Part 3 (2/2)

The proposal was received by the senators with loud cries of acclamation. A glance at Tiberius would probably have shown that Annius had found the weak spot, not merely in his defensive armour, but in his very soul. The deposition of Octavius was proving a very nemesis; it was a democratic act that was in the highest degree undemocratic, an a.s.sertion and yet a gross violation of popular liberty.[386] The superst.i.tious ma.s.ses were in the habit of was.h.i.+ng their hands and purifying their bodies before they entered into the presence of a tribune.[387] Might there not be a thrill of awe and repentance when the idea was brought home to them that this holy temple had been violated: and must not this be followed by a sense of repugnance to the man who had prompted them to the unhallowed deed? Tiberius sprang to his feet, quitted the senate-house and summoned the people. The majesty of the tribunate in his person had been outraged by Annius. He must answer for his words. The aged senator appeared before the crowd; he knew his disadvantage if the ordinary weapons of comitial strife were employed.

In power of words and in repute with the ma.s.ses he stood far behind Tiberius. But his presence of mind did not desert him. Might he ask a few questions before the regular proceedings began? The request was allowed and there was a dead silence. ”Now suppose,” said Annius, ”you, Tiberius, were to wish to cover me with shame and abuse, and suppose I were to call on one of your colleagues for help, and he were to come up here to offer me his a.s.sistance, and suppose further that this were to excite your displeasure, would you deprive that colleague of yours of his office?” To answer that question in the affirmative was to admit that the tribunician power was dead; to answer it in the negative was to invite the retort that the _auxilium_ was only one form of the _intercessio_. The quick-witted southern crowd must have seen the difficulty at once, and Tiberius himself, usually so ready and bold in speech, could not face the dilemma. He remained silent and dismissed the a.s.sembly.[388]

But matters could not remain as they were. This new aspect of Octavius's deposition was the talk of the town, and there were many troubled consciences amongst the members of his own following. Something must be done to quiet them; he must raise the question himself. The situation had indeed changed rapidly. Tiberius Gracchus was on his defence. Never did his power of special pleading appear to greater advantage than in the speech which followed. He had the gift which makes the mighty Radical, of diving down and seizing some fundamental truth of political science, and then employing it with merciless logic for the ill.u.s.tration or refutation of the practice of the present. The central idea here was one gathered from the political science of the Greeks. The good of the community is the only test of the rightness of an inst.i.tution. It is justified if it secures that end, unjustified if it does not: or, to use the language of religion, holy in the one case, devoid of sanct.i.ty in the other. And an inst.i.tution is not a mere abstraction; we must judge it by its use. We must, therefore, say that when it obeys the common interest, it is right: when it ceases to obey it, it is wrong. But the right must be preserved and the wrong plucked out. So Gracchus maintained that the tribune was holy and sacrosanct because he had been sanctified to the people's service and was the people's head. If then he change his character and do the people wrong, cutting down its strength and silencing its voice as expressed through the suffrage, he has deprived himself of his office, for he has ceased to conform to the terms on which he received it. Should we leave a tribune alone who was pulling down the Capitolium or burning the docks? And yet a tribune who did these things would remain a tribune, though a bad one. It is only when a tribune is destroying the power of the people that he is no longer a tribune at all. The laws give the tribune the power to arrest the consul. It is a power given against a man elected by the people; for consul and tribune are equally mandataries of the people. Shall not then the people have the right of depriving the tribune of his authority, when he uses this authority in a way prejudicial to the interests of the giver? What does the history of the past teach us? Can anything have been more powerful or more sacred than the ancient monarchy of Rome? The Imperium of the king was unlimited, the highest priestly offices were his. Yet the city expelled Tarquin for his crimes. The tyranny of a single man was alone sufficient to bring to an end a government which had its roots in the most distant past, which had presided over the very birth of the city. And, if sanct.i.ty alone is to be the ground of immunity, what are we to think of the punishment of a vestal virgin? Is there anything in Rome more holy and awe-inspiring than the maidens who tend and guard the eternal flame? Yet their sin is visited by the most horrible of deaths. They hold their sacrosanct character through the G.o.ds; they lose it, therefore, when they sin against the G.o.ds. Should the same not be true of the tribune? It is on account of the people that he is sacred; he cannot retain this divine character when he wrongs the people; he is a man engaged in destroying the very power which is the source of his strength. If the tribunate can justly be gained by a favourable vote of the majority of the tribes, can it not with greater justice be taken away by an adverse vote of all of them? Again, what should be the limits of our action in dealing with sacred things? Does sanct.i.ty mean immobility? By no means. What are more holy and inviolable than things dedicated to the G.o.ds? Yet this character does not prevent the people from handling, moving, transferring them as it pleases. In the case of the tribunate, it is the office, not the man, that is inviolable; it may be treated as an object of dedication and transferred to another. The practice of our own State proves that the office is not inviolable in the sense of being inalienable, for its holders have often forsworn it and asked to be divested of it.[389]

