A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate

Chapter 6

Prev List Next

Meanwhile the effort was being made to reawaken Carthage and to defy the curse in which Scipio had declared that the soil of the fallen city should be trodden only by the feet of beasts. No scruple could be aroused by the division of the surrounding lands; the site where Carthage had stood was alone under the ban,[695] and had Gracchus been content with mere agrarian a.s.signment or had he established Junonia at some neighbouring spot, his opponents would have been disarmed of the potent weapon which superst.i.tion invariably supplied at Rome. As it was, alarming rumours soon began to spread of dreadful signs which had accompanied the inauguration of the colony.[696] When the colonists according to ancient custom were marching to their destined home in military order with standards flying, the ensign which headed the column was caught by a furious wind, torn from the grip of its resisting bearer, and shattered on the ground. When the altars had been raised and the victims laid upon them, a sudden storm-blast caught the offerings and hurled them beyond the boundaries of the projected city which had recently been cut by the share. The boundary-stones themselves were visited by wolves, who seized them in their teeth and carried them off in headlong flight. The reality of the last alarming phenomenon, perhaps of all these omens, was vehemently denied by Gracchus and by Flaccus;[697] but, even if the reports now flying abroad in Rome had any basis in fact, the circ.u.mstances of the foundation did not deter the leader nor frighten away his colonists. Gracchus proceeded with his work in an orderly and methodical manner, and when he deemed his personal supervision no longer essential, returned to Rome after an absence of seventy days. He was recalled by the news of the unequal contest that was being waged between the pa.s.sionate Fulvius and the adroit Drusus.

Clearly the circ.u.mstances required a cooler head than that possessed by Flaccus; and there was the threat of a still further danger which rendered Gracchus"s presence a necessity. The consulship for the following year was likely to be gained by one of the most stalwart champions of ultra-aristocratic views. Lucius Opimius had been defeated when seeking that office in the preceding year, chiefly through the support which Gracchus"s advocacy had secured to Fannius. Now there was every chance of his success;[698] for Opimius"s chief claim to distinction was the prompt action which he had shown in the conquest of Fregellae, and the large numbers of the populace who detested the Italian cause were likely to aid his senatorial partisans in elevating him to the consulship. The consular elections might exercise a reactionary influence on the tribunician; and, if Gracchus"s candidature was a failure, he might be at the mercy of a resolute opponent, who would regard his destruction as the justifiable act of a saviour of society.

When Caius returned, the people as a whole seemed more apathetic than hostile. They listened with a cold ear both to appeals and promises, and this coldness was due to satiety rather than suspicion. They had been promised so much within the last few months that demagogism seemed to be a normal feature of existence, and no keen emotion was stirred by any new appeal to their vanity or to their interests. Such apathy, although it may favour the military pretender, is more to be dreaded than actual discontent by the man who rules merely by the force of character and eloquence. Criticism may be met and faced, and, the keener it is, the more it shows the interest of the critics in their leader. Pericles was hated one moment, deified the next; but no man could profess to be indifferent to his personality and designs. Gracchus took the lesson to heart, and concentrated his attention on the one cla.s.s of his former supporters, whose daily life recalled a signal benefit which he had conferred, a cla.s.s which might be moved by grat.i.tude for the past and hope for the future. One of his first acts after his return was to change his residence from the Palatine to a site lying below the Forum.[699] Here he had the very poor as his neighbours, the true urban proletariate which never dreamed of availing itself of agrarian a.s.signments or colonial schemes, but set a very real value on the corn-distributions, and may have believed that their continuance would be threatened by Gracchus"s fall from power. It is probable, however, that, even without this motive, the characteristic hatred which is felt by the partially dest.i.tute for the middle cla.s.s, may have deepened the affection with which Gracchus was regarded by the poorer of his followers, when they saw him abandoned by the more outwardly respectable of his supporters. The present position of Gracchus showed clearly that the powerful coalition on which he had built up his influence had crumbled away. From a leader of the State he had become but the leader of a faction, and of one which had hitherto proved itself powerless to resist unaided a sudden attack by the government.

From this democratic stronghold he promulgated other laws, the tenor of which is unknown, while he showed his sympathy with the lower orders in a practical way which roused the resentment of his fellow-magistrates.

[700] A gladiatorial show was to be given in the Forum on a certain day, and most of the magistrates had erected stands, probably in the form of a rude wooden amphitheatre, which they intended to let on hire.[701]

Gracchus chose to consider this proceeding as an infringement of the people"s rights. It was perhaps not only the admission by payment, but the opinion that the enclosure unduly narrowed the area of observation and cut off all view of the performance from the surrounding crowd,[702]

that aroused Gracchus"s protest, and he bade the magistrates pull down the erection that the poorer cla.s.ses might have a free view of the spectacle. His request was disregarded, and Gracchus prepared a surprise for the obstinate organisers. On the very night before the show he sallied out with the workmen that his official duties still placed at his disposal; the tiers of seats were utterly demolished, and when day dawned the people beheld a vacant site on which they might pack themselves as they pleased. To the lower orders it seemed the act of a courageous champion, to the officials the wild proceeding of a headstrong demagogue. It could not have improved Gracchus"s chances with the moneyed cla.s.ses of any grade; he had merged their chances of enjoyment with that of the crowd and violated their sense of the prerogatives of wealth.

But, although Gracchus may have been acting violently, he was not acting blindly. He must have known that his cause was almost lost, but he must also have been aware that the one chance of success lay in creating a solidarity of feeling in the poorer cla.s.ses, which could only be attained by action of a p.r.o.nounced and vigorous type. To what extent he was successful in reviving a following which furnished numerical support superior, or even equivalent to, the cla.s.ses alienated by his conduct or won over by the intrigues of his opponents, is a fact on which we have no certain information. Only one mention has been preserved of his candidature for a third tribunate: and this narrative, while a.s.serting the near approach which Gracchus made to victory, confesses the uncertainty of the accounts which had been handed down of the election.

