The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus
But this acquiescence had its limit. The Italian domain-land was not
solely in the hands of Roman burgesses; large tracts of it had been
assigned in exclusive usufruct to particular allied communities by
decrees of the people or senate, and other portions had been occupied
with or without permission by Latin burgesses. The allotment-
commission at length attacked these possessions also. The resumption
of the portions simply occupied by non-burgesses was no doubt allowable
in formal law, and not less presumably the resumption of the domain-land
handed over by decrees of the senate or even by resolutions of the
burgesses to the Italian communities, since thereby the state by no
means renounced its ownership and to all appearance gave its grants
to communities, just as to private persons, subject to revocation.
But the complaints of these allied or subject communities, that Rome
did not keep the settlements that were in force, could not be simply
disregarded like the complaints of the Roman citizens injured by the
action of the commissioners. Legally the former might be no better
founded than the latter; but, while in the latter case the matter
at stake was the private interests of members of the state, in
reference to the Latin possessions the question arose, whether it was
politically right to give fresh offence to communities so important in
a military point of view and already so greatly estranged from Rome by
numerous disabilities de jure and de facto(3) through this keenly-felt
injury to their material interests. The decision lay in the hands
of the middle party; it was that party which after the fall of
Gracchus had, in league with his adherents, protected reform against
the oligarchy, and it alone was now able in concert with the oligarchy
to set a limit to reform. The Latins resorted personally to the
most prominent man of this party, Scipio Aemilianus, with a request
that he would protect their rights. He promised to do so; and
mainly through his influence,(4) in 625, a decree of the people
withdrew from the commission its jurisdiction, and remitted the
decision respecting what were domanial and what private possessions
to the censors and, as proxies for them, the consuls, to whom according
to the general principles of law it pertained. This was simply a
suspension of further domain-distribution under a mild form. The consul
Tuditanus, by no means Gracchan in his views and little inclined to
occupy himself with the difficult task of agrarian definition,
embraced the opportunity of going off to the Illyrian army and leaving
the duty entrusted to him unfulfilled. The allotment-commission no
doubt continued to subsist, but, as the judicial regulation of the
domain-land was at a standstill, it was compelled to remain inactive.
Assassination of Aemilianus
The reform-party was deeply indignant. Even men like Publius Mucius
and Quintus Metellus disapproved of the intervention of Scipio. Other
circles were not content with expressing disapproval. Scipio had
announced for one of the following days an address respecting the
relations of the Latins; on the morning of that day he was found dead
in his bed. He was but fifty-six years of age, and in full health
and vigour; he had spoken in public the day before, and then in the
evening had retired earlier than usual to his bedchamber with a view
to prepare the outline of his speech for the following day. That he
had been the victim of a political assassination, cannot be doubted;
he himself shortly before had publicly mentioned the plots formed
to murder him. What assassin's hand had during the night slain
the first statesman and the first general of his age, was never
discovered; and it does not become history either to repeat the
reports handed down from the contemporary gossip of the city, or
to set about the childish attempt to ascertain the truth out of such
materials. This much only is clear, that the instigator of the deed
must have belonged to the Gracchan party; the assassination of Scipio
was the democratic reply to the aristocratic massacre at the temple
of Fidelity. The tribunals did not interfere. The popular party,
justly fearing that its leaders Gaius Gracchus, Flaccus, and Carbo,
whether guilty or not, might be involved in the prosecution, opposed
with all its might the institution of an inquiry; and the aristocracy,
which lost in Scipio quite as much an antagonist as an ally, was not
unwilling to let the matter sleep. The multitude and men of moderate
views were shocked; none more so than Quintus Metellus, who had
disapproved of Scipio's interference against reform, but turned away
with horror from such confederates, and ordered his four sons to carry
the bier of his great antagonist to the funeral pile. The funeral
was hurried over; with veiled head the last of the family of the
conqueror of Zama was borne forth, without any one having been
previously allowed to see the face of the deceased, and the flames
of the funeral pile consumed with the remains of the illustrious
man the traces at the same time of the crime.
The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio
Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter
absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country,
and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.
Conscious of the best intentions and of no common abilities, he was
doomed to see the ruin of his country carried out before his eyes,
and to repress within him every earnest attempt to save it, because
he clearly perceived that he should only thereby make the evil worse;
doomed to the necessity of sanctioning outrages like that of Nasica,
and at the same time of defending the work of the victim against
his murderers. Yet he might say that he had not lived in vain.
