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

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49

Meanwhile the proceedings in the Area Capitolii had been becoming
somewhat less turbulent. The turmoil had quieted down with the exclusion
of the more violent members of the opposition. Gracchus had called a
Contio, for the purpose, it was said, of encouraging his supporters and
asserting his own constancy and defiance of senatorial authority. The
gathering had become a mere partisan mass meeting, such as had often
been seen in the course of the current year, and the herald was crying
"Silence," [420] when suddenly the men on the outskirts of the throng
fell back to right and left. A long line of senators had been seen
hastening up the hill. A deputation from the fathers had come. That must
have been the first impression: and the crowd fell back before its
masters. But in a moment it was seen that the masters had come to
chastise, not to plead. With set faces and blazing eyes Nasica and his
following threw themselves on the yielding mass. The unarmed senators
snatched at the first weapons that lay to hand, the fragments of the
shattered furniture of the meeting, severed planks and legs of benches,
while their retinue pressed on with clubs and sticks. The whole column
made straight for Tiberius and his improvised body-guard. Resistance was
hopeless, and the tribune and his friends turned to flee. But the idea
of restoring order occupied but a small place in the minds of the
maddened senators, The accumulated bitterness of a year found its outlet
in one moment of glorious vengeance. The fathers were behaving like a
Greek street mob of the lowest type which had turned against an
oppressive oligarchy. They were clubbing the Gracchans to death.
Tiberius was in flight when some one seized his toga. He slipped it off
and fled, clad only in his tunic, when he stumbled over a prostrate body
and fell. As he rose, a rain of blows descended on his head.[421] The
man who was seen to strike the first blow is said to have been Publius
Saturius, one of his own colleagues. The glory of his death was
vehemently disputed; one Rufus, since he could not claim the first blow,
is said to have boasted of being the author of the second. Tiberius is
said to have fallen by the very doors of the Capitoline temple, not far
from the statues of the Kings.[422] The number of his adherents that
perished was over three hundred, and it was noted that not one of these
was slain by the sword.[423] Their bodies were thrown into the
Tiber--not by the mob but by the magistrates; the hand of an aedile
committed that of Tiberius to the stream.[424]

The murder of a young man, who was still under thirty at the time of his
death,[425] and the slaughter of a few hundreds of his adherents, may
not seem to be an act of very great significance in the history of a
mighty empire. Yet ancient historians regarded the event as
epoch-marking, as the turning point in the history of Rome, as the
beginning of the period of the civil wars.[426] To justify this
conclusion it is not enough to point to the fact that this was the first
blood shed in civic discord since the age of the Kings;[427] for it
might also have been the last. Though the vendetta is a natural
outgrowth of Italian soil, yet masses of men are seldom, like
individuals, animated solely by the spirit of revenge. The blood of the
innocent is a good battle-cry in politics, but it is little more; it is
far from being the mere pretext, but it is equally far from being the
true cause, of future revolution. Familiarity with the use of force in
civic strife is also a fatal cause of its perpetuation; but familiarity
implies its renewed employment: it can hardly be the result of the first
experiment in murder. The repetition of this ghastly phenomenon in Roman
politics can only be accounted for by the belief that the Gracchan
_emeute_ was of its very nature an event that could not be isolated:
that Gracchus was a pioneer in a hostile country, and that his opponents
preserved all their inherent weakness after the first abortive
manifestation of their pretended strength. A bad government may be
securely entrenched. The senate, whether good or bad, had no defences at
all. Its weakness had in the old days been its pride. It ruled by
influencing opinion. Now that it had ceased to influence, it ruled by
initiating a riot in the streets. It had no military support except such
as was given it by friendly magistrates, and this was a dangerous weapon
which it hesitated to use. To ignore militarism was to be at the mercy
of the demagogue of the street, to admit it was found subsequently to be
equivalent to being at the mercy of the demagogue of the camp. In either
case authority must be maintained at the cost of civil war. But the
material helplessness of the senate was only one factor in the problem.
More fatal flaws were its lack of insight to discover that there were
new problems to be faced, and lack of courage in facing them. This moral
helplessness was due partly to the selfishness of individuals, but
partly also to the fixity of political tradition. In spite of the
brilliancy and culture of some of its members, the senate in its
corporate capacity showed the possession of a narrow heart and an
inexpansive intelligence. Its sympathies were limited to a class; it
learnt its new lessons slowly and did not see their bearing on the
studies of the future. Imperialism abroad and social contentment at home
might be preserved by the old methods which had worked so well in the
past. But to the mind of the masses the past did not exist, and to the
mind of the reformer it had buried its dead. The career of Tiberius
Gracchus was the first sign of a great awakening; and if we regard it as
illogical, and indeed impossible, to pause here and estimate the
character of his reforms, it is because the more finished work of his
brother was the completion of his efforts and followed them as
inexorably as the daylight follows the dawn.

