction in important cases, which senators seem to have

acquired, was henceforth broken through, and the _judex_ in civil suits

was sometimes taken from the equestrian order.[628]

The superficial aspect of this great change seemed full of promise for

the future. The ample means of the new jurors might be taken as a

guarantee of their purity; their selection from the middle class, as a

security of the soundness and disinterestedness of their judgments.

Perhaps Gracchus himself was the victim of this hope, and believed that

the scourge of the nobility which he had placed in the hands of the

knights, might at least be decorously wielded. The judgment of the

after-world varied as to the mode in which they exercised their power.

Cicero, in advocating the claims of the order to a renewed tenure of

authority, could urge that during their possession of the courts for

nearly fifty years, their judgments had never been tainted by the least

suspicion of corruption.[629] This was a safe assertion if suspicion is

only justified by proof; for the Gracchan jurors seem to have been from

the first exempted from all prosecution for bribery.[630] This legal

exemption is all the more remarkable as Gracchus himself was the author

of a law which permitted a criminal prosecution for a corrupt

judgment.[631] It is difficult to understand the significance of this

enactment, for the magistrates, against whom it was directed, were in

few cases judges of fact, except in the military domain. It could not

have referred to the president of a standing commission who was a mere

vehicle for the judgment of the jury; but Gracchus probably contemplated

the occasional revival of special commissions sanctioned by the people,

and it is possible that even the two praetors who presided over the

civil courts may have been subject to the operation of the law, which

may not have been directed merely against corrupt sentences in criminal

matters, as was subsequently the case when the law was renewed by Sulla.

It is even possible that the law dates from a period anterior to the

creation of the equestrian _judices_; but, even on this hypothesis, the

exclusion of the latter from its operation was something of an anomaly;

for even the civil _judex_ of Rome, on whose analogy the jurors of the

standing commissions had been created, was in early times criminally,

and at a later period at least pecuniarily, liable for an unjust

sentence.[632] We shall elsewhere have occasion to dwell on the value

which the equestrian order attached to this immunity, and we shall see

that its relief at the freedom from vexatious prosecution is of itself

no sign of corruption. One of our authorities does indeed emphatically

assert the ultimate prevalence of bribery in the equestrian courts:[633]

and circumstances may be easily imagined which would have made this

resort natural, if not inevitable. A band of capitalists eager to secure

a criminal verdict, which had a purely commercial significance, would

scarcely be slow to employ commercial methods with their less wealthy

representatives on the Bench, and votes might have been purchased by

transactions in which cash payments played no part. But the corruption

of individuals was of far less moment than the solidarity of interest

and collective cupidity of the mercantile order as a whole. The verdicts

of the courts reflected the judgment of the Exchange. It was even

possible to create a prosecution[634] simply for the purpose of damning

a man who, in the exercise of his authority, had betrayed tendencies

which were interpreted as hostile to capitalism.

The future war between the senate and the equites would not have been

waged so furiously, had not Gracchus given his favoured class the chance

of asserting a positive control, in virtue of an almost official

position, over the richest domains of the Roman world. The fatal bequest

of Attalus was still the plaything of parties; but the prize which

Tiberius had destined for the people was used by Caius to seal his

compact with the knights. The concession, which could not be openly

avowed, was accomplished by means so indirect that its meaning must have

escaped the majority of the voters who sanctioned it, and its

consequences may not have been fully grasped by the legislator himself.