It was to him, at least quite as much as to the author of the
Sempronian law, that the Roman burgesses were indebted for an increase
of nearly 80,000 new farm-allotments; he it was too who put a stop to
this distribution of the domains, when it had produced such benefit
as it could produce. That it was time to break it off, was no doubt
disputed at the moment even by well-meaning men; but the fact that
Gaius Gracchus did not seriously recur to those possessions which
might have been, and yet were not, distributed under the law of his
brother, tells very much in favour of the belief that Scipio hit
substantially the right moment. Both measures were extorted from
the parties--the first from the aristocracy, the second from the
friends of reform; for each its author paid with his life. It was
Scipio's lot to fight for his country on many a battle-field and to
return home uninjured, that he might perish there by the hand of an
assassin; but in his quiet chamber he no less died for Rome than if
he had fallen before the walls of Carthage.
Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus
The distribution of land was at an end; the revolution went on.
The revolutionary party, which possessed in the allotment-commission
as it were a constituted leadership, had even in the lifetime of Scipio
skirmished now and then with the existing government. Carbo, in
particular, one of the most distinguished men of his time in oratorical
talent, had as tribune of the people in 623 given no small trouble to
the senate; had carried voting by ballot in the burgess-assemblies, so
far as it had not been introduced already;(5) and had even made the
significant proposal to leave the tribunes of the people free to
reappear as candidates for the same office in the year immediately
following, and thus legally to remove the obstacle by which Tiberius
Gracchus had primarily been thwarted. The scheme had been at that
time frustrated by the resistance of Scipio; some years later,
apparently after his death, the law was reintroduced and carried
through, although with limiting clauses.(6) The principal object
of the party, however, was to revive the action of the allotment-
commission which had been practically suspended; the leaders seriously
talked of removing the obstacles which the Italian allies interposed
to the scheme by conferring on them the rights of citizenship, and the
agitation assumed mainly that direction. In order to meet it, the
senate in 628 got the tribune of the people Marcus Junius Pennus to
propose the dismissal of all non-burgesses from the capital, and
in spite of the resistance of the democrats, particularly of Gaius
Gracchus, and of the ferment occasioned by this odious measure in the
Latin communities, the proposal was carried. Marcus Fulvius Flaccus
retorted in the following year (629) as consul with the proposal to
facilitate the acquisition of burgess-rights by the burgesses of the
allied communities, and to concede even to those who had not acquired
them an appeal to the Roman comitia against penal judgments. But he
stood almost alone--Carbo had meanwhile changed his colours and was
now a zealous aristocrat, Gaius Gracchus was absent as quaestor in
Sardinia--and the project was frustrated by the resistance not of the
senate merely, but also of the burgesses, who were but little inclined
to extend their privileges to still wider circles. Flaccus left Rome
to undertake the supreme command against the Celts; by his Transalpine
conquests he prepared the way for the great schemes of the democracy,
while he at the same time withdrew out of the difficulty of having to
bear arms against the allies instigated by himself.
Destruction of Fregallae
Fregellae, situated on the borders of Latium and Campania at the
principal passage of the Liris in the midst of a large and fertile
territory, at that time perhaps the second city of Italy and in the
discussions with Rome the usual mouthpiece of all the Latin colonies,
began war against Rome in consequence of the rejection of the proposal
brought in by Flaccus--the first instance which had occurred for a
hundred and fifty years of a serious insurrection, not brought about
by foreign powers, in Italy against the Roman hegemony. But on this
occasion the fire was successfully extinguished before it had caught
hold of other allied communities. Not through the superiority of
the Roman arms, but through the treachery of a Fregellan Quintus
Numitorius Pullus, the praetor Lucius Opimius quickly became master
of the revolted city, which lost its civic privileges and its walls
and was converted like Capua into a village. The colony of Fabrateria
was founded on a part of its territory in 630; the remainder and
the former city itself were distributed among the surrounding
communities. This rapid and fearful punishment alarmed the
allies, and endless impeachments for high treason pursued not only
the Fregellans, but also the leaders of the popular party in Rome,
who naturally were regarded by the aristocracy as accomplices in
this insurrection. Meanwhile Gaius Gracchus reappeared in Rome.
