A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate

Chapter 7

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The anxieties of the Latins and Italians were also quieted, although it may be questioned whether the memory of past wrongs, now rendered irrevocable by the progress of recent agrarian experiments, did not enter into the agitation for the conferment of the franchise, which they still continued to sustain. The last great law, following the spirit of the enactment of Drusus which had preceded it by about a year, does indeed show traces of an anxiety to respect Italian claims. Apart from the fact, which we have already mentioned, that all lands which had been granted in usufruct to colonists, were still to be public and were, therefore, in the case of Latin colonies, to be at the disposal of the communities to which they had been granted by treaty, the law contains a special provision for the maintenance of the rights of Latins and Italians, so far as they are in harmony with the rights allowed to Roman citizens by the enactment.[781] The guarantees which had been sanctioned by Drusus, were therefore respected; but their observance was conditioned by the rule that all prohibitions now created for Romans should be extended to the allies. As we do not know the purport of Drusus"s measure, or the practices current on the Roman domains occupied by Latins, we cannot say whether this clause produced any derogation of their rights; but it must have limited the right of free pasturage on the public commons, if they had possessed this in a higher degree than was now permitted, and the right to occupy public land was also forbidden them in the future. But it was from the negative point of view that the law might be interpreted as creating or perpetuating a grievance; for some of the positive benefits which it conferred seem to have been limited to Romans. The land which it makes private property, is land which has been a.s.signed by colonial or agrarian commissioners, or land which has been occupied up to a certain limit. If colonial land had really been a.s.signed to Latins by Caius Gracchus, their rights are retained by this law, if they had been made Roman citizens at the time of the settlement; but if they had been admitted as partic.i.p.ants in the agrarian distribution throughout Italy, their rights as owners are not confirmed with those of Roman citizens; and the Latin who merely occupied land was not given the privilege of the Roman possessor of becoming the owner of the soil, if his occupation were restricted within a certain limit.[782] He still retained merely a precarious possession, for which dues to the State were probably exacted. It was something to have rights confirmed, but they probably appeared less valuable when those of others were extended. A more generous treatment could hardly have been expected from a law of Rome dealing with her own domain, primarily in the interests of her own citizens; but the Italians were tending to forget their civic independence, and chose rather to compare their personal rights with those of the Roman burgesses. Such a comparison applied to the final agrarian settlement must have done something to emphasise their belief in the inferiority of their position.

This review of the legislation on social questions which was initiated or endured by the senate, shows the tentative att.i.tude adopted by the n.o.bility in their dealings with the people, and proves either a statesmanlike view of the needs of the situation or the entire lack of a proud consciousness of their own immunity from attack. Even had they possessed the power to dictate to the Comitia, they were hemmed in on another side; for they had not dared to raise a protest against the law of Gracchus which transferred criminal jurisdiction over the members of their own order to the knights. The equestrian courts sat in judgment on the n.o.blest members of the aristocracy; for the political or personal motives which urged to prosecution were stronger even than the camaraderie of the order, and governors of provinces were still in danger of indictment by their peers. Within two years of the transference of the courts, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, known in later life as "the Augur" and famed for his knowledge of the civil law, returned from his province of Asia to meet the accusation of t.i.tus Albucius.[783]

The knights did not begin by a vindictive exercise of their authority.

Although Asia was the most favoured sphere of their activity, Scaevola was acquitted. Seven years later they gave a stern and perhaps righteous example of their severity in the condemnation of Caius Porcius Cato.[784] The accused when consul had obtained Macedonia as his province, and had waged a frontier war with the Scordisci, which ended in the annihilation of his forces and his own narrow escape from the field of battle. His ill-success perhaps deepened the impression made by his extortions in Macedonia, and he was sentenced to the payment of a fine. Neither in the case of the acquittal nor in that of the condemnation does political bias seem to have influenced the judgment of the courts, and the equestrian jurors may have seemed for a time to realise the best hopes which had inspired their creation.

The attention of the leading members of the n.o.bility was probably too absorbed by the problem of adapting senatorial rule to altered circ.u.mstances to allow them the leisure or the inclination to embark on fresh legislative projects of their own. Our record of these years is so imperfect that it would be rash to conclude that the scanty proposals on new subjects which it reveals exhausted the legislative activity of the senate; but had they done so, the circ.u.mstance would be intelligible; for the work that invited the attention of the senate in its own interest, was one of consolidation rather than of reform; the political feeling of the time put measures of a distinctly reactionary character, such as might have been welcomed by the more conservative members of the order, wholly out of the question; and the government was not likely, except under compulsion, to undertake legislation of a progressive type.

The only important law of the period certainly proceeding from governmental circles, and dealing with a question that was novel, in the sense that it had not been heard of for a considerable number of years and had played no part in the Gracchan movements, was one pa.s.sed by the consul Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. It dealt with the voting power of the freedmen,[785] and probably confirmed its restriction to the four city tribes. It is difficult to a.s.sign a political meaning to this law, as we do not know the practice which prevailed at the time of Scaurus"s intervention; but it is probable that the restriction imposed by the censors of 169, who had confined the freedmen to a single tribe,[786]

had not been observed, that great irregularity prevailed in the manner of their registration, and that Scaurus"s measure, which was a return to the arrangement reached at the end of the fourth century, was intended to restrict the voting privileges of the cla.s.s. This interpretation of his intention would seem to show that the increasing liberality of the Roman master had created a cla.s.s the larger portion of which was not dependent on the wealthier and more conservative section of the citizen body, or was at least enabled to a.s.sert its freedom from control through the secrecy of the ballot. The interests of the cla.s.s were almost identical with those of the free proletariate, in which the descendants of the freedmen were merged: and the law of Scaurus, which strengthened the country vote by preventing this urban influence spreading through all the tribes, may be an evidence that the senate distrusted the present pa.s.sivity of the urban folk, and looked forward with apprehension to a time when they might have to rely on the more stable element which the country districts supplied. We shall see in the sequel that this antic.i.p.ation of the freedmen"s att.i.tude was not unjustified, and that the increase of their voting power still continued to be an effective battle-cry for the demagogue who was eager to increase his following in the city.

