A History of Rome, Vol 1 by A H.J. Greenidge

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Roman society must have seen much promise in his youth, for honours came
early. A seat at the augural board was regarded as a tribute to his
merit rather than his birth;[312] and indeed the Roman aristocrats, who
dispensed such favours, were too clever to be the slaves of a name, when
political manipulation was in question and talent might be diverted to
the true cause. His marriage was a more important determinant in his
career. The bride who was offered him was the daughter of Appius
Claudius Pulcher, a man of consular and censorian rank and now Princeps
of the senate,[313] a clever representative of that brilliant and
eccentric house, that had always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius
had already displayed some of the restless individuality of his
ancestors. When the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with
the Salassi, he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his
daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the importunate
tribune who attempted to drag him off.[314] A similar unconventionality
was manifested in the present betrothal. The story runs that Appius
broached the question to Tiberius at an augural banquet. The proposition
was readily accepted, and Appius in his joy shouted out the news to his
wife as he entered his own front door. The lady was more surprised than
annoyed. "What need for all this haste," she said, "unless indeed you
have found Tiberius Gracchus for our girl?" [315] Appius, hasty as he
was, was probably in this case not the victim of a sudden inspiration.
The restless old man doubtless pined for reform; but he was weighed down
by years, honours and familiarity with the senate. He could not be the
protagonist in the coming struggle; but in Tiberius he saw the man of
the future.

The chances of the time favoured a military even more than a political
career; the chief spheres of influence were the province and the camp,
and it was in these that the earliest distinctions of Tiberius were won.
When a lad of fifteen he had followed his brother-in-law Scipio to
Africa, and had been the first to mount the walls of Carthage in the
vain assault on the fortress of Megara.[316] He had won the approval of
the commander by his discipline and courage, and left general regret
amongst the army when he quitted the camp before the close of the
campaign. But an experience as potent for the future as his first taste
of war, must have been those hours of leisure spent in Scipio's
tent.[317] If contact with the great commander aroused emulation, the
talk on political questions of Scipio and his circle must have inspired
profound reflection. Here he could find aspirations enough; all that was
lacking was a leader to translate them into deeds. The quaestorship, the
first round of the higher official ladder, found him attached to the
consul Mancinus and destined for the ever-turbulent province of Spain.
It was a fortunate chance, for here was the scene of his father's
military and diplomatic triumphs. But the sequel was unexpected. He had
gone to fulfil the duties of a subordinate; he suddenly found himself
performing those of a commander-in-chief or of an accredited
representative of the Roman people. The Numantines would treat only with
a Gracchus, and the treaty that saved Roman lives but not Roman honour
was felt to be really his work. In a moment he was involved in a
political question that agitated the whole of Rome. The Numantine treaty
was the topic of the day. Was it to be accepted or, if repudiated,
should the authors of the disaster, the causes of the breach of faith,
be surrendered in time-honoured fashion to the enemy as an expiation for
the violated pledge? On the first point there was little hesitation; the
senate decided for the nullity of the treaty, and it was likely that
this view would be accepted by the people, if the measures against the
ratifying officials were not made too stringent. For on this point there
was a difference of opinion. The poorer classes, whose sons and brothers
had been saved from death or captivity by the treaty, blamed Mancinus as
the cause of the disaster, but were grateful to Tiberius as the author
of the agreement. Others who had less to lose and could therefore afford
to stand on principle, would have enforced the fullest rigour of the
ancient rules and have delivered up the quaestor and tribunes with the
defaulting general.[318] It was thought that the influence of Scipio,
always great with the agricultural voters, might have availed to save
even Mancinus, nay that, if he would, he might have got the peace
confirmed.[319] But his efforts were believed to have been employed in
favour of Tiberius. The matter ended in an illogical compromise. The
treaty was repudiated, but it was decreed that the general alone should
be surrendered.[320] A breach in an ancient rule of religious law had
been made in favour of Tiberius.

