The Reform Movement and Tiberius Gracchus
The Roman Government before the Period of the Gracchi
For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna the Roman state
enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there
on the surface. Its dominion extended over the three continents;
the lustre of the Roman power and the glory of the Roman name were
constantly on the increase; all eyes rested on Italy, all talents and
all riches flowed thither; it seemed as if a golden age of peaceful
prosperity and intellectual enjoyment of life could not but there
begin. The Orientals of this period told each other with astonishment
of the mighty republic of the west, "which subdued kingdoms far and
near, and whoever heard its name trembled; but it kept good faith
with its friends and clients. Such was the glory of the Romans, and
yet no one usurped the crown and no one paraded in purple dress; but
they obeyed whomsoever from year to year they made their master, and
there was among them neither envy nor discord."
Spread of Decay
So it seemed at a distance; matters wore a different aspect on a
closer view. The government of the aristocracy was in full train
to destroy its own work. Not that the sons and grandsons of the
vanquished at Cannae and of the victors at Zama had so utterly
degenerated from their fathers and grandfathers; the difference was
not so much in the men who now sat in the senate, as in the times.
Where a limited number of old families of established wealth and
hereditary political importance conducts the government, it will
display in seasons of danger an incomparable tenacity of purpose and
power of heroic self-sacrifice, just as in seasons of tranquillity
it will be shortsighted, selfish, and negligent--the germs of both
results are essentially involved in its hereditary and collegiate
character. The morbid matter had been long in existence, but it
needed the sun of prosperity to develop it. There was a profound
meaning in the question of Cato, "What was to become of Rome, when
she should no longer have any state to fear?" That point had now
been reached. Every neighbour whom she might have feared was
politically annihilated; and of the men who had been reared under
the old order of things in the severe school of the Hannibalic war,
and whose words still sounded as echoes of that mighty epoch so long
as they survived, death called one after another away, till at length
even the voice of the last of them, the veteran Cato, ceased to be heard
in the senate-house and in the Forum. A younger generation came to the
helm, and their policy was a sorry answer to that question of the old
patriot. We have already spoken of the shape which the government of
the subjects and the external policy of Rome assumed in their hands.
In internal affairs they were, if possible, still more disposed to
let the ship drive before the wind: if we understand by internal
government more than the transaction of current business, there was at
this period no government in Rome at all. The single leading thought
of the governing corporation was the maintenance and, if possible, the
increase of their usurped privileges. It was not the state that had
a title to get the right and best man for its supreme magistracy;
but every member of the coterie had an inborn title to the highest
office of the state--a title not to be prejudiced either by the
unfair rivalry of men of his own class or by the encroachments of
the excluded. Accordingly the clique proposed to itself, as its
most important political aim, the restriction of re-election to the
consulship and the exclusion of "new men"; and in fact it succeeded
in obtaining the legal prohibition of the former about 603,(1) and
in sufficing with a government of aristocratic nobodies. Even the
inaction of the government in its outward relations was doubtless
connected with this policy of the nobility, exclusive towards
commoners, and distrustful towards the individual members of their
own order. By no surer means could they keep commoners, whose deeds
were their patent of nobility, aloof from the pure circles of the
aristocracy than by giving no opportunity to any one to perform
deeds at all; to the existing government of general mediocrity
even an aristocratic conqueror of Syria or Egypt would have
proved extremely inconvenient.
Attempts at Reform
Permanent Criminal Commissions
Vote by Ballot
Exclusion of the Senators from the Equestrian Centuries
The Public Elections
It is true that now also there was no want of opposition, and it was
even to a certain extent effectual. The administration of justice
was improved. The administrative jurisdiction, which the senate
exercised either of itself or, on occasion, by extraordinary commissions,
over the provincial magistrates, was confessedly inadequate. It was
an innovation with a momentous bearing on the whole public life of the
Roman community, when in 605, on the proposal of Lucius Calpurnius Piso,
a standing senatorial commission (-quaestio ordinaria-) was instituted to
try in judicial form the complaints of the provincials against the Roman
magistrates placed over them on the score of extortion. An effort
was made to emancipate the comitia from the predominant influence
of the aristocracy. The panacea of Roman democracy was secret voting
in the assemblies of the burgesses, which was introduced first for
the elections of magistrates by the Gabinian law (615), then for
the public tribunals by the Cassian law (617), lastly for the voting
on legislative proposals by the Papirian law (623). In a similar
way soon afterwards (about 625) the senators were by decree of the
people enjoined on admission to the senate to surrender their public
horse, and thereby to renounce their privileged place in the voting
of the eighteen equestrian centuries.(2) These measures, directed to
the emancipation of the electors from the ruling aristocratic order,
may perhaps have seemed to the party which suggested them the first
step towards a regeneration of the state; in fact they made not the
slightest change in the nullity and want of freedom of the legally
supreme organ of the Roman community; that nullity indeed was only
the more palpably evinced to all whom it did or did not concern.
Equally ostentatious and equally empty was the formal recognition
accorded to the independence and sovereignty of the burgesses by
the transference of their place of assembly from the old Comitium below
the senate-house to the Forum (about 609). But this hostility between
the formal sovereignty of the people and the practically subsisting
constitution was in great part a semblance. Party phrases were in
free circulation: of the parties themselves there was little trace in
matters really and directly practical. Throughout the whole seventh
century the annual public elections to the civil magistracies,
especially to the consulship and censorship, formed the real standing
question of the day and the focus of political agitation; but it was
only in isolated and rare instances that the different candidates
represented opposite political principles; ordinarily the question
related purely to persons, and it was for the course of affairs a
matter of indifference whether the majority of the votes fell to a
Caecilian or to a Cornelian. The Romans thus lacked that which
outweighs and compensates all the evils of party-life--the free and
common movement of the masses towards what they discern as a befitting
aim--and yet endured all those evils solely for the benefit of the
paltry game of the ruling coteries.
It was comparatively easy for the Roman noble to enter on the career
of office as quaestor or tribune of the people; but the consulship
and the censorship were attainable by him only through great exertions
prolonged for years. The prizes were many, but those really worth
having were few; the competitors ran, as a Roman poet once said, as
it were over a racecourse wide at the starting-point but gradually
narrowing its dimensions. This was right, so long as the magistracy
was--what it was called--an "honour" and men of military, political,
or juristic ability were rival competitors for the rare chaplets; but
now the practical closeness of the nobility did away with the benefit
of competition, and left only its disadvantages. With few exceptions
the young men belonging to the ruling families crowded into the
political career, and hasty and premature ambition soon caught at
means more effective than was useful action for the common good.
