considered it, and they at last elected Scipio consul B.C. 134, and sent
him to Spain. He took Numantia after a siege of fifteen months, and
totally destroyed it, B.C. 133, the same year in which his
brother-in-law Tiberius Gracchus lost his life. (Velleius Paterc. ii.
4.) Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, served under Scipio at
Numantia, and also Jugurtha, afterwards king of the Numidians, and Caius
Marius, the conqueror of Jugurtha.
[44] Plutarch's account of the Roman public land is brief and not
satisfactory. A clearer statement, which differs from Plutarch's in some
respects, is given by Appian. (_Civil Wars_, i. 7, &c.) The Roman
territory (Romanus Ager) was originally confined to a small circuit, as
we see from the history of the early wars of Rome. Even Aricia (La
Riccia) about fifteen miles south-east of Rome, was a city of the Latin
confederation in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus. (Liv. 1, c. 50.) The
Romans extended their territory by conquest, and they thus acquired
large tracts of land in Italy, which were made the property of the state
under the name of Ager Publicus. This public land was enjoyed originally
by the patricians, and perhaps by them only, on payment of a certain
rent to the treasury (Ærarium). The rents of the public land were a
large part of the public income, and intended to defray a portion of the
public expenditure. The plebs soon began to lay claim to a share in
these lands, and a division of some tracts was made among the plebeians
in the reign of Servius Tullius. The lands divided among the plebeians
were given to them in ownership. The tracts of public land which were
enjoyed by the patricians on the terms above mentioned, were considered,
as they, in fact, were, public property; and the interest of the
patricians in such lands was called a possession (possessio). Those who
enjoyed the public land as a possessio were said to possess it
(possidere), and they were called possessores, a term which often occurs
in the first six books of Livius, and which Plutarch has attempted to
translate by a Greek word ([Greek: ktêmatikoi]). It is likely enough
that the patricians abused their right to the use of the land by not
always paying the rent; as we may collect from the passages in Dionysius
(_Antiq. Rom._ viii. 70, 73, ix. 51, x. 36). Their enjoyment of
extensive tracts also prevented the public land from being distributed
among the plebeians to the extent that they wished. The disputes between
the two orders in the state, the aristocracy or nobles and the
plebeians, or, as Livius generally calls them, the patres and the plebs;
(the padri and the plebe of Machiavelli, _Discorsi_, &c.), about the
public land, commenced with the agitation of Spurius Cassius, B.C. 486,
the history of which is given by Livius in his Second Book (c. 41). The
contest was continued at intervals to B.C. 366, when a law was passed
which is commonly called one of the Licinian Rogations, which forbade
any man to have a possession in the public lands to the amount of more
than 500 jugera. This is the law to which Plutarch alludes.
The extent and difficulty of the subject of the public land makes it
impossible to examine it fully in a note. I propose to treat of it at
length in an appendix in a future volume.
[45] The words in Plutarch literally signify "barbarian prisons," but I
have used the word ergastula, which was the Roman name, though it is a
word of Greek origin, and signifies "working-places." The ergastula were
places generally under ground and lighted from above: they were used
both as places to work in and as lodging-places for slaves who
cultivated the fields in chains. (Plinius, _N.H._ 18, c. 3; Florus, iii.
19.) They were also places of punishment for refractory slaves. The
object of these places of confinement was also to prevent slaves from
running away, and rising in insurrection. The slaves were placed at
night in separate cells to prevent all communication between them. When
the slaves broke out in rebellion in Sicily under Eunus, who is
mentioned by Plutarch (Sulla, c. 36), the ergastula were broken open,
and a servile army of above sixty thousand men was raised. The Roman
master had full power over his slave, who was merely viewed as an
animal; and these ergastula, being in the country and out of sight,
would give a cruel master full opportunity of exercising his tyranny.
They were abolished by the Emperor Hadrian (Spartianus, _Hadrianus_,
18).