The masses who applauded the new law about the province of Asia, may

have seen in it but a promise of the increase of their revenues; while

the desire of swelling the public finances, which he had so heavily

burdened, of putting an end to the anomalous condition of a district

which was neither free nor governed, neither protectorate nor province,

perhaps even of meeting the wishes of some of the Asiatic provincials,

who preferred regular to irregular exactions, may have been combined in

the mind of Gracchus with the wish to see the equites confront the

senate in yet another sphere. The change which he proposed was one

concerned with the taxation of the province. It cannot be determined how

far he was responsible for the infliction of new burdens on Rome's

Asiatic subjects. The increase of the public revenue, of which he

boasted in one of his speeches to the people,[635] the new harbour dues

with which he is credited,[636] may point to certain creations of his

own; but the end at which he aimed seems to have been mainly a revival

of the system of taxation which had been current in the kingdom of the

Attalids, accompanied by a new and, as he possibly thought, better

system of collection. It could not have been he who first burdened the

taxpayer with the payment of tithes; for this method of revenue was of

immense antiquity in all Hellenised lands and is not likely to have been

unknown to the kings of Pergamon. It is a method that, from its elastic

nature, bears less heavily on the agriculturist than that of a direct

impost; for the payment is conditioned by the size of the crops and is

independent of the changing value of money. The chief objection to the

tax, considered in itself and apart from its accompanying circumstances,

was the immensity of the revenue which it yielded; the sums exacted by

an Oriental despot were unnecessary for the economical administration of

Rome; and the Roman administration of half a century earlier might have

reduced the tithe to a twentieth as it had actually cut down the taxes

of Macedonia to one-half of their original amount. Sicily, indeed,

furnished an example of the tithe system; but the expenses of a

government decrease in proportion to the area of administration, and

Sicily could not furnish the ample harbour dues and other payments in

money, which should have made the commercial wealth of Asia lighten the

burden on the holder of land. The rating of the new province was, in

fact, an admission of a change in the theory of imperial taxation. Asia

was not merely to be self-supporting; her revenues were to yield a

surplus which should supplement the deficit of other lands, or aid in

the support of the proletariate of the capital.

The realisation of this principle may not have imposed heavier burdens

than Asia had known in the time of her kings. But the fiction that the

new dependency was to be maintained in a state of "freedom," which even

after the downfall of Aristonicus seems to have exercised some influence

on Roman policy, had led to a suspension of regular taxation for the

purposes of the central government, which caused the Gracchan proposals

to be regarded by certain political circles at Rome in the light of a

novelty, and probably of a hardship.[637] They could hardly have borne

either character to the Asiatic provincials themselves. The war

indemnities and exactions which followed the great struggle, must have

been a more grievous burden than the system of taxation to which they

were inured: and it is incredible that during the six years which had

elapsed since the suppression of the revolt, or even the three years

that had passed since the completion of Aquillius's organisation, no

revenues had been raised by Rome from her new subjects for

administrative purposes. They probably had been raised, but in a manner

exasperating because irregular. What was needed was a methodical system,

which should abolish at once the fiction of "freedom" and the reality of

the exactions meted out at the caprice of the governor of the moment.

Such a system was supplied by Gracchus, and it was doubtless reached by

the application of the characteristic Roman method of maintaining,

whether for good or ill, the principles of organisation which were

already in existence in the new dependency.

The novelty of the Gracchan system lay, not in the manner of taxation,

but in the method adopted for securing the returns. The greatest

obstacle to the tithe system is the difficulty of instituting an

efficient method of collection. To gather in taxes which are paid in

kind and to dispose of them to the best advantage, is a heavy burden for

a municipality. The desire for a system of contract is sure to arise,

and in an Empire the efficient contractor is more likely to be found in

the central state than in any of its dependencies. It was of this

feeling that Gracchus took advantage when he enacted that the taxes of

Asia should be put up for auction at Rome,[638] and that the whole

province should be regarded as a single area of taxation at the great

auction which the censor held in the capital. It was certain that no

foreign competition could prevail in this sale of a kingdom's revenues.

The right to gather in the tithes could be purchased only by a powerful

company of Roman capitalists. The Decumani of Asia would represent the

heart and brain of the mercantile body; they would form a senate and a

Principate amongst the Publicani.[639] They would flood the province

with their local directors, their agents and their freedmen; and each

station would become a centre for a banking business which would involve

individuals and cities in a debt, of which the tithe was but a fraction.

