On the side of Gracchus were many of the most eminent men, who certainly were owners of large estates as well as the Scipios, but who gave up their private advantage for the common good. There was even his father-in-law Appius Claudius, who in other respects was just as proud as any of his forefathers, but who in this behaved as Appius Claudius Cæcus had done in his most glorious moments; moreover, there was the great P. Mucius Scævola who was then consul; there was also the father-in-law of his brother, P. Licinius Crassus, and others. The rage which broke out against Tib. Gracchus in the senate, is difficult to describe; it went beyond all the bounds of decency. Men of rank, when they are the champions of oligarchy, as soon as ever their interests are touched, not only display the same greedy covetousness as the worst bred, but likewise a fury which one could hardly have believed. Hitherto no one had lost sight of what was due to Gracchus and his family: he enjoyed the same respect among the Romans, as among barbarians; every one acknowledged his virtue, and even those who looked upon all virtue as folly, were forced to own that he was afflicted with that folly. But now the heroes of triumphs, and the first men of the state, railed against him as a mutinous fellow who was actuated by the most detestable motives. P. Cornelius Nasica, he who was grandson of him who in the war with Hannibal had been declared to be the most virtuous of men; and son of Scipio Nasica, who was likewise said to have been an example to the whole nation, and who had tried hard to bring back the good ways of the olden time; a man who himself also was deemed to be the very soul of honour, and perhaps deserved to be so in many respects—became hand and glove with the infamous Q. Pompeius. From this it does not follow that he was a knave; it may be that, hardened in his oligarchical notions, he really saw Ti. Gracchus as he fancied him to be. The senate did not possess the same means which the patricians once had against the plebeians: it had not the old negative of the curies, the Hortensian law having conceded to the tribes the most unbounded power of legislation, so that the senate could not step in with a senatus consultum. By the strangest anomaly, the tribunes could now only check each other, since there was no veto where it would have been most needed: the only means of defeating a law was the intercession of a tribune.
There are hereditary family principles in Rome, as there were also family characters; and these are more than mere political maxims.[74] Throughout the family of the Gracchi, as has been already mentioned, we find a certain mildness, and an unaffected kindliness towards those who were in need of help. This is shown in the three generations which are remarkable in history, by Tib. Gracchus in the Second Punic War, by Tib. Gracchus the censor, and by the two unfortunate brothers Tiberius and Caius; it is a disposition moreover which in Rome was not often met with, and which had now disappeared entirely. The same thing is to be seen in every free state, and it is one of those spells by which a commonwealth is upheld. Those who are born in certain families, are, as it were, predestined to such and such political principles: thus in England it is known at once to which party a Russel is sure to belong, just as every one receives from his church the doctrines which he is to follow.[75]
If the notion that the tribunes belonged to a different class from the ruling one, is quite erroneous at the very outset, it is utterly groundless now. At this time, we may positively say that as a rule the tribunes—though they did not all become consuls themselves, as every year there were ten tribunes elected, and not more than two consuls—belonged to the consular families, and that it was only very rarely that a plebeian was made consul who had not once been tribune. This is a point, which we must not lose sight of. It now happened not unseldom that a man like Gracchus was among the tribunes. M. Octavius, who was tribune with him, belonged to a good family, although not one of the very first rank. Him the opposite party gained over, to put in his veto. There is nothing to say against his character: he had formerly been a friend of Tiberius Gracchus, but party spirit had now got the better of him. He himself had much to lose, and Gracchus offered to make it up to him out of his own property; but this, of course, he could not accept. In vain did Gracchus try to convince him of his error, and adjure him to recal his intercession: it was all to no purpose, as Octavius had bound himself by his word of honour, and could not act otherwise than in the trammels of his faction, which is the worst thing that a man can do in a struggle of parties. The question now was, whether Gracchus should give up a law which might save the nation and check the spread of vice, merely because a man who was his friend had sold his soul to the evil faction; or whether he should do a thing which was indeed contrary to the letter, but quite in the spirit of the constitution. He made up his mind to the latter course, which was to move in the assembly of the people, that Octavius should be put out of his tribuneship. This was an irregularity; but, properly speaking, the independence of the tribunes was an abuse: consuls had been deposed more than once, and an office from which its holder cannot be removed, is an absurdity in a republic. The tribunes were merely commissioned to bring motions before the people, and whoever has given a commission can also take it away again. But what Gracchus did, was wrong in point of form. That he might swerve from the law as little as he could, he proposed to Octavius, first to put himself to the vote; and when Octavius refused, he went on with his motion. Seventeen tribes had already voted against Octavius, when Gracchus once more besought him to give up his opposition, or else to resign. But he would do neither, and was deposed. As he wished to make a scene, he would not leave the rostra, until Gracchus had him dragged down by force, thus awakening that feeling of disgust among the beholders, which the senate and the men in power were eager to call forth.
