The Gracchi were the genuine offspring, and their eloquence the natural fruits of these turbulent times. Till their age, oratory had been a sort of Arcanum imperii,—an instrument of government in the power of the Senate, who used every precaution to retain its exclusive exercise. It was the [pg 113]great bulwark that withstood the tide of popular passion, and weakened it so as not to beat too high or strongly on their own order and authority. The Gracchi not only broke down the embankment, but turned the flood against the walls of the Senate itself. The interests of the people had never yet been espoused by men endued with eloquence equal to theirs. Cicero, while blaming their political conduct, admits that both were consummate orators; and this he testifies from the recollection of persons still surviving in his day, and who remembered their mode of speaking. Indeed, the wonderful power which both brothers exercised over the people is a sufficient proof of their eloquence. Tiberius Gracchus was the first who made rhetoric a serious study and art. In his boyhood, he was carefully instructed in elocution by his mother Cornelia: he also constantly attended the ablest and most eloquent masters from Greece, and, as he grew up, he bestowed much time on the exercise of private declamation. It is not likely, that, gifted as he was by nature, and thus instructed, the powers of eloquence should long have remained dormant in his bosom. At the time when he first appeared on the turbulent stage of Roman life, the accumulation of landed property among a few individuals, and the consequent abuse of exorbitant wealth, had filled Italy with slaves instead of citizens—had destroyed the habits of rural industry among the people at large, and leaving only rich masters at the head of numerous and profligate servants, gradually rooted out those middle classes of society which constitute the strength, the worth, and the best hopes of every well-regulated commonwealth. It is said, that while passing through Etruria on his way to Numantia, Tiberius Gracchus found the country almost depopulated of freemen, and thence first formed the project of his Agrarian law, which was originally intended to correct the evils arising from the immense landed possessions of the rich, by limiting them to the number of acres specified in the ancient enactments[232], and dividing the conquered territories among the poorer citizens. Preparatory to its promulgation, he was wont to assemble the people round the rostrum, where he pleaded for the poor, in language of which we have a specimen in Plutarch: “The wild beasts of Italy have their dens to retire to—their places of refuge and repose; while the brave men who shed their blood in the cause of their country, have nothing left but fresh air and sunshine. Without houses, without settled habitations, they wander from place to place with their wives and children; and their commanders do but [pg 114]mock them, when, at the head of their armies, they exhort their soldiers to fight for their sepulchres and altars. For, among such numbers, there is not one Roman who has an altar which belonged to his ancestors, or a tomb in which their ashes repose. The private soldiers fight and die to increase the wealth and luxury of the great; and they are styled sovereigns of the world, while they have not a foot of ground they can call their own[233].” By such speeches as these, the people were exasperated to fury, and the Senate was obliged to have recourse to Octavius, who, as one of the tribunes, was the colleague of Gracchus, to counteract the effects of his animated eloquence. Irritated by this opposition, Gracchus abandoned the first plan of his law, which was to give indemnification from the public treasury to those who should be deprived of their estates, and proposed a new bill, by which they were enjoined forthwith to quit those lands which they held contrary to previous enactments. On this subject there were daily disputes between him and Octavius on the rostrum. Finding that his plans could not otherwise be accomplished he resolved on the expedient of deposing his colleague; and thenceforth, to the period of his death, his speeches (one of which is preserved by Plutarch) were chiefly delivered in persuasion or justification of that violent measure.
Caius Gracchus was endued with higher talents than Tiberius, but the resentment he felt on account of his brother’s death, and eager desire for vengeance, led him into measures which have darkened his character with the shades of the demagogue. At the time of his brother’s death he had only reached the age of twenty. In early youth, he distinguished himself by the defence of one of his friends named Vettius, and charmed the people by the eloquence which he exerted. He appears soon afterwards to have been impelled, as it were, by a sort of destiny, to the same political course which had proved fatal to his brother, and which terminated in his own destruction. His speeches were all addressed to the people, and were delivered in proposing laws, calculated to increase their authority, and lessen that of the Senate,—as those for colonizing the public lands, and dividing them among the poor; for regulating the markets, so as to diminish the price of bread, and for vesting the judicial power in the knights. A fragment of his speech, De Legibus Promulgatis, is said to have been recently discovered, with other classical remains, in the Ambrosian Library. Aulus Gellius also quotes from this harangue, a passage, in which the orator complained that some respect[pg 115]able citizens of a municipal town in Italy had been scourged with rods by a Roman magistrate. Gellius praises the conciseness, neatness, and graceful ease of the narrative, resembling dramatic dialogue, in which this incident was related. Similar, but only similar qualities, appear in his accusation of the Roman legate, who, while travelling to Asia in a litter, caused a peasant to be scourged to death, for having asked his slaves if it was a corpse they were carrying. “The relation of these events,” says Gellius, “does not rise above the level of ordinary conversation. It is not a person complaining or imploring, but merely relating what had occurred;” and he contrasts this tameness with the energy and ardour with which Cicero has painted the commission of a like enormity by Verres[234].
