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

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The choice was inevitable and was dictated by three potent
considerations. There was the dignity of the man, recently raised to its
greatest height by the capture of Numantia; there was his known
detachment from the recent Gracchan policy and his forcibly expressed
dislike of the means by which it had been carried through; there was the
further conviction based on his recent utterances that he had little
liking for the Roman proletariate. The news of Gracchus's fall had been
brought to Scipio in the camp before Numantia; his epitaph on the
murdered tribune was that which the stern Hellenic goddess of justice
and truth breathes over the slain Aegisthus:--

So perish all who do the like again.[447]

To Scipio Gracchus's undertaking must have seemed an act of impudent
folly, its conduct must have appeared something worse than madness. In
all probability it was not the agrarian movement which roused his
righteous horror, but the gross violation of the constitution which
seemed to him to be involved in the inception and consequences of the
plan. Of all political temperaments that of the Moderate is the least
forgiving, just because it is the most timorous. He sees the gulf that
yawns at his own feet, he lacks the courage to take the leap, and sets
up his own halting attitude, of which he is secretly ashamed, as the
correct demeanour for all sensible and patriotic men. The Conservative
can appreciate the efforts of the Radical, for each is ennobled by the
pursuit of the impossible; but the man of half measures and
indeterminate aims, while contemning both, will find the reaction from
violent change a more potent sentiment even than his disgust at corrupt
immobility. Probably Scipio had never entertained such a respect for the
Roman constitution as during those busy days in camp, when the incidents
of the blockade were varied by messages describing the wild proceedings
of his brother-in-law at Rome. Yet Scipio must have known that an
unreformed government could give him nothing corresponding to his
half-shaped ideals of a happy peasantry, a disciplined and effective
soldiery, an uncorrupt administration that would deal honestly and
gently with the provincials. His own position was in itself a strong
condemnation of the powers at Rome. They were relying for military
efficiency on a single man. Why should not they rely for political
efficiency on another? But the latter question did not appeal to Scipio.
To tread the beaten path was not the way to make an army; but it was
good enough for politics.

Scipio did not scorn the honours of a triumph, and the victory of
Numantia was followed by the usual pageant in the streets.[448] He was
unquestionably the foremost man of Rome, and senate and commons hung on
his lips to catch some definite expression of his attitude to recent
events, or to those which were stirring men's minds in the present. They
had not long to wait, for a test was soon presented. When in 131 Carbo
introduced his bill permitting re-election to the tribunate, all the
resources of Scipio's dignified oratory were at the disposal of the
senate, and the coalition of his admirers with the voters whom the
senate could dispose of, was fatal to the chances of the bill.[449] Such
an attitude need not have weakened his popularity; for excellent reasons
could be given, in the interest of popular government itself, against
permitting any magistracy to become continuous, But his political
enemies were on the watch, and in one of the debates on the measure care
was taken that a question should be put, the answer to which must either
identify or compromise him with the new radicalism. Carbo asked him what
he thought about the death of Tiberius Gracchus. Scipio's answer was
cautious but precise; "If Gracchus had formed the intention of seizing
on the administration of the State, he had been justly slain." It was
merely a restatement of the old constitutional theory that one who aimed
at monarchy was by that very fact an outlaw. But the answer,
hypothetical as was its expression, implied a suspicion of Gracchus's
aims. It did not please the crowd; there was a roar of dissent. Then
Scipio lost his temper. The contempt of the soldier for the civilian, of
the Roman for the foreigner, of the man of pure for the man of mixed
blood--a contempt inflamed to passion by the thought that men such as he
were often at the mercy of these wretches--broke through all reserve. "I
have never been frightened by the clamour of the enemy in arms," he
shouted, "shall I be alarmed by your cries, ye step-sons of Italy?" This
reflection on the lineage of his audience naturally aroused another
protest. It was met by the sharp rejoinder, "I brought you in chains to
Rome; you are freed now, but none the more terrible for that!" [450] It
was a humiliating spectacle. The most respected man in Rome was using
the vulgar abuse of the streets to the sovereign people; and the man who
used this language was so blinded by prejudice as not to see that the
blood which he reviled gave the promise of a new race, that the mob
which faced him was not a crowd of Italian peasants, willing victims of
the martinet, that the Asiatic and the Greek, with their sordid clothes
and doubtful occupations, possessed more intelligence than the Roman
members of the Scipionic circle and might one day be the rulers of Rome.
The new race was one of infinite possibilities. It needed guidance, not
abuse. Carbo and his friends must have been delighted with the issue of
their experiment. Scipio had paid the first instalment to that treasury
of hatred, which was soon to prove his ruin and to make his following a
thing of the past.