CHAPTER III

The attitude of the senate after the fall of Gracchus was not that of a
combatant who had emerged secure from the throes of a great crisis. A
less experienced victor would have dwelt on the magnitude of the
movement and been guilty of an attempt at its sudden reversal. But the
government pretended that there had been no revolution, merely an
_emeute_. The wicked authors of the sedition must be punished; but the
Gracchan legislation might remain untouched. More than one motive
probably contributed to shape this view. In the first place, the
traditional policy of Rome regarded reaction as equivalent to
revolution. A rash move should be stopped in its inception; but, had it
gone a little way and yielded fruit in the shape of some permanent
organisation, it would be well to accept and, if possible, to weaken
this product; it would be the height of rashness to attempt its
destruction. The recognition of the _fait accompli_ had built up the
Roman Empire, and the dreaded consequences had not come. Why should not
the same be true of a new twist in domestic policy? Secondly, the
opposition of the senate to Gracchus's reforms was based far more
decidedly on political than on economic grounds. The frenzy which seized
the fathers during the closing act of the tribune's life, was excited by
his comprehensive onslaught on their monopoly of provincial, fiscal and
judicial administration. His attempt to annex their lands had aroused
the resentment of individuals, but not the hatred of a corporation. The
individual was always lost in the senate, and the wrongs of the
landowner could be ignored for the moment and their remedy left to time,
if political prudence dictated a middle course. Again, reflection may
have suggested the thought whether these wrongs were after all so great
or so irremediable. The pastoral wealth of Italy was much; but it was
little compared with the possibilities of enterprise in the provinces.
Might not the bait of an agrarian law, whose chances of success were
doubtful and whose operation might in time be impeded by craftily
devised legislation, lull the people into an acceptance of that
senatorial control of the foreign world, which had been so scandalously
threatened by Gracchus? There was a danger in the very raising of this
question; there was further danger in its renewal. A party cry seldom
becomes extinct; but its successful revival demands the sense of some
tangible grievance. To remove the grievance was to silence the
demagogue; what the people wanted was comfort and not power. And lastly,
the senate was not wholly composed of selfish or aggrieved land-holders.
Amongst the sternest upholders of its traditions there were probably
many who were immensely relieved that the troublesome land question had
received some approach to a solution. There are always men hide-bound by
convention and unwilling to move hand or foot in aid of a remedial
measure, who are yet profoundly grateful to the agitator whom they
revile, and profoundly thankful that the antics which they deem
grotesque, have saved themselves from responsibility and their country
from a danger.

It was with such mixed feelings that the senate viewed the Gracchan
_debacle_. It was impossible, however, to accept the situation in its
entirety; for to recognise the whole of Gracchus's career as legitimate
was to set a dangerous precedent for the future. The large army of the
respectable, the bulwark of senatorial power, had not been sufficiently
alarmed. It was necessary to emphasise the fact that there had been an
outrageous sedition on the part of the lower classes. With this object
the senate commanded that the new consuls Popillius and Rupilius should
sit as a criminal commission for the purpose of investigating the
circumstances of the outbreak.[428] The commission was empowered to
impose any sentence, and it is practically certain that it judged
without appeal. The consuls, as usual, exercised their own discretion in
the choice of assessors. The extreme party was represented by Nasica.
Laelius, who also occupied a place on the judgment-seat, might have been
regarded as a moderate;[429] although, as popular sedition and not the
agrarian question was on its trial, there is no reason to suppose that a
member of the Scipionic circle would be less severe than any of his
colleagues in his animadversions on the wretched underlings of the
Gracchan movement whom it was his duty to convict of crime. It was in
fact the street cohort of Tiberius, men whose voices, torches and sticks
had so long insulted the feelings of respectable citizens, that seems to
have been now visited with the penalties for high treason; for no
illustrious name is found amongst the victims of the commission. On some
the ban of interdiction was pronounced, on others the death penalty was
summarily inflicted. Amongst the slain was Diophanes the rhetor; and one
Caius Villius, by some mysterious effort of interpretation which baffles
our analysis, was doomed to the parricide's death of the serpent and the
sack.[430] Blossius of Cumae was also arraigned, and his answer to the
commission was subsequently regarded as expressing the deepest villainy
and the most exalted devotion. His only defence was his attachment to
Gracchus, which made the tribune's word his law. "But what," said
Laelius "if he had willed that you should fire the Capitol?" "That would
never have been the will of Gracchus," was the reply, "but had he willed
it, I should have obeyed".[431] Blossius escaped the immediate danger,
but his fears soon led him to leave Rome, and now an exile from his
adopted as well as from his parent state, he could find no hope but in
the fortunes of Aristonicus, who was bravely battling with the Romans in
Asia. On the collapse of that prince's power he put himself to
death.[432]

