proceedings were extremely low on both sides. Tib. Gracchus was lauded
by the people as the essence of everything noble, and denounced by the
patricians as the incarnation of everything contemptible. On one side he
was hailed as a patriot, and on the other side he was hooted as a
fraudulent demagogue; so that if everything that went in at one ear went
out at the other, his head must have been a thoroughfare for every kind
of vehicle of abuse and flattery. The Senate took the meanest means of
revenge, and reduced his official salary to one denarius and a half, or
about a shilling a day in English money. Tiberius, thus curtailed of the
means on which he lived, declared there was a conspiracy against his
life, and rather prematurely went into mourning for himself, to excite
the public sympathy. Putting his children into black, he took them with
him from house to house, requesting that they might be taken in as
orphans; but the public refused to be taken in by a trick so obvious.
False accusations were, however, brought against him; and a next-door
neighbour stood up in the Senate, declaring that he had that morning
observed a diadem and a scarlet robe delivered at the back door, which
proved that Tiberius intended to usurp the regal authority. In order to
obtain the weight of an official position for his reforms, Tiberius got
himself elected tribune of the people, and the apparently inevitable
effects of taking office were at once shown in his introduction of a
modified edition of the measure he had previously clamoured for.
The aristocratic party set every engine and every old pump at work to
throw cold water on his project, and they at length persuaded one of his
colleagues, named Octavius, who was played upon as easily as an octave
flute, to take part against him. The mode of opposition resorted to by
Gracchus was rather more effective than constitutional, for he called
upon the people to dismiss his colleague--an arrangement almost as
equitable as it would be for one judge to insist upon the dismissal of
another, who might refuse to announce himself submissively as "of the
same opinion" with his learned brother. When, however, the people are
once fairly off, in a certain or uncertain course, they seldom think
how unfairly their precipitancy may operate. They had set their hearts
on a particular measure, and they refused to be guided by their heads;
but without deliberation, drove away every obstacle that impeded the
accomplishment of their wishes. As Octavius still held his position,
Gracchus gave notice that he had a resolution to propose, and, on the
following day, he moved the removal of his colleague. Octavius, however,
met the proposed resolution by a remarkable display of resolution on his
own part, and he declared that he should stick to his office,
notwithstanding the other's unfriendly offices. These means having
failed, Tiberius made a personal appeal to his colleague, and pointed
out to him the gracefulness of a voluntary resignation; but Octavius,
who rated himself very highly, objected altogether to the voluntary
principle. Tiberius next attempted to starve his colleague out by
sealing up the treasury; but the sealing made no impression on Octavius,
who retained his official seat until it was drawn from under him by the
mob, and he fell to the ground, between the two stools of himself and
his unscrupulous colleague. A client or creature of the Gracchi was
elected in the place of the deposed Tribune, who had been got rid of by
upsetting one of the most important forms of the constitution--that form
being no other than the bench occupied by one of the highest officers of
the government. Octavius was hurried out among the mob, who thrust him
about in every direction; but, when it came to the push, Tiberius
Gracchus endeavoured to pull him through his difficulties. The effort
was almost vain; and Octavius owed his life to a faithful slave, who
lost an eye in seeing his master through the dangers that surrounded
him. After this manifestation of the popular opinion, no Tribune
ventured to have an opinion of his own--or, if he had, he kept it to
himself, with a prudent regard to his personal safety.
The new bill for distributing the soil became at once the law of the
land, and the two Gracchi--Tib. and Caius--with Appius Claudius, the
father-in-law of the former, became a permanent triumvirate. This desire
of the temporary holders of power to change their tenancy at will to a
life estate, has been in all ages conspicuous. The stability of
authority is so desirable, that a fixed executive seems to be everywhere
a natural want; but the mushroom might as well seek to substitute itself
for the oak, whose roots have struck deep into the soil, as the mere
chief of a revolution might hope, without any hold on the affections of
a nation, to become the founder of a dynasty.
[Illustration: Tib. Gracchus canvassing.]
