EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY
* * * * *
THE GRACCHI MARIUS AND SULLA
BY
A.H. BEESLEY
WITH MAPS
1921
PREFACE
It would be scarcely possible for anyone writing on the period
embraced in this volume, to perform his task adequately without making
himself familiar with Mr. Long's 'History of the Decline of the Roman
Republic' and Mommsen's 'History of Rome.' To do over again (as though
the work had never been attempted) what has been done once for all
accurately and well, would be mere prudery of punctiliousness. But
while I acknowledge my debt of gratitude to both these eminent
historians, I must add that for the whole period I have carefully
examined the original authorities, often coming to conclusions widely
differing from those of Mr. Long. And I venture to hope that from
the advantage I have had in being able to compare the works of two
writers, one of whom has well-nigh exhausted the theories as the
other has the facts of the subject, I have succeeded in giving a more
consistent and faithful account of the leaders and legislation of the
revolutionary era than has hitherto been written. Certainly there
could be no more instructive commentary on either history than the
study of the other, for each supplements the other and emphasizes
its defects. If Mommsen at times pushes conjecture to the verge of
invention, as in his account of the junction of the Helvetii and
Cimbri, Mr. Long, in his dogged determination never to swerve from
facts to inference, falls into the opposite extreme, resorting to
somewhat Cyclopean architecture in his detestation of stucco. But
my admiration for his history is but slightly qualified by such
considerations, and to any student who may be stimulated by the
volumes of this series to acquire what would virtually amount to an
acquaintance first-hand with the narratives of ancient writers, I
would say 'Read Mr. Long's history.' To do so is to learn not only
knowledge but a lesson in historical study generally. For the writings
of a man with whom style is not the first object are as refreshing as
his scorn for romancing history is wholesome, and the grave irony with
which he records its slips amusing.
A.H.B.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION.
Previous history of the Roman orders--The Ager Publicus--Previous
attempts at agrarian legislation--Roman slavery--The first Slave
War--The Nobiles, Optimates, Populares, Equites--Classification of the
component parts of the Roman State--State of the transmarine provinces
CHAPTER II.
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.
Scipio Aemilianus--Tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus--His agrarian
proposals--Wisdom of them--Grievances of the possessors--Octavius
thwarts Gracchus--Conduct of Gracchus defended--His other intended
reforms--He stands again for the tribunate--His motives--His murder
CHAPTER III.
CAIUS GRACCHUS.
Blossius spared--The law of T. Gracchus carried out--Explanation
of Italian opposition to it--Attitude of Scipio Aemilianus--His
murder--Quaestorship of Caius Gracchus--The Alien Act of
Pennus--Flaccus proposes to give the Socii the franchise--Revolt and
extirpation of Fregellae--Tribunate of Caius Gracchus--Compared to
Tiberius--His aims--His Corn Law defended--His Lex Judiciaria--His law
concerning the taxation of Asia--His conciliation of the equites--His
colonies--He proposes to give the franchise to the Italians--Other
projects--Machinations of the nobles against him--M. Livius Drusus
outbids him--Stands again for the tribunate, but is rejected--His
murder--Some of his laws remain in force--The Maria Lex--Reactionary
legislation of the Senate--The Lex Thoria--All offices confined to a
close circle
CHAPTER IV.
THE JUGURTHINE WAR.
Legacy of Attalus--Aristonicus usurps his kingdom--Settlement of
Asia--Jugurtha murders Hiempsal and attacks Adherbal--His intrigues
at Rome and the infamy of M. Aemilius Scaurus and the other Roman
nobles--Three commissions bribed by Jugurtha--Adherbal murdered--Rome
declares war and Jugurtha bribes the Roman generals, Bestia and
Scaurus--Memmius denounces them at Rome--Jugurtha summoned to Rome,
where he murders Massiva--He defeats Aulus Albinos--Metellus sent
against him Jugurtha defeated on the Muthul--Keeps up a guerilla
warfare--Marius stands for the consulship, and succeeds
Metellus--Bocchus betrays Jugurtha to Sulla--Settlement of Numidia
CHAPTER V.
THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.
Recommencement of the Social struggle at Rome--Marius the popular
hero--Incessant frontier-warfare of the Romans--The Cimbri defeat
Carbo and Silanus--Caepio and 'The Gold of Tolosa'--The Cimbri defeat
Scaurus and Caepio--Marius elected consul--The Cimbri march towards
Spain--Their nationality--Their plan of operations--Plan of
Marius--Battle of Aquae Sextiae--Battle of Vercellae
CHAPTER VI.
THE ROMAN ARMY.
Second Slave War--Aquillius ends it--Changes in the Roman
army--Uniform equipment of the legionary--Mariani muli--The cohort
the tactical unit--The officers--Numbers of the legion--The pay--The
praetorian cohort--Dislike to service--The army becomes professional
CHAPTER VII.
SATURNINUS AND DRUSUS.
Saturninus takes up the Gracchan policy, in league with Glaucia and
Marius--The Lex Servilia meant to relieve the provincials, conciliate
the equites, and throw open the judicia to all citizens--Agrarian law
of Saturninus--His laws about grain and treason--Murder of Memmius,
Glaucia's rival--Saturninus is attacked and deserted by Marius--The
Lex Licinia Minucia heralds the Social War--Drusus attempts
reform--Obliged to tread in the steps of the Gracchi--His proposals
with regard to the Italians, the coinage, corn, colonies and the
equites--Opposed by Philippus and murdered
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SOCIAL WAR.
