Aristocracy had lost its exclusive privileges; but these had only become more objectionable by being spread over a larger surface; for they were now extended to a certain portion of the plebeians, who went by the name of novi homines, or upstarts. These were distinguished from the Nobiles, or, to speak shortly, the nobs, who enjoyed the right of having the images of their ancestors in wax; but this jus imaginum, as it was termed, conferred only an imaginary dignity. There was no legal privilege attached to the sort of nobility above described; but those persons who were qualified by the possession of the waxen forms of their fathers, were looked upon as men making in society a highly respectable figure.
Notwithstanding the liberty which is declared by republicans to be inseparable from the Republican form of Government, laws were passed to restrain the liberty of private action in the days of the Roman Commonwealth. By the Orchian law, made in the year of the city 572 (B.C. 181), the number of guests that might sit down to dinner was limited: and as a further illustration of republican freedom, it may be mentioned that the entertainer was obliged to keep open his doors , so that all who were freely-and-easily inclined might enter his house to see that the law was complied with. Twenty years later, it was decreed by the law of Fannius, that no entertainment should cost more than one hundred asses, or six shillings and five-pence farthing, on high days and holidays; on ten other days in the month, the meal was not to exceed thirty asses, or one and eleven-pence farthing; but on ordinary occasions seven-pence farthing was the figure to which even the richest man was to limit the cost of his dinner. The law not only interfered with the bill of expenses, but with the bill of fare; and, under the Consulship of M. Scaurus, the dormouse was excluded from the dinner-table as an enervating luxury. Vegetables were allowed to any extent, and bread might be eaten at—or even beyond—discretion.
To such a ridiculous extent did the Romans carry their interference with the private expenditure of each other, that when Crassus and Cn. Demetrius were Censors, they endeavoured in the most absurd manner to damage each other's popularity. Demetrius publicly charged Crassus with having been guilty of extravagance for going into mourning on the death of a favourite fish; and Crassus retorted by declaring that Demetrius had lost three wives without exhibiting signs of mourning for any one of them.[64]
FOOTNOTE:
[64] Macrobius, Saturnal., lib. ii., c. 1.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD
THE GRACCHI AND THEIR MOTHER. RISE AND FALL OF TIBERIUS
AND CAIUS GRACCHUS.
A people trained to live chiefly on spoils taken from others must be continually spoiling itself for any peaceful occupation; and those whose chief support is the sword, must be always destroying the food they live upon. When foreign means are exhausted, it becomes necessary to look at home, and those who have existed by robbing strangers, are no sooner deprived of their external sources of support, than they begin to rob each other. Such was the order—or rather the disorder—of things in Rome, where wealth had got into the hands of the few, and the social fabric, like a building too heavy at the top, was in immediate danger of a downfall. There were large classes of persons who were assured that they were perfectly free; but, though enjoying the freedom of air itself, they found in it no element of comfort, when they had nothing more substantial than the air to live upon. Deprived of every inch of land, there was but a flatulent sort of satisfaction in the enjoyment of the atmosphere, nor could the most long-winded of orators impress the people with the idea that life could be maintained by simply imbibing the breath of liberty. They were informed that they were the lords of the earth;[65] but this mockery of respect was simply insulting the emptiness of their mouths by a scarcely less empty title. The plebeians were like a number of ciphers without a preliminary figure, and, though possessing all the materials of strength in their vast body, were powerless until a head could be found for them. This at length appeared in the person of Tib. Sempronius Gracchus, the grandson of the elder Scipio, and as two heads are said to be better than one, Tib. united his brother Caius with him in the office of leader to the great plebeian movement.