These laws of his, Gracchus made in 629 and 630, having been tribune for two years running. His tribunate was less stormy than that of his brother, as he had much greater power, and was less thwarted. He got himself, and his friend M. Fulvius Flaccus, and very likely Q. Rubrius also, to be appointed triumvirs for the establishing of colonies; for his activity was unwearied, and it was felt in all the branches of the state to which his influence as tribune could reach. Among others, he had founded a colony by the side of old Carthage, and against this settlement a hypocritical outcry was raised, as if it might one day become dangerous to Rome; a most senseless notion, which some folks even held in good earnest. The jealousy and spite against him had now risen to the highest pitch, and the present opportunity was seized to harass him. The senate, with fiendish cunning, egged on another tribune, M. Livius Drusus, to outbid him in liberality to the people, and that in the name of the senate, so as to undermine his popularity. The great mass did not care, who it was that offered a boon to them; they thought, “Gracchus wants to buy and cheat us, Livius bids more: let us take what we can get, and not let ourselves be cheated.” Such, the Italians are even to this day. I myself have seen a striking example of this in the citizen of a small town, who had some coins which I valued for him. He fancied that I wanted to overreach him; and immediately after, he asked me, for a piece which I wished to buy, three times as much as I had told him, whereas before that, I might have had all of them for the third part of what they were worth. When one gives the modern Romans any advice from real kindness, and with perfect disinterestness, they will at once suspect you of having some secret end in view; for indeed they will not trust anybody. Thus it was also in those times. Livius did away with the tithes with which the lands were still burthened; and instead of the two colonies which Gracchus had proposed, he founded twelve, each of which was to consist of three thousand citizens. This the rich could easily grant, the only losers by it being the old inhabitants, unhappy men who hitherto had dwelt by sufferance on the soil where their ancestors had been conquered; for the estates of the rich were only in those places where the old towns had been destroyed. With regard to these colonies of Livius, we may ask, have they really been founded? There seems to be no doubt of it, as those of Gracchus were certainly established; indeed they were in all likelihood those duodecim coloniæ in Cicero’s oration pro Cæcina, about which there has been so much controversy. These cannot have had any reference to what happened in the war with Hannibal, when the number of those which had remained faithful was eighteen; so that eighteen and not twelve must have had the commercium given them as a boon. The MSS. have XII.: it has been proposed to write XIIX. instead; but this kind of notation is not met with in any of the old manuscripts. If, as I take it for granted, they were not twelve new colonies, but twelve Latin towns which, as they had a great deal of unoccupied ground, were increased by three thousand citizens, it is quite easy to understand why they had better rights than the other colonies.
Gracchus saw that the thoughtless people turned away from him to the senate, and to the tools of the senate who deceived them. There are many men, frank and kindly souls, who heartily love the Beautiful, and are delighted at seeing distinguished men play their part, and look upon them as the ornaments of their age; others think of nothing but themselves: driven on by envy and jealousy, and grieved at hearing any name praised be it ever so slightly, even when it does not harm them in the least, they are glad if they can discover any weaknesses in great men. All this tribe now raised an outcry against Gracchus, laughing at him as a doctrinaire, a man of crotchets and theories. He had now for so long a time enjoyed great consideration, and he stood forth in too full a blaze of light not to become an eyesore to many people; just as the Athenian citizen gave his vote against Aristides, because he was called the Just. Thus it came to pass, that when he again offered himself as a candidate for the tribuneship, he was rejected; nor is there any reason to believe that his colleagues had been guilty of foul play. Among the independent educated middle classes only, Gracchus seems to have had many partisans; but these had not much political weight, and his friends of high rank were hot-headed people. In the year 631, his enemy L. Opimius, the destroyer of Fregellæ, whom, the year before, he had kept out of the consulship, was chosen consul. For when he was in the heyday of his popularity, he once asked the people to promise him a favour; this they granted, and while it was thought that he would demand great things, he begged the consulship for C. Fannius. The latter was a homo novus, at least for the consulship, and it would have been hard for him to get it without the help of Gracchus: he, however, soon left him, and went over to his foes. Opimius also was a plebeian; but, like Popillius Lænas, he sided with the aristocracy against Gracchus. The oligarchical party was bent upon getting up a quarrel. Gracchus, now that he was no longer sacrosanctus, did not feel sure of his life, and was therefore always surrounded by many of his friends. The measures of the senate became more and more hostile: the colonies granted to him were to be broken up by a decree of that body, and there was a deliberation on the subject; one