Interests of Italian capitalists and small farmers opposed--The Social
War breaks out at Asculum--The insurgents choose Corfinium as their
capital--In the first year they gain everywhere--Then the Lex Julia is
passed and in the second year they lose everywhere--The star of Sulla
rises, that of Marius declines--The Lex Plautia Papiria--First year
of the war--The confederates defeat Perperna, Crassus, Caesar,
Lupus, Caepio, and take town after town--The Umbrians and Etruscans
Revolt--Second year--Pompeius triumphs in the north, Cosconius in
the south-east, Sulla in the south-west--Revolution at Rome--The
confederates courted by both parties--The rebellion smoulders on till
finally quenched by Sulla after the Mithridatic War
CHAPTER IX.
SULPICIUS.
Financial crisis at Rome--Sulpicius Rufus attempts to reform the
government, and complete the enfranchisement of the Italians--His laws
forcibly carried by the aid of Marius--Sulla driven from Rome flies to
the army at Nola, and marches at their head against Marius--Sulpicius
slain--Marius outlawed--Sulla leaves Italy after reorganizing the
Senate and the comitia
CHAPTER X.
MARIUS AND CINNA.
Flight of Marius--His romantic adventures at Circeii, Minturnae,
Carthage--Cinna takes up the Italian cause--Driven from Rome by
Octavius, he flies to the army in Campania and marches on Rome--Marius
lands in Etruria--Octavius summons Pompeius from Etruria and
their armies surround the city--Marius and Cinna enter Rome--The
proscriptions--Seventh consulship and death of Marius--Cinna supreme
CHAPTER XI.
THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR.
Sertorius in Spain--Cyrene bequeathed to Rome--Previous history of
Mithridates--His submission to Aquillius--Aquillius forces on a
war--He is defeated and killed by Mithridates--Massacre of Romans in
Asia--Mithridates repulsed at Rhodes
CHAPTER XII.
SULLA IN GREECE AND ASIA.
Aristion induces Athens to revolt--Sulla lands in Epirus, and besieges
Athens and the Piraeus--His difficulties--He takes Athens and the
Piraeus, and defeats Archelaus at Chaeroneia and Orchomenus--Terms
offered to Mithridates--Tyranny of the latter--Flaccus comes to Asia
and is murdered by Fimbria, who is soon afterwards put to death by
Sulla
CHAPTER XIII.
SULLA IN ITALY.
Sulla lands at Brundisium and is joined by numerous adherents--Battle
of Mount Tifata--Sertorius goes to Spain--Sulla in 83 is master of
Picenum, Apulia, and Campania--Battle of Sacriportus--Sulla blockades
young Marius in Praeneste--Indecisive war in Picenum between Carbo
and Metellus--Repeated attempts to relieve Praeneste--Carbo flies
to Africa--His lieutenants threaten Rome--Sulla comes to the rescue
--Desperate attempt to take the city by Pontius--Battle of the
Colline Gate--Sulla's danger--Death of Carbo, of Domitius
Ahenobarbus--Exploits of Pompeius in Sicily and Africa--His
vanity--Murena provokes the second Mithridatic War--Sertorius in
Spain--His successes and ascendency over the natives
CHAPTER XIV.
PERSONAL RULE AND DEATH OF SULLA.
The Sullan proscriptions--Sulla and Caesar--The Cornelii--Sulla's
horrible character--His death and splendid obsequies
CHAPTER XV.
SULLA'S REACTIONARY MEASURES.
The Leges Corneliae--Sulla remodels the Senate, the quaestorship,
the censorship, the tribunate, the comitia, the consulship, the
praetorship, the augurate and pontificate, the judicia--Minor laws
attributed to him--Effects of his legislation the best justification
of the Gracchi
LIST OF PHRASES
INDEX
MAPS.
MARCH OF SULLA AND ARCHELAUS BEFORE CHAERONEIA
BATTLE OF CHAERONEIA
THE
GRACCHI, MARIUS AND SULLA.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION.
During the last half of the second century before Christ Rome was
undisputed mistress of the civilised world. A brilliant period of
foreign conquest had succeeded the 300 years in which she had overcome
her neighbours and made herself supreme in Italy. In 146 B.C. she had
given the death-blow to her greatest rival, Carthage, and had annexed
Greece. In 140 treachery had rid her of Viriathus, the stubborn
guerilla who defied her generals and defeated her armies in Spain.
In 133 the terrible fate of Numantia, and in 132 the merciless
suppression of the Sicilian slave-revolt, warned all foes of the
Republic that the sword, which the incompetence of many generals had
made seem duller than of old, was still keen to smite; and except
where some slave-bands were in desperate rebellion, and in Pergamus,
where a pretender disputed with Rome the legacy of Attalus, every land
along the shores of the Mediterranean was subject to or at the mercy
of a town not half as large as the London of to-day. Almost exactly a
century afterwards the Government under which this gigantic empire had
been consolidated was no more.
