The senate and the nobles, who retained the national feelings in all their strength, girded themselves to resist the threatened innovation; but in the time of the Gracchi, the mass of the commons was already adulterated by foreign admixtures, and felt far less keenly the old prejudices of race and country. Accordingly, when their favourite leaders, overlooking every ulterior consequence rather than justly estimating them, called the Latins and Italians to their standards, the Roman populace were easily persuaded to admit them to a share in their own struggle, and pledged themselves to advance together the respective interests of both. The allies themselves, under the able direction of the Gracchi, turned all their indignation against the aristocracy of the city, which they sought to make their own. They ascribed to the peculiar constitution of Rome the jealous and selfish opposition they encountered, and denounced republican government itself, on account of prejudices incident, in fact, to all conquering races. Monarchy indeed, it may be allowed, is generally more favourable than aristocracy to the surrender of national prejudices; and the Italians acted upon a genuine instinct in invoking kingly rule, and, while the tribunes allured them with the hope of citizenship, seducing the tribunes themselves with the prospect of the regal diadem. It was said that Saturninus was actually saluted king by his seditious followers; and nothing, perhaps, but the deep impression, so sedulously fostered by the nobles, of the traditional tyranny of the Tarquins, prevented the Roman commons from joining generally in the same cry. But the title of king was destined still to remain the popular bugbear for many centuries; and no man had yet arisen with genius to disguise a monarchy under the republican names of dictator or imperator.
The nobles attacked the tribunes with brute violence; the Roman commons and the Italian confederates they managed by craft and intrigue. At one time they sought to sow dissension between them, at another to outbid their own demagogues in the liberality of their offers, which they took care never to fulfil. They debauched the populace by largesses and amusements, and detached them from the cause of the allies. Alarmed at the progress Marius had made in opening the franchise to his Italian veterans, they contrived, at last, to throw a cloud over the brilliancy of his reputation, and availing themselves of the venal voices of the tribes, to recall Metellus from banishment and consummate another aristocratic reaction. In the insolence of their triumph they enjoined the consuls of the year 95 to expel from the city all the Italians who had domiciled themselves within the walls; and the law of Crassus and Scævola, which repeated the harsh enactments of eighty and ninety years before, convinced the injured subjects of the republic that their mistress had learned neither wisdom nor justice by the triumph of her arms and the extension of her empire.
[95-91 B.C.]
But though conquered, the Italians had not ceased to be formidable. The free constitution of the generality of their cities had nourished a race of able speakers and statesmen, and the Cimbrian War had trained many thousands of brave veterans, who had been disbanded after the battle of Vercellæ, and not yet recalled to their standards by the urgency of any other foreign contest. With these resources among themselves, they had still, moreover, a powerful friend in the Roman tribunate. M. Livius Drusus, a son of the opponent of the Gracchi, whom the senate had commissioned to promise still ampler concessions to their assailants than the Gracchi themselves, had devoted himself in earnest to the policy which his father only pretended to advocate. But in assuming the patronage of the reformers, the younger Drusus did not abandon the party of the nobles with which he was hereditarily connected. He sought, with every appearance, it may be allowed, of honest zeal,[88] to conciliate the interests of all parties. He restored the judicia to the senators, while, at the same time, he introduced three hundred knights into the senate. He coupled these measures with a promise of lands to the needy citizens, and of the franchise to the Italians and Latins. Of all the Roman demagogues Drusus may justly be esteemed the ablest and the wisest. Full of confidence in himself, his views were large, and his frank and bold demeanour corresponded with them. He affected the generous virtues of the ancient republic. When his architect offered him the plan of a house so disposed as to exclude his neighbours’ supervision, “Build me rather,” he exclaimed, “a dwelling in which all my countrymen may behold everything I do.” His principles however were less rigorous than his pretensions. The necessities of his position, which required him to make friends of all parties, demanded an exorbitant outlay, and the means by which he supplied it were reprobated as dishonourable. His profusion surpassed that of all his predecessors in the arts of popular flattery; and he ventured to vaunt that his successors would have nothing left to give but the skies above and the dust beneath them. His manners were overbearing, and might suggest the idea that he aimed at regal domination. He spoke of the commonwealth as “his own”; and when the senators invited him to attend at their ordinary place of meeting, he replied that he would await their coming in the curia of Hostilius, which happened to be most convenient to himself. Such was the man whom the Italians gladly invoked as their leader. In his sickness all the cities of the peninsula offered vows for his safety. It seemed as if the salvation of the country depended upon his recovery.
Drusus required indeed strong support in that quarter to enable him to bear up against the odium excited by his measures among the privileged orders at home. Even in his own house he was surrounded by timid and murmuring friends; his own family were imbued with hostility to his avowed policy. Among them was his nephew, M. Porcius Cato, at that time about four years old. A chief of the Marsians, admitted to the uncle’s hospitality, amused himself by asking the child to support the cause of the Italians. Cato, so ran the story, frowardly refused; he was offered playthings and sweetmeats; still he refused. At last the Marsian, piqued at his obstinacy, held him from the window by the leg, and again demanded his assent, threatening to cast him headlong unless he yielded. But caresses and menaces were equally fruitless, and the Marsian sighed to think of the resistance he must expect to encounter from the men, if a mere child could display such dogged inflexibility.
Roman Cuirass
[91 B.C.]
During the progress of the tribune’s intrigues, the indisposition of both the senate and the knights to his measures became more strongly marked; and notwithstanding the adherence of some of the principal nobles, he was compelled to draw closer the bands of alliance between himself and the Italians. The impatience of his foreign associates was not easily restrained, and he was obliged himself to denounce a plot they formed for murdering the consuls at the great festival of the Latin feriæ. But his influence waxed more and more powerful with them, and the oath they took to promote the common interests of the confederacy expressed their entire devotion to the person of their generous leader. They swore that they would have no other friends than his friends, that they would count his foes their foes, that they would spare nothing, neither their parents, nor their children, nor their own lives, for his advantage together with that of the common cause. “If I become a Roman citizen,” the oath continued, “I will esteem Rome my country and Drusus my benefactor.” The senate heard with indignation of the progress of these intrigues, at the moment when it was called upon to ratify by a vote the proposal for conferring the franchise upon its mutinous subjects. It was informed that Pompædius Silo, the chief of the Marsians, was marching at the head of ten thousand men, along by-roads and with arms concealed, towards the city, to intimidate the nobles. A force was despatched to intercept his progress, and a parley ensued, in which the leader of the Romans assured his adversary that the senate was actually prepared to concede the boon required.
For the moment blows were averted; but in the curia the discussion was still animated and the decision dubious. The classes opposed to the concession had gained some of the Italians to their side, and with the support of the Umbrians and Etruscans, alarmed at the projected foundation of new colonies in their territories, ventured still to withhold the concession. When the day for voting arrived, the consul Marcius Philippus attempted to break up the meeting. One of the tribune’s officers seized and throttled him till the blood sprang from his mouth and eyes. The city was now thrown into a state of the fiercest excitement. Tribunes were arrayed against tribunes, nobles against nobles, Romans against Romans, Italians against Italians. The streets were traversed by armed bands on either side. Everything seemed to portend a bloody solution of the crisis. At this juncture Drusus, attended by a number of his adherents, was returning one evening to his house. Passing along an obscure corridor he was heard suddenly to cry out that he was struck, and fell to the ground with a poniard planted in his groin. In a few hours he expired, exclaiming with his dying breath, “When will Rome again find so good a citizen as myself?” The assassin had escaped in the crowd (91).