of the tribunes moreover, who had been nominated by the oligarchs, spoke to the people then assembled before the Capitol, against Gracchus, and when the latter came forward to defend himself, he was charged in a tumultuous manner with having interrupted the tribune. The consul, who just then was offering a sacrifice on the Capitol, sent one of his lictors, as if to fetch something for the sacrifice, but in reality for another purpose; and the man while forcing his way across the friends of Gracchus, cried out, “Ye evil-minded fellows! make room for the good citizens!” One of them was rash enough to strike him; a tumult arose, and the lictor was murdered. His dead body was displayed in the forum, and a scene was got up, as if he had been a martyr to the good cause. For the first time,[78] the senate now passed the decree, viderent Consules, ne quid detrimenti res publica caperet. Opimius was invested with dictatorial power; for the custom of making dictators had fallen into disuse, as it could no longer be managed in the old forms, the curies having ceased to exist. Gracchus now took leave of his wife and children; after which, he and Fulvius went to the Aventine, the ancient refuge for persecuted innocence. He had had no foreboding of the misfortune which had come upon him: his whole party was all in confusion, and he could not make up his mind to let things go on to extremity. His friend and colleague, the consular M. Fulvius Flaccus, who was more resolute, armed some of the common people, and slaves; in short, any one whom he could get. The mob itself—from henceforth we meet with nothing better—for which Gracchus had no sympathies, left him to his fate, taking him for a knave or a fool, and being quite content, so long as they kept the benefits which he had gained for them. Thus it cost the consuls no trouble to attack the Aventine, though they had only a small force, the city being either paralyzed or indifferent. The knights, whom Gracchus had nearly remodelled as an order, were likewise idle lookers on, owing to that fear which is inherent in rich men whose wealth is not in landed property, but merely in money. This class shows itself lukewarm in every commotion, and lets itself be trampled on in every possible way, as we see, for instance, in the history of Florence.
Gracchus sent to the senate to effect a compromise; but unconditional surrender was demanded. The Aventine being feebly defended, the clivus Publicius, by which one ascended from the Circus, was taken by storm; and now Fulvius sent his son, a fine, handsome youth, to the senate, to ask for a truce. He was sent back the first time; and when he came again, Opimius had him arrested, thrown into a dungeon, and afterwards put to death. When the Aventine was taken, Fulvius, who had hidden himself, was found and slain; Gracchus leaped from the temple of Diana down the sharp steep of the Aventine, and sprained his ankle; not being able to find a horse, he, leaning on his friends, could hardly reach the Pons sublicius. The two friends, Pomponius and Lætorius, who were knights, and formed an honourable exception to the majority of the higher classes, fought like Horatius Cocles on the bridge, to keep the pursuers at bay, and allowed themselves to be cut down. In the meanwhile, Gracchus fled across the Tiber into a sacred grove (lucus Furiarum), which, however, did not shelter him. Opimius had promised for his head its weight in gold. According to the most likely account, a faithful slave did him the friendly service of killing him. An Anagnian, Septimuleius, got the head, and filled it with molten lead. Upwards of three thousand men were denounced as partisans of Gracchus, and nearly all of them were put to death by Opimius; a few only may have made their escape. This war of extermination was waged against all who were in any way distinguished: it was a downright butchery, like that of the year 1799 at Naples. For two years the bloodshed lasted, and these murderers called themselves boni homines, boni cives. There were many renegades, and there is no doubt but that C. Carbo was very early one of them. He became consul, and then defended Opimius against the charges brought against him by the tribune Q. Decius. Carbo, after he had saved Opimius, became the darling of the oligarchs; but now there arose against him P. Licinius Crassus, a near kinsman of his, perhaps a brother of the wife of C. Gracchus, and the very one of whom Cicero so often speaks, especially in the masterly dialogue de Oratore, and in his “Brutus.” Crassus was a man of uncommon mind and powers; but like all the orators of that age (with the exception of C. Gracchus), wanting in cultivation. He too began on the side of the people, and then he went over to the senate, and became one of the foremost champions of the oligarchy; yet he is a very respectable oligarch, and quite free from the reproach which clings to so many others. He now spoke against Carbo, and attacked him in such a manner, that he took away his own life by means of poison (a solution of vitriol, atramentum sutorium).[79] This was a satisfaction to men’s feelings, and it gave a hope of the possibility that things would still change for the better. But for all that, they remained as they were: the knights were intimidated; the courts of justice were no better, nor were any fruits whatever of their independence yet to be seen. The utter worthlessness of those who were in power is strikingly shown in the war of Jugurtha, which Sallust, with his fine tact, has therefore made the subject of his historical work. But we must first speak of the conquests of the empire.
