CHAPTER VII

THE CRISIS--THE ATTEMPTED REFORMS OF THE GRACCHI

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

* * * * *

"Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

"Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,--

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

--Lowell's _The Present Crisis_.

The critical days of any contest are seldom those of its final

culmination. The end has generally been long foreshadowed. The time at

which the last stand for the Roman liberties was made was not during

the civil wars of the last century before Christ, but at the time of

the attempted reforms of the previous century. The years in which the

great crisis of the Roman republic was reached were those from 134 to

121 B.C., the years marked by the activities of the Gracchi.

The story of the Gracchi constitutes one of the strangest, grandest,

and saddest stories in the whole course of history. It is a double

story of sacrifice, suffering, and untiring labor; of temporary

success, of ultimate death and failure--but a failure which stands

forth more glorious in the pages of history than the greatest

successes of others. It is the story of two brothers, possessed of

wealth and of high rank and connections, in the richest and most

powerful country of the world--men to whom was open either an easy

path along the old established road to the highest honors of the Roman

state or the life of luxurious ease so eagerly embraced by the

majority of the rich young Romans of that day. Casting aside both

these choices, and recognizing the dangers of their native state,

these brothers sacrificed all in an attempt to restore to Rome those

conditions which in the past had built up her greatness, and to secure

a redress of those conditions which had made the status of the great

mass of the citizens of the "Mistress of the World" hardly superior to

that of the very serfs. It is a story of the most aggravated

selfishness and relentless hatred on the part of those favored few

whose special and illegal interests were threatened by the attacks of

the young reformers. It is also, unfortunately, to too great an extent

a story of ingratitude and cowardice on the part of those for whose

interest Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus sacrificed themselves in vain.

The Gracchi were fortunate in having as father one of those Romans

who still retained the Roman virtues of an earlier age,--patriotism,

bravery, and honor. Not only had the administration of the elder

Gracchus of the offices of consul and censor at Rome been free from

corruption, but his administration of the governorship of the Province

of Ebro had been of great service to his native country and had,

furthermore, endeared his memory to the Spaniards themselves.

The mother of the Gracchi was Cornelia, daughter of Africanus Scipio,

the greatest Roman hero of the previous generation. Of the twelve sons

and one daughter born of this union, only the daughter and two sons

lived to maturity. The two surviving sons were the first born,

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, born about 166 B.C., and his brother

Gaius, nine years younger.

Few young Romans were afforded the opportunity of such close relations

and intercourse with the leading men of Rome as was Tiberius Gracchus

in his early years. Even in boyhood his mind seems to have been of a

serious cast, more interested in study and speculation than in the

pleasures customary in youth.

In his father's house, which was to a large extent a common meeting

place for all that was best in Roman society, he frequently heard the

leading men of the city lament the disappearance from the country

districts of the free citizens, and the attendant evils which seemed

to be hovering over the Roman state. But what to his elders appeared

lamentable principally on account of its effect upon the recruiting of

the Roman legions, and consequently upon the control of Rome over her

provinces and her foreign influence, was to young Tiberius an evil of

a very different and more serious character. To him alone of this

group did this condition appear as a great moral and social wrong--a

wrong, moreover, whose effect would not be limited to the character of

the soldiers in the Roman army, but which, if not remedied, would,

like a cancer, eat out the very life of the Roman republic. Another

difference was that those evils which brought forth from others

languid, pessimistic, speculative reflections roused in Tiberius

Gracchus the determination to action.

Hardly was the boyhood of Tiberius over when his public life began.

"Scarcely had Tiberius assumed the garb of manhood when he

was elected into the college of augurs. At the banquet given

to celebrate his installation, App. Claudius, the chief of

the senate, offered him his daughter's hand in marriage.

When the proud senator returned home, he told his wife that

he had that day betrothed their daughter. 'Ah,' she cried,

'she is too young; it had been well to wait a while--unless,

indeed, young Gracchus is the man.' Soon after his marriage

he accompanied Scipio to Carthage, where he was the first to

scale the walls.

"The personal importance of Gracchus was strengthened by the

marriage of Scipio with his only sister. But this marriage

proved unhappy. Sempronia had no charms of person, and her

temper was not good; Scipio's austere manners were little

pleasing to a bride; nor were children born to form a bond

of union between them." (Liddell's _History of Rome_.)

A brief taste of military life was added to the experience and

training of Tiberius Gracchus when he served, while a mere youth, in

the capture of Carthage.

His thirtieth year was spent as a quæstor in Spain. While traveling to

and from this province he was forcibly impressed by the industrial and

economic conditions in Etruria. Throughout this rich and extensive

territory the small freeholder seemed to have entirely disappeared,

and the land was now occupied by large estates cultivated by slaves.

Tiberius returned to Rome just as the so-called "slave war" in Sicily

broke out. This war not only called attention to the vast number and

the depths of wretchedness of the slaves already in Italy and the

adjoining island, but it also served to emphasize the perilous

condition of a state whose foundation rested upon such a smoldering

volcano.

In this servile war the slaves throughout large portions of the island

of Sicily arose in a body, murdered those of their masters who were

not fortunate enough to escape, and selected a Syrian juggler as their

king. A Greek slave, named Achæus, proved not only a skillful

commander in the field but also a capable organizer, and he soon

mustered a large army containing both slaves and free laborers.

Another leader, Cleon, a Sicilian slave, captured the important city

of Agrigentum. The united forces defeated the Roman prætor Lucius

Hypsæus, and temporarily drove the Romans out of Sicily.

It was not until after three years of continued warfare, after the

Romans had suffered numerous defeats and great armies had been sent

under three different Roman consuls, that the rebellion in Sicily was

finally put down.

Upon his return from Spain, and at the breaking out of the servile

war, Tiberius Gracchus had not hesitated to freely express his

feelings as to the cause of the existing evils, and as to the

necessary remedies for their amelioration, and it was not long before

that part of the Roman people who were dissatisfied with existing

conditions turned to Gracchus as the only logical leader for the

reform movement. As his views on the cause of the evils and the

general character of the remedies which he proposed had been shown to

the people by his speeches, Tiberius was elected tribune in 134 B.C.,

taking office on December 10 of that year.

The reforms proposed by Tiberius Gracchus in the bill presented before

the comitia tributa, almost immediately after his installation as

tribune, were entirely of an economic character. In the field of mere

political rights nothing more remained to be asked by the lowest of

the Roman citizens; their pitiable condition was the result of the

existing agrarian situation. The agrarian bill proposed by Tiberius

Gracchus, while a radical departure from existing conditions, was

neither illegal, confiscatory, nor unjust; it merely provided for a

reassumption on the part of the state of land long held illegally by

the "special interests" of the place and age.

The agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus was in its main features merely

a revival of the Licinian agrarian law of 367 B.C. By the original law

(which for more than two centuries had been so flagrantly violated) it

had been provided that no head of a family should hold more than five

hundred jugera (a jugera being a little more than three fifths of an

acre) of the public land. Tiberius proposed to reënact this law, but

with the concession added that adult sons might hold each an

additional two hundred and fifty jugera; but not more than one

thousand jugera, in all, were to be held by any single family. Whoever

was unlawfully in possession of the public land was required to return

the same, above the permitted maximum, to the state; fair

compensation, however, was to be allowed for improvements made by the

holder of the land while it was in his possession.

The law further provided that all public lands were to be placed

under the control of three commissioners. This commission was to allot

the public land, in small parcels, to such poor citizens as might

apply for it. These new occupiers of the land were to hold it in

perpetuity as tenants of the state, paying a small annual rental.

These estates were to descend to the children of the holders, but were

not to be alienated, thus preventing the possibility of the land being

once again gathered together into large estates.