Foreign wars will have but secondary importance in the following
pages. [Sidenote: The history will not be one of military events.] The
interest of the narrative centres mainly in home politics; and though
the world did not cease to echo to the tramp of conquering legions,
and the victorious soldier became a more and more important factor in
the State, still military matters no longer, as in the Samnite and
Punic wars, absorb the attention, dwarfed as they are by the great
social struggle of which the metropolis was the arena. In treating of
the first half of those hundred years of revolution, which began
with the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus and ended with the battle of
Actium, it is mainly the fall of the Republican and the foreshadowing
of the Imperial system of government which have to be described.
[Sidenote: In order to understand the times of the Gracchi it is
necessary to understand the history of the orders at Rome.] But, in
order to understand rightly the events of those fifty years, some
survey, however brief, of the previous history of the Roman orders is
indispensable.
[Sidenote: The patres.] When the mists of legend clear away we see a
community which, if we do not take slaves into account, consisted
of two parts--the governing body, or patres, to whom alone the term
Populus Romanus strictly applied, and who constituted the Roman State,
and the governed class, or clientes, who were outside its pale. The
word patrician, more familiar to our ear than the substantive from
which it is formed, came to imply much more than its original meaning.
[Sidenote: The clients.] In its simplest and earliest sense it was
applied to a man who was sprung from a Roman marriage, who stood
towards his client on much the same footing which, in the mildest form
of slavery, a master occupies towards his slave. As the patronus was
to the libertus, when it became customary to liberate slaves, so in
some measure were the Fathers to their retainers, the Clients. That
the community was originally divided into these two sections is known.
What is not known is how, besides this primary division of patres and
clientes, there arose a second _political_ class in the State, namely
the plebs. The client as client had no political existence. [Sidenote:
The plebeians.] But as a plebeian he had. Whether the plebs was formed
of clients who had been released from their clientship, just as slaves
might be manumitted; or of foreigners, as soldiers, traders, or
artisans were admitted into the community; or partly of foreigners and
partly of clients, the latter being equalised by the patres with the
former in self-defence; and whether as a name it dated from or was
antecedent to the so-called Tullian organization is uncertain. But we
know that in one way or other a second political division in the State
arose and that the constitution, of which Servius Tullius was the
reputed author, made every freeman in Rome a citizen by giving him a
vote in the Comitia Centuriata. Yet though the plebeian was a citizen,
and as such acquired 'commercium,' or the right to hold and devise
property, it was only after a prolonged struggle that he achieved
political equality with the patres. [Sidenote: Gradual acquisition
by the plebs of political equality with the patres.] Step by step he
wrung from them the rights of intermarriage and of filling offices of
state; and the great engine by which this was brought about was the
tribunate, the historical importance of which dates from, even though
as a plebeian magistracy it may have existed before, the first
secession of the plebs in 494 B.C. [Sidenote: Character of the
tribunate.] The tribunate stood towards the freedom of the Roman
people in something of the same relation which the press of our time
occupies towards modern liberty: for its existence implied free
criticism of the executive, and out of free speech grew free action.
[Sidenote: The Roman government transformed from oligarchy into a
plutocracy.]
Side by side with those external events which made Rome mistress first
of her neighbours, then, of Italy, and lastly of the world, there went
on a succession of internal changes, which first transformed a pure
oligarchy into a plutocracy, and secondly overthrew this modified form
of oligarchy, and substituted Caesarism. With the earlier of these
changes we are concerned here but little. The political revolution was
over when the social revolution which we have to record began. But the
roots of the social revolution were of deep growth, and were in fact
sometimes identical with those of the political revolution. [Sidenote:
Parallel between Roman and English history.] Englishmen can understand
such an intermixture the more readily from the analogies, more or less
close, which their own history supplies. They have had a monarchy.
They have been ruled by an oligarchy, which has first confronted and
then coalesced with the moneyed class, and the united orders have been
forced to yield theoretical equality to almost the entire nation,
while still retaining real authority in their own hands. They have
seen a middle class coquetting with a lower class in order to force
an upper class to share with it its privileges, and an upper class
resorting in its turn to the same alliance; and they may have noted
something more than a superficial resemblance between the tactics
of the patres and nobiles of Rome and our own magnates of birth and
commerce. Even now they are witnessing the displacement of political
by social questions, and, it is to be hoped, the successful solution
of problems which in the earlier stages of society have defied the
efforts of every statesman. Yet they know that, underlying all the
political struggles of their history, questions connected with
the rights and interests of rich and poor, capitalist and toiler,
land-owner and land-cultivator, have always been silently and
sometimes violently agitated. Political emancipation has enabled
social discontent to organize itself and find permanent utterance, and
we are to-day facing some of the demands to satisfy which the Gracchi
sacrificed their lives more than 2,000 years ago. [Sidenote: The
struggle between the orders chiefly agrarian.] With us indeed the
wages question is of more prominence than the land question, because
we are a manufacturing nation; but the principles at stake are much
the same. At Rome social agitation was generally agrarian, and the
first thing necessary towards understanding the Gracchan revolution is
to gain a clear conception of the history of the public land.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Ager Publicus.] The ground round a town like
Rome was originally cultivated by the inhabitants, some of whom, as
more food and clothing were required, would settle on the soil. From
them the ranks of the army were recruited; and, thus doubly oppressed
by military service and by the land tax, which had to be paid in coin,
the small husbandman was forced to borrow from some richer man in the
town. Hence arose usury, and a class of debtors; and the sum of debt
must have been increased as well as the number of the debtors by the
very means adopted to relieve it. [Sidenote: Fourfold way of dealing
with conquered territory.] When Rome conquered a town she confiscated
a portion of its territory, and disposed of it in one of four ways.