The aristocracy had first sought to detain the object of their dread
in Sardinia by omitting to provide the usual relief, and then, when
without caring for that point he returned, had brought him to trial
as one of the authors of the Fregellan revolt (629-30). But the
burgesses acquitted him; and now he too threw down the gauntlet,
became a candidate for the tribuneship of the people, and was
nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly
attended by unusual numbers. War was thus declared. The democratic
party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity
remained virtually at rest for nine years; now the truce was at an
end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty
than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect
called to take the lead.
Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Gracchus (601-633) was very different from his brother, who
was about nine years older. Like the latter, he had no relish for
vulgar pleasures and vulgar pursuits; he was a man of thorough
culture and a brave soldier; he had served with distinction before
Numantia under his brother-in-law, and afterwards in Sardinia.
But in talent, in character, and above all in passion he was decidedly
superior to Tiberius. The clearness and self-possession, which the
young man afterwards displayed amidst the pressure of all the varied
labours requisite for the practical carrying out of his numerous laws,
betokened his genuine statesmanly talent; as the passionate devotedness
faithful even to death, with which his intimate friends clung to
him, evinced the loveable nature of that noble mind. The discipline
of suffering which he had undergone, and his compulsory reserve during
the last nine years, augmented his energy of purpose and action; the
indignation repressed within the depths of his breast only glowed there
with an intensified fervour against the party which had disorganized
his country and murdered his brother. By virtue of this fearful
vehemence of temperament he became the foremost orator that Rome ever
had; without it, we should probably have been able to reckon him among
the first statesmen of all times. Among the few remains of his
recorded orations several are, even in their present condition, of
heart-stirring power;(7) and we can well understand how those who heard
or even merely read them were carried away by the impetuous torrent
of his words. Yet, great master as he was of speech, he was himself
not unfrequently mastered by anger, so that the utterance of the
brilliant speaker became confused or faltering. It was the true image
of his political acting and suffering. In the nature of Gaius there was
no vein, such as his brother had, of that somewhat sentimental but very
short-sighted and confused good-nature, which would have desired to
change the mind of a political opponent by entreaties and tears; with
full assurance he entered on the career of revolution and strove to
reach the goal of vengeance. "To me too," his mother wrote to him,
"nothing seems finer and more glorious than to retaliate on an enemy,
so far as it can be done without the country's ruin. But if this is
not possible, then may our enemies continue and remain what they are,
a thousand times rather than that our country should perish."
Cornelia knew her son; his creed was just the reverse. Vengeance he
would wreak on the wretched government, vengeance at any price, though
he himself and even the commonwealth were to be ruined by it--the
presentiment, that fate would overtake him as certainly as his brother,
drove him only to make haste like a man mortally wounded who throws
himself on the foe. The mother thought more nobly; but the son--
with his deeply provoked, passionately excited, thoroughly Italian
nature--has been more lamented than blamed by posterity, and posterity
has been right in its judgment.
Alterations on the Constituion by Gaius Gracchus
Distribution of Grain
Change in the Order of Voting
Tiberius Gracchus had come before the burgesses with a single
administrative reform. What Gaius introduced in a series of separate
proposals was nothing else than an entirely new constitution; the
foundation-stone of which was furnished by the innovation previously
carried through, that a tribune of the people should be at liberty to
solicit re-election for the following year.(8) While this step enabled
the popular chief to acquire a permanent position and one which
protected its holder, the next object was to secure for him material
power or, in other words, to attach the multitude of the capital--for
that no reliance was to be placed on the country people coming only
from time to time to the city, had been sufficiently apparent--with its
interests steadfastly to its leader. This purpose was served, first of
all, by introducing distributions of corn in the capital. The grain
accruing to the state from the provincial tenths had already been
frequently given away at nominal prices to the burgesses.(9) Gracchus
enacted that every burgess who should personally present himself in the
capital should thenceforth be allowed monthly a definite quantity--
apparently 5 -modii- (1 1/4 bushel)--from the public stores, at 6 1/3
-asses- (3d.) for the -modius-, or not quite the half of a low average
price;(10) for which purpose the public corn-stores were enlarged by the
construction of the new Sempronian granaries. This distribution--which
consequently excluded the burgesses living out of the capital, and
could not but attract to Rome the whole mass of the burgess-
proletariate--was designed to bring the burgess-proletariate of the
capital, which hitherto had mainly depended on the aristocracy, into
dependence on the leaders of the movement-party, and thus to supply
the new master of the state at once with a body-guard and with a firm
majority in the comitia. For greater security as regards the latter,
moreover, the order of voting still subsisting in the -comitia
centuriata-, according to which the five property-classes in each
tribe gave their votes one after another,(11) was done away; instead
of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously in an
order of succession to be fixed on each occasion by lot. While these
enactments were mainly designed to procure for the new chief of the
state by means of the city-proletariate the complete command of the
capital and thereby of the state, the amplest control over the comitial
machinery, and the possibility in case of need of striking terror into
the senate and magistrates, the legislator certainly at the same
time set himself with earnestness and energy to redress the
existing social evils.
