The Comic History of Rome

by Gilbert Abbott À Beckett

The plebeian party became quite as unreasonable on one side of the question, as the patricians had been on the other; and C. Papirius Carbo, a demagogue, who had got the place of tribune, proposed that the people should have the right of re-electing the same person to the tribuneship over and over again,—a suggestion designed to render his own position permanent. Scipio Æmilianus opposed the measure to the utmost; and after going home one night, he had no sooner finished his supper, than he began to cram himself for a speech, with which he contemplated coming out on the day following. He was, however, found dead in his bed; and, though probability points to apoplexy as the cause, the historians have—without much, indeed, of evidence—returned a verdict of Wilful Murder against C. P. Carbo. We have no hesitation in acquitting him of this dreadful crime; but we cannot say that we shall be able to allow him to quit these pages without a stain on his character. It is to be regretted that the Senate had not the courage to institute an inquiry at the time when the occurrence took place, and when only the real facts could have been ascertained; for such a course would have saved considerable trouble to those chroniclers who are always ready to frame an entirely new set of circumstances of their own, to replace those which contemporaneous investigation has omitted to supply us with.

Caius Sempronius Gracchus was getting daily more tired of his thoroughly retired life; and, being an excellent spokesman, he began to flatter himself that the commonweal might profit by his services. He is said to have been urged on by his brother's ghost; but there is reason to believe that he was impelled by a more commendable spirit. This fraternal shade is stated to have appeared to him in his dreams; but the matters he now began to take in hand were not those which he could afford to go to sleep over.

In republics, where he who is the humble servant of the people to-day, may be, to-morrow, the people's master, talent is looked upon with jealousy by the governing power, which, while ostensibly employing an able instrument, may be, in fact, promoting a dangerous rival. Thus, when the head of a nation is removable, it is reluctant to employ the best men, lest they prove better than the head itself, and aspire to the very highest position.

Where the form of government is monarchical, it is to the interest of the ruler to avail himself of the ablest assistance he can obtain; for, being himself irremovable, he becomes the fixed centre towards which the glories and successes of his ministers and servants continually gravitate.

It was on the principle of getting rid of a dangerous rival, that the republican government had sent away Caius Gracchus from Rome,—where he might have been everything—to Sardinia, where he would almost inevitably sink to nothing. He was himself apprehensive of this result, and he consequently returned to Rome, leaving Sardinia without the leave of any one. His duty should have kept him abroad, but ambition urged him home; and, in a republic, there is little to insure the fidelity of one who, though the servant of the Government to-day, may be its master to-morrow. Leaving the interests of his country in Sardinia to take care of themselves, this professed patriot came to look after his own interests in Rome, and took his talents into the political market. He immediately stood for the tribuneship; and though he had abandoned one post—that of Quæstor in Sardinia—he was elected to the more important post, which might, indeed, be termed the chief pillar of popular liberty.

Though he had, of course, solicited and obtained his high office on purely public grounds, he at once endeavoured to use it for the gratification of personal animosities. His first two measures were proposed with a view to avenging his brother's death; and he sought to give the intended new laws a retrospective effect, for the purpose of gratifying his private enmity. He introduced a law to prevent a person deprived by the people of any office, from being appointed to the public service again; but this exalted patriot withdrew the bill to please his mother. He carried various measures of more or less value, and among them was a law for the establishment of granaries for supplying the poor with corn at a very low price; but though this might have been very attractive to buyers, and insured a brisk demand, it does not seem calculated to encourage growers and sellers to such an extent that a supply could always be relied upon. Of course, the deficiency had to be made good from the pockets of the public; and therefore the process amounted to little more than receiving with one hand what had been paid by the other.

The privilege of purchasing cheap corn was not limited, as some[66] have supposed, to the poor; but every citizen could claim his share; and even Piso, a Consul—though perhaps he was one of the greatly reduced Consuls—had been shabby enough to demand the privilege. Piso had been an opponent of the law; and Gracchus, seeing him among the crowd receiving a bushel of the cheap grain, taunted him with his inconsistency in taking advantage of a corn measure which he had set his face against. The answer of Piso was sensible and just; for, said he, "though I had a strong objection to your giving away my property, I think I have a right to try to get my share of it." Another of his enactments vested the right of putting a Roman citizen to death, in the people themselves, a measure that was no doubt theoretically attractive, though practically inconvenient. To vest in the public at large the privilege of applying the sentences to the highest offences, would really be giving a nation so much rope, that business would be suspended very often, instead of the criminals.

Caius Gracchus next applied himself to Law Reform with considerable zeal; but it was not so much the law itself, as those who administered it, that required amendment. Those who held the scales of justice, used to weigh only the gold of the suitors; and the judges were so far impartial, that they had no bias towards any particular side, but favoured that which was the most liberal in bribing them. Many of the defendants had been guilty of extortion, which was a common practice with the judges themselves; and therefore a rude sort of honour, commonly known as honour among thieves, was not altogether banished from the judgment-seat. Caius Gracchus, however, caused a law to be passed, in which we trace the origin of that glorious institution, familiarly known as "twelve men in a box," so dear to the hearts, and sometimes, also, to the pockets of Englishmen. The law alluded to, provided for the trial of causes by a middle class of equites or knights, who were, literally speaking, men who could keep a horse, and who, on the same principle adopted in modern times as to the keepers of gigs,[67] were considered to be respectable.

The Senators had made a practice of acquitting all criminals of their own class, and, by acquitting themselves thus shamefully, they had become guilty of the grossest corruption; but the equites were frequently regardless of equity, and were found leaning with undue leniency towards offenders of their own order. Gracchus had now become the popular idol, but he never had an idle hour, and was always busy in building up a reputation for himself by the construction of works of permanent utility. He knew that general occupation is necessary to public content, and he felt that as long as he could keep the hands of the multitude employed on bricks and mortar, he was, in reality, cementing his own power. This policy placed considerable patronage at his command, and he rallied round him a crowd of contractors and artificers, who, but for his power of giving them something better to do, would, perhaps, have been contracting the bad habit of political agitation, or resorting to every kind of revolutionary artifice.

The greatest political work of Caius was that in which he did the least; and his legislative successes sink into insignificance by the side of the real grandeur of his extensive failure. This was his attempt to extend the franchise to all the Italians, and the other allies; but Rome refused to aid him in the grand design, and determined to rivet upon Italy those Italian irons with which Rome at a future period was destined to burn her fingers. So popular was Caius Gracchus, that, upon his re-election to office, the people, who could not get near enough to the Campus Martius on account of the crowd, voted for him from the tops of houses or unfinished buildings; and many came up to the poll by climbing an adjacent scaffold.