The story ran that he really gained a majority of the votes, but that the tribune who presided, with the connivance of some of his colleagues, basely falsified the returns.[703] It is a story that cannot be tested on account of our ignorance of the precautions taken, and therefore of the possibilities of fraud which might be exhibited, in the elections of this period. At a later period actual records of the voting were kept, in case a decision should be doubted;[704] and had an appeal to a scrutiny been possible at this time, Gracchus was not the man to let the dubious result remain unchallenged. But the story, even if we regard it as expressing a mere suspicion, suggests the profound disappointment of a considerable cla.s.s, which had given its favourite its united support and received the news of his defeat with surprise and resentment. It breathes the poor man"s suspicion of the chicanery of the rich, and may be an index that Gracchus retained the confidence of his humbler supporters until the end.

The defeat, although a terrible blow, did not crush the spirit of Gracchus; it only rendered it more bitter and defiant. It was now that he exulted openly in the destructive character of his work, and he is said to have answered the taunts of his enemies by telling them that their laughter had a painful ring, and that they did not yet know the great cloud of darkness which his political activity had wrapped around their lives.[705] The dreaded danger of Opimius"s election was soon realised, and members of the newly appointed tribunician college were willing to put themselves at the orders of the senate. The surest proof that Gracchus had fallen would be the immediate repeal of one of his laws, and the enactment which was most a.s.sailable was that which, though pa.s.sed under another"s name, embodied his project for the refoundation of Carthage. This Rubrian law might be attacked on the ground that it contravened the rules of religious right, the violation of which might render any public act invalid;[706] and the stories which had been circulated of the evil omens that had attended the establishment of Junonia, were likely to cause the scruples of the senate to be supported by the superst.i.tion of the people. Gracchus still held an official position as a commissioner for colonies, if not for land-distribution and the making of roads, but none of these positions gave him the authority to approach the people or the power to offer effective legal resistance to the threatened measure; any further opposition might easily take the form of a breach of the peace by a private individual and give his enemies the opportunity for which they were watching; and it was therefore with good reason that Gracchus at first determined to adopt a pa.s.sive att.i.tude in the face of the proposal of the tribune Minucius Rufus for the repeal of the Rubrian law.[707] Even Cornelia seems to have counselled prudence, and it was perhaps this crisis in her son"s career which drew from her the pa.s.sionate letter, in which the mother triumphs over the patriot and she sees the ruin of the Republic and the madness of her house in the loss which would darken her declining years.[708] This protest is more than consistent with the story that she sent country folk[709] to swell the following and protect the person of her son, when she saw that he would not yield without another effort to maintain his cause. The change of att.i.tude is said to have been forced on Gracchus by the exhortations of his friends and especially of the impetuous Fulvius. The organisation of a band such as Gracchus now gathered round him, although not in itself illegal, was a provocation to riot; and a disastrous incident soon occurred which gave his opponents the handle for which they had long been groping. At the dawn of the day, on which the meeting was to be held for the discussion, and perhaps for the voting, on the repeal of the threatened law, Gracchus and his followers ascended to the Capitol, where the opposite party was also gathering in strength. It seems that the consul Opimius himself, although he could not preside at the final meeting of the a.s.sembly, which was purely plebeian, was about to hold a Contio[710] or to speak at one summoned by the tribunes. Gracchus himself did not immediately enter the area in which the meeting was to be held, but paced the portico of the temple buried in his thoughts.[711] What immediately followed is differently told; but the leading facts are the same in every version.[712] A certain Antullus or Antullius, spoken of by some as a mere unit amongst the people, described by others as an attendant or herald of Opimius, spoke some words--the Gracchans said, of insolence: their opponents declared, of patriotic protest--to Gracchus or to Fulvius, at the same time stretching out his arm to the speaker whom he addressed. The gesture was misinterpreted, and the unhappy man fell pierced with iron pens, the only weapons possessed by the unarmed crowd. There could be no question that the first act of violence had come from Gracchus"s supporters, and the end for which Opimius had waited had been gained. Even the eagerness with which the leader had disclaimed the hasty action of his followers might be interpreted as a renewed infringement of law. He had hurried from the Capitol to the Forum to explain to all who would listen the unpremeditated nature of the deed and his own innocence of the murder; but this very action was a grave breach of public law, implying as it did an insult to the majesty of the tribune in summoning away a section of the people whom he was prepared to address.[713]

The meeting on the Capitol was soon dissolved by a shower of rain,[714]

and the tribunes adjourned the business to another day; while Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, whose half-formed plans had now been shattered, hastened to their respective homes. The weakness of their position had been that they refused to regard themselves in their true light as the leaders of a revolution against the government. Whatever their own intentions may have been, it is improbable that their supporters followed them to the Capitol simply with the design of giving peaceful votes against the measure proposed: and, had Antullius not fallen, the meeting on the Capitol might have been broken up by a rush of Gracchans, as that which Tiberius once harangued had been invaded by a band of senators. Success and even salvation could now be attained solely by the use of force; and the question of personal safety must have appealed to the rank and file as well as to the leaders, for who could forget the judicial ma.s.sacre which had succeeded the downfall of Tiberius? But the security of their own lives was probably not the only motive which led numbers of their adherents to follow the two leaders to their homes.[715] Loyalty, and the keen activity of party spirit, which stimulates faction into war, must also have led them to make a last attempt to defend their patrons and their cause. The whole city was in a state of restless antic.i.p.ation of the coming day; few could sleep, and from midnight the Forum began to be filled with a crowd excited but depressed by the sense of some great impending evil.[716]

At daybreak the consul Opimius sent a small force of armed men to the Capitol, evidently for the purpose of preventing the point of vantage being seized by the hostile democrats, and then he issued notices for a meeting of the senate. For the present he remained in the temple of Castor and Pollux to watch events. When the fathers had obeyed his summons, he crossed the Forum and met them in the Curia. Shortly after their deliberations had begun, a scene, believed to have been carefully prepared, began to be enacted in the Forum.[717] A band of mourners was seen slowly making its way through the crowded market-place; conspicuous on its bier was the body of Antullius, stripped so that the wound which was the price of his loyalty might be seen by all. The bearers took the route that led them past the senate-house, sobbing as they went and wailing out the mourning cry. The consul was duly startled, and curious senators hastened to the door. The bier was then laid on the ground, and the horrified aristocrats expressed their detestation of the dreadful crime of which it was a witness. Their indignation may have imposed on some members of the crowd; others were inclined to mock this outburst of oligarchic pathos, and to wonder that the men who had slain Tiberius Gracchus and hurled his body into the Tiber, could find their hearts thus suddenly dissolved at the death of an unfortunate but undistinguished servant. The motive of the threnody was somewhat too obvious, and many minds pa.s.sed from the memory of Tiberius"s death to the thought of the doom which this little drama was meant to presage for his brother.