But, in spite of this mark of popular favour, the experience had been
disheartening and its effect was disturbing. Although it is impossible
to subscribe to the opinion of later writers, who, looking at the matter
from a conservative and therefore unfavourable aspect, saw in this early
check the key to Tiberius's future action,[321] yet anger and fear leave
their trace even on the best regulated minds. The senate had torn up his
treaty and placed him for the moment in personal peril. It was to the
people that he owed his salvation. If circumstances were to develop an
opposition party in Rome, he was being pushed more and more into its
ranks. And a coolness seems to have sprung up at this time between him
and the man who had been his great _exemplar_. Tiberius took no counsel
of Scipio before embarking on his great enterprise; support and advice
were sought elsewhere. He may have already tested Scipio's lack of
sympathy with an active propaganda; shame might have kept back the hint
of a plan that might seem to imply a claim to leadership. But it is
possible that there was some feeling of resentment against the warrior
now before Numantia, who had done nothing to save the last Numantine
treaty and the honour of the name of Gracchus.

His reticence could scarcely have been due to ignorance of his own
designs; for his brother Caius left it on record that it was while
journeying northward from Rome on his way to Numantia that Tiberius's
eyes were first fully opened to the magnitude of the malady that cried
aloud for cure.[322] It was in Etruria, the paradise of the capitalist,
that he saw everywhere the imported slave and the barbarian who had
replaced the freeman. It was this sight that first suggested something
like a definite scheme. A further stimulus was soon to be found in
scraps of anonymous writing which appeared on porches, walls and
monuments, praying for his succour and entreating that the public land
should be recovered for the poor.[323] The voiceless Roman people was
seeking its only mode of utterance, a tribune who should be what the
tribune had been of old, the servant of the many not the creature of the
few. To Gracchus's mother his plans could hardly have been veiled. She
is even said to have stimulated a vague craving for action by the
playful remark that she was still known as the mother-in-law of Scipio,
not as the mother of the Gracchi.[324]

But there was need of serious counsel. Gracchus did not mean to be a
mere demagogue, coming before the people with a half-formed plan and
stirring up an agitation which could end merely in some idle resolution.
There were few to whom he could look for advice, but those few were of
the best. Three venerable men, whose deeds and standing were even
greater than their names, were ready with their support. There was the
chief pontiff, P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the man who was said to
combine in a supreme degree the four great blessings of wealth, birth,
eloquence and legal lore;[325] there was the brother of Crassus, P.
Mucius Scaevola,[326] the greatest lawyer of his age and already
destined to the consulship for the following year; lastly there was
Tiberius's father-in-law, the restless Appius, now eagerly awaiting the
fulfilment of a cherished scheme by the man of his own choice.[327]

Thus fortified, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his tribunate, and
formulated the measure which was to leave large portions of the public
domain open for distribution to the poor. In the popular gatherings with
which he opened his campaign, he dwelt on the nature of the evils which
he proposed to remedy. It was the interest of Italy, not merely of the
Roman proletariate, that was at stake.[328] He pointed out how the
Italian peasantry had dwindled in numbers, and how that portion of it
which still survived had been reduced to a poverty that was irremediable
by their own efforts. He showed that the slave gangs which worked the
vast estates were a menace, not a help, to Rome. They could not be
enlisted for service in the legions; their disaffection to their masters
was notorious; their danger was being proved even now by the horrible
condition of Sicily, the fate of its slave-owning landlords, the long,
difficult and eventful war which had not even yet been brought to a
close.[329] Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of reason in
his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the Rostra. "The beasts
that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking-places where they may make
their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy but the blessings of
air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you
wander to and fro with your wives and children. Our generals are in the
habit of inspiring their soldiers to the combat by exhorting them to
repel the enemy in defence of their tombs and ancestral shrines. The
appeal is idle and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar, you have
no ancestral tomb. No! you fight and die to give wealth and luxury to
others. You are called the masters of the world; yet there is no clod of
earth that you can call your own." [330]

