Tiberius Gracchus was born about the year 164 B.C. He was one of twelve
children, nine of whom died in infancy, himself, his brother Caius, and
his sister Cornelia being the only survivors. His family was plebeian,
but of high antiquity, his ancestors for several generations having
held the highest offices in the Republic. On the mother's side he was
the grandson of Scipio Africanus. His father, after a distinguished
career as a soldier in Spain and Sardinia, had attempted reforms at
Rome. He had been censor, and in this capacity he had ejected
disreputable senators from the Curia; he had degraded offending
equites; he had rearranged and tried to purify the Comitia. But his
connections were aristocratic. His wife was the daughter of the most
illustrious of the Scipios. His own daughter was married to the second
most famous of them, Scipio Africanus the Younger. He had been himself
in antagonism with the tribunes, and had taken no part at any time in
popular agitations.
The father died when Tiberius was still a boy, and the two brothers
grew up under the care of their mother, a noble and gifted lady. They
displayed early remarkable talents. Tiberius, when old enough, went
into the army, and served under his brother-in-law in the last
Carthaginian campaign. He was first on the walls of the city in the
final storm. Ten years later he went to Spain as Quaestor, where he
carried on his father's popularity, and by taking the people's side in
some questions fell into disagreement with his brother-in-law. His
political views had perhaps already inclined to change. He was still of
an age when indignation at oppression calls out a practical desire to
resist it. On his journey home from Spain he witnessed scenes which
confirmed his conviction and determined him to throw all his energies
into the popular cause. His road lay through Tuscany, where he saw the
large-estate system in full operation--the fields cultivated by the
slave gangs, the free citizens of the Republic thrust away into the
towns, aliens and outcasts in their own country, without a foot of soil
which they could call their own. In Tuscany, too, the vast domains of
the landlords had not even been fairly purchased. They were parcels of
the _ager publicus_, land belonging to the State, which, in spite of a
law forbidding it, the great lords and commoners had appropriated and
divided among themselves. Five hundred acres of State land was the most
which by statute any one lessee might be allowed to occupy. But the law
was obsolete or sleeping, and avarice and vanity were awake and active.
Young Gracchus, in indignant pity, resolved to rescue the people's
patrimony. He was chosen tribune in the year 133. His brave mother and
a few patricians of the old type encouraged him, and the battle of the
revolution began. The Senate, as has been said, though without direct
legislative authority, had been allowed the right of reviewing any new
schemes which were to be submitted to the assembly. The constitutional
means of preventing tribunes from carrying unwise or unwelcome measures
lay in a consul's veto, or in the help of the College of Augurs, who
could declare the auspices unfavorable, and so close all public
business. These resources were so awkward that it had been found
convenient to secure beforehand the Senate's approbation, and the
encroachment, being long submitted to, was passing by custom into a
rule. But the Senate, eager as it was, had not yet succeeded in
engrafting the practice into the constitution. On the land question the
leaders of the aristocracy were the principal offenders. Disregarding
usage, and conscious that the best men of all ranks were with him,
Tiberius Gracchus appealed directly to the people to revive the
agrarian law. His proposals were not extravagant. That they should have
been deemed extravagant was a proof of how much some measure of the
kind was needed. Where lands had been enclosed and money laid out on
them he was willing that the occupants should have compensation. But
they had no right to the lands themselves. Gracchus persisted that the
_ager publicus_ belonged to the people, and that the race of yeomen,
for whose protection the law had been originally passed, must be
re-established on their farms. No form of property gives to its owners
so much consequence as land, and there is no point on which in every
country an aristocracy is more sensitive. The large owners protested
that they had purchased their interests on the faith that the law was
obsolete. They had planted and built and watered with the sanction of
the government, and to call their titles in question was to shake the
foundations of society. The popular party pointed to the statute. The
monopolists were entitled in justice to less than was offered them.
They had no right to a compensation at all. Political passion awoke
again after the sleep of a century. The oligarchy had doubtless
connived at the accumulations. The suppression of the small holdings
favored their supremacy, and placed the elections more completely in
their control. Their military successes had given them so long a tenure
of power that they had believed it to be theirs in perpetuity; and the
new sedition, as they called it, threatened at once their privileges
and their fortunes. The quarrel assumed the familiar form of a struggle
between the rich and the poor, and at such times the mob of voters
becomes less easy to corrupt. They go with their order, as the prospect
of larger gain makes them indifferent to immediate bribes. It became
clear that the majority of the citizens would support Tiberius
Gracchus, but the constitutional forms of opposition might still be
resorted to. Octavius Caecina, another of the tribunes, had himself
large interests in the land question. He was the people's magistrate,
one of the body appointed especially to defend their rights, but he
went over to the Senate, and, using a power which undoubtedly belonged
to him, he forbade the vote to be taken.
