”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected
for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them
faithfully, or to have an army at command.
for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them
faithfully, or to have an army at command.
Napoleon - History of Julius Caesar - a
Now, the edileship required a
large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes
and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to
this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the
aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position,
where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies
of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices
closed against new men. From 535 to 621--eighty-six years--nine families
alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of
the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years
(630-642. )[616] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when,
addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is
regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and
infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the
multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put
all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling
together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or
two orders. ”[617]
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a
Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the
comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility
preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only
after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in. [618]
The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in
proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence
what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate
aspirations towards a better future.
Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in
its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to
restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all
the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second
came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which
consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law
interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten
years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,[619] and immediately abandoned,
renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which
threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote,
revived at three different epochs;[620] now the measures against
solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into
force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by
turn, refused or granted to the people. [621] By the Portian laws of 557
and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman
citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio
Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with
sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks. [622] At the beginning of the
seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all
elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the
decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes
on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent
tribunals (_quæstiones perpetuæ_), established from 605, it was sought
to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions,
successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society.
The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then
maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices
were soon to shake it to its foundations.
We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and
thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no
nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she
has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the
Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has
conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of
Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east,
the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians,
the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a
tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the
Danube. [623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of
barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles,
Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of
civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia
receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of
the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her
tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a
Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms.
But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within
exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA.
(621-676. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic. ]
I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had
lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism
created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to
sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good
sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from
the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at
every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but
sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of
a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline
began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who
had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi,
acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to
decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of
the best cause.
As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a
dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and
wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece
subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held
by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited
power. [625]
Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When,
freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give
themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides
troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful
men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a
veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at
other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no
longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all
were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition
to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of
things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the
ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the
depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such
a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a
generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could
neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it. ”[626]
The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the
introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense
riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in
causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had
taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one
hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues,
in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had
felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on
the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into
Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt
for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence
which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true,
superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice
is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit,
and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were
loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had
taken possession of all classes.
Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and
sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two
periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain
peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty
and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly
of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his
cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s
conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in
leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a
purchaser! ”[628]
Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions:
for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural
population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified;
the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of
proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the
place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by
the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that
fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly,
the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire,
without participating in the rights of Roman citizens. [629] There were,
as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies
and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state
of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the
metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected
to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were
exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation,
followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It
was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity
and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as
equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited
territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged
class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand
citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only
belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it
is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of
several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were
deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still
remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and
Norba. [631]
The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed
of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had
finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by
purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and
this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy. [632] At a later time,
when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received,
either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense
quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of
wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into
pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer
hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only
did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the
knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many
had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general
(_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the
whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the
provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance
was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made
the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.
Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the
patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly
in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there
were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the
soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a
degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of
619. [634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to
furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been
carried away for slaves by Roman collectors. [635] In the great market of
Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy. [636]
The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause
of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in
regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but
without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally
attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they
were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of
forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or
of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes
admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable
mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore
always the stigma of their origin. [638] Confined to the urban tribes,
they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population
of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a
veritable disdain: “Silence! ” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does
not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he
proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not
frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken. ”[639] When the
people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the
rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all
seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the
candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were
also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when,
crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by
their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.
On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal
families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to
preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves
worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made
them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that
there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a
democracy without people.
There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and
abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against
solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to
cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of
Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give
more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of
Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed
property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and
thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.
All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius
Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at
his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms,
but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles. [641]
[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621). ]
II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous
initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages
as well as eloquence,[642] he was son of the Gracchus who was twice
consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus. [643] At the
age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his
brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the
first to mount to the assault. [644] Questor of the Consul Mancinus in
Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the
love of virtue,[645] far from being dazzled by the splendour of the
moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them
while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the
tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of
eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been
entertained by Scipio Æmilianus[646] to distribute the public domain
among the poor. [647] The people themselves demanded the concession with
great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with
inscriptions calling for it. [648]
Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the
germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the
deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy
without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war,
after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting
examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused
innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts. [649]
He then spoke with contempt of the slaves, of that restless, uncertain
class, invading the rural districts, useless for the recruitment of the
armies, dangerous to society, as the last insurrection in Sicily clearly
proved. He ended by proposing a law, which was simply a reproduction of
that of Licinius Stolo, that had fallen into disuse. Its object was to
withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which
they had unjustly seized. No landholder should retain more than five
hundred _jugera_ for himself and two hundred and fifty for each of his
sons. These lands should belong to them for ever; the part confiscated
should be divided into lots of thirty _jugera_ and farmed hereditarily,
either to Roman citizens, or to Italiote auxiliaries, on condition of a
small rent to the treasury, and with an express prohibition to alienate.
The proprietors were to be indemnified for the part of their lands which
they so lost. This project, which all the old writers judged to be just
and moderate, raised a tempest among the aristocracy. The Senate
rejected it, and, when the people were on the point of adopting it, the
tribune Octavius, gained over by the rich citizens,[650] opposed to it
his inflexible veto. Suddenly interrupted in his designs, Tiberius
embraced the resolution, as bold as it was contrary to the laws, of
obtaining a vote of the tribes to depose the tribune. These having
pronounced accordingly, the new law was published, and three triumvirs
appointed for carrying it into execution: they were, Tiberius, his
brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Upon another
proposition, he obtained a decision that the money left by the King of
Pergamus to the Roman people should be employed for the expenses of
establishing those who were to receive the lands. [651]
The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the
country tribes. [652] Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm,
carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of
one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.
The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests,
were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted
to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the
assassination of Tiberius. [653] In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value
riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman
aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have
recourse to extremities. ”[654]
The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune
Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of
the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so
far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of
purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty. [655] The
latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by
the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle
became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to
secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of
his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies.
The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius
failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey
the call. [656]
Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a
revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary
qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained
the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his
adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation
than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to
give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius
that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their
slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a
considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance
demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head
to explain by signs the danger which threatened him. [657] Then his
enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to
his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate,
preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the
Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain,
with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred
inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same
fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.
The man had succumbed, but the cause remained standing, and public
opinion forced the Senate to discontinue its opposition to the execution
of the agrarian law, to substitute for Tiberius, as commissioner for the
partition of lands, Publius Crassus, an ally of the Gracchi; the people
commiserated the fate of the victims and cursed the murderers. Scipio
Nasica gained nothing by his triumph; to withdraw him from the general
resentment he was sent to Asia, where he died miserably.
The execution of the law encountered, nevertheless, many obstacles. The
limits of the _ager publicus_ had never been well defined; few
title-deeds existed, and those which could be produced were often
unintelligible. The value of this property, too, had changed
prodigiously. It was necessary to indemnify those who had cleared
uncultivated grounds or made improvements. Most of the lots contained
religious buildings and sepulchres. According to the antique notions, it
was a sacrilege to give them any other destination. The possessors of
the _ager publicus_, supported by the Senate and the equestrian order,
made the most of all these difficulties. The Italiotes showed no less
ardour in protesting against the partition of the lands, knowing well
that it would be less favourable to them than to the Romans.