The senators returned to the Curia, and the final resolution was taken.

Opimius was willing to venture on the step which Scaevola had declined, and a new principle of const.i.tutional law was tentatively admitted. A state of siege was declared in the terms that "the consul should see that the State took no harm," [718] and active measures were taken to prepare the force which this decree foreshadowed. Opimius bade the senators see to their arms, and enjoined each of the members of the equestrian centuries to bring with him two slaves in full equipment at the dawn of the next day.[719] But an attempt was made to avert the immediate use of force by issuing a summons to Gracchus and Flaccus to attend at the senate and defend their conduct there.[720] The summons was perfectly legal, since the consul had the right to demand the presence of any citizen or even any inferior magistrate; but the two leaders may well be excused for their act of contumacy in disobeying the command. They knew that they would merely be putting themselves as prisoners into the hands of a hostile force; nor, in the light of past events, was it probable that their surrender and punishment would save their followers from destruction. Preparations for defence, or a counter-demonstration which would prove the size and determination of their following, might lead the senate to think of negotiation. Its members had an inducement to take this view. Their legal position, with respect to the step which they were now contemplating, was unsound; and although they might claim that they had the government in the shape of its chief executive officer on their side, and that their late policy had attracted the support of the majority of the citizens, yet there was no uncontested precedent for the legitimacy of waging war against a faction at Rome; they had no mandate to perform this mission, and its execution, which had lately been rendered illegal by statute law, might subsequently be repudiated even by many of those whom they now regarded as their supporters. Yet we cannot wonder at the uncompromising att.i.tude of the senate. They held themselves to be the legitimate government of the State; they had learnt the lesson that a government must rest either on its merits or on force; they were unwilling to repeat the scandalous scene which, on the occasion of Tiberius Gracchus"s death, had proved their weakness, and were perhaps unable to resort to such unpremeditated measures in the face of the larger following of Caius; they could enlist on their side some members of the upper middle cla.s.s who would share in the guilt, if guilt there was: and lastly they had at their mercy two men, of whom one had twice shaken the commonwealth and the other had gloried in the prospect of its self-mutilation in the future.

The wisdom and justice of resistance appealed immediately to the mind of Flaccus, whose combative instincts found their natural satisfaction in the prospect of an interchange of blows. The finer and more complex spirit of Gracchus issued in a more uncertain mood. The bane of the thinker and the patriot was upon him. Was a man who had led the State to fight against it, and the rule of reason to be exchanged for the base arbitrament of the sword? None knew the emotions with which he turned from the Forum to gaze long and steadfastly at the statue of his father and to move away with a groan;[721] but the sight of his sorrow roused a sympathy which the call to arms might not have stirred. Many of the bystanders were stung from their att.i.tude of indifference to curse themselves for their base abandonment of the man who had sacrificed so much, to follow him to his house, and to keep a vigil before his doors.

The night was pa.s.sed in gloomy wakefulness, the spirits of the watchers were filled with apprehension of the common sacrifice which the coming day might demand, and the silence was only broken when the voluntary guard was at intervals relieved by those who had already slumbered.

Meanwhile the neighbours of Flaccus were being startled by the sounds of boisterous revelry that issued from his halls. The host was displaying an almost boyish exuberance of spirits, while his congenial comrades yelled and clapped as the wine and the jest went round. At daybreak Fulvius was dragged from his heavy slumbers, and he and his companions armed themselves with the spoils of his consulship, the Gallic weapons that hung as trophies upon his walls.[722] They then set out with clamorous threats to take possession of the Aventine. The home that Icilius had won for the Plebs was to be the scene of another struggle for freedom. It was in later times pretended that Fulvius had taken the step, from which even Catilina shrank, of calling the slaves to arms on a promise of freedom.[723] We have no means of disproving the allegation, which seems to have occurred with suspicious frequency in the records left by aristocratic writers of the popular movements which they had a.s.sisted to crush. But it is easy to see that the devotion of slaves to their own masters during such struggles, and the finding of their bodies amidst the slain, would be proof enough to a government, anxious to emphasise its merits as a saviour of society, that general appeals had been made to the servile cla.s.s. Such a deduction might certainly have been drawn from a view of the forces mustered under Opimius; for in these the slaves may have exceeded the citizens in number.[724]

Gracchus"s mind was still divided between resistance and resignation. He consented to accompany his reckless friend to the Aventine, as the only place of refuge; but he declined to don his armour, merely fastening under his toga a tiny dagger,[725] as a means of defence in the last resort, or perhaps of salvation, did all other measures fail. The presage of his coming doom was shared by his wife Licinia who clung to him at the door, and when he gently disengaged himself from her arms, made one more effort to grasp his robe and sank senseless on the threshold. When Gracchus reached the Aventine with his friends, he found that Flaccus and his party had seized the temple of Diana and had made hasty preparations for fortifying it against attack. But Gracchus, impressed with the helplessness or the horror of the situation, persuaded him to make an effort at accommodation, and the younger son of Flaccus, a boy of singular beauty, was despatched to the Curia on the mission of peace.[726] With modest mien and tears streaming from his eyes he gave his message to the consul. Many--perhaps most--of those who listened were not averse to accept a compromise which would relieve the intolerable strain and avert a civil strife. But Opimius was inflexible; the senate, he said, could not be approached by deputy; the princ.i.p.als must descend from the Aventine, lay down their arms, deliver themselves up to justice as citizens subject to the laws, and then they might appeal to the senate"s grace; he ended by forbidding the youth to return, if he could not bring with him an acceptance of these final terms. The more pacific members of the senate could offer no effective objection, for it was clear that the consul was acting within his legal rights. The coercion of a disobedient citizen was a matter for the executive power and, though Opimius had spoken in the name of the senate, the authority and the responsibility were his. Retirement would have been their only mode of protest; but this would have been a violation of the discipline which bound the Council to its head, and would have betrayed a suspicious indifference to the cause which was regarded as that of the const.i.tution. It is said that, on the return of the messenger, Gracchus expressed willingness to accept the consul"s terms and was prepared to enter the senate and there plead his own cause and that of his followers.[727] But none of his comrades would agree, and Flaccus again despatched his son with proposals similar to those which had been rejected. Opimius carried out his injunction by detaining the boy and, thirsting for battle to effect the end which delay would have a.s.sured, advanced his armed forces against the position held by Flaccus. He was not wholly dependent on the improvised levies of the previous day. There were in Rome at that moment some bands of Cretan archers,[728] which had either just returned from service with the legions or were destined to take part in some immediate campaign. It was to their efforts that the success of the attack was mainly due. The barricade at the temple might have resisted the onslaught of the heavily-armed soldier; but its defenders were pierced by the arrows, the precinct was strewn with wounded men, and the ranks were in utter disorder when the final a.s.sault was made. There were names of distinction which lent a dignity to the ma.s.sacre that followed. Men like Publius Lentulus, the venerable chief of the senate, gave a perpetual colour of respectability to the action of Opimius by appearing in their panoplies amongst the forces that he led.[729]

