The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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
Rival Demagogism of the Senate
The Livian Laws
As a matter of course, the senate offered to the proletariate not merely
the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and
otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate,
the tribune of the people Marcus Livius Drusus proposed to relieve
those who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent
imposed on them,(27) and to declare their allotments to be free and
alienable property; and, further, to provide for the proletariate
not in transmarine, but in twelve Italian, colonies, each of 3000
colonists, for the planting of which the people might nominate
suitable men; only, Drusus himself declined--in contrast with the
family-complexion of the Gracchan commission--to take part in this
honourable duty. Presumably the Latins were named as those who would
have to bear the costs of the plan, for there does not appear to have
now existed in Italy other occupied domain-land of any extent save that
which was enjoyed by them. We find isolated enactments of Drusus--
such as the regulation that the punishment of scourging might only be
inflicted on the Latin soldier by the Latin officer set over him, and
not by the Roman officer--which were to all appearance intended to
indemnify the Latins for other losses. The plan was not the most
refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear; the endeavour to draw
the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariate still closer
by their exercising jointly a tyranny over the Latins was too
transparent; the inquiry suggested itself too readily, In what part of
the peninsula, now that the Italian domains had been mainly given away
already--even granting that the whole domains assigned to the Latins
were confiscated--was the occupied domain-land requisite for the
formation of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess-communities to
be discovered? Lastly the declaration of Drusus, that he would have
nothing to do with the execution of his law, was so dreadfully prudent
as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite suited
for the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the
additional and perhaps decisive consideration, that Gracchus,
on whose personal influence everything depended, was just then
establishing the Carthaginian colony in Africa, and that his
lieutenant in the capital, Marcus Flaccus, played into the hands of
his opponents by his vehement and maladroit actings. The "people"
accordingly ratified the Livian laws as readily as it had before
ratified the Sempronian. It then, as usual, repaid its latest, by
inflicting a gentle blow on its earlier, benefactor, declining to
re-elect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate for the
tribunate for the year 633; on which occasion, however, there are
alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the tribune
presiding at the election, who had been formerly offended by
Gracchus. Thus the foundation of his despotism gave way beneath
him. A second blow was inflicted on him by the consular elections,
which not only proved in a general sense adverse to the democracy,
but which placed at the head of the state Lucius Opimius, who as
praetor in 629 had conquered Fregellae, one of the most decided
and least scrupulous chiefs of the strict aristocratic party,
and a man firmly resolved to get rid of their dangerous antagonist
at the earliest opportunity.
Attack on the Transmarine Colonialization
Downfall of Gracchus
Such an opportunity soon occurred. On the 10th of December, 632,
Gracchus ceased to be tribune of the people; on the 1st of January,
633, Opimius entered on his office. The first attack, as was fair,
was directed against the most useful and the most unpopular measure of
Gracchus, the re-establishment of Carthage. While the transmarine
colonies had hitherto been only indirectly assailed through the
greater allurements of the Italian, African hyaenas, it was now alleged,
dug up the newly-placed boundary-stones of Carthage, and the Roman
priests, when requested, certified that such signs and portents ought
to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site accursed by the
gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience compelled to
have a law proposed, which prohibited the planting of the colony of
Junonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to establish it
was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day of voting
at the Capitol whither the burgesses were convoked, with a view to
procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law. He wished
to shun acts of violence, that he might not himself supply his
opponents with the pretext which they sought; but he had not been able
to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans, who remembered
the catastrophe of Tiberius and were well acquainted with the designs
of the aristocracy, from appearing in arms, and amidst the immense
excitement on both sides quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul
Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the
Capitoline temple; one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony,
Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hand, haughtily
ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he
would lay hands on Gaius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his
sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly
sought to address the people and to disclaim the responsibility for
the sacrilegious murder; he only furnished his antagonists with a
further formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in
the confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking to
the people--an offence, for which an obsolete statute, originating at
the time of the old dissensions between the orders,(28) had prescribed
the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to
put down by force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the
republican constitution, as they were fond of designating the events
of this day. He himself passed the night in the temple of Castor in
the Forum; at early dawn the Capitol was filled with Cretan archers,
the senate-house and Forum with the men of the government party--the
senators and the section of the equites adhering to them--who by order
of the consul had all appeared in arms and each attended by two
armed slaves. None of the aristocracy were absent; even the aged and
venerable Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with
shield and sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in
the Spanish wars, Decimus Brutus, was entrusted with the command of
the armed force; the senate assembled in the senate-house. The bier
with the corpse of Antullius was deposited in front of it; the senate,
as if surprised, appeared en masse at the door in order to view
the dead body, and then retired to determine what should be done.