The first requisite for a public career came to be powerful connections;
and therefore that career began, not as formerly in the camp, but in
the ante-chambers of influential men. A new and genteel body of clients
now undertook--what had formerly been done only by dependents and
freedmen--to come and wait on their patron early in the morning, and
to appear publicly in his train. But the mob also is a great lord,
and desires as such to receive attention. The rabble began to demand
as its right that the future consul should recognize and honour the
sovereign people in every ragged idler of the street, and that every
candidate should in his "going round" (-ambitus-) salute every
individual voter by name and press his hand. The world of quality
readily entered into this degrading canvass. The true candidate
cringed not only in the palace, but also on the street, and
recommended himself to the multitude by flattering attentions,
indulgences, and civilities more or less refined. Demagogism and
the cry for reforms were sedulously employed to attract the notice and
favour of the public; and they were the more effective, the more they
attacked not things but persons. It became the custom for beardless
youths of genteel birth to introduce themselves with -eclat- into
public life by playing afresh the part of Cato with the immature
passion of their boyish eloquence, and by constituting and proclaiming
themselves state-attorneys, if possible, against some man of very
high standing and very great unpopularity; the Romans suffered the
grave institutions of criminal justice and of political police to
become a means of soliciting office. The provision or, what was
still worse, the promise of magnificent popular amusements had long
been the, as it were legal, prerequisite to the obtaining of the
consulship;(3) now the votes of the electors began to be directly
purchased with money, as is shown by the prohibition issued against
this about 595. Perhaps the worst consequence of the continual
courting of the favour of the multitude by the ruling aristocracy
was the incompatibility of such a begging and fawning part with
the position which the government should rightfully occupy in
relation to the governed. The government was thus converted from
a blessing into a curse for the people. They no longer ventured to
dispose of the property and blood of the burgesses, as exigency required,
for the good of their country. They allowed the burgesses to become
habituated to the dangerous idea that they were legally exempt from
the payment of direct taxes even by way of advance--after the war
with Perseus no further advance had been asked from the community.
They allowed their military system to decay rather than compel the
burgesses to enter the odious transmarine service; how it fared
with the individual magistrates who attempted to carry out the
conscription according to the strict letter of the law, has
already been related.(4)
Optimates and Populares
In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate oligarchy
and a democracy still undeveloped but already cankered in the bud
were interwoven in a manner pregnant with fatal results. According
to their party names, which were first heard during this period,
the "Optimates" wished to give effect to the will of the best, the
"Populares" to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome
of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining
community. Both parties contended alike for shadows, and numbered
in their ranks none but enthusiasts or hypocrites. Both were equally
affected by political corruption, and both were in fact equally
worthless. Both were necessarily tied down to the status quo, for
neither on the one side nor on the other was there found any political
idea--to say nothing of any political plan--reaching beyond the
existing state of things; and accordingly the two parties were so
entirely in agreement that they met at every step as respected both
means and ends, and a change of party was a change of political
tactics more than of political sentiments. The commonwealth would
beyond doubt have been a gainer, if either the aristocracy had directly
introduced a hereditary rotation instead of election by the burgesses,
or the democracy had produced from within it a real demagogic government.
But these Optimates and these Populares of the beginning of the seventh
century were far too indispensable for eachother to wage such internecine
war; they not only could not destroy each other, but, even if they had
been able to do so, they would not have been willing. Meanwhile the
commonwealth was politically and morally more and more unhinged, and
was verging towards utter disorganization.
Social Crisis
The crisis with which the Roman revolution was opened arose not out
of this paltry political conflict, but out of the economic and social
relations which the Roman government allowed, like everything else,
simply to take their course, and which thus found opportunity to
bring the morbid matter, that had been long fermenting, without
hindrance and with fearful rapidity and violence to maturity. From
a very early period the Roman economy was based on the two factors
--always in quest of each other, and always at variance--the husbandry
of the small farmer and the money of the capitalist. The latter in the
closest alliance with landholding on a great scale had already for
centuries waged against the farmer-class a war, which seemed as though
it could not but terminate in the destruction first of the farmers
and thereafter of the whole commonwealth, but was broken off without
being properly decided in consequence of the successful wars and the
comprehensive and ample distribution of domains for which these wars
gave facilities. It has already been shown(5) that in the same age,
which renewed the distinction between patricians and plebeians under
altered names, the disproportionate accumulation of capital was
preparing a second assault on the farming system. It is true that
the method was different. Formerly the small farmer had been ruined
by advances of money, which practically reduced him to be the steward
of his creditor; now he was crushed by the competition of transmarine,
and especially of slave-grown, corn. The capitalists kept pace with
the times; capital, while waging war against labour or in other words
against the liberty of the person, of course, as it had always done,
under the strictest form of law, waged it no longer in the unseemly
fashion which converted the free man on account of debt into a slave,
but, throughout, with slaves legitimately bought and paid; the former
usurer of the capital appeared in a shape conformable to the times
as the owner of industrial plantations. But the ultimate result was
in both cases the same--the depreciation of the Italian farms; the
supplanting of the petty husbandry, first in a part of the provinces
and then in Italy, by the farming of large estates; the prevailing
tendency to devote the latter in Italy to the rearing of cattle and
the culture of the olive and vine; finally, the replacing of the
free labourers in the provinces as in Italy by slaves. Just as the
nobility was more dangerous than the patriciate, because the former
could not, like the latter, be set aside by a change of the
constitution; so this new power of capital was more dangerous than
that of the fourth and fifth centuries, because nothing was to be
done against it by changes in the law of the land.
Slavery and Its Consequences
Before we attempt to describe the course of this second great
conflict between labour and capital, it is necessary to give here
some indication of the nature and extent of the system of slavery.
We have not now to do with the old, in some measure innocent, rural
slavery, under which the farmer either tilled the field along with
his slave, or, if he possessed more land than he could manage, placed
the slave--either as steward or as a sort of lessee obliged to render
up a portion of the produce--over a detached farm.(6) Such relations
no doubt existed at all times--around Comum, for instance, they were
still the rule in the time of the empire--but as exceptional features
in privileged districts and on humanely-managed estates. What we now
refer to is the system of slavery on a great scale, which in the Roman
state, as formerly in the Carthaginian, grew out of the ascendency
of capital. While the captives taken in war and the hereditary
transmission of slavery sufficed to keep up the stock of slaves
during the earlier period, this system of slavery was, just like that
of America, based on the methodically-prosecuted hunting of man; for,
owing to the manner in which slaves were used with little regard to
their life or propagation, the slave population was constantly on
the wane, and even the wars which were always furnishing fresh
masses to the slave-market were not sufficient to cover the deficit.
No country where this species of game could be hunted remained exempt
from visitation; even in Italy it was a thing by no means unheard
of, that the poor freeman was placed by his employer among the slaves.
But the Negroland of that period was western Asia,(7) where the Cretan
and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and slave-
dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands; and where,
emulating their feats, the Roman revenue-farmers instituted human hunts
in the client states and incorporated those whom they captured among
their slaves. This was done to such an extent, that about 650 the king
of Bithynia declared himself unable to furnish the required contingent,
because all the people capable of labour had been dragged off from his
kingdom by the revenue-farmers. At the great slave-market in Delos,
where the slave-dealers of Asia Minor disposed of their wares to
Italian speculators, on one day as many as 10,000 slaves are said to
have been disembarked in the morning and to have been all sold before
evening--a proof at once how enormous was the number of slaves
delivered, and how, notwithstanding, the demand still exceeded the
supply. It was no wonder. Already in describing the Roman economy
of the sixth century we have explained that it was based, like all
the large undertakings of antiquity generally, on the employment of
slaves.(8) In whatever direction speculation applied itself, its
instrument was without exception man reduced in law to a beast of
burden. Trades were in great part carried on by slaves, so that
the proceeds fell to the master. The levying of the public revenues
in the lower grades was regularly conducted by the slaves of the
associations that leased them. Servile hands performed the operations
of mining, making pitch, and others of a similar kind; it became early
the custom to send herds of slaves to the Spanish mines, whose
superintendents readily received them and paid a high rent for them.
