Rome

by W. Warde Fowler

In fact, the personality of this man is the real explanation of his work. If it had been possible for him to retain that personal influence which Plutarch emphasises, and to keep his legislative power even for a few years, as a modern statesman may expect to keep it, it is quite possible that Rome might have escaped an era of danger and degeneracy. But that could not be. A triple-headed Cerberus was guarding the path that led to effectual reform: the forms of the old constitution, out of date many of them, and unsuited to the needs of a great empire: the narrow spirit of the oligarchical faction, opposed, for self-regarding reasons, to all change: and lastly, the mean and fickle temper of the mongrel city populace, whose power was sovereign in legislation and elections. In the effort to overcome this Cerberus Gracchus lost his precious personal influence, and found his original designs warped from their true bearing. He survived through two tribunates, in the course of which he did much valuable work, but in the third year he was brutally and needlessly slain by his political enemies. Already Rome had put to death two of the most valuable men she ever produced, and in the coming century she was to put to death many more.

He had begun his work by a noble effort so to mend the constitution that a reformer might be able to pass his laws without breaking it, as Tiberius had been tempted to do. He tried to increase the numbers of the Senate, so as to leaven that great council, which he rightly looked on as the working centre of the constitution, with new ideas and wider interests. And he sought, too, to solve the great problem of citizenship, by giving the Italians some effectual share in it, and so at least the chance of making their voice heard in Roman politics. But for such measures of real progress neither Senate nor people were ready: the Senate was the stronghold of old prejudices, and the people were not pleased to admit Italians to its privileges. Both these great projects, which show how far-reaching Gracchus’s views as a statesman were, proved complete failures.

To conciliate the Senate became more and more hopeless as Gracchus lost his personal influence, and he gave up the attempt. Instead, he dealt the senatorial oligarchy a heavy blow by depriving senators of the right to sit in judgment on ex-provincial governors accused of extortion (a crime now becoming only too common), and giving it to the class below, the Equites, or men of business. Thus he made a split between the two upper classes of society, which had very unfortunate results. Not less unhappy was another measure, meant to conciliate the hungry free population of the city, on which he must depend for the passing of his laws. There had long been a difficulty in feeding this population: for its number had increased beyond all expectation, the corn-supply was not properly organised, and the price of grain was constantly fluctuating. Recognising the fact that any legislator was in peril who could not make it impossible that the price should rise suddenly, he fixed a permanent price, more than half below the normal, to be maintained at State cost, whether or no the State were a loser. But here he went too far, and gave later and less scrupulous demagogues the chance of making still more serious mischief. No doubt he thought that the State need not be a loser, if production, transport, warehousing and finance were organised as he meant to organise them; but there is also little doubt that he was mistaken, and that henceforward the “people” were really being fed largely at the expense of the State, and lapsing into a condition of semi-pauperism.

I have said enough to show how sad was the failure of the first real statesman produced by Rome. Yet Gracchus was able to do some useful work which survived. Under his auspices was passed a great law, of the text of which we still possess about one-third, for the trial of provincial governors accused of extortion: and we know of another, bearing his own name, which regulated the succession to these governorships with justice and wisdom. Also he took up his brother’s land bill, and carried it on with that practical persistency which is reflected, as we saw, in Plutarch’s life of him. But in spite of high aims and some successes, his story is a sad one; and the loss to Italy and the Empire at that moment of a man of righteous aims and practical genius was simply incalculable.

Whatever else the Gracchi did, or failed to do, they undoubtedly succeeded, both in their lives and in their deaths, in shaking the power and prestige of the senatorial government; and nothing had been put in its place, nor had it even been reformed. Henceforward for a long period there was no constitution that could claim an honest man’s loyalty or devotion; the idea of the State was growing dim, and the result was inefficiency in every department. The governing class was corrupt and the army undisciplined, and this at a time when there was coming upon Rome, and upon the civilised world, a period of extreme peril from foreign enemies. This corruption and inefficiency became obvious a few years after the death of the younger Gracchus in a long struggle with a Numidian chief in the province of Africa, who contrived to outwit and defy Roman envoys and Roman armies, by taking advantage of the corruptibility of the one and the indiscipline of the other. Luckily for Rome this war produced a great soldier in Gaius Marius, a “new man” of Italian birth, and another in L. Cornelius Sulla, a man of high patrician family; and these two, though destined to be the bitterest foes, brought the war to a successful end.

