A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate

by A. H. J. Greenidge

Internal evidence makes it probable that this law was passed in the year 111 B.C.,[777] and consequently at the close of that period of comparative quiescence which was immediately followed by the political storm raised by the conduct of the war in Numidia. It may, therefore, be regarded as a product of senatorial enlightenment, although its provisions would be quite as consistent with the views of a tolerably sober democrat. The main scope of the enactment is to give the character of absolute private ownership, unburdened by any restrictions such as the payment of dues to the State, to nearly all the land which had been public at the time of the passing of the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus. The first provisions refer to lands which had not been dealt with by the agrarian commissioners. Any occupant of the public domain, who has been allowed to preserve his allotment intact, because it does not exceed the limit fixed by the earlier laws, and any one who has received public land from the State in exchange for a freehold which he has surrendered for the foundation of a colony, is henceforth to hold such portions of the public domain as his private property. The same provision holds for all land that has been assigned, whether by colonial or agrarian commissioners. The first class of assignments are those incidental to the one or two colonies of Caius Gracchus, and perhaps of Drusus, that were actually established in Italy. Even at the time of settlement such land must have been made the private property of its holders; and this law, therefore, but confirms the tenure, and implies the validity of the act of colonisation. Such land is mentioned as having been "given and assigned in accordance with a resolution of the people and the plebs," and all eases in which recent colonial laws had been repealed or dropped—cases which would include Caius Gracchus's threatened partition of the Campanian territory—are tacitly excluded. The second class of assignments refer to those made by the land-commissioners during the whole period of their chequered existence, and the land whose private character is thus confirmed, must have covered much the larger part of what had once been the State's domain in Italy.

A certain portion of this domain still remains, however, the property of the State and is not converted into private land. The whole of the soil which had been given in usufruct to colonies and municipal towns, is retained in its existing condition; the holders, whether Latin colonists or Roman citizens, are confirmed in their possessions; but, as the land still remains public, they are doubtless expected to continue to pay their quit-rent to the State. Similar provision is made for a peculiar class of land, which had been given by Rome as security for a national debt. The debt had never been liquidated, probably because the creditors preferred the land. This they were now to retain on condition of continued payment of the quit-rent, which marked the fact that the State was still its nominal owner. A public character is also maintained for land which had been assigned for the maintenance of roads. Here we find the only instance of an actual assignation of the Gracchan commissioners which was not converted, into private property; the obvious reason for this exception being that these occupants performed a specific and necessary duty, which would disappear if their tenure was converted into absolute ownership. Exception against ownership was also made for those commons on which the occupants of surrounding farms had an exclusive right of sending their flocks to pasture;[778] for the conversion of such grazing land into private lots would have injured the collective interests, and conferred little benefit on the individuals of the group.[779] The remaining classes of land which still remain the property of the State, are the roads of Italy, such public land as had been specially exempted from distribution by the legislation of the Gracchi, and such as had remained public on other grounds. The only known instance of the first class is the Campanian territory, which continued to be let on leases by the State and to bring to the treasury a sure and considerable revenue; the second class was probably represented by land which was not arable and had for this reason escaped distribution. The law provides that it is not to be occupied but to serve the purposes of grazing-land, and a limit is fixed to the number of cattle and sheep belonging to a single owner to which it is to afford free pasturage. For the enjoyment of grazing-rights beyond this limit dues are to be paid to the contractors who have purchased the right of collection from the State.