The vine and olive harvest in Italy was not conducted by the people
on the estate, but was contracted for by a slave-owner. The tending
of cattle was universally performed by slaves. We have already
mentioned the armed, and frequently mounted, slave-herdsmen in
the great pastoral ranges of Italy;(9) and the same sort of pastoral
husbandry soon became in the provinces also a favourite object of Roman
speculation--Dalmatia, for instance, was hardly acquired (599) when
the Roman capitalists began to prosecute the rearing of cattle there on
a great scale after the Italian fashion. But far worse in every respect
was the plantation-system proper--the cultivation of the fields by a
band of slaves not unfrequently branded with iron, who with shackles
on their legs performed the labours of the field under overseers
during the day, and were locked up together by night in the common,
frequently subterranean, labourers' prison. This plantation-system
had migrated from the east to Carthage,(10) and seems to have been
brought by the Carthaginians to Sicily, where, probably for this reason,
it appears developed earlier and more completely than in any other part
of the Roman dominions.(11) We find the territory of Leontini, about
30,000 -jugera- of arable land, which was let on lease as Roman
domain(12) by the censors, divided some decades after the time of the
Gracchi among not more than 84 lessees, to each of whom there thus fell
on an average 360 jugera, and among whom only one was a Leontine; the
rest were foreign, mostly Roman, speculators. We see from this instance
with what zeal the Roman speculators there walked in the footsteps of
their predecessors, and what extensive dealings in Sicilian cattle
and Sicilian slave-corn must have been carried on by the Roman and
Non-Roman speculators who covered the fair island with their pastures
and plantations. Italy however still remained for the present
substantially exempt from this worst form of slave-husbandry. Although
in Etruria, where the plantation-system seems to have first emerged
in Italy, and where it existed most extensively at least forty years
afterwards, it is extremely probable that even now -ergastula- were
not wanting; yet Italian agriculture at this epoch was still chiefly
carried on by free persons or at any rate by non-fettered slaves,
while the greater tasks were frequently let out to contractors.
The difference between Italian and Sicilian slavery is very clearly
apparent from the fact, that the slaves of the Mamertine community,
which lived after the Italian fashion, were the only slaves who did
not take part in the Sicilian servile revolt of 619-622.
The abyss of misery and woe, which opens before our eyes in this most
miserable of all proletariates, may be fathomed by those who venture
to gaze into such depths; it is very possible that, compared with the
sufferings of the Roman slaves, the sum of all Negro sufferings is but
a drop. Here we are not so much concerned with the hardships of the
slaves themselves as with the perils which they brought upon the Roman
state, and with the conduct of the government in confronting them.
It is plain that this proletariate was not called into existence by
the government and could not be directly set aside by it; this could
only have been accomplished by remedies which would have been still
worse than the disease. The duty of the government was simply, on
the one hand, to avert the direct danger to property and life, with
which the slave-proletariate threatened the members of the state,
by an earnest system of police for securing order; and on the other
hand, to aim at the restriction of the proletariate, as far as possible,
by the elevation of free labour. Let us see how the Roman aristocracy
executed these two tasks.
Insurrection of the Slaves
The First Sicilian Slave War
The servile conspiracies and servile wars, breaking out everywhere,
illustrate their management as respects police. In Italy the scenes
of disorder, which were among the immediate painful consequences of
the Hannibalic war,(13) seemed now to be renewed; all at once the
Romans were obliged to seize and execute in the capital 150, in
Minturnae 450, in Sinuessa even 4000 slaves (621). Still worse,
as may be conceived, was the state of the provinces. At the great
slave-market at Delos and in the Attic silver-mines about the same
period the revolted slaves had to be put down by force of arms.
The war against Aristonicus and his "Heliopolites" in Asia Minor was
in substance a war of the landholders against the revolted slaves.(14)
But worst of all, naturally, was the condition of Sicily, the chosen
land of the plantation system. Brigandage had long been a standing
evil there, especially in the interior; it began to swell into
insurrection. Damophilus, a wealthy planter of Enna (Castrogiovanni),
who vied with the Italian lords in the industrial investment of his
living capital, was attacked and murdered by his exasperated rural
slaves; whereupon the savage band flocked into the town of Enna, and
there repeated the same process on a greater scale. The slaves rose
in a body against their masters, killed or enslaved them, and summoned
to the head of the already considerable insurgent army a juggler
from Apamea in Syria who knew how to vomit fire and utter oracles,
formerly as a slave named Eunus, now as chief of the insurgents
styled Antiochus king of the Syrians. And why not? A few years before
another Syrian slave, who was not even a prophet, had in Antioch
itself worn the royal diadem of the Seleucids.(15) The Greek slave
Achaeus, the brave "general" of the new king, traversed the island,
and not only did the wild herdsmen flock from far and near to
the strange standards, but the free labourers also, who bore no
goodwill to the planters, made common cause with the revolted slaves.
In another district of Sicily Cleon, a Cilician slave, formerly in his
native land a daring bandit, followed the example which had been set
and occupied Agrigentum; and, when the leaders came to a mutual
understanding, after gaining various minor advantages they succeeded
in at last totally defeating the praetor Lucius Hypsaeus in person
and his army, consisting mostly of Sicilian militia, and in capturing
his camp. By this means almost the whole island came into the power
of the insurgents, whose numbers, according to the most moderate
estimates, are alleged to have amounted to 70,000 men capable of
bearing arms. The Romans found themselves compelled for three
successive years (620-622) to despatch consuls and consular armies
to Sicily, till, after several undecided and even some unfavourable
conflicts, the revolt was at length subdued by the capture of
Tauromenium and of Enna. The most resolute men of the insurgents
threw themselves into the latter town, in order to hold their ground
in that impregnable position with the determination of men who
despair of deliverance or of pnrdon; the consuls Lucius Calpurnius
Piso and Publius Rupilius lay before it for two years, and reduced
it at last more by famine than by arms.(16)
These were the results of the police system for securing order, as
it was handled by the Roman senate and its officials in Italy and
the provinces. While the task of getting quit of the proletariate
demands and only too often transcends the whole power and wisdom of
a government, its repression by measures of police on the other hand
is for any larger commonwealth comparatively easy. It would be well
with states, if the unpropertied masses threatened them with no other
danger than that with which they are menaced by bears and wolves;
only the timid and those who trade upon the silly fears of the
multitude prophesy the destruction of civil order through servile
revolts or insurrections of the proletariate. But even to this easier
task of restraining the oppressed masses the Roman government was by no
means equal, notwithstanding the profound peace and the inexhaustible
resources of the state. This was a sign of its weakness; but not of
its weakness alone. By law the Roman governor was bound to keep the
public roads clear and to have the robbers who were caught, if they were
slaves, crucified; and naturally, for slavery is not possible without a
reign of terror. At this period in Sicily a razzia was occasionally
doubtless set on foot by the governor, when the roads became too
insecure; but, in order not to disoblige the Italian planters, the
captured robbers were ordinarily given up by the authorities to
their masters to be punished at their discretion; and those masters
were frugal people who, if their slave-herdsmen asked clothes, replied
with stripes and with the inquiry whether travellers journeyed through
the land naked. The consequence of such connivance accordingly was,
that OH the subjugation of the slave-revolt the consul Publius Rupilius
ordered all that came into his hands alive--it is said upwards of
20,000 men--to be crucified. It was in truth no longer possible
to spare capital.