Nor need their operations be confined to the dominions of Rome; they

would spread over Phrygia, rendered helpless by the gift of freedom, and

creep into the realms of the neighbouring protected kings, safe in the

knowledge that the magic name of "citizen of Rome" was a cover to the

most doubtful transaction and a safeguard against the slightest

punishment. The collectors were liable to no penalties for extortion,

for that crime could be committed only by a Roman magistrate: and their

possession of the courts enabled them to raise the spectre of conviction

on this very charge before the eyes of any governor who might attempt to

check the devastating march of the battalions of commerce.

As merchants and bankers the Knights would be sufficiently protected by

the judicial powers of their class; but their operations as speculators

in tithes needed another safeguard. The contracts made with the censor

would extend over a period of five years, and the keenness of the

competing companies would generally ensure to the State the promise of

an enormous sum for the privilege of farming the taxes. But the tithe

might be reduced in value by a bad harvest or the ravages of war, and

the successful company might overreach itself in its eagerness to secure

the contract. The power of revising such bargains had once assured to

the senate the securest hold which it possessed over the mercantile

class.[640] This complete dependence was now to be removed, and

Gracchus, while not taking the power of decision from the senate,

formulated in his law certain principles of remission which it was

expected to observe.[641]

By these indirect and seemingly innocent changes in the relations of the

mercantile order to the senate, a new balance of power had been created

in the State. The Republic, according to the reflection of a later

writer, had been given two heads,[642] and this new Janus, more ominous

than the old, was believed to be the harbinger of deadly conflict

between the rival powers. In moments of calm Gracchus may have believed

that his reforms were but a renewed illustration of that genius for

compromise out of which the Roman constitution had grown, and that he

had but created new and necessary defences against a recently developed

absolutism; but, in the heat of the conflict into which he was soon

plunged, his vindictive fancy saw but the gloomier aspect of his new

creation, and he boasted that the struggle for the courts was a dagger

which he had hurled into the Forum, an instrument which the possessor

would use to mangle the body of his opponent.[643]