No valid objection could be made to the proposals of Tiberius

Gracchus, which were merely the righting of one of the worst of the

existing scandals of the Roman administration; a reform, moreover,

which was to be carried out in such a manner as to give to the

wrongdoers far greater consideration than that to which they were

entitled. The law, however, dealt a heavy blow against the richest and

most powerful class in Rome. The greater Roman capitalists had so long

held possession, in utter defiance of the law, of the great bulk of

the public lands of the state that their wrongful possessions had, in

their eyes, ripened into a rightfully vested interest.

An indirect method of attack has always been used by the opponents of

Gracchus, both by the opponents of his own day and by those historians

who have attempted to assail his memory. A recent historian,

unfriendly both to Gracchus and to his democratic reforms (Ferrero),

refers to this bill as follows:

"The bill was very favorably received by the peasants and

the small proprietors. It appears also to have given great

satisfaction to the clients, freemen, and artisans, who made

up the proletariat of the metropolis; they fell into the not

unnatural mistake--often made by the poor before and

since--of regarding the greed of the rich, and the

indifference of the government, as a sufficient explanation

of their own distress."

The ancient historian Plutarch thus refers to this contest:

"Tiberius defending the matter, which of itself was good and

just, with such eloquence as might have justified an evil

cause, was invincible; and no man was able to argue against

him to confute him, when, speaking in the behalf of the poor

citizens of Rome (the people being gathered round about the

pulpit for orations), he told them, that the wild beasts

through Italy had their dens and caves of abode, and the men

that fought, and were slain for their country, had nothing

else but air and light, and so were compelled to wander up

and down with their wives and children, having no

resting-place nor house to put their heads in. And that the

captains do but mock their soldiers when they encourage them

in battle to fight valiantly for the graves, the temples,

their own houses, and their predecessors. For, said he, of

such a number of poor citizens as there be, there cannot a

man of them show any ancient house or tomb of their

ancestors, because the poor men go to the wars, and are

slain for the rich men's pleasures and wealth; besides, they

falsely call them lords of the earth, where they have not a

handful of ground that is theirs. These and such other like

words being uttered before all of the people with such

vehemency and truth, so moved the common people withal, and

put them in such a rage, that there was no adversary of his

able to withstand him. Therefore, leaving to contradict and

deny the law by argument, the rich men put all their trust

in Marcus Octavius, colleague and fellow-tribune in office,

who was a grave and wise young man, and Tiberius' very

familiar friend. That the first time they came to him, to

oppose him against the confirmation of this law, he prayed

them to hold him excused, because Tiberius was his very

friend. But, in the end, being compelled to it through the

great number of the rich men that were importunate with him,

he withstood Tiberius' law, which was enough to overthrow

it."

A more deep-dyed treachery than that to which Marcus Octavius at

length consented is, fortunately, but seldom met with in history. It

was a treachery not only to one of his closest friends, not only to

the class which he represented and the voters who had elected him, but

also to the character and traditions of the very office which he held.

The creation of the office of tribune had been the first great victory

won by the plebeians; the duties of those holding this office had been

to protect the lives and property, the rights and the liberties, of

the weaker class in the community--the plebeians.

To make it possible for the tribunes to give such protection, the veto

had been granted to them. From the time when this power had first been

secured by the tribunes down to the day when the agrarian law of

Tiberius Gracchus came before the comitia tributa for its final

decision, the veto power of the Roman tribune had been the greatest

bulwark of the poor man of Rome. Now, in the greatest crisis of the

long contest in Roman history of human rights against class

privileges, this power was to be the weapon by which a traitor was to

secure the victory of the rich landowners over the great body of the

Roman citizens.

The day upon which the bill was to come before the comitia tributa

found the Forum crowded with what was probably the largest number of

citizens who, up to this time, had ever attended a meeting of this

assembly. Tiberius Gracchus made his speech in favor of the law, which

speech was received with great applause. The moment of his great

triumph was apparently just at hand. The clerk was about to read the

words of the bill, before it was voted upon, when the renegade tribune

Marcus Octavius stood up and forbade the clerk to read the bill.

Gracchus was surprised and, for the time, helpless. After much bitter

discussion, the meeting was adjourned; but Gracchus gave notice that

he would take up his bill again upon the next regular meeting day of

the comitia tributa.

The cowardly treachery of his colleague, instead of discouraging

Tiberius Gracchus, merely spurred him on to greater efforts. His

policy, formerly in the main a conciliatory one, now became militant.

In retaliation for the veto of Octavius he too made use of this power.

Indeed, a more thorough and effective use of this power than that made

by Gracchus at this time can hardly be imagined. A veto was put upon

the exercise of any of his functions by any of the Roman officials;

even the treasury was shut up and the courts of justice discontinued.

As the great landowners had now forfeited all claims to consideration

on account of the methods which they had adopted, the compensation

clauses were struck out of the bill, which in its amended form simply

provided that the state should resume possession of all lands held in

contravention of the Licinian Law. Even in this amended form there was

nothing revolutionary about the bill; it was merely the reënactment of

a law which already existed, and should have been in operation.

On the second day when the bill came before the comitia an attempt was

again made to read the law, and this was again prevented by the veto

of the tribune Octavius. Party feeling by this time ran so high that a

riot seemed inevitable. Trouble was for the time averted by an

agreement to refer the matter to the Senate.

A few months before, Gracchus' name would have possessed great

influence in the Senate, and, furthermore, a number of the

senators--the most patriotic and clear sighted, who saw the dangers

with which Rome was confronted--had in the beginning sympathized with

Gracchus in the objects which he sought. By this time, however,

Gracchus had lost all the sympathy and support which he had ever

possessed in this direction. This is sometimes explained by saying

that Tiberius Gracchus had alienated all the conservative elements in

his support by the intemperance of his actions. Such an explanation

cannot stand the scrutiny of history. The proposals and objects of

Gracchus were never anything but moderate--never anything more than

the claim that the existing laws must be enforced. The methods of

Gracchus were not only strictly legal but also strictly conventional

and usual, until the disgraceful tactics of his opponents constrained

him to more forcible action.

At this time Tiberius Gracchus, meeting only reproaches from the

senators, who were enraged at him because he had called attention to

and made an issue of a state of political corruption from which their

class had benefited for generations, returned to the comitia. Upon his

return the meeting was again dissolved; but before it had adjourned

Gracchus gave notice that he would still again bring up his measure

before the comitia tributa, on its next regular meeting day, and that

if Marcus Octavius again interposed the veto power to prevent a vote

being taken upon the bill, he would move the people that Octavius be

deposed as tribune.

Before the day for the next meeting of the comitia tributa arrived,

Gracchus appears to have made every effort to induce his colleague and

former friend to recede from his position. All efforts in this

direction, however, proving ineffectual, Gracchus immediately upon the

assembling of the comitia moved that the tribune Marcus Octavius be

removed from office. Of the first seventeen tribes to vote, each, by a

unanimous or practically unanimous vote, was in favor of the

deposition of Octavius. Before the vote of the eighteenth tribe was

taken, Gracchus made a final appeal to Octavius to withdraw his

opposition. After some hesitation Octavius refused, and the vote of

the next tribe furnished the required majority for his deposition.

For the first time in a popular government the principle of the right

of the people to recall an unworthy public official had been put into

practical operation. A more fitting occasion for this action can

hardly be imagined.