Scaurus was also the author of a sumptuary law.[787] It came appropriately from a man who had been trained in a school of poverty, and shows the willingness of the n.o.bility to submit, at least in appearance, to the discipline which would present it to the world as a self-sacrificing administration, reaping no selfish reward for its intense labour, and submitting to that equality of life with the average citizen which is the best democratic concession that a powerful oligarchy can make. The activity of the censorship was exhibited in the same direction. Foreign and expensive dishes were prohibited by the guardians of public morals, as they were by Scaurus"s sumptuary law:[788] and the censors of 115, Metellus and Domitius, undertook a scrutiny of the stage which resulted in the complete exclusion from Rome of all complex forms of the histrionic art and its reduction to the simple Latin type of music and song.[789] Their energy was also displayed in a destructive examination of the morals of their own order, and as a result of the scrutiny thirty-two senators were banished from the Curia.[790] To guard the senate-house from scandal was indeed the necessary policy of a n.o.bility which knew that its precarious power rested on the opinion of the streets; and the efforts of the censors, directed like those of their predecessors, to a regeneration which had a national type as its goal, show that that opinion could not yet have been considered wholly cosmopolitan or corrupt. The frequent splendour of triumphal processions, such as those which celebrated the victories of Domitius and Fabius over the Allobroges, of Metellus over the Dalmatians, and of Scaurus over the Ligurians,[791] produced a comfortable impression of the efficiency of the government in extending or preserving the frontiers of the empire; the triumph itself was the symbol of success, and few could have cared to question the extent and utility of the achievement. Satisfied with the belief that they were witnessing the average type of successful administration, the electors pursued the course, from which they so seldom deflected, of giving their unreserved confidence to the ancient houses; and this epoch witnessed a striking instance of hereditary influence, if not of hereditary talent, when Metellus Macedonicus was borne to his grave by sons, of whom four had held curule office, three had possessed the consulship, and one had fulfilled in addition the lofty functions of the censor and enjoyed the honour of a triumph.[792]

Yet distinction without a certain degree of fitness was now, as at every other time, an impossibility in Rome. The n.o.bility, although it did not love originality, extended a helping hand to the capacity that was willing to support its cause and showed the likelihood of dignifying its administration; a career was still open to talent and address, if they were held to be wisely directed; and the man of the period who best deserves the t.i.tle of leader of the State, was one who had not even sprung from the second strata of Roman society, but had struggled with a poverty which would have condemned an ordinary man to devote such leisure as he could spare for politics to swelling the babel of the Forum and the streets. It is true that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus bore a patrician name, and was one of those potential kings who, once in the senate, might a.s.sume the royal foot-gear and continue the holy task, which they had performed from the time of Romulus, of guarding and transmitting the auspices of the Roman people. But the splendour of the name had long been dimmed. Even in the history of the great wars of the beginning of the century but one Aemilius Scaurus appears, and he holds but a subordinate command as an officer of the Roman fleet. The father of the future chief of the senate had been forced to seek a livelihood in the humble calling of a purveyor of charcoal.[793] The son, resolute, ambitious and conscious of great powers, long debated with himself the question of his future walk in life.[794] He might remain in the ranks of the business world, supply money to customers in place of coal, and seize the golden opportunities which were being presented by the extension of the banking industry in the provincial world. Had he chosen this path, Scaurus might have been the chief of the knights and the most resolute champion of equestrian claims against the government. But his course was decided by the afterthought that the power of words was greater than that of gold, and that eloquence might secure, not only wealth, but the influence which wealth alone cannot attain. The fame which he gained in the Forum led inevitably to service in the field. He reaped distinction in the Spanish campaigns and served under Orestes in Sardinia. His narrow means rather than his principles may have been the reason why his aedileship was not marked by the generous shows to which the people were accustomed and by which their favour was usually purchased; in Scaurus"s tenure of that office splendour was replaced by a rigorous performance of judicial duties;[795] but that such an equivalent could serve his purpose, that it should be even no hindrance to his career, proves the respect that his strenuous character had won from the people, and the antic.i.p.ation formed by the government of the value of his future services. Now, when he was nearing his fiftieth year, he had secured the consulship, the bourne of most successful careers, but not to be the last or greatest prize of a man whose stately presence, unbending dignity, and apparent simplicity of purpose, could generally awe the people into respect, and whose keenness of vision and talent for intrigue impressed the senatorial mind with a sense of his power to save, when claims were pressing and difficulties acute.[796]

His consulship, though without brilliancy, added to the respectable laurels that he had already attained. A successful raid on some Illyrian tribes[797] showed at least that he had retained the physical endurance of his youth; while his legislation on sumptuary matters and the freedman"s vote showed the spirit of a milder Cato, and the moderate conservatism, not distasteful to the Roman of pure blood, which would preserve the preponderance in political power to the citizen untainted by the stain of servitude. A stormy event of his period of office gave the crowd an opportunity of seeing the severity with which a magistrate of the older school could avenge an affront to the dignity of his office. Publius Decius, who was believed to be a conscious imitator of Fulvius Flaccus in the exaggerated vehemence of his oratory, and who had already proved by his prosecution of Opimius that he was ready to defend certain features of the Gracchan cause even when such championship was fraught with danger, was in possession of the urban praetorship at the time when Scaurus held the consulship. One day the consul pa.s.sed the open court of justice when the praetor was giving judgment from the curule chair. Decius remained seated, either in feigned oblivion or in ostentatious disregard of the presence of his superior. The politic wrath of Scaurus was aroused; an enemy had been delivered into his hands, and the people might be given an object-lesson of the way in which the most vehement champion of popular rights was, even when covered with the dignity of a magistracy, but a straw in the iron grasp of the higher Imperium. The consul ordered Decius to rise, his official robe to be rent, the chair of justice to be shattered in pieces, and published a warning that no future litigant should resort to the court of the contumacious praetor.[798] The vulgar mind is impressed, when it is not angered, by such scenes of violence. A repute for sternness is the best cloak for the flexibility which, if revealed, would excite suspicion. Scaurus to the popular mind was an embodiment of stiff patrician dignity, perhaps happily devoid of that touch of insolence which is often the mark of a career a.s.sured without a struggle; of a self-complacent dignity, quietly conscious of its own deserts and demanding their due reward, of the calmness of a soul that is above suspicion and refuses to admit even in its inmost sanctuary the thought that its motives can be impugned. Meanwhile certain disrespectful onlookers were expressing wonder at his mysteriously growing wealth and marvelling as to its source. But, marvel as they might, they never drove Scaurus to the necessity of an explanation. We shall find him as an old man repelling all attacks by the irresistible appeal to his services and his career. The condemnation of Scaurus appealed to the conservative as a blow struck at the dignity of the State itself; to the man of a more open mind it was at least the shattering of a delightful illusion.