But even these limitations of senatorial prerogative were not deemed

sufficient. A proposal was made which had the ingenious scope of

limiting the senate's control over the more important provinces in

favour of the magistrates, the equestrian order and the people. One of

the most valuable items of patronage which the senate possessed was the

assignment of the consular provinces. They claimed the right of deciding

which of the annual commands without the walls should be reserved for

the consuls of the year, and by their disposition in this matter could

reward a favourite with wealth or power, and condemn a political

opponent to impotence or barren exile. This power had long been employed

as a means of coercing the two chief magistrates into obedience to the

senate's will, and the equestrian order must have viewed with some alarm

the possibility of Asia becoming the prize of the candidates favoured by

the nobility. Had Gracchus declared that the direct election to

provincial commands should henceforth be in the hands of the people, the

change would have been but a slight departure from an admitted

constitutional precedent; for there is little more than a technical

difference between electing a man for an already ascertained sphere of

operations, as had been done in the cases of Terentius Varro and the two

Scipios during the Punic wars, and attaching a special command to an

individual already elected. But Gracchus preferred the traditional and

indirect method. He did not question the right of the senate to decide

what provinces should be assigned to the consuls, but he enacted that

this decision should be made before these magistrates were elected to

office.[644] The people would thus, in their annual choice of the

highest magistrates, be electing not only to a sphere of administration

at home, but to definite foreign commands as well; the prize which the

senate had hitherto bestowed would be indirectly the people's gift, and

the nominees of the Comitia would find themselves in possession of

departments which were presumably the most important that lay at the

disposal of the senate. To secure the finality of the arrangement made

by the senate, and to prevent this body subsequently reversing an

awkward assignment to which it had unwittingly committed itself,

Gracchus ordained that the tribunician veto should not be employed

against the senate's decision as to what provinces should be reserved

for the future consuls;[645] for he knew that the tribune was often the

instrument of the government, and that the suspensory veto of this

magistrate could cause the question of assignment to drag on until after

the consuls were elected, and thus restore to the senate its ancient

right of patronage. The change, although it produced the desired results

of freeing the magistrates from subservience, the mercantile order from

a reasonable fear, and the people from the pain of seeing their

favourite nominee rendered useless for the purposes for which he was

appointed, cannot be said to have added anything to the efficiency of

provincial administration. It may even be regarded as a retrograde step,

as the commencement of that system of routine in provincial

appointments, which regarded proved capacity for the government and

defence of the subjects of Rome as the last qualification necessary for

foreign command. The senate in its award may often have been swayed by

unworthy motives; but it was sometimes moved by patriotic fears. Of the

two consuls it might send the one of tried military ability to a

province threatened by war and dismiss the mere politician to a peaceful

district. But now, without any regard to present conditions or future

contingencies, it was forced to assign departments to men whose very

names were unknown. The people, in the exercise of their elective power,

were acting almost as blindly as the senate; for the issues of a Roman

election were often so ill-defined, its cross-currents, due to personal

influence and the power of the canvass, so strong and perplexing, that

it was rarely possible to predict the issue of the poll. On the other

hand, if there was a candidate so eminent that his return could be

predicted as a certainty, the senate might assign some insignificant

spheres of administration as the provinces of the future consuls; and

thus, in the one case where the decision might be influenced by

knowledge and reason, the Gracchan law was liable to defeat its own

ends. A further weakness of the enactment, from the point of view of

efficiency, was that it made no attempt to alter the mode in which the

designated provinces were to be occupied by their claimants. If the

consuls could not come to an agreement as to which _provincia_ each

should hold, the chance of the lot still decided a question on which the

future fortunes of the empire might turn.

It is a relief to turn from this work of demolition, which in spite of

its many justifications is pervaded by a vindictive suspicion, to some

great constructive efforts by which Gracchus proved himself an

enlightened and disinterested social reformer. He did not view agrarian

assignation as an alternative to colonisation, but recognised that the

industrial spirit might be awakened by new settlements on sites

favourable to commerce, as the agricultural interest had been aroused by

the planting of settlers on the desolated lands. Gracchus was, indeed,

not the first statesman to employ colonisation as a remedy for social

evils; for economic distress and the hunger for land had played their

part from the earliest times in the military settlements which Rome had

scattered over Italy. But down to his time strategic had preponderated

over industrial motives, and he was the first to suggest that

colonisation might be made a means of relief for the better classes of

the urban proletariate, whose activities were cramped and whose energies

were stifled by the crowded life and heated atmosphere of the city. His

settlers were to be carefully selected. They were actually to be men who

could stand the test of an investigation into character.[646] It seems

clear that the new opportunities were offered to men of the lower middle

class, to traders of cramped means or of broken fortunes. His other

protégés had been cared for in other ways; the urban masses who lived on

the margin of destitution had been assisted by the corn law, and the

sturdy son of toil could look for help to the agrarian commission. Of

the many settlements which he projected for Italy,[647] two which were

actually established during his second tribunate[648] occupied maritime

positions favourable for commerce. Scylacium, on the bay which lies

southward of the Iapygian promontory, was intended to revivify a decayed

Greek settlement and to reawaken the industries of the desolated

Bruttian coast; while Neptunia was seemingly the name of the new

entrepôt which he founded at the head of the Tarentine Gulf. It was

apparently established on the land which Rome had wrested from Tarentum,

and may have originally formed a town distinct from this Greek city,

once the great seaport of Calabria, but retaining little of its former

greatness since its partial destruction in the Punic wars.[649] Its

Hellenism was on the wane, and this decline in its native civilisation

may account for the fact that the new and the old foundations seem

eventually to have been merged into one, and that Tarentum could receive

a purely Latin constitution after the close of the Social War.[650] Its

purple fisheries and rich wine-producing territory were worthy objects

of the enterprise of Gracchus. Capua was a still greater disgrace to the

Roman administration than Tarentum. Its fertile lands were indeed

cultivated by lessees of Rome and yielded a large annual produce to the

State. But the unredeemed site, on which had stood the pride of Southern

Italy, was still a lamentable witness to the jealousy of the conqueror.