The government may have succeeded in its immediate object of proving
itself an effective policeman. The sense of order may have been
satisfied, and the spirit of turbulence, if it existed, may have been
for the moment cowed. But the memory of the central act of the ghastly
tragedy on the Capitoline hill could not be so easily obliterated, and
the chief actor was everywhere received with lowered brows and
ill-omened cries.[433] It was superstition as well as hatred that
sharpened the popular feeling against Nasica. A man was walking the
streets of Rome whose hands were stained by a tribune's blood. He
polluted the city wherein he dwelt and the presence of all who met him.
The convenient theory that a mere street riot had been suppressed might
have been accepted but for the awkward fact that the sanctity of the
tribunate had been trodden under foot by its would-be vindicators. A
prosecution of Nasica was threatened; and in such a case might not the
arguments that vindicated Octavius be the doom of the accused? Popular
hatred finds a convenient focus in a single man; it is easier to loathe
an individual than a group. But for this very reason the removal of the
individual may appease the resentment that the group deserves. Nasica
was an embarrassment to the senate and he might prove a convenient
scapegoat. It was desirable that he should be at once rewarded and
removed; and the opportunity for an honourable banishment was easily
found. The impending war with Aristonicus necessitated the sending of a
commission to Asia, and Nasica was included amongst the five members of
this embassy.[434] There was honour in the possession of such a post and
wealth to be gained by its tenure; but the aristocracy had eventually to
pay a still higher price for keeping Nasica beyond the borders of Italy.
When the chief pontificate was vacated by the fall of Crassus in 130
B.C., the refugee was invested with the office so ardently sought by the
nobles of Rome.[435] He was forced to be contented with this shadow of a
splendid prize, for he was destined never to exercise the high functions
of his office in the city. He seems never to have left Asia and, after a
restless change of residence, he died near the city of Pergamon.[436]