The struggles which had preceded had so excited men’s passions, that
each party, as the opportunity occurred, presented laws the most
opposite to each other. At one time, on the motion of the tribune Junius
Pennus, it is a question of expelling all foreigners from Rome (628), in
order to deprive the party of the people of auxiliaries; at another, on
that of M. Fulvius, the right of city is claimed in favour of the
Italiotes (629). This demand leads to disturbances: it is rejected, and
the Senate, to rid itself of Fulvius, sends him against the Salluvii,
who were threatening Massilia. But already the allies themselves,
impatient at seeing their rights incessantly despised, were attempting
to secure them by force, and the Latin colony of Fregellæ revolts first;
but it is soon destroyed utterly by the prætor M. Opimius (629). The
rigour of this act of repression was calculated to intimidate the other
towns; but there are questions which must be resolved, and cannot be put
down. The cause which has been vanquished ten years is on the point of
finding in the brother of Tiberius Gracchus a new champion.
[Sidenote: Caius Gracchus (631). ]
III. Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred
deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After
serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the
tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his
ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of
Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of
his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of
Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not
hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs. [658] Invested
with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the
sanction of the people several laws; some directed merely against the
enemies of his brother;[659] others, of great political meaning, which
require more particular notice.
First, the importance of the tribunes was increased by the faculty of
being re-elected indefinitely,[660] which tended to give a character of
permanence to functions which were already so preponderant. Next, the
law _frumentaria_, by turn carried into effect and abandoned,[661]
gained him adherents by his granting without distinction, to all the
poor citizens, the monthly distribution of a certain quantity of wheat;
and for this purpose vast public granaries were constructed. [662] The
shortening of the time of service of the soldiers,[663] the prohibition
to enrol them under seventeen years of age, and the payment by the
treasury of their equipment, which was previously deducted from their
pay, gained him the favour of the army. The establishment of new tolls
(_portoria_) augmented the resources of the State; new colonies were
founded,[664] not only in Italy, but in the possessions out of the
peninsula. [665] The agrarian law, which was connected with the
establishment of these colonies, was confirmed, probably with the view
of restoring to the commissioners charged with its execution their
judicial powers, which had fallen into disuse. [666] Long and wide roads,
starting from Rome, placed the metropolis in easy communication with the
different countries of Italy. [667]
Down to this time, the appointments to the provinces had taken place
after the consular elections, which allowed the Senate to distribute
the great commands nearly according to its own convenience; it was now
arranged, in order to defeat the calculations of ambition and cupidity,
that the Senate should assign, before the election of the consuls, the
provinces which they should administrate. [668] To elevate the title of
Roman citizen, the dispositions of the law Porcia were put in force
again, and it was forbidden not only to pronounce capital
punishment[669] on a Roman citizen, except in case of high treason
(_perduellio_), but even for this offence to apply it without the
ratification of the people. It was equivalent to repealing the law of
provocation, the principle of which had been inscribed in the laws of
the Twelve Tables.
C. Gracchus attempted still more in the cause of equality. He proposed
to confer the right of city on the allies who enjoyed the Latin law, and
even to extend this benefit to all the inhabitants of Italy. [670] He
wished that in the comitia all classes should be admitted without
distinction to draw lots for the century called _prærogativa_, or which
had precedency in voting;[671] this “prerogative” had in fact a great
influence, because the suffrage of the first voters was regarded as a
divine presage; but these propositions were rejected. Desirous of
diminishing the power of the Senate, Gracchus resolved to oppose to it
the knights, whose importance he increased by new attributes. He caused
a law to be passed which authorised the censor to let to farm, in Asia,
the lands taken from the inhabitants of the conquered towns. [672] The
knights then took in farm the rents and tithes of those countries, of
which the soil belonged of right to the Roman people;[673] the old
proprietors were reduced to the condition of simple tenants. Finally,
Caius gave the knights a share in the judiciary powers, exercised
exclusively by the Senate, the venality of which had excited public
contempt. [674] Three hundred knights were joined with three hundred
senators, and the cognisance of all actions at law thus devolved upon
six hundred judges. [675] These measures gained for him the good-will of
an order which, hostile hitherto to the popular party, had contributed
to the failure of the projects of Tiberius Gracchus.
The tribune’s success was immense; his popularity became so great that
the people surrendered to him the right of naming the three hundred
knights among whom the judges were to be chosen, and his simple
recommendation was enough to secure the election of Fannius, one of his
partisans, to the consulship. Desiring further to show his spirit of
justice towards the provinces, he sent back to Spain the wheat
arbitrarily carried away from the inhabitants by the proprætor Fabius.
The tribunes had thus, at that epoch, a veritable omnipotence: they had
charge of the great works; disposed of the public revenues; dictated, so
to say, the election of the consuls; controlled the acts of the
governors of provinces; proposed the laws, and saw to their execution.
These measures taken together, from the circumstance that they were
favourable to a great number of interests, calmed for some time the
ardour of the opposition, and reduced it to silence. Even the Senate
became reconciled in appearance with Caius Gracchus; but under the
surface the feeling of hatred still existed, and another tribune was
raised up against him, Livius Drusus, whose mission was to propose
measures destined to restore to the Senate the affection of the people.
C. Gracchus had designed that the allies enjoying Latin rights should be
admitted to the right of city. Drusus caused it to be declared that,
like the Roman citizens, they should no longer be subject to be beaten
with rods. According to the law of the Gracchi, the lands distributed to
the poor citizens were burdened with a small rent for the profit of the
public treasury; Drusus freed them from it. [676] In rivalry to the
agrarian law, he obtained the creation of twelve colonies of three
thousand citizens each. Lastly, it was thought necessary to remove Caius
Gracchus himself out of the way, by appointing him to lead to Carthage,
to raise it from its ruins, the colony of six thousand individuals,
taken from all parts of Italy,[677] of which he had obtained the
establishment.
During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one
hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the
other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal,
compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter
enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of
these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a
third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected
consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the
nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the
town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation
of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of
deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.
The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in
the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with
extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate
tyrants--a treacherous qualification always employed against the
defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph,
they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of
a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly.
Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius
underwent a similar fate. The head of the tribune was carried in
triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The
agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to
torment the Senate.
Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the
laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and
prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,[678]
“because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent
measure.
”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected
for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them
faithfully, or to have an army at command.
Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws
continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part,
inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions
of lands which had been taken from them,[680] and its effects were only
destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of
corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak,
the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less
miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a
sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred
and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they
combated with arms ideas which arms could not destroy. When, in the
midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root
in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them;
but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and
imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent
repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again
incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a
hundred others grow up in its place.
[Sidenote: War of Jugurtha (637). ]
IV. An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party:
will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman
name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on
the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men
who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their
ancestors.
Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine,
had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia.
Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the
inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children,
Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in
spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman
commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him
and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon
master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death
also. The Senate sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius,
who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful
peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul,
on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to
come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of
reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the
scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:--
“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the
nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed
to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius
Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not
caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law,
but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I
acknowledge that _to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to
the kingly power_; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance
obtained by the blood of the citizens. . . . In these last years you
groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free
people made the tributaries of a few nobles--of those who alone are in
possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is
too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they
have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the
dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and
men. . . . But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic?
Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity, the most
criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good
faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic.
Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced
unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and
these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the
course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety. . . . Ah!
could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to
rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you
resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your
enemies as allies. ”[681]
He then reminded his audience of all Jugurtha’s crimes. The latter rose
to justify himself; but the tribune C. Bæbius, with whom he was in
league, ordered the king to keep silence. The Numidian was on the point
of gathering the fruit of such an accumulation of corruptions, when,
having caused a dangerous rival, Massiva, the grandson of Masinissa, to
be assassinated at Rome, he became the object of public reprobation, and
was compelled to return to Africa. War then re-commences; the consul
Albinus lets it drag on in length. Recalled to Rome to hold the comitia,
he entrusts the command to his brother, the proprætor Aulus, whose army,
soon seduced by Jugurtha, lets itself be surrounded, and is under the
necessity of making a dishonourable capitulation. The indignation at
Rome is at its height. On the proposal of a tribune, an inquiry is
opened against all the presumed accomplices in the misdeeds of
Jugurtha; they were punished, and, as often happens under such
circumstances, the vengeance of the people passed the limits of justice.