The opponents of Tib. Gracchus had now the advantage of seeing him wrong in form. The agrarian law was carried, and a standing triumvirate was appointed to watch over the way in which it was kept. Tib. Gracchus, his brother, and his father-in-law, were named as triumvirs. From the Somnium Scipionis, we see that the socii and Latini attached themselves to P. Scipio, and we have even a great many statements which show that they, like the senate, were against the agrarian law: the reason for this we may make out by laying things together, there being several ways of accounting for it, one of which must undoubtedly be the true one. The Roman laws, unless it were expressly stipulated, did not apply to the allies, as we know from the usury laws, which are a case in point. Now it may be that the law of Licinius had said nothing about the socii and Latini; so that if these had a possessio, they were not tied down to the maximum of five hundred jugera. Those who were rich, may have bought up in remote districts the latifundia of former Roman possessors, and they would now have been disturbed by the Sempronian law. Certain it is, that the socii and Latini had always been granted a certain portion of the ager publicus: thus for instance the Campanians had a very large one, which they could only have acquired as allies; the Marsians had a share in the Apulian pastures. That Gracchus had meddled with these holdings, is not very likely, though it cannot be positively denied. It is more probable, on the other hand, that many places had been allowed, till further orders, to have the use of their ager on condition of their paying tribute for it, though the right of ownership, which these had lost in war, had not been restored to them by the Roman people: if this indulgence were now taken away, it was hard upon them. They also got compensations, as we know for certain in the case of Carthage. Those who held on such tenures, had now the same interest as the wealthy Romans. However this may have been, the allies felt themselves aggrieved.—The plea then of defending the rights of the subjects, was the mask behind which the covetousness of those who were in power was hidden: they put on the guise of being the champions of these without thinking at all of themselves, an hypocrisy, which has taken in even a clear-headed man like Cicero, who is remarkably wavering with regard to these and other like transactions: his heart is with the Gracchi, but led by a priori reasoning, he decides against them; and thus he feels quite at a loss, and is afraid to speak out. The circumstances under which he wrote the books de Re publica and de Legibus, are his excuse. The opposition of the Latins was a great stumblingblock in the way of Gracchus; the optimates were only able to counterbalance the popular party by thus leaguing themselves with the allies. But when the oligarchy had gained the victory by the help of the socii, they afterwards basely sacrificed them, very nearly as the Irish Roman Catholics were sacrificed at the Union.
About this time, already in the beginning of the year, Attalus died. The establishment of the province of Asia now forms an episode in the tribunate of Gracchus, in which he again showed himself to have been a statesman of deep thought, and earned great honour. Among the goods which the king left, was a large treasure, as is always the case with eastern princes, who, much as they spend, hoard as much again; and this was sent to Rome. Now it is often thrown out as a reproach against Gracchus, that he divided it among the Roman people; but there was nothing wrong in what he did. In Rome, as in the small Swiss cantons, every citizen had a share in the sovereignty; besides which, the public ærarium was becoming richer every day, as the tributes already yielded so immense a surplus, that the citizens had no longer to pay any direct taxes. As the great mass of the people had now sunk into the lowest depths of wretchedness, this division was quite justifiable; and the more so, as land was to be assigned to them, and they wanted money to stock it. The triumvirs for the distribution of the land were now first to make out, which estates belonged to the republic, and which to private persons: for many had been sold, and many in the midst of the allotted districts had been left to their former owners; so that the keeping of the registers was exceedingly difficult. The Romans had these registers, just as we have our surveys for the assessment of taxes; but they were very carelessly done, as the seat of government was at Rome alone, and there was hardly anything like sub-delegation.
