The Revolution and Gaius Gracchus
The Commisssion for Distributing the Domains
Tiberius Gracchus was dead; but his two works, the distribution
of land and the revolution, survived their author. In presence
of the starving agricultural proletariate the senate might venture
on a murder, but it could not make use of that murder to annul
the Sempronian agrarian law; the law itself had been far more
strengthened than shaken by the frantic outbreak of party fury.
The party of the aristocracy friendly towards reform, which openly
favoured the distribution of the domains--headed by Quintus Metellus,
just about this time (623) censor, and Publius Scaevola--in concert with
the party of Scipio Aemilianus, which was at least not disinclined to
reform, gained the upper hand for the time being even in the senate;
and a decree of the senate expressly directed the triumvirs to begin
their labours. According to the Sempronian law these were to be
nominated annually by the community, and this was probably done: but
from the nature of their task it was natural that the election should
fall again and again on the same men, and new elections in the proper
sense occurred only when a place became vacant through death. Thus in
the place of Tiberius Gracchus there was appointed the father-in-law
of his brother Gaius, Publius Crassus Mucianus; and after the fall of
Mucianus in 624(1) and the death of Appius Claudius, the business of
distribution was managed in concert with the young Gaius Gracchus by
two of the most active leaders of the movement party, Marcus Fulvius
Flaccus and Gaius Papirius Carbo. The very names of these men are
vouchers that the work of resuming and distributing the occupied
domain-land was prosecuted with zeal and energy; and, in fact, proofs
to that effect are not wanting. As early as 622 the consul of that
year, Publius Popillius, the same who directed the prosecutions of
the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded on a public monument that
he was "the first who had turned the shepherds out of the domains and
installed farmers in their stead"; and tradition otherwise affirms that
the distribution extended over all Italy, and that in the formerly
existing communities the number of farms was everywhere augmented--for
it was the design of the Sempronian agrarian law to elevate the farmer-
class not by the founding of new communities, but by the strengthening
of those already in existence. The extent and the comprehensive effect
of these distributions are attested by the numerous arrangements
in the Roman art of land-measuring that go back to the Gracchan
assignations of land; for instance, a due placing of boundary-stones
so as to obviate future mistakes appears to have been first called
into existence by the Gracchan courts for demarcation and the land-
distributions. But the numbers on the burgess-rolls give the
clearest evidence. The census, which was published in 623 and actually
took place probably in the beginning of 622, yielded not more than
319,000 burgesses capable of bearing arms, whereas six years afterwards
(629) in place of the previous falling-off(2) the number rises to
395,000, that is 76,000 of an increase--beyond all doubt solely
in consequence of what the allotment-commission did for the Roman
burgesses. Whether it multiplied the farms among the Italians in
the same proportion maybe doubted; at any rate what it did accomplish
yielded a great and beneficent result. It is true that this
result was not achieved without various violations of respectable
interests and existing rights. The allotment-commission, composed
of the most decided partisans, and absolute judge in its own cause,
proceeded with its labours in a reckless and even tumultuary fashion;
public notices summoned every one, who was able, to give information
regarding the extent of the domain-lands; the old land-registers were
inexorably referred to, and not only was occupation new and old
revoked without distinction, but in various cases real private
property, as to which the holder was unable satisfactorily to prove
his tenure, was included in the confiscation. Loud and for the most
part well founded as were the complaints, the senate allowed the
distributors to pursue their course; it was clear that, if the
domain question was to be settled at all, the matter could not
be carried through without such unceremonious vigour of action.
Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus
But this acquiescence had its limit. The Italian domain-land was not
solely in the hands of Roman burgesses; large tracts of it had been
assigned in exclusive usufruct to particular allied communities by
decrees of the people or senate, and other portions had been occupied
with or without permission by Latin burgesses. The allotment-
commission at length attacked these possessions also. The resumption
of the portions simply occupied by non-burgesses was no doubt allowable
in formal law, and not less presumably the resumption of the domain-land
handed over by decrees of the senate or even by resolutions of the
burgesses to the Italian communities, since thereby the state by no
means renounced its ownership and to all appearance gave its grants
to communities, just as to private persons, subject to revocation.
But the complaints of these allied or subject communities, that Rome
did not keep the settlements that were in force, could not be simply
disregarded like the complaints of the Roman citizens injured by the
action of the commissioners. Legally the former might be no better
founded than the latter; but, while in the latter case the matter
at stake was the private interests of members of the state, in
reference to the Latin possessions the question arose, whether it was
politically right to give fresh offence to communities so important in
a military point of view and already so greatly estranged from Rome by
numerous disabilities de jure and de facto(3) through this keenly-felt
injury to their material interests. The decision lay in the hands
of the middle party; it was that party which after the fall of
Gracchus had, in league with his adherents, protected reform against
the oligarchy, and it alone was now able in concert with the oligarchy
to set a limit to reform. The Latins resorted personally to the
most prominent man of this party, Scipio Aemilianus, with a request
that he would protect their rights. He promised to do so; and
mainly through his influence,(4) in 625, a decree of the people
withdrew from the commission its jurisdiction, and remitted the
decision respecting what were domanial and what private possessions
to the censors and, as proxies for them, the consuls, to whom according
to the general principles of law it pertained. This was simply a
suspension of further domain-distribution under a mild form. The consul
Tuditanus, by no means Gracchan in his views and little inclined to
occupy himself with the difficult task of agrarian definition,
embraced the opportunity of going off to the Illyrian army and leaving
the duty entrusted to him unfulfilled. The allotment-commission no
doubt continued to subsist, but, as the judicial regulation of the
domain-land was at a standstill, it was compelled to remain inactive.
Assassination of Aemilianus
The reform-party was deeply indignant. Even men like Publius Mucius
and Quintus Metellus disapproved of the intervention of Scipio. Other
circles were not content with expressing disapproval. Scipio had
announced for one of the following days an address respecting the
relations of the Latins; on the morning of that day he was found dead
in his bed. He was but fifty-six years of age, and in full health
and vigour; he had spoken in public the day before, and then in the
evening had retired earlier than usual to his bedchamber with a view
to prepare the outline of his speech for the following day. That he
had been the victim of a political assassination, cannot be doubted;
he himself shortly before had publicly mentioned the plots formed
to murder him. What assassin's hand had during the night slain
the first statesman and the first general of his age, was never
discovered; and it does not become history either to repeat the
reports handed down from the contemporary gossip of the city, or
to set about the childish attempt to ascertain the truth out of such
materials. This much only is clear, that the instigator of the deed
must have belonged to the Gracchan party; the assassination of Scipio
was the democratic reply to the aristocratic massacre at the temple
of Fidelity. The tribunals did not interfere. The popular party,
justly fearing that its leaders Gaius Gracchus, Flaccus, and Carbo,
whether guilty or not, might be involved in the prosecution, opposed
with all its might the institution of an inquiry; and the aristocracy,
which lost in Scipio quite as much an antagonist as an ally, was not
unwilling to let the matter sleep. The multitude and men of moderate
views were shocked; none more so than Quintus Metellus, who had
disapproved of Scipio's interference against reform, but turned away
with horror from such confederates, and ordered his four sons to carry
the bier of his great antagonist to the funeral pile. The funeral
was hurried over; with veiled head the last of the family of the
conqueror of Zama was borne forth, without any one having been
previously allowed to see the face of the deceased, and the flames
of the funeral pile consumed with the remains of the illustrious
man the traces at the same time of the crime.