Here Gracchus proposed to place a settlement[651] which through its

commercial promise might amply have compensated for a loss of a portion

of the State's domain. Neither he nor his brother had ever threatened

the distribution of the territory of Capua, and it is, therefore,

probable that in this case he did not contemplate a large agricultural

foundation, but rather one that might serve better than the existing

village to focus the commerce of the Campanian plain. But the revenue

from the domain, and the jealousy of Rome's old and powerful rival,

which might be awakened in all classes, were strong weapons in the hands

of his opponents, and the renewal of Capua was destined to be the work

of a later and more fortunate leader of the party of reform. The

colonising effort of Gracchus was plainly one that had the regeneration

of Italy, as well as the satisfaction of distressed burgesses, as its

object; none of the three sites, on which he proposed to establish his

communes of citizens, possessed at the time an urban centre capable of

utilising the vast possibilities of the area in which it was placed. But

this twofold object was not to be limited to Italy. He dreamed of

transmarine enterprise taking a more solid and more generally useful

form than that furnished by the vagrant trader or the local agent of the

capitalist.[652] The idea and practice of colonisation across the sea

were indeed no new ones; isolated foundations for military purposes,

such as Palma and Pollentia in the Balearic Isles, were being planted by

the direction of the government. But these were small settlements

intended to serve a narrow purpose; they doubtless spread Roman customs

and formed a basis for Roman trade; but, if these motives had entered

into their foundation, the experiment would have been tried on a far

larger scale. In truth the idea of permanent settlement beyond the seas

did not appeal either to the Roman character or to the political

theories of the governing classes. It is questionable whether an

imperial people, forming but a tiny minority amongst its subjects, and

easily reaping the fruits of its conquests, could ever take kindly to

the adventure, the initial hardships, and the lasting exclusion from the

dazzling life of the capital, which are implied in permanent residence

abroad. The Roman in pursuit of gain was a restless spirit, who would

voyage to any land that was, or was likely to be, under imperial

control, establish his banking house and villa under any clime, and be

content to spend the most active years of his life in the exploitation

of the alien; but to him it was a living truth that all roads led to

Rome. The city was the nucleus of enterprise, the heart of commerce; and

such sentiment as the trader possessed was centred on the commercial

life of the Forum and the political devices on which it fed. Such a

spirit is not, favourable to true colonisation, which implies a

detachment from the affairs of the mother city; and it was not by this

means, but rather by the spontaneous evolution of natural centres for

the teeming Italian immigrants already settled in the provinces, that

the Romanisation of the world was ultimately assisted. Consequently no

great pressure had ever been put on the government to induce it to relax

the principles which led it to look with indifference or disfavour on

the foundation of Roman settlements abroad. There was probably a fear

that the establishment of communities of Roman citizens in the provinces

might awaken the desire of the subject states to participate in Roman

rights. It was deemed better that the highest goal of the provincial's

ambition should be the freedom of his state, and that he should never

dream of that absorption into the ruling body to which the Italian alone

was permitted to aspire. Added to this maxim of statecraft was one of

those curious superstitions which play so large a part in imperial

politics and attain a show of truth from the superficial reading of

history. It was pointed out by the wise that colonies had often proved

more potent than their parent states, that Carthage had surpassed Tyre,

Massilia Phocaea, Syracuse Corinth, and Cyzicus Miletus. In the same way

a daughter of Rome might wax greater than her mother, and the city that

governed Italy might be powerless to cope with a rebellious dependency

in the provinces.[653] This was not altogether an idle fear in the

earlier days of conquest; for at any period before the war with Pyrrhus

a transmarine city of Italian blood and customs might have proved a

formidable rival. Nor at the stage which the empire had reached at the

time of Gracchus was it without its justification; for Rome was by no