There was no precedent for the removal of either consul, praetor, or
tribune, except under circumstances very different from any which could
as yet be said to have arisen. The magistrates held office for a year
only, and the power of veto had been allowed them expressly to secure
time for deliberation and to prevent passionate legislation. But
Gracchus was young and enthusiastic. Precedent or no precedent, the
citizens were omnipotent. He invited them to declare his colleague
deposed. They had warmed to the fight, and complied. A more experienced
statesman would have known that established constitutional bulwarks
cannot be swept away by a momentary vote. He obtained his agrarian law.
Three commissioners were appointed, himself, his younger brother, and
his father-in-law, Appius Claudius, to carry it into effect; but the
very names showed that he had alienated his few supporters in the
higher circles, and that a single family was now contending against the
united wealth and distinction of Rome. The issue was only too certain.
Popular enthusiasm is but a fire of straw. In a year Tiberius Gracchus
would be out of office. Other tribunes would be chosen more amenable to
influence, and his work could then be undone. He evidently knew that
those who would succeed him could not be relied on to carry on his
policy. He had taken one revolutionary step already; he was driven on
to another, and he offered himself illegally to the Comitia for
re-election. It was to invite them to abolish the constitution and to
make him virtual sovereign; and that a young man of thirty should have
contemplated such a position for himself as possible is of itself a
proof of his unfitness for it. The election-day came. The noble lords
and gentlemen appeared in the Campus Martius with their retinues of
armed servants and clients; hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain
for demagogues, and meaning to read a lesson to sedition which it would
not easily forget. Votes were given for Gracchus. Had the hustings been
left to decide the matter, he would have been chosen; but as it began
to appear how the polling would go, sticks were used and swords; a riot
rose, the unarmed citizens were driven off, Tiberius Gracchus himself
and three hundred of his friends were killed and their bodies were
flung into the Tiber.
Thus the first sparks of the coming revolution were trampled out. But
though quenched and to be again quenched with fiercer struggles, it was
to smoulder and smoke and burst out time after time, till its work was
done. Revolution could not restore the ancient character of the Roman
nation, but it could check the progress of decay by burning away the
more corrupted parts of it. It could destroy the aristocracy and the
constitution which they had depraved, and under other forms present for
a few more centuries the Roman dominion. Scipio Africanus, when he
heard in Spain of the end of his brother-in-law, exclaimed, "May all
who act as he did perish like him!" There were to be victims enough and
to spare before the bloody drama was played out. Quiet lasted for ten
years, and then, precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius
Gracchus came forward to avenge him, and carry the movement through
another stage. Young Caius had been left one of the commissioners of
the land law; and it is particularly noticeable that though the author
of it had been killed, the law had survived him being too clearly right
and politic in itself to be openly set aside. For two years the
commissioners had continued to work, and in that time forty thousand
families were settled on various parts of the _ager publicus_, which
the patricians had been compelled to resign. This was all which they
could do. The displacement of one set of inhabitants and the
introduction of another could not be accomplished without quarrels,
complaints, and perhaps some injustice. Those who were ejected were
always exasperated. Those who entered on possession were not always
satisfied. The commissioners became unpopular. When the cries against
them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was then
quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over the assembly,
and had a further opportunity of showing its recovered ascendency when,
two years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends
introduced a bill to make the tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius
Gracchus actively supported the change, but it had no success; and,
waiting till times had altered, and till he had arrived himself at an
age when he could carry weight, the young brother retired from
politics, and spent the next few years with the army in Africa and
Sardinia. He served with distinction; he made a name for himself both
as a soldier and an administrator. Had the Senate left him alone, he
might have been satisfied with a regular career, and have risen by the
ordinary steps to the consulship. But the Senate saw in him the
possibilities of a second Tiberius; the higher his reputation, the more
formidable he became to them. They vexed him with petty prosecutions,
charged him with crimes which had no existence, and at length by
suspicion and injustice drove him into open war with them. Caius
Gracchus had a broader intellect than his brother, and a character
considerably less noble. The land question he perceived was but one of
many questions. The true source of the disorders of the Commonwealth
was the Senate itself. The administration of the Empire was in the
hands of men totally unfit to be trusted with it, and there he thought
the reform must commence. He threw himself on the people. He was chosen
tribune in 123, ten years exactly after Tiberius. He had studied the
disposition of parties. He had seen his brother fall because the
equites and the senators, the great commoners and the nobles, were
combined against him. He revived the agrarian law as a matter of
course, but he disarmed the opposition to it by throwing an apple of
discord between the two superior orders. The high judicial functions in
the Commonwealth had been hitherto a senatorial monopoly. All cases of
importance, civil or criminal, came before courts of sixty or seventy
jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be necessarily senators. The
privilege had been extremely lucrative. The corruption of justice was
already notorious, though it had not yet reached the level of infamy
which it attained in another generation. It was no secret that in
ordinary causes jurymen had sold their verdicts; and, far short of
taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many ways in
which they could let themselves be approached and their favor
purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in
the sale of justice is alike hateful to those who abhor iniquity on
principle and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But
this was not the worst. The governors of the provinces, being chosen
from those who had been consuls or praetors, were necessarily members
of the Senate. Peculation and extortion in these high functions were
offences in theory of the gravest kind; but the offender could only be
tried before a limited number of his peers, and a governor who had
plundered a subject state, sold justice, pillaged temples, and stolen
all that he could lay hands on, was safe from punishment if he returned
to Rome a millionaire and would admit others to a share in his spoils.