The action of Tiberius Gracchus in adopting this innovation has been

bitterly denounced, and as strongly defended. One of the liberal

historians refers to this action as follows:

"These acts of Tiberius Gracchus are commonly said to have

been the beginning of revolution at Rome; and the guilt of

it is accordingly laid at his door. And there can be no

doubt that he was guilty in the sense that a man is guilty

who introduces a light into some chamber filled with

explosive vapour, which the stupidity or malice of others

has suffered to accumulate. But, after all, too much is made

of this violation of constitutional forms and the sanctity

of the tribunate. The first were effete, and all regular

means of renovating the republic seemed to be closed to the

despairing patriot, by stolid obstinacy sheltering itself

under the garb of law and order. The second was no longer

what it had been--the recognised refuge and defence of the

poor. The rich, as Tiberius in effect argued, had found out

how to use it also. If all men who set the example of

forcible infringement of law are criminals, Gracchus was a

criminal. But in the world's annals he sins in good company;

and when men condemn him, they should condemn Washington

also. Perhaps his failure has had most to do with his

condemnation. But if ever a revolution was excusable this

was; for it was carried not by a small party for small

aims, but by national acclamations, by the voices of

Italians who flocked to Rome to vote. How far Gracchus saw

the inevitable effects of his acts is open to dispute. But

probably he saw it as clearly as any man can see the future.

Because he was generous and enthusiastic, it is assumed that

he was sentimental and weak, and that his policy was guided

by impulse rather than reason. There seems little to sustain

such a judgment other than the desire of writers to

emphasise a comparison between him and his brother." (A. H.

Beesly, in _The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla_.)

The procedure adopted by Gracchus on this occasion was unknown to the

law, but it is hard to say that it was against the law. If this action

was unconstitutional, and revolutionary, so had been every change

which had ever been made in the fundamental principles of Roman public

law. The truth of the matter was that Rome had neither a written

constitution nor any law governing the method by which its fundamental

law might be changed. Rome, in this respect, was constantly in a

position similar to that in which the state of Rhode Island found

herself in 1841. The old colonial charter, which after the separation

from England had been continued in force as a state constitution, was

no longer suitable for existing conditions, and there was a general

feeling among the inhabitants of the state that the old charter must

give way to a new state constitution. A difficulty, however, here

presented itself in the fact that the old colonial charter, having

been granted by royal authority, contained no provision as to its

amendment by act of the people. In this situation the people of the

state were compelled to go outside of their organic law, and,

disregarding the old charter, to adopt a new constitution and form of

government. All this was not accomplished, however, without much

confusion and an incipient civil war.

Similarly situated, Tiberius Gracchus was now obliged to go beyond the

letter of the existing law, and to vindicate the underlying principle

of Roman law that the duty of the tribune was the protection of the

rights of the people, by introducing a new political expedient into

the scheme of Roman government.

Upon the deposition of Octavius the agrarian law of Gracchus was

immediately passed by acclamation. Three commissioners were appointed

to carry out the provisions of the bill--Tiberius Gracchus, his

brother Gaius, and Appius Claudius, the father-in-law of Tiberius

Gracchus.

For a time the success and popularity of Gracchus was at its zenith;

the commissioners, appointed to allot the land, energetically

prosecuted the work, and the great landowners became more and more

bitter as they saw their illegal gains about to be wrested from them.

One difficulty in the carrying out of the agrarian law was due to the

fact that the poverty of the mass of the Roman citizens was such that

very few who desired to secure an allotment of land were possessed of,

or could secure, the necessary money to stock the new farms and to

erect the necessary buildings. When, therefore, at this crisis, it was

learned that Attalus Philometor, the recently deceased king of

Pergamus, in Asia Minor, had made the Roman people his heirs,

bequeathing to them both his kingdom and all his private lands and

treasures, Gracchus grasped at this opportunity to overcome the

difficulty experienced by the agrarian commission. He proposed a law

providing that all the money so received should be used to furnish

the necessary stock for those to whom the public land was assigned.

About the same time another law was enacted, apparently not proposed

by Tiberius Gracchus, providing that the Agrarian Commission (called

the triumviri) should have final jurisdiction in all controversies

over the question as to whether any particular piece of land was

public or private land. The capitalistic party, setting an example

which has been so often followed in our own country and in our own

day, now attempted to divert the issue from the reforms being put into

operation through the energy of Gracchus, by personal attacks upon the

tribune himself; he was accused of having received a purple robe and

diadem from the envoy of the late king of Pergamus; of having violated

the Roman constitution; of desiring to make himself king over Rome.

Only vindictive partisanship could find any basis upon which to allege

the truth of any of these charges except perhaps that of a technical

violation of the Roman constitution in the deposition of Octavius. The

extreme party in the Senate, led by Publius Scipio Nasica, were openly

plotting the death of Tiberius Gracchus, either by assassination or

by judicial proceedings, as soon as his term of office should expire.

The violent position taken by his opponents clearly showed to Tiberius

Gracchus that both his reforms and his life were in danger. It was

evident that neither the agrarian reforms nor the life of Gracchus

would be safe after he had ceased to hold the office of tribune, and

the course of events finally drove Tiberius into becoming a candidate

for reëlection. To strengthen his hold upon the people he prepared

three new laws. The first law diminished the required period of

military service; the second law changed the procedure in the higher

courts of law, and permitted the jurors to be selected from all

persons possessing a certain amount of property, instead of (as

previously) restricting the selection to members of the Senate; the

third law created the right of appeal from the courts of law to the

assembly of the people in all cases.

The scenes at the election in June, 133 B.C., when Tiberius Gracchus

for the second time came before the comitia tributa as a candidate for

election as tribune, were among the most tumultuous in all Roman

political history. Upon the first day of voting the first tribe gave

its vote for the reëlection of Tiberius Gracchus; upon this, his

opponents immediately raised a protest, declaring that no one could be

twice, in succession, elected to the office of tribune. The debate on

this question developed into such a tumult that any further business

became an impossibility, and the meeting was adjourned until the next

day.

The friends of Tiberius were now thoroughly alarmed for his safety. A

large throng accompanied him to his home, and kept watch before his

doors all night. Before going to the comitia tributa in the morning

Tiberius is reported to have told his friends that if he considered

himself in danger, during the day's proceedings, and thought it

necessary for his friends to repel force by force, he would raise his

hand to his head. No means seems to have been adopted, however, for

any concerted or effectual resistance, and none of his friends who

attended the meeting of the comitia tributa went armed.

On the morning of the second meeting of the comitia tributa the Senate

also met close by in the temple of Faith. Nasica demanded of the

consul Scævola, who presided, to take steps to prevent the reëlection

of Tiberius Gracchus. The consul refused to interfere. At this stage

one of the senators, Fulvius Flaccus, who was friendly to Tiberius,

hastened from the temple to inform him that his death was about to be

resolved upon by the Senate. Upon hearing this news the friends of

Gracchus began hastily to arm themselves with staves, for the

protection of their leader, and Gracchus gave the agreed signal by

raising his hand to his head.

Seizing every opportunity to attack the motives of Gracchus, his

opponents raised the cry that he was asking for a crown, and this

report was carried into the Senate. Nasica, the bitterest of the

enemies of Gracchus and of his reforms, shouted, "The consul is

betraying the republic! Those who would save their country, follow

me!" and rushed out from the meeting of the Senate. He was followed by

many of the senators, and by their slaves and adherents, those who

were not already armed breaking up the benches to make clubs for

themselves. The followers of Gracchus, without any organization among

themselves, were unable to offer effectual resistance to the attack,

and soon fled in all directions. Tiberius Gracchus attempted to take

refuge in the temple of Jupiter, but the priests closed the doors

against him, and, stumbling over a bench, he was killed by repeated

blows on the head before he could rise. In this riot more than three

hundred of the followers of Gracchus were killed by clubs, or by being

driven over the wall at the edge of the Tarpeian rock. The hatred

toward Tiberius Gracchus, on the part of the special interests of the

time, did not end with his murder. Gaius Gracchus was refused

permission, which he sought, to bury his brother, and it was decreed

by the Senate that the bodies of Tiberius Gracchus and his followers

should be thrown into the Tiber before daybreak on the following

morning.