The leaders of the democracy had gone from the Capitol to their
houses; Marcus Flaccus had spent the night in preparing for the war
in the streets, while Gracchus apparently disdained to strive with
destiny. Next morning, when they learned the preparations made by
their opponents at the Capitol and the Forum, both proceeded to the
Aventine, the old stronghold of the popular party in the struggles
between the patricians and the plebeians. Gracchus went thither
silent and unarmed; Flaccus called the slaves to arms and entrenched
himself in the temple of Diana, while he at the same time sent his
younger son Quintus to the enemy's camp in order if possible to arrange
a compromise. The latter returned with the announcement that the
aristocracy demanded unconditional surrender; at the same time he
brought a summons from the senate to Gracchus and Flaccus to appear
before it and to answer for their violation of the majesty of the
tribunes. Gracchus wished to comply with the summons, but Flaccus
prevented him from doing so, and repeated the equally weak and
mistaken attempt to move such antagonists to a compromise. When
instead of the two cited leaders the young Quintus Flaccus once more
presented himself alone, the consul treated their refusal to appear
as the beginning of open insurrection against the government; he
ordered the messenger to be arrested and gave the signal for attack
on the Aventine, while at the same time he caused proclamation to be
made in the streets that the government would give to whosoever should
bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold,
and that they would guarantee complete indemnity to every one who
should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict.
The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned; the valiant nobility in
union with the Cretans and the slaves stormed the almost undefended
mount, and killed all whom they found, about 250 persons, mostly of
humble rank. Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of
concealment, where they were soon afterwards hunted out and put to
death. Gracchus had at the beginning of the conflict retired into
the temple of Minerva, and was there about to pierce himself with his
sword, when his friend Publius Laetorius seized his arm and besought
him to preserve himself if possible for better times. Gracchus was
induced to make an attempt to escape to the other bank of the Tiber;
but when hastening down the hill he fell and sprained his foot.
To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned to face
his pursuers and allowed themselves to be cut down, Marcus Pomponius
at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine, Publius Laetorius at
the bridge over the Tiber where Horatius Cocles was said to have once
singly withstood the Etruscan army; so Gracchus, attended only by his
slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber.
There, in the grove of Furrina, were afterwards found the two dead
bodies; it seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master
and then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over
to the government as required; the stipulated price and more was paid
to Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of
Gracchus, while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were
sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into
the river; the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of
the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of
Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as 3000 of them are said
to have been strangled in prison, amongst whom was Quintus Flaccus,
eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict and
was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable
disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol where the altar
consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace(29) and
other shrines erected on similar occasions to Concord were situated,
these small chapels were pulled down; and out of the property of the
killed or condemned traitors, which was confiscated even to the
portions of their wives, a new and splendid temple of Concord with
the basilica belonging to it was erected in accordance with a decree
of the senate by the consul Lucius Opimius. Certainly it was an act
in accordance with the spirit of the age to remove the memorials of
the old, and to inaugurate a new, concord over the remains of the three
grandsons of the conqueror of Zama, all of whom--first Tiberius
Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the
mightiest, Gaius Gracchus--had now been engulfed by the revolution.
The memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was
not allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son;
but the passionate attachment, which very many had felt towards the two
noble brothers and especially towards Gaius during their life, was
touchingly displayed also after their death in the almost religious
veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of
police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where
they had fallen.
CHAPTER IV
The Rule of the Restoration
Vacancy in the Government
The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on
his death a ruin. His death indeed, like that of his brother, was
primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at the same time a very
material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when
the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as
it was on the point of being established. It was all the more so in
the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping
and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment
absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen
chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself
warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place. Gaius
had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius
had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular
party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be
named as leader. The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress
without a commander; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but
the general was wanting, and there was no one to take possession of
the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.
The Restored Aristocracy
So it accordingly happened. After the decease of Gaius Gracchus
without heirs, the government of the senate as it were spontaneously
resumed its place; and this was the more natural, that it had not
been, in the strict sense, formally abolished by the tribune, but
had merely been reduced to a practical nullity by his exceptional
proceedings. Yet we should greatly err, if we should discern in
this restoration nothing further than a relapse of the state-machine
into the old track which had been trodden and worn for centuries.