The permanence of the land commission was the most important result of
the senate's determination to detach the political from the economic
consequences of the Gracchan movement.[437] But they tolerated rather
than accepted it. Had they wished to make it their own, every nerve
would have been strained to secure the three places at the annual
elections for men who represented the true spirit of the nobility. But
there was every reason for allowing the people's representatives to
continue the people's work. The commission was an experiment, and the
government did not wish to participate in possible failure; a seasonable
opportunity might arise for suspending or neutralising its activities,
and the senate did not wish to reverse its own work; whether success or
failure attended its operations, the task of the commissioners was sure
to arouse fears and excite odium, especially amongst the Italian allies;
and the nobility were less inclined to excite such sentiments than to
turn them to account. So the people were allowed year after year to
perpetuate the Gracchan clique and to replace its members by avowed
sympathisers with programmes of reform. Tiberius's place was filled by
Crassus, whose daughter Licinia was wedded to Caius Gracchus.[438] Two
places were soon vacated by the fall of Crassus in Asia and the death of
Appius Claudius. They were filled by Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius
Papirius Carbo.[439] The Former had already proved his sympathy with
Gracchus, the latter had Just brought to an end an agitating tribunate,
which had produced a successful ballot law and an abortive attempt to
render the tribune re-eligible. The personnel of the commission was,
therefore, a guarantee of its good faith. Its energy was on a level with
its earnestness. The task of annexing and distributing the domain land
was strenuously undertaken, and other officials, on whom fell the purely
routine function of enforcing the new limit of occupation, seem to have
been equally faithful to their work. Even the consul Popillius, one of
the presidents of the commission that tried the Gracchan rioters, has
left a record of his activity in the words that he was "the first to
expel shepherds from their domains and install farmers in their
stead".[440] The boundary stones of the commissioners still survive to
mark the care with which they defined the limits of occupied land and of
the new allotments; and the great increase in the census roll between
the years 131 and 125 B.C. finds its best explanation in the steady
increase of small landholders effected by the agrarian law. In the
former year the register had shown rather less than 319,000 citizens; in
the latter the number had risen to somewhat more than 394,000.[441] If
this increase of nearly 76,000 referred to the whole citizen body, it
would be difficult to connect it with the work of the commission, except
on the hypothesis that numerous vagrants, who did not as a rule appear
at the census, now presented themselves for assessment; but, when it is
remembered that the published census list of Rome merely contained the
returns of her effective military strength, and that this consisted
merely of the _assidui_, it is clear that a measure which elevated large
portions of the _capite censi_ to the position of yeoman farmers must
have had the effect of increasing the numbers on the register; and this
sudden leap in the census roll may thus be attributed to the successful
working of the new agrarian scheme.[442] A result such as this could not
have been wholly transitory; in tracing the agrarian legislation of the
post-Gracchan period we shall indeed find the trial of experiments which
prove that no final solution of the land question had been reached; we
shall see the renewal of the process of land absorption which again led
to the formation of gigantic estates; but these tendencies may merely
mark the inevitable weeding-out of the weaker of the Gracchan colonists;
they do not prove that the sturdier folk failed to justify the scheme,
to work their new holdings at a profit, and to hand them down to their
posterity. It is true that the landless proletariate of the city
continued steadily to increase; but the causes which lead to the
plethora of an imperial capital are too numerous to permit us to explain
this increase by the single hypothesis of a renewed depopulation of the
country districts.

The distribution of allotments, however, represented but the simpler
element of the scheme. The really arduous task was to determine in any
given case what land could with justice be distributed. The judicial
powers of the triumvirs were taxed to the utmost to determine what land
was public, and what was private. The possessors would at times make no
accurate profession of their tenure; such as were made probably in many
cases aroused distrust. Information was invited from third parties, and
straightway the land courts were the scene of harrowing litigation.[443]
It could at times be vaguely ascertained that, while a portion of some
great domain was held on occupation from the State, some other portion
had been acquired by purchase; but what particular part of the estate
was held on either tenure was undiscoverable, for titles had been lost,
or, when preserved, did not furnish conclusive evidence of the justice
of the original transfer. Even the ascertainment of the fact that a
tract of land had once belonged to the State was no conclusive proof
that the State could still claim rights of ownership; for some of it had
in early times been assigned in allotments, and no historical record
survived to prove where the assignment had ended and the permission of
occupation had begun. The holders of private estates had for purposes of
convenience worked the public land immediately adjoining their own
grounds, the original landmarks had been swept away, and, although they
had paid their dues for the possession of so many acres, it was
impossible to say with precision which those acres were. The present
condition of the land was no index; for some of the possessors had
raised their portion of the public domain to as high a pitch of
cultivation as their original patrimonies: and, as the commissioners
were naturally anxious to secure arable land in good condition for the
new settlers, the original occupiers sometimes found themselves in the
enjoyment of marsh or swamp or barren soil,[444] which remained the sole
relics of their splendid possessions. The judgments of the court were
dissolving ancestral ties, destroying homesteads, and causing the
transference of household gods to distant dwellings. Such are the
inevitable results of an attempt to pry into ancient titles, and to
investigate claims the basis of which lies even a few decades from the
period of the inquisition.