The strongest part of this utterance was that which dealt with the sacred character of office; it was a mere emanation from the performance of certain functions; the protection, not the reality, of the thing.

Gracchus might have added that even a treaty might under certain circ.u.mstances be legitimately broken. The weakest, from a Roman standpoint or indeed from that of any stable political society, was the identification of the permanent and temporary character of an inst.i.tution, the a.s.sumption that a meeting of the people was the people, that a tribune was the tribune. How far the speech was convincing we do not know; it certainly did not relieve Tiberius of his embarra.s.sments, which were now thickening around him.

Tiberius's success had been mainly due to the country voters. It is true that he had a large following in the city; but this was numerically inferior to a ma.s.s of urban folk, whose att.i.tude was either indifferent or hostile. They were indifferent in so far as they did not want agrarian a.s.signments, and hostile in so far as they were clients of the n.o.ble houses which opposed Tiberius's policy. This urban party was now in the ascendant, for the country voters had scattered to their homes.[390] The situation demanded that he should work steadily for two objects, re-election to the tribunate and the support of the city voters. If, in addition to this support, he could hold out hopes that would attract the great capitalists to his side, his position would be impregnable. Hence in his speeches he began to throw out hints of a new and wide programme of legislation.[391] There was first the military grievance. Recent regulations, by the large decrease which they made in the property qualifications required for service,[392] had increased the liability to the conscription of the manufacturing and trading cla.s.ses of Rome. Gracchus proposed that the period of service should be shortened--his suggestion probably being, not that the years of liability to service (the seventeenth to the forty-sixth) should be lessened, but that within these years a limited number of campaigns should be agreed on, which should form the maximum amount of active service for every citizen.[393] Two other proposals dealt with the question of criminal jurisdiction. The first allowed an appeal to the people from the decision of _judices_. The form in which this proposal is stated by our authority, would lead us to suppose that the courts to be rendered appellable were those const.i.tuted under standing laws. The chief of these _quaestiones_ or _judicia publica_ was the court which tried cases for extortion, established in the first instance by a Lex Calpurnia, and possibly reconst.i.tuted before this epoch by a Junian law.[394] A permanent court for the trial of murder may also have existed at this time.[395] The judges of these standing commissions were drawn from the senatorial order; and Gracchus, therefore, by suggesting an appeal from their judgment to the people, was attacking a senatorial monopoly of the most important jurisdiction, and perhaps reflecting on the conduct of senatorial _judices_, as displayed especially in relation to the grievances of distressed provincials. But it is probable that he also meant to strike a blow at a more extraordinary prerogative claimed by the senate, and to deny the right of that body to establish special commissions which could decide without appeal on the life and fortunes of Roman citizens.[396] So far his proposals, whether based on a conviction of their general utility or not, were a bid for the support of the average citizen. But when he declared that the qualification for the criminal judges of the time could not be allowed to stand, and that these judges should be taken either from a joint panel of senators and knights, or from the senate increased by the addition of a number of members of the equestrian order equal to its present strength, he was holding out a bait to the wealthy middle cla.s.s, who were perhaps already beginning to feel senatorial jurisdiction in provincial matters irksome and disadvantageous to their interests. We are told by one authority that Gracchus's eyes even ranged beyond the citizen body and that he contemplated the possibility of the gift of citizens.h.i.+p to the whole of Italy.[397] This was not in itself a measure likely to aid in his salvation by the people; if it was not a disinterested effort of far-sighted genius, it may have been due to the gathering storm which his experience showed him the agrarian commission would soon be forced to meet.[398] Certainly, if all these schemes are rightly attributed to Tiberius Gracchus, it was he more than any man who projected the great programme of reform that the future had in store.