The period which witnessed the crowning of the efforts of the poor and struggling patrician was also sufficiently liberal, or sufficiently poor in aristocratic talent, to admit the initial steps in the official career of a genuine son of the people. It was now that Caius Marius was laboriously climbing the grades of curule rank, and showing in the pursuit of political influence at home the rugged determination which had already distinguished him in the field. A Volscian by descent, he belonged to Rome through the accident of birth in the old munic.i.p.ality of Arpinum, which since the early part of the second century had enjoyed full Roman citizenship and therefore gave its citizens the right of suffrage and of honours in the capital. Born of good yeoman stock in the village of Cereatae in the Arpinate territory,[799] he had pa.s.sed a boyhood which derived no polish from the refinements, and no taint from the corruptions, of city life. In his case there was no puzzling discrepancy between the outer and the inner man. His frame and visage were the true index of a mind, somewhat unhewn and uncouth, but with a ma.s.sive reserve of strength, a persistence not blindly obstinate, a patience that could wear out the most brilliant efforts of his rivals and opponents. He did not court hostility, but simply shouldered his way st.u.r.dily to the front, encouraged by Rome"s better spirits, who saw in him the excellent officer with qualities that might make the future general, and appealing to the people, when they gradually became familiar with his presence, as a type of that venerable myth, the rustic statesman of the past. The poverty of his early lot was perhaps exaggerated by historians[800] who wished to point the contrast between his humble origin and his later glory, and to find a suitable cradle for his rugged nature; even the initial stages of his career afford no evidence of a struggle against pressing want, nor is there any proof that he was supported by the bounty of his powerful friends. Even if he entered the army as a common foot-soldier, he would merely have shared the lot of many a well-to-do yeoman who obeyed the call of the conscription. With Marius, however, military service was not to be an incident, but a profession. The needs of a widening empire were calling for special capacities such as had never been demanded in the past. The career of Scaurus had shown the successful pleader surmounting the obstacle of poverty; even the higher barrier of birth might be leaped amidst the democratising influences of the camp. The n.o.bility was not sufficiently self-centred to be wholly blind to its own interests; and it was easier to patronise a soldier than a pleader. In the latter case the aspirant"s political creed must be examined; in the former the last question that would be asked was whether the officer possessed any political creed at all. It might be a question of importance for the future with respect to the candidature for those offices which alone conferred high military command, even though there was as yet no dream of the sword becoming the arbiter of political life; but the genuine commander, engaged in the difficult task of remodelling an army, had no eye but for the bearing and qualities of the soldier, and would not scruple to cast aside his patrician prejudices in a despairing effort to find the fittest instruments for the perfecting of his great design. It was Marius"s fortunate lot to enter the field at a time of trial, and to serve his first campaign under a general, who was combating the adverse forces of influence, licence and incompetence in the official staff supplied by the government and represented by the young scions of the n.o.bility. To the camp before Numantia, where Scipio was scourging his men into obedience, rooting out the amenities of life, and astonishing his officers with new ideas of the meaning of a campaign, Marius brought the very qualities on which the general had set his heart. An unflinching courage, shown on one occasion in single combat when he overthrew a champion of the foe, a power of physical endurance which could submit to all changes of temperature and food, a minute precision in the performance of the detailed duties of the camp, soon led to his rapid advancement and to his selection as a member of the intimate circle which surrounded the commander-in-chief. Every great specialist has a small claim to the gift of prophecy; for he possesses an instinct which reveals more than his reason will permit him to prove; and we need not wonder at the story that, when once the debate grew warm round Scipio"s table as to who would succeed him as the chosen commander of the Roman host, he lightly touched the shoulder of Marius and answered "Perhaps we shall find him here".[801]

The higher commands in the army could be sought only through a political career; and Marius, inspired with the highest hopes by Scipio"s commendation, was forced to breathe the uncongenial atmosphere of the city and to fight his way upwards to the curule offices. There is no proof that he took advantage of the current of democratic feeling which accompanied the movements of the Gracchi. It was, perhaps, as well that he did not; for such an a.s.sociation might have long delayed his higher political career. The n.o.bles who posed as democrats probably attached more importance to forensic skill than to military merit; and the support which Marius enjoyed was sought and found amongst the representatives of the opposite party. Scipio"s death removed a man who might have been a powerful advocate on his behalf; the vague relationship of clientship in which the family of Marius had stood to the clan of the Herennii[802]--a relation common between Roman families and the members of Italian townships, and in this case probably dating from a time before Arpinum had received full Roman rights--seems never to have led to active interference on his behalf on the part of the representatives of that ancient Samnite house. Perhaps the Herennii were too weak to a.s.sist the fortunes of their client; they certainly give no names to the Fasti of this period. It is also possible that the proud soldier was galled by the memory of the hereditary yoke, and sought a.s.sistance where it would be given simply as a mark of merit, not as a duty conditioned by the claim to irksome reciprocal obligations. The all-powerful family of the Caecilii Metelli, who were at this time vigorously fulfilling the destiny of office which heaven had prescribed for their clan, stretched out a helping hand to the distinguished soldier;[803] a family born to military command might consult its interests, while it gratified its sympathies, by attaching to its _clientele_ a warrior who had received the best training of the school of Africa.n.u.s. After he had held the military tribunate and the quaestorship,[804] Marius attained the tribunate of the Plebs with the a.s.sistance of Lucius Caecilius Metellus.[805] He was in his thirty-ninth year when he entered on the first office which gave him the opportunity of claiming the attention of the people by the initiation of legislative measures. The slowness of his rise may have led him to believe that he might accelerate his career by taking his fortune into his own hands; certainly if the law which bore his name was not unwelcome to the better portion of the n.o.bility, the methods by which he forced it through did not commend themselves even to his patron. His proposal was meant to limit the exercise of undue influence at the Comitia, and although the law doubtless referred to legislative meetings summoned for every purpose, it was chiefly directed to securing the independence of the voter in such public trials as still took place before the people,[806]

