[118] Kaltwasser remarks that Aurelius Victor (De Viris Illustribus, c. 55) says that Caius died in the grove of Furina, the goddess of thieves, whose sacred place was beyond, that is on the west side of the Tiber, and that Plutarch appears to have confounded this with the name of the Furies, the Greek Erinnyes. This may be so; or Victor may have made a mistake, which he often has done.
[119] Opimius must have been as great a knave as Septimuleius, for the fraud was palpable. Stories of this kind are generally given with variations. Plinius (N. H. 33, c. 14) says it was the mouth that was filled with lead, and that Septimuleius had been a confidential friend of Caius. This was the first instance in Rome of head money being offered and paid; but the example was followed in the proscriptions of Sulla, and those of the triumviri Lepidus, M. Antonius, and Cæsar Octavianus.
[120] I have followed Kaltwasser in translating the Greek word ἀπονοία, which signifies madness, desperation, or a desperate deed, by discord, for the sake of maintaining something like the opposition between the two words which exists in the original.
[121] Caius Opimius was consul with Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, B.C. 121, the year of the death of Caius. The history of his conduct in Libya is told by Sallustius in the Jugurthine war. He was one of ten commissioners who were sent, B.C. 112, to settle the disputes between Adherbal, the son of Micipsa, and Jugurtha, the illegitimate son of Micipsa’s brother. The commissioners were bribed by Jugurtha and decided in his favour. Opimius and the rest of them were tried for the offence, B.C. 109, and banished. Opimius died in great poverty at Dyrrachium (Durazzo) in Epirus. (Sallustius, Jugurthine War, c. 134; Velleius, ii. 7.) Cicero thinks that Opimius was very hardly used after his services in crushing the insurrection at Fregellæ and putting down the disturbances excited by Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus: he calls him the saviour of the state, and laments his condemnation. (Cicero, Pro Plancio, c. 28, &c.; Brutus, c. 34; &c.)
[122] M. Fulvius Flaccus was consul, B.C. 125, during which year he defeated the Transalpine Ligurians.
[123] The legislation of the Gracchi, particularly of Caius Gracchus, comprehended many objects, the provisions as to which are comprehended under the general name of Semproniæ Leges, for it was the fashion to name a law after the gentile name of him who proposed it. The most important of the measures of Caius have been mentioned by Plutarch, with the exception of a law about the provinces. At the outbreak of the Social War, B.C. 91, the Roman provinces comprehended Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, the Spanish Peninsula, the whole of which, however, was not subdued, Cisalpine Gaul, Asia, Macedonia, Achæa, Transalpine Gaul, and some others of less note.
The original sense of the word provincia had no reference to a territory, though this is the later sense of the word and the common usage of it. The functions of the prætor urbanus who stayed at Rome were called his provincia, that is, the administration of justice was his provincia or business. The word is used in the sense of a function or office by Livius with reference to a time when there was no provincia in the later sense of the word. In the time of Cicero, provincia signified a territory out of Italy, which was administered by a Roman governor. The term Italy, at this time, did not comprise the whole peninsula, but only that part which was south of the rivers Rubico and Macra. The primary meaning of the word is confirmed by its etymology; provincia is a shortened form of providentia, which also appears in the shape prudentia. Providentia signifies “foresight,” “superintending care,” and so forth; and it is formed on the same principle as beneficentia, benevolentia, and other Latin words which are of a participial character. The etymology of Niebuhr (proventus) is untenable, and that which I have partly adopted (Smith’s Dict. of Antiquities, art. “Provincia”) is no better. Since writing that article, I saw that the word is only another form of providentia, and a friend has pointed out to me that Mr. G. C. Lewis first suggested this as the origin of the word in his Essay on the Government of Dependencies, London, 1841, Note H. p. 353. If this explanation of the word is correct, the true orthography is provintia, but I have not yet been able to find it on an inscription.
