TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.
[Sidenote: Scipio Aemilianius.] General expectation would have pointed
to Scipio Aemilianus, the conqueror of Numantia and Carthage, and the
foremost man at Rome. He was well-meaning and more than ordinarily
able, strict and austere as a general, and as a citizen uniting Greek
culture with the old Roman simplicity of life. He was full of scorn of
the rabble, and did not scruple to express it. 'Silence,' he cried,
when he was hissed for what he said about his brother-in-law's death,
'you step-children of Italy!' and when this enraged them still more,
he went on: 'Do you think I shall fear you whom I brought to Italy
in fetters now that you are loose?' He showed equal scorn for such
pursuits as at Rome at least were associated with effeminacy and vice,
and expressed in lively language his dislike of singing and dancing.
'Our children are taught disgraceful tricks. They go to actors'
schools with sambucas and psalteries. They learn to sing--a thing
which our ancestors considered to be a disgrace to freeborn children.
When I was told this I could not believe that men of noble rank
allowed their children to be taught such things. But being taken to a
dancing school I saw--I did upon my honour--more than fifty boys and
girls in the school; and among them one boy, quite a child, about
twelve years of age, the son of a man who was at that time a candidate
for office. And what I saw made me pity the Commonwealth. I saw the
child dancing to the castanets, and it was a dance which one of our
wretched, shameless slaves would not have danced.' On another occasion
he showed a power of quick retort. As censor he had degraded a man
named Asellus, whom Mummius afterwards restored to the equites.
Asellus impeached Scipio, and taunted him with the unluckiness of his
censorship--its mortality, &c. 'No wonder,' said Scipio, 'for the man
who inaugurated it rehabilitated you.'
Such anecdotes show that he was a vigorous speaker. He was of a
healthy constitution, temperate, brave, and honest in money matters;
for he led a simple life, and with all his opportunities for extortion
did not die rich. Polybius, the historian, Panaetius, the philosopher,
Terence and Lucilius, the poets, and the orator and politician
Laelius were his friends. From his position, his talents, and his
associations, he seemed marked out as the one man who could and
would desire to step forth as the saviour of his country. But such
self-sacrifice is not exhibited by men of Scipio's type. Too able to
be blind to the signs of the times, they are swayed by instincts too
strong for their convictions. An aristocrat of aristocrats, Scipio was
a reformer only so far as he thought reform might prolong the reign of
his order. From any more radical measures he shrank with dislike,
if not with fear. The weak spot often to be found in those cultured
aristocrats who coquet with liberalism was fatal to his chance of
being a hero. He was a trimmer to the core, who, without intentional
dishonesty, stood facing both ways till the hour came when he was
forced to range himself on one side or the other, and then he took the
side which he must have known to be the wrong one. Palliation of the
errors of a man placed in so terribly difficult a position is only
just; but laudation of his statesmanship seems absurd. As a statesman
he carried not one great measure, and if one was conceived in his
circle, he cordially approved of its abandonment. To those who claim
for him that he saw the impossibility of those changes which his
brother-in-law advocated, it is sufficient to reply that Rome did
not rest till those changes had been adopted, and that the hearty
co-operation of himself and his friends would have gone far to turn
failure into success. But his mind was too narrow to break through the
associations which had environed him from his childhood. When Tiberius
Gracchus, a nobler man than himself, had suffered martyrdom for the
cause with which he had only dallied, he was base enough to quote from
Homer [Greek: os apoloito kai allos hotis toiaita ge hoezoi]--'So
perish all who do the like again.'
[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus.] But the splendid peril which Scipio
shrank from encountering, his brother-in-law courted with the fire
and passion of youth. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was, according to
Plutarch, not quite thirty when he was murdered. Plutarch may have
been mistaken, and possibly he was thirty-five. His father, whose
name he bore, had been a magnificent aristocrat, and his mother
was Cornelia, daughter of Hannibal's conqueror, the first Scipio
Africanus, and one of the comparatively few women whose names are
famous in history. He had much in common with Scipio Aemilianus, whom
he resembled in rank and refinement, in valour, in his familiarity
with Hellenic culture, and in the style of his speeches. Diophanes, of
Mitylene, taught him oratory. The philosopher, Blossius, of Cumae, was
his friend. He belonged to the most distinguished circle at Rome. He
had married the daughter of Appius, and his brother had married the
daughter of Mucianus. He had served under Scipio, and displayed
striking bravery at Carthage; and, as quaestor of the incompetent
Mancinus, had by his character for probity saved a Roman army from
destruction; for the Numantines would not treat with the consul, but
only with Gracchus. No man had a more brilliant career open to him
at Rome, had he been content only to shut his eyes to the fate that
threatened his country. But he had not only insight but a conscience,
and cheerfully risked his life to avert the ruin which he foresaw.