The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio
Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter
absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country,
and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.
Conscious of the best intentions and of no common abilities, he was
doomed to see the ruin of his country carried out before his eyes,
and to repress within him every earnest attempt to save it, because
he clearly perceived that he should only thereby make the evil worse;
doomed to the necessity of sanctioning outrages like that of Nasica,
and at the same time of defending the work of the victim against
his murderers. Yet he might say that he had not lived in vain.
It was to him, at least quite as much as to the author of the
Sempronian law, that the Roman burgesses were indebted for an increase
of nearly 80,000 new farm-allotments; he it was too who put a stop to
this distribution of the domains, when it had produced such benefit
as it could produce. That it was time to break it off, was no doubt
disputed at the moment even by well-meaning men; but the fact that
Gaius Gracchus did not seriously recur to those possessions which
might have been, and yet were not, distributed under the law of his
brother, tells very much in favour of the belief that Scipio hit
substantially the right moment. Both measures were extorted from
the parties--the first from the aristocracy, the second from the
friends of reform; for each its author paid with his life. It was
Scipio's lot to fight for his country on many a battle-field and to
return home uninjured, that he might perish there by the hand of an
assassin; but in his quiet chamber he no less died for Rome than if
he had fallen before the walls of Carthage.
Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus
The distribution of land was at an end; the revolution went on.
The revolutionary party, which possessed in the allotment-commission
as it were a constituted leadership, had even in the lifetime of Scipio
skirmished now and then with the existing government. Carbo, in
particular, one of the most distinguished men of his time in oratorical
talent, had as tribune of the people in 623 given no small trouble to
the senate; had carried voting by ballot in the burgess-assemblies, so
far as it had not been introduced already;(5) and had even made the
significant proposal to leave the tribunes of the people free to
reappear as candidates for the same office in the year immediately
following, and thus legally to remove the obstacle by which Tiberius
Gracchus had primarily been thwarted. The scheme had been at that
time frustrated by the resistance of Scipio; some years later,
apparently after his death, the law was reintroduced and carried
through, although with limiting clauses.(6) The principal object
of the party, however, was to revive the action of the allotment-
commission which had been practically suspended; the leaders seriously
talked of removing the obstacles which the Italian allies interposed
to the scheme by conferring on them the rights of citizenship, and the
agitation assumed mainly that direction. In order to meet it, the
senate in 628 got the tribune of the people Marcus Junius Pennus to
propose the dismissal of all non-burgesses from the capital, and
in spite of the resistance of the democrats, particularly of Gaius
Gracchus, and of the ferment occasioned by this odious measure in the
Latin communities, the proposal was carried. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus
retorted in the following year (629) as consul with the proposal to
facilitate the acquisition of burgess-rights by the burgesses of the
allied communities, and to concede even to those who had not acquired
them an appeal to the Roman comitia against penal judgments. But he
stood almost alone--Carbo had meanwhile changed his colours and was
now a zealous aristocrat, Gaius Gracchus was absent as quaestor in
Sardinia--and the project was frustrated by the resistance not of the
senate merely, but also of the burgesses, who were but little inclined
to extend their privileges to still wider circles. Flaccus left Rome
to undertake the supreme command against the Celts; by his Transalpine
conquests he prepared the way for the great schemes of the democracy,
while he at the same time withdrew out of the difficulty of having to
bear arms against the allies instigated by himself.
Destruction of Fregallae
Fregellae, situated on the borders of Latium and Campania at the
principal passage of the Liris in the midst of a large and fertile
territory, at that time perhaps the second city of Italy and in the
discussions with Rome the usual mouthpiece of all the Latin colonies,
began war against Rome in consequence of the rejection of the proposal
brought in by Flaccus--the first instance which had occurred for a
hundred and fifty years of a serious insurrection, not brought about
by foreign powers, in Italy against the Roman hegemony. But on this
occasion the fire was successfully extinguished before it had caught
hold of other allied communities. Not through the superiority of
the Roman arms, but through the treachery of a Fregellan Quintus
Numitorius Pullus, the praetor Lucius Opimius quickly became master
of the revolted city, which lost its civic privileges and its walls
and was converted like Capua into a village. The colony of Fabrateria
was founded on a part of its territory in 630; the remainder and
the former city itself were distributed among the surrounding
communities. This rapid and fearful punishment alarmed the
allies, and endless impeachments for high treason pursued not only
the Fregellans, but also the leaders of the popular party in Rome,
who naturally were regarded by the aristocracy as accomplices in
this insurrection. Meanwhile Gaius Gracchus reappeared in Rome.
The aristocracy had first sought to detain the object of their dread
in Sardinia by omitting to provide the usual relief, and then, when
without caring for that point he returned, had brought him to trial
as one of the authors of the Fregellan revolt (629-30). But the
burgesses acquitted him; and now he too threw down the gauntlet,
became a candidate for the tribuneship of the people, and was
nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly
attended by unusual numbers. War was thus declared. The democratic
party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity
remained virtually at rest for nine years; now the truce was at an
end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty
than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect
called to take the lead.
Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Gracchus (601-633) was very different from his brother, who
was about nine years older. Like the latter, he had no relish for
vulgar pleasures and vulgar pursuits; he was a man of thorough
culture and a brave soldier; he had served with distinction before
Numantia under his brother-in-law, and afterwards in Sardinia.
