Part 23 (1/2)

It was, in fact, the great domains that drove the free peasants from the country districts. The old proprietor who sold his land could no longer remain a farmer; he had to yield the place to slaves, and he himself wandered forth without work. ”The majority of these heads of families,” says Varro in his treatise on agriculture, ”have slipped within our walls, leaving the scythe and the plough; they prefer clapping their hands at the circus to working in their fields and their vineyards.” Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune of the plebs, exclaimed in a moment of indignation, ”The wild beasts of Italy have at least their lairs, but the men who offer their blood for Italy have only the light and the air that they breathe; they wander about without shelter, without a dwelling, with their wives and their children.

Those generals do but mock them who exhort them to fight for their tombs and their temples. Is there one of them who still possesses the sacred altar of his house and the tomb of his ancestors? They are called the masters of the world while they have not for themselves a single foot of earth.”

=The City Plebs.=--While the farms were being drained, the city of Rome was being filled with a new population. They were the descendants of the ruined peasants whom misery had driven to the city; besides these, there were the freedmen and their children. They came from all the corners of the world--Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Asiatics, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls--torn from their homes, and sold as slaves; later freed by their masters and made citizens, they ma.s.sed themselves in the city. It was an entirely new people that bore the name Roman.

One day Scipio, the conqueror of Carthage and of Numantia, haranguing the people in the forum, was interrupted by the cries of the mob.

”Silence! false sons of Italy,” he cried; ”do as you like; those whom I brought to Rome in chains will never frighten me even if they are no longer slaves.” The populace preserved quiet, but these ”false sons of Italy,” the sons of the vanquished, had already taken the place of the old Romans.

This new plebeian order could not make a livelihood for itself, and so the state had to provide food for it. A beginning was made in 123 with furnis.h.i.+ng corn at half price to all citizens, and this grain was imported from Sicily and Africa. Since the year 63[140] corn was distributed gratuitously and oil was also provided. There were registers and an administration expressly for these distributions, a special service for furnis.h.i.+ng provisions (the Annona). In 46 Caesar found 320,000 citizens enrolled for these distributions.

=Electoral Corruption.=--This miserable and lazy populace filled the forum on election days and made the laws and the magistrates. The candidates sought to win its favors by giving shows and public feasts, and by dispensing provisions. They even bought votes. This sale took place on a large scale and in broad day; money was given to distributers who divided it among the voters. Once the Senate endeavored to stop this trade; but when Piso, the consul, proposed a law to prohibit the sale of suffrages, the distributers excited a riot and drove the consul from the forum. In the time of Cicero no magistrate could be elected without enormous expenditures.

=Corruption of the Senate.=--Poverty corrupted the populace who formed the a.s.semblies; luxury tainted the men of the old families who composed the Senate. The n.o.bles regarded the state as their property and so divided among themselves the functions of the state and intrigued to exclude the rest of the citizens from them. When Cicero was elected magistrate, he was for thirty years the first ”new man” to enter the succession of offices.

Accustomed to exercise power, some of the senators believed themselves to be above the law. When Scipio was accused of embezzlement, he refused even to exonerate himself and said at the tribune, ”Romans, it was on this day that I conquered Hannibal and the Carthaginians.

Follow me to the Capitol to render thanks to the G.o.ds and to beseech them always to provide generals like myself.”

To support their pretensions at home, the majority of the n.o.bles required a large amount of money. Many used their power to get it for themselves: some sent as governors plundered the subjects of Rome; others compelled foreign or hostile kings to pay for the peace granted them, or even for letting their army be beaten. It was in this way that Jugurtha bribed a Roman general. Cited to Rome to answer for a murder, he escaped trial by buying up a tribune who forbade him to speak. It was related that in leaving Rome he had said, ”O city for sale, if thou only couldst find a purchaser!”

=Corruption of the Army.=--The Roman army was composed of small proprietors who, when a war was finished, returned to the cultivation of their fields. In becoming soldiers they remained citizens and fought only for their country. Marius began to admit to the legions poor citizens who enrolled themselves for the purpose of making capital from their campaigns. Soon the whole army was full of adventurers who went to war, not to perform their service, but to enrich themselves from the vanquished. One was no longer a soldier from a sense of duty, but as a profession.

The soldiers enrolled themselves for twenty years; their time completed, they reengaged themselves at higher pay and became veterans. These people knew neither the Senate nor the laws; their obedience was only to their general. To attach them to himself, the general distributed to them the money taken from the vanquished.

During the war against Mithradates Sulla lodged his men with the rich inhabitants of Asia; they lived as they chose, they and their friends, receiving each sixteen drachmas a day. These first generals, Marius and Sulla, were still Roman magistrates. But soon rich individuals like Pompey and Cra.s.sus drew the soldiers to their pay. In 78 at the death of Sulla there were four armies, levied entirely and commanded by simple citizens. From that time there was no further question of the legions of Rome, there were left only the legions of Pompey or Caesar.