His character has been as much debated as his measures, and the most
opposite conclusions have been formed about both, so that his name
is a synonym for patriot with some, for demagogue with others. Even
historians of our own day are still at variance as to the nature of
his legislation. But from a comparison of their researches, and an
independent examination of the authorities on which they are based,
something like a clear conception of the plans of Gracchus seems
possible. What has never, perhaps, as yet been made sufficiently plain
is, who it was that Gracchus especially meant to benefit. Much of the
public land previously described lay in the north and south of Italy
from the frontier rivers Rubicon and Macra to Apulia. It formed, as
Appian says, the largest portion of the land taken from conquered
towns by Rome. [Sidenote: Agrarian proposals of Gracchus.] What
Gracchus proposed was to take from the rich and give to the poor some
of this land. It was, in fact, merely the Licinian law over again with
certain modifications, and the existence of that law would make the
necessity for a repetition of it inexplicable had it not been a
curious principle with the Romans that a law which had fallen into
desuetude ceased to be binding. But it actually fell short of the law
of Licinius, for it provided that he who surrendered what he held over
and above 500 jugera should be guaranteed in the permanent possession
of that quantity, and moreover might retain 250 jugera in addition for
each of his sons. Some writers conjecture that altogether an occupier
might not hold more than 1,000 jugera.
Now the first thing to remark about the law is that it was by no
means a demagogue's sop tossed to the city mob which he was courting.
Gracchus saw slave labour ruining free labour, and the manhood
and soil of Italy and the Roman army proportionately depreciated.
[Sidenote: Nothing demagogic about the proposal.] To fill the vacuum
he proposed to distribute to the poor not only of Rome but of the
Municipia, of the Roman colonies, and, it is to be presumed, of the
Socii also, land taken from the rich members of those four component
parts of the Roman State. This consideration alone destroys at once
the absurd imputation of his being actuated merely by demagogic
motives; but in no history is it adequately enforced. No demagogue at
that epoch would have spread his nets so wide. At the same time it
gives the key to the subsequent manoeuvres by which his enemies strove
to divide his partisans. Broadly, then, we may say that Gracchus
struck boldly at the very root of the decadence of the whole
peninsula, and that if his remedy could not cure it nothing else
could. [Sidenote: The Socii--land-owners.] How the Socii became
possessors of the public land we do not know. Probably they bought it
from Cives Romani, its authorised occupiers, with the connivance of
the State. We now see from whom the land was to be taken, namely, the
rich all over Italy, and to whom it was to be given, the poor all over
Italy; and also the object with which it was to be given, namely,
to re-create a peasantry and stop the increase of the slave-plague.
[Sidenote: Provision against evasions of the law.] In order to prevent
the law becoming a dead letter like that of Licinius, owing to poor
men selling their land as soon as they got it, he proposed that the
new land-owners should not have the right to dispose of their land to
others, and for this, though it would have been hard to carry out, we
cannot see what other proviso could have been substituted. Lastly, as
death and other causes would constantly render changes in the holdings
inevitable, he proposed that a permanent board should have the
superintendence of them, and this too was a wise and necessary
measure.
[Sidenote: Provision for the administration of the law.] We can
understand so much of the law of Gracchus, but it is hard thoroughly
to understand more. It has been urged as a difficulty not easily
explained that few people, after retaining 500 jugera for themselves
and 250 for each of their sons, would have had much left to surrender.