Tib. Gracchus, in the true spirit of a patriot by profession, proposed
limiting every power but his own, which he sought to render as extensive
as possible. When his term of office had legally expired, he declared
that the safety of the republic required his re-election, and he
accordingly forced himself on the attention of the electors as the only
desirable candidate. On the day previous to the election, he spent all
the afternoon in the mourning he had already bought, and leading his
children by the hand, he exhibited himself and them as the "un-happy
family," in the public thoroughfares. The election had already
commenced, on the following day, when the Conservative party objected
to it on the ground of illegality. The proceedings were already opened,
when Tib. Gracchus set out on a canvass, expecting that his canvass
would enable him to reach the desired point with a wet sail and flying
colours. Not content with going alone to solicit the electors, he took
one of his own boys in his hand, and he got all the mothers on his side,
by introducing what may be termed child's play into his electioneering
movements. In the afternoon, the candidate doubted whether he would go
personally to the poll, when his friends--some of them from whom he
would have been glad to have been saved--assured him that he had better
go, for there was no danger. Taking their advice, he had got as far as
the area in front of the Capitol, when he was seized with the
irresolution of an area-sneak, and hanging about the spot, he refused to
go further. A debate was in progress among the senators, when one of
them, P. Scipio Nasica, called upon the house to come to the door, and
save the republic by sacrificing Tiberius. The whole assembly rushed
upon its legs and its crutches; some of the members seized hold of
sticks, others snatched up their clubs, and declared that the vengeance
of the clubs should fall on Tiberius. In this spirit they sallied forth,
and looking for Gracchus, they soon knocked dissension on the head, by
one of those blows which disposed of any pretensions he might have had
to a crown when they first encountered him. His brother, Caius Gracchus,
fell politically with his relative; but without resigning his office, he
abandoned his post, and he withdrew to a little place he had in the
country, though neglecting to give up his place in the triumvirate.
[Illustration: Melancholy End of Tib. Gracchus.]
Scipio Æmilianus was on his return from Spain to Rome when he heard of
the death of his brother-in-law; and, quoting a line from Homer, to the
effect that
"All thus perish who such deeds perform,"
he declared that his relative Tib. had met with such a fate as his
antecedents warranted. Scipio at once assumed the leadership of the
Conservatives, or rather of the destructives; for their Conservatism
consisted merely in a desire to keep all they had unfairly got, while
their policy tended to break all the bonds of mutual interest and
goodwill, which can alone permanently bind society.
[Illustration: Scipio Æmilianus cramming himself for a Speech after a
hearty Supper.]
The plebeian party became quite as unreasonable on one side of the
question, as the patricians had been on the other; and C. Papirius
Carbo, a demagogue, who had got the place of tribune, proposed that the
people should have the right of re-electing the same person to the
tribuneship over and over again,--a suggestion designed to render his
own position permanent. Scipio Æmilianus opposed the measure to the
utmost; and after going home one night, he had no sooner finished his
supper, than he began to cram himself for a speech, with which he
contemplated coming out on the day following. He was, however, found
dead in his bed; and, though probability points to apoplexy as the
cause, the historians have--without much, indeed, of evidence--returned
a verdict of Wilful Murder against C. P. Carbo. We have no hesitation in
acquitting him of this dreadful crime; but we cannot say that we shall
be able to allow him to quit these pages without a stain on his
character. It is to be regretted that the Senate had not the courage to
institute an inquiry at the time when the occurrence took place, and
when only the real facts could have been ascertained; for such a course
would have saved considerable trouble to those chroniclers who are
always ready to frame an entirely new set of circumstances of their own,
to replace those which contemporaneous investigation has omitted to
supply us with.
Caius Sempronius Gracchus was getting daily more tired of his thoroughly
retired life; and, being an excellent spokesman, he began to flatter
himself that the commonweal might profit by his services. He is said to
have been urged on by his brother's ghost; but there is reason to
believe that he was impelled by a more commendable spirit. This
fraternal shade is stated to have appeared to him in his dreams; but the
matters he now began to take in hand were not those which he could
afford to go to sleep over.
In republics, where he who is the humble servant of the people to-day,
may be, to-morrow, the people's master, talent is looked upon with
jealousy by the governing power, which, while ostensibly employing an
able instrument, may be, in fact, promoting a dangerous rival. Thus,
when the head of a nation is removable, it is reluctant to employ the
best men, lest they prove better than the head itself, and aspire to the
very highest position.
Where the form of government is monarchical, it is to the interest of
the ruler to avail himself of the ablest assistance he can obtain; for,
being himself irremovable, he becomes the fixed centre towards which the
glories and successes of his ministers and servants continually
gravitate.
It was on the principle of getting rid of a dangerous rival, that the
republican government had sent away Caius Gracchus from Rome,--where he
might have been everything--to Sardinia, where he would almost
inevitably sink to nothing. He was himself apprehensive of this result,
and he consequently returned to Rome, leaving Sardinia without the leave
of any one. His duty should have kept him abroad, but ambition urged him
home; and, in a republic, there is little to insure the fidelity of one
who, though the servant of the Government to-day, may be its master
to-morrow. Leaving the interests of his country in Sardinia to take care
of themselves, this professed patriot came to look after his own
interests in Rome, and took his talents into the political market. He
immediately stood for the tribuneship; and though he had abandoned one
post--that of Quæstor in Sardinia--he was elected to the more important
post, which might, indeed, be termed the chief pillar of popular
liberty.