The proposal, which was ushered in by these stirring appeals, seemed at
first sight to be of a moderate and somewhat conservative character. It
professed to be the renewal of an older law, which had limited the
amount of domain land which an individual might possess to five hundred
_jugera_;[331] it professed, that is, to reinforce an injunction which
had been persistently disobeyed, for this enactment restricting
possession had never been repealed. The extent to which a proposal of
this kind is a re-enactment, in the spirit as well as in the letter,
depends entirely on the length of time which has elapsed since the
original proposal has begun to be violated. A political society, which
recognises custom as one of the bases of law, must recognise desuetude
as equally valid. A law, which has not been enforced for centuries,
would, by the common consent of the courts of such nations as favour
progressive legislation, be regarded as no law at all. Again, the age of
an ordinance determines its suitability to present conditions. It may be
justifiable to revive an enactment that is centuries old; but the
revival should not necessarily dignify itself with that name. It must be
regarded as a new departure, unless the circumstances of the old and the
new enactment can be proved to be approximately the same. Our attempts
to judge the Gracchan law by these considerations are baffled by our
ignorance of the real date of the previous enactment, the stringency of
whose measures he wished to renew. If it was the Licinian law of the
middle of the fourth century,[332] this law must have been renewed, or
must still have continued to be observed, at a period not very long
anterior to the Gracchan proposal; for Cato could point his argument
against the declaration of war with Rhodes by an appeal to a provision
attributed to this measure[333]--an appeal which would have been
pointless, had the provision fallen into that oblivion which persistent
neglect of an enactment must bring to all but the professed students of
law. We can at least assert that the charge against Gracchus of reviving
an enactment so hoary with age as to be absurdly obsolete, is not one of
the charges to be found even in those literary records which were most
unfriendly to his legislation.[334]

The general principle of the measure was, therefore, the limitation to
five hundred _jugera_ of the amount of public land that could be
"possessed" by an individual. The very definition of the tenure
immediately exempted large portions of the State's domain from the
operation of this rule.[335] The Campanian land was leased by the State
to individuals, not merely possessed by them as the result of an
occupation permitted by the government; it, therefore, fell outside the
scope of the measure;[336] but, as it was technically public land and
its ownership was vested in the State, it would have been hazardous to
presume its exemption; it seems, therefore, to have been specifically
excluded from the operation of the bill, and a similar exception was
probably made in favour of many other tracts of territory held under a
similar tenure.[337] Either Gracchus declined to touch any interest that
could properly describe itself as "vested," even though it took merely
the form of a leasehold, or he valued the secure and abundant revenue
which flowed into the coffers of the State from these domains. There
were other lands strictly "public" where the claim of the holders was
still stronger, and where dispossession without the fullest compensation
must have been regarded as mere robbery. We know from later legislation
that respect was had to such lands as the Trientabula, estates which had
been granted by the Roman government at a quit rent to its creditors, as
security for that portion of a national debt which had never been
repaid. It is less certain what happened in the case of lands of which
the usufruct alone had been granted to communities of Roman citizens or
Latin colonists. Ownership in this case still remained vested in the
Roman people, and if the right of usufruct had been granted by law, it
could be removed by law. In the case of Latin communities, however, it
was probably guaranteed by treaty, which no mere law could touch: and so
similar were the conditions of Roman and Latin communities in this
particular, that it is probable that the land whose use was conferred on
whole communities by these ancient grants, was wholly spared by the
Gracchan legislation. In the case of those commons which were possessed
by groups of villagers for the purposes of pasturage (_ager
compascuus_),[338] it is not likely that the group was regarded as the
unit: and therefore, even in the case of such an aggregate possessing
over five hundred _jugera_, their occupation was probably left
undisturbed.