But this difficulty is imaginary rather than real; for Appian says
that the public land was 'the greater part' of the land taken by Rome
from conquered states, and the great families may have had vast
tracts of it as pasture land. [Sidenote: Things about the law hard to
understand.] There are, however, other things which with our meagre
knowledge of the law we cannot explain. For instance, was a hard
and fast line drawn at 500 jugera as compensation whether a man
surrendered 2 jugera or 2,000 beyond that amount? Again, considering
the outcry made, it is hard to imagine that only those possessing
above 500 jugera were interfered with. But this perhaps may be
accounted for by recollecting that in such matters men fight bravely
against what they feel to be the thin end of the wedge, even if they
are themselves concerned only sympathetically. What Gracchus meant to
do with the slaves displaced by free labour, or how he meant to decide
what was public and what was private land after inextricable confusion
between the two in many parts for so many years, we cannot even
conjecture. The statesmanlike comprehensiveness, however, of his main
propositions justifies us in believing that he had not overlooked such
obvious stumbling-blocks in his way. [Sidenote: Appian's criticism of
the law.] When Appian says he was eager to accomplish what he thought
to be a good thing, we concur in the testimony Appian thus gives to
Gracchus having been a good man. But when he goes on to say he was so
eager that he never even thought of the difficulty, we prefer to judge
Gracchus by his own acts rather than by Appian's criticism or the
similar criticisms of modern writers. [Sidenote: Speeches of Gracchus
explaining his motives.] The speeches ascribed to him, which are
apparently genuine, seem to show that he knew well enough what he was
about. 'The wild beasts of Italy,' he said, 'have their dens to retire
to, but the brave men who spill their blood in her cause have nothing
left but air and light. Without homes, without settled habitations,
they wander from place to place with their wives and children; and
their generals do but mock them when at the head of their armies they
exhort their men to fight for their sepulchres and the gods of their
hearths, for among such numbers perhaps there is not one Roman who has
an altar that has belonged to his ancestors or a sepulchre in which
their ashes rest. The private soldiers fight and die to advance the
wealth and luxury of the great, and they are called masters of the
world without having a sod to call their own.' Again, he asked, 'Is
it not just that what belongs to the people should be shared by the
people? Is a man with no capacity for fighting more useful to his
country than a soldier? Is a citizen inferior to a slave? Is an alien
or one who owns some of his country's soil the best patriot? You have
won by war most of your possessions, and hope to acquire the rest of
the habitable globe. But now it is but a hazard whether you gain the
rest by bravery or whether by your weakness and discords you are
robbed of what you have by your foes. Wherefore, in prospect of such
acquisitions, you should if need be spontaneously and of your own free
will yield up these lands to those who will rear children for the
service of the State. Do not sacrifice a great thing while striving
for a small, especially as you are to receive no contemptible
compensation for your expenditure on the land, in free ownership of
500 jugera secure for ever, and in case you have sons, of 250 more for
each of them.
The striking point in the last extract is his remark about a 'small
thing.' It is likely, enough that the losses of the proprietors as a
body would not be overwhelming, and that the opposition was rendered
furious almost as much by the principle of restitution, and
interference with long-recognised ownership, as by the value of what
they were called on to disgorge. Five hundred jugera of slave-tended
pasture-land could not have been of very great importance to a rich
Roman, who, however, might well have been alarmed by the warning of
Gracchus with regard to the army, for in foreign service, and not in
grazing or ploughing, the fine gentleman of the day found a royal road
to wealth. [Sidenote: Grievances of the possessors.] On the other hand
it is quite comprehensible both that the possessors imagined that they
had a great grievance, and that they had some ground for their belief.
A possessor, for instance, who had purchased from another in the full
faith that his title would never be disturbed, had more right to be
indignant than a proprietor of Indian stock would have, if in case of
the bankruptcy of the Indian Government the British Government should
refuse to refund his money. There must have been numbers of such cases
with every possible complexity of title; and even if the class that
would be actually affected was not large, it was powerful, and every
landowner with a defective title would, however small his holding
(provided it was over 30 jugera, the proposed allotment), take the
alarm and help to swell the cry against the Tribune as a demagogue and
a robber. This is what we can state about the agrarian law of Tiberius
Gracchus. It remains to be told how it was carried.
[Sidenote: How the law was carried.] Gracchus had a colleague named
Octavius, who is said to have been his personal friend. Octavius had
land himself to lose if the law were carried, and he opposed it.
Gracchus offered to pay him the value of the land out of his own
purse; but Octavius was not to be so won over, and as Tribune
interposed his veto to prevent the bill being read to the people that
they might vote on it. Tiberius retorted by using his power to suspend
public business and public payments. One day, when the people were
going to vote, the other side seized the voting urns, and then
Tiberius and the rest of the Tribunes agreed to take the opinion of
the Senate. The result was that he came away more hopeless of success
by constitutional means, and doubtless irritated by insult. He then
proposed to Octavius that the people should vote whether he or
Octavius should lose office--a weak proposal perhaps, but the proposal
of an honest, generous man, whose aim was not self-aggrandisement but
the public weal. Octavius naturally refused. Tiberius called together
the thirty-five tribes, to vote whether or no Octavius should
be deprived of his office. [Sidenote: Octavius deprived of the
Tribunate.] The first tribe voted in the affirmative, and Gracchus
implored Octavius even now to give way, but in vain. The next sixteen
tribes recorded the same vote, and once more Gracchus interceded with
his old friend. But he spoke to deaf ears. The voting went on, and
when Octavius, on his Tribunate being taken from him, would not go
away, Plutarch says that Tiberius ordered one of his freedmen to drag
him from the Rostra.