At last, after warm debates, an honourable man is chosen, Metellus,
belonging to the faction of the nobles, and he is charged with the war
in Africa. Public opinion, by forcing the Senate to punish corruption,
had triumphed over bad passions; and “it was the first time,” says
Sallust, “that the people put a bridle on the tyrannical pride of the
nobility. ”[682]
[Sidenote: Marius (647). ]
V. The Gracchi had made themselves, so to say, the civil champions of
the popular cause: Marius became its stern soldier. Born of an obscure
family, bred in camps, having arrived by his courage at high grades, he
had the roughness and the ambition of the class which feels itself
oppressed. A great captain, but a partisan in spirit, naturally inclined
to good and to justice, he became, towards the end of his life, through
love of power, cruel and inexorable. [683]
After having distinguished himself at the siege of Numantia, he was
elected tribune of the people, and displayed in that office a great
impartiality. [684] It was the first step of his fortune. Having become
the lieutenant of Metellus, in the war against Jugurtha he sought to
supplant his general; and, at a later period, succeeded in allying
himself to an illustrious family by marrying Julia, paternal aunt of the
great Cæsar. Guided by his instinct or intelligence, he had learnt that
beneath the official people there existed a people of proletaries and of
allies which demanded a consideration in the State.
Having reached the consulship through his high military reputation,
backed by intrigues, he was charged with the war of Numidia, and, before
his departure, expressed with energy, in an address to the people, the
rancours and principles of the democratic party of that time.
“You have charged me,” he said, “with the war against Jugurtha; the
nobility is irritated at your choice: but why do you not change your
decree, by going to seek for this expedition a man among that crowd of
nobles, of old lineage, who counts many ancestors, but not a single
campaign? . . . It is true that he would have to take among the people an
adviser who could teach him his business. With these proud patricians
compare Marius, a new man. What they have heard related by others, what
they have read of, I have seen in part, I have in part done. . . . They
reproach me with the obscurity of my birth and fortune; I reproach them
with their cowardice and personal infamy. Nature, our common mother, has
made all men equal, and the bravest is the most noble. . . . If they think
they are justified in despising me, let them also despise their
ancestors, ennobled like me by their personal merits. . . . And is it not
more worthy to be oneself the author of his name than to degrade that
which has been transmitted to you?
“I cannot, to justify your confidence, make a display of images, nor
boast of the triumphs or consulships of my ancestors; but I can produce,
if necessary, javelins, a standard, the trappings of war, twenty other
military gifts, besides the scars which furrow my breast. These are my
images, these my nobility, not left by inheritance, but won for myself
by great personal labours and perils. ”[685]
After this oration, in which is revealed the legitimate ardour of those
who, in all aristocratic countries, demand equality, Marius, contrary to
the ancient system, enrolled more proletaries than citizens. The
veterans also crowded under his standards. He conducted the war of
Africa with skill; but he was robbed of part of his glory by his
questor, P. Cornelius Sylla. This man, called soon afterwards to play so
great a part, sprung from an illustrious patrician family, ambitious,
ardent, full of boldness and confidence in himself, recoiled before no
obstacle. The successes, which cost so many efforts to Marius, seemed to
come of themselves to Sylla. Marius defeated the Numidian prince, but,
by an adventurous act of boldness, Sylla received his submission, and
ended the war. From that time began, between the proconsul and his young
questor, a rivalry which, in time, was changed into violent hatred. They
became, one, the champion of the democracy; the other, the hope of the
oligarchic faction. So the Senate extolled beyond measure Metellus and
Sylla, in order that the people should not consider Marius as the first
of the generals. [686] The gravity of events soon baffled this
manœuvre.
While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger
threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had
moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia
(in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all
their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and
adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls. [687] In their
passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged
with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul;
returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they
demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to
meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The
Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew
the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was
only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri,
followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites
the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable
of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger,
sought no longer to seize the power. [688] Marius was, contrary to the
law, named a second time consul, in 650, and charged with the war in
Gaul.
This great captain laboured during several years to restore military
discipline, practise his troops, and familiarise them with their new
enemies, whose aspect filled them with terror. Marius, considered
indispensable, was re-elected from year to year; from 650 to 654, he was
five times elected consul, and beat the Cimbri, united with the Ambrones
and Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (_Aix_), re-passed into Italy, and
exterminated, near Vercellæ, the Cimbri who had escaped from the last
battle and those whom the Celtiberians had driven back from Spain. These
immense butcheries, these massacres of whole peoples, removed for some
time the barbarians from the frontiers of the Republic.
Consul for the sixth time (654), the saviour of Rome and Italy, by a
generous deference, would not triumph without his colleague
Catulus,[689] and did not hesitate to exceed his powers in granting to
two auxiliary cohorts of Cameria, who had distinguished themselves, the
rights of city. [690] But his glory was obscured by culpable intrigues.
Associated with the most turbulent chiefs of the democratic party, he
excited them to revolt, and sacrificed them as soon as he saw that they
could not succeed. When governments repulse the legitimate wishes of the
people and true ideas, then factious men seize on them as a powerful arm
to serve their passions and personal interests; the Senate having
rejected all the proposals of reform, those who sought to raise
disorders found in them a pretext and support in their perverse
projects. L. Appuleius Saturninus, one of Marius’s creatures, and
Glaucia, a fellow of loose manners, were guilty of incredible
violences. The first revived the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, and went
beyond them in proposing the partition of the lands taken from the
Cimbri; a measure which he sought to impose by terror and murder. In the
troubles which broke out at the election of the consuls for 655, the
urban tribes came to blows with the country tribes. In the midst of the
tumult, Saturninus, followed by a troop of desperadoes, made himself
master of the Capitol, and fortified himself in it. Charged, in his
quality of consul, with the repression of sedition, Marius first
favoured it by an intentional inaction; then, seeing all good citizens
run to arms, and the factious without support, even deserted by the
urban plebeians, he placed himself at the head of some troops, and
occupied the avenues to the Capitol. From the first moment of the
attack, the rebels threw down their arms and demanded quarter. Marius
left them to be massacred by the people, as though he had wished that
the secret of the sedition might die with them.
The question of Italian emancipation was not foreign to the revolt of
Saturninus. It is certain that the claims of the Italiotes, rejected
after the death of C. Gracchus, and then adjourned at the approach of
the Cimbri, who threatened all the peninsula with one common
catastrophe, were renewed with more earnestness than ever after the
defeat of the barbarians. The earnestness of the allies to come to the
succour of Italy, the courage which they had shown in the battle-fields
of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ, gave them new claims to become Romans. Yet,
if some prudent politicians believed that the time was arrived for
yielding to the wishes of the Italiotes, a numerous and powerful party
revolted at the idea of such a concession. The more the privileges of
the citizens became extended, the more the Roman pride resisted the
thought of having sharers in them. M. Livius Drusus (663), tribune of
the people, son of the Drusus already mentioned, having under his
command in Rome an immense body of clients, the acknowledged patron of
all the Italiote cities, dared to attempt this salutary reform, and had
nearly carried it by force of party. He was not ignorant that there was
already in existence a formidable confederacy of the peoples of the
south and east of Italy, and that more than once their chiefs had
meditated a general insurrection. Drusus, trusting in their projects,
had had the art to restrain them and to obtain from them the promise of
a blind obedience. The success of the tribune seemed certain. The people
were gained over by distributions of wheat and concessions of lands; the
Senate, intimidated, appeared to have become powerless, when, a few days
before the vote of the tribes, Drusus was assassinated. All Italy
accused the senators of this crime, and war became inevitable.