The law then quits the public domains of Italy for those of Africa and Corinth, partly for the purpose of specifying with exactitude the rights of the various occupiers and tenants who were settled on the territories, but chiefly with the object of effecting the sale of some of the public domain in the province of Africa and the dependency of Achaea. This intention of alienation is perhaps the chief reason why the great varieties of tenure of the African soil are marshalled before us with such detail and precision; for it was necessary, in view of the contemplated sale, to re-assert the stability of rights that should be secure by their very nature or had been guaranteed by solemn compact. But the occasion of a comprehensive settlement of the agrarian question in Italy was no doubt gladly seized as affording the right opportunity for surveying, revising, and establishing the claims of those who were in enjoyment of what was, or had been, the provincial domain of Rome across the seas. The rights of Roman citizens and subjects are indifferently considered, and amongst the former those of the settlers who had journeyed to Africa in accordance with the promises of the Rubrian law are fully recognised. The degree of permanence accorded to the manifold kinds of tenure passed in review can not be determined from our text; but, even when all claims that deserved a permanent recognition had been subtracted, there still remained a residuum of land, leased at quinquennial intervals by the censors, which might be alienated without the infliction of injury on established rights. We do not know to what extent this sale, the mechanism for which was minutely provided for in the law, was carried in Africa; its application to the domain land of Corinth was either withdrawn or, if carried out, was but slight or temporary; for Corinthian land remained to be threatened by later agrarian legislation. It is not easy to suggest a motive for this sale; for it would seem a short-sighted policy to part, on an extensive scale and therefore presumably at a cheapened rate, with some of the most productive land in the world, such as was the African domain of the period, in order to recoup the treasury for the immediate pecuniary injury which it was suffering in the loss of the revenues from the public land of Italy. Perhaps the government had grown suspicious of the operations of the middle-men, and, since they had restricted their activity by limiting the amount of public land in Italy, deemed a similar policy advisable in relation to some of their foreign dependencies.

The length at which we have dwelt on this law is proportionate to its importance in the political history of the times, and if we possessed fuller knowledge of its effects, we should doubtless be able to add, in their social history as well. Its economic results, however, are exceedingly obscure, and possibly it produced none worthy of serious consideration; for the artificial stability which it may have seemed to give to the existing tenure of land could in no way check the play of economic forces. If these tendencies were still in favour of large holdings,[780] the process of accumulation must have continued, and, as we have before remarked, the accumulator was in a securer position when purchasing land which was admittedly the private property of its owner, than when buying allotments which might be held to be still liable to the public dues. On the other hand, the remission of the impost must have relieved, and the sense of private ownership inspired, the labours of the smaller proprietors; and the perpetuation of a considerable proportion of the Gracchan settlers is probable on general grounds. The reason why it is difficult to give specific reasons for this belief is that, at the time when we next begin to get glimpses of the condition of the Italian peasant class, the great reform had been effected which incorporated the nations of Italy into Rome. The existence of numerous small proprietors in the Ciceronian period is attested, but many of these may have been citizens recently given to Rome by the Italian stocks, amongst whom agriculture on a small scale had never become extinct.

But the political import of this measure is considerable. By restricting to narrow limits all the land of Italy to which the State could make a claim, it altered the character of agrarian agitation for the future. It did not indeed fulfil its possible object of obviating such measures; but it rendered the vested interests of all Italian cultivators secure, with the exception of the lessees of the leased domain, who perhaps had no claim to permanence of tenure. This domain was represented chiefly by the Campanian land: and the reformer who would make this territory his prey, injured the finances of the State more than the interests of the individual. If he desired more, he must seek it either in the foreign domains of Rome or by the adoption of some scheme of land purchase. Assignment of lands in particular districts of Italy or in the provinces naturally took the form of colonisation, and this is the favourite shape assumed by the agrarian schemes of the future. Rome was still to witness many fierce controversies as to the merits of the policy of colonial expansion, and as to the wisdom of employing public property and public revenues to this end; the rights of the conqueror to the lands of his vanquished fellow-citizens were also to be cruelly asserted, and the civil wars also invited a species of brigandage for the attainment of possession which too often replaced the judgments of the courts; but never again do we find a regular political warfare waged between the rich and the poor for the possession of territories to which each of the disputants laid claim. The storm which had burst on the Roman world with the land law of Tiberius Gracchus had now spent its force. It had undoubtedly produced a great change on the face of Italy; but this was perhaps more striking in appearance than in reality; neither the work of demolition, nor the opportunities offered for renewal, attained the completeness which they had presented in the reformer's dreams.