[46] C. Lælius, the father, was an intimate friend of Scipio Africanus
the Elder. C. Lælius, the son, the Wise or the Prudent, was also an
intimate friend of the younger Africanus. Cicero's treatise on
Friendship is entitled Lælius in honour of Lælius the Prudent.
[47] Tiberius Gracchus was elected Tribune B.C. 133, and he lost his
life the same year.
[48] Cicero (_Brutus_, c. 27) calls the Greek Diophanes a teacher of
Tiberius Gracchus. Blossius is mentioned by Cicero (_Lælius_, c. 11) as
one of those who urged Tiberius to his measures of reform. Antipater of
Tarsus was a Stoic. The two sons of Cornelia had a learned education and
were acquainted with the language and philosophy of the Greeks, and it
is probable that the moral and political speculations with which they
thus became familiar, and their associating with Greeks, had
considerable influence on their political opinions. Tiberius Gracchus
the father was also well enough acquainted with Greek to speak the
language. His oration to the Rhodians was spoken in Greek.
[49] It does not seem certain what Postumius is intended. Sp. Postumius
Albinus Magnus was consul B.C. 148, and is supposed by Meyer (_Orat. Rom.
Fragmenta_, 197) to be the orator alluded to by Cicero (_Brutus_, 25).
But this Postumius was too old to be a rival of Gracchus. Another of the
same name was consul B.C. 110, and conducted the war against Jugurtha
unsuccessfully; but he was perhaps too young to be a rival of Gracchus.
(Cicero, _Brutus_, 34.)
[50] This was P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus Dives, the son of P. Mucius
Scævola, and the adopted son of P. Licinius Crassus Dives, as appears
from Cicero (_Academ._ 2, c. 5), who mentions him with his brother P.
Scævola as one of the advisers of Tiberius Gracchus in his legislation.
Crassus was consul with L. Valerius Flaccus B.C. 131. He was a soldier,
a lawyer, and an orator. He lost his life in the war against Aristonikus
in the Roman province of Asia B.C. 131. It is remarked that he was the
first pontifex maximus who went beyond the limits of Italy, for he was
consul and pontifex maximus when he went to carry on the war against
Aristonikus. (Livius, _Epitome_, 59.) The pontifex maximus, as the head
of religion, had important duties which required his presence at Rome.
[51] The illustrious family of the Scævolæ produced many orators and
jurists. This Scævola was P. Mucius Scævola, the brother of P. Licinius
Crassus Mucianus. He was consul B.C. 133, the year in which Tiberius
Gracchus attempted his reform. He attained the dignity of pontifex
maximus in B.C. 131 on his brother's death. Scævola was probably a timid
man. Cicero states that his brother openly favoured the measures of
Tiberius; and Scævola was suspected of doing so. After the death of
Tiberius he approved of the conduct of Scipio Nasica, who was the active
mover in this affair, and assisted in drawing up several decrees of the
Senate in justification of the measure and even in commendation of it.
(Cicero _Pro Domo_, c. 34; _Pro Plancio_, 36.) He was a great orator,
but his chief merit was as a jurist. He was the father of a son still
more distinguished as a jurist, Quintus Mucius Scævola, who also became
pontifex maximus, and was one of the teachers of Cicero. He is
considered to be one of those who laid the foundations of Roman law and
formed it into a science (_Dig._ 1, tit. 2, s. 2). Quintus Mucius
Scævola, commonly called the augur, also a distinguished jurist, was a
cousin of P. Mucius Scævola, the pontifex, and a teacher of Cicero
before Cicero became a hearer of the pontifex.
[52] The eloquence of Tiberius Gracchus is commemorated by Cicero
(_Brutus_, c. 27), who had read his orations. He describes them as not
sufficiently ornate in expression, but as acute and full of judgment.
The specimens of the orations of Tiberius (c. 9. 15) and those in Appian
(_Civil Wars_, 9. 15) fully bear out the opinion of Cicero as to his
acuteness. Some German writers assert that these speeches in Plutarch
are either fabricated by him or taken from other writers; but assertions
like these, which are not founded on evidence, are good for nothing.