THE REVOLUTION

=Necessity of the Revolution.=--The Roman people was no longer anything but an indigent and lazy mult.i.tude, the army only an aggregation of adventurers. Neither the a.s.sembly nor the legions obeyed the Senate, for the corrupt n.o.bles had lost all moral authority, so that there was left but one real power--the army; there were no men of influence beside the generals, and the generals had no longer any desire to obey. The government by the Senate, now no longer practicable, gave place to the government of the general.

=The Civil Wars.=--The revolution was inevitable, but it did not come at one stroke; it required more than a hundred years to accomplish it.

The Senate resisted, but too weak itself to govern, it was strong enough to prevent domination by another power. The generals fought among themselves to see who should remain master. For a century the Romans and their subjects lived in the midst of riot and civil war.

=The Gracchi.=--The first civil discord that blazed up in Rome was the contest of the Gracchi against the Senate. The two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, were of one of the n.o.blest families of Rome, but both endeavored to take the government from the n.o.bles who formed the Senate by making themselves tribunes of the plebs. There was at that time, either in Rome or in Italy, a crowd of citizens without means who desired a revolution; even among the rich the majority were of the cla.s.s of the knights, who complained that they had no part in the government. Tiberius Gracchus had himself named tribune of the plebs and sought to gain control of the government. He proposed to the people an agrarian law. All the lands of the public domain occupied by individuals were to be resumed by the state (with the exception of 500 acres for each one); these lands taken by the state were to be distributed in small lots to poor citizens. The law was voted. It caused general confusion regarding property, for almost all of the lands of the empire const.i.tuted a part of the public domain, but they had been occupied for a long time and the possessors were accustomed to regard themselves as proprietors. Further, as the Romans had no registry of the lands, it was often very difficult to ascertain whether a domain were private or public property. To direct these operations, Tiberius had three commissioners named on whom the people conferred absolute authority; they were Tiberius, his brother, and his father-in-law, and it was uncertain whether Tiberius had acted in the interest of the people, or simply to have a pretext for having power placed in his hands. For a year he was master of Rome; but when he wished to be elected tribune of the plebs for the succeeding year, his enemies protested, as this was contrary to custom. A riot followed.

Tiberius and his friends seized the Capitol; the partisans of the Senate and their slaves, armed with clubs and fragments of benches, pursued them and despatched them (133).

Ten years later Gaius, the younger of the Gracchi, elected tribune of the plebs (123), had the agrarian law voted anew, and established distributions[141] of corn to the poor citizens. Then, to destroy the power of the n.o.bles, he secured a decree that the judges should be taken from among the knights. For two years Gaius dominated the government, but while he was absent from the city conducting a colony of Roman citizens to Carthage the people abandoned him. On his return he could not be reelected. The consul armed the partisans of the Senate and marched against Gaius and his friends who had fled to the Aventine Hill. Gaius had himself killed by a slave; his followers were ma.s.sacred or executed in prison; their houses were razed and their property confiscated.

=Marius and Sulla.=--The contests of the Gracchi and the Senate had been no more than riots in the streets of Rome, terminating in a combat between bands hastily armed. The strife that followed was a succession of real wars between regular armies, wars in Italy, wars in all the provinces. From this time the party chiefs were no other than the generals.

The first to use his army to secure obedience in Rome was Marius. He was born in Arpinum, a little town in the mountains, and was not of n.o.ble descent. He had attained reputation as an officer in the army, and had been elected tribune of the plebs, then praetor, with the help of the n.o.bles. He turned against them and was elected consul and commissioned with the war against Jugurtha, king of Numidia, who had already fought several Roman armies. It was then that Marius enrolled poor citizens for whom military service became a profession. With his army Marius conquered Jugurtha and the barbarians, the Cimbri and Teutones, who had invaded the empire. He then returned to Rome where he had himself elected consul for the sixth time and now exercised absolute power. Two parties now took form in Rome who called themselves the party of the people (the party of Marius), and the party of the n.o.bles (that of the Senate).

The partisans of Marius committed so many acts of violence that they ended by making him unpopular. Sulla, a n.o.ble, of the great family of the Cornelii, profited by this circ.u.mstance to dispute the power of Marius; Sulla was also a general. When the Italians rose against Rome to secure the right of citizens.h.i.+p and levied great armies which marched almost to the gates of the city, it was Sulla who saved Rome by fighting the Italians.

He became consul and was charged with the war against Mithradates, king of Pontus, who had invaded Asia Minor and ma.s.sacred all the Romans (88). Marius in jealousy excited a riot in the city; Sulla departed, joined his army which awaited him in south Italy, then returned to Rome. Roman religion prohibited soldiers entering the city under arms; the consul even before pa.s.sing the gates had to lay aside his mantle of war and a.s.sume the toga. Sulla was the first general who dared to violate this restriction. Marius took flight.

But when Sulla had left for Asia, Marius came with an army of adventurers and entered Rome by force (87). Then commenced the proscriptions.

The princ.i.p.al partisans of Sulla were outlawed, and command was given to kill them anywhere they were met and to confiscate their goods.

Marius died some months later; but his princ.i.p.al partisan, Cinna, continued to govern Rome and to put to death whomever he pleased.