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

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This was the fiercest challenge that he had yet flung to the senate.
There might be a difference of opinion as to the right of a magistrate
to put a question to the people without the guidance of a senatorial
decree; the assignment of land was unquestionably a popular right in so
far as it required ratification by the commons; even the deposition of
Octavius was a matter for the people and would avenge itself. But there
were two senatorial rights--the one usurped, the other created--whose
validity had never been questioned. These were the control of finance
and the direction of provincial administration. Were the possibility
once admitted that these might be dealt with in the Comitia, the
magistrates would cease to be ministers of the senate; for it was
chiefly through a system of judicious prize-giving that the senate
attached to itself the loyalty of the official class. There was perhaps
less fear of what Gracchus himself might do than of the spectre which he
was raising for the future. For in Roman history the events of the past
made those of the future; there were few isolated phenomena in its
development.

From this time the attacks of individual senators on Gracchus became
more vehement and direct. They proceeded from men of the highest rank. A
certain Pompeius, in whom we may probably see an ex-consul and a future
censor, was not ashamed of raising the spectre of a coming monarchy by
reference to the story of the sceptre and the purple robe, and is said
to have vowed to impeach Gracchus as soon as his year of magistracy had
expired;[384] the ex-consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, of Macedonian
fame, reproached Tiberius with his rabble escort. He compared the
demeanour of the father and the son. In the censorship of the former the
citizens used to quench their lights at night, as they saw him pass up
the street to his house, that they might impress the censorial mind with
the ideas of early hours and orderly conduct; now the son of this man
might be seen returning home amidst the blaze of torches, held in the
stout arms of a defiant body-guard drawn from the neediest classes.[385]
These arrows may have Missed the mark; the one that hit was winged by an
aged senator, Titus Annius Luscus, who had held the consulship twenty
years before. His wit is said to have been better established than his
character. He excelled in that form of ready altercation, of impaling
his opponent on the horns of a dilemma by means of some innocent
question, which, both in the courts and the senate, was often more
effective than the power of continuous oratory. He now challenged
Tiberius to a wager (_sponsio_), such as in the public life of Rome was
often employed to settle a disputed point of honour or of fact, to
determine the question whether he had dishonoured a colleague, who was
holy in virtue of his office and had been made sacrosanct by the laws.
The proposal was received by the senators with loud cries of
acclamation. A glance at Tiberius would probably have shown that Annius
had found the weak spot, not merely in his defensive armour, but in his
very soul. The deposition of Octavius was proving a very nemesis; it was
a democratic act that was in the highest degree undemocratic, an
assertion and yet a gross violation of popular liberty.[386] The
superstitious masses were in the habit of washing their hands and
purifying their bodies before they entered into the presence of a
tribune.[387] Might there not be a thrill of awe and repentance when the
idea was brought home to them that this holy temple had been violated:
and must not this be followed by a sense of repugnance to the man who
had prompted them to the unhallowed deed? Tiberius sprang to his feet,
quitted the senate-house and summoned the people. The majesty of the
tribunate in his person had been outraged by Annius. He must answer for
his words. The aged senator appeared before the crowd; he knew his
disadvantage if the ordinary weapons of comitial strife were employed.
In power of words and in repute with the masses he stood far behind
Tiberius. But his presence of mind did not desert him. Might he ask a
few questions before the regular proceedings began? The request was
allowed and there was a dead silence. "Now suppose," said Annius, "you,
Tiberius, were to wish to cover me with shame and abuse, and suppose I
were to call on one of your colleagues for help, and he were to come up
here to offer me his assistance, and suppose further that this were to
excite your displeasure, would you deprive that colleague of yours of
his office?" To answer that question in the affirmative was to admit
that the tribunician power was dead; to answer it in the negative was to
invite the retort that the _auxilium_ was only one form of the
_intercessio_. The quick-witted southern crowd must have seen the
difficulty at once, and Tiberius himself, usually so ready and bold in
speech, could not face the dilemma. He remained silent and dismissed the
assembly.[388]