Plutarch gives the speeches as genuine: at least he believes them to be
so, and therefore he did not fabricate them. And it is not likely that
any body else did. These two fragments (c. 9. 15) bear no resemblance to
the style of most writers who have fabricated speeches. They are in a
genuine Roman style. If any man could fabricate them, it was Livius, and
Plutarch may have taken them from him.
[53] The same expression occurs in Horace (1 _Carm._ 1), which there
also applies to the Romans, and not to the gods, as some suppose.
[54] Marcus Octavius, who was one of the tribuni plebis B.C. 133, was a
descendant of Cneius Octavius, quæstor B.C. 230. Caius Octavius, better
known as Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus and as the Emperor Augustus, was
a descendant of Caius the second son of Cneius. Cicero, whose opinion
about the Gracchi changed with the changed circumstances of his own
life, commends the opposition of Marcus Octavius to the measures of
Gracchus. (_Brutus_, c. 25.) He also says that Octavius was a good
speaker.
The institution of the tribuni plebis is one of the most important
events in the history of Rome, and the struggle between the plebeians
headed by their tribunes, and the nobility, is the development of the
constitutional history of Rome. Though there were tribunes in the kingly
period, the establishment of the tribuni plebis as the guardians of the
plebs is properly referred to the year B.C. 494, when the plebs seceded
to the Mons Sacer or the Sacred Mount. On this occasion the patricians
consented to the election of two tribunes from the plebs. (Livius, 2, c.
33: compare Livius, 2, 56. 58.) The number was afterwards increased to
ten, and this number continued unaltered. Only a plebeian could be
elected tribune. The persons of the tribunes were declared to be sacred
(sacrosancti). Their powers were originally limited, as above stated, to
the protection of the rights of the plebs and of the individuals of the
plebeian body against the oppression of the patrician magistrates. It is
not possible within the compass of a note to trace the history of the
gradual increase of the tribunitian power (tribunitia potestas): such a
subject is a large chapter in the history of Rome. Incidental notices
often appear in Plutarch's Lives, which will help a reader to form a
general notion of the nature of the magistracy, and the effect which it
had on the development of the Roman constitution. The article Tribuni in
Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities gives an outline of
the functions of the tribuni plebis.
Very soon after the institution of the tribunate, the nobles learned the
art of destroying the power of the college of tribunes by gaining over
one or more of the members; for, as Plutarch states, the opposition
(intercessio) of a single tribune rendered the rest of his colleagues
powerless.
[55] As this is the first time that I have used this word, it requires
explanation. The origin of the Roman state is a matter involved in great
obscurity; but its history after the expulsion of the kings B.C. 509 is
the history of a struggle between a class of nobles, an aristocracy, and
the people. The old nobility of Rome were the patricians, whom Livius
calls indifferently patres (father) and patricii. In his early History
patres and plebs are opposed to one another, as we should now oppose the
terms nobles or aristocracy, and commonalty or people; not that nobles
and aristocracy are among us exactly equivalent, but in the history of
Rome there is no distinction between them. Livius frequently uses the
term patres and plebs as comprehending all the Roman citizens (ii. 33).