FOREIGN CONQUESTS DOWN TO THE WAR WITH JUGURTHA.
In Spain, few events of any importance happened between the time of Tib. Gracchus and the war with Jugurtha. The Balearic isles were subdued by one of the four sons of Metellus Macedonicus, all of whom were consuls. The Metelli were plebeians, but one of the most powerful families which formed the aristocracy; and they were truly great characters: Metellus Numidicus also, notwithstanding the reproaches which have been brought against him, is one of the most spotless of men. Another son of Metellus conquered the Dalmatians, who from henceforth remained subject to the Romans; so that one might now go by land to Greece round the Adriatic.
Soon after the death of Tib. Gracchus, the Romans made their first expedition into Transalpine Gaul. They were masters of nearly the whole of Spain, and of Italy almost as far as the Alps (Aosta did not yet belong to them); but in Gaul itself, between the Alps and the Pyrenees, they had not yet even tried to gain a firm footing: all that they did, was to secure for the Massilians, their old allies, in the beginning of the seventh century, a strip of country along the coast against the Ligurians. The first occasion for their establishing themselves there, was a war of the Salluvians or Salyans against the Ligurians: the Salluvians, who dwelt from Aix to Marseilles, were conquered by them. This tribe had been supported by the Allobroges, one of the greatest peoples of Gaul, who had their abodes in Dauphiné and Savoy, as far as Lyons; and when these had likewise been defeated, the Romans turned their arms against the Arvernians, a race governed by rich and powerful kings, which as far back as the second Punic War, held the supremacy in Gaul. These last were utterly routed on the banks of the Rhone near Vienne, in the days of C. Gracchus. Bituitus, of whose wealth various accounts have been preserved, was at that time their king: he tried to make his peace with the Romans, and the generals, Q. Fabius Maximus (who was afterwards surnamed Allobrogicus), and Cn. Domitius, sent him to Rome to beg the mercy of the senate. Without having come in deditionem, he went thither, trusting to the good faith of those who were in power; but they arrested him, and kept him a prisoner to the day of his death at Alba on the lake Fucinus, where Syphax and Perseus had died. The Roman province now reached as far as Dauphiné. The Allobroges in that country, though they acknowledged the majestas populi Romani, did not become subjects; but Provence and Lower Languedoc, were real provinces, although there was not always a prætor there. The time when the Roman provincial institutions were introduced, cannot be exactly made out, owing to the loss of the books of Livy. Aquæ Sextiæ was the first Roman colony beyond the Alps.
In 638 the Cimbri make their first appearance. After the reduction of Dalmatia, the Romans had attacked Carniola, which is said to have roused the anger of the Scordiscans. It is, however, more likely that the immigration of the Sarmatians from the east stirred up the Scordiscans, who now fell upon Macedon and Greece. This was one of the greatest calamities of the unfortunate sixth and seventh centuries of the city, which were some of the most awful for the world itself; just as the sixteenth and seventeenth of our era in modern history: it destroyed most of the beautiful works of ancient art. In Italy, that havoc went on until the times of Augustus, which were the first beginning of a kind of material prosperity. The consul C. Porcius Cato was routed in Thrace by the Scordiscans, and Macedon, Thessaly, and part of Greece, were overrun by the barbarians.
THE WAR AGAINST JUGURTHA. Q. CÆCILIUS METELLUS NUMIDICUS. C. MARIUS.
Sallust’s description of the war against Jugurtha, is one of the best specimens which we have in either language of the ancient literature, and I would even rate it above that of Catiline’s conspiracy. They are monographies, almost the only ones which the Romans had, except perhaps the history of the war with Hannibal by Cœlius Antipater, of which, however, we know nothing: the memoirs of Fannius were something quite different. Sallust takes indeed the utmost care to avoid anything that has an annalistic look; he leaves out every mention of dates, to give his work the greatest possible finish. It is a book which, the more one reads it, the more worthy of admiration it seems: it is a real study for every one who wants to know what excellent historical writing is. To him I refer you.