means a convenient centre for a government that ruled in Asia as well as

in Europe. It is more likely that the dread of rivalry was due to the

singular defects of the aspect and environment of Rome, of which its

citizens were acutely conscious, rather than to the awkwardness of its

geographical position; but, had the latter deficiency been realised, it

would be unfair to criticise the narrowness of view which failed to see

that the change of a capital does not necessarily involve the surrender

of a government. But, whether the objections implied in this

superstition were shadowy or well defined, they could not have been

lessened by the choice which was made by Gracchus and his friends of the

site for their new transmarine settlement. It was none other than

Carthage, the city which had been destroyed because the blessings of

nature had made a mockery of conquest, the city that, if revived, would

be the centre of the granary of Rome. A proposal for the renewal of

Carthage under the name of Junonia was formulated by Rubrius, one of the

colleagues of Gracchus in his first tribunate.[654] The number of the

colonists, which was less than six thousand, was specified in the

enactment, and the proportion of the emigrants to the immense territory

at his disposal rendered it possible for the legislator to assign

unusually large allotments of land. A better and an inferior class of

settlers were apparently distinguished, the former of whom were to hold

no less than two hundred _jugera_ apiece.[655] The recipients of all

allotments were to maintain them in absolute ownership, a system of

tenure which had hitherto been confined to Italy being thus extended to

provincial soil.[656] Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus were named

amongst the triumvirs who were to establish the new colony.[657] It is

probable that Roman citizens were alone considered eligible for the

colonies both in Italy and abroad, when these foundations were first

proposed, and that it was not until Gracchus had embarked on his

enterprise of enfranchising the Latins, that he allowed them to

participate in the benefits of his colonial schemes and thus indirectly

acquire full Roman citizenship.

But the commercial life of Italy might be quickened by other means than

the establishment of colonies whether at home or abroad. Gracchus saw

that the question of rapid and easy communication between the existing

towns was all important. The great roads of Rome betrayed their military

intent in the unswerving inflexibility of their course. The positions

which they skirted were of strategic, but not necessarily of industrial,

importance. To bring the hamlet into connection with the township, and

the township into touch with the capital, a series of good cross-roads

was needed; and it was probably to this object that the law of

Gracchus[658] was directed. But ease of communication may serve a

political as well as a commercial object. The representative character

of the Comitia would be increased by the provision of facilities for the

journey to Rome; and perhaps when Gracchus promulgated his measure,

there was already before his mind the possibility of the extension of

the franchise to the Latins, which would vastly increase the numbers of

the rural electorate. In any case, the measure was one which tended to

political centralisation, and Gracchus must have known that the

attainment of this object was essential to the unity and stability of a

popular government.

The great enterprise was carried through with extraordinary rapidity

during his second tribunate. But the hastiness of the construction did

not impair the beauty of the work. We are told that the roads ran

straight and fair through the country districts, showing an even surface

of quarried stone and tight-packed earth. Hollows were filled up,

ravines and torrent beds were bridged, and mounting-blocks for horsemen

lay at short and easy distances on both sides of the level course.[659]

Although the initial expense of this construction may have borne heavily

on the finances of the State, it is probable that the future maintenance

of the roads was provided for in other ways. The commerce which they

fostered may have paid its dues at toll-gates erected for the

purpose:[660] and the ancient Roman device of creating a class of

settlers on the line of a public road, for the purpose of keeping it in

repair,[661] was probably extended. Road-making was often the complement

of agrarian assignation,[662] and the two may have been employed

concurrently by Gracchus. It was the custom to assign public land on the

borders of a highway to settlers, the tenure of which was secured to

them and their heirs on condition of keeping the road in due repair.