The obstinate refusal of the Romans to share with the Italiotes all
their political rights, had been long a cause of political agitation.
More than two hundred years before, the war of the Latins and the revolt
of the inhabitants of Campania, after the battle of Cannæ, had no other
motives. About the same time (536), Spurius Carvilius proposed to admit
into the Senate two senators taken from each people in Latium. “The
assembly,” says Livy,[691] “burst into a murmur of indignation, and
Manlius, raising his voice over the others, declared that there existed
still a descendant of that consul who once, in the Capitol, threatened
to kill with his own hand the first Latin he should see in the curia;” a
striking proof of this secular resistance of the Roman aristocracy to
everything which might threaten its supremacy. But, after this epoch,
the ideas of equality had assumed a power which it was impossible to
mistake.
[Sidenote: Wars of the Allies (663). ]
VI. This civil war, which was called the _War of Allies_,[692] showed
once more the impotence of material force against the legitimate
aspirations of peoples, and it covered the country with blood and ruins.
Three hundred thousand citizens, the choice of the nation, perished on
the field of battle. [693] Rome had the superiority, it is true, and yet
it was the cause of the vanquished which triumphed, since, after the
war, the only object of which was the assertion of the rights of
citizenship, these rights were granted to most of the peoples of Italy.
Sylla subsequently restricted them, and we may be convinced, by
examining the different censuses, that the entire emancipation was only
accomplished under Cæsar. [694]
The revolt burst out fortuitously before the day fixed. It was provoked
by the violence of a Roman magistrate, who was massacred by the
inhabitants of Asculum; but all was ready for an insurrection, which
was not long before it became general. The allies had a secret
government, chiefs appointed, and an army organised. At the head of the
peoples confederated against Rome were distinguished the Marsi and the
Samnites; the first excited rather by a feeling of national pride than
by the memory of injuries to be revenged; the second, on the contrary,
by the hatred which they had vowed against the Romans during long
struggles for their independence--struggles renewed on the invasion of
Hannibal. Both shared the honour of the supreme command. It appears,
moreover, that the system of government adopted by the confederation was
a copy of the Roman institutions. To substitute Italy for Rome, and to
replace the denomination of a single town by that of a great people, was
the avowed aim of the new league. A Senate was named, or rather a Diet,
in which each city had its representatives; they elected two consuls, Q.
Pompædius Silo, a Marsian, and C. Papius Mutilus, a Samnite. For their
capital, they chose Corfinium, the name of which was changed to that of
_Italia_, or _Vitelia_, which, in the Oscan language, spoken by a part
of the peoples of Southern Italy, had the same signification. [695]
The allies were wanting neither in skilful generals nor in brave and
experienced soldiers; in the two camps, the same arms, the same
discipline. The war, commenced at the end of the year 663, was pursued
on both sides with the utmost animosity. It extended through Central
Italy, from the north to the south, from Firmum (_Fermo_) to Grumentum,
in Lucania, and from east to west from Cannæ to the Liris. The battles
were sanguinary, and often indecisive, and, on both sides, the losses
were so considerable, that it soon became necessary to enrol the
freedmen, and even the slaves.
The allies obtained at first brilliant successes. Marius had the glory
of arresting their progress, although he had only troops demoralised by
reverses. Fortune, this time again, served Sylla better; conqueror
wherever he appeared, he sullied his exploits by horrible cruelties to
the Samnites, whom he seemed to have undertaken to destroy rather than
to subdue. The Senate displayed more humanity, or more policy, in
granting spontaneously the right of Roman city to all the allies who
remained faithful to the Republic, and in promising it to all those who
should lay down their arms. It treated in the same manner the Cisalpine
Gauls; as to their neighbours on the left bank of the Po, it conferred
upon them the right of Latium. This wise measure divided the
confederates;[696] the greater part submitted. The Samnites, almost
alone, continued to fight in their mountains with the fury of despair.
The emancipation of Italy was accompanied, nevertheless, with a
restrictive measure which was designed to preserve to the Romans the
preponderance in the comitia. To the thirty-five old tribes, eight new
ones were added, in which all the Italiotes were inscribed; and, as the
votes were reckoned by tribes, and not by head, it is evident that the
influence of the new citizens must have been nearly null. [697]
Etruria had taken no part in the Social War. The nobility was devoted to
Rome, and the people lived in a condition approximating to bondage. The
law Julia, which gave to the Italiotes the right of Roman city, and
which took its name from its author, the consul L. Julius Cæsar,
produced among the Etruscans a complete revolution. It was welcomed with
enthusiasm.
While Italy was in flames, Mithridates VI. , king of Pontus, determined
to take advantage of the weakness of the Republic to aggrandise himself.
In 664, he invaded Bithynia and Cappadocia, and expelled the kings,
allies of Rome. At the same time he entered into communication with the
Samnites, to whom he promised subsidies and soldiers. Such was the
hatred then inspired by the Romans in foreign countries, that an order
of Mithridates was sufficient to raise the province of Asia, where, in
one day, eighty thousand Romans were massacred. [698] At this time the
Social War was already approaching its end. With the exception of
Samnium, all Italy was subdued, and the Senate could turn its attention
to the distant provinces.
[Sidenote: Sylla (666). ]
VII. Sylla, appointed consul in recompense for his services, was charged
with the task of chastising Mithridates. While he was preparing for this
mission, the tribune of the people, P. Sulpicius, had formed a powerful
party. A remarkable man, though without scruples, he had the qualities
and the defects of most of those who played a part in these epochs of
dissension. [699] Escorted by six hundred Roman knights, whom he called
the Anti-Senate,[700] he sold publicly the right of citizen to freedmen
and foreigners, and received the price on tables raised in the middle of
the public place. [701] He caused a plebiscitum to be passed to put an
end to the subterfuge of the law Julia, which, by an illusory
re-partition, cheated the Italiotes of the very rights which it seemed
to accord to them; and instead of maintaining them in the eight new
tribes, he caused them to be inscribed in the thirty-five old ones. The
measure was not adopted without warm discussions; but Sulpicius was
supported by all the new citizens, together with the democratic faction
and Marius. A riot carried the vote and Sylla, threatened with death,
was obliged to take refuge in the house of Marius, and hastily quit
Rome. Master of the town, Sulpicius showed the influences he obeyed, by
causing to be given to the aged Marius the province of Asia, and the
command of the expedition against Mithridates. But Sylla had his army in
Campania, and was determined to support his own claims. While the
faction of Marius, in the town, indulged in acts of violence against the
contrary faction, the soldiers of Sylla were irritated at seeing the
legions of his rival likely to snatch from them the rich booty which
Asia promised; and they swore to avenge their chief. Sylla placed
himself at their head, and marched from Nola upon Rome, with his
colleague, Pompeius Rufus, who had just joined him. The greater part of
the superior officers dared not follow him, so great was still the
prestige of the eternal city. [702] In vain deputations are addressed to
him; he marches onwards, and penetrates into the streets of Rome.
Assailed by the inhabitants, and attacked by Marius and Sulpicius, he
triumphs only by dint of boldness and energy. It was the first time that
a general, entering Rome as a conqueror, had seized the power by force
of arms.
Sylla restored order, prevented pillage, convoked the assembly of the
people, justified his conduct, and, wishing to secure for his party the
preponderance in the public deliberations, he recalled to force the old
custom of requiring the previous assent of the Senate before the
presentation of a law. The comitia by centuries were substituted for
the comitia by tribes, to which was left only the election of the
inferior magistrates. [703] Sylla caused Sulpicius to be put to death,
and abrogated his decrees; and he set a price on the head of Marius,
forgetting that he had himself, a short time before, found a refuge in
the house of his rival. He proscribed the chiefs of the democratic
faction, but most of them had fled before he entered Rome.
large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes
and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to
this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the
aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position,
where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies
of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices
closed against new men. From 535 to 621--eighty-six years--nine families
alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of
the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years
(630-642. )[616] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when,
addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is
regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and
infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the
multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put
all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling
together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or
two orders. ”[617]
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a
Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the
comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility
preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only
after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in. [618]
The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in
proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence
what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate
aspirations towards a better future.
Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in
its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to
restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all
the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second
came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which
consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law
interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten
years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,[619] and immediately abandoned,
renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which
threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote,
revived at three different epochs;[620] now the measures against
solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into
force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by
turn, refused or granted to the people. [621] By the Portian laws of 557
and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman
citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio
Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with
sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks. [622] At the beginning of the
seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all
elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the
decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes
on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent
tribunals (_quæstiones perpetuæ_), established from 605, it was sought
to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions,
successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society.
The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then
maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices
were soon to shake it to its foundations.
We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and
thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no
nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she
has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the
Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has
conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of
Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east,
the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians,
the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a
tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the
Danube. [623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of
barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles,
Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of
civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia
receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of
the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her
tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a
Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms.
But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within
exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA.
(621-676. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic. ]
I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had
lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism
created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to
sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good
sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from
the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at
every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but
sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of
a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline
began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who
had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi,
acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to
decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of
the best cause.
As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a
dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and
wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece
subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held
by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited
power. [625]
Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When,
freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give
themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides
troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful
men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a
veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at
other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no
longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all
were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition
to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of
things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the
ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the
depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such
a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a
generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could
neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it. ”[626]
The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the
introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense
riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in
causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had
taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one
hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues,
in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had
felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on
the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into
Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt
for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence
which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true,
superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice
is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit,
and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were
loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had
taken possession of all classes.
Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and
sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two
periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain
peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty
and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly
of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his
cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s
conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in
leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a
purchaser! ”[628]
Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions:
for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural
population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified;
the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of
proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the
place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by
the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that
fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly,
the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire,
without participating in the rights of Roman citizens. [629] There were,
as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies
and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state
of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the
metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected
to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were
exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation,
followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It
was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity
and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as
equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited
territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged
class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand
citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only
belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it
is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of
several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were
deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still
remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and
Norba. [631]
The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed
of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had
finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by
purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and
this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy. [632] At a later time,
when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received,
either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense
quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of
wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into
pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer
hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only
did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the
knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many
had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general
(_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the
whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the
provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance
was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made
the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.
Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the
patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly
in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there
were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the
soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a
degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of
619. [634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to
furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been
carried away for slaves by Roman collectors. [635] In the great market of
Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy. [636]
The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause
of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in
regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but
without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally
attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they
were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of
forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or
of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes
admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable
mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore
always the stigma of their origin. [638] Confined to the urban tribes,
they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population
of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a
veritable disdain: “Silence! ” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does
not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he
proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not
frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken. ”[639] When the
people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the
rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all
seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the
candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were
also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when,
crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by
their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.
On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal
families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to
preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves
worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made
them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that
there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a
democracy without people.
There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and
abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against
solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to
cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of
Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give
more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of
Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed
property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and
thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.
All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius
Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at
his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms,
but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles. [641]
[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621). ]
II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous
initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages
as well as eloquence,[642] he was son of the Gracchus who was twice
consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus. [643] At the
age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his
brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the
first to mount to the assault. [644] Questor of the Consul Mancinus in
Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the
love of virtue,[645] far from being dazzled by the splendour of the
moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them
while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the
tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of
eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been
entertained by Scipio Æmilianus[646] to distribute the public domain
among the poor. [647] The people themselves demanded the concession with
great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with
inscriptions calling for it. [648]
Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the
germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the
deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy
without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war,
after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting
examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused
innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts. [649]
He then spoke with contempt of the slaves, of that restless, uncertain
class, invading the rural districts, useless for the recruitment of the
armies, dangerous to society, as the last insurrection in Sicily clearly
proved. He ended by proposing a law, which was simply a reproduction of
that of Licinius Stolo, that had fallen into disuse. Its object was to
withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which
they had unjustly seized. No landholder should retain more than five
hundred _jugera_ for himself and two hundred and fifty for each of his
sons. These lands should belong to them for ever; the part confiscated
should be divided into lots of thirty _jugera_ and farmed hereditarily,
either to Roman citizens, or to Italiote auxiliaries, on condition of a
small rent to the treasury, and with an express prohibition to alienate.
The proprietors were to be indemnified for the part of their lands which
they so lost. This project, which all the old writers judged to be just
and moderate, raised a tempest among the aristocracy. The Senate
rejected it, and, when the people were on the point of adopting it, the
tribune Octavius, gained over by the rich citizens,[650] opposed to it
his inflexible veto. Suddenly interrupted in his designs, Tiberius
embraced the resolution, as bold as it was contrary to the laws, of
obtaining a vote of the tribes to depose the tribune. These having
pronounced accordingly, the new law was published, and three triumvirs
appointed for carrying it into execution: they were, Tiberius, his
brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Upon another
proposition, he obtained a decision that the money left by the King of
Pergamus to the Roman people should be employed for the expenses of
establishing those who were to receive the lands. [651]
The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the
country tribes. [652] Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm,
carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of
one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.
The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests,
were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted
to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the
assassination of Tiberius. [653] In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value
riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman
aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have
recourse to extremities. ”[654]
The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune
Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of
the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so
far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of
purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty. [655] The
latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by
the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle
became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to
secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of
his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies.
The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius
failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey
the call. [656]
Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a
revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary
qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained
the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his
adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation
than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to
give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius
that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their
slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a
considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance
demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head
to explain by signs the danger which threatened him. [657] Then his
enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to
his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate,
preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the
Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain,
with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred
inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same
fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.
The man had succumbed, but the cause remained standing, and public
opinion forced the Senate to discontinue its opposition to the execution
of the agrarian law, to substitute for Tiberius, as commissioner for the
partition of lands, Publius Crassus, an ally of the Gracchi; the people
commiserated the fate of the victims and cursed the murderers. Scipio
Nasica gained nothing by his triumph; to withdraw him from the general
resentment he was sent to Asia, where he died miserably.
The execution of the law encountered, nevertheless, many obstacles. The
limits of the _ager publicus_ had never been well defined; few
title-deeds existed, and those which could be produced were often
unintelligible. The value of this property, too, had changed
prodigiously. It was necessary to indemnify those who had cleared
uncultivated grounds or made improvements. Most of the lots contained
religious buildings and sepulchres. According to the antique notions, it
was a sacrilege to give them any other destination. The possessors of
the _ager publicus_, supported by the Senate and the equestrian order,
made the most of all these difficulties. The Italiotes showed no less
ardour in protesting against the partition of the lands, knowing well
that it would be less favourable to them than to the Romans.
The struggles which had preceded had so excited men’s passions, that
each party, as the opportunity occurred, presented laws the most
opposite to each other. At one time, on the motion of the tribune Junius
Pennus, it is a question of expelling all foreigners from Rome (628), in
order to deprive the party of the people of auxiliaries; at another, on
that of M. Fulvius, the right of city is claimed in favour of the
Italiotes (629). This demand leads to disturbances: it is rejected, and
the Senate, to rid itself of Fulvius, sends him against the Salluvii,
who were threatening Massilia. But already the allies themselves,
impatient at seeing their rights incessantly despised, were attempting
to secure them by force, and the Latin colony of Fregellæ revolts first;
but it is soon destroyed utterly by the prætor M. Opimius (629). The
rigour of this act of repression was calculated to intimidate the other
towns; but there are questions which must be resolved, and cannot be put
down. The cause which has been vanquished ten years is on the point of
finding in the brother of Tiberius Gracchus a new champion.