Very divergent views have been taken of the conduct of Tiberius

Gracchus and that of his opponents by different classes of historians.

Historians, equally with politicians, inevitably fall into one of the

two classes into which mankind is divided, the class of the radicals

on the one hand, or of the conservatives on the other; into the class

of those who favor progress and the recognition of the supreme right

of manhood, or into the class of those who wish to keep things as they

are, and worship before the shrine of vested interests. No single

incident in history better serves to bring out the bias of the

historian than does that of the efforts of Tiberius Gracchus in behalf

of his agrarian law. No historian can write this page of Roman history

without throwing open for the inspection of the world the inmost

workings of his mind and sympathies. That class of historians who can

see more pathos in the execution of King Louis XVI than in the

combined misery of the downtrodden millions who lived and died in

France under the two centuries of Bourbon misrule, have attempted to

cast upon Tiberius Gracchus the stigma of a demagogue, of a reckless

leader, of a violator of his country's most fundamental laws; while

the conduct of the leaders of the conservative party, who did not

hesitate at the crisis to resort even to murder rather than surrender

their unlawful profits, is excused as being rendered necessary by the

violence of Tiberius Gracchus.

Yet there are few prominent characters in whose public actions the

impartial critic can find so little to criticize as in that of the

greatest of all Roman tribunes--Tiberius Gracchus. At the outset the

whole policy of Gracchus was moderate and even conciliatory, and it

was only the unyielding selfishness of the great landowners which

forced him into a position where he must either surrender all for

which he was fighting or adopt a more vigorous plan of campaign;

which, finally, against his will, compelled him to adopt those tactics

for which he has been so severely censured by certain historians.

The legality of the deposition of Octavius has already been discussed.

It only remains to consider the action of Tiberius Gracchus in

presenting himself as a candidate for reëlection as tribune. Of the

vital necessity for this action, both to secure the enforcement of the

agrarian law and the personal safety of Tiberius himself, there can be

no doubt. It must be admitted, however, that this by itself is not a

sufficient defense of the action of Gracchus on this occasion. The

fundamental principles of government in any country cannot, generally,

be safely violated merely to meet a temporary exigency. The worst

possible government is generally better, for those who are to live

under it, than anarchy; and the condition of a country where laws can

be habitually broken with impunity is but one step from that of a

country where no laws exist. The breaking of a law with good motives

is often more disastrous than the breaking of it with bad intentions;

because in a former case an example is set which, being looked upon

with approval by a large class of the best people in the community, is

apt to furnish a precedent for future violations of the law, with the

worst motives and for the most dangerous purposes. No true republic

can long continue to exist unless a sense of reverence for and

obedience to law is bred into the mass of its citizens. The right of

overthrowing a corrupt government and of establishing a new civic

system must ever reside with the people; but such a right must be

resorted to only as an extreme, exceptional, and desperate remedy, and

the frequent recurrence of revolutions and rebellions in a republic

results in a substitution of the rule of force for the peaceful rule

of the majority, and is inconsistent with any true idea of democracy.

If, then, Tiberius Gracchus had attempted to override the fundamental

law of Rome for the purpose of obtaining some temporary personal or

partisan advantage he might well have deserved the attacks which have

been made upon his memory. Tiberius Gracchus, however, violated no

provision of the Roman constitution. No evidence exists that there was

ever any law making a Roman tribune ineligible for reëlection.

The prohibition would seem to have arisen from long-continued custom

rather than from law, and to have been of a character not unsimilar to

the so-called "conventions of the English Constitution," or to the

rule in this country that no man shall be elected for a third term as

President. If a law declaring a tribune to be ineligible for

reëlection was ever enacted in Rome (and with the absence of a full

list of Roman laws this is a point on which absolute certainty is

impossible) it was, in all probability, of a directory rather than a

mandatory character. Such was the character of all Roman laws relative

to the qualification of officers. Thus, the Roman laws provided a

regular order in which the principal offices at Rome should be held,

and prohibited any person holding any office until he had held all

those named before it on the list, and until he had reached a certain

specified age.

This law, while in the main followed, was frequently disregarded. The

violations were in the main chargeable to the very class at Rome that

was most bitter in the denunciation of Tiberius Gracchus for offering

himself as a candidate for reëlection as tribune. Under the existing

political conditions at Rome no great blame could be attached to an

occasional disregard either of the law regulating the qualifications

for office or the law, or custom, relative to the reëlection of a

tribune. It is only on this one occasion in Roman history that the

violation of either of these laws was denounced as an attack on the

Roman constitution. Even in the exciting days preceding the passage of

the Licinian Laws the tribunes Licinius and Sextius were reëlected

year after year, without the legality of their election being

questioned. Only ten years after the death of Tiberius Gracchus the

reëlection to the office of tribune of his brother, Gaius Gracchus,

was permitted. It is a striking comment upon the fairness of some of

the historians who attack Tiberius Gracchus for his alleged violation

of the law that they are able to find excuses for the action of that

branch of the senatorial party whose members were so unwilling to

surrender to the state their illegal profits that they resorted to

force to break up a meeting of the comitia tributa and to murder

Gracchus and three hundred of his adherents.

The years which intervened between the tribuneship of Tiberius

Gracchus and that of his brother Gaius were filled with internal

factional discord at Rome, but without any decisive results. Each

party, in turn, was able to secure revenge upon its opponents, in the

conflict connected with the death of Tiberius Gracchus. First, the

popular party was successful in compelling Nasica to retire from

Italy. Next, in 132 B.C., the Senate gave to the consuls a commission

to inquire into the actions of those who had supported Tiberius

Gracchus. By means of this commission the aristocratic party was

enabled to bring about the execution of some of the partisans of

Gracchus and the exile of others.

For the time the leadership of the popular party had passed to C.

Papirius Carbo, a man possessed both of the ability and the vices of

the successful demagogue. He was one of those politicians who are

always to be found in the forefront of every movement for liberty or

reform, and who, by their hypocrisy and selfishness, do more to bring

discredit upon the principles they champion than can possibly be done

by the ablest of the opponents of such principles. No greater contrast

can be imagined than is to be found in a comparison between Tiberius

Gracchus and Carbo. In the case of the former we see a devotion to

principle and to humanity which not even the fear of death could

alter; in the case of Carbo, on the contrary, we can discover nothing

but a striving for selfish ends and personal advancement. He appeared

as a radical among radicals when this attitude seemed to offer the

shortest road to fame and fortune; and with equal facility he became

the most abject tool of the senatorial party when such a change of

position seemed most likely to result to his personal benefit.

Being elected a tribune, Carbo set himself to win the favor of the

people by new popular legislation. He introduced and secured the

passage of a bill extending the use of the ballot into the legislative

assemblies of the people. His next measure, one to formally authorize

the reëlection of tribunes, was defeated. Gaius Gracchus made his

first public speech in support of this measure.

The work of the Agrarian Commission, in the meantime, had been

progressing in spite of the murder of Tiberius Gracchus and the

obstacles which the great landowners were constantly throwing in the

way of the commission. The Roman census shows that in the six years

from 131 to 125 B.C. the number of burgesses was increased by

seventy-six thousand; this increase was almost entirely due to the

operation of the agrarian law, and the work of the commission.

The vacancy in the Agrarian Commission made by the murder of Tiberius

Gracchus had been first filled by the election of P. Licinius Crassus,

father-in-law of Gaius Gracchus. Upon the death of Crassus, and of

Appius Claudius a few years later, these commissioners were succeeded

by Carbo and Fulvius Flaccus, the latter being the senator who had

attempted to warn Tiberius Gracchus of his danger, on the day of his

death.