Agrarian Laws
Colony of Capua
Transmarine Colonialization
It is true that the Italian domain question was in a certain sense
settled. The agrarian law of Tiberius and even theallotment-commission
still continued legally in force; the agrarian law carried by Gracchus
can have enacted nothing new save the restoration to the commissioners
of the jurisdiction which they had lost. That the object of this step
was only to save the principle, and that the distribution of lands,
if resumed at all, was resumed only to a very limited extent, is
shown by the burgess-roll, which gives exactly the same number of
persons for the years 629 and 639. Gaius beyond doubt did not
proceed further in this matter, because the domain-land taken
into possession by Roman burgesses was already in substance distributed,
and the question as to the domains enjoyed by the Latins could only
be taken up anew in connection with the very difficult question as
to the extension of Roman citizenship. On the other hand he took an
important step beyond the agrarian law of Tiberius, when he proposed
the establishment of colonies in Italy--at Tarentum, and more
especially at Capua--and by that course rendered the domain-land,
which had been let on lease by the state and was hitherto excluded
from distribution, liable to be also parcelled out, not, however,
according to the previous method, which excluded the founding of new
communities,(12) but according to the colonial system. Beyond doubt
these colonies were also designed to aid in permanently defending the
revolution to which they owed their existence. Still more significant
and momentous was the measure, by which Gaius Gracchus first proceeded
to provide for the Italian proletariate in the transmarine territories
of the state. He despatched to the site on which Carthage had stood
6000 colonists selected perhaps not merely from Roman burgesses but
also from the Italian allies, and conferred on the new town Junonia
the rights of a Roman burgess-colony. The foundation was important,
but still more important was the principle of transmarine emigration
thereby laid down. It opened up for the Italian proletariate a
permanent outlet, and a relief in fact more than provisional; but
it certainly abandoned the principle of state-law hitherto in force,
by which Italy was regarded as exclusively the governing, and the
provincial territory as exclusively the governed, land.
Modifications of the Penal Law
To these measures having immediate reference to the great question of
the proletariate there was added a series of enactments, which arose
out of the general tendency to introduce principles milder and more
accordant with the spirit of the age than the antiquated severity of
the existing constitution. To this head belong the modifications in
the military system. As to the length of the period of service there
existed under the ancient law no other limit, except that no citizen
was liable to ordinary service in the field before completing his
seventeenth or after completing his forty-sixth year. When, in
consequence of the occupation of Spain, the service began to become
permanent,(13) it seems to have been first legally enacted that any
one who had been in the field for six successive years acquired thereby
a right to discharge, although this discharge did not protect him from
being called out again afterwards. At a later period, perhaps about
the beginning of this century, the rule arose, that a service of
twenty years in the infantry or ten years in the cavalry gave exemption
from further military service.(14) Gracchus renewed the rule--which
presumably was often violently infringed--that no burgess should be
enlisted in the army before the commencement of his eighteenth year;
and also, apparently, restricted the number of campaigns requisite
for full exemption from military duty. Besides, the clothing of the
soldiers, the value of which had hitherto been deducted from their pay,
was henceforward furnished gratuitously by the state.