But matters could not remain as they were. This new aspect of Octavius's
deposition was the talk of the town, and there were many troubled
consciences amongst the members of his own following. Something must be
done to quiet them; he must raise the question himself. The situation
had indeed changed rapidly. Tiberius Gracchus was on his defence. Never
did his power of special pleading appear to greater advantage than in
the speech which followed. He had the gift which makes the mighty
Radical, of diving down and seizing some fundamental truth of political
science, and then employing it with merciless logic for the illustration
or refutation of the practice of the present. The central idea here was
one gathered from the political science of the Greeks. The good of the
community is the only test of the rightness of an institution. It is
justified if it secures that end, unjustified if it does not: or, to use
the language of religion, holy in the one case, devoid of sanctity in
the other. And an institution is not a mere abstraction; we must judge
it by its use. We must, therefore, say that when it obeys the common
interest, it is right: when it ceases to obey it, it is wrong. But the
right must be preserved and the wrong plucked out. So Gracchus
maintained that the tribune was holy and sacrosanct because he had been
sanctified to the people's service and was the people's head. If then he
change his character and do the people wrong, cutting down its strength
and silencing its voice as expressed through the suffrage, he has
deprived himself of his office, for he has ceased to conform to the
terms on which he received it. Should we leave a tribune alone who was
pulling down the Capitolium or burning the docks? And yet a tribune who
did these things would remain a tribune, though a bad one. It is only
when a tribune is destroying the power of the people that he is no
longer a tribune at all. The laws give the tribune the power to arrest
the consul. It is a power given against a man elected by the people; for
consul and tribune are equally mandataries of the people. Shall not then
the people have the right of depriving the tribune of his authority,
when he uses this authority in a way prejudicial to the interests of the
giver? What does the history of the past teach us? Can anything have
been more powerful or more sacred than the ancient monarchy of Rome? The
Imperium of the king was unlimited, the highest priestly offices were
his. Yet the city expelled Tarquin for his crimes. The tyranny of a
single man was alone sufficient to bring to an end a government which
had its roots in the most distant past, which had presided over the very
birth of the city. And, if sanctity alone is to be the ground of
immunity, what are we to think of the punishment of a vestal virgin? Is
there anything in Rome more holy and awe-inspiring than the maidens who
tend and guard the eternal flame? Yet their sin is visited by the most
horrible of deaths. They hold their sacrosanct character through the
gods; they lose it, therefore, when they sin against the gods. Should
the same not be true of the tribune? It is on account of the people that
he is sacred; he cannot retain this divine character when he wrongs the
people; he is a man engaged in destroying the very power which is the
source of his strength. If the tribunate can justly be gained by a
favourable vote of the majority of the tribes, can it not with greater
justice be taken away by an adverse vote of all of them? Again, what
should be the limits of our action in dealing with sacred things? Does
sanctity mean immobility? By no means. What are more holy and inviolable
than things dedicated to the gods? Yet this character does not prevent
the people from handling, moving, transferring them as it pleases. In
the case of the tribunate, it is the office, not the man, that is
inviolable; it may be treated as an object of dedication and transferred
to another. The practice of our own State proves that the office is not
inviolable in the sense of being inalienable, for its holders have often
forsworn it and asked to be divested of it.[389]

The strongest part of this utterance was that which dealt with the
sacred character of office; it was a mere emanation from the performance
of certain functions; the protection, not the reality, of the thing.
Gracchus might have added that even a treaty might under certain
circumstances be legitimately broken. The weakest, from a Roman
standpoint or indeed from that of any stable political society, was the
identification of the permanent and temporary character of an
institution, the assumption that a meeting of the people was the people,
that a tribune was the tribune. How far the speech was convincing we do
not know; it certainly did not relieve Tiberius of his embarrassments,
which were now thickening around him.