The Italian Farmers
The care of the government for the elevation of free labour,
and by consequence for the restriction of the slave-proletariate,
promised fruits far more difficult to be gained but also far richer.
Unfortunately, in this respect there was nothing done at all. In the
first social crisis the landlord had been enjoined by law to employ
a number of free labourers proportioned to the number of his slave
labourers.(17) Now at the suggestion of the government a Punic
treatise on agriculture,(18) doubtless giving instructions in the
system of plantation after the Carthaginian mode, was translated
into Latin for the use and benefit of Italian speculators--the first
and only instance of a literary undertaking suggested by the Roman
senate! The same tendency showed itself in a more important matter,
or to speak more correctly in the vital question for Rome--the system
of colonization. It needed no special wisdom, but merely a
recollection of the course of the first social crisis in Rome,
to perceive that the only real remedy against an agricultural
proletariate consisted in a comprehensive and duly-regulated system
of emigration;(19) for which the external relations of Rome offered
the most favourable opportunity. Until nearly the close of the sixth
century, in fact, the continuous diminution of the small landholders
of Italy was counteracted by the continuous establishment of new
farm-allotments.(20) This, it is true, was by no means done to the
extent to which it might and should have been done; not only was the
domain-land occupied from ancient times by private persons(21) not
recalled, but further occupations of newly-won land were permitted;
and other very important acquisitions, such as the territory of Capua,
while not abandoned to occupation, were yet not brought into
distribution, but were let on lease as usufructuary domains.
Nevertheless the assignation of land had operated beneficially--giving
help to many of the sufferers and hope to all. But after the founding
of Luna (577) no trace of further assignations of land is to be met
with for a long time, with the exception of the isolated institution
of the Picenian colony of Auximum (Osimo) in 597. The reason is
simple. After the conquest of the Boii and Apuani no new territory was
acquired in Italy excepting the far from attractive Ligurian valleys;
therefore no other land existed for distribution there except the
leased or occupied domain-land, the laying hands on which was, as may
easily be conceived, just as little agreeable to the aristocracy now as
it was three hundred years before. The distribution of the territory
acquired out of Italy appeared for political reasons inadmissible;
Italy was to remain the ruling country, and the wall of partition
between the Italian masters and their provincial servants was not
to be broken down. Unless the government were willing to set aside
considerations of higher policy or even the interests of their order,
no course was left to them but to remain spectators of the ruin of
the Italian farmer-class; and this result accordingly ensued.
The capitalists continued to buy out the small landholders, or indeed,
if they remained obstinate, to seize their fields without title of
purchase; in which case, as may be supposed, matters were not always
amicably settled. A peculiarly favourite method was to eject the wife
and children of the farmer from the homestead, while he was in the
field, and to bring him to compliance by means of the theory of
"accomplished fact." The landlords continued mainly to employ slaves
instead of free labourers, because the former could not like the
latter be called away to military service; and thus reduced the free
proletariate to the same level of misery with the slaves. They
continued to supersede Italian grain in the market of the capital,
and to lessen its value over the whole peninsula, by selling Sicilian
slave-corn at a mere nominal price. In Etruria the old native
aristocracy in league with the Roman capitalists had as early as 620
brought matters to such a pass, that there was no longer a free farmer
there. It could be said aloud in the market of the capital, that the
beasts had their lairs but nothing was left to the burgesses save
the air and sunshine, and that those who were styled the masters
of the world had no longer a clod that they could call their own.
The census lists of the Roman burgesses furnished the commentary on
these words. From the end of the Hannibalic war down to 595 the numbers
of the burgesses were steadily on the increase, the cause of which is
mainly to be sought in the continuous and considerable distributions
of domain-land:(22) after 595 again, when the census yielded 328,000
burgesses capable of bearing arms, there appears a regular falling-off,
for the list in 600 stood at 324,000, that in 607 at 322,000, that
in 623 at 319,000 burgesses fit for service--an alarming result for a
time of profound peace at home and abroad. If matters were to go on
at this rate, the burgess-body would resolve itself into planters and
slaves; and the Roman state might at length, as was the case with the
Parthians, purchase its soldiers in the slave-market.
Ideas of Reform
Scipio Aemilianus
Such was the external and internal condition of Rome, when the state
entered on the seventh century of its existence. Wherever the eye
turned, it encountered abuses and decay; the question could not
but force itself on every sagacious and well-disposed man, whether
this state of things was not capable of remedy or amendment. There
was no want of such men in Rome; but no one seemed more called to the
great work of political and social reform than Publius Cornelius Scipio
Aemilianus Africanus (570-625), the favourite son of Aemilius Paullus
and the adopted grandson of the great Scipio, whose glorious surname
of Africanus he bore by virtue not merely of hereditary but of
personal right. Like his father, he was a man temperate and
thoroughly healthy, never ailing in body, and never at a loss to
resolve on the immediate and necessary course of action. Even
in his youth he had kept aloof from the usual proceedings of
political novices--the attending in the antechambers of prominent
senators and the delivery of forensic declamations. On the other
hand he loved the chase--when a youth of seventeen, after having
served with distinction under his father in the campaign against
Perseus, he had asked as his reward the free range of the deer
forest of the kings of Macedonia which had been untouched for
four years--and he was especially fond of devoting his leisure to
scientific and literary enjoyment. By the care of his father he had
been early initiated into that genuine Greek culture, which elevated
him above the insipid Hellenizing of the semi-culture commonly in
vogue; by his earnest and apt appreciation of the good and bad
qualities in the Greek character, and by his aristocratic carriage,
this Roman made an impression on the courts of the east and even on
the scoffing Alexandrians. His Hellenism was especially recognizable
in the delicate irony of his discourse and in the classic purity of
his Latin. Although not strictly an author, he yet, like Cato,
committed to writing his political speeches--they were, like the letters
of his adopted sister the mother of the Gracchi, esteemed by the later
-litteratores- as masterpieces of model prose--and took pleasure in
surrounding himself with the better Greek and Roman -litterati-,
a plebeian society which was doubtless regarded with no small
suspicion by those colleagues in the senate whose noble birth was
their sole distinction. A man morally steadfast and trustworthy,
his word held good with friend and foe; he avoided buildings and
speculations, and lived with simplicity; while in money matters he
acted not merely honourably and disinterestedly, but also with a
tenderness and liberality which seemed singular to the mercantile
spirit of his contemporaries. He was an able soldier and officer;
he brought home from the African war the honorary wreath which was
wont to be conferred on those who saved the lives of citizens in
danger at the peril of their own, and terminated as general the
war which he had begun as an officer; circumstances gave him no
opportunity of trying his skill as a general on tasks really