Though similar in many points of character and also in their political conduct, there was a marked difference in the style of eloquence, and forensic demeanour, of the two brothers. Tiberius, in his looks and gestures, was mild and composed—Caius, earnest and vehement; so that when they spoke in public, Tiberius had the utmost moderation in his action, and moved not from his place: whereas Caius was the first of the Romans, who, in addressing the people, walked to and fro in the rostrum, threw his gown off his shoulder, smote his thigh, and exposed his arm bare[235]. The language of Tiberius was laboured and accurate, that of Caius bold and figurative. The oratory of the former was of a gentle kind, and pity was the emotion it chiefly raised—that of the latter was strongly impassioned, and calculated to excite terror. In speaking, indeed, Caius was often so hurried away by the violence of his passion, that he exalted his voice above the regular pitch, indulged in abusive expressions, and disordered the whole tenor of his oration. In order to guard against such excesses, he stationed a slave behind him with an ivory flute, which was modulated so as to lead him to lower or heighten the tone of his voice, according as the subject required a higher or a softer key. “The flute,” says Cicero, “you may as well leave at home, but the meaning of the practice you must remember at the bar[236].”
In the time of the Gracchi, oratory became an object of assiduous and systematic study, and of careful education. A youth, intended for the profession of eloquence, was usually introduced to one of the most distinguished orators of the city, [pg 116]whom he attended when he had occasion to speak in any public or private cause, or in the assemblies of the people, by which means he heard not only him, but every other famous speaker. He thus became practically acquainted with business and the courts of justice, and learned the arts of oratoric conflict, as it were, in the field of battle. “It animated,” says the author of the dialogue De Causis Corruptæ Eloquentiæ,—“it animated the courage, and quickened the judgment of youth, thus to receive their instructions in the eye of the world, and in the midst of affairs, where no one could advance an absurd or weak argument, without being exposed by his adversary, and despised by the audience. Hence, they had also an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the various sentiments of the people, and observing what pleased or disgusted them in the several orators of the Forum. By these means they were furnished with an instructor of the best and most improving kind, exhibiting not the feigned resemblance of eloquence, but her real and lively manifestation—not a pretended but genuine adversary, armed in earnest for the combat—an audience ever full and ever new, composed of foes as well as of friends, and amongst whom not a single expression could fall but was either censured or applauded.”
The minute attention paid by the younger orators to all the proceedings of the courts of justice, is evinced by the fragment of a Diary, which was kept by one of them in the time of Cicero, and in which we have a record, during two days, of the various harangues that were delivered, and the judgments that were pronounced[237].
Nor were the advantages to be derived from fictitious oratorical contests long denied to the Roman youth. The practice of declaiming on feigned subjects, was introduced at Rome about the middle of its seventh century. The Greek rhetoricians, indeed, had been expelled, as well as the philosophers, towards the close of the preceding century; but, in the year 661, Plotius Gallus, a Latin rhetorician, opened a declaiming school at Rome. At this period, however, the declamations generally turned on questions of real business, and it was not till the time of Augustus, that the rhetoricians so far prevailed, as to introduce common-place arguments on fictitious subjects.
The eloquence which had originally been cultivated for seditious purposes, and for political advancement, began now to be considered by the Roman youth as an elegant accomplishment. It was probably viewed in the same light that we [pg 117]regard horsemanship or dancing, and continued to be so in the age of Horace—
“Namque, et nobilis, et decens,
Et pro sollicitis non tacitus reis,
Et centum puer artium,