and was perhaps inspired by scenes that might have been witnessed at the acquittal of Opimius one year previously. One of the clauses of the bill provided that the exits to the galleries, through which the voters filed to give their suffrages to the tellers, should be narrowed,[807] the object being to exclude the political agents who were accustomed to occupy the sides of the pa.s.sages, and influence or intimidate, by their presence if not by their words, the voting citizen at the critical moment when he was about to record his verdict. Such methods were probably found effective even where the ballot was used, but their success must have been even greater in trials for treason, at which voting by word of mouth was still employed. It was difficult for a government, which had accepted the ballot, to offer a decent resistance to a measure of this kind. The proposal attacked indifferently political methods which might be, and probably were, employed by both parties; and, although its success would no doubt inflict more injury on the government than on the opposition, it could not be repudiated by the senate on the ground that it was tainted by an aggressively "popular"

character. The opposition which it actually encountered was apparently based on the formal ground that the heads of the administration had not been sufficiently consulted. The law was not the outcome of any senatorial decree, nor had the senate"s opinion been deliberately taken on the utility of the measure. The consul Cotta persuaded the house to frame a resolution expressing dissatisfaction with the proposal as it stood, and to summon Marius for an explanation. The summons was promptly obeyed, but the expected scene of humiliation of the untried parvenu was rudely interrupted at an early period of the debate. Marius knew that he had the people and the tribunician college with him, and that even the most perverse ingenuity could never construe the measure as a factious opposition to the interests of the State. Obedience to the senate would in this instance mean the sacrifice of a reputation for political honesty and courage; it might be better to burn his boats and to trust for the future to the generosity of the people for the gifts which the n.o.bility so grudgingly bestowed. He chose to regard the controversy as one of those cases of hopeless conflict between the members of the magistracy, for the solution of which the law had provided regular though exceptional means. He fell back on the majesty of the tribunician power, and threatened Cotta with imprisonment if he did not withdraw his resolution.[808] It is probable that up to this point no decree expressing wholesale condemnation of the bill had been pa.s.sed, and the senate might therefore be coerced through the magistrate, without its authority being utterly disregarded. Cotta turned to his colleague Metellus, known to be the friend of the obstinate tribune, and Metellus rising gave the consul his support. Marius, undaunted by the att.i.tude of his patron, hurried matters to a close. He summoned his attendant to the Curia, and bade him take Metellus himself into custody and conduct him to a place of confinement. Metellus appealed to the other tribunes, but none would offer his help; and the senate was forced to save the situation by sacrificing its vote of censure. So rapid and complete a victory, even on an issue of no great importance, delighted the popular mind. The senate was then in good favour at Rome; but a chance for realising their superiority over the greatest of their servants was always welcome to the people. They also loved those exhibitions of physical force by which the genius of Rome had solved the difficulties of her const.i.tution: and the violence of a tribune was as impressive now as was that of a consul four years later. Marius had gained a character for st.u.r.dy independence and unshaken constancy, which was to produce unexpected results in the political world of the future, and was to be immediately tested in a manner that must have proved profoundly disappointing to many who acclaimed him. It seems as though this victory over the resolution of the senate may have urged certain would-be reformers to believe that measures of a Gracchan type might win the favour of the people, and secure the support of a tribunician college which seemed to be out of sympathy with the government. Some proposal dealing with the distribution of corn,[809] perhaps an extension of the existing scheme, was made. It found no more resolute opponent than Marius, and his opposition helped to secure its utter defeat. In this resistance we may perhaps see the genuinely neutral character of the man; for the attribution of interested motives, although the historian"s favourite revenge for the difficulties of his task, endows his characters with a foresight which is as abnormal as their lack of principle; although it is questionable whether Marius would have gained by identifying himself with a cause which had not yet emerged from the ruin of its failure.

The lack of official support and the alienation of a section of the people may perhaps be traced in the successive defeats of his candidature for the curule and plebeian aedileships,[810] although in the elections to these offices the attention of the people was so keenly directed to the candidate"s pecuniary means as a guarantee of their gratification by brilliant shows, that the aedileship must have been of all magistracies the most difficult of attainment by merit unsupported by wealth. Even when the rejected candidate had won favour on other grounds, the electors could salve their consciences with the reflection that the aedileship was no obligatory step in an official career, and that, where merit and not money was in question, they could show their appreciation of personal qualities in the elections to the praetorship.

A year after his repulse Marius turned to the candidature for this office, which conveyed the first opportunity of the tenure of an independent military command. He was returned at the bottom of the poll, and even then had to fight hard to retain his place in the praetorian college.[811] A charge of undue influence was brought against the man who had struggled successfully to preserve the purity of the Comitia, and it was pretended that a slave of one of his closest political a.s.sociates had been seen within the barriers mixing with the voters.

That the charge was supported by powerful influences, or was generally believed to be correct, is perhaps shown by the conduct of the censors of the succeeding year who expelled this a.s.sociate from the senate.[812]

The jurors[813] before whom the case was tried--representatives, as we must suppose, of the equestrian order and therefore presumably uninfluenced by senatorial hostility--were long perplexed by the conflict of evidence. During the first days of the trial it seemed as though the doom of Marius was sealed, and his unexpected acquittal was only secured by the scrutiny of the tablets revealing an equality of votes, a condition which, according to the rules of Roman process, necessitated a favourable verdict.

His praetorship, in accordance with the rules which now governed this magistracy in consequence of the multiplication of the courts of justice, confined his energies to Rome. We do not know what department of this office he administered; but, as the charge of no department could make an epoch in the career of any one but a lawyer gifted with original ideas, we are not surprised to find that Marius"s tenure of this magistracy, although creditable, did not excite any marked attention.[814] After his praetorship he obtained his first independent military command in Farther Spain. Such a province had always its little problems of pacification to present to an energetic commander, and Marius"s military talents were moderately exercised by the repression of the habitual brigandage of its inhabitants.[815] His tenure of a foreign command may have added to his wealth, for provincial government could be made to increase the means of the most honest administrator. It was still more important that his tenure of the praetorship had added him to the ranks of the official n.o.bility. His birth was now no bar to any social distinction to which his simple and resolute soul might think it profitable to aspire: and a family of the patrician Julii was not ashamed to give one of its daughters to the adventurer from Arpinum.[816] Thus Marius remained for a while; to Roman society an interesting specimen of the self-made man, marked by a bluntness and directness appropriate to the type and provocative of an amused regard; to the professed politician a man with a fairly successful but puzzling political career, and one that perhaps needed not to be too seriously considered. For to all who understood the existent conditions of Roman public life, his attainment of the consulship and of a dominant position in the councils of the State must have seemed impossible. There was but one contingency that could make Marius a necessary man. This was war on a grand scale. But the contingency was distant, and, even if it arose, the government might employ his skill while keeping him in a subordinate position.