When the rout was complete and the whole crowd in full flight, Flaccus sought escape in a workshop owned by a man of his acquaintance; but the course of his flight had been observed, the narrow court which led to the house was soon crowded by pursuers, who, maddened by their ignorance of the actual tenement that concealed the person of Flaccus, vowed that they would burn the whole alley to the ground if his hiding-place were not revealed.[730] The trembling artisan who had befriended him did not dare to betray his suppliant, but relieved his scruples by whispering the secret to another. The hiding place was immediately revealed, and the great ex-consul who had laid the foundations of Rome"s dominion in farther Gaul, a man strenuous and enlightened, ardent and faithful but perhaps not overwise, was hacked to pieces by his own citizens in an obscure corner of the slums of Rome. His elder son fell fighting by his side. To the younger, the fair amba.s.sador of that day, now a prisoner of the consul, the favour was granted of choosing his own mode of death.

Early Rome had repudiated the principle of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children;[731] but the cold-blooded horrors of the Oriental and h.e.l.lenic world were now becoming accepted maxims of state to a government trembling for its safety and implacable in its revenge.

Meanwhile Gracchus had been saved from both the stain of civil war and the humiliation of capture by his foes. No man had seen him strike a blow throughout the contest. In sheer disgust at the appalling scene he had withdrawn to the shrine of Diana, and was there prepared to compa.s.s his own death.[732] His hand was stayed by two faithful friends, Pomponius and Laetorius,[733] who urged him to escape. Gracchus obeyed, but it was believed by some that, before he left the temple, he stretched forth his hand to the G.o.ddess and prayed that the Roman people might never be quit of slavery as a reward for their ingrat.i.tude and treachery.[734] This outburst of anger, a very natural consequence of his own humiliating plight, is said to have been kindled by the knowledge that the larger portion of the mob had already listened to a promise of amnesty and had joined the forces of Opimius. Unlike most imprecations, that of Gracchus was destined to be fulfilled.

The flight of Gracchus led him down the slope of the Aventine to the gate called Trigemina which stood near the Tiber"s bank. In hastening down the hill he had sprained his ankle, and time for his escape was only gained by the devotion of Pomponius,[735] who turned, and single-handed kept the pursuing enemy at bay until trampling on his prostrate body they rushed in the direction of the wooden bridge which spanned the river. Here Laetorius imitated the heroism of his comrade.

Standing with drawn sword at the head of the bridge, he thrust back all who tried to pa.s.s until Gracchus had gained the other bank. Then he too fell, pierced with wounds. The fugitive had now but a single slave to bear him company in his flight; it led them through frequented streets, where the pa.s.sers-by stopped on their way, cheered them on as though they were witnessing a contest of speed, but gave no sign of help and turned deaf ears to Gracchus"s pleading for a horse; for the pursuers were close behind, and the dulled and panic-stricken mob had no thought but for themselves. The grove of Furrina[736] received them just before they were overtaken by the pursuing band; and in the sacred precinct the last act was accomplished. It was known only that master and slave had been found lying side by side. Some believed that the faithful servant had slain Gracchus and then pierced his own breast; others held that they were both living when the enemy came upon them, but that the slave clung with such frantic devotion to his master that Gracchus"s body could not be reached until the living shield had been pierced and torn away.[737] The activity of the pursuers had been stimulated by greed, for Opimius had put a price upon the heads of both the leaders of the faction on the Aventine. The bearers of these trophies of victory were to receive their weight in gold. The humble citizens who produced the head of Flaccus are said to have been defrauded of their reward; but the action of the man who wrested the head of Gracchus from the first possessor of the prize and bore it on a javelin"s point to Opimius, long furnished a text to the moralist who discoursed on the madness of greed and the thirst of gold. Its unnatural weight is said to have revealed the fact that the brain had been extracted and the cavity filled with molten lead.[738] The bodies of the slain were for the most part thrown into the Tiber, but one account records that that of Gracchus was handed over to his mother for burial.[739] The number of the victims of the siege, the pursuit and the subsequent judicial investigation is said to have been three thousand.[740] The resistance to authority, which was all that could be alleged against the followers of Gracchus, was treated, not as a riot, but as a rebellion. The Tullianum saw its daily dole of victims, who were strangled by the executioner; the goods of the condemned were confiscated by the State and sold at public auction. All public signs of mourning were forbidden to their wives;[741] and the opinion of Scaevola, the greatest legal expert of the day, was that some property of his niece Licinia, which had been wrecked in the general tumult, could be recovered only from the goods of her husband, to whom the sedition was due.[742] The att.i.tude of the government was, in fact, based on the view that the members of the defeated party, whether slain or executed, had been declared enemies of the State. Their action had put them outside the pale of law, and the decree of the senate, which had a.s.sisted Opimius in the extreme course that he had taken, was an index that the danger, which it vaguely specified, aimed at the actual existence of the commonwealth and undermined the very foundations of society. Such was the theory of martial law which Opimius"s bold action gave to his successors. Its weakness lay in the circ.u.mstance that it was unknown to the statutes and to the courts; its plausibility was due partly to the fact that, since the desuetude of the dictatorship, no power actually existed in Rome which could legally employ force to crush even the most dangerous popular rising, and partly to the peculiarities of the movement which witnessed the first exercise of this authority.