[Sidenote: Colonies.] 1. After expelling the owners, she sent some of
her own citizens to settle upon it. They did not cease to be Romans,
and, being in historical times taken almost exclusively from the
plebs, must often have been but poorly furnished with the capital
necessary for cultivating the ground. [Sidenote: Sale.] 2. She sold
it; and, as with us, when a field is sold, a plan is made of its
dimensions and boundaries, so plans of the land thus sold were made on
tablets of bronze, and kept by the State. [Sidenote: Occupation.] 3.
She allowed private persons to 'occupy' it on payment of 'vectigal,'
or a portion of the produce; and, though not surrendering the title to
the land, permitted the possessors to use it as their private property
for purchase, sale, and succession. [Sidenote: Commons.] 4. A portion
was kept as common pasture land for those to whom the land had been
given or sold, or by whom it was occupied and those who used it paid
'scriptura,' or a tax of so much per head on the beasts, for whose
grazing they sent in a return. This irregular system was fruitful in
evil. It suited the patres with whom it originated, for they were
for a time the sole gainers by it. Without money it must have been
hopeless to occupy tracts distant from Rome. The poor man who did so
would either involve himself in debt, or be at the mercy of his richer
neighbours, whose flocks would overrun his fields, or who might oust
him altogether from them by force, and even seize him himself and
enroll him as a slave. The rich man, on the other hand, could use
such land for pasture, and leave the care of his flocks and herds
to clients and slaves. [Sidenote: This irregular system the germ of
latifundia.] So originated those 'latifundia,' or large farms, which
greatly contributed to the ruin of Rome and Italy. The tilled land
grew less and with it dwindled the free population and the recruiting
field for the army. Gangs of slaves became more numerous, and were
treated with increased brutality; and as men who do not work for their
own money are more profuse in spending it than those who do, the
extravagance of the Roman possessors helped to swell the tide of
luxury, which rose steadily with foreign conquest, and to create in
the capital a class free in name indeed, but more degraded, if less
miserable, than the very slaves, who were treated like beasts through
Italy. It is not certain whether anyone except a patrician could claim
'occupation' as a right; but, as the possessors could in any case
sell the land to plebeians, it fell into the hands of rich men,
to whichever class they belonged, both at Rome, and in the Roman
colonies, and the Municipia; and as it was never really their
property--'dominium'--but the property of the State, it was a constant
source of envy and discontent among the poor.
[Sidenote: Why complaints about the Public Land became louder at the
close of the second century B.C.] As long as fresh assignations of
land and the plantations of colonies went on, this discontent could
be kept within bounds. But for a quarter of a century preceding our
period scarcely any fresh acquisitions of land had been made in Italy,
and, with no hope of new allotments from the territory of their
neighbours, the people began to clamour for the restitution of their
own. [Sidenote: Previous agrarian legislation. Spurius Cassius.] The
first attempt to wrest public land from possessors had been made long
before this by Spurius Cassius; and he had paid for his daring with
his life. [Sidenote: The Licinian Law.] More than a century later the
Licinian law forbade anyone to hold above 500 'jugera' of public land,
for which, moreover, a tenth of the arable and a fifth of the grazing
produce was to be paid to the State. The framers of the law are said
to have hoped that possessors of more than this amount would shrink
from making on oath a false return of the land which they occupied,
and that, as they would be liable to penalties for exceeding the
prescribed maximum, all land beyond the maximum would be sold at a
nominal price (if this interpretation of the [Greek: kat' oligon] of
Appian may be hazarded) to the poor. It is probable that they did not
quite know what they were aiming at, and certain that they did not
foresee the effects of their measure. In a confused way the law
may have been meant to comprise sumptuary, political, and agrarian
objects. It forbade anyone to keep more than a hundred large or five
hundred small beasts on the common pasture-land, and stipulated for
the employment of a certain proportion of free labour. The free
labourers were to give information of the crops produced, so that
the fifths and tenths might be duly paid; and it may have been
the breakdown of such an impossible institution which led to the
establishment of the 'publicani.' [Sidenote: Composite nature of the
Licinian law.] Nothing, indeed, is more likely than that Licinius and
Sextius should have attempted to remedy by one measure the specific
grievance of the poor plebeians, the political disabilities of the
rich plebeians and the general deterioration of public morals; but,
though their motives may have been patriotic, such a measure could no
more cure the body politic than a man who has a broken limb, is blind,
and in a consumption can be made sound at every point by the heal-all
of a quack. Accordingly the Licinian law was soon, except in its
political provisions, a dead letter. Licinius was the first man
prosecuted for its violation, and the economical desire of the nation
became intensified. [Sidenote: The Flaminian law.] In 232 B.C.