Unfortunately for Gracchus the time was short for nursing a new const.i.tuency or spreading a new ideal. The time for the tribunician elections was approaching, an active canva.s.s was being carried on by the candidates, and the aggrieved landowners were throwing the whole weight of their influence into the opposite scale.[399] Wild rumours of his plans were being circulated. The family clique that filled the agrarian commission was to s.n.a.t.c.h at other offices; Gracchus's brother, a youth still unqualified even for the quaestors.h.i.+p,[400] was to be thrust into the tribunate, and his father-in-law Appius was destined for the consulate.[401] Rome was to be ruled by a dynasty, and the tyranny of the commission was to extend to every department of the State. Gracchus felt that the city-combination against him was too strong, and sent an earnest summons to his supporters in the country. But practical needs were stronger than grat.i.tude; the farmers were busy with their harvest; and it was plain that on this occasion the man of the street was to have the decisive voice. The result showed that even he was not unmoved by Gracchus's services, and by his last appeal that a life risked on behalf of the people should be protected by a renewed invest.i.ture with the tribunate.[402]

The day of the election arrived and the votes were taken. When they came to be read out, it was found that the two first tribes had given their voice for Gracchus. Then there was a sudden uproar. The votes were going against the landlords; a legal protest must be made. Men rose in the a.s.sembly, and shouted out that immediate re-election to the tribunate was forbidden by the law. They were probably both right and wrong in their protest, as men so often were who ventured to make a definite a.s.sertion about the fluid public law of Rome. There was apparently no enactment forbidding the iteration of this office, and appointment to the tribunate must have been governed by custom. But recent custom seems to have been emphatically opposed to immediate re-election, and the appeal was justified on grounds of public practice.[403] It would probably have been disregarded, had the Gracchan supporters been in an overwhelming majority, or Gracchus's colleagues unanimous in their support. But the people were divided, and the president was not enthusiastic enough in the cause to risk his future impeachment.

Rubrius, to whom the lot had a.s.signed the conduct of the proceedings on that day, hesitated as to the course which he ought to follow. A bolder spirit Mummius, the man who had been made by the deposition of Octavius, asked that the conduct of the a.s.sembly should be handed over to him.

Rubrius, glad to escape the difficulty, willingly yielded his place; but now the other members of the college interposed. The forms of the Comitia were being violated; a president could not be chosen without the use of the lot. The resignation of Rubrius must be followed by another appeal to sort.i.tion. The point of order raised, as usual, a heated discussion; the tribunes gathered on the Rostra to argue the matter out.

Nothing could be gained by keeping the people as the spectators of such a scene, and Gracchus succeeded in getting the proceedings adjourned to the following day.[404]

The situation was becoming more desperate; for each delay was a triumph for the opposition, and could only strengthen the belief in the illegality of Gracchus's claim. He now resorted to the last device of the Roman; he ceased to be a protector and became a suppliant. Although still a magistrate, he a.s.sumed the garb of mourning, and with humbled and tearful mien begged the help of individuals in the market place.[405]

He led his son by the hand; his children and their mother were to be wards of the people, for he had despaired of his own life. Many were touched; to some the tribunate of Gracchus seemed like a rift in a dark cloud of oppression which would close around them at his fall, and their hearts sank at the thought of a renewed triumph of the n.o.bility. Others were moved chiefly by the fears and sufferings of Gracchus. Cries of sympathy and defiance were raised in answer to his tears, and a large crowd escorted him to his house at nightfall and bade him be confident of their support on the following day. During his appeals he had hinted at the fear of a nocturnal attack by his foes: and this led many to form an encampment round his house and to remain as its vigilant defenders throughout the night.[406]