difficult. Scipio was not, any more than his father, a man
of brilliant gifts--as is indicated by the very fact of his
predilection for Xenophon, the sober soldier and correct author-
but he was an honest and true man, who seemed pre-eminently called
to stem the incipient decay by organic reforms. All the more
significant is the fact that he did not attempt it. It is true
that he helped, as he had opportunity and means, to redress or
prevent abuses, and laboured in particular at the improvement of
the administration of justice. It was chiefly by his assistance
that Lucius Cassius, an able man of the old Roman austerity and
uprightness, was enabled to carry against the most vehement
opposition of the Optimates his law as to voting, which introduced
vote by ballot for those popular tribunals which still embraced
the most important part of the criminal jurisdiction.(23) In like
manner, although he had not chosen to take part in boyish
impeachments, he himself in his mature years put upon their trial
several of the guiltiest of the aristocracy. In a like spirit, when
commanding before Carthage and Numantia, he drove forth the women
and priests to the gates of the camp, and subjected the rabble of
soldiers once more to the iron yoke of the old military discipline;
and when censor (612), he cleared away the smooth-chinned coxcombs
among the world of quality and in earnest language urged the
citizens to adhere more faithfully to the honest customs of their
fathers. But no one, and least of all he himself, could fail to
see that increased stringency in the administration of justice and
isolated interference were not even first steps towards the healing
of the organic evils under which the state laboured. These Scipio did
not touch. Gaius Laelius (consul in 614), Scipio's elder friend and
his political instructor and confidant, had conceived the plan of
proposing the resumption of the Italian domain-land which had not
been given away but had been temporarily occupied, and of giving
relief by its distribution to the visibly decaying Italian farmers;
but he desisted from the project when he saw what a storm he was
going to raise, and was thenceforth named the "Judicious." Scipio was
of the same opinion. He was fully persuaded of the greatness of the
evil, and with a courage deserving of honour he without respect of
persons remorselessly assailed it and carried his point, where he
risked himself alone; but he was also persuaded that the country
could only be relieved at the price of a revolution similar to that
which in the fourth and fifth centuries had sprung out of the question
of reform, and, rightly or wrongly, the remedy seemed to him worse than
the disease. So with the small circle of his friends he held a middle
position between the aristocrats, who never forgave him for his advocacy
of the Cassian law, and the democrats, whom he neither satisfied nor
wished to satisfy; solitary during his life, praised after his death
by both parties, now as the champion of the aristocracy, now as
the promoter of reform. Down to his time the censors on laying
down their office had called upon the gods to grant greater power
and glory to the state: the censor Scipio prayed that they might
deign to preserve the state. His whole confession of faith lies
in that painful exclamation.
Tiberius Gracchus
But where the man who had twice led the Roman army from deep decline
to victory despaired, a youth without achievements had the boldness to
give himself forth as the saviour of Italy. He was called Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus (591-621). His father who bore the same name
(consul in 577, 591; censor in 585), was the true model of a Roman
aristocrat. The brilliant magnificence of his aedilician games, not
produced without oppressing the dependent communities, had drawn upon
him the severe and deserved censure of the senate;(24) his interference
in the pitiful process directed against the Scipios who were personally
hostile to him(25) gave proof of his chivalrous feeling, and perhaps of
his regard for his own order; and his energetic action against the
freedmen in his censorship(26) evinced his conservative disposition.
As governor, moreover, of the province of the Ebro,(27) by his bravery
and above all by his integrity he rendered a permanent service to his
country, and at the same time raised to himself in the hearts of
the subject nation an enduring monument of reverence and affection.
His mother Cornelia was the daughter of the conqueror of Zama, who,
simply on account of that generous intervention, had chosen his former
opponent as a son-in-law; she herself was a highly cultivated and
notable woman, who after the death of her much older husband had
refused the hand of the king of Egypt and reared her three surviving
children in memory of her husband and her father. Tiberius, the
elder of the two sons, was of a good and moral disposition, of
gentle aspect and quiet bearing, apparently fitted for anything rather
than for an agitator of the masses. In all his relations and views
he belonged to the Scipionic circle, whose refined and thorough
culture, Greek and national, he and his brother and sister shared.
Scipio Aemilianus was at once his cousin and his sister's husband;
under him Tiberius, at the age of eighteen, had taken part in the
storming of Carthage, and had by his valour acquired the commendation
of the stern general and warlike distinctions. It was natural
that the able young man should, with all the vivacity and all the
stringent precision of youth, adopt and intensify the views as to
the pervading decay of the state which were prevalent in that circle,
and more especially their ideas as to the elevation of the Italian
farmers. Nor was it merely to the young men that the shrinking of
Laelius from the execution of his ideas of reform seemed to be not
judicious, but weak. Appius Claudius, who had already been consul
(611) and censor (618), one of the most respected men in the senate,
censured the Scipionic circle for having so soon abandoned the scheme
of distributing the domain-lands with all the passionate vehemence
which was the hereditary characteristic of the Claudian house; and with
the greater bitterness, apparently because he had come into personal
conflict with Scipio Aemilianus in his candidature for the censorship.
Similar views were expressed by Publius Crassus Mucianus,(28) the
-pontifex maximus- of the day, who was held in universal honour by
the senate and the citizens as a man and a jurist. Even his brother
Publius Mucius Scaevola, the founder of scientific jurisprudence in
Rome, seemed not averse to the plan of reform; and his voice was of
the greater weight, as he stood in some measure aloof from the parties.
Similar were the sentiments of Quintus Metellus, the conqueror of
Macedonia and of the Achaeans, but respected not so much on account of
his warlike deeds as because he was a model of the old discipline and
manners alike in his domestic and his public life. Tiberius Gracchus
was closely connected with these men, particularly with Appius whose
daughter he had married, and with Mucianus whose daughter was married
to his brother. It was no wonder that he cherished the idea of
resuming in person the scheme of reform, so soon as he should find
himself in a position which would constitutionally allow him the
initiative. Personal motives may have strengthened this resolution.
The treaty of peace which Mancinus concluded with the Numantines in
617, was in substance the work of Gracchus;(29) the recollection that
the senate had cancelled it, that the general had been on its account
surrendered to the enemy, and that Gracchus with the other superior
officers had only escaped a like fate through the greater favour
which he enjoyed among the burgesses, could not put the young,
upright, and proud man in better humour with the ruling aristocracy.
The Hellenic rhetoricians with whom he was fond of discussing philosophy
and politics, Diophanes of Mytilene and Gaius Blossius of Cumae,
nourished within his soul the ideals over which he brooded: when his
intentions became known in wider circles, there was no want of approving
voices, and many a public placard summoned the grandson of Africanus to
think of the poor people and the deliverance of Italy.