The word populus was originally and properly not the people in our
sense; it signified the superior and privileged class and was equivalent
to patricians. The plebs were originally not a part of the populus. In
later times the word populus was often used loosely to express generally
the Roman people, and the style and title of the Roman state was Senatus
Populusque Romanus--The Senate and the Roman populus, which term populus
in the later republic certainly included the plebs, though the plebs is
still spoken of as a class. As the plebeians gradually obtained access
to the higher honours of the state and to the consulship by a law of
Licinius Stolo B.C. 366, a new class of nobles was formed out of those
persons who had enjoyed those honours and out of their descendants. This
class was called nobiles by the Romans; the word nobilitas denoted the
rank or title of the class, but it was also used like our word nobility
to express the body of nobiles. Livius uses this term even in the
earlier books of his History, but perhaps not with strict correctness,
for in some cases at least he makes the term nobility equivalent to the
patricians. He wrote in the reign of Augustus, and he has not always
applied his terms in the earlier periods with perfect accuracy. Still we
may trace the meaning of political terms in the Roman writers with great
clearness, for no nation ever stuck more closely to old forms and
expressions, and there is a wonderful precision in the use of political
terms by Roman writers of all ages and of all classes. The name
patricians still existed after the term nobilis was introduced: a noble
might be either a patrician or a plebeian, but the distinction was well
understood between an old patrician family and a plebeian family,
however distinguished the plebeian family might become. Under the
Emperors it was not uncommon for them to promote a man to the rank of
patrician for eminent services, which under the monarchy was equivalent
to the conferring of a title of dignity in modern times, and nothing
more. (Tacit. _Ann._ xi. 25.)
In Cicero we find the aristocratical order often spoken of as the
optimates (the class of the best), a term which corresponds to the Greek
aristi ([Greek: aristoi]), whence we have the word aristocracy, which,
however, the early Greek writers, at least, only used to express a form
of government and not a class of persons. Cicero on one occasion (_Pro
P. Sestio_, c. 45) attempts to give to the word optimates a much wider
signification; to make it comprehend all good and honest people: but
this is a mere piece of rhetoric. When a poor plebeian heard the
optimates spoken of, he never imagined that it was intended to place him
among them, were he as honest as the best man among the optimates.
Cicero also says the populares were those who merely spoke and acted to
please the multitude; which shows that populus must now have changed its
meaning: the optimates were those who wished to act so as to get the
approbation of all honest men.
Plutarch's perception of the early periods of Roman history was perhaps
not strictly exact; but he comprehended very clearly the state of the
parties in the age of the Gracchi. On the one side were the nobles and
the rich, some of whom were noble and some were not; on the other side
were the people, the mass, the poor. The struggle was now between rich
and poor, and the rich often became the leaders of the poor for the
purpose of political distinction and influence, and hence the name
populares. Probably few states have ever presented the spectacle of the
striking contrast between wealth and poverty which the Roman state
exhibited from the time of the Gracchi; a class of rich, rich by
hereditary wealth and by all the modes of acquiring wealth which the
possession of office and the farming of the public revenues offered to
them; a class of poor who were born poor, who had little industry and
few means of exercising it. To this we must add, that though there were
many cultivators in the country who might enjoy a moderate subsistence
from their small estates, there was a city crowded with poor who had
votes, and by their union and numbers mainly determined the elections
and the acceptance or rejection of legislative measures. Rome, in fact,
was the centre of all political agitation, and the result of a
revolution in the city generally determined the dispute between two
rival factions. We have still to take into the account a very numerous
class of slaves. It is probable that in the earlier periods of Roman
history the slaves were comparatively few; in the later republic they
became very numerous. They formed a large part of the wealth of the
rich, and they were always a dangerous body to the state. The effect of
employing slaves generally in agriculture and other occupations was, as
it always must be, unfavourable to industry among free men. Slaves,
also, were often manumitted, and though the son of a manumitted slave
was in all respects on the same footing as a complete Roman citizen, if
his father was made such by the act of manumission, yet persons of this
condition, and especially those who had been liberated from slavery,
were looked upon as a somewhat inferior class. Their connection with the
powerful families to which they had belonged, also gave such families
great influence in all elections; and as we see in various instances,
the class of libertini, manumitted slaves, was viewed as a dangerous
body in the state. The equites at Rome can scarcely be called a middle
class: they were generally rich and the farmers of the revenues, under
the name of publicani. They were often opposed to the senate, but it was
an opposition of pure interest, and their wealth made them rather the
partisans of the aristocratical than of the popular body. Such were the
political elements with which Tiberius Gracchus had to deal, when he
attempted a reform which perhaps the times did not render practicable,
and for which he certainly did not possess the courage or the judgment
or the inflexible resolution which were necessary to secure success. The
word in Plutarch which I have here translated nobles is [Greek:
dynatoi], the powerful. In other places he calls them the rich ([Greek:
plousioi]), the possessors [of public land] ([Greek: ktêmatikoi]), the
aristocratical body ([Greek: aristokratikoi]); and perhaps other terms.
