Part 4 (1/2)

But, while these consequences were unfortunate, they were not likely to produce political complications so long as the grievances were confined to members of the citizen body. The vested interests which had been ignored in the pa.s.sing of the measure might be brushed aside in its execution. Had the territory of Italy belonged to Rome, there would have been much grumbling but no resistance; for effective resistance required a shadow of legal right. But beyond the citizen body lay groups of states which were interested in varying degrees in the execution of the agrarian measure: and their grievances, whether legitimate or not, raised embarra.s.sing questions of public law. The munic.i.p.alities composed of Roman citizens or of half-burgesses had, as we saw, been alarmed at the introduction of the measure, perhaps through a misunderstanding of its import and from a suspicion that the land which had been given them in usufruct was to be resumed. Possibly the proceedings of the commission may have done something to justify this fear, for the limits of this land possessed by corporate bodies had probably become very ill-defined in the course of years. But, although a corporate was stronger than an individual interest and rested on some public guarantee, the complaints of these towns.h.i.+ps, composed as they were of burgesses, were merely part of the civic question, and must have been negligible in comparison with the protests of the federate cities of Italy and the Latins. We cannot determine what grounds the Italian Socii had either for fear or protest. It is not certain that land had been a.s.signed to them in usufruct,[445] and such portions of their conquered territories as had been restored to them by the Roman State were their own property. But, whether the territories which they conceived to be threatened were owned or possessed by these communities, such owners.h.i.+p or possession was guaranteed to them by a sworn treaty, and it is inconceivable that the Gracchan legislation, the strongest and the weakest point of which was its strict legality, should have openly violated federative rights. When, however, we consider the way in which the public land of Rome ran in and out of the territories of these allied communities, it is not wonderful that doubts should exist as to the line of demarcation between state territories and the Roman domain.

Vexed questions of boundaries might everywhere be raised, and the government of an Italian community would probably find as much difficulty as a private possessor in furnis.h.i.+ng doc.u.mentary evidence of t.i.tle. The fears of the Latin communities are far more comprehensible, and it was probably in these centres that the Italian revolt against the proceedings of the commission chiefly originated. The interests of the Latins in this matter were almost precisely similar to those of the Romans: and this ident.i.ty of view arose from a similarity of status. The Latin colonies had had their territories a.s.signed by Roman commissioners: and it is probable, although it cannot be proved, that doubts arose as to the legitimate extent of these a.s.signments in relation to the neighbouring public land. Many of these territories may have grown mysteriously at the expense of Rome in districts far removed from the capital: and in Gaul especially encroachments on the Roman domain by munic.i.p.alities or individuals of the Latin colonies most recently established may have been suspected. But the Latin community had another interest in the question, which bore a still closer resemblance to that shown by the Roman burgesses. As the individual Latin might be a recipient of the favour of the commissioners, so he might be the victim of their legal claims. The fact that he shared the right of commerce with Rome and could acquire and sue for land by Roman forms, makes it practically certain that he could be a possessor of the Roman domain. So eager had been the government in early times to see waste land reclaimed and defended, that it could hardly have failed to welcome the enterprising Latin who crossed his borders, threw his energies into the cultivation of the public land, and paid the required dues. Many of the wealthier members of Latin communities may thus have been liable to the fate of the ejected possessors of Rome; but even those amongst them whose possessions did not exceed the prescribed limit of five hundred _jugera_, may have believed that their claims would receive, or had received, too little attention from the Roman commission, while the difficulties resulting from the fusion of public and private land in the same estates may have been as great in these communities as they were in the territory of Rome. Such grievances presented no feature of singularity; they were common to Italy, and one might have thought that a Latin protest would have been weaker than a Roman. But there was one vital point of difference between the two. The Roman could appeal only as an individual; the Latin appealed as a member of a federate state. He did not pause to consider that his grievance was due to his being half a Roman and enjoying Roman rights. The truth that a suzerain cannot treat her subjects as badly as she treats her citizens may be morally, but is not legally, a paradox. The subjects have a collective voice, the citizens have ceased to have one when their own government has turned against them. The position of these Latins, illogical as it may have been, was strengthened by the extreme length to which Rome had carried her principle of non-interference in ail dealings with federate allies. The Roman Comitia did not legislate for such states, no Roman magistrate had jurisdiction in their internal concerns.