[Sidenote: Caius Gracchus (631). ]
III. Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred
deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After
serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the
tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his
ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of
Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of
his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of
Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not
hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs. [658] Invested
with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the
sanction of the people several laws; some directed merely against the
enemies of his brother;[659] others, of great political meaning, which
require more particular notice.
First, the importance of the tribunes was increased by the faculty of
being re-elected indefinitely,[660] which tended to give a character of
permanence to functions which were already so preponderant. Next, the
law _frumentaria_, by turn carried into effect and abandoned,[661]
gained him adherents by his granting without distinction, to all the
poor citizens, the monthly distribution of a certain quantity of wheat;
and for this purpose vast public granaries were constructed. [662] The
shortening of the time of service of the soldiers,[663] the prohibition
to enrol them under seventeen years of age, and the payment by the
treasury of their equipment, which was previously deducted from their
pay, gained him the favour of the army. The establishment of new tolls
(_portoria_) augmented the resources of the State; new colonies were
founded,[664] not only in Italy, but in the possessions out of the
peninsula. [665] The agrarian law, which was connected with the
establishment of these colonies, was confirmed, probably with the view
of restoring to the commissioners charged with its execution their
judicial powers, which had fallen into disuse. [666] Long and wide roads,
starting from Rome, placed the metropolis in easy communication with the
different countries of Italy. [667]
Down to this time, the appointments to the provinces had taken place
after the consular elections, which allowed the Senate to distribute
the great commands nearly according to its own convenience; it was now
arranged, in order to defeat the calculations of ambition and cupidity,
that the Senate should assign, before the election of the consuls, the
provinces which they should administrate. [668] To elevate the title of
Roman citizen, the dispositions of the law Porcia were put in force
again, and it was forbidden not only to pronounce capital
punishment[669] on a Roman citizen, except in case of high treason
(_perduellio_), but even for this offence to apply it without the
ratification of the people. It was equivalent to repealing the law of
provocation, the principle of which had been inscribed in the laws of
the Twelve Tables.
C. Gracchus attempted still more in the cause of equality. He proposed
to confer the right of city on the allies who enjoyed the Latin law, and
even to extend this benefit to all the inhabitants of Italy. [670] He
wished that in the comitia all classes should be admitted without
distinction to draw lots for the century called _prærogativa_, or which
had precedency in voting;[671] this “prerogative” had in fact a great
influence, because the suffrage of the first voters was regarded as a
divine presage; but these propositions were rejected. Desirous of
diminishing the power of the Senate, Gracchus resolved to oppose to it
the knights, whose importance he increased by new attributes. He caused
a law to be passed which authorised the censor to let to farm, in Asia,
the lands taken from the inhabitants of the conquered towns. [672] The
knights then took in farm the rents and tithes of those countries, of
which the soil belonged of right to the Roman people;[673] the old
proprietors were reduced to the condition of simple tenants. Finally,
Caius gave the knights a share in the judiciary powers, exercised
exclusively by the Senate, the venality of which had excited public
contempt. [674] Three hundred knights were joined with three hundred
senators, and the cognisance of all actions at law thus devolved upon
six hundred judges. [675] These measures gained for him the good-will of
an order which, hostile hitherto to the popular party, had contributed
to the failure of the projects of Tiberius Gracchus.
The tribune’s success was immense; his popularity became so great that
the people surrendered to him the right of naming the three hundred
knights among whom the judges were to be chosen, and his simple
recommendation was enough to secure the election of Fannius, one of his
partisans, to the consulship. Desiring further to show his spirit of
justice towards the provinces, he sent back to Spain the wheat
arbitrarily carried away from the inhabitants by the proprætor Fabius.
The tribunes had thus, at that epoch, a veritable omnipotence: they had
charge of the great works; disposed of the public revenues; dictated, so
to say, the election of the consuls; controlled the acts of the
governors of provinces; proposed the laws, and saw to their execution.
These measures taken together, from the circumstance that they were
favourable to a great number of interests, calmed for some time the
ardour of the opposition, and reduced it to silence. Even the Senate
became reconciled in appearance with Caius Gracchus; but under the
surface the feeling of hatred still existed, and another tribune was
raised up against him, Livius Drusus, whose mission was to propose
measures destined to restore to the Senate the affection of the people.
C. Gracchus had designed that the allies enjoying Latin rights should be
admitted to the right of city. Drusus caused it to be declared that,
like the Roman citizens, they should no longer be subject to be beaten
with rods. According to the law of the Gracchi, the lands distributed to
the poor citizens were burdened with a small rent for the profit of the
public treasury; Drusus freed them from it. [676] In rivalry to the
agrarian law, he obtained the creation of twelve colonies of three
thousand citizens each. Lastly, it was thought necessary to remove Caius
Gracchus himself out of the way, by appointing him to lead to Carthage,
to raise it from its ruins, the colony of six thousand individuals,
taken from all parts of Italy,[677] of which he had obtained the
establishment.
During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one
hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the
other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal,
compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter
enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of
these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a
third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected
consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the
nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the
town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation
of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of
deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.
The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in
the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with
extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate
tyrants--a treacherous qualification always employed against the
defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph,
they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of
a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly.
Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius
underwent a similar fate. The head of the tribune was carried in
triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The
agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to
torment the Senate.
Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the
laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and
prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,[678]
“because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent
measure.
”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected
for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them
faithfully, or to have an army at command.
Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws
continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part,
inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions
of lands which had been taken from them,[680] and its effects were only
destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of
corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak,
the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less
miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a
sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred
and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they
combated with arms ideas which arms could not destroy. When, in the
midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root
in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them;
but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and
imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent
repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again
incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a
hundred others grow up in its place.
[Sidenote: War of Jugurtha (637). ]
IV. An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party:
will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman
name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on
the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men
who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their
ancestors.
Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine,
had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia.
Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the
inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children,
Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in
spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman
commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him
and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon
master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death
also. The Senate sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius,
who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful
peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul,
on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to
come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of
reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the
scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:--
“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the
nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed
to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius
Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not
caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law,
but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I
acknowledge that _to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to
the kingly power_; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance
obtained by the blood of the citizens. . . . In these last years you
groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free
people made the tributaries of a few nobles--of those who alone are in
possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is
too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they
have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the
dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and
men. . . . But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic?
Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity, the most
criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good
faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic.
Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced
unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and
these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the
course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety. . . . Ah!
could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to
rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you
resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your
enemies as allies. ”[681]
He then reminded his audience of all Jugurtha’s crimes. The latter rose
to justify himself; but the tribune C. Bæbius, with whom he was in
league, ordered the king to keep silence. The Numidian was on the point
of gathering the fruit of such an accumulation of corruptions, when,
having caused a dangerous rival, Massiva, the grandson of Masinissa, to
be assassinated at Rome, he became the object of public reprobation, and
was compelled to return to Africa. War then re-commences; the consul
Albinus lets it drag on in length. Recalled to Rome to hold the comitia,
he entrusts the command to his brother, the proprætor Aulus, whose army,
soon seduced by Jugurtha, lets itself be surrounded, and is under the
necessity of making a dishonourable capitulation. The indignation at
Rome is at its height. On the proposal of a tribune, an inquiry is
opened against all the presumed accomplices in the misdeeds of
Jugurtha; they were punished, and, as often happens under such
circumstances, the vengeance of the people passed the limits of justice.