The career of Marius is not the only proof that the tradition of successful opposition to the senate could be easily revived. In the year following his tribunate a new and successful effort was made in the direction of transmarine colonisation.[817] The pretext for the measure was the necessity for preserving command of the territory which had been won by the great victories of Domitius and Fabius on the farther side of the Alps; the strategic value of the foundation was undeniable, and the opposition of the government was probably directed by the form which it was proposed that the new settlement should take. It was not to be a mere fort in the enemy"s country, like the already-established Aquae s.e.xtiae,[818] but a true _colonia_ of Roman citizens,[819] the creation of which was certain to lead to excessive complications in the foreign policy which dealt with the frontiers of the north. Such a colony would become the centre of an active trade with the surrounding tribes; though professedly founded in the people"s interest, it would rapidly become a mere feeler for extending the operations of the great mercantile cla.s.s; the growth of Roman trade-interests would necessarily involve a policy of defence and probably of expansion, which would tell heavily on the resources of the State. The success of the government was dependent on the restriction of its efforts, and there is nothing surprising in the hearty opposition which it offered to the projected colony of Narbo Martius. Even after the original measure sanctioning the settlement had pa.s.sed the Comitia, senatorial influence led to the promulgation of a new proposal in which the people was asked to reconsider its decision.[820] But the project had found an ardent champion in the young Lucius Cra.s.sus, who strengthened the position which he had won in the previous year, by a speech weighty beyond the promise of his age.[821]

In his successful advocacy of a national undertaking he was not afraid to impugn the authority of the senate, and reaped an immediate reward in being selected, despite his youth, as one of the commissioners for establishing the settlement.[822]

It is probable that without the support of the equestrian order the project for the foundation of Narbo Martius might have fallen through.

The man of popular sympathies whose measures attracted their support was tolerably certain of success, and the man who posed as the champion of the order was still more firmly placed. The latter position was occupied for a considerable time by Caius Servilius Glaucia, whose tribunate probably belongs to the close of the period which we are describing.[823] Glaucia himself, probably one of those scions of the n.o.bility whom an original bent of mind had alienated from the narrow interests of his order, was a man who, lacking in the gift of pa.s.sionate but steadfast seriousness which makes the great reformer, possessed powers admirably adapted for holding the popular ear and inspiring his auditors with a kind of robust confidence in himself. Ready, acute and witty,[824] he possessed the happy faculty of taking the Comitia, under the guise of the plain and honest man, into his confidence. The very ignorance of his auditors became a respectable attribute, when it was figured as ingenuous simplicity which needed protection against the tortuous wiles of the legislator and the official draughtsman. On one occasion he told his audience that the essence of a law was its preamble. If, when read to them, it was found to contain the words "dictator, consul, praetor or magister equitum," the bill was no concern of theirs. But, if they caught the utterance "and whosoever after this enactment," then they must wake up, for some new fetter of law was being forged to bind their limbs.[825] A man of this unconventional type was not likely to be popular in the senate, and the opprobrious name, which he subsequently bore in the Curia,[826] is a proof of the liveliness which he imparted to debate.

At the time of Glaucia"s tribunate some subtle movement seems to have been on foot for undoing the judiciary law of Caius Gracchus and ousting the knights from their possession of the court before which senators most frequently appeared. The law which dealt with the crime of extortion by Roman officials had been frequently renewed, and, whenever a proposal was made for recasting the enactment with a view to effecting improvements in procedure, the equestrian tenure of the court was threatened; for a new law might state qualifications for the jurors differing from those which had given this department of jurisdiction to the knights. The relief of the order was therefore great when the necessary work of revision was undertaken by one who showed himself an ardent champion of equestrian claims.[827] Glaucia"s alteration in procedure was thorough and permanent. He introduced the system of the "second hearing "--an obligatory renewal of the trial, which rendered it possible for counsel to discuss evidence which had been already given, and for jurors to get a grasp of the ma.s.s of scattered data which had been presented to their notice--[828] and he also made it possible to recover damages, not only from the chief malefactor, but from all who had dishonestly shared his spoils.[829] These principles continued to be observed in trials for extortion to the close of the Republic, and may have been the only permanent relic of Glaucia"s feverish political career. But for the moment the clauses of his law which dealt with the qualifications of the jurors, were those most anxiously awaited and most heartily acclaimed. He had stemmed a reaction and consolidated, beyond hope of alteration for a long term of years, the system of dual control established by Caius Gracchus.

The careers and successes of Marius, Cra.s.sus and Glaucia exhibit the spirit of unrest which broke at intervals through the apathetic tolerance displayed by the people towards the rule of the n.o.bility.

These alternations of confidence and distrust find their counterpart in the religious history of the times; but a panic springing from a belief in the anger of the G.o.ds was even more difficult to control than the alarm excited by the att.i.tude of the government. Such a panic knew no distinctions of station, s.e.x or age; it seized on citizens who cared nothing for the problems of administration, it was strong in proportion to the weakness of its victims, and gathered from the dark thoughts and wild words of the imbecile the poison which infected the sober mind and a.s.sumed, from the very universality of the sickness, the guise of a healthy effort at rooting out some deep-seated pollution from the State.

The gloomy record of the religious persecutions of the past made it still more difficult for a government, which prided itself on the retention of the ancient control of morals, which gloried in its monopoly of an historic priesthood that had often set its hand to the work of extirpation, to stifle such a cry. The demand for atonement was the voice of the conserver of Rome"s moral life, of the patriotic devotee who was striving earnestly to reclaim the waning favour of her tutelary G.o.ds. If it was further believed that the seat of the corruption was to be found amidst the families of the n.o.bility itself, the last barrier to resistance had been broken down, for even to seem to shield the unholy thing was to make its lurking place an object of horror and execration.