To this head belongs, moreover, the tendency which is on various
occasions apparent in the Gracchan legislation, if not to abolish
capital punishment, at any rate to restrict it still further than had
been done before--a tendency, which to some extent made itself felt even
in military jurisdiction. From the very introduction of the republic
the magistrate had lost the right of inflicting capital punishment on
the burgess without consulting the community, except under martial
law;(15) if this right of appeal by the burgess appears soon after
the period of the Gracchi available even in the camp, and the right
of the general to inflict capital punishments appears restricted to
allies and subjects, the source of the change is probably to be sought
in the law of Gaius Gracchus -de provocatione- But the right of the
community to inflict or rather to confirm sentence of death was
indirectly yet essentially limited by the fact, that Gracchus withdrew
the cognizance of those public crimes which most frequently gave
occasion to capital sentences--poisoning and murder generally--
from the burgesses, and entrusted it to permanent judicial commissions.
These could not, like the tribunals of the people, be broken up by
the intercession of a tribune, and there not only lay no appeal from
them to the community, but their sentences were as little subject to
be annulled by the community as those of the long-established civil
jurymen. In the burgess-tribunals it had, especially in strictly
political processes, no doubt long been the rule that the accused
remained at liberty during his trial, and was allowed by
surrendering his burgess-rights to save at least life and freedom;
for the fine laid on property, as well as the civil condemnation,
might still affect even the exiled. But preliminary arrest and
complete execution of the sentence remained in such cases at least
legally possible, and were still sometimes carried into effect even
against persons of rank; for instance, Lucius Hostilius Tubulus,
praetor of 612, who was capitally impeached for a heinous crime,
was refused the privilege of exile, arrested, and executed. On the
other hand the judicial commissions, which originated out of the civil
procedure, probably could not at the outset touch the liberty or
life of the citizen, but at the most could only pronounce sentence
of exile; this, which had hitherto been a mitigation of punishment
accorded to one who was found guilty, now became for the first time a
formal penalty This involuntary exile however, like the voluntary, left
to the person banished his property, so far as it was not exhausted
in satisfying claims for compensation and money-fines. Lastly, in
the matter of debt Gaius Gracchus made no alteration; but very
respectable authorities assert that he held out to those in debt the
hope of a diminution or remission of claims--which, if it is correct,
must likewise be reckoned among those radically popular measures.
Elevation of the Equestrian Order
While Gracchus thus leaned on the support of the multitude, which
partly expected, partly received from him a material improvement
of its position, he laboured with equal energy at the ruin of the
aristocracy. Perceiving clearly how insecure was the rule of the
head of the state built merely on the proletariate, he applied himself
above all to split the aristocracy and to draw a part of it over to
his interests. The elements of such a rupture were already in
existence. The aristocracy of the rich, which had risen as one man
against Tiberius Gracchus, consisted in fact of two essentially
dissimilar bodies, which may be in some measure compared to the
peerage and the city aristocracy of England. The one embraced the
practically closed circle of the governing senatorial families who
kept aloof from direct speculation and invested their immense capital
partly in landed property, partly as sleeping partners in the great
associations. The core of the second class was composed of the
speculators, who, as managers of these companies, or on their own
account, conducted the large mercantile and pecuniary transactions
throughout the range of the Roman hegemony. We have already shown(16)
how the latter class, especially in the course of the sixth century,
gradually took its place by the side of the senatorial aristocracy,
and how the legal exclusion of the senators from mercantile pursuits
by the Claudian enactment, suggested by Gaius Flaminius the precursor
of the Gracchi, drew an outward line of demarcation between the senators
and the mercantile and moneyed men. In the present epoch the mercantile
aristocracy began, under the name of the -equites-, to exercise a
decisive influence in political affairs. This appellation, which
originally belonged only to the burgess-cavalry on service, came
gradually to be transferred, at any rate in ordinary use, to all
those who, as possessors of an estate of at least 400,000 sesterces,
were liable to cavalry service in general, and thus comprehended the
whole of the upper society, senatorial and non-senatorial, in Rome.
But not long before the time of Gaius Gracchus the law had declared
a seat in the senate incompatible with service in the cavalry,(17) and
the senators were thus eliminated from those qualified to be equites;
and accordingly the equestrian order, taken as a whole, might be regarded
as representing the aristocracy of speculators in contradistinction
to the senate. Nevertheless those members of senatorial families who
had not entered the senate, especially the younger members, did not
cease to serve as equites and consequently to bear the name; and,
in fact, the burgess-cavalry properly so called--that is, the
eighteen equestrian centuries--in consequence of being made up
by the censors continued to be chiefly filled up from the young
senatorial aristocracy.(18)