But in talent, in character, and above all in passion he was decidedly
superior to Tiberius. The clearness and self-possession, which the
young man afterwards displayed amidst the pressure of all the varied
labours requisite for the practical carrying out of his numerous laws,
betokened his genuine statesmanly talent; as the passionate devotedness
faithful even to death, with which his intimate friends clung to
him, evinced the loveable nature of that noble mind. The discipline
of suffering which he had undergone, and his compulsory reserve during
the last nine years, augmented his energy of purpose and action; the
indignation repressed within the depths of his breast only glowed there
with an intensified fervour against the party which had disorganized
his country and murdered his brother. By virtue of this fearful
vehemence of temperament he became the foremost orator that Rome ever
had; without it, we should probably have been able to reckon him among
the first statesmen of all times. Among the few remains of his
recorded orations several are, even in their present condition, of
heart-stirring power;(7) and we can well understand how those who heard
or even merely read them were carried away by the impetuous torrent
of his words. Yet, great master as he was of speech, he was himself
not unfrequently mastered by anger, so that the utterance of the
brilliant speaker became confused or faltering. It was the true image
of his political acting and suffering. In the nature of Gaius there was
no vein, such as his brother had, of that somewhat sentimental but very
short-sighted and confused good-nature, which would have desired to
change the mind of a political opponent by entreaties and tears; with
full assurance he entered on the career of revolution and strove to
reach the goal of vengeance. "To me too," his mother wrote to him,
"nothing seems finer and more glorious than to retaliate on an enemy,
so far as it can be done without the country's ruin. But if this is
not possible, then may our enemies continue and remain what they are,
a thousand times rather than that our country should perish."
Cornelia knew her son; his creed was just the reverse. Vengeance he
would wreak on the wretched government, vengeance at any price, though
he himself and even the commonwealth were to be ruined by it--the
presentiment, that fate would overtake him as certainly as his brother,
drove him only to make haste like a man mortally wounded who throws
himself on the foe. The mother thought more nobly; but the son--
with his deeply provoked, passionately excited, thoroughly Italian
nature--has been more lamented than blamed by posterity, and posterity
has been right in its judgment.
Alterations on the Constituion by Gaius Gracchus
Distribution of Grain
Change in the Order of Voting
Tiberius Gracchus had come before the burgesses with a single
administrative reform. What Gaius introduced in a series of separate
proposals was nothing else than an entirely new constitution; the
foundation-stone of which was furnished by the innovation previously
carried through, that a tribune of the people should be at liberty to
solicit re-election for the following year.(8) While this step enabled
the popular chief to acquire a permanent position and one which
protected its holder, the next object was to secure for him material
power or, in other words, to attach the multitude of the capital--for
that no reliance was to be placed on the country people coming only
from time to time to the city, had been sufficiently apparent--with its
interests steadfastly to its leader. This purpose was served, first of
all, by introducing distributions of corn in the capital. The grain
accruing to the state from the provincial tenths had already been
frequently given away at nominal prices to the burgesses.(9) Gracchus
enacted that every burgess who should personally present himself in the
capital should thenceforth be allowed monthly a definite quantity--
apparently 5 -modii- (1 1/4 bushel)--from the public stores, at 6 1/3
-asses- (3d.) for the -modius-, or not quite the half of a low average
price;(10) for which purpose the public corn-stores were enlarged by the
construction of the new Sempronian granaries. This distribution--which
consequently excluded the burgesses living out of the capital, and
could not but attract to Rome the whole mass of the burgess-
proletariate--was designed to bring the burgess-proletariate of the
capital, which hitherto had mainly depended on the aristocracy, into
dependence on the leaders of the movement-party, and thus to supply
the new master of the state at once with a body-guard and with a firm
majority in the comitia. For greater security as regards the latter,
moreover, the order of voting still subsisting in the -comitia
centuriata-, according to which the five property-classes in each
tribe gave their votes one after another,(11) was done away; instead
of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously in an
order of succession to be fixed on each occasion by lot. While these
enactments were mainly designed to procure for the new chief of the
state by means of the city-proletariate the complete command of the
capital and thereby of the state, the amplest control over the comitial
machinery, and the possibility in case of need of striking terror into
the senate and magistrates, the legislator certainly at the same
time set himself with earnestness and energy to redress the
existing social evils.
Agrarian Laws
Colony of Capua
Transmarine Colonialization
It is true that the Italian domain question was in a certain sense
settled. The agrarian law of Tiberius and even theallotment-commission
still continued legally in force; the agrarian law carried by Gracchus
can have enacted nothing new save the restoration to the commissioners
of the jurisdiction which they had lost. That the object of this step
was only to save the principle, and that the distribution of lands,
if resumed at all, was resumed only to a very limited extent, is
shown by the burgess-roll, which gives exactly the same number of
persons for the years 629 and 639. Gaius beyond doubt did not
proceed further in this matter, because the domain-land taken
into possession by Roman burgesses was already in substance distributed,
and the question as to the domains enjoyed by the Latins could only
be taken up anew in connection with the very difficult question as
to the extension of Roman citizenship. On the other hand he took an
important step beyond the agrarian law of Tiberius, when he proposed
the establishment of colonies in Italy--at Tarentum, and more
especially at Capua--and by that course rendered the domain-land,
which had been let on lease by the state and was hitherto excluded
from distribution, liable to be also parcelled out, not, however,
according to the previous method, which excluded the founding of new
communities,(12) but according to the colonial system. Beyond doubt
these colonies were also designed to aid in permanently defending the
revolution to which they owed their existence. Still more significant
and momentous was the measure, by which Gaius Gracchus first proceeded
to provide for the Italian proletariate in the transmarine territories
of the state. He despatched to the site on which Carthage had stood
6000 colonists selected perhaps not merely from Roman burgesses but
also from the Italian allies, and conferred on the new town Junonia
the rights of a Roman burgess-colony. The foundation was important,
but still more important was the principle of transmarine emigration
thereby laid down. It opened up for the Italian proletariate a
permanent outlet, and a relief in fact more than provisional; but
it certainly abandoned the principle of state-law hitherto in force,
by which Italy was regarded as exclusively the governing, and the
provincial territory as exclusively the governed, land.
Modifications of the Penal Law
To these measures having immediate reference to the great question of
the proletariate there was added a series of enactments, which arose
out of the general tendency to introduce principles milder and more
accordant with the spirit of the age than the antiquated severity of
the existing constitution. To this head belong the modifications in
the military system. As to the length of the period of service there
existed under the ancient law no other limit, except that no citizen
was liable to ordinary service in the field before completing his
seventeenth or after completing his forty-sixth year. When, in
consequence of the occupation of Spain, the service began to become
permanent,(13) it seems to have been first legally enacted that any
one who had been in the field for six successive years acquired thereby
a right to discharge, although this discharge did not protect him from
being called out again afterwards. At a later period, perhaps about
the beginning of this century, the rule arose, that a service of
twenty years in the infantry or ten years in the cavalry gave exemption
from further military service.(14) Gracchus renewed the rule--which
presumably was often violently infringed--that no burgess should be
enlisted in the army before the commencement of his eighteenth year;
and also, apparently, restricted the number of campaigns requisite
for full exemption from military duty. Besides, the clothing of the
soldiers, the value of which had hitherto been deducted from their pay,
was henceforward furnished gratuitously by the state.