These acts of Tiberius Gracchus are commonly said to have been the
beginning of revolution at Rome; and the guilt of it is accordingly
laid at his door. And there can be no doubt that he was guilty in the
sense that a man is guilty who introduces a light into some chamber
filled with explosive vapour, which the stupidity or malice of others
has suffered to accumulate. But, after all, too much is made of this
violation of constitutional forms and the sanctity of the Tribunate.
[Sidenote: Defence of the conduct of Gracchus.] The first were effete,
and all regular means of renovating the Republic seemed to be closed
to the despairing patriot, by stolid obstinacy sheltering itself
under the garb of law and order. The second was no longer what it had
been--the recognised refuge and defence of the poor. The rich, as
Tiberius in effect argued, had found out how to use it also. If all
men who set the example of forcible infringement of law are criminals,
Gracchus was a criminal. But in the world's annals he sins in good
company; and when men condemn him, they should condemn Washington
also. Perhaps his failure has had most to do with his condemnation.
Success justifies, failure condemns, most revolutions in most men's
eyes. But if ever a revolution was excusable this was; for it
was carried not by a small party for small aims, but by national
acclamation, by the voices of Italians who flocked to Rome either to
vote, or, if they had not votes themselves, to overawe those who had.
How far Gracchus saw the inevitable effect of his acts is open to
dispute. [Sidenote: Gracchus not a weak sentimentalist.] But probably
he saw it as clearly as any man can see the future. Because he was
generous and enthusiastic, it is assumed that he was sentimental and
weak, and that his policy was guided by impulse rather than reason.
There seems little to sustain such a judgment other than the desire of
writers to emphasise a comparison between him and his brother. If
his character had been what some say that it was, his speeches would
hardly have been described by Cicero as acute and sensible, but not
rhetorical enough. All his conduct was consistent. He strove hard
and to the last to procure his end by peaceable means. Driven into
a corner by the tactics of his opponents, he broke through the
constitution, and once having done so, went the way on which his acts
led him, without turning to the right hand or the left. There seems
to be not a sign of his having drifted into revolution. Because a
portrait is drawn in neutral tints, it does not follow that it is
therefore faithful, and those writers who seem to think they must
reconcile the fact of Tiberius having been so good a man with his
having been, as they assert, so bad a citizen, have blurred the
likeness in their anxiety about the chiaroscuro. No one would affirm
that Tiberius committed no errors; but that he was a wise as well as
a good man is far more in accordance with the facts than a more
qualified verdict would be.
[Sidenote: Mean behaviour of the Senate.] The Senate showed its spite
against the successful Tribune by petty annoyances, such as allowing
him only about a shilling a day for his official expenditure, and, as
rumour said, by the assassination of one of his friends. But, while
men like P. Scipio Nasica busied themselves with such miserable
tactics, Tiberius brought forward another great proposal supplementary
to his agrarian law. [Sidenote: Proposal of Gracchus to distribute the
legacy of Attalus.] Attalus, the last king of Pergamus, had just died
and left his kingdom to Rome. Gracchus wished to divide his treasures
among the new settlers, and expressed some other intention of
transferring the settlement of the country from the Senate to the
people. As to the second of these propositions it would be unsafe
as well as unfair to Gracchus to pronounce judgment on it without
a knowledge of its details. The first was both just and wise and
necessary, for previous experience had shown that the first temptation
of a pauper land-owner was to sell his land to the rich, and, as the
law of Gracchus forbade this, he was bound to give the settler a fair
start on his farm. [Sidenote: Retort of the Senate.] The Senate took
fresh alarm, and it found vent again in characteristically mean
devices. One senator said that a diadem and a purple robe had been
brought to Gracchus from Pergamus. Another assailed him because men
with torches escorted him home at night. Another twitted him with the
deposition of Octavius. To this last attack, less contemptible than
the others, he replied in a bold and able speech, which practically
asserted that the spirit of the constitution was binding on a citizen,
but that its letter under some circumstances was not.