Tribunate of Gracchus
His Agrarian Law
Tiberius Gracchus was invested with the tribunate of the people on
the 10th of December, 620. The fearful consequences of the previous
misgovernment, the political, military, economic, and moral decay of
the burgesses, were just at that time naked and open to the eyes of
all. Of the two consuls of this year one fought without success in
Sicily against the revolted slaves, and the other, Scipio Aemilianus,
was employed for months not in conquering, but in crushing a small
Spanish country town. If Gracchus still needed a special summons to
carry his resolution into effect, he found it in this state of matters
which filled the mind of every patriot with unspeakable anxiety.
His father-in-law promised assistance in counsel and action; the support
of the jurist Scaevola, who had shortly before been elected consul for
621, might be hoped for. So Gracchus, immediately after entering on
office, proposed the enactment of an agrarian law, which in a certain
sense was nothing but a renewal of the Licinio-Sextian law of 387.(30)
Under it all the state-lands which were occupied and enjoyed by
the possessors without remuneration--those that were let on lease,
such as the territory of Capua, were not affected by the law--were to
be resumed on behalf of the state; but with the restriction, that
each occupier should reserve for himself 500 -jugera- and for each son
250 (so as not, however, to exceed 1000 -jugera- in all) in permanent
and guaranteed possession, or should be entitled to claim compensation
in land to that extent. Indemnification appears to have been
granted for any improvements executed by the former holders, such
as buildings and plantations. The domain-land thus resumed was to
be broken up into lots of 30 jugera; and these were to be distributed
partly to burgesses, partly to Italian allies, not as their own free
property, but as inalienable heritable leaseholds, whose holders bound
themselves to use the land for agriculture and to pay a moderate
rent to the state-chest. A -collegium- of three men, who were
regarded as ordinary and standing magistrates of the state and were
annually elected by the assembly of the people, was entrusted with
the work of resumption and distribution; to which was afterwards added
the important and difficult function of legally settling what was
domain-land and what was private property. The distribution was
accordingly designed to go on for an indefinite period until the
Italian domains which were very extensive and difficult of adjustment
should be regulated. The new features in the Sempronian agrarian law,
as compared with the Licinio-Sextian, were, first, the clause in favour
of the hereditary possessors; secondly, the leasehold and inalienable
tenure proposed for the new allotments; thirdly and especially, the
regulated and permanent executive, the want of which under the older
law had been the chief reason why it had remained without lasting
practical application.
War was thus declared against the great landholders, who now, as
three centuries ago, found substantially their organ in the senate;
and once more, after a long interval, a single magistrate stood forth
in earnest opposition to the aristocratic government. It took up the
conflict in the mode--sanctioned by use and wont for such cases--of
paralyzing the excesses of the magistrates by means of the magistracy
itself.(31) A colleague of Gracchus, Marcus Octavius, a resolute man
who was seriously persuaded of the objectionable character of the
proposed domain law, interposed his veto when it was about to be put
to the vote; a step, the constitutional effect of which was to set
aside the proposal. Gracchus in his turn suspended the business
of the state and the administration of justice, and placed his seal
on the public chest; the government acquiesced--it was inconvenient,
but the year would draw to an end. Gracchus, in perplexity, brought his
law to the vote a second time. Octavius of course repeated his -veto-;
and to the urgent entreaty of his colleague and former friend, that
he would not obstruct the salvation of Italy, he might reply that on
that very question, as to how Italy could be saved, opinions differed,
but that his constitutional right to use his veto against the proposal
of his colleague was beyond all doubt. The senate now made an attempt
to open up to Gracchus a tolerable retreat; two consulars challenged
him to discuss the matter further in the senate house, and the tribune
entered into the scheme with zeal. He sought to construe this
proposal as implying that the senate had conceded the principle of
distributing the domain-land; but neither was this implied in it,
nor was the senate at all disposed to yield in the matter; the
discussions ended without any result. Constitutional means were
exhausted. In earlier times under such circumstances men were not
indisposed to let the proposal go to sleep for the current year, and
to take it up again in each succeeding one, till the earnestness of
the demand and the pressure of public opinion overbore resistance.
Now things were carried with a higher hand. Gracchus seemed to himself
to have reached the point when he must either wholly renounce his
reform or begin a revolution. He chose the latter course; for he
came before the burgesses with the declaration that either he or
Octavius must retire from the college, and suggested to Octavius
that a vote of the burgesses should be taken as to which of them
they wished to dismiss. Octavius naturally refused to consent to
this strange challenge; the -intercessio- existed for the very purpose
of giving scope to such differences of opinion among colleagues. Then
Gracchus broke off the discussion with his colleague, and turned to
the assembled multitude with the question whether a tribune of the
people, who acted in opposition to the people, had not forfeited his
office; and the assembly, long accustomed to assent to all proposals
presented to it, and for the most part composed of the agricultural
proletariate which had flocked in from the country and was
personally interested in the carrying of the law, gave almost
unanimously an affirmative answer. Marcus Octavius was at the bidding
of Gracchus removed by the lictors from the tribunes' bench; and then,
amidst universal rejoicing, the agrarian law was carried and the
first allotment-commissioners were nominated. The votes fell on the
author of the law along with his brother Gaius, who was only twenty
years of age, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Such a family-
selection augmented the exasperation of the aristocracy. When the
new magistrates applied as usual to the senate to obtain the moneys
for their equipment and for their daily allowance, the former was
refused, and a daily allowance was assigned to them of 24 -asses-
(1 shilling). The feud spread daily more and more, and became
more envenomed and more personal. The difficult and intricate task
of defining, resuming, and distributing the domains carried strife
into every burgess-community, and even into the allied Italian towns.
Further Plans of Gracchus
The aristocracy made no secret that, while they would acquiesce perhaps
in the law because they could not do otherwise, the officious legislator
should never escape their vengeance; and the announcement of Quintus
Pompeius, that he would impeach Gracchus on the very day of his
resigning his tribunate, was far from being the worst of the threats
thrown out against the tribune. Gracchus believed, probably with
reason, that his personal safety was imperilled, and no longer
appeared in the Forum without a retinue of 3000 or 4000 men--a step
which drew down on him bitter expressions in the senate, even from
Metellus who was not averse to reform in itself. Altogether, if
he had expected to reach the goal by the carrying of his agrarian
law, he had now to learn that he was only at the starting-point.
The "people" owed him gratitude; but he was a lost man, if he had
no farther protection than this gratitude of the people, if he did
not continue indispensable to them and did not constantly attach
to himself fresh interests and hopes by means of other and more
comprehensive proposals. Just at that time the kingdom and wealth
of the Attalids had fallen to the Romans by the testament of the
last king of Pergamus;(32) Gracchus proposed to the people that the
Pergamene treasure should be distributed among the new landholders for
the procuring of the requisite implements and stock, and vindicated
generally, in opposition to the existing practice, the right of the
burgesses to decide definitively as to the new province. He is said
to have prepared farther popular measures, for shortening the period
of service, for extending the right of appeal, for abolishing the
prerogative of the senators exclusively to do duty as civil jurymen,
and even for the admission of the Italian allies to Roman
citizenship. How far his projects in reality reached, cannot be
ascertained; this alone is certain, that Gracchus saw that his only
safety lay in inducing the burgesses to confer on him for a second
year the office which protected him, and that, with a view to obtain
this unconstitutional prolongation, he held forth a prospect of
further reforms. If at first he had risked himself in order to save
the commonwealth, he was now obliged to put the commonwealth at stake
in order to his own safety.