Before day-break he was up and engaged in hasty colloquy with his friends. The fear of force was certainly present; and definite plans may have been now made for its repulsion. Some even believed that a signal for battle was agreed on by Gracchus, if matters should come to that extreme.[407] With a true Roman's scruples he took the omens before he left his house. They presaged ill. The keeper of the sacred chickens, which Gracchus's Imperium now permitted him to consult, could get nothing from the birds, even though he shook the cage. Only one of the fowls advanced, and even that would not touch the food. And the unsought omens were as evil as those invited. Snakes were found to have hatched a brood in his helmet, his foot stumbled on the threshold with such violence that blood flowed from his sandal; he had hardly advanced on his way when crows were seen struggling on his left, and the true object of the sign was pointed when a stone, dislodged by one of them from a roof, fell at his own feet. This concourse of ill-luck frightened his boldest comrades; but his old teacher, Blossius of c.u.mae, vehemently urged the prosecution of the task. Was a son of Gracchus, the grandson of Africa.n.u.s, chief minister of the Roman people,[408] to be deterred by a crow from listening to the summons of the citizens? If the disgrace of his absence amused his enemies, they would keep their laughter to themselves. They would use that absence seriously, to denounce him to the people as a king who was already aping the luxury of the tyrant. As Blossius spoke, men were seen running from the direction of the Capitol; they came up, they bade him press on, as all was going well. And, in fact, it seemed as if all might turn out brightly. The Capitoline temple, and the level area before it, which was to be the scene of the voting, were filled with his supporters. A hearty cheer greeted him as he appeared, and a phalanx closed round him to prevent the approach of any hostile element. Shortly after the proceedings began, the senate was summoned by the consul to meet in the temple of Fides.[409] A few yards of sloping ground was all that now separated the two hostile camps.[410]

The interval for reflection had strengthened the belief of some of the tribunes that Gracchus's candidature was illegal, and they were ready to support the renewed protests of the rich. The election, however, began; for the faithful Mummius was now presiding, and he proceeded to call on the tribes to vote. But the business of filing into their separate compartments, always complicated, was now impossible. The fringe of the crowd was in a continual uproar; from its extremities the opponents of the measure were wedging their way in. As his supporters squared their shoulders, the whole ma.s.s rocked and swayed. There was no hope of eliciting a decision from this scuffling and pus.h.i.+ng throng. Every moment brought the a.s.sembly nearer to open riot. Suddenly a man was seen at some distance from Tiberius gesticulating with his hand as though he had something to impart. He was recognised as Fulvius Flaccus, a senator, a man perhaps already known as a sympathiser with schemes of reform. Gracchus asked the crowd immediately around him to give way a little, and Fulvius fought his way up to the tribune. His news was that in the sitting of the senate the rich proprietors had asked the consul to use force, that he had declined, and that now they were preparing on their own motion to slay Tiberius. For this purpose they had collected a large band of armed slaves and retainers.[411] Tiberius immediately imparted the news to his friends. Preparations for defence were hastily made: an improvised body-guard was formed; togas were girt up, and the staves of the lictors were broken into fragments to serve as clubs. The Gracchans more distant from the centre of the scene were meanwhile marvelling at the strange preparations of which they caught but glimpses, and could be seen asking eager questions as to their meaning.

To reach these distant supporters by his voice was impossible; Tiberius could but touch his forehead with his hand to indicate that his life was in danger. Immediately a shout went up from the opposite side ”Tiberius is asking for the diadem,” and eager messengers sped with the news to the senate.[412] There was probably a knowledge that physical support for their cause would be found in that quarter, and the exodus of these excited capitalists was apparently a.s.sisted by an onslaught from the mob. A regular tumult was brewing, and the tribunes, instead of striving to preserve order, or staying to interpose their sacred persons between the enraged combatants, fled incontinently from the spot. Their fear was natural, for by remaining they might seem to be identifying themselves with a cause that was either lost or lawless. With the tribunes vanished the last trace of legality. The priests closed the temple to keep its precincts from the mob. The more timorous of the crowd fled in wild disorder, spreading wilder rumours. Tiberius was deposing the remaining tribunes from office; he was appointing himself to a further tribunate without the formalities of election.[413]

Meanwhile the senate was deliberating in the temple of Fides. In the old days their deliberations might have resulted in the appointment of a dictator, and one of the historians who has handed down the record of these facts marvels that this was not the case now.[414] But the dictators.h.i.+p had been weakened by submission to the appeal, and long before it became extinct had lost its significance as a means of repressing sedition within the city. The Roman const.i.tution had now no mechanism for declaring a state of siege or martial law. From one point of view the extinction of the dictators.h.i.+p was to be regretted. The nomination of this magistrate would have involved at least a day's delay;[415] some further time would have been necessary before he had collected round him a sufficient force in a city which had neither police nor soldiers. Had it been decided to appoint a dictator, the outrages of the next hour could never have occurred. As things were, it seemed as though the senate had to choose between impotence and murder.

