Scipio felt that it was necessary to explain his motives, and announced his purpose of delivering set speeches, one day in the senate, and the day after in the Forum. The first only of these purposes was fulfilled. By his speech in the senate he pledged himself to maintain the rights of the Latins and Italians against the triumvirs, and to prevent the unjust resumption of the lands that had been granted to them. The senate loudly applauded; and Scipio was escorted home by the mass of the senators with a jubilant crowd of Italians. Many thought this the most glorious day of his life. He retired to rest early, in good health. In the morning he was found dead in his bed. By his side lay the tablets on which he had been noting down the heads of the oration which he had intended to make next day.
The death of Scipio struck consternation into the hearts of the senators. Metullus exclaimed that he had been murdered. It is said that on the neck marks as of strangulation appeared; and when he was carried out to burial the head was covered, contrary to custom. At the moment suspicion attached to C. Gracchus, and to his sister Sempronia, the wife of Scipio. But these unfounded rumours soon passed over; and it was confidently affirmed that Carbo was the murderer. Cicero speaks of it as an undoubted fact; the character, as well as the subsequent history, of the man justifies the belief.[b] Appian,[g] on the other hand, is non-committal, mentioning rumours against Cornelia as well as Sempronia, and adding that “some believe he gave himself this death, because he saw he could not perform what he promised”; while others assert “that Scipio’s slaves under torment confessed that some unknown men they had let in at the back door had strangled him, and that they dared not disclose the murder, because they knew that the people, hating Scipio, rejoiced at his death.” Of modern authorities, George Long[d] thinks “the circumstances of Scipio’s death were suspicious.” But he doubts even that Cicero believed his own charge against Carbo; and adds “the conclusion should be that Scipio died a natural death.” Ihne[f] says: “After a minute and careful examination of the circumstances, there appears to be no reason to doubt that Scipio’s death was natural.” This, however, is perhaps stating the case a little too strongly. Whatever the balance of probability, it can never be proven conclusively whether Scipio died naturally or by violence: in the minds of some investigators, the question will always hold a place in the long list of historical uncertainties.[a]
Thus died the younger Africanus. No public honours attested his public services. The funeral feast was furnished in the most thrifty manner by his nephew Q. Tubero, a rigid stoic, who was glad thus to remind the people of their ingratitude.
Scipio possessed no lofty genius like the great man whose name he bore; yet there was at Rome no one of his own time to be compared with him. To say that he was the best general of the day is little praise, for military talent was at that time scarce; but no doubt his abilities for war would have won him glory in the best times of the republic. His disinterested generosity has been already noticed; at his death he was found to be no richer than when he succeeded to the inheritance of the great Scipio. His love of the country and his habitual reserve led him to shun public life. But the austere manner and severe gravity which he commonly affected gave way among his friends; and there is nothing that more raises our esteem for Scipio than the warm attachment borne to him by such men as Polybius, as well as Lælius, Rupilius, and others, whom Cicero has introduced into his beautiful dialogues. Scipio has usually been represented as a stiff adherent of the oligarchy, but the facts of history disprove this opinion. He might have lived some years to moderate the fury of party strife, to awe the factious, and to support just claims; for at his death he numbered no more than six-and-fifty years. His death at this moment was perhaps the greatest loss that the republic could have suffered.[b]
The general verdict on Scipio is laudatory. Even George Long,[d] who ridicules the usual historical summing-up of great men, finds Scipio worthy of much praise, but Beesly is of such contrary mind that he may well be quoted:
“He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once stepped into the arena as their champion. In reality he was a reactionist who, when the inevitable results of those liberal ideas which had been broached in his own circle stared him in the face, seized the first available means of stifling them. The world had moved too fast for him. As censor, instead of beseeching the gods to increase the glory of the State, he begged them to preserve it. Brave as a man, he was a pusillanimous statesman. It was well for his reputation that he died just then. Without Sulla’s personal vices he might have played Sulla’s part as a politician, and his atrocities in Spain as well as his remark on the death of Tiberius Gracchus—words breathing the very essence of a narrow swordman’s nature—showed that from bloodshed at all events he would not have shrunk. It is hard to respect such a man in spite of all his good qualities. Fortune gave him the opportunity of playing a great part, and he shrank from it. When the crop sprang up which he had himself helped to sow, he blighted it. But because he was personally respectable, and because he held a middle course between contemporary parties, he has found favour with historians, who are too apt to forget that there is in politics, as in other things, a right course and a wrong, and that to attempt to walk along both at once proves a man to be a weak statesman, and does not prove him to be a great or good man.”[c]
CAIUS GRACCHUS AND HIS TIMES
[129-126 B.C.]
The sudden death of Scipio was followed by a calm. The turbulent Carbo vanishes from the scene, till nine years later he reappears as a champion of the violent oligarchical party. C. Gracchus was still living in retirement. Fulvius Flaccus was content to let the Agrarian law sleep in face of the portentous difficulties created by the measures of the triumvirs. Nor was there anything in foreign affairs to ruffle the general calm. But under this external tranquillity a leaven of agitation was at work. It was not to be expected that the new-born jealousy which had sprung up between the Romans on the one side and the Latins and Italians on the other, would fall asleep. Proposals, however, were set afloat for reconciling these two opposing interests. The Italians were led to hope that they might be made citizens of Rome, on condition that they should not resist the execution of the Agrarian law.
But the burgesses of Rome soon perceived that the admission of the Latins and Italians to the Roman franchise would reduce them to comparative insignificance. All the benefits now derived from the provinces by Romans exclusively must then be shared with a vastly increased number of citizens, and the profits as well as the power of a Roman must be materially diminished. In the year 126 B.C. a large number of Italian strangers flocked to Rome, eager for the promised boon. But by this time public opinion at Rome was so far changed that M. Junius Pennus, one of the tribunes, brought forward what we may call a severe alien-act, by which all strangers were compelled to quit Rome. The successors of Gracchus, however, remained constant to their new policy, and Caius himself was induced to speak in public for the second time. But he was unsuccessful. The law of Pennus was passed; and from this time may be dated that angry contest of feeling between the Romans and the Italians which after thirty-eight years found vent in a bloody war.