To this head belongs, moreover, the tendency which is on various
occasions apparent in the Gracchan legislation, if not to abolish
capital punishment, at any rate to restrict it still further than had
been done before--a tendency, which to some extent made itself felt even
in military jurisdiction. From the very introduction of the republic
the magistrate had lost the right of inflicting capital punishment on
the burgess without consulting the community, except under martial
law;(15) if this right of appeal by the burgess appears soon after
the period of the Gracchi available even in the camp, and the right
of the general to inflict capital punishments appears restricted to
allies and subjects, the source of the change is probably to be sought
in the law of Gaius Gracchus -de provocatione- But the right of the
community to inflict or rather to confirm sentence of death was
indirectly yet essentially limited by the fact, that Gracchus withdrew
the cognizance of those public crimes which most frequently gave
occasion to capital sentences--poisoning and murder generally--
from the burgesses, and entrusted it to permanent judicial commissions.
These could not, like the tribunals of the people, be broken up by
the intercession of a tribune, and there not only lay no appeal from
them to the community, but their sentences were as little subject to
be annulled by the community as those of the long-established civil
jurymen. In the burgess-tribunals it had, especially in strictly
political processes, no doubt long been the rule that the accused
remained at liberty during his trial, and was allowed by
surrendering his burgess-rights to save at least life and freedom;
for the fine laid on property, as well as the civil condemnation,
might still affect even the exiled. But preliminary arrest and
complete execution of the sentence remained in such cases at least
legally possible, and were still sometimes carried into effect even
against persons of rank; for instance, Lucius Hostilius Tubulus,
praetor of 612, who was capitally impeached for a heinous crime,
was refused the privilege of exile, arrested, and executed. On the
other hand the judicial commissions, which originated out of the civil
procedure, probably could not at the outset touch the liberty or
life of the citizen, but at the most could only pronounce sentence
of exile; this, which had hitherto been a mitigation of punishment
accorded to one who was found guilty, now became for the first time a
formal penalty This involuntary exile however, like the voluntary, left
to the person banished his property, so far as it was not exhausted
in satisfying claims for compensation and money-fines. Lastly, in
the matter of debt Gaius Gracchus made no alteration; but very
respectable authorities assert that he held out to those in debt the
hope of a diminution or remission of claims--which, if it is correct,
must likewise be reckoned among those radically popular measures.
Elevation of the Equestrian Order
While Gracchus thus leaned on the support of the multitude, which
partly expected, partly received from him a material improvement
of its position, he laboured with equal energy at the ruin of the
aristocracy. Perceiving clearly how insecure was the rule of the
head of the state built merely on the proletariate, he applied himself
above all to split the aristocracy and to draw a part of it over to
his interests. The elements of such a rupture were already in
existence. The aristocracy of the rich, which had risen as one man
against Tiberius Gracchus, consisted in fact of two essentially
dissimilar bodies, which may be in some measure compared to the
peerage and the city aristocracy of England. The one embraced the
practically closed circle of the governing senatorial families who
kept aloof from direct speculation and invested their immense capital
partly in landed property, partly as sleeping partners in the great
associations. The core of the second class was composed of the
speculators, who, as managers of these companies, or on their own
account, conducted the large mercantile and pecuniary transactions
throughout the range of the Roman hegemony. We have already shown(16)
how the latter class, especially in the course of the sixth century,
gradually took its place by the side of the senatorial aristocracy,
and how the legal exclusion of the senators from mercantile pursuits
by the Claudian enactment, suggested by Gaius Flaminius the precursor
of the Gracchi, drew an outward line of demarcation between the senators
and the mercantile and moneyed men. In the present epoch the mercantile
aristocracy began, under the name of the -equites-, to exercise a
decisive influence in political affairs. This appellation, which
originally belonged only to the burgess-cavalry on service, came
gradually to be transferred, at any rate in ordinary use, to all
those who, as possessors of an estate of at least 400,000 sesterces,
were liable to cavalry service in general, and thus comprehended the
whole of the upper society, senatorial and non-senatorial, in Rome.
But not long before the time of Gaius Gracchus the law had declared
a seat in the senate incompatible with service in the cavalry,(17) and
the senators were thus eliminated from those qualified to be equites;
and accordingly the equestrian order, taken as a whole, might be regarded
as representing the aristocracy of speculators in contradistinction
to the senate. Nevertheless those members of senatorial families who
had not entered the senate, especially the younger members, did not
cease to serve as equites and consequently to bear the name; and,
in fact, the burgess-cavalry properly so called--that is, the
eighteen equestrian centuries--in consequence of being made up
by the censors continued to be chiefly filled up from the young
senatorial aristocracy.(18)
This order of the equites--that is to say, substantially, of the
wealthy merchants--in various ways came roughly into contact with
the governing senate. There was a natural antipathy between the
genteel aristocrats and the men to whom money had brought rank.
The ruling lords, especially the better class of them, stood just
as much aloof from speculations, as the men of material interests
were indifferent to political questions and coterie-feuds. The two
classes had already frequently come into sharp collision, particularly
in the provinces; for, though in general the provincials had far more
reason than the Roman capitalists had to complain of the partiality of
the Roman magistrates, yet the ruling lords of the senate did not lend
countenance to the greedy and unjust doings of the moneyed men, at
the expense of the subjects, so thoroughly and absolutely as those
capitalists desired. In spite of their concord in opposing a common
foe such as was Tiberius Gracchus, a deep gulf lay between the nobility
and the moneyed aristocracy; and Gaius, more adroit than his brother,
enlarged it till the alliance was broken up and the mercantile class
ranged itself on his side.
Insignia of the Equites
That the external privileges, through which afterwards the men of
equestrian census were distinguished from the rest of the multitude--
the golden finger-ring instead of the ordinary ring of iron or copper,
and the separate and better place at the burgess-festivals--were first
conferred on the equites by Gaius Gracchus, is not certain, but is not
improbable. For they emerged at any rate about this period, and, as
the extension of these hitherto mainly senatorial privileges(19) to
the equestrian order which he brought into prominence was quite in
the style of Gracchus, so it was in very truth his aim to impress on
the equites the stamp of an order, similarly close and privileged,
intermediate between the senatorial aristocracy and the common multitude;
and this same aim was more promoted by those class-insignia, trifling
though they were in themselves and though many qualified to be equites
might not avail themselves of them, than by many an ordinance far
more intrinsically important. But the party of material interests,
though it by no means despised such honours, was yet not to be
gained through these alone. Gracchus perceived well that it would
doubtless duly fall to the highest bidder, but that it needed a high
and substantial bidding; and so he offered to it the revenues of Asia
and the jury courts.