There was indeed another way. Such was the respect for members of the senatorial order, that a deputation of that body, headed by the consul, would probably have led to the dispersal of the mob. But pa.s.sions were inflamed and it was no time for peaceful counsels. The advocate of summary measures was the impetuous Nasica. He urged the consul to save the city and to put down the tyrant. He demanded that the sense of the house should be taken as to whether extreme measures were now necessary.

Even at this time a tradition may have existed that a magic formula by which the senate advised the magistrates ”to see to it that the State took no harm,” [416] could justify any act of violence in an emergency.

The sense of the house was with Nasica, but a resolution could not be framed unless the consul put the question. The answer of Scaevola was that of a lawyer. He would commence no act of violence, he would put to death no citizen uncondemned. If, however, the people, through the persuasion or compulsion of Tiberius, should come to any illegal decision, he would see that such a resolution was not observed. Nasica sprang to his feet. ”The consul is betraying the city; those who wish the salvation of the laws, follow me.” [417] With this he drew the hem of his toga over his head,[418] and rushed from the door in the direction of the Capitoline temple. He was followed by a crowd of senators, all wrapping the folds of their togas round their left arms.

Outside the door they were joined by their retainers armed with clubs and staves.[419]

Meanwhile the proceedings in the Area Capitolii had been becoming somewhat less turbulent. The turmoil had quieted down with the exclusion of the more violent members of the opposition. Gracchus had called a Contio, for the purpose, it was said, of encouraging his supporters and a.s.serting his own constancy and defiance of senatorial authority. The gathering had become a mere partisan ma.s.s meeting, such as had often been seen in the course of the current year, and the herald was crying ”Silence,” [420] when suddenly the men on the outskirts of the throng fell back to right and left. A long line of senators had been seen hastening up the hill. A deputation from the fathers had come. That must have been the first impression: and the crowd fell back before its masters. But in a moment it was seen that the masters had come to chastise, not to plead. With set faces and blazing eyes Nasica and his following threw themselves on the yielding ma.s.s. The unarmed senators s.n.a.t.c.hed at the first weapons that lay to hand, the fragments of the shattered furniture of the meeting, severed planks and legs of benches, while their retinue pressed on with clubs and sticks. The whole column made straight for Tiberius and his improvised body-guard. Resistance was hopeless, and the tribune and his friends turned to flee. But the idea of restoring order occupied but a small place in the minds of the maddened senators, The acc.u.mulated bitterness of a year found its outlet in one moment of glorious vengeance. The fathers were behaving like a Greek street mob of the lowest type which had turned against an oppressive oligarchy. They were clubbing the Gracchans to death.

Tiberius was in flight when some one seized his toga. He slipped it off and fled, clad only in his tunic, when he stumbled over a prostrate body and fell. As he rose, a rain of blows descended on his head.[421] The man who was seen to strike the first blow is said to have been Publius Saturius, one of his own colleagues. The glory of his death was vehemently disputed; one Rufus, since he could not claim the first blow, is said to have boasted of being the author of the second. Tiberius is said to have fallen by the very doors of the Capitoline temple, not far from the statues of the Kings.[422] The number of his adherents that perished was over three hundred, and it was noted that not one of these was slain by the sword.[423] Their bodies were thrown into the Tiber--not by the mob but by the magistrates; the hand of an aedile committed that of Tiberius to the stream.[424]