All other possessors must vacate the land which exceeded the prescribed
limit. Such an ordinance would have been harsh, had no compensation been
allowed, and Gracchus proposed certain amends for the loss sustained. In
the first place, the five hundred _jugera_ retained by each possessor
were to be increased by half as much again for each son that he might
possess: although it seems that the amount retained was not to exceed
one thousand _jugera_.[339] Secondly, the land so secured to existing
possessors was not to be held on a merely precarious tenure, and was not
to be burdened by the payment of dues to the State; even if ownership
was not vested in its holders, they were guaranteed gratuitous
undisturbed possession in perpetuity.[340] Thirdly, the bill as
originally drafted even suggested some monetary compensation for the
land surrendered.[341] This compensation was probably based on a
valuation of stock, buildings, and recent permanent improvements, which
were to be found on the territory now reverting to the State. It must
have applied for the most part only to arable land, and practically
amounted to a purchase by the State of items to which it could lay no
legal claim; for it was the soil alone, not the buildings on the soil,
over which its lordship could properly be asserted.

The object of reclaiming the public land was its future distribution
amongst needy citizens. This distribution might have taken either of two
forms. Fresh colonies might have been planted, or the acquired land
might merely be assigned to settlers who were to belong to the existing
political organisations. It was the latter method of simple assignation
that Gracchus chose. There was felt to be no particular need for new
political creations; for the pacification of Italy seemed to be
accomplished, and the new farming class would perform their duty to the
State equally well as members of the territory of Rome or of that of the
existing municipia and coloniae of Roman citizens. There is some
evidence that the new proprietors were not all to be attached to the
city of Rome itself, but that many, perhaps most, were to be attributed
to the existing colonies and municipia, in the neighbourhood of which
their allotments lay.[342] The size of the new allotments which Gracchus
projected is not known; it probably varied with the needs and status of
the occupier, perhaps with the quality of the land, and there is some
indication that the maximum was fixed at thirty _jugera_.[343] This is
an amount that compares favourably with the two, three, seven or ten
_jugera_ of similar assignments in earlier times, and is at once a proof
of the decrease in the value of land--a decrease which had contributed
to the formation of the large estates--and of the large amount of
territory which was expected to be reclaimed by the provisions of the
new measure. The allotments thus assigned were not, however, to be the
freehold property of their recipients. They were, indeed, heritable and
to be held on a perfectly secure tenure by the assignees and their
descendants; but a revenue was to be paid to the State for their use:
and they were to be inalienable--the latter provision being a desperate
expedient to check the land-hunger of the capitalist, and to save the
new settlers from obedience to the economic tendencies of the
times.[344]

It is doubtful whether the social object of Gracchus could have been
fully accomplished, had he confined his attention wholly to the existing
citizens of Rome. The area of economic distress was wider than the
citizen body, and it was the salvation of Italy as a whole that Gracchus
had at heart.[345] There is much reason for supposing that some of the
Italian allies were to be recipients of the benefits of the
measure.[346] In earlier assignations the Latins had not been excluded,
and it is probable that at least these, whether members of old
communities or of colonies, were intended to have some share in the
distribution. There could be no legal hindrance to such participation.
With respect to rights in land, the Latins were already on a level with
Roman citizens, and their exclusion from the new allotments would have
been due to a mere political prejudice which is not characteristic
either of Gracchus or his plans.

The ineffectiveness of laws at Rome was due chiefly to the apathy of the
executive authority. Gracchus saw clearly that his measure would, like
other social efforts of the past, become a mere pious resolution, if its
execution were entrusted to the ordinary officials of the State.[347]
But a special commission, which should effectually carry out the work
which he contemplated, must be of a very unusual kind. The magnitude of
the task, and the impossibility of assigning any precise limit of time
to its completion, made it essential that the Triumvirate which he
established should bear the appearance of a regular but extraordinary
magistracy of the State. The three commissioners created by the bill
were to be elected annually by the Comitia of the Tribes.[348]
Re-election of the same individuals was possible, and the new magistracy
was to come to an end only with the completion of its work. Its
occupants, perhaps, possessed the Imperium from the date of the first
institution of the office; they certainly exercised it from the moment
when, as we shall see, their functions of assignment were supplemented
by the addition of judicial powers. Gracchus was doubtless led to this
new creation purely by the needs of his measure; but he showed to later
politicians the possibility of creating a new and powerful magistracy
under the guise of an agrarian law.