Taxation of Asia
The system of Roman financial administration, under which the indirect
taxes as well as the domain-revenues were levied by means of
middlemen, in itself granted to the Roman capitalist-class the most
extensive advantages at the expense of those liable to taxation.
But the direct taxes consisted either, as in most provinces, of fixed
sums of money payable by the communities--which of itself excluded
the intervention of Roman capitalists--or, as in Sicily and Sardinia,
of a ground-tenth, the levying of which for each particular community
was leased in the provinces themselves, so that wealthy provincials
regularly, and the tributary communities themselves very frequently,
farmed the tenth of their districts and thereby kept at a distance
the dangerous Roman middlemen. Six years before, when the province
of Asia had fallen to the Romans, the senate had organized it
substantially according to the first system.(20) Gaius Gracchus(21)
overturned this arrangement by a decree of the people, and not only
burdened the province, which had hitherto been almost free from
taxation, with the most extensive indirect and direct taxes,
particularly the ground-tenth, but also enacted that these taxes
should be exposed to auction for the province as a whole and in Rome--
a rule which practically excluded the provincials from participation,
and called into existence in the body of middlemen for the -decumae-,
-scriptura-, and -vectigalia- of the province of Asia an association of
capitalists of colossal magnitude. A significant indication, moreover,
of the endeavour of Gracchus to make the order of capitalists
independent of the senate was the enactment, that the entire or
partial remission of the stipulated rent was no longer, as hitherto,
to be granted by the senate at discretion, but was under definite
contingencies to be accorded by law.
Jury Courts
While a gold mine was thus opened for the mercantile class, and the
members of the new partnership constituted a great financial power
imposing even for the government--a "senate of merchants"-a definite
sphere of public action was at the same time assigned to them in
the jury courts. The field of the criminal procedure, which by right
came before the burgesses, was among the Romans from the first very
narrow, and was, as we have already stated,(22) still further narrowed
by Gracchus; most processes--both such as related to public crimes, and
civil causes--were decided either by single jurymen [-indices-], or by
commissions partly permanent, partly extraordinary. Hitherto both the
former and the latter had been exclusively taken from the senate;
Gracchus transferred the functions of jurymen--both in strictly civil
processes, and in the case of the standing and temporary commissions--
to the equestrian order, directing a new list of jurymen to be
annually formed after the analogy of the equestrian centuries from
all persons of equestrian rating, and excluding the senators
directly, and the young men of senatorial families by the fixing of
a certain limit of age, from such judicial functions.(23) It is not
improbable that the selection of jurymen was chiefly made to fall
on the same men who played the leading part in the great mercantile
associations, particularly those farming the revenues in Asia and
elsewhere, just because these had a very close personal interest in
sitting in the courts; and, if the lists of jurymen and the societies
of -publicani- thus coincided as regards their chiefs, we can all
the better understand the significance of the counter-senate thus
constituted. The substantial effect of this was, that, while hitherto
there had been only two authorities in the state--the government as the
administering and controlling, and the burgesses as the legislative,
authority--and the courts had been divided between them, now the moneyed
aristocracy was not only united into a compact and privileged class on
the solid basis of material interests, but also, as a judicial and
controlling power, formed part of the state and took its place almost
on a footing of equality by the side of the ruling aristocracy. All
the old antipathies of the merchants against the nobility could not
but thenceforth find only too practical an expression in the sentences
of the jurymen; above all, when the provincial governors were called
to a reckoning, the senator had to await a decision involving his
civic existence at the hands no longer as formerly of his peers,
but of great merchants and bankers. The feuds between the Roman
capitalists and the Roman governors were transplanted from the
provincial administration to the dangerous field of these processes
of reckoning. Not only was the aristocracy of the rich divided, but
care was taken that the variance should always find fresh nourishment
and easy expression.
Monarchical Government Substituted for That of the Senate
With his weapons--the proletariate and the mercantile class--thus
prepared, Gracchus set about his main work, the overthrow of the
ruling aristocracy. The overthrow of the senate meant, on the one
hand, the depriving it of its essential functions by legislative
alterations; and on the other hand, the ruining of the existing
aristocracy by measures of a more personal and transient kind.
Gracchus did both. The function of administration, in particular,
had hitherto belonged exclusively to the senate; Gracchus took it away,
partly by settling the most important administrative questions by means
of comitial laws or, in other words, practically through tribunician
dictation, partly by restricting the senate as much as possible
in current affairs, partly by taking business after the most
comprehensive fashion into his own hands. The measures of the
former kind have been mentioned already: the new master of the state
without consulting the senate dealt with the state-chest, by imposing
a permanent and oppressive burden on the public finances in the
distribution of corn; dealt with the domains, by sending out colonies
not as hitherto by decree of the senate and people, but by decree of
the people alone; and dealt with the provincial administration, by
overturning through a law of the people the financial constitution given
by the senate to the province of Asia and substituting for it one
altogether different. One of the most important of the current duties
of the senate--that of fixing at its pleasure the functions for the
time being of the two consuls--was not withdrawn from it; but the
indirect pressure hitherto exercised in this way over the supreme
magistrates was limited by directing the senate to fix these functions
before the consuls concerned were elected. With unrivalled
activity, lastly, Gaius concentrated the most varied and most
complicated functions of government in his own person. He himself
watched over the distribution of grain, selected the jurymen, founded
the colonies in person notwithstanding that his magistracy legally
chained him to the city, regulated the highways and concluded building-
contracts, led the discussions of the senate, settled the consular
elections--in short, he accustomed the people to the fact that one man
was foremost in all things, and threw the lax and lame administration
of the senatorial college into the shade by the vigour and versatility
of his personal rule. Gracchus interfered with the judicial
omnipotence, still more energetically than with the administration,
of the senate. We have already mentioned that he set aside the
senators as jurymen; the same course was taken with the jurisdiction
which the senate as the supreme administrative board allowed to itself
in exceptional cases. Under severe penalties he prohibited--
apparently in his renewal of the law -de provocatione-(24)--the
appointment of extraordinary commissions of high treason by decree
of the senate, such as that which after his brother's murder had sat
in judgment on his adherents. The aggregate effect of these measures
was, that the senate wholly lost the power of control, and retained
only so much of administration as the head of the state thought fit
to leave to it. But these constitutive measures were not enough; the
governing aristocracy for the time being was also directly assailed.
It was a mere act of revenge, which assigned retrospective effect to
the last-mentioned law and thereby compelled Publius Popillius--the
aristocrat who after the death of Nasica, which had occurred in the
interval, was chiefly obnoxious to the democrats--to go into exile.