Tiberius's success had been mainly due to the country voters. It is true
that he had a large following in the city; but this was numerically
inferior to a mass of urban folk, whose attitude was either indifferent
or hostile. They were indifferent in so far as they did not want
agrarian assignments, and hostile in so far as they were clients of the
noble houses which opposed Tiberius's policy. This urban party was now
in the ascendant, for the country voters had scattered to their
homes.[390] The situation demanded that he should work steadily for two
objects, re-election to the tribunate and the support of the city
voters. If, in addition to this support, he could hold out hopes that
would attract the great capitalists to his side, his position would be
impregnable. Hence in his speeches he began to throw out hints of a new
and wide programme of legislation.[391] There was first the military
grievance. Recent regulations, by the large decrease which they made in
the property qualifications required for service,[392] had increased the
liability to the conscription of the manufacturing and trading classes
of Rome. Gracchus proposed that the period of service should be
shortened--his suggestion probably being, not that the years of
liability to service (the seventeenth to the forty-sixth) should be
lessened, but that within these years a limited number of campaigns
should be agreed on, which should form the maximum amount of active
service for every citizen.[393] Two other proposals dealt with the
question of criminal jurisdiction. The first allowed an appeal to the
people from the decision of _judices_. The form in which this proposal
is stated by our authority, would lead us to suppose that the courts to
be rendered appellable were those constituted under standing laws. The
chief of these _quaestiones_ or _judicia publica_ was the court which
tried cases for extortion, established in the first instance by a Lex
Calpurnia, and possibly reconstituted before this epoch by a Junian
law.[394] A permanent court for the trial of murder may also have
existed at this time.[395] The judges of these standing commissions were
drawn from the senatorial order; and Gracchus, therefore, by suggesting
an appeal from their judgment to the people, was attacking a senatorial
monopoly of the most important jurisdiction, and perhaps reflecting on
the conduct of senatorial _judices_, as displayed especially in relation
to the grievances of distressed provincials. But it is probable that he
also meant to strike a blow at a more extraordinary prerogative claimed
by the senate, and to deny the right of that body to establish special
commissions which could decide without appeal on the life and fortunes
of Roman citizens.[396] So far his proposals, whether based on a
conviction of their general utility or not, were a bid for the support
of the average citizen. But when he declared that the qualification for
the criminal judges of the time could not be allowed to stand, and that
these judges should be taken either from a joint panel of senators and
knights, or from the senate increased by the addition of a number of
members of the equestrian order equal to its present strength, he was
holding out a bait to the wealthy middle class, who were perhaps already
beginning to feel senatorial jurisdiction in provincial matters irksome
and disadvantageous to their interests. We are told by one authority
that Gracchus's eyes even ranged beyond the citizen body and that he
contemplated the possibility of the gift of citizenship to the whole of
Italy.[397] This was not in itself a measure likely to aid in his
salvation by the people; if it was not a disinterested effort of
far-sighted genius, it may have been due to the gathering storm which
his experience showed him the agrarian commission would soon be forced
to meet.[398] Certainly, if all these schemes are rightly attributed to
Tiberius Gracchus, it was he more than any man who projected the great
programme of reform that the future had in store.

Unfortunately for Gracchus the time was short for nursing a new
constituency or spreading a new ideal. The time for the tribunician
elections was approaching, an active canvass was being carried on by the
candidates, and the aggrieved landowners were throwing the whole weight
of their influence into the opposite scale.[399] Wild rumours of his
plans were being circulated. The family clique that filled the agrarian
commission was to snatch at other offices; Gracchus's brother, a youth
still unqualified even for the quaestorship,[400] was to be thrust into
the tribunate, and his father-in-law Appius was destined for the
consulate.[401] Rome was to be ruled by a dynasty, and the tyranny of
the commission was to extend to every department of the State. Gracchus
felt that the city-combination against him was too strong, and sent an
earnest summons to his supporters in the country. But practical needs
were stronger than gratitude; the farmers were busy with their harvest;
and it was plain that on this occasion the man of the street was to have
the decisive voice. The result showed that even he was not unmoved by
Gracchus's services, and by his last appeal that a life risked on behalf
of the people should be protected by a renewed investiture with the
tribunate.[402]