He Solicits Re-election to the Tribunate
The tribes met to elect the tribunes for the ensuing year, and
the first divisions gave their votes for Gracchus; but the opposite
party in the end prevailed with their veto, so far at least that
the assembly broke up without having accomplished its object, and
the decision was postponed to the following day. For this day Gracchus
put in motion all means legitimate and illegitimate; he appeared to the
people dressed in mourning, and commended to them his youthful son;
anticipating that the election would once more be disturbed by the
veto, he made provision for expelling the adherents of the aristocracy
by force from the place of assembly in front of the Capitoline
temple. So the second day of election came on; the votes fell as on
the preceding day, and again the veto was exercised; the tumult began.
The burgesses dispersed; the elective assembly was practically dissolved;
the Capitoline temple was closed; it was rumoured in the city, now that
Tiberius had deposed all the tribunes, now that he had resolved to
continue his magistracy without reelection.
Death of Gracchus
The senate assembled in the temple of Fidelity, close by the temple
of Jupiter; the bitterest opponents of Gracchus spoke in the sitting;
when Tiberius moved his hand towards his forehead to signify
to the people, amidst the wild tumult, that his head was in danger,
it was said that he was already summoning the people to adorn his
brow with the regal chaplet. The consul Scaevola was urged to have
the traitor put to death at once. When that temperate man, by no
means averse to reform in itself, indignantly refused the equally
irrational and barbarous request, the consular Publius Scipio Nasica,
a harsh and vehement aristocrat, summoned those who shared his views
to arm themselves as they could and to follow him. Almost none of the
country people had come into town for the elections; the people of the
city timidly gave way, when they saw men of quality rushing along with
fury in their eyes, and legs of chairs and clubs in their hands.
Gracchus attempted with a few attendants to escape. But in his
flight he fell on the slope of the Capitol, and was killed by a
blow on the temples from the bludgeon of one of his furious pursuers
--Publius Satureius and Lucius Rufus afterwards contested the infamous
honour--before the statues of the seven kings at the temple of
Fidelity; with him three hundred others were slain, not one by
weapons of iron. When evening had come on, the bodies were thrown
into the Tiber; Gaius vainly entreated that the corpse of his
brother might be granted to him for burial. Such a day had never
before been seen by Rome. The party-strife lasting for more than
a century during the first social crisis had led to no such
catastrophe as that with which the second began. The better portion
of the aristocracy might shudder, but they could no longer recede.
They had no choice save to abandon a great number of their most
trusty partisans to the vengeance of the multitude, or to assume
collectively the responsibility of the outrage: the latter course was
adopted. They gave official sanction to the assertion that Gracchus
had wished to seize the crown, and justified this latest crime by
the primitive precedent of Ahala;(33) in fact, they even committed
the duty of further investigation as to the accomplices of Gracchus
to a special commission and made its head, the consul Publius Popillius,
take care that a sort of legal stamp should be supplementarily impressed
on the murder of Gracchus by bloody sentences directed against a large
number of inferior persons (622). Nasica, against whom above all
others the multitude breathed vengeance, and who had at least the
courage openly to avow his deed before the people and to defend it,
was under honourable pretexts despatched to Asia, and soon afterwards
(624) invested, during his absence, with the office of Pontifex
Maximus. Nor did the moderate party dissociate themselves from these
proceedings of their colleagues. Gaius Laelius bore a part in the
investigations adverse to the partisans of Gracchus; Publius Scaevola,
who had attempted to prevent the murder, afterwards defended it in the
senate; when Scipio Aemilianus, after his return from Spain (622), was
challenged publicly to declare whether he did or did not approve the
killing of his brother-in-law, he gave the at least ambiguous reply
that, so far as Tiberius had aspired to the crown, he had been
justly put to death.
The Domain Question Viewed in Itself
Let us endeavour to form a judgment regarding these momentous events.
The appointment of an official commission, which had to counteract
the dangerous diminution of the farmer-class by the comprehensive
establishment of new small holdings from the whole Italian landed
property at the disposal of the state, was doubtless no sign of a
healthy condition of the national economy; but it was, under the
existing circumstances political and social, suited to its purpose.
The distribution of the domains, moreover, was in itself no political
party-question; it might have been carried out to the last sod without
changing the existing constitution or at all shaking the government
of the aristocracy. As little could there be, in that case, any
complaint of a violation of rights. The state was confessedly
the owner of the occupied land; the holder as a possessor on mere
sufferance could not, as a rule, ascribe to himself even a bonafide
proprietary tenure, and, in the exceptional instances where he could
do so, he was confronted by the fact that by the Roman law prescription
did not run against the state. The distribution of the domains was not
an abolition, but an exercise, of the right of property; all jurists
were agreed as to its formal legality. But the attempt now to carry
out these legal claims of the state was far from being politically
warranted by the circumstance that the distribution of the domains
neither infringed the existing constitution nor involved a violation
of right. Such objections as have been now and then raised in our
day, when a great landlord suddenly begins to assert in all their
compass claims belonging to him in law but suffered for a long period
to lie dormant in practice, might with equal and better right be
advanced against the rogation of Gracchus. These occupied domains
had been undeniably in heritable private possession, some of them for
three hundred years; the state's proprietorship of the soil, which
from its very nature loses more readily than that of the burgess the
character of a private right, had in the case of these lands become
virtually extinct, and the present holders had universally come
to their possessions by purchase or other onerous acquisition.
The jurist might say what he would; to men of business the measure
appeared to be an ejection of the great landholders for the benefit
of the agricultural proletariate; and in fact no statesman could give
it any other name. That the leading men of the Catonian epoch formed
no other judgment, is very clearly shown by their treatment of a similar
case that occurred in their time. The territory of Capua and the
neighbouring towns, which was annexed as domain in 543, had for
the most part practically passed into private possession during
the following unsettled times. In the last years of the sixth
century, when in various respects, especially through the influence
of Cato, the reins of government were drawn tighter, the burgesses
resolved to resume the Campanian territory and to let it out for
the benefit of the treasury (582). The possession in this instance
rested on an occupation justified not by previous invitation but
at the most by the connivance of the authorities, and had continued
in no case much beyond a generation; but the holders were not
dispossessed except in consideration of a compensatory sum disbursed
under the orders of the senate by the urban praetor Publius Lentulus
(c. 589).(34) Less objectionable perhaps, but still not without
hazard, was the arrangement by which the new allotments bore
the character of heritable leaseholds and were inalienable. The most
liberal principles in regard to freedom of dealing had made Rome
great; and it was very little consonant to the spirit of the Roman
institutions, that these new farmers were peremptorily bound down
to cultivate their portions of land in a definite manner, and that
their allotments were subject to rights of revocation and all the
cramping measures associated with commercial restriction.