It is remarkable that this proposal was only carried by 18 to 17
votes in the assembly of the tribes--a sign how much the influence
of the aristocracy still availed with the multitude, at least in
questions of a personal interest. A similar but far less justifiable
decree--the proposal, directed against Marcus Octavius, that whoever
had been deprived of his office by decree of the people should be
for ever incapable of filling a public post--was recalled by Gaius
at the request of his mother; and he was thus spared the disgrace
of openly mocking justice by legalizing a notorious violation of
the constitution, and of taking base vengeance on a man of honour,
who had not spoken an angry word against Tiberius and had only acted
constitutionally and in accordance with what he conceived to be
his duty. But of very different importance from these measures was
the scheme of Gaius--which, it is true, was hardly carried into effect--
to strengthen the senate by 300 new members, that is, by just about as
many as it hitherto had contained, and to have them elected from the
equestrian order by the comitia--a creation of peers after the most
comprehensive style, which would have reduced the senate into the most
complete dependence on the chief of the state.
Character of the Constitution of Gaius Gracchus
This was the political constitution which Gaius Gracchus projected
and, in its most essential points, carried out during the two years
of his tribunate (631, 632), without, so far as we can see,
encountering any resistance worthy of mention, and without requiring
to apply force for the attainment of his ends. The order of sequence
in which these measures were carried can no longer be recognized in
the confused accounts handed down to us, and various questions that
suggest themselves have to remain unanswered. But it does not seem
as if, in what is missing, many elements of material importance have
escaped us; for as to the principal matters we have quite trustworthy
information, and Gaius was by no means, like his brother, urged on
further and further by the current of events, but evidently had a well-
considered and comprehensive plan, the substance of which he fully
embodied in a series of special laws. Now the Sempronian constitution
itself shows very clearly to every one who is able and willing to
see, that Gaius Gracchus did not at all, as many good-natured
people in ancient and modern times have supposed, wish to place
the Roman republic on new democratic bases, but that on the contrary
he wished to abolish it and to introduce in its stead a -tyrannis---
that is, in modern language, a monarchy not of the feudal or of the
theocratic, but of the Napoleonic absolute, type--in the form of a
magistracy continued for life by regular re-election and rendered
absolute by an unconditional control over the formally sovereign
comitia, an unlimited tribuneship of the people for life. In fact
if Gracchus, as his words and still more his works plainly testify,
aimed at the overthrow of the government of the senate, what other
political organization but the -tyrannis- remained possible, after
overthrowing the aristocratic government, in a commonwealth which
had outgrown primary assemblies and for which parliamentary government
did not exist? Dreamers such as was his predecessor, and knaves such
as after-times produced, might call this in question; but Gaius
Gracchus was a statesman, and though the formal shape, which that great
man had inwardly projected for his great work, has not been handed
down to us and may be conceived of very variously, yet he was beyond
doubt aware of what he was doing. Little as the intention of
usurping monarchical power can be mistaken, as little will those
who survey the whole circumstances on this account blame Gracchus.
An absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a nation, but it is
a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy; and history cannot
censure one who imposes on a nation the lesser suffering instead
of the greater, least of all in the case of a nature so vehemently
earnest and so far aloof from all that is vulgar as was that of Gaius
Gracchus. Nevertheless it may not conceal the fact that his whole
legislation was pervaded in a most pernicious way by conflicting
aims; for on the one hand it aimed at the public good, while on the
other hand it ministered to the personal objects and in fact the
personal vengeance of the ruler. Gracchus earnestly laboured to find
a remedy for social evils, and to check the spread of pauperism; yet
he at the same time intentionally reared up a street proletariate of
the worst kind in the capital by his distributions of corn, which were
designed to be, and became, a premium to all the lazy and hungry civic
rabble. Gracchus censured in the bitterest terms the venality of
the senate, and in particular laid bare with unsparing and just
severity the scandalous traffic which Manius Aquillius had driven with
the provinces of Asia Minor;(25) yet it was through the efforts of
the same man that the sovereign populace of the capital got itself
alimented, in return for its cares of government, by the body of its
subjects. Gracchus warmly disapproved the disgraceful spoliation of
the provinces, and not only instituted proceedings of wholesome
severity in particular cases, but also procured the abolition of the
thoroughly insufficient senatorial courts, before which even Scipio
Aemilianus had vainly staked his whole influence to bring the most
decided criminals to punishment. Yet he at the same time, by the
introduction of courts composed of merchants, surrendered the
provincials with their hands fettered to the party of material
interests, and thereby to a despotism still more unscrupulous than
that of the aristocracy had been; and he introduced into Asia a
taxation, compared with which even the form of taxation current after
the Carthaginian model in Sicily might be called mild and humane--
just because on the one hand he needed the party of moneyed men,
and on the other hand required new and comprehensive resources to
meet his distributions of grain and the other burdens newly imposed
on the finances. Gracchus beyond doubt desired a firm administration
and a well-regulated dispensing of justice, as numerous thoroughly
judicious ordinances testify; yet his new system of administration
rested on a continuous series of individual usurpations only formally
legalized, and he intentionally drew the judicial system--which every
well-ordered state will endeavour as far as possible to place, if not
above political parties, at any rate aloof from them--into the midst
of the whirlpool of revolution. Certainly the blame of these
conflicting tendencies in Gaius Gracchus is chargeable to a very great
extent on his position rather than on himself personally. On the
very threshold of the -tyrannis- he was confronted by the fatal
dilemma, moral and political, that the same man had at one and the
same time to maintain his ground, we may say, as a robber-chieftain
and to lead the state as its first citizen--a dilemma to which
Pericles, Caesar, and Napoleon had also to make dangerous sacrifices.