The killing of Caius Gracchus and his followers, however useless and mischievous the act may have been, had about it an air of spurious legality, with which no ingenuity could invest the murder of Tiberius and his adherents. The fallen chiefs were in enjoyment of no magisterial authority that could justify either their initial action or their subsequent disobedience; they had fortified a position in the town, and had certainly taken up arms, presumably for the purpose of inflicting grievous harm on loyal fellow-citizens. As their opponents were certainly the government, what could they be but declared foes who had been caught red-handed in an act of treason so open and so violent that the old ident.i.ty of "traitors" and "enemies" was alone applicable to their case? Thus legal theory itself proclaimed the existence of civil war, and handed on to future generations of party leaders an instrument of ma.s.sacre and extirpation which reached its culminating point in the proscription list of Sulla.

Opimius, after he had ceased to preside at his death-dealing commission, expressed the view that he had removed the rabies of discord from the State by the foundation of a temple to Harmony. The bitter line which some unseen hand scribbled on the door,[743] expressed the doubt, which must soon have crept over many minds, whether the doctor had not been madder than the patient, and the view, which was soon destined to be widely held, that the authors of the discord which had been professedly healed, the teachers who were educating Rome up to a higher ideal of civil strife, were the very men who were now in power.[744] We shall see in the sequel with what speed Time wrought his political revenge. In the hearts of men the Gracchi were even more speedily avenged. The Roman people often alternated between bursts of pa.s.sionate sentiment and abject states of cowardly contentment; but through all these phases of feeling the memory of the two reformers grew and flourished. To accept the Gracchi was an article of faith impressed on the proudest n.o.ble and the most bigoted optimate by the clamorous crowd which he addressed. The man who aped them might be p.r.o.nounced an impostor or a traitor; the men he aped belonged almost to the distant world of the half-divine. Their statues were raised in public places, the sites on which they had met their death were accounted holy ground and were strewn with humble offerings of the season"s fruits. Many even offered to their images a daily sacrifice and sank on their knees before them as before those of the G.o.ds.[745] The quiet respect or ecstatic reverence with which the names and memories of the Gracchi were treated, was partly due to a vague sense in the mind of the common man that they were the authors of the happier aspects of the system under which he lived, of the brighter gleams which occasionally pierced the clouds of oppression and discomfort; it was also due to the conviction in the mind of the statesman, often resisted but always recurring, that their work was unalterable. To undo it was to plunge into the dark ages, to attempt to modify it was immediately to see the necessity of its renewal. At every turn in the paths of political life the statesman was confronted by two figures, whom fear or admiration raised to gigantic proportions. The orthodox historian would angrily declare that they were but the figures of two young men, whose intemperate action had thrown Rome into convulsion and who had met their fate, not undeserved however lamentable, the one in a street riot, the other while heading an armed sedition. But the criticism contained the elements of its own refutation. The youth, the brotherhood, the martyrdom of the men were the very elements that gave a softening radiance to the hard contour of their lives. The Gracchi were a stern and ever-present reality; they were also a bright and gracious memory. In either character they must have lived; but the combination of both presentments has secured them an immortality which age, wisdom, experience and success have often struggled vainly to secure. That strange feeling which a great and beautiful life has often inspired, that it belongs to eternity rather than to the immediate past, and that it has few points of contact with the prosaic round of present existence, had almost banished from Cornelia"s mind the selfish instincts of her loss, and had perhaps even dulled the tender memories which cl.u.s.ter round the frailer rather than the stronger elements in the characters of those we love. Those who visited her in her villa at Misenum, where she kept her intellectual court, surrounded by all that was best in letters, and exchanging greetings or gifts with the potentates of the earth, were amazed at the composure with which she spoke of the lives and actions of her sons.[746] The memory drew no tear, her voice conveyed no intonation of sorrow or regret. She spoke of them as though they were historical figures of the past, men too distant and too great to arouse the weak emotion which darkens contemplation. Some thought that her mind had been shaken by age, or that her sensibility had been dulled by misfortune.

"In this they proved their own utter lack of sensibility" says the loving biographer of the Gracchi: They did not know, he adds, the signs of that n.o.bility of soul, which is sometimes given by birth and is always perfected by culture, or the reasonable spirit of endurance which mental and moral excellence supply. The calmness of Cornelia proved, as well, that she was at one with her children after their death, and their ident.i.ty with a mind so pure is as great a tribute to their motives as the admiration or fear of the Romans is to their intellect and their deeds, Cornelia deserved a memorial in Rome for her own intrinsic worth; but the demeanour of her latter days justifies the legend engraved on the statue which was to be seen in the portico of Metellus: "To Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi".[747]

We are now in a position to form some estimate of the political changes which had swept over Rome during the past twelve years. The revolutionary legislation of this period was, strictly speaking, not itself the change, but merely the formula which marked an established growth; nor can any profit be derived from drawing a marked contrast between the aims and methods of the two men who were responsible for the most decisive of these reforms. A superficial view of the facts might lead us to suppose that Tiberius Gracchus had bent his energies solely to social amelioration, and that it was reserved for his brother Caius to effect vast changes in the working, though not in the structure, of the const.i.tution. But even a chronological survey of the actions of these two statesmen reveals the vast union of interests that suddenly thrust themselves forward, with a vehemence which demanded either such a resistance as no political society is h.o.m.ogeneous enough to maintain, or such concessions as may be graciously made by a government which after the grant may still retain most of the forms and much of the substance of its former power. So closely interwoven were social and political questions, so necessary was it for the attempted satisfaction of one cla.s.s immediately to create the demand for the recognition or compensation of another, that Tiberius Gracchus had no sooner formulated his agrarian proposals than he was beset with thoughts of legislating for the army, transferring some of the judicial power to the equestrian order, and granting the franchise to the allies. Even the belief that these projects were merely a device for securing his own ascendency, does not prove that their announcement was due to a brilliant discovery of their originator, or that he created wants which he thereupon proposed to satisfy. The desperate statesman seizes on the grievance which is nearest to hand; it is true that he may increase a want by giving the first loud and clear expression to the low and confused murmurings of discontent; but a grievance that lives and gives violent tokens of its presence, as did that of the Italian allies in the Fregellan revolt, must be real, not fict.i.tious: and when it finds a remedy, as the needs of the poor and the political claims of the knights did under the regime of Caius Gracchus, the presumption is that the disease has been of long standing, and that what it has for a long time lacked was not recognition, but the opportunity and the intelligence necessary to secure redress. Caius Gracchus was as little of a political explorer as his brother; it did not require the intuition of genius to see facts which formed the normal environment of every prominent politician of the age. His claim to greatness rests, partly on the mental and moral strength which he shared with Tiberius and which gave him the power to counteract the force of inertia and trans.m.u.te vague thought, first into glowing words and then into vigorous action; partly on the extraordinary ingenuity with which he balanced the interests and claims of cla.s.ses so as to form a coalition which was for the time resistless: and partly on the finality with which he removed the jealousies of the hour from the idle arena of daily political strife, and gave them their place in the permanent machinery of the const.i.tution, there to remain as the necessary condition of the precarious peace or the internecine war which the jarring elements of a balance of power bring in turn to its possessors.