The day of the election arrived and the votes were taken. When they came
to be read out, it was found that the two first tribes had given their
voice for Gracchus. Then there was a sudden uproar. The votes were going
against the landlords; a legal protest must be made. Men rose in the
assembly, and shouted out that immediate re-election to the tribunate
was forbidden by the law. They were probably both right and wrong in
their protest, as men so often were who ventured to make a definite
assertion about the fluid public law of Rome. There was apparently no
enactment forbidding the iteration of this office, and appointment to
the tribunate must have been governed by custom. But recent custom seems
to have been emphatically opposed to immediate re-election, and the
appeal was justified on grounds of public practice.[403] It would
probably have been disregarded, had the Gracchan supporters been in an
overwhelming majority, or Gracchus's colleagues unanimous in their
support. But the people were divided, and the president was not
enthusiastic enough in the cause to risk his future impeachment.
Rubrius, to whom the lot had assigned the conduct of the proceedings on
that day, hesitated as to the course which he ought to follow. A bolder
spirit Mummius, the man who had been made by the deposition of Octavius,
asked that the conduct of the assembly should be handed over to him.
Rubrius, glad to escape the difficulty, willingly yielded his place; but
now the other members of the college interposed. The forms of the
Comitia were being violated; a president could not be chosen without the
use of the lot. The resignation of Rubrius must be followed by another
appeal to sortition. The point of order raised, as usual, a heated
discussion; the tribunes gathered on the Rostra to argue the matter out.
Nothing could be gained by keeping the people as the spectators of such
a scene, and Gracchus succeeded in getting the proceedings adjourned to
the following day.[404]

The situation was becoming more desperate; for each delay was a triumph
for the opposition, and could only strengthen the belief in the
illegality of Gracchus's claim. He now resorted to the last device of
the Roman; he ceased to be a protector and became a suppliant. Although
still a magistrate, he assumed the garb of mourning, and with humbled
and tearful mien begged the help of individuals in the market
place.[405]

He led his son by the hand; his children and their mother were to be
wards of the people, for he had despaired of his own life. Many were
touched; to some the tribunate of Gracchus seemed like a rift in a dark
cloud of oppression which would close around them at his fall, and their
hearts sank at the thought of a renewed triumph of the nobility. Others
were moved chiefly by the fears and sufferings of Gracchus. Cries of
sympathy and defiance were raised in answer to his tears, and a large
crowd escorted him to his house at nightfall and bade him be confident
of their support on the following day. During his appeals he had hinted
at the fear of a nocturnal attack by his foes: and this led many to form
an encampment round his house and to remain as its vigilant defenders
throughout the night.[406]

Before day-break he was up and engaged in hasty colloquy with his
friends. The fear of force was certainly present; and definite plans may
have been now made for its repulsion. Some even believed that a signal
for battle was agreed on by Gracchus, if matters should come to that
extreme.[407] With a true Roman's scruples he took the omens before he
left his house. They presaged ill. The keeper of the sacred chickens,
which Gracchus's Imperium now permitted him to consult, could get
nothing from the birds, even though he shook the cage. Only one of the
fowls advanced, and even that would not touch the food. And the unsought
omens were as evil as those invited. Snakes were found to have hatched a
brood in his helmet, his foot stumbled on the threshold with such
violence that blood flowed from his sandal; he had hardly advanced on
his way when crows were seen struggling on his left, and the true object
of the sign was pointed when a stone, dislodged by one of them from a
roof, fell at his own feet. This concourse of ill-luck frightened his
boldest comrades; but his old teacher, Blossius of Cumae, vehemently
urged the prosecution of the task. Was a son of Gracchus, the grandson
of Africanus, chief minister of the Roman people,[408] to be deterred by
a crow from listening to the summons of the citizens? If the disgrace of
his absence amused his enemies, they would keep their laughter to
themselves. They would use that absence seriously, to denounce him to
the people as a king who was already aping the luxury of the tyrant. As
Blossius spoke, men were seen running from the direction of the Capitol;
they came up, they bade him press on, as all was going well. And, in
fact, it seemed as if all might turn out brightly. The Capitoline
temple, and the level area before it, which was to be the scene of the
voting, were filled with his supporters. A hearty cheer greeted him as
he appeared, and a phalanx closed round him to prevent the approach of
any hostile element. Shortly after the proceedings began, the senate was
summoned by the consul to meet in the temple of Fides.[409] A few yards
of sloping ground was all that now separated the two hostile camps.[410]