By a false a.n.a.logy it could easily be argued that no Roman commission should be allowed to disturb their peaceful agricultural relations and to produce a social revolution within their borders. The allies now sought a champion for their cause, since the const.i.tution supplied no mechanism for the direct expression of Italian grievances. The complaints of individual cities had in the past been borne to the senate and voiced by the Roman patrons of these towns. Now that a champion for the confederacy was needed, a common patron had to be created. He was immediately found in Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s.[446]

The choice was inevitable and was dictated by three potent considerations. There was the dignity of the man, recently raised to its greatest height by the capture of Numantia; there was his known detachment from the recent Gracchan policy and his forcibly expressed dislike of the means by which it had been carried through; there was the further conviction based on his recent utterances that he had little liking for the Roman proletariate. The news of Gracchus's fall had been brought to Scipio in the camp before Numantia; his epitaph on the murdered tribune was that which the stern h.e.l.lenic G.o.ddess of justice and truth breathes over the slain Aegisthus:--

So perish all who do the like again.[447]

To Scipio Gracchus's undertaking must have seemed an act of impudent folly, its conduct must have appeared something worse than madness. In all probability it was not the agrarian movement which roused his righteous horror, but the gross violation of the const.i.tution which seemed to him to be involved in the inception and consequences of the plan. Of all political temperaments that of the Moderate is the least forgiving, just because it is the most timorous. He sees the gulf that yawns at his own feet, he lacks the courage to take the leap, and sets up his own halting att.i.tude, of which he is secretly ashamed, as the correct demeanour for all sensible and patriotic men. The Conservative can appreciate the efforts of the Radical, for each is enn.o.bled by the pursuit of the impossible; but the man of half measures and indeterminate aims, while contemning both, will find the reaction from violent change a more potent sentiment even than his disgust at corrupt immobility. Probably Scipio had never entertained such a respect for the Roman const.i.tution as during those busy days in camp, when the incidents of the blockade were varied by messages describing the wild proceedings of his brother-in-law at Rome. Yet Scipio must have known that an unreformed government could give him nothing corresponding to his half-shaped ideals of a happy peasantry, a disciplined and effective soldiery, an uncorrupt administration that would deal honestly and gently with the provincials. His own position was in itself a strong condemnation of the powers at Rome. They were relying for military efficiency on a single man. Why should not they rely for political efficiency on another? But the latter question did not appeal to Scipio.

To tread the beaten path was not the way to make an army; but it was good enough for politics.

Scipio did not scorn the honours of a triumph, and the victory of Numantia was followed by the usual pageant in the streets.[448] He was unquestionably the foremost man of Rome, and senate and commons hung on his lips to catch some definite expression of his att.i.tude to recent events, or to those which were stirring men's minds in the present. They had not long to wait, for a test was soon presented. When in 131 Carbo introduced his bill permitting re-election to the tribunate, all the resources of Scipio's dignified oratory were at the disposal of the senate, and the coalition of his admirers with the voters whom the senate could dispose of, was fatal to the chances of the bill.[449] Such an att.i.tude need not have weakened his popularity; for excellent reasons could be given, in the interest of popular government itself, against permitting any magistracy to become continuous, But his political enemies were on the watch, and in one of the debates on the measure care was taken that a question should be put, the answer to which must either identify or compromise him with the new radicalism. Carbo asked him what he thought about the death of Tiberius Gracchus. Scipio's answer was cautious but precise; ”If Gracchus had formed the intention of seizing on the administration of the State, he had been justly slain.” It was merely a restatement of the old const.i.tutional theory that one who aimed at monarchy was by that very fact an outlaw. But the answer, hypothetical as was its expression, implied a suspicion of Gracchus's aims. It did not please the crowd; there was a roar of dissent. Then Scipio lost his temper. The contempt of the soldier for the civilian, of the Roman for the foreigner, of the man of pure for the man of mixed blood--a contempt inflamed to pa.s.sion by the thought that men such as he were often at the mercy of these wretches--broke through all reserve. ”I have never been frightened by the clamour of the enemy in arms,” he shouted, ”shall I be alarmed by your cries, ye step-sons of Italy?” This reflection on the lineage of his audience naturally aroused another protest. It was met by the sharp rejoinder, ”I brought you in chains to Rome; you are freed now, but none the more terrible for that!” [450] It was a humiliating spectacle. The most respected man in Rome was using the vulgar abuse of the streets to the sovereign people; and the man who used this language was so blinded by prejudice as not to see that the blood which he reviled gave the promise of a new race, that the mob which faced him was not a crowd of Italian peasants, willing victims of the martinet, that the Asiatic and the Greek, with their sordid clothes and doubtful occupations, possessed more intelligence than the Roman members of the Scipionic circle and might one day be the rulers of Rome.