The nerves of the people were first excited by various prodigies that had appeared; a confirmation of their fears might have been found in the utter destruction of the army of Porcius Cato in Thrace;[830] and a strange calamity soon gave an index to the nature of the offence which excited the anger of the G.o.ds. When Helvius, a Roman knight, was journeying with his wife and daughter from Rome to Apulia, they were enveloped in a sudden storm. The alarm of the girl urged the father to seek shelter with all speed. The horses were loosed from the vehicle, the maiden was placed on one, and the party was hastening along the road, when suddenly there was a blinding flash and, when it had pa.s.sed, the young Helvia and her horse were seen p.r.o.ne upon the ground. The force of the lightning had stripped every garment and ornament from her body, and the dead steed lay a few paces off with its trappings riven and scattered around it.[831] Death by a thunderbolt had always a meaning, which was sometimes hard to find; but here the G.o.ds had not left the inquiring votary utterly in doubt. The nakedness of the stricken maiden was a riddle that the priests could read. It was a manifest sign that a virginal vow had been broken, and that some of the keepers of the eternal fire were tainted with the sin of unchast.i.ty. The destruction of the horse seemed to portend that a knight would be found to be a partner in the crime.[832] Evidence was invited and was soon forthcoming. The slave of a certain Barrus came forward and deposed to the corruption of three of the vestal virgins, Aemilia, Licinia and Marcia.[833] He pretended that the incestuous intercourse had been of long standing, and he named his own master amongst many other men whom he declared to be the authors of the sacrilege. The maidens were believed to have added to their lovers to screen their first offence; the sacrifice of their honour became the price of silence; and their first corrupters were forced to be dumb when jealousy was mastered by fear. The knowledge of the crime is believed to have been widely spread amongst the circles of the better cla.s.s, until the conspiracy of silence was broken down by the action of a slave,[834] and all who would not be deemed accomplices were forced to add their share to the weight of the accusing testimony.

A scandal of this magnitude called for a formal trial by the supreme religious tribunal, and towards the close of the year[835] Lucius Metellus, the chief pontiff, summoned the incriminated vestals before the college. Aemilia was condemned, but Licinia and Marcia were acquitted. There was an immediate outcry; the pontiff"s leniency was severely censured; and the anger and fear of the people emboldened a tribune, s.e.xtus Peducaeus, to propose for the first time that the secular arm should wrest from the pontifical college the spiritual jurisdiction that it had abused. He carried a resolution that a special commission should be established by the people to continue the investigation.[836] The judges were probably Roman knights after the model of the Gracchan jurors; the president was the terrible Lucius Ca.s.sius Longinus, already known for his severity as a censor and famed for his penetration as a criminal judge. This fatal penetration, which had endowed his tribunal with the nickname "the reef of the accused," [837] was now welcomed as a surety that the inquiry would be searching, and that the innocence which survived it would be so well established that all doubt and fear would be dissolved. This commission condemned, not only the two vestals whom the pontiffs had acquitted, but many of their female intermediaries as well.[838] Some of their supposed paramours must also have been convicted; amongst the accused was Marcus Antonius, who was in future days to share the realm of oratory with Lucius Cra.s.sus. He was on the eve of his departure to Asia, where he was to exercise the duties of a quaestor, when he was summoned to appear before the court over which Ca.s.sius presided. He might have pleaded the benefit of his obligation to continue his official duties;[839] but he preferred to waive his claim and face his judges. His escape was believed to have been mainly due to the heroic conduct of a young slave, who, presented of his own free will to the torture, bore the anguish of the rack, the scourge and the fire without uttering a word that might incriminate his master.[840] The free employment of such methods in trials for incest throws a grave doubt on the value of the judgment which they elicited; and, when a court is established for the purpose of appeasing the popular conscience, a part at least of its conduct may be easily suspected of being preordained. Ca.s.sius"s rigour in this matter was thought excessive;[841] but, even had he and the jurors meted out nothing but the strictest justice, the memory of their sentence would long have rankled in the minds of the influential families whose members they had condemned, and thus perpetuated the tradition of their unnecessary severity. It may be doubted, however, whether a secular court was competent to inflict the horrible penalties of pontifical jurisdiction, to condemn the vestal to a living grave and her paramour to death by the scourge;[842] interdiction, and perhaps in the more serious cases the death by strangling usually reserved for traitors, may have been meted out to the men, while the women may have been handed over to their relatives for execution. But even this exemplary visitation of the vices which lurked in the heart of the State was not deemed sufficient to appease the G.o.ds or to quiet the popular conscience. To punish the guilty was to offer the barest satisfaction to heaven and to conscience; a fuller atonement was demanded, and the Sibylline oracles, when consulted on the point, were understood to ordain the cultivation of certain strange divinities by the living sacrifice of four strangers, two of h.e.l.lenic and two of Gallic race.[843] The accomplishment of this act must have been a severe strain on the reason and conscience of a government which sixteen years later absolutely prohibited the performance of human sacrifice[844] and soon made efforts to stamp out the barbarous ritual even in its foreign dependencies.[845] Even this concession to the panic of the times could not be regarded as fraught with much worldly success. The G.o.ds seemed still to retain an unkind feeling both to the city and the government.

Two years later there was a return of dreadful prodigies, and a great part of Rome was laid waste by a terrible fire. A few months more and news was brought from Africa which shook to its very foundations the fabric of senatorial rule.[846]

CHAPTER VI

The land, on which the eyes of the world were soon to be fastened, was the neglected protectorate which had been built up to secure the temporary purpose of the overthrow of Carthage, and had since remained in the undisturbed possession of the peaceful descendants of Masinissa.