At last, after warm debates, an honourable man is chosen, Metellus,
belonging to the faction of the nobles, and he is charged with the war
in Africa. Public opinion, by forcing the Senate to punish corruption,
had triumphed over bad passions; and “it was the first time,” says
Sallust, “that the people put a bridle on the tyrannical pride of the
nobility. ”[682]
[Sidenote: Marius (647). ]
V. The Gracchi had made themselves, so to say, the civil champions of
the popular cause: Marius became its stern soldier. Born of an obscure
family, bred in camps, having arrived by his courage at high grades, he
had the roughness and the ambition of the class which feels itself
oppressed. A great captain, but a partisan in spirit, naturally inclined
to good and to justice, he became, towards the end of his life, through
love of power, cruel and inexorable. [683]
After having distinguished himself at the siege of Numantia, he was
elected tribune of the people, and displayed in that office a great
impartiality. [684] It was the first step of his fortune. Having become
the lieutenant of Metellus, in the war against Jugurtha he sought to
supplant his general; and, at a later period, succeeded in allying
himself to an illustrious family by marrying Julia, paternal aunt of the
great Cæsar. Guided by his instinct or intelligence, he had learnt that
beneath the official people there existed a people of proletaries and of
allies which demanded a consideration in the State.
Having reached the consulship through his high military reputation,
backed by intrigues, he was charged with the war of Numidia, and, before
his departure, expressed with energy, in an address to the people, the
rancours and principles of the democratic party of that time.
“You have charged me,” he said, “with the war against Jugurtha; the
nobility is irritated at your choice: but why do you not change your
decree, by going to seek for this expedition a man among that crowd of
nobles, of old lineage, who counts many ancestors, but not a single
campaign? . . . It is true that he would have to take among the people an
adviser who could teach him his business. With these proud patricians
compare Marius, a new man. What they have heard related by others, what
they have read of, I have seen in part, I have in part done. . . . They
reproach me with the obscurity of my birth and fortune; I reproach them
with their cowardice and personal infamy. Nature, our common mother, has
made all men equal, and the bravest is the most noble. . . . If they think
they are justified in despising me, let them also despise their
ancestors, ennobled like me by their personal merits. . . . And is it not
more worthy to be oneself the author of his name than to degrade that
which has been transmitted to you?
“I cannot, to justify your confidence, make a display of images, nor
boast of the triumphs or consulships of my ancestors; but I can produce,
if necessary, javelins, a standard, the trappings of war, twenty other
military gifts, besides the scars which furrow my breast. These are my
images, these my nobility, not left by inheritance, but won for myself
by great personal labours and perils. ”[685]
After this oration, in which is revealed the legitimate ardour of those
who, in all aristocratic countries, demand equality, Marius, contrary to
the ancient system, enrolled more proletaries than citizens. The
veterans also crowded under his standards. He conducted the war of
Africa with skill; but he was robbed of part of his glory by his
questor, P. Cornelius Sylla. This man, called soon afterwards to play so
great a part, sprung from an illustrious patrician family, ambitious,
ardent, full of boldness and confidence in himself, recoiled before no
obstacle. The successes, which cost so many efforts to Marius, seemed to
come of themselves to Sylla. Marius defeated the Numidian prince, but,
by an adventurous act of boldness, Sylla received his submission, and
ended the war. From that time began, between the proconsul and his young
questor, a rivalry which, in time, was changed into violent hatred. They
became, one, the champion of the democracy; the other, the hope of the
oligarchic faction. So the Senate extolled beyond measure Metellus and
Sylla, in order that the people should not consider Marius as the first
of the generals. [686] The gravity of events soon baffled this
manœuvre.
While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger
threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had
moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia
(in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all
their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and
adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls. [687] In their
passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged
with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul;
returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they
demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to
meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The
Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew
the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was
only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri,
followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites
the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable
of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger,
sought no longer to seize the power. [688] Marius was, contrary to the
law, named a second time consul, in 650, and charged with the war in
Gaul.
This great captain laboured during several years to restore military
discipline, practise his troops, and familiarise them with their new
enemies, whose aspect filled them with terror. Marius, considered
indispensable, was re-elected from year to year; from 650 to 654, he was
five times elected consul, and beat the Cimbri, united with the Ambrones
and Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (_Aix_), re-passed into Italy, and
exterminated, near Vercellæ, the Cimbri who had escaped from the last
battle and those whom the Celtiberians had driven back from Spain. These
immense butcheries, these massacres of whole peoples, removed for some
time the barbarians from the frontiers of the Republic.
Consul for the sixth time (654), the saviour of Rome and Italy, by a
generous deference, would not triumph without his colleague
Catulus,[689] and did not hesitate to exceed his powers in granting to
two auxiliary cohorts of Cameria, who had distinguished themselves, the
rights of city. [690] But his glory was obscured by culpable intrigues.
Associated with the most turbulent chiefs of the democratic party, he
excited them to revolt, and sacrificed them as soon as he saw that they
could not succeed. When governments repulse the legitimate wishes of the
people and true ideas, then factious men seize on them as a powerful arm
to serve their passions and personal interests; the Senate having
rejected all the proposals of reform, those who sought to raise
disorders found in them a pretext and support in their perverse
projects. L. Appuleius Saturninus, one of Marius’s creatures, and
Glaucia, a fellow of loose manners, were guilty of incredible
violences. The first revived the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, and went
beyond them in proposing the partition of the lands taken from the
Cimbri; a measure which he sought to impose by terror and murder. In the
troubles which broke out at the election of the consuls for 655, the
urban tribes came to blows with the country tribes. In the midst of the
tumult, Saturninus, followed by a troop of desperadoes, made himself
master of the Capitol, and fortified himself in it. Charged, in his
quality of consul, with the repression of sedition, Marius first
favoured it by an intentional inaction; then, seeing all good citizens
run to arms, and the factious without support, even deserted by the
urban plebeians, he placed himself at the head of some troops, and
occupied the avenues to the Capitol. From the first moment of the
attack, the rebels threw down their arms and demanded quarter. Marius
left them to be massacred by the people, as though he had wished that
the secret of the sedition might die with them.
The question of Italian emancipation was not foreign to the revolt of
Saturninus. It is certain that the claims of the Italiotes, rejected
after the death of C. Gracchus, and then adjourned at the approach of
the Cimbri, who threatened all the peninsula with one common
catastrophe, were renewed with more earnestness than ever after the
defeat of the barbarians. The earnestness of the allies to come to the
succour of Italy, the courage which they had shown in the battle-fields
of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ, gave them new claims to become Romans. Yet,
if some prudent politicians believed that the time was arrived for
yielding to the wishes of the Italiotes, a numerous and powerful party
revolted at the idea of such a concession. The more the privileges of
the citizens became extended, the more the Roman pride resisted the
thought of having sharers in them. M. Livius Drusus (663), tribune of
the people, son of the Drusus already mentioned, having under his
command in Rome an immense body of clients, the acknowledged patron of
all the Italiote cities, dared to attempt this salutary reform, and had
nearly carried it by force of party. He was not ignorant that there was
already in existence a formidable confederacy of the peoples of the
south and east of Italy, and that more than once their chiefs had
meditated a general insurrection. Drusus, trusting in their projects,
had had the art to restrain them and to obtain from them the promise of
a blind obedience. The success of the tribune seemed certain. The people
were gained over by distributions of wheat and concessions of lands; the
Senate, intimidated, appeared to have become powerless, when, a few days
before the vote of the tribes, Drusus was assassinated. All Italy
accused the senators of this crime, and war became inevitable.