The time for choosing new tribunes was now at hand. The tribunes entered upon their functions on the ninth of December; but for a longer time than we can tell, the elections had been held at the end of June, or in the beginning of July, that the tribunate might never be vacant. As the tribunes took part in the discussions of the senate, and in these Gracchus was treated with a vulgar and most reckless fury, he could easily foresee, that when once out of office, he would be at the mercy of his foes: as triumvir agrorum dividundorum, he was not sacrosanctus. He therefore tried, in accordance with the laws, to have his tribuneship renewed. This was done very often in the first ages; but it may have fallen into disuse, and thus the party against him have had the plea of prescription on the score of which they might withstand him. When the prærogativa had nominated him, and another tribe had followed on the same side, the opposition declared this vote to be null and void, and demanded that the tribunes should not receive any suffrages for him. Q. Rubrius, a tribune who presided over the election, having become quite at a loss what to do, Mummius, another tribune who had been chosen instead of Octavius, said that Rubrius ought to yield his place to him: on this, as the other tribunes demanded that the matter should be decided by lot, a quarrel arose, and the day passed away without anything being settled. Gracchus already saw that his death was aimed at, and he went about with his child among the people, begging them to stand by him, and to save his life. In the earliest times, the plebes assembled on the forum; but in the war with Hannibal already, it always votes on the area before the temple in the Capitol; I have not yet been able to find out when it was that this change began. It also seems that the votes were now given by word of mouth, and not, as formerly, on tablets, a custom which afterwards the Lex Cassia only restored, so that it is by no means to be looked upon as an innovation, as is generally thought. Professor Wunder has very correctly perceived this. Let no one believe that it is possible to honour Cicero more highly than I do; yet I cannot help saying, that he is to be blamed for all the erroneous notions which are rife on this subject, as well as on so many others. Gracchus now was on the area of the Capitol, and was speaking most movingly to the people, who seemed as if they would uphold him. At any other time of the year, when the country folks were in great numbers in the city, he would undoubtedly have found the strongest protection; but these were away on account of the harvest, and the townspeople were not only lukewarm, but many of them were directly under the influence of the optimates. Here also we see how the constitution, owing to circumstances, had become quite different from what it had been formerly under the self-same forms. In the earlier ages, when the territory did not yet reach over many leagues, the citizens might assemble and the tribus rusticæ be represented, if not fully, at least in considerable numbers: but now that the Roman peasantry lived so far away, especially, for instance, after the assignments of Flaminius in the Romagna, they were no more able to come to town and vote; and the form of the law, which was suitable to the former size of the city, was now thoroughly preposterous and mischievous. On the following day, the elections were to go on, and people now met together with a gloomy foreboding that blood would be shed. Gracchus came only lightly armed. The senate was assembled in the temple of Fides. The votes were about to be given, when a tumult arose. The senate being near, at the news that there was an uproar among the people, Scipio Nasica called upon the consul Mucius Scævola to take strong measures. The latter appears in a doubtful light: according to most of the accounts, he seems to have been favourable to Gracchus; according to others, just the reverse; but if we suppose him to have been a weak-minded man who stood in fear of his faction, this contradiction may be accounted for. Nasica, seeing that a bold stroke would decide the matter, called upon all the senators to follow him; and they all, to a man, while leaving the temple, declared Gracchus a traitor. The people fell back before men of such high rank, and the senators seized hold of everything that might serve as a weapon. There seem to have been scaffoldings erected all round (even now-a-days in Italy, wherever there is anything to be seen, benches are placed); part of these were broken in pieces. The report had been spread, that Gracchus had appeared with a diadem, and that he wanted to have himself proclaimed king: the senators, with the exception of some blockheads who would believe anything, well knew the whole to be a lie; but the people, who could not tell their own mind, and had no leader, many of them dispersed. The senators laid hold of the broken pieces of timber, and made an onset against the few unarmed men that were still gathering round Tiberius Gracchus, who, on