Since the reality of the problems with which the Gracchi dealt is undeniable, and since few would be inclined to admit that the most effective treatment of a problem, whether social or political, is to refuse it a solution, any reasonable criticism of their reforms must be based solely on a consideration of their aims and methods. The land question, which was taken up by both these legislators, attracts our first attention. The aim of the resumption and redistribution of the public domain had been the revival of the cla.s.s of peasant holders, whom legend declared, perhaps with a certain element of truth, to have formed the flower of the civic population during the years when Rome was struggling for a place amongst the surrounding peoples and in the subsequent period of her expansion over Italy. Such an aim may be looked at from two points of view. It may be regarded as an end in itself, without any reference to its political results, or it may be looked on as an effort to increase the power and security of the State without any peculiar consideration of the comfort and well-being of its individual members. The Gracchan scheme, regarded from the first point of view, can, with respect to its end as distinguished from its methods, be criticised unfavourably only by those who hold that an urban life does under all circ.u.mstances convey moral, mental and physical benefits which are denied by the conditions of residence in country districts. It is true that the objector may in turn point out that the question of the standard of comfort to be attained in either sphere is here of supreme importance; but such an issue brings us at once within the region of means and not of ends, and an ideal of human life cannot be judged solely with reference to the practicability of its realisation. It is the second point of view from which the aim of this land legislation may be contemplated, which first gives the critic the opportunity of denying the validity of the end as well as the efficiency of the means. If the new agriculturist was meant to be an element of strength to the Roman State, to save it from the selfishness of a narrow oligarchy, the instability of a city mob and the corruption of both, to defend the conquests which the city had won or to push her empire further, it was necessary to prove that he could be of utility both as a voting unit and as a soldier in the legions. His capacity for performing the first function efficiently was, at the very least, extremely questionable. The reality of the farmer"s vote obviously depended on the closeness of his residence to the capital, since there is not the least trace, at this or at any future time during the history of the Republic, of the formation of any design for modifying the rigidly primary character of the popular a.s.semblies of Rome. The rights of the voter at a distance had always been considered so purely potential, that the inland and northern settlements which Rome established in Italy had generally been endowed with Latin rights, while the colonies of Roman citizens cl.u.s.tered more closely round their mother; and men had always been found ready to sacrifice the active rights of Roman citizenship, on account of the worthlessness of their possession in a remote colony. It was even difficult to reconcile the pa.s.sive rights of Roman citizenship with residence at a distance from the capital; for all the higher jurisdiction was centred in Rome and could not easily be sought by the inhabitants of distant settlements.[748] But, even if we exclude the question of relative distance from the centre of affairs, it was still not probable that the dweller in the country would be a good citizen according to the h.e.l.lenic comprehension of that phrase. When Aristotle approves of a country democracy, simply because it is not strictly a democracy at all,[749] he is thinking, not merely of the farmer"s lack of interest in city politics, but of the incompatibility of the perpetual demands which rural pursuits make on time and energy with attendance on public business at the centre of affairs. The son of the soil soon learns that he owes undivided allegiance to his mother: and he will seldom be stirred by a political emotion strong enough to overcome the practical appeals which are made by seed-time and harvest. But the opportunities for discarding civic obligations were far greater in Rome than in the Greek communities. The Roman a.s.semblies had no stated days of meeting, laws might be promulgated and pa.s.sed at any period of the year, their tenor was explained at public gatherings which were often announced on the very morning of the day for which they were summoned, and could be attended only by those whom chance or leisure or the habitual pursuit of political excitement had brought to the Capitol or the Forum. There was not at this period a fixed date even for the elections of the higher magistrates. An attempt was perhaps made to arrange them for the summer, when the roads were pa.s.sable, the labours of spring were over, and the toils of harvest time had not yet commenced.[750] But the creation of the magistrates with Imperium depended to a large extent on the convenience of the consuls, one of whom had sometimes to be summoned back from a campaign to preside at the Comitia which were to elect his successors; while even the date of the tribunician elections might have been conditioned by political considerations. The closing events of the life of Tiberius Gracchus prove how difficult it was to secure the attendance of the country voter even when an election of known political import was in prospect; while Caius realised that the best security for the popular leader, whether as a legislator or a candidate, was to attach the urban resident to himself by the ties of grat.i.tude and interest. We can scarcely admit, in the face of facts like these, that the agriculturist created by the Gracchan reforms was likely to render any signal political a.s.sistance to his city. It is true that the existence of a practically disfranchised proletariate may have a modifying influence on politics. It could not in Rome serve the purpose, which it sometimes fulfils in the modern world, of moulding the opinion of the voter; but even in Rome it suggested a reserve that might be brought up on emergencies. A state, however, does not live on emergencies but on the constant and watchful activity of its members. Such activity could be displayed at Rome only by the leisured senator or the leaders of the city mob. The forces that had worked for oligarchy in the past might under changed conditions produce a narrow type of urban democracy; but they presented no hope of the realisation of a true popular government.