The provincials might send deputations to complain, but these
complaints came before men who had themselves governed provinces or
else aspired to govern them. It had been proved in too many instances
that the law which professed to protect them was a mere mockery.
Caius Gracchus secured the affections of the knights to himself, and
some slightly increased chance of an improvement in the provincial
administration, by carrying a law in the assembly disabling the
senators from sitting on juries of any kind from that day forward, and
transferring the judicial functions to the equites. How bitterly must
such a measure have been resented by the Senate, which at once robbed
them of their protective and profitable privileges, handed them over to
be tried by their rivals for their pleasant irregularities, and stamped
them at the same time with the brand of dishonesty! How certainly must
such a measure have been deserved when neither consul nor tribune could
be found to interpose his veto! Supported by the grateful knights,
Caius Gracchus was for the moment all-powerful. It was not enough to
restore the agrarian law. He passed another, aimed at his brother's
murderers, which was to bear fruit in later years, that no Roman
citizen might be put to death by any person, however high in authority,
without legal trial, and without appeal, if he chose to make it, to the
sovereign people. A blow was thus struck against another right claimed
by the Senate, of declaring the Republic in danger, and the temporary
suspension of the constitution. These measures might be excused, and
perhaps commended; but the younger Gracchus connected his name with
another change less commendable, which was destined also to survive and
bear fruit. He brought forward and carried through, with enthusiastic
clapping of every pair of hands in Rome that were hardened with labor,
a proposal that there should be public granaries in the city,
maintained and filled at the cost of the State, and that corn should be
sold at a rate artificially cheap to the poor free citizens. Such a law
was purely socialistic. The privilege was confined to Rome, because in
Rome the elections were held, and the Roman constituency was the one
depositary of power. The effect was to gather into the city a mob of
needy, unemployed voters, living on the charity of the State, to crowd
the circus and to clamor at the elections, available no doubt
immediately to strengthen the hands of the popular tribune, but certain
in the long-run to sell themselves to those who could bid highest for
their voices. Excuses could be found, no doubt, for this miserable
expedient in the state of parties, in the unscrupulous violence of the
aristocracy, in the general impoverishment of the peasantry through the
land monopoly, and in the intrusion upon Italy of a gigantic system of
slave labor. But none the less it was the deadliest blow which had yet
been dealt to the constitution. Party government turns on the
majorities at the polling-places, and it was difficult afterward to
recall a privilege which once conceded appeared to be a right. The
utmost that could be ventured in later times with any prospect of
success was to limit an intolerable evil; and if one side was ever
strong enough to make the attempt, their rivals had a bribe ready in
their hands to buy back the popular support. Caius Gracchus, however,
had his way, and carried all before him. He escaped the rock on which
his brother had been wrecked. He was elected tribune a second time. He
might have had a third term if he had been contented to be a mere
demagogue. But he, too, like Tiberius, had honorable aims. The powers
which he had played into the hands of the mob to obtain he desired to
use for high purposes of statesmanship, and his instrument broke in his
hands. He was too wise to suppose that a Roman mob, fed by bounties
from the treasury, could permanently govern the world. He had schemes
for scattering Roman colonies, with the Roman franchise, at various
points of the Empire. Carthage was to be one of them. He thought of
abolishing the distinction between Romans and Italians, and
enfranchising the entire peninsula. These measures were good in
themselves--essential, indeed, if the Roman conquests were to form a
compact and permanent dominion. But the object was not attainable on
the road on which Gracchus had entered. The vagabond part of the
constituency was well contented with what it had obtained--a life in
the city, supported at the public expense, with politics and games for
its amusements. It had not the least inclination to be drafted off into
settlements in Spain or Africa, where there would be work instead of
pleasant idleness. Carthage was still a name of terror. To restore
Carthage was no better than treason. Still less had the Roman citizens
an inclination to share their privileges with Samnites and Etruscans,
and see the value of their votes watered down. Political storms are
always cyclones. The gale from the east to-day is a gale from the west
to-morrow. Who and what were the Gracchi, then?--the sweet voices began
to ask--ambitious intriguers, aiming at dictatorship or perhaps the
crown. The aristocracy were right after all; a few things had gone
wrong, but these had been amended. The Scipios and Metelli had
conquered the world: the Scipios and Metelli were alone fit to govern
it. Thus when the election time came round, the party of reform was
reduced to a minority of irreconcilable radicals who were easily
disposed of. Again, as ten years before, the noble lords armed their
followers. Riots broke out and extended day after day. Caius Gracchus
was at last killed, as his brother had been, and under cover of the
disturbance three thousand of his friends were killed along with him.
The power being again securely in their hands, the Senate proceeded at
their leisure, and the surviving patriots who were in any way notorious
or dangerous were hunted down in legal manner and put to death or
banished.