The obstinate refusal of the Romans to share with the Italiotes all
their political rights, had been long a cause of political agitation.
More than two hundred years before, the war of the Latins and the revolt
of the inhabitants of Campania, after the battle of Cannæ, had no other
motives. About the same time (536), Spurius Carvilius proposed to admit
into the Senate two senators taken from each people in Latium. “The
assembly,” says Livy,[691] “burst into a murmur of indignation, and
Manlius, raising his voice over the others, declared that there existed
still a descendant of that consul who once, in the Capitol, threatened
to kill with his own hand the first Latin he should see in the curia;” a
striking proof of this secular resistance of the Roman aristocracy to
everything which might threaten its supremacy. But, after this epoch,
the ideas of equality had assumed a power which it was impossible to
mistake.
[Sidenote: Wars of the Allies (663). ]
VI. This civil war, which was called the _War of Allies_,[692] showed
once more the impotence of material force against the legitimate
aspirations of peoples, and it covered the country with blood and ruins.
Three hundred thousand citizens, the choice of the nation, perished on
the field of battle. [693] Rome had the superiority, it is true, and yet
it was the cause of the vanquished which triumphed, since, after the
war, the only object of which was the assertion of the rights of
citizenship, these rights were granted to most of the peoples of Italy.
Sylla subsequently restricted them, and we may be convinced, by
examining the different censuses, that the entire emancipation was only
accomplished under Cæsar. [694]
The revolt burst out fortuitously before the day fixed. It was provoked
by the violence of a Roman magistrate, who was massacred by the
inhabitants of Asculum; but all was ready for an insurrection, which
was not long before it became general. The allies had a secret
government, chiefs appointed, and an army organised. At the head of the
peoples confederated against Rome were distinguished the Marsi and the
Samnites; the first excited rather by a feeling of national pride than
by the memory of injuries to be revenged; the second, on the contrary,
by the hatred which they had vowed against the Romans during long
struggles for their independence--struggles renewed on the invasion of
Hannibal. Both shared the honour of the supreme command. It appears,
moreover, that the system of government adopted by the confederation was
a copy of the Roman institutions. To substitute Italy for Rome, and to
replace the denomination of a single town by that of a great people, was
the avowed aim of the new league. A Senate was named, or rather a Diet,
in which each city had its representatives; they elected two consuls, Q.
Pompædius Silo, a Marsian, and C. Papius Mutilus, a Samnite. For their
capital, they chose Corfinium, the name of which was changed to that of
_Italia_, or _Vitelia_, which, in the Oscan language, spoken by a part
of the peoples of Southern Italy, had the same signification. [695]
The allies were wanting neither in skilful generals nor in brave and
experienced soldiers; in the two camps, the same arms, the same
discipline. The war, commenced at the end of the year 663, was pursued
on both sides with the utmost animosity. It extended through Central
Italy, from the north to the south, from Firmum (_Fermo_) to Grumentum,
in Lucania, and from east to west from Cannæ to the Liris. The battles
were sanguinary, and often indecisive, and, on both sides, the losses
were so considerable, that it soon became necessary to enrol the
freedmen, and even the slaves.
The allies obtained at first brilliant successes. Marius had the glory
of arresting their progress, although he had only troops demoralised by
reverses. Fortune, this time again, served Sylla better; conqueror
wherever he appeared, he sullied his exploits by horrible cruelties to
the Samnites, whom he seemed to have undertaken to destroy rather than
to subdue. The Senate displayed more humanity, or more policy, in
granting spontaneously the right of Roman city to all the allies who
remained faithful to the Republic, and in promising it to all those who
should lay down their arms. It treated in the same manner the Cisalpine
Gauls; as to their neighbours on the left bank of the Po, it conferred
upon them the right of Latium. This wise measure divided the
confederates;[696] the greater part submitted. The Samnites, almost
alone, continued to fight in their mountains with the fury of despair.
The emancipation of Italy was accompanied, nevertheless, with a
restrictive measure which was designed to preserve to the Romans the
preponderance in the comitia. To the thirty-five old tribes, eight new
ones were added, in which all the Italiotes were inscribed; and, as the
votes were reckoned by tribes, and not by head, it is evident that the
influence of the new citizens must have been nearly null. [697]
Etruria had taken no part in the Social War. The nobility was devoted to
Rome, and the people lived in a condition approximating to bondage. The
law Julia, which gave to the Italiotes the right of Roman city, and
which took its name from its author, the consul L. Julius Cæsar,
produced among the Etruscans a complete revolution. It was welcomed with
enthusiasm.
While Italy was in flames, Mithridates VI. , king of Pontus, determined
to take advantage of the weakness of the Republic to aggrandise himself.
In 664, he invaded Bithynia and Cappadocia, and expelled the kings,
allies of Rome. At the same time he entered into communication with the
Samnites, to whom he promised subsidies and soldiers. Such was the
hatred then inspired by the Romans in foreign countries, that an order
of Mithridates was sufficient to raise the province of Asia, where, in
one day, eighty thousand Romans were massacred. [698] At this time the
Social War was already approaching its end. With the exception of
Samnium, all Italy was subdued, and the Senate could turn its attention
to the distant provinces.
[Sidenote: Sylla (666). ]
VII. Sylla, appointed consul in recompense for his services, was charged
with the task of chastising Mithridates. While he was preparing for this
mission, the tribune of the people, P. Sulpicius, had formed a powerful
party. A remarkable man, though without scruples, he had the qualities
and the defects of most of those who played a part in these epochs of
dissension. [699] Escorted by six hundred Roman knights, whom he called
the Anti-Senate,[700] he sold publicly the right of citizen to freedmen
and foreigners, and received the price on tables raised in the middle of
the public place. [701] He caused a plebiscitum to be passed to put an
end to the subterfuge of the law Julia, which, by an illusory
re-partition, cheated the Italiotes of the very rights which it seemed
to accord to them; and instead of maintaining them in the eight new
tribes, he caused them to be inscribed in the thirty-five old ones. The
measure was not adopted without warm discussions; but Sulpicius was
supported by all the new citizens, together with the democratic faction
and Marius. A riot carried the vote and Sylla, threatened with death,
was obliged to take refuge in the house of Marius, and hastily quit
Rome. Master of the town, Sulpicius showed the influences he obeyed, by
causing to be given to the aged Marius the province of Asia, and the
command of the expedition against Mithridates. But Sylla had his army in
Campania, and was determined to support his own claims. While the
faction of Marius, in the town, indulged in acts of violence against the
contrary faction, the soldiers of Sylla were irritated at seeing the
legions of his rival likely to snatch from them the rich booty which
Asia promised; and they swore to avenge their chief. Sylla placed
himself at their head, and marched from Nola upon Rome, with his
colleague, Pompeius Rufus, who had just joined him. The greater part of
the superior officers dared not follow him, so great was still the
prestige of the eternal city. [702] In vain deputations are addressed to
him; he marches onwards, and penetrates into the streets of Rome.
Assailed by the inhabitants, and attacked by Marius and Sulpicius, he
triumphs only by dint of boldness and energy. It was the first time that
a general, entering Rome as a conqueror, had seized the power by force
of arms.
Sylla restored order, prevented pillage, convoked the assembly of the
people, justified his conduct, and, wishing to secure for his party the
preponderance in the public deliberations, he recalled to force the old
custom of requiring the previous assent of the Senate before the
presentation of a law. The comitia by centuries were substituted for
the comitia by tribes, to which was left only the election of the
inferior magistrates. [703] Sylla caused Sulpicius to be put to death,
and abrogated his decrees; and he set a price on the head of Marius,
forgetting that he had himself, a short time before, found a refuge in
the house of his rival. He proscribed the chiefs of the democratic
faction, but most of them had fled before he entered Rome.