The interval for reflection had strengthened the belief of some of the
tribunes that Gracchus's candidature was illegal, and they were ready to
support the renewed protests of the rich. The election, however, began;
for the faithful Mummius was now presiding, and he proceeded to call on
the tribes to vote. But the business of filing into their separate
compartments, always complicated, was now impossible. The fringe of the
crowd was in a continual uproar; from its extremities the opponents of
the measure were wedging their way in. As his supporters squared their
shoulders, the whole mass rocked and swayed. There was no hope of
eliciting a decision from this scuffling and pushing throng. Every
moment brought the assembly nearer to open riot. Suddenly a man was seen
at some distance from Tiberius gesticulating with his hand as though he
had something to impart. He was recognised as Fulvius Flaccus, a
senator, a man perhaps already known as a sympathiser with schemes of
reform. Gracchus asked the crowd immediately around him to give way a
little, and Fulvius fought his way up to the tribune. His news was that
in the sitting of the senate the rich proprietors had asked the consul
to use force, that he had declined, and that now they were preparing on
their own motion to slay Tiberius. For this purpose they had collected a
large band of armed slaves and retainers.[411] Tiberius immediately
imparted the news to his friends. Preparations for defence were hastily
made: an improvised body-guard was formed; togas were girt up, and the
staves of the lictors were broken into fragments to serve as clubs. The
Gracchans more distant from the centre of the scene were meanwhile
marvelling at the strange preparations of which they caught but
glimpses, and could be seen asking eager questions as to their meaning.
To reach these distant supporters by his voice was impossible; Tiberius
could but touch his forehead with his hand to indicate that his life was
in danger. Immediately a shout went up from the opposite side "Tiberius
is asking for the diadem," and eager messengers sped with the news to
the senate.[412] There was probably a knowledge that physical support
for their cause would be found in that quarter, and the exodus of these
excited capitalists was apparently assisted by an onslaught from the
mob. A regular tumult was brewing, and the tribunes, instead of striving
to preserve order, or staying to interpose their sacred persons between
the enraged combatants, fled incontinently from the spot. Their fear was
natural, for by remaining they might seem to be identifying themselves
with a cause that was either lost or lawless. With the tribunes vanished
the last trace of legality. The priests closed the temple to keep its
precincts from the mob. The more timorous of the crowd fled in wild
disorder, spreading wilder rumours. Tiberius was deposing the remaining
tribunes from office; he was appointing himself to a further tribunate
without the formalities of election.[413]

Meanwhile the senate was deliberating in the temple of Fides. In the old
days their deliberations might have resulted in the appointment of a
dictator, and one of the historians who has handed down the record of
these facts marvels that this was not the case now.[414] But the
dictatorship had been weakened by submission to the appeal, and long
before it became extinct had lost its significance as a means of
repressing sedition within the city. The Roman constitution had now no
mechanism for declaring a state of siege or martial law. From one point
of view the extinction of the dictatorship was to be regretted. The
nomination of this magistrate would have involved at least a day's
delay;[415] some further time would have been necessary before he had
collected round him a sufficient force in a city which had neither
police nor soldiers. Had it been decided to appoint a dictator, the
outrages of the next hour could never have occurred. As things were, it
seemed as though the senate had to choose between impotence and murder.
There was indeed another way. Such was the respect for members of the
senatorial order, that a deputation of that body, headed by the consul,
would probably have led to the dispersal of the mob. But passions were
inflamed and it was no time for peaceful counsels. The advocate of
summary measures was the impetuous Nasica. He urged the consul to save
the city and to put down the tyrant. He demanded that the sense of the
house should be taken as to whether extreme measures were now necessary.
Even at this time a tradition may have existed that a magic formula by
which the senate advised the magistrates "to see to it that the State
took no harm," [416] could justify any act of violence in an emergency.
The sense of the house was with Nasica, but a resolution could not be
framed unless the consul put the question. The answer of Scaevola was
that of a lawyer. He would commence no act of violence, he would put to
death no citizen uncondemned. If, however, the people, through the
persuasion or compulsion of Tiberius, should come to any illegal
decision, he would see that such a resolution was not observed. Nasica
sprang to his feet. "The consul is betraying the city; those who wish
the salvation of the laws, follow me." [417] With this he drew the hem
of his toga over his head,[418] and rushed from the door in the
direction of the Capitoline temple. He was followed by a crowd of
senators, all wrapping the folds of their togas round their left arms.
Outside the door they were joined by their retainers armed with clubs
and staves.[419]