But a far greater peril was threatening Italy herself. As we look at the map of Italy, or better still (if we have the chance) as we look up at the huge rampart of the Alps from the plain of the Po, we are tempted to think of this great barrier as impenetrable. But mountain ranges are always weak lines of defence, and history, ancient and modern alike, has abundantly proved that Italy is open to invasion from the north. Hannibal and his brother had pierced the western flank of the range, where later on there were regular thoroughfares between Rome and her western provinces; and at the eastern end, where the passes gradually lessen in height, access was easy into Italy from the north-east. Beyond this mountain barrier, at the time we have now reached, there was much disturbance going on: hungry masses of population were moving about in search of fertile land to settle in, themselves pressed on by other peoples in the same restless condition. In 113 B.C. a great migrating host, apparently of Germans, but probably gathering other peoples as it advanced, seemed to threaten the weak point of the eastern Alps.

A consul with an army was in Illyria, and tried to stop them in the country now called Carinthia, but was badly beaten. If there had been a man of genius at their head, the enemy might have penetrated into Italy; as happened again just a century later, there was nothing to stop them between the Alps and Rome. But the great host was not tempted, and pursued its way westward. In 109 they suddenly appeared beyond the western Alps, where they destroyed another consular army, and yet another fell before the Gauls of that region. Then in 105, at Orange, in Roman territory, while trying to cover the road to Massilia and so into Italy, the Romans experienced a defeat almost as terrible as that of Cannæ and half the Empire lay open to the victors. But once again they left their prey untouched, and passed westwards in search of easier conquests.

Rome had a breathing-time of nearly three years, and she also had the right man to save her. Marius remodelled the army, revolutionising it in equipment, tactics, and discipline. For material he was driven hard, and had to find recruits as best he could, drawing them from all parts of the Empire: but he had time to drill them into fine soldiers, and to lay the foundation of a marvellously perfect human defence for Mediterranean civilisation. The result was one great victory near Marseilles, and another at the eastern end of north Italy, into which the barbarians had at last penetrated: and Italy was once more secure.

Now we have to see how this peril, or rather the effort made to escape it, led to changes of the most far-reaching character in the Roman power and polity. Italy had not been saved by Roman armies or the Roman government, but by Marius and the army which he had created. For five successive years Marius was consul, contrary to all precedent, away from Rome; and the army he created looked to him, not to Rome, for pay, promotion, and discharge. We may call that host of his a Mediterranean army under the command of an Italian. It was far more like Hannibal’s army than like the old Roman citizen armies that had won the supremacy in Italy; it was a professional army devoted to its general, but with little thought of the Roman State whose servant he was. And henceforward, until Augustus restored the sense of duty to the State, the Roman armies, excellent now as fighting machines, and destined to secure effective frontiers for the Empire, were the men of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cæsar, and a constant source of anxiety and danger for the State whom they were supposed to serve.

This “long-service army” brought Rome face to face with another difficulty, and led indirectly to another great peril. When the soldiers returned home after many years of service in distant regions, what was to be done with them? Many, perhaps most of them, had no homes to go to. The veterans might naturally demand some permanent settlement, but the Senate showed no sign of appreciating the problem, and in this matter the general was helpless without the Senate. So it happened that many of them lapsed into the crowded city, to pick up a living we know not how, with the help of the distribution of cheap corn. Among them were beyond doubt numbers of non-citizens, who could not legally vote in elections or legislation, and were inadequately protected in regard to person and property, in spite of all the long service they had gone through. These men began to offer themselves as voters, and to exercise the rights of citizenship illegally; yet the confusion of the registers was such that they could not be detected. At last the adulteration of the Roman citizen body became so obvious that the consuls of 95 B.C. passed a law with the object of making it clear who was a citizen and who was not, and of eliminating those who were not really privileged.