their side, did not dare so much as to lift up a hand against the senators. Tiberius fled down the centum gradus to the Velabrum; and there his foot slipped, one of his pursuers—according to some, one of the common people; according to others, a senator, or a colleague of Gracchus (there were persons who afterwards disputed for the honour)—having pulled him by the toga: this man struck him on the head with a bit of wood, and when he fell down stunned, the murder was completed. Many of his followers shared the same fate, and their dead bodies were thrown into the Tiber: the carcase of the great man himself, having been washed ashore, was left to rot in the fields. He was not even yet thirty years old when he died. A great number were also arrested as accomplices. But the real persecution only began in the following year, under the consul P. Popillius Lænas, the descendant of one of the leaders of the plebes at the time of the Licinian law: he has left a terrible memory behind him. He caused thousands to be imprisoned, and some of them to be put to death without any trial, like a real Duke of Alva; one he condemned to be thrust into a chest filled with snakes, an atrocity which Plutarch expressedly speaks of in his life of Tiberius Gracchus. It is sad that even Cicero looks upon this Popillius Lænas as a man of honour. One anecdote I cannot help telling here. It was either at that time, or very likely some years before, that Diophanes of Mitylene and C. Blossius of Cumæ, the most intimate friends of Tib. Gracchus, were summoned before the inquisitorial tribunal, to give account of their connexion with Gracchus. The latter answered, that his connexion was well known; that Tib. Gracchus had been his most intimate friend. They then asked him, whether he had done everything that Gracchus had told him to do. He answered that he had.—“Whether he would have done anything that Gracchus might subsequently have required of him?”—“Yes,” was his answer again.—“Whether then he would at his bidding have set fire to the Capitol?” He said, that Gracchus could never have commanded such a thing.—“But what if he had commanded it notwithstanding?”—“Well then,” said he, “I would have done it.” This horrid speech was held to be a proof of his utter wickedness; but it is not so much a disgrace to him who looked upon his friend as his better self, as to the man who wrung it out of him by his captious questions. Blossius got off; but he afterwards took away his own life, that he might not fall into the hands of these bloodthirsty wretches.
It is remarkable, that the ruling party did not again abolish the new office of triumvirs, M. Fulvius Flaccus, the friend of Tiberius, being chosen in his room; but the efficiency of these was hampered, and they were able to do nothing, as those who were called upon to show their titles to their estates, did not come forward, or else made no declaration. But when the first burst of their rage was over, they saw that they were playing a dangerous game; and they left the laws of Gracchus untouched, and, for appearance’s sake, appointed the consul Tuditanus to pass judgment on the disputed points: instead of doing this, he took the field, and thus the matter was put off. Whether anything was done at all, cannot be made out. When Ap. Claudius also died, he was succeeded by C. Papirius Carbo, an unworthy disciple of Gracchus, who did the same things as his master had done before him, but from bad motives. It is the curse of revolutions, that the onward march of events hurries along with it even good men who have once plunged into them; the power of freeing oneself from the influence of what is passing around us, belongs only to that iron will which neither heeds nor shrinks from anything. A distinguished man, who had gone through all the horrors of the revolution, but had kept his hands unsullied, once said to me, “It is a terrible remembrance to have lived to see a revolution, and to have had a share in it; one goes to the attack along with the noble-minded, and one remains before the breach with the knaves.” This one should have before one’s eyes as a warning; but perhaps we may not have to dread a revolution for centuries to come. The period in Roman history which we have now reached, is one in which the explanation of forms is no longer sufficient; we must take men psychologically, and make a study of the personal characters of those who tore from each other’s grasp the spoils of the state when its life had fled from it. Carbo was a man of much talent; but he was possessed by evil spirits: he might perhaps, in peaceful times, have belonged to the number of fine souls; but in that age, he sank down into the lowest depths of guilt and meanness. His character was such, that the charge of his having murdered Scipio, is not at all impossible in itself: yet, as in the south it is so very common for it, to be reported that a man has been poisoned, if his death has exhibited any symptoms like it (as, for instance, in putrid fevers), we ought not to place unqualified belief in that suspicion.