Flaminius carried a law for the distribution of land taken from the
Senones among the plebs. Though the law turned out no possessors, it
was opposed by the Senate and nobles. Nor is this surprising, for any
law distributing land was both actually and as a precedent a blow to
the interests of the class which practised occupation. What is at
first sight surprising is that small parcels of land, such as must
have been assigned in these distributions, should have been so
coveted. [Sidenote: Why small portions of land were so coveted.] The
explanation is probably fourfold. Those who clamoured for them were
wretched enough to clutch at any change; or did not realise to
themselves the dangers and drawbacks of what they desired; or intended
at once to sell their land to some richer neighbour; or, lastly,
longed to keep a slave or two, just as the primary object of the 'mean
white' in America used to be to keep his negro. [Sidenote: Failure
of previous legislation.] On the whole, it is clear that legislation
previous to this period had not diminished agrarian grievances, and it
is clear also why these grievances were so sorely felt. The general
tendency at Rome and throughout Italy was towards a division of
society into two classes--the very rich and the very poor, a tendency
which increased so fast that not many years later it was said that out
of some 400,000 men at Rome only 2,000 could, in spite of the city
being notoriously the centre to which the world's wealth gravitated,
be called really rich men. To any patriot the progressive extinction
of small land-owners must have seemed piteous in itself and menacing
to the life of the State. On the other hand, the poor had always one
glaring act of robbery to cast in the teeth of the rich. A sanguine
tribune might hope permanently to check a growing evil by fresh
supplies of free labour. His poor partisan again had a direct
pecuniary interest in getting the land. Selfish and philanthropic
motives therefore went hand in hand, and in advocating the
distribution of land a statesman would be sure of enlisting
the sympathies of needy Italians, even more than those of the
better-provided-for poor of Rome.
[Sidenote: Roman slavery.] Incidental mention has been made of the
condition of the slaves in Italy. It was the sight of the slave-gangs
which partly at least roused Tiberius Gracchus to action, and some
remarks on Roman slavery follow naturally an enquiry into the nature
of the public land. The most terrible characteristic of slavery is
that it blights not only the unhappy slaves themselves, but their
owners and the land where they live. It is an absolutely unmitigated
evil. As Roman conquests multiplied and luxury increased, enormous
fortunes became more common, and the demand for slaves increased also.
Ten thousand are said to have been landed and sold at Delos in one
day. What proportion the slave population of Italy bore to the free at
the time of the Gracchi we cannot say. It has been placed as low as 4
per cent., but the probability is that it was far greater. [Sidenote:
Slave labour universally employed.] In trades, mining, grazing,
levying of revenue, and every field of speculation, slave-labour
was universally employed. If it is certain that even unenfranchised
Italians, however poor, could be made to serve in the Roman army, it
was a proprietor's direct interest from that point of view to employ
slaves, of whose services he could not be deprived.
[Sidenote: Whence the slaves came. Their treatment.] A vast impetus
had been given to the slave-trade at the time of the conquest of
Macedonia, about thirty-five years before our period. The
great slave-producing countries were those bordering on the
Mediterranean--Africa, Asia, Spain, &c. An organized system of
man-hunting supplied the Roman markets, and slave-dealers were part of
the ordinary retinue of a Roman army. When a batch of slaves reached
its destination they were kept in a pen till bought. Those bought
for domestic service would no doubt be best off, and the cunning,
mischievous rogue, the ally of the young against the old master of
whom we read in Roman comedy, if he does not come up to our ideal
of what a man should be, does not seem to have been physically very
wretched. Even here, however, we see how degraded a thing a slave was,
and the frequent threats of torture prove how utterly he was at the
mercy of a cruel master's caprice. We know, too, that when a master
was arraigned on a criminal charge, the first thing done to prove his
guilt was to torture his slaves. But just as in America the popular
figure of the oily, lazy, jocular negro, brimming over with grotesque
good-humour and screening himself in the weakness of an indulgent
master, merely served to brighten a picture of which the horrible
plantation system was the dark background; so at Rome no instances of
individual indulgence were a set-off against the monstrous barbarities
which in the end brought about their own punishment, and the ruin
of the Republic. [Sidenote: Dread inspired by the prospect of Roman
slavery.] Frequent stories attest the horrors of Roman slavery felt
by conquered nations. We read often of individuals, and sometimes of
whole towns, committing suicide sooner than fall into the conquerors'
hands. Sometimes slaves slew their dealers, sometimes one another. A
boy in Spain killed his three sisters and starved himself to avoid
slavery. Women killed their children with the same object. If, as it
is asserted, the plantation-system was not yet introduced into Italy,
such stories, and the desperate out-breaks, and almost incredibly
merciless suppression of slave revolts, prove that the condition of
the Roman slave was sufficiently miserable. [Sidenote: The horrors of