Carbo, for the time the guiding spirit of the commission, attempted to

win additional popularity by a vigorous policy in carrying out the

agrarian law. Energetic action along this line was undoubtedly needed,

as the great landowners had in many ways succeeded in blocking the

work of the commission. The policy of Carbo, however, was that of the

demagogue rather than that of the statesman, and the result of the

methods which he adopted was a reaction which, for a time, completely

put a stop to the work of the commission, split the popular party, and

created a new political party or faction whose existence had an

important influence upon the course of Roman political history during

the next two generations.

The first step taken by Carbo was the publication of a proclamation

calling for information against owners of public land who had not

voluntarily registered themselves as such. In theory such a proceeding

was undoubtedly a proper mode of procedure against the large holders

of public lands who were endeavoring to evade the agrarian law; but in

practice it resulted in a great deal of hardship. Many of the good

land titles throughout all Italy were without sufficient documentary

proof; and many landowners, whose land was private, were yet at a loss

for evidence to prove that their land was of this character when

information against them was filed with the commission.

The situation was a most delicate one, and one requiring the exercise

of the highest degree of honesty, tact, good judgment, and diligence.

None of these qualities was possessed by Carbo. The commission acted

in the most arbitrary manner and apparently declared a great deal of

private land to belong to the public. The injustice seems to have been

practiced not so much against the great landowners (Carbo appears even

as early as this to have been falling under the influence of the

aristocratic party) as against the small Latin and Italian landowners.

The result was that the Latins and Italians, who had been among the

truest of the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, now became alienated

from the Roman popular party under the leadership of Carbo, and began

to come under the influence of the senatorial party.

Politics made strange bedfellows two thousand years ago as well as

now, and the new turn of the wheel of Roman politics brought in

Scipio Africanus as the head of the Latins and Italians, and working

in harmony with the Senate.

The first action taken by Scipio was to introduce and secure the

passage of a law taking away from the Agrarian Commission the judicial

power by which it was enabled to decide questions as to the public or

private character of lands and vesting such power in the consuls. This

judicial power was then vested in the consul C. Sempronius Tuditanus;

but he being soon sent to Illyria to conduct a military campaign

against the Iapydes, no person was left in Rome with the power to

settle questions of this character. The work of the Agrarian

Commission was now brought to a stop, and no further reassumption or

allotting of public lands could take place. Thus the great landowners

were finally successful in destroying the effect of the agrarian

legislation of Tiberius Gracchus.

As this result began to make itself manifest, so great criticism arose

against the action of Scipio that he felt called upon to announce that

he would explain and defend his actions both before the Senate and

before the people. In his speech before the Senate he carefully

evaded all reference to the case of the great landowners who still

continued illegally to hold large tracts of the public lands, and

proclaimed his purpose to be to protect the Latin and Italian farmers

whose small holdings of land were being wrongfully taken from them by

the actions of the Agrarian Commission. These small farmers, sympathy

for whom Scipio thus attempted to arouse, thus occupied the position

held by those widows and orphans who to-day appear so prominently

among the stockholders of all law-breaking corporations.

The speech of Scipio was naturally well received in the Senate; what

its reception would have been on the second day, before the people in

the Forum, is problematical. On the morning following his speech in

the Senate Scipio was found dead in his bed. It is one of the unsolved

mysteries of history whether Scipio died from natural causes or was

murdered. Nor is it more certain, if he was murdered, as to who his

murderers were. Strong suspicion was directed against Carbo, and that

hypocritical demagogue was driven into a temporary political

retirement, from which he emerged a few years later as one of the

most serviceable tools of the senatorial party.

The importance, ability, and character of Scipio Africanus have been

greatly over-praised by most historians. A. H. Beesly, however, in his

work _The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla_, gives a discriminating criticism

of this Roman general and statesman:

"He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not stir to

humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden honest

farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once

stepped into the arena as their champion. In reality he was

a reactionist who, when the inevitable results of those

liberal ideas which had been broached in his own circle

stared him in the face, seized the first available means of

stifling them. The world had moved too fast for him. As

censor, instead of beseeching the gods to increase the glory

of the State, he begged them to preserve it. Brave as a man,

he was a pusillanimous statesman. It was well for his

reputation that he died just then. Without Sulla's personal

vices he might have played Sulla's part as a politician, and

his atrocities in Spain as well as his remark on the death

of Tiberius Gracchus--words breathing the very essence of a

narrow swordsman's nature--showed that from bloodshed at all

events he would not have shrunk. It is hard to respect such

a man in spite of all his good qualities. Fortune gave him

the opportunity of playing a great part, and he shrank from

it. When the crop sprang up which he had himself helped to

sow, he blighted it. But because he was personally

respectable, and because he held a middle course between

contemporary parties, he has found favour with historians,

who are too apt to forget that there is in politics, as in

other things, a right course and a wrong, and that to

attempt to walk along both at once proves a man to be a weak

statesman, and does not prove him to be a great or good

man."

The fillers in, who had occupied the stage of Roman politics for the

years following the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, were now removed, and

the stage was being rapidly set for the second and final act of the

great historical tragedy of the Gracchi.

The political problems which confronted Rome at the time of the death

of Scipio rapidly reached such an acute state that it became evident

the solution of these problems, and the preservation of the Roman

republic, must be the work of a Man, not of a manikin or a demagogue.

At this crisis Rome was blessed with the best of fortune, only to be

immediately thereafter cursed with the worst of misfortune. The good

fortune consisted in the fact that at this time the man presented

himself for the work; the bad fortune arose from the refusal of Rome

to avail herself of his work.

The agitation of Carbo had added to the bitter contest between rich

and poor, and one perhaps still more bitter, at least temporarily,

between Romans and Italians. An attempt was made to reconcile the

differences between the Romans and Italians by means of a compromise,

by the terms of which the Italians were to consent to the carrying out

of the Agrarian Law, and in return were to be admitted to Roman

citizenship. This last proposal was viewed with great alarm by the

Roman proletariat, most of whom were by this time possessed of nothing

in the world except the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship,

and who saw that the value of such rights and privileges would be

greatly diminished by the great increase now proposed in the number of

those by whom such rights and privileges were to be enjoyed.

The Italians, on their side, delighted at the prospect of obtaining

these rights, began to come to Rome in great numbers. This migration

added fuel to the flame, and in 126 B.C. the tribune, Junius Pennus,

proposed an alien act by which foreigners were compelled to leave

Rome. The law was passed, with unpleasant consequences at a later

date. For the second time in his life Gaius Gracchus made a public

speech, on this occasion appearing on the losing side.

The following year Gaius Gracchus served as quæstor and was sent to

Sardinia under the consul Aurelius Orestes. The Senate, and the

oligarchical party in general, had by this time come to regard the

young Gaius Gracchus with mingled fear and suspicion, and in disregard

of the laws he was first ordered to remain a second year in Sardinia,

and later to remain a third year.

In the meantime, at Rome, events had been moving rapidly. Fulvius

Flaccus, the old friend of Tiberius Gracchus, had been elected consul

and had brought in a bill extending the franchise to all the Latin and

Italian allies. Shortly thereafter, before the bill had been voted

upon, Flaccus had been sent by the Senate upon foreign service, and

the bill was sidetracked. The disappointment at such a result on the

part of those who were denied the right of suffrage, after they had

believed it won, culminated in the rebellion of the Latin city of

Fregellæ. The force with which the city was reduced to submission, and

the severity with which the outbreak was punished, destroyed any

further thought on the part of the Latins and Italians of attempting

to secure their rights by force, but increased the silent discontent

of these people.

It was with these conditions existing at Rome that Gaius Gracchus

returned to the city after two and one-half years' absence in

Sardinia, defying the Senate by disobeying its order to finish out his

third year in the island.