When Masinissa died, he had put his kingdom in order, and made Scipio executor of his will. He left his dominions to his three sons, Gulussa, Micipsa, and Mastanabal, whom we are by no means to look upon as having been somewhat like the chieftains of the tribes which now dwell in those countries; for Livy says of Mastanabal, that he had been litteris Græcis apprime eruditus. He knew Greek so well, that he wrote it; a fact which shows us how wrongly we deem the Numidians and all such races to have been mere barbarians. Even among the rude Thracians, there can be no doubt that at that time Greek learning was not unknown; we meet with it afterwards even among the Parthians. The civilization of the Greeks had spread very widely, more especially since the fall of the nation. The Numidians, as well as the Libyans, had an alphabet of their own, as one sees from remains which are found in several towns in those parts. Colonel Humbert has discovered over the gate of a city an inscriptio bilinguis, Punic and Libyan; in Cyrene, there are inscriptions in three languages, Punic, Greek, and one which is unknown; in the desert of Sahara, among the Tuariks, the travellers Clapperton and Denham have met with an alphabet which is quite distinct from the Arabic. I am convinced that it belongs to the Libyan language, which is spoken in the Canary isles, throughout the whole of the desert and the oases, as far as the Nile and the Barabras in Upper Egypt. Denham[80] is too shallow, to see his way through it; we shall be able to read the Libyan inscriptions when we fully know the alphabet, of which Denham gives one letter. The whole of this matter will one day be cleared up. The Numidian kings likewise had the Carthaginian library given them as a present by the Romans. Gulussa died early, as also did Mastanabal, who left behind him only a son by a concubine, Jugurtha. The Numidian empire, which reached from the borders of Morocco to the Syrtes as far as Leptis and Tripolis, was now in the hands of Micipsa alone. He had two sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal. Jugurtha, who had excellent abilities, at first won the heart of the old king; but when the latter discovered in him talents superior to those of his own sons, he became jealous of him, and sent him to Spain, where Scipio was gathering troops together from all parts for the siege of Numantia: there he hoped that he would perish. But Jugurtha was befriended by fortune; and he gained great favour with Scipio, under whose protection he desired to be placed, lest Micipsa should murder him. Many Romans of rank even encouraged him to revolt, and provided him with money, as he had no prospect of coming to the throne lawfully; for after Micipsa’s death, the whole of the kingdom was to be kept together. He now got letters of recommendation to Micipsa, who, taking fright, adopted him, and in his will divided the sovereignty among the three princes, who were to reign together as colleagues. The proud and fierce Hiempsal, who looked upon his cousin as an intruder, would insult him without any provocation: it was then agreed upon to share the inheritance, and in the meanwhile Jugurtha had him murdered. Jugurtha, who was no common man, being shrewd and versatile, but without any notion of truth and honesty, like an Albanian chief, now took up arms and attacked Adherbal also. The latter betook himself to the Romans, and owing to their predilection for him obtained a favourable decision: a commission was sent from Rome to divide the country between himself and Jugurtha. The commissioners, however, were so well plied with gold, that, when the division was made, Jugurtha got the most powerful and warlike part of the country. But he longed for the whole, and thus a war was soon brought on again. Adherbal imploringly besought the help of Rome against this criminal and restless man, and in the senate, at first, his cause was found to be a just one; but the ruling oligarchs, headed by Opimius, and bought over with bribes, declared for Jugurtha, and hindered every decision. In the meantime, Adherbal was beset in Cirta, and driven to the last distress: his representations to the Roman senate were all baffled by the influence of L. Opimius, as the envoys of Jugurtha, who were at Rome with a large sum of money, purchased the votes of every one. But when Cirta had been brought to extremity, some of the friends of Adherbal stole out of the town, and carried to the senate most dismal letters: a new commission was now sent, which was likewise bribed, and returned without having raised the siege. Jugurtha, however, was impelled by Nemesis not to keep his promise to Adherbal, when he yielded himself up and stipulated for his life only; nor to the Roman and Italian negotiatores, who alone had upheld that prince, and who now also surrendered. He had them slaughtered to sate his vengeance. This was too bad, and even those who had hitherto spoken most loudly for him, had no longer a word to say. A Roman embassy arrived at Utica, to call Jugurtha to account; but he gave evasive answers and completely took them in.