Such was the position of Scipio when he was approached by the Italians.
His interest in their fortunes was twofold. First he viewed them with a
soldier's eye.[451] They were tending more and more to form the flower
of the Roman armies abroad: and, although in obedience to civic
sentiment he had employed a heavier scourge on the backs of the
auxiliaries than on those of the Roman troops before Numantia,[452] the
chastisement, which he would have doubtless liked to inflict on all, was
but an expression of his interest in their welfare. Next he admired the
type for its own sake. The sturdy peasant class was largely represented
here, and he probably had more faith in its permanence amongst the
federate cities than amongst the needy burgesses whom the commissioners
were attempting to restore to agriculture. He could not have seen the
momentous consequences which would follow from a championship of the
Italian allies against the interests of the urban proletariate; that
such a dualism of interests would lead to increased demands on the part
of the one, to a sullen resistance on the part of the other; that in
this mere attempt to check the supposed iniquities of a too zealous
commission lay the germ of the franchise movement and the Social War.
His protection was a matter of justice and of interest. The allies had
deserved well and should not be robbed; they were the true protectors of
Rome and their loyalty must not be shaken. Scipio, therefore, took their
protest to the senate. He respected the susceptibilities of the people
so far as to utter no explicit word of adverse criticism on the Gracchan
measure; but he dwelt on the difficulties which attended its execution,
and he suggested that the commissioners were burdened with an invidious
task in having to decide the disputed questions connected with the land
which they annexed. By the nature of the case their judgments might
easily appear to the litigants as tinged with prejudice. It would be
better, he suggested, if the functions of jurisdiction were separated
from those of distribution and the former duties given to some other
authority.[453] The senate accepted the suggestion, and its
reasonableness must have appealed even to the people, for the measure
embodying it must have passed the Comitia, which alone could abrogate
the Gracchan law.[454] Possibly some recent judgments of the
commissioners had produced a sense of uneasiness amongst large numbers
of the citizen body, and there may have been a feeling that it would be
to the advantage of all parties if the cause of scandal were removed.
Perhaps none but the inner circle of statesmen could have predicted the
consequences of the change. The decision of the agrarian disputes was
now entrusted to the consuls, who were the usual vehicles of
administrative jurisdiction. The history of the past had proved over and
over again the utter futility of entrusting the administration of an
extraordinary and burdensome department to the regular magistrates. They
were too busy to attend to it, even if they had the will. But in this
case even the will was lacking. Of the two consuls Manius Aquillius was
destined for the war in Asia, and his colleague Caius Sempronius
Tuditanus had no sooner put his hand to the new work than he saw that
the difficulties of adjudication had been by no means the creation of
the commissioners. He answered eagerly to the call of a convenient
Illyrian war and quitted the judgment seat for the less harassing
anxieties of the camp.[455] The functions of the commissioners were
paralysed; they seem now to have reached a limit where every particle of
land for distribution was the subject of dispute, and, as there was no
authority in existence to settle the contested claims, the work of
assignation was brought to a sudden close. The masses of eager
claimants, that still remained unsatisfied, felt that they had been
betrayed; the feeling spread amongst the urban populace, and the name of
Scipio was a word that now awoke suspicion and even execration.[456] It
was not merely the sense of betrayal that aroused this hostile
sentiment; the people charged him with ingratitude. Masses of men, like
individuals, love a _protege_ more than a benefactor. They have a pride
in looking at the colossal figure which they have helped to create. And
had not they in a sense made Scipio? Their love had been quickened by
the sense of danger; they had braved the anger of the nobles to put
power into his hands; they had twice raised him to the consulship in
violation of the constitution. And now what was their reward? He had
deliberately chosen to espouse the cause of the allies and oppose the
interests of the Roman electorate. Scipio's enemies had good material to
work upon. The casual grumblings of the streets were improved on, and
formulated in the openly expressed belief that his real intention was
the repeal of the Sempronian law, and in the more far-fetched suspicion
that he meant to bring a military force to bear on the Roman mob, with
its attendant horrors of street massacre or hardly less bloody
persecution.[457]