The old practice was for the Senate, after the elections of the Consuls and Prætors, to name two provinces which should be given to the consuls after the consulship was expired. The two consuls settled by lot or by agreement which province of the two they should have. As the consuls were chosen before the two consular provinces were determined by the senate, it was in the power of the senate to give what provinces they pleased to the consuls, and so make the appointment either a favour or not. A law of Gracchus enacted that the two consular provinces should be determined before the election of consuls, and that the senate should not have the power, which they had formerly exercised, of prolonging a man’s government in a province beyond the year. This law manifestly limited the power of the Senate, though some writers conceive that it was enacted for the advantage of that body as some compensation for their loss of the judicial power.
Plutarch has treated the subject of the Gracchi with perfect impartiality. He has given them credit for good motives, and approved of their measures in general, but he has not disguised their faults. Appian considered that the measures of Tiberius were for the public good, but that his conduct was not judicious. Sallustius also admits that the Gracchi did not conduct themselves with sufficient moderation (Jugurthine War, c. 46); but Sallustius belonged to the popular party, and he approved of their measures. Most of the other Roman writers express an unfavourable opinion of the Gracchi. Florus however gives them credit for good intentions, but disapproves of the means by which they attempted to carry their measures into effect. That part of the work of Livius which treated of this period is lost, but we may collect his opinions of the Gracchi from the Epitomes of the lost books, and the general tenor of his History. The measures of the Gracchi were estimated by the rule of party spirit. The judgment of Cicero, who often mentions the Gracchi, is both for and against. His expressed opinion, whatever might be his real opinion, varied with circumstances. If we only knew his opinion from the second oration against the Agrarian Law of Rullus (ii. 5), we should consider him as approving of all the measures of the Gracchi. When he delivered that oration, Cicero had just been elected Consul: he was a Novus homo, a new man as the Romans called him, who was the first of his family to attain to the high honours of the State, and he had obtained the consulship as a friend of the people, as a popular man (Popularis). In his treatise on Friendship and other of his writings, he gives a contradictory judgment of the Gracchi; he says that Tiberius Gracchus aimed at the kingly power, or rather in fact was king for a few months; he calls the two Gracchi degenerate sons of their father; he extols the murderers of Tiberius Gracchus; he commiserates the hard fate of Opimius after saving the state by putting Caius Gracchus to death. All this was written or said after he was consul, after he had done what the murderers of the Gracchi had done, after he had put to death Catilina and his accomplices without trial contrary to the constitution, contrary to a special law which Caius Gracchus had carried that no Roman citizen should be put to death without a duly constituted trial; after he had, like Nasica and Opimius, made himself a murderer by putting men to death without letting them be tried according to law; whether they were guilty or not, is immaterial; they were put to death without trial, contrary to a principle of justice which, before he became guilty himself, Cicero had maintained and defended. The acts of the Gracchi were on record and well understood; but Cicero made his opinion of their acts depend not on his convictions, but on his interests; it is to him mainly that we may trace the common notion that the Gracchi were merely a couple of designing demagogues. The Gracchi were not wise enough or firm enough to be good reformers, but few reformers in so difficult a situation have left behind them so fair a reputation for honest intention. There was a great mass of contemporary materials for the history of the Gracchi, consisting of the speeches of the two brothers, of the numerous speeches made against them, the history of Polybius, who could not have overlooked the Gracchi in his account of the Numantine war, the history of Fannius, and other materials which Gerlach has enumerated in his Essay on the Gracchi. It is plain from Plutarch’s narrative, that he used these authorities; and if we consider how far removed he was from the time of the Gracchi, and his character, we may conclude that he has given as impartial a view of the times as he could collect from contemporary evidence. He may have made mistakes, and some mistakes we cannot help considering that he has made; but he can hardly have made any mistake in his representation of the nature of the reforms which the two brothers attempted, of the opposition that they encountered, and of their general character.
Misenum. Misenum was on the coast of Campania near Cape Miseno, a favourite residence of the wealthy Romans, who built villas there. The house of Cornelia had many occupants. It became the property of Caius Marius (c. 34), then of Lucius Lucullus, and finally of the Emperor Tiberius, who died here. It was seated on a hill which commanded an extensive sea-view.