slavery culminated in Sicily.] But doubtless misery reached its climax
in Sicily, where that system was in full swing. Slaves not sold for
domestic service were there branded and often made to work in chains,
the strongest serving as shepherds. Badly fed and clothed, these
shepherds plundered whenever they found the chance. Such brigandage
was winked at, and sometimes positively encouraged, by the owners,
while the governors shrank from punishing the brigands for fear of
offending their masters. As the demand for slaves grew, slave-breeding
as well as slave-importation was practised. No doubt there were as
various theories as to the most profitable management of slaves then
as in America lately. Damophilus had the instincts of a Legree: a
Haley and a Cato would have held much the same sentiments as to the
rearing of infants. Some masters would breed and rear, and try to get
more work from the slave by kindness than harshness. Others would work
them off and buy afresh; and as this would be probably the cheapest
policy, no doubt it was the prevalent one. And what an appalling vista
of dumb suffering do such considerations open to us! Cold, hunger,
nakedness, torture, infamy, a foreign country, a strange climate, a
life so hard that it made the early death which was almost inevitable
a comparative blessing--such was the terrible lot of the Roman
slave. At last, almost simultaneously at various places in the Roman
dominions, he turned like a beast upon a brutal drover. [Sidenote:
Outbreaks in various quarters.] At Rome, at Minturnae, at Sinuessa,
at Delos, in Macedonia, and in Sicily insurrections or attempts at
insurrections broke out. They were everywhere mercilessly suppressed,
and by wholesale torture and crucifixion the conquerors tried to
clothe death, their last ally, with terror which even a slave dared
not encounter. In the year when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune (and the
coincidence is significant), it was found necessary to send a consul
to put down the first slave revolt in Sicily. It is not known when it
broke out. [Sidenote: Story of Damophilus.] Its proximate cause was
the brutality of Damophilus, of Enna, and his wife Megallis. His
slaves consulted a man named Eunous, a Syrian-Greek, who had long
foretold that he would be a king, and whom his master's guests had
been in the habit of jestingly asking to remember them when he came
to the throne. [Sidenote: The first Sicilian slave war.] Eunous led a
band of 400 against Enna. He could spout fire from his mouth, and his
juggling and prophesying inspired confidence in his followers. All the
men of Enna were slain except the armourers, who were fettered and
compelled to forge arms. Damophilus and Megallis were brought with
every insult into the theatre. He began to beg for his life with some
effect, but Hermeias and another cut him down; and his wife, after
being tortured by the women, was cast over a precipice. But their
daughter had been gentle to the slaves, and they not only did not harm
her, but sent her under an escort, of which this Hermeias was one, to
Catana. Eunous was now made king, and called himself Antiochus. He
made Achaeus his general, was joined by Cleon with 5,000 slaves, and
soon mustered 10,000 men. Four praetors (according to Florus) were
defeated; the number of the rebels rapidly increased to 200,000; and
the whole island except a few towns was at their mercy. In 134 the
consul Flaccus went to Sicily; but with what result is not known.
In 133 the consul L. Calpurnius Piso captured Messana, killed 8,000
slaves, and crucified all his prisoners. In 132 P. Rupilius captured
the two strongholds of the slaves, Tauromenium and Enna (Taormina and
Castragiovanni). Both towns stood on the top ledges of precipices, and
were hardly accessible. Each was blockaded and each was eventually
surrendered by a traitor. But at Tauromenium the defenders held out,
it is said, till all food was gone, and they had eaten the children,
and the women, and some of the men. Cleon's brother Comanus was taken
here; all the prisoners were first tortured, and then thrown down the
rocks. At Enna Cleon made a gallant sally, and died of his wounds.
Eunous fled and was pulled out of a pit with his cook, his baker, his
bathman, and his fool. He is said to have died in prison of the same
disease as Sulla and Herod. Rupilius crucified over 20,000 slaves, and
so quenched with blood the last fires of rebellion.
Besides the dangers threatening society from the discontent of the
poor, the aggressions of the rich, the multiplication and ferocious
treatment of slaves, and the social rivalries of the capital, the
condition of Italy and the general deterioration of public morality
imperatively demanded reform. It has been already said that we do
not know for certain how the plebs arose. But we know how it wrested
political equality from the patres, and, speaking roughly, we may date
the fusion of the two orders under he common title 'nobiles,' from
the Licinian laws. [Sidenote: The 'nobiles' at Rome.] It had been a
gradual change, peaceably brought about, and the larger number having
absorbed the smaller, the term 'nobiles,' which specifically meant
those who had themselves filled a curule office, or whose fathers had
done so, comprehended in common usage the old nobility and the new.
The new nobles rapidly drew aloof from the residuum of the plebs, and,
in the true _parvenu_ spirit, aped and outdid the arrogance of the old
patricians. Down to the time of the Gracchi, or thereabouts, the two
great State parties consisted of the plebs on the one hand, and these
nobiles on the other. [Sidenote: The 'optimates' and 'populares.']