But the conduct of Gaius Gracchus cannot be wholly explained from
this necessity; along with it there worked in him the consuming
passion, the glowing revenge, which foreseeing its own destruction
hurls the firebrand into the house of the foe. He has himself
expressed what he thought of his ordinance as to the jurymen and similar
measures intended to divide the aristocracy; he called them daggers
which he had thrown into the Forum that the burgesses--the men of
rank, obviously--might lacerate each other with them. He was a
political incendiary. Not only was the hundred years' revolution which
dates from him, so far as it was one man's work, the work of Gaius
Gracchus, but he was above all the true founder of that terrible
urban proletariate flattered and paid by the classes above it, which
through its aggregation in the capital--the natural consequence of
the largesses of corn--became at once utterly demoralized and aware
of its power, and which--with its demands, sometimes stupid, sometimes
knavish, and its talk of the sovereignty of the people--lay like
an incubus for five hundred years upon the Roman commonwealth and
only perished along with it And yet--this greatest of political
transgressors was in turn the regenerator of his country. There is
scarce a structural idea in Roman monarchy, which is not traceable
to Gaius Gracchus. From him proceeded the maxim--founded doubtless
in a certain sense in the nature of the old traditional laws of war,
but yet, in the extension and practical application now given to it,
foreign to the older state-law--that all the land of the subject
communities was to be regarded as the private property of the state;
a maxim, which was primarily employed to vindicate the right of the
state to tax that land at pleasure, as was the case in Asia, or to
apply it for the institution of colonies, as was done in Africa,
and which became afterwards a fundamental principle of law under the
empire. From him proceeded the tactics, whereby demagogues and
tyrants, leaning for support on material interests, break down the
governing Aristocracy, but subsequently legitimize the change of
constitution by substituting a strict and efficient administration
for the previous misgovernment. To him, in particular, are traceable
the first steps towards such a reconciliation between Rome and the
provinces as the establishment of monarchy could not but bring in its
train; the attempt to rebuild Carthage destroyed by Italian rivalry
and generally to open the way for Italian emigration towards the
provinces, formed the first link in the long chain of that momentous
and beneficial course of action. Right and wrong, fortune and
misfortune were so inextricably blended in this singular man
and in this marvellous political constellation, that it may well
beseem history in this case--though it beseems her but seldom--
to reserve her judgment.
The Question As to the Allies
When Gracchus had substantially completed the new constitution
projected by him for the state, he applied himself to a second and
more difficult work. The question as to the Italian allies was still
undecided. What were the views of the democratic leaders regarding
it, had been rendered sufficiently apparent.(26) They naturally
desired the utmost possible extension of the Roman franchise, not
merely that they might bring in the domains occupied by the Latins for
distribution, but above all that they might strengthen their body of
adherents by the enormous mass of the new burgesses, might bring the
comitial machine still more fully under their power by widening the
body of privileged electors, and generally might abolish a distinction
which had now with the fall of the republican constitution lost all
serious importance. But here they encountered resistance from their
own party, and especially from that band which otherwise readily gave
its sovereign assent to all which it did or did not understand.
For the simple reason that Roman citizenship seemed to these people,
so to speak, like a partnership which gave them a claim to share in
sundry very tangible profits, direct and indirect, they were not at
all disposed to enlarge the number of the partners. The rejection
of the Fulvian law in 629, and the insurrection of the Fregellans
arising out of it, were significant indications both of the obstinate
perseverance of the fraction of the burgesses that ruled the comitia,
and of the impatient urgency of the allies. Towards the end of his
second tribunate (632) Gracchus, probably urged by obligations which
he had undertaken towards the allies, ventured on a second attempt.
In concert with Marcus Flaccus--who, although a consular, had again
taken the tribuneship of the people, in order now to carry the law
which he had formerly proposed without success--he made a proposal
to grant to the Latins the full franchise, and to the other Italian
allies the former rights of the Latins. But the proposal encountered
the united opposition of the senate and the mob of the capital.
The nature of this coalition and its mode of conflict are clearly and
distinctly seen from an accidentally preserved fragment of the speech
which the consul Gaius Fannius made to the burgesses in opposition to
the proposal. "Do you then think," said the Optimate, "that, if you
confer the franchise on the Latins, you will be able to find a place
in future--just as you are now standing there in front of me--in the
burgess-assembly, or at the games and popular amusements? Do you not
believe, on the contrary, that those people will occupy every spot?"
Among the burgesses of the fifth century, who on one day conferred
the franchise on all the Sabines, such an orator might perhaps have
been hissed; those of the seventh found his reasoning uncommonly clear
and the price of the assignation of the Latin domains, which was
offered to it by Gracchus, far too low. The very circumstance, that
the senate carried a permission to eject from the city all non-
burgesses before the day for the decisive vote, showed the fate in
store for the proposal. And when before the voting Livius Drusus,
a colleague of Gracchus, interposed his veto against the law, the
people received the veto in such a way that Gracchus could not
venture to proceed further or even to prepare for Drusus the fate
of Marcus Octavius.
Overthrow of Gracchus
It was, apparently, this success which emboldened the senate to
attempt the overthrow of the victorious demagogue. The weapons of
attack were substantially the same with which Gracchus himself had
formerly operated. The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile
class and the proletariate; primarily on the latter, which in this
conflict, wherein neither side had any military reserve, acted as
it were the part of an army. It was clear that the senate was not
powerful enough to wrest either from the merchants or from the
proletariate their new privileges; any attempt to assail the corn-
laws or the new jury-arrangement would have led, under a somewhat
grosser or somewhat more civilized form, to a street-riot in presence
of which the senate was utterly defenceless. But it was no less
clear, that Gracchus himself and these merchants and proletarians were
only kept together by mutual advantage, and that the men of material
interests were ready to accept their posts, and the populace strictly so
called its bread, quite as well from any other as from Gaius Gracchus.
The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least,
immoveably firm with the exception of a single one--his own supremacy.
The weakness of the latter lay in the fact, that in the constitution of
Gracchus there was no relation of allegiance subsisting at all between
the chief and the army; and, while the new constitution possessed all
other elements of vitality, it lacked one--the moral tie between ruler
and ruled, without which every state rests on a pedestal of clay.
In the rejection of the proposal to admit the Latins to the franchise
it had been demonstrated with decisive clearness that the multitude
in fact never voted for Gracchus, but always simply for itself.
The aristocracy conceived the plan of offering battle to the author
of the corn-largesses and land-assignations on his own ground.
Rival Demagogism of the Senate
The Livian Laws
As a matter of course, the senate offered to the proletariate not merely
the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and
otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate,
the tribune of the people Marcus Livius Drusus proposed to relieve
those who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent
imposed on them,(27) and to declare their allotments to be free and
alienable property; and, further, to provide for the proletariate
not in transmarine, but in twelve Italian, colonies, each of 3000
colonists, for the planting of which the people might nominate
suitable men; only, Drusus himself declined--in contrast with the
family-complexion of the Gracchan commission--to take part in this
honourable duty. Presumably the Latins were named as those who would
have to bear the costs of the plan, for there does not appear to have
now existed in Italy other occupied domain-land of any extent save that
which was enjoyed by them. We find isolated enactments of Drusus--
such as the regulation that the punishment of scourging might only be
inflicted on the Latin soldier by the Latin officer set over him, and
not by the Roman officer--which were to all appearance intended to
indemnify the Latins for other losses. The plan was not the most
refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear; the endeavour to draw
the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariate still closer
by their exercising jointly a tyranny over the Latins was too
transparent; the inquiry suggested itself too readily, In what part of
the peninsula, now that the Italian domains had been mainly given away
already--even granting that the whole domains assigned to the Latins
were confiscated--was the occupied domain-land requisite for the
formation of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess-communities to
be discovered? Lastly the declaration of Drusus, that he would have
nothing to do with the execution of his law, was so dreadfully prudent
as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite suited
for the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the
additional and perhaps decisive consideration, that Gracchus,
on whose personal influence everything depended, was just then
establishing the Carthaginian colony in Africa, and that his
lieutenant in the capital, Marcus Flaccus, played into the hands of
his opponents by his vehement and maladroit actings. The "people"
accordingly ratified the Livian laws as readily as it had before
ratified the Sempronian. It then, as usual, repaid its latest, by
inflicting a gentle blow on its earlier, benefactor, declining to
re-elect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate for the
tribunate for the year 633; on which occasion, however, there are
alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the tribune
presiding at the election, who had been formerly offended by
Gracchus. Thus the foundation of his despotism gave way beneath
him. A second blow was inflicted on him by the consular elections,
which not only proved in a general sense adverse to the democracy,
but which placed at the head of the state Lucius Opimius, who as
praetor in 629 had conquered Fregellae, one of the most decided
and least scrupulous chiefs of the strict aristocratic party,
and a man firmly resolved to get rid of their dangerous antagonist
at the earliest opportunity.
