The Two Great Republics: Rome and the United States

by James Lewis

His character might be fitly described in the words of Thomas Moore as one of those

"Spirits of fire, that brood not long, But flash resentment back for wrong; And hearts where, slow but deep, the seeds Of vengeance ripen into deeds."

The desire to avenge the death of his brother was indeed the central idea of Gaius Gracchus throughout his whole political career. It is when we look at his work from this viewpoint that much which appears contradictory or obscure becomes easy to appreciate and understand.

One of the first steps taken by Gaius Gracchus in the reform campaign undertaken by him was an attempt to divide the ranks of those who had opposed his brother. The oligarchical party had for many generations been composed of two different elements united for mutual protection, but whose interests, in many respects, were mutually antagonistic. The object of Gracchus was to break the political union between the two factions by arousing the points of antagonism.

The two elements in the aristocratic party above referred to were the senatorial families and the wealthy mercantile interests. The general line of demarcation between the two classes was the distinction between the aristocracy of money and the aristocracy of birth, generally to be found wherever aristocracies exist. The senators, with few exceptions, were recruited from the old families which had been prominent in Rome for generations and even for centuries. The majority of the members were of patrician descent, but the distinction between patrician and plebeian was now of little, or no, practical importance. Some of the senatorial families were wealthy, others were not; where wealth was possessed it generally consisted of large landed estates. All members of the Senate, whether rich or poor, were possessed of valuable political rights and opportunities.

The other element of the aristocracy included the merchants and speculators, who had control of the financial affairs of the city and of the government, and who had been rapidly accumulating large fortunes, during the period which had elapsed since the Punic Wars. Gracchus played for the support of this element at the same time that he assailed the power of the Senate.

By the terms of the Calpurnian Law, passed in 149 B.C., it had been provided that all provincial magistrates accused of dishonesty in their administration should be tried before the prætor peregrinus and a jury selected from the Senate. It was now voted that the jury should be taken not from the Senate but from a body of three hundred men selected from all Roman citizens who possessed the amount of property which entitled a person to be enrolled among the equites. From the standpoint of judicial reform the fairness of this act could not be questioned. However gross might have been the misgovernment of any provincial Roman official, it was generally impossible to secure a conviction before a senatorial jury. As one historian (Liddell) sums up the matter:

"These courts had given little satisfaction. In all important cases of corruption, especially such as occurred in the provinces, the offenders were themselves senators. Some of the judges had been guilty of like offences; extortion was looked upon as a venial crime; prosecutions became a trial of party strength, and the culprit was usually absolved."

Equally important in the eyes of Gaius Gracchus, to the judicial reform thus effected, was the effect which the law had toward raising the equites to a position where, as an order, they would be a formidable rival to the Senate. As a further bid for the support of the moneyed aristocracy as against the old landed aristocracy and the aristocracy of birth, Gracchus, in providing for the levying of new taxes in the province of Asia, proposed the innovation of having the tax farmed out at Rome, instead of in the province itself.

Another law did away with an old established abuse in the assignment of provinces by the Senate to pro-consuls. Heretofore, each consul had had his province assigned to him after his election, and the most desirable provinces had therefore fallen to those toward whom the Senate was the most friendly. It was now decreed that the provinces for the two consuls for each year should be assigned before the election of the consuls, and that the consuls should determine, either by agreement or by lot, which of the two provinces should fall to each.