After that date new names come into use, though we can no more fix the
exact time when the terms optimates and populares superseded previous
party watchwords than we can when Tory gave place to Conservative, and
Whig to Liberal. Thus patricians and plebeians were obsolete terms,
and nobles and plebeians no longer had any political meaning, for each
was equal in the sight of the law; each had a vote; each was eligible
to every office. But when the fall of Carthage freed Rome from all
rivals, and conquest after conquest filled the treasury, increased
luxury made the means of ostentation more greedily sought. Office
meant plunder; and to gain office men bribed, and bribed every day
on a vaster scale. If we said that 'optimates' signified the men
who bribed and abused office under the banner of the Senate and its
connections, and that 'populares' meant men who bribed and abused
office with the interests of the people outside the senatorial pale
upon their lips, we might do injustice to many good men on both sides,
but should hardly be slandering the parties. Parties in fact they were
not. They were factions, and the fact that it is by no means easy
always to decide how far individuals were swayed by good or bad
motives, where good motives were so often paraded to mask base
actions, does not disguise their despicable character. Honest
optimates would wish to maintain the Senate's preponderance from
affection to it, and from belief in its being the mainstay of the
State. Honest populares, like the Gracchi, who saw the evils of
senatorial rule, tried to win the popular vote to compass its
overthrow. Dishonest politicians of either side advocated conservatism
or change simply from the most selfish personal ambition; and in time
of general moral laxity it is the dishonest politicians who give the
tone to a party. The most unscrupulous members of the ruling ring, the
most shameless panderers to mob prejudice, carry all before them. Both
seek one thing only--personal ascendency, and the State becomes the
bone over which the vilest curs wrangle.
[Sidenote: Who the equites were.] In writing of the Gracchi reference
will be made to the Equites. The name had broadened from its original
meaning, and now merely denoted all non-senatorial rich men. An
individual eques would lean to the senatorial faction or the faction
of men too poor to keep a horse for cavalry service, just as his
connexions were chiefly with the one or the other. How, as a body, the
equites veered round alternately to each side, we shall see hereafter.
Instead of forming a sound middle class to check the excesses of both
parties, they were swayed chiefly by sordid motives, and backed up
the men who for the time seemed most willing or able to gratify their
greed. What went on at Rome must have been repeated over again with
more or less exactitude throughout Italy, and there, in addition to
this process of national disintegration, the clouds of a political
storm were gathering. The following table will show at a glance the
classification of the Roman State as constituted at the outbreak of
the Social War.
_Cives Romani_:
1. Rome
2. Roman Colonies
3. Municipia
Roman Colonies and Municipia are Praefectura.
_Peregrini_:
1. Latini or Nomen Latinum
a. Old Latin towns except such as had been made Municipia
b. Colonies of old Latin towns
c. Joint colonies (if any) of Rome and old Latin towns
d. Colonies of Italians from all parts of Italy founded by Rome
under the name of Latin Colonies
2. Socii, i.e. Free inhabitants of Italy
3. Provincials, i.e. Free subjects of Rome out of Italy
[Sidenote: Rights of Cives Romani.] The Cives Romani in and out of
Rome had the Jus Suffragii and the Jus Honorum, i.e. the right to vote
and the right to hold office. [Sidenote: The Roman Colony.] A _Roman
Colony_ was in its organization Rome in miniature, and the people
among whom it had been planted as a garrison may either have retained
their own political constitution, or have been governed by a
magistrate sent from Rome. They were not Roman citizens except as
being residents of a Roman city, but by irregular marriages with
Romans the line of demarcation between the two peoples may have grown
less clearly defined. [Sidenote: The Praefectura.] _Praefectura_ was
the generic name for Roman colonies and for all Municipia to which
prefects were sent annually to administer justice. [Sidenote:
Municipia] _Municipia_ are supposed to have been originally those
conquered Italian towns to which Connubium and Commercium, i.e. rights
of intermarriage and of trade, were given, but from whom Jus Suffragii
and Jus Honorum were withheld. These privileges, however, were
conferred on them before the Social War. Some were governed by Roman
magistrates and some were self-governed. They voted in the Roman
tribes, though probably only at important crises, such as the
agitation for an agrarian law. They were under the jurisdiction of the
Praetor Urbanus, but vicarious justice was administered among them by
an official called _Praefectus juri dicundo_, sent yearly from Rome.
[Sidenote: The Latini.] The Latini had no vote at Rome, no right of
holding offices, and were practically Roman subjects. A Roman who
joined a Latin colony ceased to be a Roman citizen. Whether there was
any difference between the internal administration of a Latin colony
and an old Latin town is uncertain. The Latini may have had Commercium
and Connubium, or only the former. They certainly had not Jus
Suffragii or Jus Honorum, and they were in subjection to Rome. A Latin
could obtain the Roman franchise, but the mode of doing so at this
time is a disputed point. Livy mentions a law which enabled a Latin to
obtain the franchise by migrating to Rome and being enrolled in the
census, provided he left children behind him to fill his place. There
is no doubt that either legally or irregularly Latini did migrate to
Rome and did so obtain the citizenship, but we know no more. Others
say that the later right by which a Latin obtained the citizenship in
virtue of filling a magistracy in his native town existed already.
[Sidenote: The Socii.] Of the Socii, all or many of them had treaties
defining their relations to Rome, and were therefore known as
Foederatae Civitates. They had internal self-government, but were
bound to supply Rome with soldiers, ships, and sailors.