Scipio was laying siege to Numantia, when he heard the news of his brother-in-law’s death; and he expressed his approval of it. After his return to Rome, Carbo called upon him to declare whether he looked upon the death of Gracchus as just; but he shuffled out of this, saying, that it was just, if Gracchus had meant to make himself king. This was mere senseless slander, and thus men’s minds were generally embittered against Scipio. The oligarchs themselves were divided: not every one who had clamoured for Gracchus’ blood, was therefore Scipio’s friend; but they all wanted him, and it flattered his vanity to consider himself also as the protector of the Latins and of the allies. Tiberius’ death had by no means brought the dispute to a decision; far from it, it was carried on with unabated violence. Scipio intended to speak in the assembly of the people against the enforcing of the Sempronian law, which was never repealed; as we may see from the original tables of the Lex Thoria (640-50), and the few fragments of a later agrarian law. The evening before the day on which he was to address the people, he had betaken himself to rest at an early hour, to think over his speech; but in the morning he was found dead in his bed. This sudden death now raised the suspicion of his having been murdered; yet, strange to say, no inquiry was made, although it would have been the interest of the ruling party to have had one. The result might, however, perhaps have turned against this very party;[76] for instance, against Q. Pompeius, or Metellus: people even went so far as to charge Scipio’s wife, Sempronia, a sister of the Gracchi, with having got him out of the world by poison. Yet poisoned he could not have been, by all accounts; for as his corpse was borne upon an open bier, the symptoms of it would have shown themselves. If he died a violent death, he must have been strangled.
From the death of Tiberius, to the first tribunate of Caius Gracchus, several remarkable measures were debated: the question of the new division of land was no more to be got rid of. Unluckily, we do not know the particulars: it is a pity that the books of Livy, from the 50th down to the 60th, have been lost. We have a decree of the tribune M. Junius Pennus, that the allies should be left in possession of their land, but should not be raised to the right of citizenship; which was quite in the spirit of the oligarchy. In many towns of the Marsians, Samnites, and others, there were a great many rich and uncorrupted families, which, had they been engrafted upon the worn out Roman stock, would very soon have thrown the Roman aristocracy into the shade. For this reason, they were not to become citizens, but to keep their land; and by this means it was hoped to quiet them. But when they saw themselves thus taken in in every way, they began to plot together: the details, however, of this conspiracy are shrouded in darkness. In the lifetime of Tib. Gracchus already, there had been a talk of giving the right of citizenship to the Latins, especially to Tibur and Præneste, and perhaps also to the towns of the Hernicans, but above all, to the colonies. These consisted of Romans, Latins, and Hernicans of all kinds, who lived under the Latin law, and had the best claims to the right of citizenship; but Gracchus must either have put off his plans with regard to them, or have quite given them up. Now they insisted upon having it, as it had been chiefly their support which had upheld the senate. It is inconceivable how Fregellæ, the most flourishing of them, could at that time have been so mad as to take up arms; the other Latins would have nothing to do with it, and the colonies were scattered throughout the whole country. The Italians proper, as they stood one step lower down, were perhaps not always glad when the Latins got such privileges; they rejoiced at their trouble, and gave them no help. The prætor L. Opimius besieged, conquered, and destroyed Fregellæ: not a trace is left of the town, and a dreadful revenge was taken on the people.