It will be granted that these objections to the Sempronian agrarian
law were of no small weight. Yet they are not decisive. Such a
practical eviction of the holders of the domains was certainly a
great evil; yet it was the only means of checking, at least for a
long time, an evil much greater still and in fact directly destructive
to the state--the decline of the Italian farmer-class. We can well
understand therefore why the most distinguished and patriotic men
even of the conservative party, headed by Gaius Laelius and Scipio
Aemilianus, approved and desired the distribution of the domains
viewed in itself.
The Domain Question before the Burgesses
But, if the aim of Tiberius Gracchus probably appeared to
the great majority of the discerning friends of their country
good and salutary, the method which he adopted, on the other hand,
did not and could not meet with the approval of a single man of note
and of patriotism. Rome about this period was governed by the senate.
Any one who carried a measure of administration against the majority
of the senate made a revolution. It was revolution against the spirit
of the constitution, when Gracchus submitted the domain question to the
people; and revolution also against the letter, when he destroyed not
only for the moment but for all time coming the tribunician veto--
the corrective of the state machine, through which the senate
constitutionally got rid of interferences with its government--by the
deposition of his colleague, which he justified with unworthy sophistry.
But it was not in this step that the moral and political mistake of
the action of Gracchus lay. There are no set forms of high treason
in history; whoever provokes one power in the state to conflict with
another is certainly a revolutionist, but he may be at the same time
a discerning and praiseworthy statesman. The essential defect of the
Gracchan revolution lay in a fact only too frequently overlooked--in
the nature of the then existing burgess-assemblies. The agrarian law
of Spurius Cassius(35) and that of Tiberius Gracchus had in the main
the same tenor and the same object; but the enterprises of the two
men were as different, as the former Roman burgess-body which shared
the Volscian spoil with the Latins and Hernici was different from
the present which erected the provinces of Asia and Africa. The former
was an urban community, which could meet together and act together;
the latter was a great state, as to which the attempt to unite those
belonging to it in one and the same primary assembly, and to leave to
this assembly the decision, yielded a result as lamentable as it was
ridiculous.(36) The fundamental defect of the policy of antiquity
--that it never fully advanced from the urban form of constitution to
that of a state or, which is the same thing, from the system of
primary assemblies to a parliamentary system--in this case avenged
itself. The sovereign assembly of Rome was what the sovereign
assembly in England would be, if instead of sending representatives
all the electors of England should meet together as a parliament--an
unwieldy mass, wildly agitated by all interests and all passions, in
which intelligence was totally lost; a body, which was neither able
to take a comprehensive view of things nor even to form a resolution
of its own; a body above all, in which, saving in rare exceptional
cases, a couple of hundred or thousand individuals accidentally
picked up from the streets of the capital acted and voted in name of
the burgesses. The burgesses found themselves, as a rule, nearly as
satisfactorily represented by their de facto representatives in the
tribes and centuries as by the thirty lictors who de jure represented
them in the curies; and just as what was called the decree of the
curies was nothing but a decree of the magistrate who convoked the
lictors, so the decree of the tribes and centuries at this time was
in substance simply a decree of the proposing magistrate, legalised
by some consentients indispensable for the occasion. But while in
these voting-assemblies, the -comitia-, though they were far from
dealing strictly in the matter of qualification, it was on the whole
burgesses alone that appeared, in the mere popular assemblages on the
other hand--the -contiones---every one in the shape of a man was
entitled to take his place and to shout, Egyptians and Jews, street-
boys and slaves. Such a "meeting" certainly had no significance
in the eyes of the law; it could neither vote nor decree. But it
practically ruled the street, and already the opinion of the street
was a power in Rome, so that it was of some importance whether this
confused mass received the communications made to it with silence or
shouts, whether it applauded and rejoiced or hissed and howled at
the orator. Not many had the courage to lord it over the populace
as Scipio Aemilianus did, when they hissed him on account of his
expression as to the death of his brother-in-law. "Ye," he said,
"to whom Italy is not mother but step-mother, ought to keep silence!"
and when their fury grew still louder, "Surely you do not think
that I will fear those let loose, whom I have sent in chains
to the slave-market?"
That the rusty machinery of the comitia should be made use of for the
elections and for legislation, was already bad enough. But when those
masses--the -comitia- primarily, and practically also the -contiones---
were permitted to interfere in the administration, and the instrument
which the senate employed to prevent such interferences was wrested out
of its hands; when this so-called burgess-body was allowed to decree
to itself lands along with all their appurtenances out of the public
purse; when any one, whom circumstances and his influence with the
proletariate enabled to command the streets for a few hours, found it
possible to impress on his projects the legal stamp of the sovereign
people's will, Rome had reached not the beginning, but the end of
popular freedom--had arrived not at democracy, but at monarchy.
For that reason in the previous period Cato and those who shared
his views never brought such questions before the burgesses,
but discussed them solely in the senate.(37) For that reason
contemporaries of Gracchus, the men of the Scipionic circle,
described the Flaminian agrarian law of 522--the first step in
that fatal career--as the beginning of the decline of Roman greatness.
For that reason they allowed the author of the domain-distribution
to fall, and saw in his dreadful end, as it were, a rampart against
similar attempts in future, while yet they maintained and turned
to account with all their energy the domain-distribution itself
which he had carried through--so sad was the state of things in
Rome that honest patriots were forced into the horrible hypocrisy
of abandoning the evil-doer and yet appropriating the fruit of
the evil deed. For that reason too the opponents of Gracchus were
in a certain sense not wrong, when they accused him of aspiring to the
crown. For him it is a fresh impeachment rather than a justification,
that he himself was probably a stranger to any such thought.
The aristocratic government was so thoroughly pernicious, that
the citizen, who was able to depose the senate and to put
himself in its place, might perhaps benefit the commonwealth
more than he injured it.
Results
But such a bold player Tiberius Gracchus was not. He was a tolerably
capable, thoroughly well-meaning, conservative patriot, who simply
did not know what he was doing; who in the fullest belief that he
was calling the people evoked the rabble, and grasped at the crown
without being himself aware of it, until the inexorable sequence of
events urged him irresistibly into the career of the demagogue-tyrant;
until the family commission, the interferences with the public
finances, the further "reforms" exacted by necessity and despair,
the bodyguard from the pavement, and the conflicts in the streets
betrayed the lamentable usurper more and more clearly to himself and
others; until at length the unchained spirits of revolution seized and
devoured the incapable conjurer. The infamous butchery, through which
he perished, condemns itself, as it condemns the aristocratic faction
whence it issued; but the glory of martyrdom, with which it has
embellished the name of Tiberius Gracchus, came in this instance,
as usually, to the wrong man. The best of his contemporaries judged
otherwise. When the catastrophe was announced to Scipio Aemilianus,
he uttered the words of Homer:
"--Os apoloito kai allos, otis toiauta ge pezoi--"
and when the younger brother of Tiberius seemed disposed to come forward
in the same career, his own mother wrote to him: "Shall then our house
have no end of madness? Where shall be the limit? Have we not yet
enough to be ashamed of, in having confused and disorganized the state?"
So spoke not the anxious mother, but the daughter of the conqueror of
Carthage, who knew and experienced a misfortune yet greater than the
death of her children.