Attack on the Transmarine Colonialization
Downfall of Gracchus
Such an opportunity soon occurred. On the 10th of December, 632,
Gracchus ceased to be tribune of the people; on the 1st of January,
633, Opimius entered on his office. The first attack, as was fair,
was directed against the most useful and the most unpopular measure of
Gracchus, the re-establishment of Carthage. While the transmarine
colonies had hitherto been only indirectly assailed through the
greater allurements of the Italian, African hyaenas, it was now alleged,
dug up the newly-placed boundary-stones of Carthage, and the Roman
priests, when requested, certified that such signs and portents ought
to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site accursed by the
gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience compelled to
have a law proposed, which prohibited the planting of the colony of
Junonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to establish it
was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day of voting
at the Capitol whither the burgesses were convoked, with a view to
procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law. He wished
to shun acts of violence, that he might not himself supply his
opponents with the pretext which they sought; but he had not been able
to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans, who remembered
the catastrophe of Tiberius and were well acquainted with the designs
of the aristocracy, from appearing in arms, and amidst the immense
excitement on both sides quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul
Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the
Capitoline temple; one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony,
Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hand, haughtily
ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he
would lay hands on Gaius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his
sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly
sought to address the people and to disclaim the responsibility for
the sacrilegious murder; he only furnished his antagonists with a
further formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in
the confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking to
the people--an offence, for which an obsolete statute, originating at
the time of the old dissensions between the orders,(28) had prescribed
the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to
put down by force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the
republican constitution, as they were fond of designating the events
of this day. He himself passed the night in the temple of Castor in
the Forum; at early dawn the Capitol was filled with Cretan archers,
the senate-house and Forum with the men of the government party--the
senators and the section of the equites adhering to them--who by order
of the consul had all appeared in arms and each attended by two
armed slaves. None of the aristocracy were absent; even the aged and
venerable Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with
shield and sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in
the Spanish wars, Decimus Brutus, was entrusted with the command of
the armed force; the senate assembled in the senate-house. The bier
with the corpse of Antullius was deposited in front of it; the senate,
as if surprised, appeared en masse at the door in order to view
the dead body, and then retired to determine what should be done.
The leaders of the democracy had gone from the Capitol to their
houses; Marcus Flaccus had spent the night in preparing for the war
in the streets, while Gracchus apparently disdained to strive with
destiny. Next morning, when they learned the preparations made by
their opponents at the Capitol and the Forum, both proceeded to the
Aventine, the old stronghold of the popular party in the struggles
between the patricians and the plebeians. Gracchus went thither
silent and unarmed; Flaccus called the slaves to arms and entrenched
himself in the temple of Diana, while he at the same time sent his
younger son Quintus to the enemy's camp in order if possible to arrange
a compromise. The latter returned with the announcement that the
aristocracy demanded unconditional surrender; at the same time he
brought a summons from the senate to Gracchus and Flaccus to appear
before it and to answer for their violation of the majesty of the
tribunes. Gracchus wished to comply with the summons, but Flaccus
prevented him from doing so, and repeated the equally weak and
mistaken attempt to move such antagonists to a compromise. When
instead of the two cited leaders the young Quintus Flaccus once more
presented himself alone, the consul treated their refusal to appear
as the beginning of open insurrection against the government; he
ordered the messenger to be arrested and gave the signal for attack
on the Aventine, while at the same time he caused proclamation to be
made in the streets that the government would give to whosoever should
bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold,
and that they would guarantee complete indemnity to every one who
should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict.
The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned; the valiant nobility in
union with the Cretans and the slaves stormed the almost undefended
mount, and killed all whom they found, about 250 persons, mostly of
humble rank. Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of
concealment, where they were soon afterwards hunted out and put to
death. Gracchus had at the beginning of the conflict retired into
the temple of Minerva, and was there about to pierce himself with his
sword, when his friend Publius Laetorius seized his arm and besought
him to preserve himself if possible for better times. Gracchus was
induced to make an attempt to escape to the other bank of the Tiber;
but when hastening down the hill he fell and sprained his foot.
To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned to face
his pursuers and allowed themselves to be cut down, Marcus Pomponius
at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine, Publius Laetorius at
the bridge over the Tiber where Horatius Cocles was said to have once
singly withstood the Etruscan army; so Gracchus, attended only by his
slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber.
There, in the grove of Furrina, were afterwards found the two dead
bodies; it seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master
and then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over
to the government as required; the stipulated price and more was paid
to Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of
Gracchus, while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were
sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into
the river; the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of
the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of
Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as 3000 of them are said
to have been strangled in prison, amongst whom was Quintus Flaccus,
eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict and
was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable
disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol where the altar
consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace(29) and
other shrines erected on similar occasions to Concord were situated,
these small chapels were pulled down; and out of the property of the
killed or condemned traitors, which was confiscated even to the
portions of their wives, a new and splendid temple of Concord with
the basilica belonging to it was erected in accordance with a decree
of the senate by the consul Lucius Opimius. Certainly it was an act
in accordance with the spirit of the age to remove the memorials of
the old, and to inaugurate a new, concord over the remains of the three
grandsons of the conqueror of Zama, all of whom--first Tiberius
Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the
mightiest, Gaius Gracchus--had now been engulfed by the revolution.
The memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was
not allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son;
but the passionate attachment, which very many had felt towards the two
noble brothers and especially towards Gaius during their life, was
touchingly displayed also after their death in the almost religious
veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of
police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where
they had fallen.