The fortunes of the kingdom of Numidia, so far as they affected that kingdom itself, deserved to be neglected by its suzerain; for the power which Masinissa had won by arms and diplomacy was more than sufficient to protect its own interests. The Numidia of the day formed in territorial extent one of the mightiest kingdoms of the world, and ranked only second to Egypt amongst the client powers of Rome.[847] It extended from Mauretania to Cyrenaica,[848] from the river Muluccha to the greater Syrtis, thus touching on the west the Empire of the Moors, at that time confined to Tingitana, on the east almost penetrating to Egypt, and enjoying the best part of the fertile region which borders the coast of the Mediterranean.[849] For the Moroccan boundary of the kingdom--the river Muluccha or Molocath--see Gobel _Die Westkuste Afrikas im Altertum_ pp. 79,80. From this vast tract of country Rome had cut out for herself a small section on the north-east. In the creation of the province of Africa her moderation and forbearance must have astonished her Numidian client; and, if Masinissa showed signs of hesitancy in rousing himself for the destruction of Carthage, the fears of his sons must have been immediately dispelled when they saw the slender profits which Rome meant to reap from the suppression of their joint rival. The Numidian kings were even allowed to keep the territory which had been wrested from Carthage between the Second and Third Punic Wars. This comprised the region about the Tusca, which boasted not less than fifty towns, the district known as the Great Plains,[850] which has been identified with the great basin of the Dakhla of the Oulad-bon-Salem, and probably the plateau of Vaga (Bedja) which dominates this basin.[851] The Roman lines merely extended from the Tusca (the Wad El-Kebir) in the North, where that river flows into the Mediterranean opposite the island of Thabraca (Tabarka) to Thenae (Henschir Tina) on the south-east.[852] But even the upper waters of the Tusca belonged to Numidia, as did the towns of Vaga, Sicca Veneria and Zama Regia. Consequently the Roman frontier must have curved eastward until it reached the point where a rocky region separates the basin of the Bagradas (Medjerda) from the plains of the Sahel; thence it ran to the neighbourhood of Aquae Regiae and thence, probably following the line of a ditch drawn between the two great depressions of Kairouan and El-Gharra, to its ultimate bourne at Thenae.[853] It is clear that the Romans did not look on their province as an end desirable in itself.

They had left in the hands of their Numidian friends some of the most fertile lands, some of the richest commercial towns, situated in a district which they might easily have claimed. Against such annexation Masinissa could have uttered no word of legitimate protest. His kingdom had already been almost doubled by the acquisition of the lands of his rival Syphax, and his sons saw themselves through the aid of Rome in possession of an artificially created kingdom, which was so entirely out of harmony with the traditions of Numidian life that it could scarcely have entered into the dreams of any prince of that race. But the conquering city reposed some faith in grat.i.tude, and reposed still more in its habitual policy of caution. The province which it created was simply a political and strategic necessity. It was intended to secure the negative object of preventing the reconst.i.tution of the great political and commercial centre which had fallen.[854] If Carthage was never to rise again, a fragment of the coast-line must be kept in the hands of the possessors of its devastated site. It might have been better for the peace of Africa had the Romans been a little more grasping and had the Roman position been stronger than it was. The Phoenicians scattered along the coast had become familiar objects to the Berber inhabitants and their kings; to the enlightened monarch they were a valuable addition to the population of any of his cities--all the more valuable now that they were politically powerless. But with the Roman official and the Roman trader it was different. Here was an alien and (in spite of the restraint of the government) an encroaching civilisation, utterly unfamiliar to the eyes of the natives, but known to justify its lordly security by that dim background of power which clung to the name of the paramount city of the West. The Roman possessions were an ugly eyesore to a man who held that Africa should be for the Africans. The wise Masinissa might tolerate the spectacle, content (as, indeed, he should have been) with the power and security which Rome"s friendship had brought to her ally. But it remained to be seen whether his views would always be held by his own subjects or by some less cautious or less happily placed successor of his own line.

It was indeed possible that a hostile feeling of nationality might be awakened beyond the limits even of the great kingdom of Numidia. The designations which the Romans employ for the natives of North Africa obscure the fact, which was recognised in later times by the Arab conquerors, of the unity of the great Berber folk.[855] Roman historians and geographers speak of the Numidians and Mauretanians as though they were distinct peoples; but there can be little doubt that, then as to-day, they were but two fractions of the same great race, and that even the wild Gaetulians of the South are but representatives of the parent stock of this indigenous people. As in the case of nearly all races which in default of historical data we are forced to call indigenous, two separate elements may be distinguished in this stock, an earlier and a later, and survivals of the original distinctions between these elements were clearly discernible in many parts of Northern Africa; but, as the fusion between these stocks had been effected in prehistoric times, a common Berber nationality may be held to have extended from the Atlantic almost to Egypt, at the time when the Romans were added to the immigrant Semites and Greeks who had already sought to dwell amidst its borders. The basis of this nationality is thought to be found in the aborigines of the Sahara who had gradually moved up from the desert to the present littoral. There they were joined by a race of another type who were wending their way from what is now the continent of Europe. The Saharic man was of a dark-brown colour but with no traces of the negroid type. His European comrade was a man of fair complexion and light hair; and these curiously blended races continued to live side by side and to form a single nation, preserving perhaps each some of its own psychical characteristics, but speaking in common the language of the older Saharic stock.[856] But the two races were not uniformly distributed over the various territories of Northern Africa. The white race was perhaps more in evidence in Mauretania, as it is in the Morocco of to-day;[857] the dark race was probably most strongly represented amongst the Gaetulians of the South. There were, in short, in Northern Africa two zones, marked by differences of civilisation as well as of ethnic descent, which were clearly distinguished in antiquity. The first is represented by the Afri, Numidians, and Moors, who inhabited the coast region from East to West. These were early subjected to alien influences, the greatest of which, before the coming of the Roman, was the advent of the Semite. The second is shown by the vast aggregate of tribes which form a curve along the south from the ocean to the Cyrenaica. These tribes, which were called by the common name of Gaetuli, were almost exempt from European influences in historic, and probably in prehistoric, times. A few intermingled with the Aethiopians of the Sahara,[858] but, taken as a whole, they are believed to represent the primitive race of brown Saharic dwellers in all its purity.