The censors were in office at the time of the return of Gaius Gracchus

to Rome, and his enemies succeeded in having him summoned before them

immediately to answer for his alleged misconduct in leaving the post

to which he had been assigned by the Senate. It was hoped that the

censors could be induced to denounce him, which action would have

rendered him ineligible to hold public office. Gracchus, however, so

strongly defended himself in a speech to the people that the censors

did not dare take any action against him. In his speech he relied on

the well-established principle of the Roman law at that time, that the

Senate had no authority to compel him to serve as quæstor for a longer

period than one year. As to his own conduct in the exercise of the

office of quæstor he said, "No one can say that I have received a

penny in presents, or have put any one to charges on my own account.

The purse which I took out full I have brought back empty; though I

could name persons who took out casks filled with wine and brought

them home charged with money."

Upon his acquittal Gaius Gracchus became a candidate for the office of

tribune, and was elected, in spite of the most strenuous opposition of

the senatorial party and of the great landowners. However, the

opposition to him was so strong that, in the number of votes received,

he stood only fourth in the list of successful candidates.

Before entering upon the work of Gaius Gracchus as Roman tribune it is

admissible to stop for a moment to compare the characters, natures,

and abilities of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. The general judgment of

history seems to assign a far higher place to Gaius Gracchus than to

his elder brother. How far such a view is correct is certainly

questionable. It is a view based largely upon the longer term of

office, the more spectacular reforms, and the more dramatic death of

the younger brother. Without detracting in any degree from the high

character and motives, and the wonderful ability, of Gaius Gracchus,

it may still be said that the higher niche in the temple of history

more properly belongs to Tiberius.

To Tiberius belongs that special honor which properly attaches itself

to the pioneer; perhaps, most of all, to the pioneer in the field of

political, social, or economic reforms. In the case of Tiberius, his

career was deliberately entered upon, as the result of his profound

study and keen observation, acting upon his naturally strong Roman

patriotism, hatred of wrong and oppression, and sympathy for humanity.

Whether the career of Gaius would have taken the direction which it

did but for the memory and influence of his brother, is problematical.

It is certain that the strongest motive which urged him onward in his

career as tribune was the all-mastering desire and determination to

avenge the murder of his brother, and to vindicate his memory by

carrying his measures through to a triumphant conclusion. It might

almost be said that the mainspring of the career of Tiberius was his

love for Rome, while the mainspring of the career of Gaius was his

love for his brother.

Tiberius Gracchus was the greater statesman; Gaius Gracchus the better

politician. Tiberius could see more clearly the great outlines of what

lay at a distance; Gaius could discern more exactly the details of

what was close at hand. If the political activities of the two

brothers could have been at the same time, each would have

supplemented the other, and it is possible that their combined efforts

might have been sufficient to secure the accomplishment of their

purposes.

In many respects Gaius Gracchus surpassed his brother in ability. The

younger brother is generally conceded to have been the greatest orator

who, up to that time, had ever lived in Rome; while Cicero, unfriendly

both to Gaius Gracchus personally and to his measures, lamented his

early death as a loss to Roman literature. It is also probable that

Gaius was superior to his brother in executive ability and in his

wonderful capacity for hard work. Against that must be set the greater

vision displayed by Tiberius Gracchus, in the character and details of

his proposed reforms. There was nothing in the measure proposed by the

elder Gracchus which conflicts with either justice, the soundest

principles of statesmanship, or of political economy; nor was there

any feature which seemed to have been inserted in those measures

merely as a bid for popularity or for votes.

Unfortunately, as much cannot be said for the reforms of Gaius

Gracchus; some of the provisions of the laws which he proposed were

unsound in theory and dangerous in practice, and were probably brought

forward merely as a bid for popularity. Provisions of this character

were not numerous enough, or important enough, to detract from the

general merit of the reforms proposed by Gaius Gracchus, but their

presence in his bills would seem to indicate on his part a less

comprehensive grasp of political principles than that possessed by his

brother.

It is a striking illustration of the irony which fate sometimes makes

use of, that the only part of the measures brought forward by the

Gracchi which were permitted to have a permanent influence upon Roman

life and history were the questionable measures of Gaius Gracchus.

In their temperaments Tiberius appears the calmer, Gaius possessing

the more fiery disposition. Tiberius, throughout his career, continued

to exercise the highest degree of control over both his feelings and

his actions. While fighting for principles which he believed essential

to the safety and welfare of Rome he manifested surprisingly little

animosity toward his opponents. Even in the deposition of Octavius he

seems to have been free from personal malice, as is indicated by his

attempt to secure a reconciliation with his brother tribune after

seventeen out of the necessary eighteen tribunes had voted in favor of

the deposition of the latter.

Gaius, embittered by the murder of his brother Tiberius, developed a

hatred toward his opponents which time never healed. Patience and

judgment led him to bide his time and prepare for the contest which he

considered as fated, and for the revenge upon which he was

determined.

His character might be fitly described in the words of Thomas Moore as

one of those

"Spirits of fire, that brood not long,

But flash resentment back for wrong;

And hearts where, slow but deep, the seeds

Of vengeance ripen into deeds."

The desire to avenge the death of his brother was indeed the central

idea of Gaius Gracchus throughout his whole political career. It is

when we look at his work from this viewpoint that much which appears

contradictory or obscure becomes easy to appreciate and understand.

One of the first steps taken by Gaius Gracchus in the reform campaign

undertaken by him was an attempt to divide the ranks of those who had

opposed his brother. The oligarchical party had for many generations

been composed of two different elements united for mutual protection,

but whose interests, in many respects, were mutually antagonistic. The

object of Gracchus was to break the political union between the two

factions by arousing the points of antagonism.

The two elements in the aristocratic party above referred to were the

senatorial families and the wealthy mercantile interests. The general

line of demarcation between the two classes was the distinction

between the aristocracy of money and the aristocracy of birth,

generally to be found wherever aristocracies exist. The senators, with

few exceptions, were recruited from the old families which had been

prominent in Rome for generations and even for centuries. The majority

of the members were of patrician descent, but the distinction between

patrician and plebeian was now of little, or no, practical importance.

Some of the senatorial families were wealthy, others were not; where

wealth was possessed it generally consisted of large landed estates.

All members of the Senate, whether rich or poor, were possessed of

valuable political rights and opportunities.

The other element of the aristocracy included the merchants and

speculators, who had control of the financial affairs of the city and

of the government, and who had been rapidly accumulating large

fortunes, during the period which had elapsed since the Punic Wars.

Gracchus played for the support of this element at the same time that

he assailed the power of the Senate.

By the terms of the Calpurnian Law, passed in 149 B.C., it had been

provided that all provincial magistrates accused of dishonesty in

their administration should be tried before the prætor peregrinus and

a jury selected from the Senate. It was now voted that the jury should

be taken not from the Senate but from a body of three hundred men

selected from all Roman citizens who possessed the amount of property

which entitled a person to be enrolled among the equites. From the

standpoint of judicial reform the fairness of this act could not be

questioned. However gross might have been the misgovernment of any

provincial Roman official, it was generally impossible to secure a

conviction before a senatorial jury. As one historian (Liddell) sums

up the matter:

"These courts had given little satisfaction. In all

important cases of corruption, especially such as occurred

in the provinces, the offenders were themselves senators.

Some of the judges had been guilty of like offences;

extortion was looked upon as a venial crime; prosecutions

became a trial of party strength, and the culprit was

usually absolved."

Equally important in the eyes of Gaius Gracchus, to the judicial

reform thus effected, was the effect which the law had toward raising

the equites to a position where, as an order, they would be a

formidable rival to the Senate. As a further bid for the support of

the moneyed aristocracy as against the old landed aristocracy and the

aristocracy of birth, Gracchus, in providing for the levying of new

taxes in the province of Asia, proposed the innovation of having the

tax farmed out at Rome, instead of in the province itself.