It might be hoped, however, that the newly created farmer might add to the military, if not the political, strength of the State. The hope, so far as it rested on the agriculturist himself, was rendered something of an anachronism by the present conditions of service. Even in the old days a campaign prolonged beyond the ordinary duration of six months had often effected the ruin of the peasant proprietor; and now that the cautious policy of the protectorate had been so largely abandoned and Rome"s military efforts, no longer limited to wars of defence or aggression, were directed to securing her ascendency in distant dependencies by means of permanent garrisons, service in the legions was a still more fatal impediment to industrial development. Rome had not yet learnt the lesson that an empire cannot be garrisoned by an army of conscripts; but she was becoming conscious of the inadequacy of her own military system, and this consciousness led her to take the easy but fatal step of throwing far the larger burden of foreign service on the Latins and Italian allies. Any increase in the number and efficiency of her own military forces would thus remove a dangerous grievance, while it added to the strength which, in the last resort, could alone secure the permanence of her supremacy even in Italy. Such an increase was finally effected in the only possible manner--by the adoption of a system of voluntary enlistment and by carrying still further the increasing disregard for those antiquated conditions of wealth and status, which were a part of the theory that service was a burden and wholly inconsistent with the new requirement that it should become a profession. Although it must be confessed that little a.s.sistance in this direction was directly tendered by the Gracchan legislation, yet it should be remembered that, even if we exclude from consideration the small efforts made by Caius to render military service a more attractive calling, the increase of the farmer cla.s.s might of itself have done much to solve the problem. Although the single occupant of a farm was clearly incapable of taking his part in expeditions beyond the seas without serious injury to his own interests, yet the sons of such a man might have performed a considerable term of military service without disastrous consequences to the estate, and where the inheritance had remained undivided and several brothers held the land in common, the duties of the soldier and the farmer might have been alternated without leaving the homestead divested of its head. The recognition of the military life as a profession must have profited still more by the policy which encouraged the growth of the country population; for the energy of the surplus members of the household, whose services were not needed or could not be adequately rewarded on the farm, would find a more salutary outlet in the stirring life of the camp than in the enervating influences of the city. The country-side might still continue to supply a better physique and a finer morale than were likely to be discovered in the poorer quarters of Rome.

The objects aimed at in the Gracchan scheme of land-reform, although in some respects difficult of realisation, have aroused less hostile criticism than the methods which were adopted for their fulfilment. It may be held that the scheme of practical confiscation, which, advocated by Tiberius Gracchus, plunged him at once into a fierce political struggle and encountered resistance which could only be overcome by unconst.i.tutional means, might have been avoided had the reformer seen that an economic remedy must be ultimate to be successful, and that an economic tendency can only be resisted by destroying the conditions which give it the false appearance of a law. The two conditions which were at the time fatal to the efforts of the moderate holder of land, are generally held to have been the cheapness and, under the inhumane circ.u.mstances of its employment, even efficiency of slave labour, and the compet.i.tion of cheap corn from the provinces. The remedial measures which might immediately present themselves to the mind of a modern economist, who was unfettered by a belief in free trade or in the legitimacy of securing the cheapest labour available, are the prohibition of, or restrictions on, the importation of slaves, and the imposition of a duty on foreign corn. The first device might in its extreme form have been impracticable, for it would have been difficult to ensure such a supervision of the slave market as to discriminate between the sale of slaves for agricultural or pastoral work and their acquirement for domestic purposes. A tax on servile labour employed on land, or the moderate regulation which Caesar subsequently enforced that a certain proportion of the herdsmen employed on the pasture lands should be of free birth,[751] would have been more practicable measures, and perhaps, if presented as an alternative to confiscation, might not have encountered an unconquerable resistance from the capitalists, although their very moderation might have won them but a lukewarm support from the people, and ensured the failure that attends on half-measures which do not carry their meaning on their face and lack the boldness which excites enthusiasm. But the real objection which the Gracchi and their circle would have had to legislation of this type, whether it had been suggested to them in its extreme shape or in some modified form, would have been that it could not have secured the object at which they aimed. Such measures would merely have revived the free labourer, while their dream was to re-establish the peasant proprietor, or at least the occupant who held his land on a perfectly secure tenure from the State. And even the revival of the free labourer would only have been exhibited on the most modest scale; for such legislation would have done nothing to reclaim arable land which had degenerated into pasturage, and to reawaken life in the great deserted tracts, whose solitude was only broken by the rare presence of the herdsman"s cabin.

To raise a cry for the restoration of free labour on this exiguous scale might have exposed a legislator to the disappointment, if not derision, of his friends and invited the criticism, effective because popular, of all his secret foes. The masters of the world were not likely to give enthusiastic support to a leader who exhibited as their goal the lonely, barren and often dangerous life of sheep-driver to some greedy capitalist, and who offered them the companionship, and not the service, of the slaves that their victorious arms had won.

The alternative of protective legislation for the defence of Italian grain may be even more summarily dismissed. It was, in the first place, impossible from the point of view of political expediency. The Gracchi, or any other reforming legislators, had to depend for their main support on the voting population of the city of Rome: and such a const.i.tuency would never have dreamed for a moment of sanctioning a measure which would have made the price of corn dearer in the Roman market, even if the objections of the capitalists who placed the foreign grain on that market could have been successfully overcome. So far from dreaming of the practicability of such a scheme, Caius Gracchus had been forced to allow the sale of corn at Rome at a cost below the current market-price.