But the peace of the citizen body was not the only blessing believed to be secured by this removal of a temptation to tamper with Italian lands. The anxieties of the Latins and Italians were also quieted, although it may be questioned whether the memory of past wrongs, now rendered irrevocable by the progress of recent agrarian experiments, did not enter into the agitation for the conferment of the franchise, which they still continued to sustain. The last great law, following the spirit of the enactment of Drusus which had preceded it by about a year, does indeed show traces of an anxiety to respect Italian claims. Apart from the fact, which we have already mentioned, that all lands which had been granted in usufruct to colonists, were still to be public and were, therefore, in the case of Latin colonies, to be at the disposal of the communities to which they had been granted by treaty, the law contains a special provision for the maintenance of the rights of Latins and Italians, so far as they are in harmony with the rights allowed to Roman citizens by the enactment.[781] The guarantees which had been sanctioned by Drusus, were therefore respected; but their observance was conditioned by the rule that all prohibitions now created for Romans should be extended to the allies. As we do not know the purport of Drusus's measure, or the practices current on the Roman domains occupied by Latins, we cannot say whether this clause produced any derogation of their rights; but it must have limited the right of free pasturage on the public commons, if they had possessed this in a higher degree than was now permitted, and the right to occupy public land was also forbidden them in the future. But it was from the negative point of view that the law might be interpreted as creating or perpetuating a grievance; for some of the positive benefits which it conferred seem to have been limited to Romans. The land which it makes private property, is land which has been assigned by colonial or agrarian commissioners, or land which has been occupied up to a certain limit. If colonial land had really been assigned to Latins by Caius Gracchus, their rights are retained by this law, if they had been made Roman citizens at the time of the settlement; but if they had been admitted as participants in the agrarian distribution throughout Italy, their rights as owners are not confirmed with those of Roman citizens; and the Latin who merely occupied land was not given the privilege of the Roman possessor of becoming the owner of the soil, if his occupation were restricted within a certain limit.[782] He still retained merely a precarious possession, for which dues to the State were probably exacted. It was something to have rights confirmed, but they probably appeared less valuable when those of others were extended. A more generous treatment could hardly have been expected from a law of Rome dealing with her own domain, primarily in the interests of her own citizens; but the Italians were tending to forget their civic independence, and chose rather to compare their personal rights with those of the Roman burgesses. Such a comparison applied to the final agrarian settlement must have done something to emphasise their belief in the inferiority of their position.

This review of the legislation on social questions which was initiated or endured by the senate, shows the tentative attitude adopted by the nobility in their dealings with the people, and proves either a statesmanlike view of the needs of the situation or the entire lack of a proud consciousness of their own immunity from attack. Even had they possessed the power to dictate to the Comitia, they were hemmed in on another side; for they had not dared to raise a protest against the law of Gracchus which transferred criminal jurisdiction over the members of their own order to the knights. The equestrian courts sat in judgment on the noblest members of the aristocracy; for the political or personal motives which urged to prosecution were stronger even than the camaraderie of the order, and governors of provinces were still in danger of indictment by their peers. Within two years of the transference of the courts, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, known in later life as "the Augur" and famed for his knowledge of the civil law, returned from his province of Asia to meet the accusation of Titus Albucius.[783] The knights did not begin by a vindictive exercise of their authority. Although Asia was the most favoured sphere of their activity, Scaevola was acquitted. Seven years later they gave a stern and perhaps righteous example of their severity in the condemnation of Caius Porcius Cato.[784] The accused when consul had obtained Macedonia as his province, and had waged a frontier war with the Scordisci, which ended in the annihilation of his forces and his own narrow escape from the field of battle. His ill-success perhaps deepened the impression made by his extortions in Macedonia, and he was sentenced to the payment of a fine. Neither in the case of the acquittal nor in that of the condemnation does political bias seem to have influenced the judgment of the courts, and the equestrian jurors may have seemed for a time to realise the best hopes which had inspired their creation.