Another law did away with an old established abuse in the assignment

of provinces by the Senate to pro-consuls. Heretofore, each consul had

had his province assigned to him after his election, and the most

desirable provinces had therefore fallen to those toward whom the

Senate was the most friendly. It was now decreed that the provinces

for the two consuls for each year should be assigned before the

election of the consuls, and that the consuls should determine, either

by agreement or by lot, which of the two provinces should fall to

each.

The first of the economic measures of Gaius Gracchus was one to renew

and extend the agrarian law of his brother. In connection with this

law the right to decide whether land was public or private was once

more given to the Agrarian Commission, and provisions were also made

providing that new colonies should be founded in different parts of

Italy and also in the provinces. The carrying into execution of this

last provision was to be postponed until the following year. The

proposal to found colonies beyond the limits of Italy marked an

innovation both in Roman law and in the economic habits and customs of

the Romans.

Another law provided that the Roman government should undertake the

work of providing grain for its citizens; that every person possessing

the Roman franchise should have the right of purchasing grain from the

government at the price of six and a third asses per modius (the set

price being far under the market value); and that the losses sustained

in this grain trade should be taken out of the public treasury. Of all

the proposed reforms of the Gracchi this is the least defensible, and

the one which had the greatest influence upon the future. Lord

Macaulay, in the course of his speech made on the third reading of the

great English Reform Bill of 1832, said:

"The defect is not in the Reform Bill, but in the very

nature of government. On the physical condition of the great

body of people government acts not as a specific, but as an

alterative. Its operation is powerful, indeed, and certain,

but gradual and indirect. The end of government is not

directly to make the people rich, but to protect them in

making themselves rich--and a government which attempts more

than this is precisely the government which is likely to

perform less. Governments do not and cannot support the

people. We have no miraculous powers--and we have not the

rod of the Hebrew lawgiver--we cannot rain down bread on the

multitude from Heaven--we cannot smite the rock and give

them to drink. We can give them only freedom to employ their

industry to the best advantage, and security in the

enjoyment of what their industry has acquired."

The fundamental principles of the science of government and political

economy, so forcibly expressed by Lord Macaulay on this occasion, and

which must be both understood and applied by every successful

lawmaker, were throughout his career thoroughly realized by Tiberius

Gracchus, and were also generally appreciated by his younger brother.

On this occasion, however, Gaius Gracchus lost sight of, or recklessly

disregarded, all the basic principles of the true science of

government or economics. If it became the permanent policy of Rome to

provide food for a great proportion of her citizens, this could only

result finally in their permanent pauperization. The effect of this

law was certain to be the opposite of that sought by the agrarian laws

of the two Gracchi.

The object of the latter laws was to bring the Roman citizens, or as

many of them as possible, "back to the soil"; to develop once more

that race of hardy Roman peasants, whose arms had won the great

military victories of the Roman republic; and to reduce both the

numbers and the influence of the unemployed and dangerous proletariat

of the city. The law as to the sale of grain was not only certain to

have an influence in an exactly opposite direction to that which would

be exerted by the agrarian law, if this latter law could be put into

successful operation, but, more than this, the operation of the grain

law would render the success of the agrarian law far more difficult

and doubtful. The truth of the matter was that the success of the

agrarian law was endangered not only by the opposition of the

aristocracy but also by the present character of the Roman

proletariat. The course of events at Rome during the previous century

and a half had done much to destroy the stamina of the mass of the

Roman people; and a life of economic independence, as the result of

hard labor in the country, held less attractions for the majority of

this class than an easily secured, though meager, living in the city.

Anything which rendered life in Rome easier and more pleasant made it

so much the harder to induce Roman citizens to settle on the farms. No

legislation ever yet passed in Rome had aroused such immediate and

universal enthusiasm among the poorer classes at Rome as did this law

relative to the sale of grain.

This law, the worst of those proposed by the Gracchi, was destined to

have the greatest influence of any of those laws upon the course of

development of Roman history. It is a peculiar phenomenon to be

observed in the study of the psychology of dishonesty that while the

beneficiaries of any system of "graft" will fight to the last

extremity against any infringement upon their interests, sometimes

even, as was the case with French nobility at the time of the French

Revolution, carrying their resistance to such limits as to involve

themselves and their country in a common ruin; nevertheless, it is

often easy to induce these favored interests to assist in the

establishment of some other system of "graft" for the benefit of

certain classes of their opponents.

When a class has become so blinded to the true standard of right and

wrong, and of relative values, as to look upon special privileges for

the few against the many, and long-continued systems of dishonesty, as

"vested interests," it seems to be much easier for them to submit to

wrongful exactions from others than to cease from such wrongful

exactions themselves. Thus, in the case of the grain laws at Rome, the

aristocratic party, unrelenting in their opposition to the agrarian

laws of the Gracchi, which would put an end to long-continued robbing

of the state and go far toward building up again a class of free

yeoman landowners, without opposition acquiesced in the establishment

of a system of wholesale exploitation of the state for the maintenance

at the public expense of a lazy, worthless, and corrupt mob.

The fatal idea contained in the grain law, having obtained a foothold

in the Roman policy, rapidly developed. Fifty years after the law of

Gaius Gracchus it was necessary to limit the amount of grain which

could be purchased by any one citizen to five modii (about one and a

quarter bushels) per month; at this period forty thousand citizens

were regular purchasers of grain from the state. At a little later

period it was provided that five modii per month should be given

without charge to such citizens as might require it. At one time the

number of Roman citizens receiving this free allowance of grain rose

to three hundred and twenty thousand. The Emperor Augustus fixed the

maximum number to whom such allowance should be given at two hundred

thousand.

The permanent and continuing effect of these grain laws was to further

demoralize free labor in Italy and the character of the Roman citizen,

and to bring about a constantly increasing use of slave labor in

agriculture and of mercenaries in war.

One of the minor laws introduced by Gaius Gracchus was that which

fixed the minimum age for military service at seventeen, and provided

that the uniform and arms of the soldiers should be furnished by the

state.

A more important law, and one whose object was both to better economic

conditions and to strike at the power of the Senate, was a law calling

for large expenditures for the purpose of improving the roads through

Italy and building new roads, and which gave the complete management

of such work to the tribunes. Previously, the control of all public

works and improvements had been in the hands of the censors, subject

to the supervision of the Senate.

It was to the carrying out of this last-mentioned law that Gaius

devoted his greatest energies during the year of his first

tribuneship. The improvement of the commercial roads throughout Italy

was a work which all classes in the community must approve; and even

the enemies of Gracchus could but praise the executive ability and the

untiring energy with which he supervised the carrying out of the work.

The great system of internal improvements undertaken this year,

however, attracted to Rome a great multitude of people from all parts

of Italy, and tended to accentuate the bad feeling on the part of the

mass of the Roman citizens toward the Italians.

Gaius Gracchus was, for the time, the complete master of the political

situation. In the consular election of 123 B.C. he was able to secure

the election of C. Fannius, an old friend and supporter of his

brother, and the defeat of L. Opimius, the candidate of the senatorial

party. The position of tribune had now become of such dignity and

importance that Fulvius Flaccus, although he had already held the

office of consul, presented himself as a candidate for this office in

the election of this year.

Gracchus did not present himself as a candidate for reëlection on

account of the law, or custom, against reëlection to this office.

However, he was reëlected tribune this year, although the manner in

which his reëlection was brought about is not very clear to us. The

Roman historians say that as a sufficient number of candidates did not

present themselves to fill all the positions of tribunes, the comitia

tributa reëlected Gracchus under the law which gave them the right to

reëlect a tribune under such conditions.