[Sidenote: Other intended reforms of Gracchus.] He was also engaged in
meditating other important reforms, all directed against the Senate's
power. Plutarch says that they comprised abridgment of the soldier's
term of service, an appeal to the people from the judices, and the
equal partition between the Senate and equites of the privilege of
serving as judices, which hitherto belonged only to the former.
According to Velleius, Tiberius also promised the franchise to all
Italians south of the Rubicon and the Macra, which, if true, is
another proof of his far-seeing statesmanship. To carry out such
extensive changes it was necessary to procure prolongation of office
for himself, and he became a candidate for the next year's tribunate.
[Sidenote: Gracchus stands again for the Tribunate. His motives.] To
say that considerations of personal safety dictated his candidature
is a very easy and specious insinuation, but is nothing more. It is
indeed a good deal less, for it is utterly inconsistent with the other
acts of an unselfish, dauntless career. At election-time the first
two tribes voted for Tiberius. Then the aristocracy declared his
candidature to be illegal because he could not hold office two years
running. It may have been so, or the law may have been so violated
as to be no more valid than the Licinian law, which, though never
abrogated, had never much force. [Sidenote: Tactics of the Senate.]
To fasten on some technical flaw in his procedure was precisely in
keeping with the rest of the acts of the opposition. But those writers
who accuse Tiberius of being guilty of another illegal act in standing
fail to observe the force of the fact, that it was not till the first
two tribes had voted that the aristocracy interfered. This shows that
their objection was a last resort to an invalid statute, and a deed
of which they were themselves ashamed. However, the president of the
tribunes, Rubrius, hesitated to let the other tribes vote; and when
Mummius, Octavius's substitute, asked Rubrius to yield to him the
presidency, others objected that the post must be filled by lot, and
so the election was adjourned till the next day.
It was clear enough to what end things were tending, and Tiberius,
putting on mourning committed his young son to the protection of the
people. It need hardly be said that the father's affection and the
statesman's bitter dismay at finding the dearest object of his life
about to be snatched from him by violence need not have been tinged
with one particle of personal fear. A man of tried bravery like
Gracchus might guard his own life indeed, but only as be regarded it
as indispensable to a great cause. That evening he told his partisans
he would give them a sign next day if he should think it necessary to
use force at his election. It has been assumed that this proves he was
meditating treason. But it proves no more than that he meant to repel
force forcibly if, as was only too certain, force should be used, and
this is not treason. No other course was open to him. The one weak
spot in his policy was that he had no material strength at his back.
Even Sulla would have been a lost man at a later time, if he had not
had an army at hand to which he could flee for refuge, just as without
the army Cromwell would have been powerless. But it was harvest-time
now, and the rural allies of Gracchus were away from home in the
fields. [Sidenote: Murder of Gracchus.] The next day dawned, and with
it occurred omens full of meaning to the superstitious Romans. The
sacred fowls would not feed. Tiberius stumbled at the doorway of his
house and broke the nail of his great toe. Some crows fought on the
roof of a house on the left hand, and one dislodged a tile, which
fell at his feet. But Blossius was at his side encouraging him, and
Gracchus went on to the Capitol and was greeted with a great cheer
by his partisans. [Sidenote: Different accounts given by Appian and
Plutarch.] Appian says that when the rich would not allow the election
to proceed, Tiberius gave the signal. Plutarch tells us that Fulvius
Flaccus came and told him that his foes had resolved to slay him, and,
having failed to induce the consul Scaevola to act, were arming their
friends and slaves, and that Gracchus gave the signal then. As Appian
agrees with Plutarch in his account of Nasica's conduct in the Senate,
the last is the more probable version of what occurred. Nasica called
on Scaevola to put down the tyrant. Scaevola replied that he would not
be the first to use force. Then Nasica, calling on the senators to
follow him, mounted the Capitol to a position above that of Gracchus.
Arming themselves with clubs and legs of benches, his followers
charged down and dispersed the crowd. Gracchus stumbled over some
prostrate bodies, and was slain either by a blow from P. Satyreius, a
fellow-tribune, or from L. Rufus, for both claimed the distinction. So
died a genuine patriot and martyr; and so foul a murder fitly heralded
the long years of bloodshed and violence which were in store for the
country which he died to save.
* * * * *