Though he had, of course, solicited and obtained his high office on
purely public grounds, he at once endeavoured to use it for the
gratification of personal animosities. His first two measures were
proposed with a view to avenging his brother's death; and he sought to
give the intended new laws a retrospective effect, for the purpose of
gratifying his private enmity. He introduced a law to prevent a person
deprived by the people of any office, from being appointed to the public
service again; but this exalted patriot withdrew the bill to please his
mother. He carried various measures of more or less value, and among
them was a law for the establishment of granaries for supplying the poor
with corn at a very low price; but though this might have been very
attractive to buyers, and insured a brisk demand, it does not seem
calculated to encourage growers and sellers to such an extent that a
supply could always be relied upon. Of course, the deficiency had to be
made good from the pockets of the public; and therefore the process
amounted to little more than receiving with one hand what had been paid
by the other.
The privilege of purchasing cheap corn was not limited, as some[66] have
supposed, to the poor; but every citizen could claim his share; and even
Piso, a Consul--though perhaps he was one of the greatly reduced
Consuls--had been shabby enough to demand the privilege. Piso had been
an opponent of the law; and Gracchus, seeing him among the crowd
receiving a bushel of the cheap grain, taunted him with his
inconsistency in taking advantage of a corn measure which he had set his
face against. The answer of Piso was sensible and just; for, said he,
"though I had a strong objection to your giving away my property, I
think I have a right to try to get my share of it." Another of his
enactments vested the right of putting a Roman citizen to death, in the
people themselves, a measure that was no doubt theoretically attractive,
though practically inconvenient. To vest in the public at large the
privilege of applying the sentences to the highest offences, would
really be giving a nation so much rope, that business would be suspended
very often, instead of the criminals.
Caius Gracchus next applied himself to Law Reform with considerable
zeal; but it was not so much the law itself, as those who administered
it, that required amendment. Those who held the scales of justice, used
to weigh only the gold of the suitors; and the judges were so far
impartial, that they had no bias towards any particular side, but
favoured that which was the most liberal in bribing them. Many of the
defendants had been guilty of extortion, which was a common practice
with the judges themselves; and therefore a rude sort of honour,
commonly known as honour among thieves, was not altogether banished from
the judgment-seat. Caius Gracchus, however, caused a law to be passed,
in which we trace the origin of that glorious institution, familiarly
known as "twelve men in a box," so dear to the hearts, and sometimes,
also, to the pockets of Englishmen. The law alluded to, provided for the
trial of causes by a middle class of equites or knights, who were,
literally speaking, men who could keep a horse, and who, on the same
principle adopted in modern times as to the keepers of gigs,[67] were
considered to be respectable.
The Senators had made a practice of acquitting all criminals of their
own class, and, by acquitting themselves thus shamefully, they had
become guilty of the grossest corruption; but the equites were
frequently regardless of equity, and were found leaning with undue
leniency towards offenders of their own order. Gracchus had now become
the popular idol, but he never had an idle hour, and was always busy in
building up a reputation for himself by the construction of works of
permanent utility. He knew that general occupation is necessary to
public content, and he felt that as long as he could keep the hands of
the multitude employed on bricks and mortar, he was, in reality,
cementing his own power. This policy placed considerable patronage at
his command, and he rallied round him a crowd of contractors and
artificers, who, but for his power of giving them something better to
do, would, perhaps, have been contracting the bad habit of political
agitation, or resorting to every kind of revolutionary artifice.
The greatest political work of Caius was that in which he did the least;
and his legislative successes sink into insignificance by the side of
the real grandeur of his extensive failure. This was his attempt to
extend the franchise to all the Italians, and the other allies; but Rome
refused to aid him in the grand design, and determined to rivet upon
Italy those Italian irons with which Rome at a future period was
destined to burn her fingers. So popular was Caius Gracchus, that, upon
his re-election to office, the people, who could not get near enough to
the Campus Martius on account of the crowd, voted for him from the tops
of houses or unfinished buildings; and many came up to the poll by
climbing an adjacent scaffold.
He who would keep himself constantly sailing before the wind raised by
the breath of public applause, must be for ever on some new tack; for no
airs are more variable than those which the people are apt to give
themselves. Caius Gracchus was soon destined to discover the fact that,
amid the storms of political life, the highest point can be safely
occupied by none but the political weathercock. He had too much rigid
inflexibility to turn with every breeze; and instead of being moved by
each passing gust, he was simply dis-gusted by the vacillation
exhibited.
[Illustration: Rash Act of Caius Gracchus.]