[Sidenote: Grievances of the Latins and allies.] At the time of the
Gracchi discontent was seething among the Latins and allies. There
were two classes among them--the rich landlords and capitalists, who
prospered as the rich at Rome prospered, and the poor who were weighed
down by debt or were pushed out of their farms by slave-labour, or
were hangers-on of the rich in the towns and eager for distributions
of land. The poor were oppressed no doubt by the rich men both of
their own cities and of Rome. The rich chafed at the intolerable
insolence of Roman officials. It was not that Rome interfered with
the local self-government she had granted by treaty, but the Italians
laboured under grievous disabilities and oppression. So late as the
Jugurthine war, Latin officers were executed by martial law, whereas
any Roman soldier could appeal to a civil tribunal. Again, while the
armies had formerly been recruited from the Romans and the allies
equally, now the severest service and the main weight of wars fell
on the latter, who furnished, moreover, two soldiers to every Roman.
Again, without a certain amount of property, a man at Rome could not
be enrolled in the army; but the rule seems not to have applied
to Italians. Nor was the civil less harsh than the military
administration. A consul's wife wished to use the men's bath at
Teanum; and because the bathers were not cleared out quickly enough,
and the baths were not clean enough, M. Marius, the chief magistrate
of the town, was stripped and scourged in the market-place. A free
herdsman asked in joke if it was a corpse that was in a litter passing
through Venusia, and which contained a young Roman. Though not even an
official, its occupant showed that, if lazy, he was at least alive, by
having the peasant whipped to death with the litter straps. In short,
the rich Italians would feel the need of the franchise as strongly as
the old plebeians had felt it, and all the more strongly because the
Romans had not only ceased to enfranchise whole communities, but were
chary of giving the citizenship even to individuals. The poor also had
the ordinary grievances against their own rich, and were so far likely
to favour the schemes of any man who assailed the capitalist class,
Roman or Italian, as a whole; but they none the less disliked Roman
supremacy, and would be easily persuaded to attribute to that
supremacy some of the hardships which it did not cause.
[Sidenote: State of the transmarine provinces.] While such fires were
slowly coming to the surface in Italy, and were soon to flame out in
the Social War, the state of the provinces out of the peninsula was
not more reassuring. The struggle with Viriathus and the Numantine war
had revealed the fact that the last place to look for high martial
honour or heroic virtue was the Roman army. If a Scipio sustained the
traditions of Roman generalship, and a Gracchus those of republican
rectitude, other commanders would have stained the military annals
of any nation. [Sidenote: Deterioration of Roman generalship.] Roman
generals had come to wage war for themselves and not for the State.
They even waged it in defiance of the State's express orders. If they
found peace in the provinces, they found means to break it, hoping to
glut their avarice by pillage or by the receipt of bribes, which it
was now quite the exception not to accept, or to win sham laurels and
cheap triumphs from some miserable raid on half-armed barbarians.
Often these carpet-knights were disgracefully beaten, though infamy in
the provinces sometimes became fame at Rome, and then they resorted
to shameful trickery repeated again and again. [Sidenote: and of the
Army.] The State and the army were worthy of the commanders. The
former engaged in perhaps the worst wars that can be waged. Hounded on
by its mercantile class, it fought not for a dream of dominion, or
to beat back encroaching barbarism, but to exterminate a commercial
rival. The latter, which it was hard to recruit on account of the
growing effeminacy of the city, it was harder still to keep under
discipline. It was followed by trains of cooks, and actors, and the
viler appendages of oriental luxury, and was learning to be satisfied
with such victories as were won by the assassination of hostile
generals, or ratified by the massacre of men who had been guaranteed
their lives. The Roman fleet was even more inefficient than the army;
and pirates roved at will over the Mediterranean, pillaging this
island, waging open war with that, and carrying off the population as
slaves. A new empire was rising in the East, as Rome permitted the
Parthians to wrest Persia, Babylonia, and Media from the Syrian kings.
The selfish maxim, _Divide et impera_, assumed its meanest form as it
was now pursued. It is a poor and cowardly policy for a great nation
to pit against each other its semi-civilised dependencies, and to fan
their jealousies in order to prevent any common action on their part,
or to avoid drawing the sword for their suppression. Slave revolts,
constant petty wars, and piracy were preying on the unhappy
provincials, and in the Roman protectorate they found no aid. All
their harsh mistress did was to turn loose upon them hordes of
money-lenders and tax-farmers ('negotiatores,' and 'publicani'), who
cleared off what was left by those stronger creatures of prey, the
proconsuls. Thus the misery caused by a meddlesome and nerveless
national policy was enhanced by a domestic administration based on
turpitude and extortion.
[Sidenote: Universal degeneracy of the Government, and decay of the
nation.] Everywhere Rome was failing in her duties as mistress of the
civilised world. Her own internal degeneracy was faithfully reflected
in the abnegation of her imperial duties. When in any country the
small-farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers
are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to
pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man's lips, but ideas
of true beauty in very few men's souls; when the business-sharper is
the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts;
when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice
according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into
great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief
gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is
increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing
impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation;
when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out
the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon
which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely
light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply
replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any
number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in
robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the footpad or
burglar'--when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before
which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.
A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined. A mob, a moneyed
class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other,
and hated by the rest of the world; Italians bitterly jealous of
Romans, and only in better plight than the provinces beyond the sea;
more miserable than either, swarms of slaves beginning to brood
over revenge as a solace to their sufferings; the land going out of
cultivation; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the
population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a
speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to
organized pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, whole sale
luxury, and monstrous vice. The hour for reform was surely come. Who
was to be the man?
* * * * *