Such was the measure that seemed to its proposer a reasonable and
equitable means of remedying a grave injustice and restoring rather than
giving rights to the poor. He might, if he would, have insisted on
simple restitution. Had he pressed the letter of the law, not an atom of
the public domain need have been left to its present occupiers. The
possessor had no rights against the State; he held on sufferance, and
technically he might be supposed to be always waiting for his summons to
ejectment. To give such people something over and above the limit that
the laws had so long prescribed, to give them further a security of
tenure for the land retained which amounted almost to complete
ownership--were not these unexpected concessions that should be received
with gratitude? And even up to the eve of the polling the murmurs of the
opposition were sometimes met by appeals to its nobler sentiments. The
rich, said Gracchus, if they had the interests of Italy, its future
hopes and its unborn generations at heart, should make this land a free
gift to the State; they were vexing themselves about small issues and
refusing to face the greater problems of the day.[349]

But personal interests can never seem small, and the average man is more
concerned with the present than with the future. The opposition was
growing in volume day by day, and the murmurs were rising into shrieks.
The class immediately threatened must have been numerically small; but
they made up in combination and influence what they lacked in numbers.
It was always easy to startle the solid commercial world of Rome by the
cry of "confiscation". A movement in this direction might have no
limits; the socialistic device of a "re-division of land," which had so
often thrown the Greek commonwealths into a ferment, was being imported
into Roman politics. All the forces of respectability should be allied
against this sinister innovation. It is probable that many who
propagated these views honestly believed that they exactly fitted the
facts of the case. The possessors did indeed know that they were not
owners. They were reminded of the fact whenever they purchased the right
of occupation from a previous possessor, for such a title could not pass
by mancipation; or whenever they sued for the recovery of an estate from
which they had been ejected, for they could not make the plea before the
praetor that the land was theirs "according to the right of the
Quirites," but could rely only on the equitable assistance of the
magistrate tendered through the use of the possessory interdicts; or,
more frequently still, whenever they paid their dues to the Publicanus,
that disinterested middle-man, who had no object in compromising with
the possessors, and could seldom have allowed an acre of land to escape
his watchful eye. But, in spite of these reminders, there was an
impression that the tenure was perfectly secure, and that the State
would never again re-assert its lordship in the extreme form of
dispensing entirely with its clients. Gracchus might talk of
compensation, but was there any guarantee that it would be adequate,
and, even supposing material compensation to be possible, what solace
was that to outraged feelings? Ancestral homes, and even ancestral
tombs, were not grouped on one part of a domain, so that they could be
saved by an owner when he retained his five hundred _jugera_; they were
scattered all over the broad acres. Estates that technically belonged to
a single man, and were therefore subject to the operation of the law,
had practically ceased to confer any benefit on the owner, and were
pledged to other purposes. They had been divided as the _peculia_ of his
sons, they had been promised as the dowry of his daughters. Again those
former laws may have rightly forbidden the occupation of more than a
certain proportion of land; but much of the soil now in possession had
not been occupied by its present inhabitant; he had bought the right to
be there in hard cash from the former tenant. And think of the invested
capital! Dowries had been swallowed up in the soil, and the Gracchan law
was confiscating personal as well as real property, taking the wife's
fortune as well as the husband's. Nay, if the history of the public land
were traced, could it not be shown that such value as it now possessed
had been given it by its occupiers or their ancestors? The land was not
assigned in early times, simply because it was not worth assignation. It
was land that had been reclaimed for use, and of this use the authors of
its value were now to be deprived.[350]