But, while these consequences were unfortunate, they were not likely to
produce political complications so long as the grievances were confined
to members of the citizen body. The vested interests which had been
ignored in the passing of the measure might be brushed aside in its
execution. Had the territory of Italy belonged to Rome, there would have
been much grumbling but no resistance; for effective resistance required
a shadow of legal right. But beyond the citizen body lay groups of
states which were interested in varying degrees in the execution of the
agrarian measure: and their grievances, whether legitimate or not,
raised embarrassing questions of public law. The municipalities composed
of Roman citizens or of half-burgesses had, as we saw, been alarmed at
the introduction of the measure, perhaps through a misunderstanding of
its import and from a suspicion that the land which had been given them
in usufruct was to be resumed. Possibly the proceedings of the
commission may have done something to justify this fear, for the limits
of this land possessed by corporate bodies had probably become very
ill-defined in the course of years. But, although a corporate was
stronger than an individual interest and rested on some public
guarantee, the complaints of these townships, composed as they were of
burgesses, were merely part of the civic question, and must have been
negligible in comparison with the protests of the federate cities of
Italy and the Latins. We cannot determine what grounds the Italian Socii
had either for fear or protest. It is not certain that land had been
assigned to them in usufruct,[445] and such portions of their conquered
territories as had been restored to them by the Roman State were their
own property. But, whether the territories which they conceived to be
threatened were owned or possessed by these communities, such ownership
or possession was guaranteed to them by a sworn treaty, and it is
inconceivable that the Gracchan legislation, the strongest and the
weakest point of which was its strict legality, should have openly
violated federative rights. When, however, we consider the way in which
the public land of Rome ran in and out of the territories of these
allied communities, it is not wonderful that doubts should exist as to
the line of demarcation between state territories and the Roman domain.
Vexed questions of boundaries might everywhere be raised, and the
government of an Italian community would probably find as much
difficulty as a private possessor in furnishing documentary evidence of
title. The fears of the Latin communities are far more comprehensible,
and it was probably in these centres that the Italian revolt against the
proceedings of the commission chiefly originated. The interests of the
Latins in this matter were almost precisely similar to those of the
Romans: and this identity of view arose from a similarity of status. The
Latin colonies had had their territories assigned by Roman
commissioners: and it is probable, although it cannot be proved, that
doubts arose as to the legitimate extent of these assignments in
relation to the neighbouring public land. Many of these territories may
have grown mysteriously at the expense of Rome in districts far removed
from the capital: and in Gaul especially encroachments on the Roman
domain by municipalities or individuals of the Latin colonies most
recently established may have been suspected. But the Latin community
had another interest in the question, which bore a still closer
resemblance to that shown by the Roman burgesses. As the individual
Latin might be a recipient of the favour of the commissioners, so he
might be the victim of their legal claims. The fact that he shared the
right of commerce with Rome and could acquire and sue for land by Roman
forms, makes it practically certain that he could be a possessor of the
Roman domain. So eager had been the government in early times to see
waste land reclaimed and defended, that it could hardly have failed to
welcome the enterprising Latin who crossed his borders, threw his
energies into the cultivation of the public land, and paid the required
dues. Many of the wealthier members of Latin communities may thus have
been liable to the fate of the ejected possessors of Rome; but even
those amongst them whose possessions did not exceed the prescribed limit
of five hundred _jugera_, may have believed that their claims would
receive, or had received, too little attention from the Roman
commission, while the difficulties resulting from the fusion of public
and private land in the same estates may have been as great in these
communities as they were in the territory of Rome. Such grievances
presented no feature of singularity; they were common to Italy, and one
might have thought that a Latin protest would have been weaker than a
Roman. But there was one vital point of difference between the two. The
Roman could appeal only as an individual; the Latin appealed as a member
of a federate state. He did not pause to consider that his grievance was
due to his being half a Roman and enjoying Roman rights. The truth that
a suzerain cannot treat her subjects as badly as she treats her citizens
may be morally, but is not legally, a paradox. The subjects have a
collective voice, the citizens have ceased to have one when their own
government has turned against them. The position of these Latins,
illogical as it may have been, was strengthened by the extreme length to
which Rome had carried her principle of non-interference in ail dealings
with federate allies. The Roman Comitia did not legislate for such
states, no Roman magistrate had jurisdiction in their internal concerns.
By a false analogy it could easily be argued that no Roman commission
should be allowed to disturb their peaceful agricultural relations and
to produce a social revolution within their borders. The allies now
sought a champion for their cause, since the constitution supplied no
mechanism for the direct expression of Italian grievances. The
complaints of individual cities had in the past been borne to the senate
and voiced by the Roman patrons of these towns. Now that a champion for
the confederacy was needed, a common patron had to be created. He was
immediately found in Scipio Aemilianus.[446]