The attacks on Scipio were not confined to the informal language of
private intercourse. Hostile magistrates introduced his enemies to the
Rostra, and men like Fulvius Flaccus inveighed bitterly against
him.[458] On the day when one of these attacks was made, Scipio was
defending his position before the people; he had been stung by the
charge of ingratitude, for he retorted it on his accusers; he complained
that an ill return was being made to him for his many services to the
State. In the evening Scipio was escorted from the senate to his house
by a crowd of sympathisers. Besides senators and other Romans the escort
comprised representatives of his new clients, the Latins and the Italian
allies.[459] His mind was full of the speech which he meant to deliver
to the people on the following day. He retired early to his sleeping
chamber and placed his writing tablet beside his bed, that he might fix
the sudden inspirations of his waking hours. When morning dawned, he was
found lying on his couch but with every trace of life extinct. The
family inquisition on the slaves of the household was held as a matter
of course. Their statements were never published to the world, but it
was believed that under torture they had confessed to seeing certain men
introduced stealthily during the night through the back part of the
house; these, they thought, had strangled their master.[460] The reason
which they assigned for their reticence was their fear of the people;
they knew that Scipio's death had not appeased the popular fury, that
the news had been received with joy, and they did not wish by invidious
revelations to become the victims of the people's hate. The fears of the
slaves were subsequently reflected in the minds of those who would have
been willing to push the investigation further. There was ground for
suspicion; for Scipio, although some believed him delicate,[461] had
shown no sign of recent illness. A scrutiny of the body is even said to
have revealed a livid impress near the throat.[462] The investigation
which followed a sudden death within the walls of a Roman household, if
it revealed the suspicion of foul play, was usually the preliminary to a
public inquiry. The duty of revenge was sacred; it appealed to the
family even more than to the public conscience. But there was no one to
raise the cry for retribution. He had no sons, and his family was
represented but by his loveless wife Sempronia. His many friends must
indeed have talked of making the matter public, and perhaps began at
once to give vent to those dark suspicions which down to a late age
clouded the names of so many of the dead man's contemporaries. But the
project is said to have been immediately opposed by representatives of
the popular party;[463] the crime, if crime there was, had been no
vulgar murder; a suspicion that violence had been used was an insult to
the men who had fought him fairly in the political field; a _quaestio_
instituted by the senate might be a mere pretext for a judicial murder;
it might be the ruse by which the nobles sought to compass the death of
the people's new favourite and rising hope, Caius Gracchus. Ultimately
those who believed in the murder and pined to avenge it, were
constrained to admit that it was wiser to avoid a disgraceful political
wrangle over the body of their dead hero. But, for the retreat to be
covered, it must be publicly announced by those who had most authority
to speak, that Scipio had died a natural death. This was accordingly the
line taken by Laelius, when he wrote the funeral oration which Quintus
Fabius Maximus delivered over the body of his uncle;[464] "We cannot
sufficiently mourn this death by disease" were words purposely spoken to
be an index to the official version of the decease. The fear of
political disturbance which veiled the details of the tragedy, also
dictated that the man, whom friends and enemies alike knew to have been
the greatest of his age, should have no public funeral.[465]

The government might well fear a scandalous scene--the Forum with its
lanes and porticoes crowded by a snarling holiday crowd, the laudation
of the speakers interrupted by gibes and howls, the free-fight that
would probably follow the performance of the obsequies.

But suppression means rumour. The mystery was profoundly enjoyed by this
and subsequent ages. Every name that political or domestic circumstances
could conveniently suggest, was brought into connection with Scipio's
death. Caius Gracchus,[466] Fulvius Flaccus,[467] Caius Papirius
Carbo[468] were all indifferently mentioned. Suspicion clung longest to
Carbo, probably as the man who had lately come into the most direct
conflict with his supposed victim; even Carbo's subsequent conversion to
conservatism could not clear his name, and his guilt seems to have been
almost an article of faith amongst the optimates of the Ciceronian
period. But there were other versions which hinted at domestic crime.
Did not Cornelia have an interest in removing the man who was undoing
the work of her son, and might she not have had a willing accomplice in
Scipio's wife Sempronia?[469] It was believed that this marriage of
arrangement had never been sanctioned by love; Sempronia was plain and
childless, and the absence of a husband's affection may have led her to
think only of her duties as a daughter and a sister.[470] People who
were too sane for these extravagances, but were yet unwilling to accept
the prosaic solution of a natural death and give up the pleasant task of
conjecture, suggested that Scipio had found death by his own hand. The
motive assigned was the sense of his inability to keep the promises
which he had made.[471] These promises may have been held to be certain
suggestions for the amelioration of the condition of the Latin and
Italian allies.

But it required no conjecture and no suspicion to emphasise the tragic
nature of Scipio's death. He was but fifty-six; he was by far the
greatest general that Rome could command, a champion who could spring
into the breach when all seemed lost, make an army out of a rabble and
win victory from defeat; he was a great moral force, the scourge of the
new vices, the enemy of the provincial oppressor; he was the greatest
intellectual influence in aristocratic Rome, embellishing the staid
rigour of the ancient Roman with something of the humanism of the Greek;
Xenophon was the author who appealed most strongly to his simple and
manly tastes; and his purity of soul and clearness of intellect were
fitly expressed in the chasteness and elegance of his Latin style. The
modern historian has not to tax his fancy in discovering great qualities
in Scipio; the mind of every unprejudiced contemporary must have echoed
the thought of Laelius, when he wrote in his funeral speech "We cannot
thank the gods enough that they gave to Rome in preference to other
states a man with a heart and intellect like this".[472] But the
dominant feeling amongst thinking men, who had any respect for the
empire and the constitution, was that of panic at the loss. Quintus
Metellus Macedonicus had been his political foe; but when the tidings of
death were brought him, he was like one distraught. "Citizens," he
wailed, "the walls of our city are in ruins." [473] And that a great
breach had been made in the political and military defences of Rome is
again the burden of Laelius's complaint, "He has perished at a time when
a mighty man is needed by you and by all who wish the safety of this
commonwealth." These utterances were not merely a lament for a great
soldier, but the mourning for a man who might have held the balance
between classes and saved a situation that was becoming intolerable. We
cannot say whether any definite means of escape from the brewing storm
was present to Scipio's mind, or, if he had evolved a plan, whether he
was master of the means to render it even a temporary success. Perhaps
he had meddled too little with politics to have acquired the dexterity
requisite for a reconciler. Possibly his pride and his belief in the
aristocracy as an aggregate would have stood in his way. But he was a
man of moderate views who led a middle party, and he attracted the
anxious attention of men who believed that salvation would not come from
either of the extremes. He had once been the favourite of the crowd, and
might be again, he commanded the distant respect of the nobility, and he
had all Italy at his side. Was there likely to be a man whose position
was better suited to a reconciliation of the war of jarring interests?
Perhaps not; but at the time of his death the first steps which he had
taken had only widened the horizon of war. He found a struggle between
the commons and the nobles; he emphasised, although he had not created,
the new struggle between the commons and Italy. His next step would have
been decisive, but this he was not fated to take.

When we turn from the history of the agrarian movement and its
unexpected consequences to other items in the internal fortunes of Rome
during this period, we find that Tiberius Gracchus had left another
legacy to the State. This was the idea of a magistracy which, freed from
the restraint of consulting the senate, should busy itself with
political reform, remove on its own initiative the obstacles which the
constitution threw in the path of its progress, and effect the
regeneration of Rome and even of Italy by means of ordinances elicited
from the people. The social question was here as elsewhere the efficient
cause; but it left results which seemed strangely disproportionate to
their source. The career of Gracchus had shown that the leadership of
the people was encumbered by two weaknesses. These were the packing of
assemblies by dependants of the rich, whose votes were known and whose
voices were therefore under control, and the impossibility of
re-election to office, which rendered a continuity of policy on the part
of the demagogue impossible. It was the business of the tribunate of
Carbo to remove both these hindrances to popular power. His first
proposal was to introduce voting by ballot in the legislative
assemblies;[474] it was one that could not easily be resisted, since the
principle of the ballot had already been recognised in elections, and in
all judicial processes with the exception of trials for treason. These
measures seem to have had the support of the party of moderate reform:
and Scipio and his friends probably offered no resistance to the new
application of the principle. Without their support, and unprovided with
arguments which might excite the fears or jealousy of the people, the
nobility was powerless: and the bill, therefore, easily became law. The
change thus introduced was unquestionably a great one. Hitherto the
country voters had been the most independent; now the members of the
urban proletariate were equally free, and from this time forth the voice
of the city could find an expression uninfluenced by the smiles or
frowns of wealthy patrons. The ballot produced its intended effect more
fully in legislation than in election; its introduction into the latter
sphere caused the nobility to become purchasers instead of directors;
but it was seldom that a law affected individual interests so directly
as to make a bargain for votes desirable. The chief bribery found in the
legislative assemblies was contained in the proposal submitted by the
demagogue.

Carbo's second proposal, that immediate and indefinite re-election to
the tribunate should be permitted, was not recommended on the same
grounds of precedent or reason. The analogies of the Roman constitution
were opposed to it, and the rules against the perpetuity of office which
limited the patrician magistracies, and made even a single re-election
to the consulship illegal,[475] while framed in support of aristocratic
government, had had as their pretext the security of the Republic, and
therefore ostensibly of popular freedom and control. Again, the people
might be reminded that the tribunate was not always a power friendly to
their interests, and that the veto which blocked the expression of their
will might be continued to a second year by the obstinate persistence of
a minority of voters. Excellent arguments of a popular kind could be,
and probably were, employed against the proposal. Certainly the
sentiment which really animated the opposition could have found little
favour with the masses, who ultimately voted for the rejection of the
bill. All adherents of senatorial government must have seen in the
success of the measure the threat of a permanent opposition, the
possibility of the rise of official demagogues of the Greek type,
monarchs in reality though, not in name, the proximity of a Gracchan
movement unhampered by the weakness which had led to Gracchus's fall. It
is easier for an electorate to maintain a principle by the maintenance
of a personality than to show its fervour for a creed by submitting new
and untried exponents to a rigid confession of faith. The senate knew
that causes wax and wane with the men who have formulated them, and it
had always been more afraid of individuals than of masses. Scipio's view
of the Gracchan movement and his acceptance of the cardinal maxims of
existing statecraft, prepare us for the attitude which he assumed on
this occasion. His speech against the measure was believed to have been
decisive in turning the scale. He was supported by his henchmen, and the
faithful Laelius also gave utterance to the protests of the moderates
against the unwelcome innovation. This victory, if decisive, would have
made the career of Caius Gracchus impossible--a career which, while it
fully justified the attitude of the opposition, more than fulfilled the
designs of the advocates of the change. But the triumph was evanescent.
Within the next eight years re-election to the tribunate was rendered
possible under certain circumstances. The successful proposal is said to
have taken the form of permitting any one to be chosen, if the number of
candidates fell short of the ten places which were to be filled.[476]
This arrangement was probably represented as a corollary of the ancient
religious injunction which forbade the outgoing tribunes to leave the
Plebs unprovided with guardians; and this presentment of the case
probably weakened the arguments of the opposition. The aristocratic
party could hardly have misconceived the import of the change. It was
intended that a party which desired the re-election of a tribune should,
by withdrawing some of its candidates at the last moment,[477] qualify
him for reinvestiture with the magistracy.