This is the only occasion upon which we hear anything of this law, and

we have no knowledge as to when it was passed, or as to what were its

exact provisions. Some writers, of that school of historians hostile

to the work of Tiberius Gracchus, hint that a law authorizing the

reëlection of tribunes, under the peculiar circumstances above

mentioned, must have been enacted since the death of Tiberius

Gracchus. The theory of these writers involves the assumption of the

enactment of a law prohibiting the reëlection of tribunes, and then of

another law limiting the application of the first law, although we

have no evidence as to the passage of either of such laws, and no

evidence of their existence, except during the conflicts of the

Gracchi.

Upon his reëlection Gaius Gracchus, probably largely through the

influence of Flaccus, introduced a bill to extend the franchise to all

the Latin colonies and probably to all the citizens of the Italian

communities. The measure was that of a patriot and a statesman, but it

proved the undoing of its author. The measure failed to pass, and its

introduction destroyed a great part of the influence and popularity of

Gaius Gracchus.

Trouble and unpopularity next came to Gaius Gracchus from the

colonies which were to be founded during this year. Gracchus entered

upon this work in a conservative manner, starting out with only a few

colonies, at the outset sending only a few citizens to each colony and

admitting no citizen to any of the colonies unless he was of a

respectable character.

The Senate, seeing the power of Gaius Gracchus tottering, resolved to

destroy him politically by taking away his influence with the people.

To accomplish this purpose Marcus Livius Drusus, who also held the

office of tribune but who was a man of great wealth and affiliated

with the senatorial party, was put forward to outbid Gracchus for the

popular approval. In pursuance of this plan Drusus introduced a law

for the immediate settlement of twelve colonies, each colony to

consist of three thousand families, chosen without regard to their

character, and each colonist to hold his land rent free. The passage

of this Livian Law, as it was called, marked the close of the control

of Gaius Gracchus over the comitia tributa. In the elections of 122

B.C. L. Opimius, the enemy of Gracchus, was elected consul, and

neither Gracchus nor Flaccus was reëlected tribune.

The opponents of Gracchus, however, were not content with having

driven him from political power, but were resolved upon depriving him

of life as well. An excuse for an attack upon Gaius Gracchus was found

in a report from Carthage that the colony founded there by Gracchus

had been situated upon ground which had been cursed by Scipio at the

time of the destruction of Carthage. Acting upon this report, the

Senate directed the tribunes to call a meeting of the comitia tributa

for the purpose of revoking the law relative to the colony at

Carthage.

Upon the day of the meeting of the tribes one of the followers of the

consul Opimius, who had taken occasion to insult Gaius Gracchus, was

stabbed by some unknown person. The senatorial party now had the

opportunity to secure their prey, and immediately proceeded to

accomplish their purpose. The meeting of the comitia tributa was

broken up, and a meeting of the Senate called, at which Gracchus was

declared a public enemy and the consuls directed to take steps to

secure the safety of the republic.

It is outside the purpose of this work to go into the details of the

butchery of the next day in which Gaius Gracchus, Fulvius Flaccus, and

three thousand of their supporters lost their lives. The charge that

Gaius Gracchus had planned to do what Julius Cæsar was to do in the

next century, make himself dictator, or emperor, of Rome, is best

disproved by the absolute lack of any military preparations on the

part of Gracchus, even to the extent of securing his own safety when

he knew his life was in constant danger.

Although the friends of Gracchus and Flaccus had gathered together to

protect their leaders, they were without either proper arms or any

system of military organization, and were cut down, almost without

resistance, by the armed forces which had been collected by the

consul, Opimius. Mention might be made of the fruitless heroism

displayed by some of those friends of Gaius Gracchus who remained true

to him to the last; but the flashes of brightness were few, and the

day must ever be recorded as one of the darkest in all Roman history.

It was this day that marked the final failure of the last movement

which might have saved and rejuvenated the great Roman republic; it

was this day that showed the right of manhood was no longer the

highest right in Rome, and that the rule of special and vested

interests was now supreme.

The singleness of purpose and openness of character in Tiberius

Gracchus leave no opening for speculation or doubt as to the motives

from which he acted or the objects which he sought. Both the character

and the actions of Gaius Gracchus are more complex than those of his

brother, and many historians have doubted the disinterestedness of his

agitation for popular rights. The final summaries upon the character

of this man, of two recent historians, are as follows:

"The man who originates is always so far greater than the

man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother

led. The very dream which Caius told to the people shows

that his brother's spell was still on him, and his telling

it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed

fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was

swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and

reason. But no doubt he profited by experience of the past.

He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity

wasted on the murderous crew whom he had sworn to punish.

Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a death to which he

considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one fervent

passion, he took up his brother's cause with a double

portion of his brother's spirit, because he had thought more

before action, because he had greater natural eloquence, and

because being forewarned he was forearmed.

"In spite of the labours of recent historians, the

legislation of Caius Gracchus is still hard to understand.

Where the original authorities contradict each other, as

they often do, probable conjecture is the most which can be

attained, and no attempt will be made here to specify what

were the measures of the first tribunate of Caius, and what

of the second. The general scope and tendency of his

legislation is clear enough. It was to overthrow the

senatorial government, and in the new government to give the

chief share of the executive power to the mercantile class,

and the chief share of the legislative power to Italians.

These were his immediate aims. Probably he meant to keep all

the strings he thus set in motion in his own hands, so as to

be practically monarch of Rome. But whether he definitely

conceived the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own

requirements, pictured to himself a successor at some future

time inheriting the authority which he had established, no

one can say." (Beesly.)

"It is clear that he did not wish to place the Roman

Republic on a new democratic basis, but that he wished to

abolish it, and introduce in its stead an absolute

despotism, in the form of an unlimited tribuneship for life.

Nor can he be blamed for it; as, though an absolute monarchy

is a great misfortune for a nation, it is a less misfortune

than an absolute oligarchy. Besides this, he was fired with

the passion for a speedy vengeance, and was in fact a

political incendiary--the author not only of the one hundred

years' revolution, which dates from him, but the founder of

that terrible urban proletariat which, utterly demoralized

by corn largesses and the flattery of the classes above it,

and at the same time conscious of its power, lay like an

incubus for five hundred years on the Roman commonwealth,

and only perished with it.

"Many of the fundamental maxims of Roman monarchy may be

traced to Gracchus. He first laid down that all the land of

subject communities was to be regarded as the private

property of the state--a maxim first applied to vindicate

the right of the state to tax the land and then to send out

colonies to it, which later became a fundamental principle

of law under the empire. He invented the tactics by which

his successors broke down the governing aristocracy, and

substituted strict and judicious administration for the

previous misgovernment. He first opened the way to a

reconciliation between Rome and the provinces, and his

attempt to rebuild Carthage and to give an opportunity for

Italian emigration to the provinces was the first link in

the chain of that beneficial course of action. Right and

wrong, fortune and misfortune, were so inextricably blended

in this singular man and in this marvelous political

constellation, that it may well beseem history in this

case--though it beseems her but seldom--to reserve her

judgment." (Mommsen.)

Much of the criticism of each of these historians is manifestly true;

but the charge that Gaius Gracchus contemplated the substitution of

the rule of a despot for the rule of the oligarchy seems not to be

borne out by the facts.

A true understanding of the policies and objects of Gaius Gracchus can

be had only when we start our investigation with an appreciation of

the strongest motive which urged him onward. This motive was not, on

the one hand, a deep-rooted love and reverence for popular rights (as

was undoubtedly the case with his brother Tiberius); nor, on the other

hand, was it selfish interest, or the desire to usurp to himself the

supreme power in the state. The strongest influence in the life and

character of Gaius Gracchus was the desire to be avenged upon the

senatorial party for the murder of his brother. His efforts in behalf

of popular rights were instigated primarily by the desire to show

respect to his brother's memory and to carry out his brother's

policies. Upon this hypothesis the life and character of Gaius

Gracchus can be easily understood.