Sometimes their own labour and that of their slaves were reckoned the

equivalent of the usual dues; at other times the dues themselves were

used by the public authorities for the purpose. Gracchus may thus have

turned his agrarian law to an end which was not contemplated by that

of Tiberius.

The execution of the law must have been a heavy blow to the power and

prestige of the senate. Its control of the purse was infringed and it

ceased to be the sole employer of public labour. For Gracchus, in

defiance of the principle that the author of a measure should not be its

executant,[663] was his own road-maker, as his brother Tiberius had been

his own land commissioner. He was the patron of the contractor and the

benefactor of the Italian artisan. The bounties which he now gave were

the reward of labour, and not subject to the criticism which had

attended his earlier efforts for the relief of poverty in Rome; but some

pretended to take the sinister view that the bands of workmen by which

he was surrounded might be employed for a less innocent purpose than the

making of roads.[664].

The proceedings of Gracchus during his first year of office had made it

inevitable that he should hold the tribunate for a second time. Enough

had been performed to win him the ardent support of the masses; enough

had been promised to make his return to office desirable, not only to

the people, but to the expectant capitalists. The legal hindrances to

re-election had been removed, or could be evaded, and the continuity of

power, which was essential to the realisation of an adequate programme

of reform, could now for the first time be secured. In the present state

of public feeling there was little probability of the veto being

employed by any one of his future colleagues, although some of these

would inevitably be moderates or members of the senatorial party. But

Gracchus was eager that his cause should be represented in another

department of the State, which presented possibilities of assistance or

of mischief, and that the spectacle of the tribunate as the sole focus

of democratic sentiment, exalting itself in opposition to the higher

magistracies of the people, should, if possible, be averted. In one of

his addresses to the commons he said he had to ask a favour of them.

Were it granted, he would value it above all things; should they think

good to refuse, he would bear no grudge against them. Here he paused;

the favour remained undisclosed; and he left popular imagination to

revel in the possibilities of his claims. It was a happy stroke; for he

had filled the minds of his auditors with a gratifying sense of their

own boundless power, and with suspicions of illegal ambitions, with

which it was well that they should become familiar, but which one

dramatic moment would for the time dispel. His words were interpreted as

a request for the consulship: and the prevalent opinion is said to have

been that he desired to hold this office in combination with the

tribunate. The time for the consular elections was approaching and

expectation was roused to its highest pitch, when Gracchus was seen

conducting Gaius Fannius into the Forum and, with the assistance of his

own friends, accosting the electors in his behalf.[665] The candidate

was a man whose political temperament Caius had had full opportunities

of studying. As a tribune he had been much under the influence of Scipio

Aemilianus,[666] and as he rose slowly through the grades of curule

rank,[667] he must still have retained his character as a moderate. He

was therefore preferable to any candidate put forward by the optimates:

and the influence of Gracchus secured Fannius the consulship almost at

the moment when, without the trouble of a canvass or even of a formal

candidature, he himself secured his second term of office. His position

was further strengthened by the return of the ex-consul Fulvius Flaccus,

as one of his colleagues in the tribunate.

It was now, when the grand programme was actually being carried through,

and the execution of the most varied measures was being pressed on by a

single hand, that the possibilities of personal government were first

revealed in Rome. The fiery orator was less to be dreaded than the

unwearied man of action, whose restless energy was controlled by a

clearness of judgment and concentration of purpose, which could

distinguish every item of his vast sphere of administration and treat

the task of the moment as though it were the one nearest to his heart.

Even those who hated and feared Gracchus were struck with amazement at

the practical genius which he revealed; while the sight of the leader in

the midst of his countless tasks, surrounded by the motley retinue which

they involved, roused the wondering admiration of the masses.[668] At

one moment he was being interviewed by a contractor for public works, at

another by an envoy from some state eager to secure his mediation; the

magistrate, the artisan, the soldier and the man of letters besieged his

presence chamber, and each was received with the appropriate word and

the kindly dignity, which kings may acquire from training, but men of

kingly nature receive from heaven as a seal of their fitness to rule.