The attention of the leading members of the nobility was probably too absorbed by the problem of adapting senatorial rule to altered circumstances to allow them the leisure or the inclination to embark on fresh legislative projects of their own. Our record of these years is so imperfect that it would be rash to conclude that the scanty proposals on new subjects which it reveals exhausted the legislative activity of the senate; but had they done so, the circumstance would be intelligible; for the work that invited the attention of the senate in its own interest, was one of consolidation rather than of reform; the political feeling of the time put measures of a distinctly reactionary character, such as might have been welcomed by the more conservative members of the order, wholly out of the question; and the government was not likely, except under compulsion, to undertake legislation of a progressive type. The only important law of the period certainly proceeding from governmental circles, and dealing with a question that was novel, in the sense that it had not been heard of for a considerable number of years and had played no part in the Gracchan movements, was one passed by the consul Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. It dealt with the voting power of the freedmen,[785] and probably confirmed its restriction to the four city tribes. It is difficult to assign a political meaning to this law, as we do not know the practice which prevailed at the time of Scaurus's intervention; but it is probable that the restriction imposed by the censors of 169, who had confined the freedmen to a single tribe,[786] had not been observed, that great irregularity prevailed in the manner of their registration, and that Scaurus's measure, which was a return to the arrangement reached at the end of the fourth century, was intended to restrict the voting privileges of the class. This interpretation of his intention would seem to show that the increasing liberality of the Roman master had created a class the larger portion of which was not dependent on the wealthier and more conservative section of the citizen body, or was at least enabled to assert its freedom from control through the secrecy of the ballot. The interests of the class were almost identical with those of the free proletariate, in which the descendants of the freedmen were merged: and the law of Scaurus, which strengthened the country vote by preventing this urban influence spreading through all the tribes, may be an evidence that the senate distrusted the present passivity of the urban folk, and looked forward with apprehension to a time when they might have to rely on the more stable element which the country districts supplied. We shall see in the sequel that this anticipation of the freedmen's attitude was not unjustified, and that the increase of their voting power still continued to be an effective battle-cry for the demagogue who was eager to increase his following in the city.

Scaurus was also the author of a sumptuary law.[787] It came appropriately from a man who had been trained in a school of poverty, and shows the willingness of the nobility to submit, at least in appearance, to the discipline which would present it to the world as a self-sacrificing administration, reaping no selfish reward for its intense labour, and submitting to that equality of life with the average citizen which is the best democratic concession that a powerful oligarchy can make. The activity of the censorship was exhibited in the same direction. Foreign and expensive dishes were prohibited by the guardians of public morals, as they were by Scaurus's sumptuary law:[788] and the censors of 115, Metellus and Domitius, undertook a scrutiny of the stage which resulted in the complete exclusion from Rome of all complex forms of the histrionic art and its reduction to the simple Latin type of music and song.[789] Their energy was also displayed in a destructive examination of the morals of their own order, and as a result of the scrutiny thirty-two senators were banished from the Curia.[790] To guard the senate-house from scandal was indeed the necessary policy of a nobility which knew that its precarious power rested on the opinion of the streets; and the efforts of the censors, directed like those of their predecessors, to a regeneration which had a national type as its goal, show that that opinion could not yet have been considered wholly cosmopolitan or corrupt. The frequent splendour of triumphal processions, such as those which celebrated the victories of Domitius and Fabius over the Allobroges, of Metellus over the Dalmatians, and of Scaurus over the Ligurians,[791] produced a comfortable impression of the efficiency of the government in extending or preserving the frontiers of the empire; the triumph itself was the symbol of success, and few could have cared to question the extent and utility of the achievement. Satisfied with the belief that they were witnessing the average type of successful administration, the electors pursued the course, from which they so seldom deflected, of giving their unreserved confidence to the ancient houses; and this epoch witnessed a striking instance of hereditary influence, if not of hereditary talent, when Metellus Macedonicus was borne to his grave by sons, of whom four had held curule office, three had possessed the consulship, and one had fulfilled in addition the lofty functions of the censor and enjoyed the honour of a triumph.[792]