Had the term Nomad or Numidian been applied to the southern races, the designation might have been justified by the migratory character of their life. But it is more than questionable whether the designation is defensible as applied to the people to whom it is usually attached. The Numidians do not seem to have possessed either the character or habits of a genuinely nomadic people such as the Arabs.[859] They lived in huts and not in tents. These huts (_mapalia_), which had the form of an upturned boat, may have seemed a poor habitation to Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans; but, as habitations, they were meant to be permanent; they were an index of the possession of property, of a lasting attachment to the soil. The village formed by a group of these little homes cl.u.s.tering round a steep height, was a still further index of a political and military society that intended to maintain and defend the area on which it had settled. The pages of Sall.u.s.t give ample evidence of an active village life engrossed with the toils of agriculture, and the ma.s.s of the population of the region of the Tell must have been for a long time fixed to the soil which yielded it a livelihood. Elsewhere there was indeed need of something like periodic migration. On the high plateaux pastoral life made the usual change from summer to winter stations necessary. But this regulated movement does not correspond strictly to the desultory life of a truly nomadic people. Yet it is easy to see how, in contrast to the regular and often sedentary mercantile life of the Phoenician and the Greek, that of the Numidian might be considered wild and migratory. He was in truth a "trekker" rather than a nomad, and he possessed the invaluable military attributes of the man unchained by cities and accustomed to wander far in a hard and bracing country. A skill in horsemanship that was the wonder of the world, the eye for a country hastily traversed, the memory for the spot once seen, the power of rapid mobilisation and of equally rapid disappearance, the gift of being a knight one day, a shepherd or a peasant the next--these were the attributes that made a Roman conquest of Numidia so long impossible and rendered diplomacy imperative as a supplement to war.

It is less easy to reconstruct the moral and political attributes of this people from the data which we at present possess, or to reconcile the experience of to-day with the impressions of ancient historians. But so permanent has been the great bulk of the population of Northern Africa that it is tempting to interpret the ancient Numidian in the light of the modern Kabyle. One who has had experience of the latter endows him with an intelligent head, a frank and open physiognomy and a lively eye, describes him as active and enterprising, lively and excitable, possessed of moral pride, eminently truthful, a stern holder of his plighted word and a respecter of women--a respect shown by the general practice of monogamy.[860] Even when stirred to war he is said not to lend himself to unnecessary cruelty.[861] The activity, liveliness and excitability of this people may be traced in the accounts of antiquity; but Roman records would add the impression of duplicity, treachery and cruelty as characteristics of the race. Yet as these characteristics are exhibited in the record of a great national war against a hated invader, and are chiefly ill.u.s.trated in the persons of a king or his ministers--individuals spoilt by power or maddened by fear--we need not perhaps attach too much importance to the discrepancy between the evidence of the ancient and modern world.

Much of the history of Numidia, especially during the epoch of the war of the Romans against Jugurtha, would be illuminated if we could interpret the political tendencies of its ancient inhabitants by those of the Kabyle of modern times. The latter is said to be a st.u.r.dy democrat, founding his society on the ideas of equality and individuality. Each member of this society enjoys the same rights and is bound down to the same duties. There is no military or religious n.o.bility, there are no hereditary chiefs. The affairs of the society, about which all can speak or vote, are administered by simple delegates.[862] There is nothing in the history of the war with Jugurtha to belie these characteristics, there is much which confirms them. In the narrative of that war there is no mention of a n.o.bility. The influential men described are simply those who have been elevated by wealth or familiarity with the king. The monarchy itself is a great power where the king is present, but the life of the community is not broken when the king is a fugitive; and loyalty to the crown centres round a great personality, who is expected to drive the hated invaders into the sea, not merely round the name of a legitimate dynasty.

Monarchy, in fact, seems a kind of artificial product in Numidia; but, artificial as it may have been, it had done good work. An active reign of more than fifty years by a man who united the absolutism of the savage potentate with the wisdom and experience of the civilised ruler, had produced effects in Numidia that could never die, Masinissa had proved what Numidian agriculture might become under the guidance of scientific rules by the creation of model farms, whose fertile acres showed that cultivated plants of every kind could be grown on native soil;[863] while under his rule and that of his son Micipsa the life of the city showed the same progress as that of the country. Numidia could not become one of the granaries of the world without its capital rising to the rank of a great commercial city. Cirta, though situated some forty-eight Roman miles from the sea,[864] was soon sought by the Greeks, those ubiquitous bankers of the Mediterranean world,[865] while Roman and Italian capitalists eagerly plied their business in this new and attractive sphere which had been presented to their efforts by the conquests of Rome and the civilising energy of its native rulers.

The kingdom of Numidia suffered from a weakness common to monarchies where the strong spirits of subjects and local chiefs can be controlled only by the still stronger hand of the central potentate, and where the practice of polygamy and concubinage in the royal house sometimes gave rise to many pretenders but to no heir with an indefeasible claim to rule. There was no settled principle of succession to the throne, and the death of the sovereign for the time being threatened the peace or unity of the kingdom, while it entailed grave responsibilities upon its nominal protector. Masinissa himself had been excluded from the throne by an uncle,[866] and but for his vigour and energy might have remained the subject of succeeding pretenders.

A crisis was threatened at his own decease but was happily averted by the prudence of the dying monarch. Loath as he probably was to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, he thrust on her the invidious task of deciding the succession to the throne. He felt that Roman authority would be more effective than paternal wishes; perhaps he saw that amongst his sons there was not one who could be trusted alone and unaided to continue to build up the fortunes of the state and to claim recognition from his brothers as their undisputed lord, while the show of submission to Rome might weaken the vigilance and disarm the jealousy of the protecting power. Scipio was summoned to his deathbed to apportion the kingdom between the legitimate sons who survived him, Micipsa, Gulussa and Mastanabal.[867] To Micipsa was given the capital Cirta, the royal palace and the general administration of the kingdom, the warlike Gulussa was made commander-in-chief, while to Mastanabal the youngest was a.s.signed the task of directing the judicial affairs of the dominion.[868] This division of authority was soon disturbed by the death of the two younger brothers, and Micipsa was left alone to indulge his peaceful inclinations during a long and uneventful reign of nearly thirty years. The fall of Carthage had left him free from all irritating external relations; for the King of Numidia was no longer required to act the part of a constant spy on the actions, and an occasional trespa.s.ser on the territory, of the greatest of African powers. The nearest scene of disturbance was the opposite continent of Spain, and here he did Rome good service by sending her a.s.sistance against Viriathus and the Numantines.[869] Unvexed by troubles within his borders, Micipsa devoted his life to the arts of peace. He beautified Cirta and attracted Greek settlers to the town, amongst them men of arts and learning, who delighted the king with their literary and philosophic discourse.[870]

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