The impression of overbearing violence which had been given by his

speeches, was immediately dispelled by contact with the man. The time of

storm and stress had been passed for the moment, and in the fruition of

his temporary power the true character of Gracchus was revealed. The

pure intellectual enjoyment which springs from the sense of efficiency

and the effective pursuit of a long-desired task, will not be shaken by

the awkward impediments of the moment. All the human instruments, which

the work demands, reflect the value of the object to which they

contribute: and Gracchus was saved from the insolent pride of the

patrician ruler and the helpless peevishness of the mere agitator whom

circumstances have thrust into power, by the fact that his emotional

nature was mastered by an intellect which had outlived prejudice and had

never known the sense of incapacity. By the very character of its

circumstances the regal nature was forced into a style of life which

resembled and foreshadowed that of the coming monarchy. The

accessibility to his friends and clients of every grade was the pride of

the Roman noble, and doubtless Gracchus would willingly have modelled

his receptions on the informal pattern which sufficed the proudest

patrician at the head of the largest _clientèle_. But Gracchus's callers

were not even limited to the whole of Rome; they came from Italy and the

provinces: and it was found to be essential to adopt some rules of

precedence, which would produce a methodical approach to his presence

and secure each of his visitors an adequate hearing. He was the first

Roman, we are told, to observe certain rules of audience. Some members

of the crowd which thronged his ante-chamber, were received singly,

others in smaller or in larger groups.[669] It is improbable that the

mode of reception varied wholly with the official or social rank of

those admitted; the nature of the client's business must also have

dictated the secrecy or publicity of the interview; but the system must

have seemed to his baffled enemies a welcome confirmation of their real

or pretended fears--a symptom of the coming, if not actual, overthrow of

Republicanism, the suspicion of which might one day be driven even into

the thick heads of the gaping crowds, who stood by the portals to gaze

at the ever-shifting throng of callers and to marvel at the power and

popularity of their leader. Had Gracchus been content to live in the

present and to regard his task as completed, it is just possible that

the diverse interests which he had so dexterously welded together might

have enabled him to secure, not indeed a continuity of power (for that

would have been as strenuously resisted by the middle as by the upper

class), but immediate security from the gathering conspiracy, the

preservation of his life, and the probability of a subsequent political

career. It is, however, difficult, to conceive that the position which

Gracchus held could be either resigned or forgiven; and, although we

cannot credit him with any conscious desire for holding a position not

admitted by the laws, yet his genius unconsciously led him to identify

the commonwealth with himself, while his mind, as receptive as it was

progressive, would not have readily acquiesced in the view that a

political creation can at any moment be called complete. The

disinterested statesman will cling to power as tenaciously as one

devoured by the most sordid ambition: and even on the lowest ground of

personal security, the possession of authority is perhaps more necessary

to the one than to the other. So indissolubly blended are the power and

the projects of a leader, that it is idle to raise the question whether

personal motives played any part in the project with which Gracchus was

now about to delight his enemies and alienate his friends. He took up

anew the question of the enfranchisement of the Italians--a question

which the merest political tyro could have told him was enough to doom

the statesman who spoke even a word in its favour. But Caius's position

was no ordinary one, and he may have regarded his present influence as

sufficient to induce the people to accept the unpalatable measure, the

success of which might win for himself and his successors a wider

constituency and a more stable following. The error in judgment is

excusable in one who had never veiled his sympathy with the Italian

cause, and had hitherto found it no hindrance to his popularity; but so

clear-sighted a man as Gracchus must have felt at times that he was

staking, not only his own career, but the fate of the programme and the

party which he had built up, on the chance of securing an end, which had

ceased to be regarded as the mere removal of an obstacle and had grown

to be looked on as the coping-stone of a true reformer's work.