Yet distinction without a certain degree of fitness was now, as at every other time, an impossibility in Rome. The nobility, although it did not love originality, extended a helping hand to the capacity that was willing to support its cause and showed the likelihood of dignifying its administration; a career was still open to talent and address, if they were held to be wisely directed; and the man of the period who best deserves the title of leader of the State, was one who had not even sprung from the second strata of Roman society, but had struggled with a poverty which would have condemned an ordinary man to devote such leisure as he could spare for politics to swelling the babel of the Forum and the streets. It is true that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus bore a patrician name, and was one of those potential kings who, once in the senate, might assume the royal foot-gear and continue the holy task, which they had performed from the time of Romulus, of guarding and transmitting the auspices of the Roman people. But the splendour of the name had long been dimmed. Even in the history of the great wars of the beginning of the century but one Aemilius Scaurus appears, and he holds but a subordinate command as an officer of the Roman fleet. The father of the future chief of the senate had been forced to seek a livelihood in the humble calling of a purveyor of charcoal.[793] The son, resolute, ambitious and conscious of great powers, long debated with himself the question of his future walk in life.[794] He might remain in the ranks of the business world, supply money to customers in place of coal, and seize the golden opportunities which were being presented by the extension of the banking industry in the provincial world. Had he chosen this path, Scaurus might have been the chief of the knights and the most resolute champion of equestrian claims against the government. But his course was decided by the afterthought that the power of words was greater than that of gold, and that eloquence might secure, not only wealth, but the influence which wealth alone cannot attain. The fame which he gained in the Forum led inevitably to service in the field. He reaped distinction in the Spanish campaigns and served under Orestes in Sardinia. His narrow means rather than his principles may have been the reason why his aedileship was not marked by the generous shows to which the people were accustomed and by which their favour was usually purchased; in Scaurus's tenure of that office splendour was replaced by a rigorous performance of judicial duties;[795] but that such an equivalent could serve his purpose, that it should be even no hindrance to his career, proves the respect that his strenuous character had won from the people, and the anticipation formed by the government of the value of his future services. Now, when he was nearing his fiftieth year, he had secured the consulship, the bourne of most successful careers, but not to be the last or greatest prize of a man whose stately presence, unbending dignity, and apparent simplicity of purpose, could generally awe the people into respect, and whose keenness of vision and talent for intrigue impressed the senatorial mind with a sense of his power to save, when claims were pressing and difficulties acute.[796] His consulship, though without brilliancy, added to the respectable laurels that he had already attained. A successful raid on some Illyrian tribes[797] showed at least that he had retained the physical endurance of his youth; while his legislation on sumptuary matters and the freedman's vote showed the spirit of a milder Cato, and the moderate conservatism, not distasteful to the Roman of pure blood, which would preserve the preponderance in political power to the citizen untainted by the stain of servitude. A stormy event of his period of office gave the crowd an opportunity of seeing the severity with which a magistrate of the older school could avenge an affront to the dignity of his office. Publius Decius, who was believed to be a conscious imitator of Fulvius Flaccus in the exaggerated vehemence of his oratory, and who had already proved by his prosecution of Opimius that he was ready to defend certain features of the Gracchan cause even when such championship was fraught with danger, was in possession of the urban praetorship at the time when Scaurus held the consulship. One day the consul passed the open court of justice when the praetor was giving judgment from the curule chair. Decius remained seated, either in feigned oblivion or in ostentatious disregard of the presence of his superior. The politic wrath of Scaurus was aroused; an enemy had been delivered into his hands, and the people might be given an object-lesson of the way in which the most vehement champion of popular rights was, even when covered with the dignity of a magistracy, but a straw in the iron grasp of the higher Imperium. The consul ordered Decius to rise, his official robe to be rent, the chair of justice to be shattered in pieces, and published a warning that no future litigant should resort to the court of the contumacious praetor.[798] The vulgar mind is impressed, when it is not angered, by such scenes of violence. A repute for sternness is the best cloak for the flexibility which, if revealed, would excite suspicion. Scaurus to the popular mind was an embodiment of stiff patrician dignity, perhaps happily devoid of that touch of insolence which is often the mark of a career assured without a struggle; of a self-complacent dignity, quietly conscious of its own deserts and demanding their due reward, of the calmness of a soul that is above suspicion and refuses to admit even in its inmost sanctuary the thought that its motives can be impugned. Meanwhile certain disrespectful onlookers were expressing wonder at his mysteriously growing wealth and marvelling as to its source. But, marvel as they might, they never drove Scaurus to the necessity of an explanation. We shall find him as an old man repelling all attacks by the irresistible appeal to his services and his career. The condemnation of Scaurus appealed to the conservative as a blow struck at the dignity of the State itself; to the man of a more open mind it was at least the shattering of a delightful illusion.