The murder of a young man, who was still under thirty at the time of his death,[425] and the slaughter of a few hundreds of his adherents, may not seem to be an act of very great significance in the history of a mighty empire. Yet ancient historians regarded the event as epoch-marking, as the turning point in the history of Rome, as the beginning of the period of the civil wars.[426] To justify this conclusion it is not enough to point to the fact that this was the first blood shed in civic discord since the age of the Kings;[427] for it might also have been the last. Though the vendetta is a natural outgrowth of Italian soil, yet ma.s.ses of men are seldom, like individuals, animated solely by the spirit of revenge. The blood of the innocent is a good battle-cry in politics, but it is little more; it is far from being the mere pretext, but it is equally far from being the true cause, of future revolution. Familiarity with the use of force in civic strife is also a fatal cause of its perpetuation; but familiarity implies its renewed employment: it can hardly be the result of the first experiment in murder. The repet.i.tion of this ghastly phenomenon in Roman politics can only be accounted for by the belief that the Gracchan _emeute_ was of its very nature an event that could not be isolated: that Gracchus was a pioneer in a hostile country, and that his opponents preserved all their inherent weakness after the first abortive manifestation of their pretended strength. A bad government may be securely entrenched. The senate, whether good or bad, had no defences at all. Its weakness had in the old days been its pride. It ruled by influencing opinion. Now that it had ceased to influence, it ruled by initiating a riot in the streets. It had no military support except such as was given it by friendly magistrates, and this was a dangerous weapon which it hesitated to use. To ignore militarism was to be at the mercy of the demagogue of the street, to admit it was found subsequently to be equivalent to being at the mercy of the demagogue of the camp. In either case authority must be maintained at the cost of civil war. But the material helplessness of the senate was only one factor in the problem.

More fatal flaws were its lack of insight to discover that there were new problems to be faced, and lack of courage in facing them. This moral helplessness was due partly to the selfishness of individuals, but partly also to the fixity of political tradition. In spite of the brilliancy and culture of some of its members, the senate in its corporate capacity showed the possession of a narrow heart and an inexpansive intelligence. Its sympathies were limited to a cla.s.s; it learnt its new lessons slowly and did not see their bearing on the studies of the future. Imperialism abroad and social contentment at home might be preserved by the old methods which had worked so well in the past. But to the mind of the ma.s.ses the past did not exist, and to the mind of the reformer it had buried its dead. The career of Tiberius Gracchus was the first sign of a great awakening; and if we regard it as illogical, and indeed impossible, to pause here and estimate the character of his reforms, it is because the more finished work of his brother was the completion of his efforts and followed them as inexorably as the daylight follows the dawn.

CHAPTER III

The att.i.tude of the senate after the fall of Gracchus was not that of a combatant who had emerged secure from the throes of a great crisis. A less experienced victor would have dwelt on the magnitude of the movement and been guilty of an attempt at its sudden reversal. But the government pretended that there had been no revolution, merely an _emeute_. The wicked authors of the sedition must be punished; but the Gracchan legislation might remain untouched. More than one motive probably contributed to shape this view. In the first place, the traditional policy of Rome regarded reaction as equivalent to revolution. A rash move should be stopped in its inception; but, had it gone a little way and yielded fruit in the shape of some permanent organisation, it would be well to accept and, if possible, to weaken this product; it would be the height of rashness to attempt its destruction. The recognition of the _fait accompli_ had built up the Roman Empire, and the dreaded consequences had not come. Why should not the same be true of a new twist in domestic policy? Secondly, the opposition of the senate to Gracchus's reforms was based far more decidedly on political than on economic grounds. The frenzy which seized the fathers during the closing act of the tribune's life, was excited by his comprehensive onslaught on their monopoly of provincial, fiscal and judicial administration. His attempt to annex their lands had aroused the resentment of individuals, but not the hatred of a corporation. The individual was always lost in the senate, and the wrongs of the landowner could be ignored for the moment and their remedy left to time, if political prudence dictated a middle course. Again, reflection may have suggested the thought whether these wrongs were after all so great or so irremediable. The pastoral wealth of Italy was much; but it was little compared with the possibilities of enterprise in the provinces.

Might not the bait of an agrarian law, whose chances of success were doubtful and whose operation might in time be impeded by craftily devised legislation, lull the people into an acceptance of that senatorial control of the foreign world, which had been so scandalously threatened by Gracchus? There was a danger in the very raising of this question; there was further danger in its renewal. A party cry seldom becomes extinct; but its successful revival demands the sense of some tangible grievance. To remove the grievance was to silence the demagogue; what the people wa

<script>