Restoration is always revolution; but in this case it was not so
much the old government as the old governor that was restored.
The oligarchy made its appearance newly equipped in the armour of
the -tyrannis- which had been overthrown. As the senate had beaten
Gracchus from the field with his own weapons, so it continued in the
most essential points to govern with the constitution of the Gracchi;
though certainly with the ulterior idea, if not of setting it aside
entirely, at any rate of thoroughly purging it in due time from the
elements really hostile to the ruling aristocracy.
Prosecutions of the Democrats
At first the reaction was mainly directed against persons. Publius
Popillius was recalled from banishment after the enactments relating
to him had been cancelled (633), and a warfare of prosecution was
waged against the adherents of Gracchus; whereas the attempt of
the popular party to have Lucius Opimius after his resignation of
office condemned for high treason was frustrated by the partisans
of the government (634). The character of this government of
the restoration is significantly indicated by the progress of the
aristocracy in soundness of sentiment. Gaius Carbo, once the ally
of the Gracchi, had for long been a convert,(1) and had but recently
shown his zeal and his usefulness as defender of Opimius. But he
remained the renegade; when the same accusation was raised against him
by the democrats as against Opimius, the government were not unwilling
to let him fall, and Carbo, seeing himself lost between the two
parties, died by his own hand. Thus the men of the reaction showed
themselves in personal questions pure aristocrats. But the reaction
did not immediately attack the distributions of grain, the taxation
of the province of Asia, or the Gracchan arrangement as to the jurymen
and courts; on the contrary, it not only spared the mercantile
class and the proletariate of the capital, but continued to render
homage, as it had already done in the introduction of the Livian
laws, to these powers and especially to the proletariate far more
decidedly than had been done by the Gracchi. This course was not
adopted merely because the Gracchan revolution still thrilled for
long the minds of its contemporaries and protected its creations;
the fostering and cherishing at least of the interests of the populace
was in fact perfectly compatible with the personal advantage of
the aristocracy, and thereby nothing further was sacrificed than
merely the public weal.
The Domain Question under the Restoration
All those measures which were devised by Gaius Gracchus for the
promotion of the public welfare--the best but, as may readily be
conceived, also the most unpopular part of his legislation--were
allowed by the aristocracy to drop. Nothing was so speedily and so
successfully assailed as the noblest of his projects, the scheme of
introducing a legal equality first between the Roman burgesses and
Italy, and thereafter between Italy and the provinces, and--inasmuch
as the distinction between the merely ruling and consuming and the
merely serving and working members of the state was thus done away--
at the same time solving the social question by the most comprehensive
and systematic emigration known in history. With all the determination
and all the peevish obstinacy of dotage the restored oligarchy
obtruded the principle of deceased generations--that Italy must
remain the ruling land and Rome the ruling city in Italy--afresh
on the present. Even in the lifetime of Gracchus the claims of
the Italian allies had been decidedly rejected, and the great idea of
transmarine colonization had been subjected to a very serious attack,
which became the immediate cause of Gracchus' fall. After his
death the scheme of restoring Carthage was set aside with little
difficulty by the government party, although the individual allotments
already distributed there were left to the recipients. It is true
that they could not prevent a similar foundation by the democratic
party from succeeding at another point: in the course of the conquests
beyond the Alps which Marcus Flaccus had begun, the colony of Narbo
(Narbonne) was founded there in 636, the oldest transmarine burgess-
city in the Roman empire, which, in spite of manifold attacks by the
government party and in spite of a proposal directly made by the
senate to abolish it, permanently held its ground, protected, as it
probably was, by the mercantile interests that were concerned. But,
apart from this exception--in its isolation not very important--the
government was uniformly successful in preventing the assignation
of land out of Italy.
The Italian domain-question was settled in a similar spirit.