The aristocratic party, perceiving this, resolved to beat him with his
own weapons; and they prevailed upon M. Livius Drusus, his colleague in
the tribuneship, to outbid him by all sorts of extravagances for the
prize of popularity. When Gracchus proposed to distribute land among
the poor at a small fixed rental, Drusus moved, by way of amendment,
that they should have it for nothing at all; and as to the corn in the
public granaries, if Gracchus said the people ought to have it at half
price, Drusus would insist upon their right to be paid for the trouble
of walking away with it. The people, as a matter of course, followed the
man who was most profuse in his promises, rather than him who had been
the most liberal in his performances. Caius Gracchus was, in the mean
time, induced to go to Africa to mark out the ground for a new city. The
reporters of the period--who were, no doubt, in the pay of his
opponents--circulated all kinds of ill-natured stories, in which it was
alleged that the omens had been unfavourable; that the flags had been
blown down, or the pavement blown up; and that the wolves had eaten up
every flag-staff--a thing not very easy to swallow. On his return to
Rome, from which he had been absent only seventy days, he found Drusus
amazingly popular, and every nose turned up at himself, which induced
him to recognise a general snub in the faces of many of his old
followers. He offered himself a third time for the tribuneship, but he
was at the bottom of the poll, and an election row commenced, when an
officious lictor lost, first, his fasces; secondly, his securis--which
he had done his utmost to secure; and ultimately his life, in the
scuffle. Caius Gracchus, who had mainly endeavoured to keep the peace,
knew he would be accused of breaking it, and he accordingly ran as fast
as he could; but in scaling a wall to get into another street, he
unfortunately sprained his ankle. His friends continued to carry him
until, moved by a sudden instinct of self-preservation, they dropped an
acquaintance it would have been no longer safe to keep up, and poor
Caius was left alone with a single manservant. His pursuers being at his
heels, the ex-tribune desired the faithful attendant to stab him, and
the man was too much in the habit of obeying his master's orders to
hesitate. Having respectfully run his employer through, he found himself
so terribly out of place in the world, that, apologising for the
liberty, he finished himself off with the same dagger.
A reward of its weight in gold had already been offered for the head of
Caius Gracchus, when one Septimulcius, having picked it up, carried it
home, and plumbed it with lead before he took it to the authorities.
Opimius, the Consul, weighed it, and exclaiming, "Bless me! seven pounds
and a half!" threw down in exchange for the head, the same quantity of
the precious metal. His customer having gone away, Opimius proceeded at
his leisure to examine his bargain. "Well!" said he, "I don't know that
it's worth its weight in gold, but the offer was my own, and I must make
the best of it." On a minuter inspection, he detected the trick that had
been played, and though he had looked upon Caius as somewhat
leaden-headed, he at once perceived that nature had not been the only
plumber employed in this disgraceful transaction.
All the friends of Gracchus were cast into prison and slain; but it was
astonishing to observe how contracted his circle became when it was
known that ruin awaited every member of it. They who had been his
intimates made the sudden discovery that they had never known him at
all, and others, who had been too frequently in his company to repudiate
the acquaintance, declared that they had been grievously mistaken in his
character. Several of his radical associates joined the aristocratic
party, and his friend Carbo was so severely bantered on his having gone
over to the other side, that after trying both sides, he took refuge in
suicide as the only side left for him.
Rome owed much to the Gracchi; but it paid them both off in a most
unsatisfactory manner. Tiberius was an orator of such power, that, to
prevent his voice from being too loud, he took with him a piper--paying
the piper out of his own pocket--to prevent him from pitching it too
strong when he was addressing the multitude. Tiberius Gracchus was the
first orator who introduced the graces of action into the art of public
speaking; and he was in the habit of rolling, as it were, from side to
side, which gave him great sway with his audience.
Caius Gracchus was a man of action, rather than of words, and was the
first to divide distance into portions of one thousand paces, each of
which he called a mile, and which was one of his really useful measures.
He was also the inventor of milestones, and of those stations for
awkward equestrians, which enabled many to ride the high horse, who
would otherwise have been placed on their own humble footing.
[Illustration]
The two Gracchi owed, no doubt, to the teaching of their mother, much of
their success--if, at least, that can be called success which ended in
the violent death of both of them. Cornelia was, however, a little too
much addicted to making prodigies of her sons; and it is said of her,
that, on one occasion, when receiving a visit from a Campanian lady, who
came to display her jewels, the mother of the Gracchi, having privately
sent for the children, exclaimed, as they stole gently in with their
nurse, "These are my jewels: what do you think of them?" So maudlin was
her maternal sensibility, that she never spoke of her sons without
tears, which were always responded to by the infants themselves, with
sympathetic, but uncomfortable, moisture. Nothing, however, can damp
parental love; and, to a fond mother's feelings, childhood has no
unpleasant features; though it is different to him who, if approaching
them at all, prefers looking at them in a drier aspect.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Plut., Tib. Gracch.
[66] Plutarch implies that it was so; but Cicero relates anecdotes
showing the fact to have been otherwise.
[67] The following question and answer, uttered in a Court of Law on a
modern trial, are well known:--
_Counsel._ "What do you mean by respectable?"
_Witness._ "He keeps a gig."
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.
THE JUGURTHINE WAR. WAR AGAINST THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONI.