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

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An aspirant for favour, who wished to enter on a race with the recent
type of popular leader, must inevitably think of provision for the poor;
but a mere copy or extension of the Gracchan proposals was impossible.
No measure that had been fiercely opposed by the senate could be
defended with decency by the representative, and, as Drusus came in
after time to be styled, the "advocate" of that body.[684] Such a scheme
as an extension of the system of corn distribution would besides have
shocked the political sense both of the patron and his clients, and
would not have served the political purposes of the latter, since such a
concession could not easily have been rescinded. The system of agrarian
assignation, in the form in which it had been carried through by the
hands of the Gracchi, had at the moment a complete machinery for its
execution, and there was no plausible ground for extending this measure
of benevolence. The older system of colonisation was the device which
naturally occurred to Drusus and his advisers, and the choice was the
more attractive in that it might be employed in a manner which would
accentuate certain elements in the Gracchan scheme of settlement that
had not commended themselves to public favour. The masses of Rome
desired the monopoly of every prize which the favourite of the moment
had to bestow; but Gracchus's colonies were meant for the middle class,
not for the very poor, and the preliminary to membership of the
settlements was an uncomfortable scrutiny into means, habits and
character.[685] The masses desired comfort. Capua may have pleased them,
but they had little liking for a journey across the sea to the site of
desolated Carthage. The very modesty of Gracchus's scheme, as shown in
the number of the settlements projected and of the colonists who were to
find a home in each, proved that it was not intended as a benefit to the
proletariate as a whole. Drusus came forward with a proposal for twelve
colonies, all of which were probably to be settled on Italian and
Sicilian soil;[686] each of these foundations was to provide for three
thousand settlers, and emigrants were not excluded on the ground of
poverty. An oblique reflection on the disinterestedness of Gracchus's
efforts was further given in the clause which created the commissioners
for the foundation of these new colonies, Drusus's name did not appear
in the list. He asked nothing for himself, nor would he touch the large
sums of money which must flow through the hands of the commissioners for
the execution of so vast a scheme.[687] The suspicion of self-seeking or
corruption was easily aroused at Rome, as it must have been in any state
where such large powers were possessed by the executive, and where no
control of the details of execution or expenditure had ever been
exercised by the people; and Gracchus's all-embracing energy had
betrayed him into a position, which had been accepted in a moment of
enthusiasm, but which, disallowed as it was by current sentiment and
perhaps by the law, might easily be shaken by the first suggestion of
mistrust. The scheme of Drusus, although it proved a phantom and perhaps
already possessed this elusive character when the senate pledged its
credit to the propounder of the measure, was of value as initiating a
new departure in the history of Roman colonisation. Even Gracchus had
not proposed to provide in this manner for the dregs of the city, and
the first suggestion for forming new foundations simply for the object
of depleting the plethora of Rome--the purpose real or professed of many
later advocates of colonisation--was due to the senate as an accident in
a political game, to Drusus perhaps as the result of mature reflection.
Since his proposal, which was really one for agrarian assignation on an
enormous scale, was meant to compete with Gracchus's plan for the
founding of colonies, it was felt to be impossible to burden the new
settlers with the payment of dues for the enjoyment of their land.
Gracchus's colonists were to have full ownership of the soil allotted to
them, and Drusus's could not be placed in an inferior position. But the
existence of thirty-six thousand settlers with free allotments would
immediately suggest a grievance to those citizens who, under the
Gracchan scheme of land-assignment, had received their lots subject to
the condition of the payment of annual dues to the State. If the new
allotments were to be declared free, the burden must be removed from
those which had already been distributed.[688] Drusus and the senate
thus had a logical ground for the step which seems to have been taken,
of relieving all the land which had been distributed since the tribunate
of the elder Gracchus from the payment of _vectigal_. It was a popular
move, but it is strange that the senate, which was for the most part
playing with promises, should have made up its mind to a definite step,
the taking of which must have seriously injured the revenues of the
State. But perhaps they regarded even this concession as not beyond
recall, and they may have been already revolving in their minds those
tortuous schemes of land-legislation, which in the near future were to
go far to undo the work of the reformers.

The senate also permitted Drusus to propose a law for the protection of
the Latins, which should prove that the worst abuses on which Gracchus
dwelt might be removed without the gift of the franchise. The enactment
provided that no Latin should be scourged by a Roman magistrate, even on
military service.[689] Such summary punishment must always have been
illegal when inflicted on a Latin who was not serving as a soldier under
Roman command and was within the bounds of the jurisdiction of his own
state; the only conceivable case in which he could have been legally
exposed to punishment at the hands of Roman officials in times of peace,
was that of his committing a crime when resident or domiciled in Rome.
In such circumstances the penalty may have been summarily inflicted, for
the Latins as a whole did not possess the right of appeal to the Roman
Comitia.[690] The extension of the magisterial right of coercion over
the inhabitants of Latin towns, and its application in a form from which
the Roman citizen could appeal, were mere abuses of custom, which
violated the treaties of the Latin states and were not first forbidden
by the Livian law. But the declaration that the Latin might not be
scourged by a Roman commander even on military service, was a novelty,
and must have seemed a somewhat startling concession at a time when the
Roman citizen was himself subject to the fullest rigour of martial law.
It was, however, one that would appeal readily to the legal mind of
Rome, for it was a different matter for a Roman to be subject to the
martial law of his own state, and for the member of a federate community
to be subjected to the code of this foreign power. It was intended that
henceforth the Latin should suffer at least the degrading punishment of
scourging only after the jurisdiction and on the bidding of his own
native commander; but it cannot be determined whether he was completely
exempted from the military jurisdiction of the Roman commander-in-chief
--an exemption which might under many circumstances have proved fatal to
military discipline and efficiency. There is every reason to suppose
that this law of Drusus was passed, and some reason to believe that it
continued valid until the close of the Social War destroyed the
distinctions between the rights of the Latin and the Roman. Its enactment
was one of the cleverest strokes of policy effected by Drusus and the
senate; for it must have satisfied many of the Latins, who were eager
for protection but not for incorporation, while it illustrated the
weakness, and as it may have seemed to many, the dishonesty, of
Gracchus's seeming contention that abuses could only be remedied by the
conferment of full political rights. The whole enterprise of Drusus
fully attained the immediate effect desired by the senate. The people
were too habituated to the rule of the nobility to remember grievances
when approached as friends; the advances of the senate were received in
good faith, and Drusus might congratulate himself that a representative
of the Moderates had fulfilled the appropriate task of a mediator
between opposing factions.[691]

We might have expected that Gracchus, in the face of such formidable
competition, would have stood his ground in Rome and would have
exhausted every effort of his resistless oratory in exhibiting the
dishonesty of his opponents and in seeking to reclaim the allegiance of
the people. But perhaps he held that the effective accomplishment of
another great design would be a better object-lesson of his power as a
benefactor and a surer proof of the reality of his intentions, as
contrasted with the shadowy promises of Drusus. He availed himself of
his position of triumvir for the foundation of the colony of Junonia--an
office which the senate gladly allowed him to accept--and set sail for
Africa to superintend in person the initial steps in the creation of his
great transmarine settlement.[692] His original plan was soon modified
by the opposition which it encountered; the promised number of
allotments was raised to six thousand, and Italians were now invited to
share in the foundation.[693] Both of these steps were doubtless the
result of the senate's dalliance with colonial schemes and with the
Latins, but the latter may also be interpreted as a desperate effort to
get the colony under weigh at any cost. Fulvius Flaccus, who was also
one of the colonial commissioners, either stayed at Rome during the
entire period of his colleague's absence or paid but the briefest visit
to Africa; for he is mentioned as the representative of the party's
interests in Rome during Gracchus's residence in the province. The
choice of the delegate was a bad one. Not only was Flaccus hated by the
senate, but he was suspected by the people. These in electing him to the
tribunate had forgiven his Italian leanings when the Italian cause was
held to be extinct; but now the odium of the franchise movement clung to
him afresh, and suspicion was rife that the secret dealings with the
allies, which were believed to have led to the outbreak of Fregellae,
had never been interrupted or had lately been renewed. The difficulties
of his position were aggravated by faults of manner. He possessed
immense courage and was an excellent fighter; but, like many men of
combative disposition, he was tactless and turbulent. His reckless
utterances increased the distrust with which he was regarded, and
Gracchus's popularity necessarily waned with that of his
lieutenant.[694]

Meanwhile the effort was being made to reawaken Carthage and to defy the
curse in which Scipio had declared that the soil of the fallen city
should be trodden only by the feet of beasts. No scruple could be
aroused by the division of the surrounding lands; the site where
Carthage had stood was alone under the ban,[695] and had Gracchus been
content with mere agrarian assignment or had he established Junonia at
some neighbouring spot, his opponents would have been disarmed of the
potent weapon which superstition invariably supplied at Rome. As it was,
alarming rumours soon began to spread of dreadful signs which had
accompanied the inauguration of the colony.[696] When the colonists
according to ancient custom were marching to their destined home in
military order with standards flying, the ensign which headed the column
was caught by a furious wind, torn from the grip of its resisting
bearer, and shattered on the ground. When the altars had been raised and
the victims laid upon them, a sudden storm-blast caught the offerings
and hurled them beyond the boundaries of the projected city which had
recently been cut by the share. The boundary-stones themselves were
visited by wolves, who seized them in their teeth and carried them off
in headlong flight. The reality of the last alarming phenomenon, perhaps
of all these omens, was vehemently denied by Gracchus and by
Flaccus;[697] but, even if the reports now flying abroad in Rome had any
basis in fact, the circumstances of the foundation did not deter the
leader nor frighten away his colonists. Gracchus proceeded with his work
in an orderly and methodical manner, and when he deemed his personal
supervision no longer essential, returned to Rome after an absence of
seventy days. He was recalled by the news of the unequal contest that
was being waged between the passionate Fulvius and the adroit Drusus.
Clearly the circumstances required a cooler head than that possessed by
Flaccus; and there was the threat of a still further danger which
rendered Gracchus's presence a necessity. The consulship for the
following year was likely to be gained by one of the most stalwart
champions of ultra-aristocratic views. Lucius Opimius had been defeated
when seeking that office in the preceding year, chiefly through the
support which Gracchus's advocacy had secured to Fannius. Now there was
every chance of his success;[698] for Opimius's chief claim to
distinction was the prompt action which he had shown in the conquest of
Fregellae, and the large numbers of the populace who detested the
Italian cause were likely to aid his senatorial partisans in elevating
him to the consulship. The consular elections might exercise a
reactionary influence on the tribunician; and, if Gracchus's candidature
was a failure, he might be at the mercy of a resolute opponent, who
would regard his destruction as the justifiable act of a saviour
of society.

When Caius returned, the people as a whole seemed more apathetic than
hostile. They listened with a cold ear both to appeals and promises, and
this coldness was due to satiety rather than suspicion. They had been
promised so much within the last few months that demagogism seemed to be
a normal feature of existence, and no keen emotion was stirred by any
new appeal to their vanity or to their interests. Such apathy, although
it may favour the military pretender, is more to be dreaded than actual
discontent by the man who rules merely by the force of character and
eloquence. Criticism may be met and faced, and, the keener it is, the
more it shows the interest of the critics in their leader. Pericles was
hated one moment, deified the next; but no man could profess to be
indifferent to his personality and designs. Gracchus took the lesson to
heart, and concentrated his attention on the one class of his former
supporters, whose daily life recalled a signal benefit which he had
conferred, a class which might be moved by gratitude for the past and
hope for the future. One of his first acts after his return was to
change his residence from the Palatine to a site lying below the
Forum.[699] Here he had the very poor as his neighbours, the true urban
proletariate which never dreamed of availing itself of agrarian
assignments or colonial schemes, but set a very real value on the
corn-distributions, and may have believed that their continuance would
be threatened by Gracchus's fall from power. It is probable, however,
that, even without this motive, the characteristic hatred which is felt
by the partially destitute for the middle class, may have deepened the
affection with which Gracchus was regarded by the poorer of his
followers, when they saw him abandoned by the more outwardly respectable
of his supporters. The present position of Gracchus showed clearly that
the powerful coalition on which he had built up his influence had
crumbled away. From a leader of the State he had become but the leader
of a faction, and of one which had hitherto proved itself powerless to
resist unaided a sudden attack by the government.

From this democratic stronghold he promulgated other laws, the tenor of
which is unknown, while he showed his sympathy with the lower orders in
a practical way which roused the resentment of his fellow-magistrates.
[700] A gladiatorial show was to be given in the Forum on a certain day,
and most of the magistrates had erected stands, probably in the form of
a rude wooden amphitheatre, which they intended to let on hire.[701]
Gracchus chose to consider this proceeding as an infringement of the
people's rights. It was perhaps not only the admission by payment, but
the opinion that the enclosure unduly narrowed the area of observation
and cut off all view of the performance from the surrounding crowd,[702]
that aroused Gracchus's protest, and he bade the magistrates pull down
the erection that the poorer classes might have a free view of the
spectacle. His request was disregarded, and Gracchus prepared a surprise
for the obstinate organisers. On the very night before the show he
sallied out with the workmen that his official duties still placed at his
disposal; the tiers of seats were utterly demolished, and when day dawned
the people beheld a vacant site on which they might pack themselves as
they pleased. To the lower orders it seemed the act of a courageous
champion, to the officials the wild proceeding of a headstrong
demagogue. It could not have improved Gracchus's chances with the
moneyed classes of any grade; he had merged their chances of enjoyment
with that of the crowd and violated their sense of the prerogatives
of wealth.

But, although Gracchus may have been acting violently, he was not acting
blindly. He must have known that his cause was almost lost, but he must
also have been aware that the one chance of success lay in creating a
solidarity of feeling in the poorer classes, which could only be
attained by action of a pronounced and vigorous type. To what extent he
was successful in reviving a following which furnished numerical support
superior, or even equivalent to, the classes alienated by his conduct or
won over by the intrigues of his opponents, is a fact on which we have
no certain information. Only one mention has been preserved of his
candidature for a third tribunate: and this narrative, while asserting
the near approach which Gracchus made to victory, confesses the
uncertainty of the accounts which had been handed down of the election.
The story ran that he really gained a majority of the votes, but that
the tribune who presided, with the connivance of some of his colleagues,
basely falsified the returns.[703] It is a story that cannot be tested
on account of our ignorance of the precautions taken, and therefore of
the possibilities of fraud which might be exhibited, in the elections of
this period. At a later period actual records of the voting were kept,
in case a decision should be doubted;[704] and had an appeal to a
scrutiny been possible at this time, Gracchus was not the man to let the
dubious result remain unchallenged. But the story, even if we regard it
as expressing a mere suspicion, suggests the profound disappointment of
a considerable class, which had given its favourite its united support
and received the news of his defeat with surprise and resentment. It
breathes the poor man's suspicion of the chicanery of the rich, and may
be an index that Gracchus retained the confidence of his humbler
supporters until the end.

The defeat, although a terrible blow, did not crush the spirit of
Gracchus; it only rendered it more bitter and defiant. It was now that
he exulted openly in the destructive character of his work, and he is
said to have answered the taunts of his enemies by telling them that
their laughter had a painful ring, and that they did not yet know the
great cloud of darkness which his political activity had wrapped around
their lives.[705] The dreaded danger of Opimius's election was soon
realised, and members of the newly appointed tribunician college were
willing to put themselves at the orders of the senate. The surest proof
that Gracchus had fallen would be the immediate repeal of one of his
laws, and the enactment which was most assailable was that which, though
passed under another's name, embodied his project for the refoundation
of Carthage. This Rubrian law might be attacked on the ground that it
contravened the rules of religious right, the violation of which might
render any public act invalid;[706] and the stories which had been
circulated of the evil omens that had attended the establishment of
Junonia, were likely to cause the scruples of the senate to be supported
by the superstition of the people. Gracchus still held an official
position as a commissioner for colonies, if not for land-distribution
and the making of roads, but none of these positions gave him the
authority to approach the people or the power to offer effective legal
resistance to the threatened measure; any further opposition might
easily take the form of a breach of the peace by a private individual
and give his enemies the opportunity for which they were watching; and
it was therefore with good reason that Gracchus at first determined to
adopt a passive attitude in the face of the proposal of the tribune
Minucius Rufus for the repeal of the Rubrian law.[707] Even Cornelia
seems to have counselled prudence, and it was perhaps this crisis in her
son's career which drew from her the passionate letter, in which the
mother triumphs over the patriot and she sees the ruin of the Republic
and the madness of her house in the loss which would darken her
declining years.[708] This protest is more than consistent with the
story that she sent country folk[709] to swell the following and protect
the person of her son, when she saw that he would not yield without
another effort to maintain his cause. The change of attitude is said to
have been forced on Gracchus by the exhortations of his friends and
especially of the impetuous Fulvius. The organisation of a band such as
Gracchus now gathered round him, although not in itself illegal, was a
provocation to riot; and a disastrous incident soon occurred which gave
his opponents the handle for which they had long been groping. At the
dawn of the day, on which the meeting was to be held for the discussion,
and perhaps for the voting, on the repeal of the threatened law,
Gracchus and his followers ascended to the Capitol, where the opposite
party was also gathering in strength. It seems that the consul Opimius
himself, although he could not preside at the final meeting of the
assembly, which was purely plebeian, was about to hold a Contio[710] or
to speak at one summoned by the tribunes. Gracchus himself did not
immediately enter the area in which the meeting was to be held, but
paced the portico of the temple buried in his thoughts.[711] What
immediately followed is differently told; but the leading facts are the
same in every version.[712] A certain Antullus or Antullius, spoken of
by some as a mere unit amongst the people, described by others as an
attendant or herald of Opimius, spoke some words--the Gracchans said, of
insolence: their opponents declared, of patriotic protest--to Gracchus
or to Fulvius, at the same time stretching out his arm to the speaker
whom he addressed. The gesture was misinterpreted, and the unhappy man
fell pierced with iron pens, the only weapons possessed by the unarmed
crowd. There could be no question that the first act of violence had
come from Gracchus's supporters, and the end for which Opimius had
waited had been gained. Even the eagerness with which the leader had
disclaimed the hasty action of his followers might be interpreted as a
renewed infringement of law. He had hurried from the Capitol to the
Forum to explain to all who would listen the unpremeditated nature of
the deed and his own innocence of the murder; but this very action was a
grave breach of public law, implying as it did an insult to the majesty
of the tribune in summoning away a section of the people whom he was
prepared to address.[713]

The meeting on the Capitol was soon dissolved by a shower of rain,[714]
and the tribunes adjourned the business to another day; while Gracchus
and Fulvius Flaccus, whose half-formed plans had now been shattered,
hastened to their respective homes. The weakness of their position had
been that they refused to regard themselves in their true light as the
leaders of a revolution against the government. Whatever their own
intentions may have been, it is improbable that their supporters
followed them to the Capitol simply with the design of giving peaceful
votes against the measure proposed: and, had Antullius not fallen, the
meeting on the Capitol might have been broken up by a rush of Gracchans,
as that which Tiberius once harangued had been invaded by a band of
senators. Success and even salvation could now be attained solely by the
use of force; and the question of personal safety must have appealed to
the rank and file as well as to the leaders, for who could forget the
judicial massacre which had succeeded the downfall of Tiberius? But the
security of their own lives was probably not the only motive which led
numbers of their adherents to follow the two leaders to their
homes.[715] Loyalty, and the keen activity of party spirit, which
stimulates faction into war, must also have led them to make a last
attempt to defend their patrons and their cause. The whole city was in a
state of restless anticipation of the coming day; few could sleep, and
from midnight the Forum began to be filled with a crowd excited but
depressed by the sense of some great impending evil.[716]