He calls the plebs, or people as opposed to this class, by various
names, of which [Greek: dêmos] is the most common: he also calls them
the multitude ([Greek: plêthos]), the many ([Greek: hoi polloi]), and
other like names.
It is impossible to attain perfect precision in the use of political
terms in a translation of Plutarch; and in order to be critically exact,
it would be necessary to load these notes continually with remarks. But
this critical exactness is not required here: the opposition of the two
orders in the state is intelligible to everybody. The contests in Rome
from the time of the Gracchi to the establishment of the monarchy under
Augustus, were contests in which the rich and the powerful were
constantly struggling among themselves for political supremacy; there
was an acknowledged aristocratical and an acknowledged popular party.
But the leaders of both parties, with perhaps some few exceptions, were
mainly bent on personal aggrandisement. The aristocratical class had a
clearer object than the leaders of the popular party: they wished to
maintain the power of their order and that of the senate, which was the
administering body. The leaders of the popular party could have no clear
object in view except the destruction of the power of the senate: the
notion of giving the people more power than they possessed would have
been an absurdity. Accordingly the depression of the aristocratical body
had for a necessary consequence the elevation of an individual to power,
as in the case of Cæsar the dictator. Sulla, it is true, was an
aristocrat, and he destroyed so far as he could the popular party; but
he made himself dictator, and to the last day of his life he ruled all
parties with a rod of iron.
The existence of a numerous and needy class who participated in
political power without having any property which should be a guarantee
for their honest use of it, was the stuff out of which grew the
revolutions of Rome. There was a crowded city population, clamorous, for
cheap bread, for grants of land, for public shows and amusements, averse
to labour, constantly called into political activity by the annual
elections, always ready to sell their votes to the best bidders; and a
class always ready to use this rabble as a tool for their political and
personal aggrandisement. Machiavelli observes (_Istor. Fiorent._ iii.)
that the natural enmity which exists between the men of the popular
party and the nobles (gli uomini Populari e i Nobili), proceeds from the
wish of the nobles to command and of the others not to obey, and that
these are the causes of all the evils that appear in states. He adds
(iv.) that states, and especially those that are not well constituted,
which are administered under the name of republics, often change their
government and condition, but the fluctuation is not between liberty and
servitude, as many suppose, but between servitude and licence. It is
only the name of liberty which is in the mouths of the ministers of
licence who are the popular leaders, and the ministers of servitude who
are the nobles; both of them wish to be subject neither to the laws nor
to men. These remarks, which are peculiarly applicable to Florence and
the so-called republics of Italy of that time, apply equally to the
Roman state. There are governments, however, to which the name republic
can be properly applied, and that of Great Britain is one, which owing
to the possession of certain elements have a more stable character.
Still the general character of a popular and of an aristocratical party
is correctly sketched by Machiavelli.
[56] Plutarch, who is fond of allusions to the Greek poets, here alludes
to a passage in the Bacchæ of Euripides, l. 387:
"for e'en in Bacchus' orgies
She who is chaste will never be corrupted."
See Bacchæ, ed. Elmsley, l. 317, 834, and the notes.
[57] The temple of Saturn was now used, among other purposes, as the
treasury of the state, the Ærarium.
[58] A dolo is described by Hesychius, v. [Greek: Dolônes], in one
sense, as a dagger contained in a wooden case, a kind of sword-stick.
(See Facciolati, _Lexicon_.) Kaltwasser describes it as a walking-stick
containing a dagger, and translates the passage, "he provided himself
with a robbers' dagger, without making any secret of it." I think that
he wore it concealed, but made no secret of it, which agrees better with
the whole context; and Amyot has translated it so.