But, even had protection been possible, it must have come as the last, not as the first, of the constructive measures necessary for the settlement of the agrarian question. It might have done something to keep the small farms standing, but these farms had to be created before their maintenance was secured; and if adopted, apart from some scheme aiming at a redivision of the land, such a protective measure would merely have benefited such existing owners of the large estates as still continued to devote a portion of their domains to agriculture. The fact, however, which may be regarded as certain, that foreign corn could undersell that of Italy in the Roman market, and probably in that of all the great towns within easy access of the sea, may seem a fatal flaw in the agrarian projects of the Gracchi. What reason was there for supposing that the tendencies which in the past had favoured the growth of large holdings and replaced agriculture by pasturage, should remain inoperative in the future? Tiberius Gracchus"s own regulation about the inalienability of the lands which he a.s.signed, seemed to reveal the suspicion that the tendencies towards acc.u.mulation had not yet been exhausted, and that the occupants of the newly created farms might not find the pursuit of agriculture so profitable as to cling to them in scorn of the enticements of the encroaching capitalist. Doubtless the prohibition to sell revealed a weakness in the agricultural system of the times; but the regulation was probably framed, not in despair of the small holder securing a maintenance, but as a protection against the money-lender, that curse of the peasant-proprietor, who might now be less willing to approach the peasant, when the security which he obtained could under no circ.u.mstances lead to his acquiring eventual ownership. With respect to the future, there was reasonable hope that the farmer, if kept in tolerable security from the strategic advances of his wealthier neighbours, would be able to hold his own. In a modern state, possessing a teeming population and a complex industrial organisation, where the profits of a widely spread commercial life have raised the standard of comfort and created a host of varied needs, the view may reasonably be taken that, before agriculture can declare itself successful, it must be able to point to some central market where it will receive an adequate reward for the labour it entails. But this view was by no means so prevalent in the simpler societies of antiquity. The difficulties of communication, which, with reference to transport, must have made Rome seem nearer to Africa than to Umbria, and must have produced a similar tendency to reliance on foreign imports in many of the great coast towns, would alone have been sufficient to weaken the reliance of the farmer on the consumption of his products by the larger cities. The belief that the homestead might be almost self-sufficient probably lingered on in remote country districts even in the days of the Gracchi; or, if absolute self-existence was unattainable, the necessities of life, which the home could not produce, might be procured without effort by periodical visits to the market or fair, which formed the industrial centre of a group of hamlets. The seemingly ample size of the Gracchan allotments, some of which were three times as great as the larger of the colonial a.s.signments of earlier days,[752] pointed to the possibility of the support of a large family, if the simpler needs of life were alone considered. The farmer"s soul need not be vexed by compet.i.tion if he was content to live and not to trade, and it might have been hoped that the devotion to the soil, which ownership inspires, might have worked its magic even on the lands left barren through neglect. There might even be a hope for the cultivator who aimed at the markets of the larger towns; for, if corn returned no profit, yet oil and wine were not yet undersold, and were both of them commodities which would bring better returns than grain to the minute and scrupulous care in which the smaller cultivator excels the owner of a great domain. The failure of corn-growing as a productive industry, perhaps the legislation of the Gracchi itself, must have given a great impetus to the cultivation of the vine and the olive, the value attached to which during the closing years of the Republic is, as we have seen, attested by the fact that the extension of these products was prohibited in the Transalpine regions in order to protect the interests of the Roman producer.

An agricultural revival was, therefore, possible; but its success demanded a spirit that would enter readily into the work, and submit without a murmur to the conditions of life which the stern task enjoined. It was here that the agrarian legislation of the Gracchi found its obstacle. So far as it did fail--so far, that is, as it was not sufficient to prevent the renewed acc.u.mulation of the people in the towns and the continued depopulation of the country districts--it failed because it offended against social ideals rather than against economic tendencies. Many of the settlers whom it planted on the allotments, must already have been demoralised by the feverish atmosphere of Rome; while others of a saner and more vigorous type may have soon looked back on the capital, not as the lounging-place of the idler, but as the exchange of the world, or have turned their thoughts to the provinces as the sphere where energy was best rewarded and capital gave its speediest returns. Of the other social measures of this period, colonisation, in so far as it had a purely agricultural object, is subject to the criteria that have been applied to the agrarian movements of the time; although it is possible that the formation of new or the remodelling of old political societies, which must have followed the scheme of Drusus, had this been ever realised, would have infused a more vigorous life in agricultural settlements of this type than was likely to be awakened in those which formed a mere outlying part of Rome or some existing munic.i.p.ality. We have seen how the colonial plan of Drusus differed in its intention from that of Caius Gracchus; but the latter statesman had, in the settlement which he projected at Junonia, planned a foundation which would proximately have lived on the wealth of its territory rather than on its trade, and must always have been, like Carthage of old, as much an agricultural as a commercial state. To an agrarian project such as this no economic objection could have been offered and, had the scheme of transmarine colonisation been fully carried out, the provinces themselves might have been made to benefit the farming cla.s.s of Italy, whose economic foes they had become. The distance also of such settlements from Rome would have blunted the craving for the life of the capital, which beset the minds and paralysed the energies of the occupants of Italian land.

But, on the whole, the Gracchan scheme of colonisation was, as we have seen, commercial rather than agricultural, and was probably intended to benefit a cla.s.s that was not adapted to rural occupations, either by a.s.sociation or training. By this enterprise Caius Gracchus showed that he saw with perfect clearness the true reason, and the final evidence, of the stagnation of the middle cla.s.s. A nation which has abandoned agriculture and allows itself to be fed by foreign hands, even by those of its own subjects, is exposed to military dangers which are obvious, and to political perils somewhat more obscure but bearing their evil fruit from time to time; but such treason to the soil is no sign of national decay, if the legions of workers have merely transferred their allegiance from the country to the town, from agriculture to manufacture and commerce. In Italy this comforting explanation was impossible.

Except perhaps in Latium and Campania, there were few industrial centres; many of those that existed were in the hands of Greeks, many more had sunk under the stress of war and had never been revived. The great syndicates in which Roman capital was invested, employed slaves and freedmen as their agents; the operations of these great houses were directed mainly to the provinces, and the Italian seaports were employed merely as channels for a business which was speculative and financial and, so far as Italy was concerned, only to a very slight, if to any, degree productive. To re-establish the producer or the trader of moderate means, was to revive a stable element in the population, whose existence might soften the rugged asperity with which capital confronted power on the one hand and poverty on the other. But to revive it at Rome would have demanded artificial measures, which, attacking as they must have done the monopolies possessed by the Equites, would have defeated the legislator"s immediate object and probably proved impracticable, while such a revival would also have accentuated the centralisation, which might be useful to the politician but was deplored by the social reformer. The debilitated cla.s.s might, however, recover its elasticity if placed in congenial surroundings and invited to the sites which had once attracted the enterprise of the Greek trader; and Caius Gracchus"s settlements in the south of Italy were means to this end. We have no warrant for p.r.o.nouncing the experiment an utter failure. Some of these colonies lived on, although in what guise is unknown. But even a moderate amount of success would have demanded a continuity in the scheme, which wa

Prev List Next