The Italian colonies of Gaius, especially Capua, were cancelled,
and such of them as had already been planted were again broken up;
only the unimportant one of Tarentum was allowed to subsist in the
form of the new town Neptunia placed alongside of the former Greek
community. So much of the domains as had already been distributed
by non-colonial assignation remained in the hands of the recipients;
the restrictions imposed on them by Gracchus in the interest of the
commonwealth--the ground-rent and the prohibition of alienation--had
already been abolished by Marcus Drusus. With reference on the other
hand to the domains still possessed by right of occupation--which,
over and above the domain-land enjoyed by the Latins, must have mostly
consisted of the estates left with their holders in accordance with
the Gracchan maximum(2)--it was resolved definitively to secure them to
those who had hitherto been occupants and to preclude the possibility
of future distribution. It was primarily from these lands, no doubt,
that the 36,000 new farm-allotments promised by Drusus were to have
been formed; but they saved themselves the trouble of inquiring where
those hundreds of thousands of acres of Italian domain-land were to
be found, and tacitly shelved the Livian colonial law, which had
served its purpose;--only perhaps the small colony of Scolacium
(Squillace) may be referred to the colonial law of Drusus. On the
other hand by a law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius
carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment-commission
was abolished in 635, and there was imposed on the occupants of the
domain-land a fixed rent, the proceeds of which went to the benefit
of the populace of the capital--apparently by forming part of the fund
for the distribution of corn; proposals going still further, including
perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted by the
judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius. The final step was
taken eight years afterwards (643), when by a new decree of the
people(3) the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the
rent-free private property of the former occupants. It was added,
that in future domain-land was not to be occupied at all, but was
either to be leased or to lie open as public pasture; in the latter
case provision was made by the fixing of a very low maximum of ten
head of large and fifty head of small cattle, that the large herd-
owner should not practically exclude the small. In these judicious
regulations the injurious character of the occupation-system, which
moreover was long ago given up,(4) was at length officially recognized,
but unhappily they were only adopted when it had already deprived the
state in substance of its domanial possessions. While the Roman
aristocracy thus took care of itself and got whatever occupied land
was still in its hands converted into its own property, it at the same
time pacified the Italian allies, not indeed by conferring on them the
property of the Latin domain-land which they and more especially their
municipal aristocracy enjoyed, but by preserving unimpaired the rights
in relation to it guaranteed to them by their charters. The opposite
party was in the unfortunate position, that in the most important
material questions the interests of the Italians ran diametrically
counter to those of the opposition in the capital; in fact the
Italians entered into a species of league with the Roman government,
and sought and found protection from the senate against the
extravagant designs of various Roman demagogues.
The Proletariate and the Equestrian Order under the Restoration
While the restored government was thus careful thoroughly to eradicate
the germs of improvement which existed in the Gracchan constitution,
it remained completely powerless in presence of the hostile powers
that had been, not for the general weal, aroused by Gracchus.
The proletariate of the capital continued to have a recognized title
to aliment; the senate likewise acquiesced in the taking of the jurymen
from the mercantile order, repugnant though this yoke was to the
better and prouder portion of the aristocracy. The fetters which
the aristocracy wore did not beseem its dignity; but we do not find
that it seriously set itself to get rid of them. The law of Marcus
Aemilius Scaurus in 632, which at least enforced the constitutional
restrictions on the suffrage of freedmen, was for long the only
attempt--and that a very tame one--on the part of the senatorial
government once more to restrain their mob-tyrants. The proposal,
which the consul Quintus Caepio seventeen years after the introduction
of the equestrian tribunals (648) brought in for again entrusting the
trials to senatorial jurymen, showed what the government wished; but
showed also how little it could do, when the question was one not
of squandering domains but of carrying a measure in the face of
an influential order. It broke down.(5) The government was not
emancipated from the inconvenient associates who shared its power;
but these measures probably contributed still further to disturb the
never sincere agreement of the ruling aristocracy with the merchant-
class and the proletariate. Both were very well aware, that the
senate granted all its concessions only from fear and with reluctance;
permanently attached to the rule of the senate by considerations
neither of gratitude nor of interest, both were very ready to render
similar services to any other master who offered them more or even as
much, and had no objection, if an opportunity occurred, to cheat or
to thwart the senate. Thus the restoration continued to govern with
the desires and sentiments of a legitimate aristocracy, and with
the constitution and means of government of a -tyrannis-. Its rule
not only rested on the same bases as that of Gracchus, but it was
equally ill, and in fact still worse, consolidated; it was strong,
when in league with the populace it overthrew serviceable
institutions, but it was utterly powerless, when it had to face the
bands of the streets or the interests of the merchants. It sat on
the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, indignant
at the institutions of the state which it ruled and yet incapable of
even systematically assailing them, vacillating in all its conduct
except where its own material advantage prompted a decision, a picture
of faithlessness towards its own as well as the opposite party, of
inward inconsistency, of the most pitiful impotence, of the meanest
selfishness--an unsurpassed ideal of misrule.