The new race was one of infinite possibilities. It needed guidance, not abuse. Carbo and his friends must have been delighted with the issue of their experiment. Scipio had paid the first instalment to that treasury of hatred, which was soon to prove his ruin and to make his following a thing of the past.

Such was the position of Scipio when he was approached by the Italians.

His interest in their fortunes was twofold. First he viewed them with a soldier's eye.[451] They were tending more and more to form the flower of the Roman armies abroad: and, although in obedience to civic sentiment he had employed a heavier scourge on the backs of the auxiliaries than on those of the Roman troops before Numantia,[452] the chastis.e.m.e.nt, which he would have doubtless liked to inflict on all, was but an expression of his interest in their welfare. Next he admired the type for its own sake. The st.u.r.dy peasant cla.s.s was largely represented here, and he probably had more faith in its permanence amongst the federate cities than amongst the needy burgesses whom the commissioners were attempting to restore to agriculture. He could not have seen the momentous consequences which would follow from a champions.h.i.+p of the Italian allies against the interests of the urban proletariate; that such a dualism of interests would lead to increased demands on the part of the one, to a sullen resistance on the part of the other; that in this mere attempt to check the supposed iniquities of a too zealous commission lay the germ of the franchise movement and the Social War.

His protection was a matter of justice and of interest. The allies had deserved well and should not be robbed; they were the true protectors of Rome and their loyalty must not be shaken. Scipio, therefore, took their protest to the senate. He respected the susceptibilities of the people so far as to utter no explicit word of adverse criticism on the Gracchan measure; but he dwelt on the difficulties which attended its execution, and he suggested that the commissioners were burdened with an invidious task in having to decide the disputed questions connected with the land which they annexed. By the nature of the case their judgments might easily appear to the litigants as tinged with prejudice. It would be better, he suggested, if the functions of jurisdiction were separated from those of distribution and the former duties given to some other authority.[453] The senate accepted the suggestion, and its reasonableness must have appealed even to the people, for the measure embodying it must have pa.s.sed the Comitia, which alone could abrogate the Gracchan law.[454] Possibly some recent judgments of the commissioners had produced a sense of uneasiness amongst large numbers of the citizen body, and there may have been a feeling that it would be to the advantage of all parties if the cause of scandal were removed.

Perhaps none but the inner circle of statesmen could have predicted the consequences of the change. The decision of the agrarian disputes was now entrusted to the consuls, who were the usual vehicles of administrative jurisdiction. The history of the past had proved over and over again the utter futility of entrusting the administration of an extraordinary and burdensome department to the regular magistrates. They were too busy to attend to it, even if they had the will. But in this case even the will was lacking. Of the two consuls Manius Aquillius was destined for the war in Asia, and his colleague Caius Semp.r.o.nius Tudita.n.u.s had no sooner put his hand to the new work than he saw that the difficulties of adjudication had been by no means the creation of the commissioners. He answered eagerly to the call of a convenient Illyrian war and quitted the judgment seat for the less hara.s.sing anxieties of the camp.[455] The functions of the commissioners were paralysed; they seem now to have reached a limit where every particle of land for distribution was the subject of dispute, and, as there was no authority in existence to settle the contested claims, the work of a.s.signation was brought to a sudden close. The ma.s.ses of eager claimants, that still remained unsatisfied, felt that they had been betrayed; the feeling spread amongst the urban populace, and the name of Scipio was a word that now awoke suspicion and even execration.[456] It was not merely the sense of betrayal that aroused this hostile sentiment; the people charged him with ingrat.i.tude. Ma.s.ses of men, like individuals, love a _protege_ more than a benefactor. They have a pride in looking at the colossal figure which they have helped to create. And had not they in a sense made Scipio? Their love had been quickened by the sense of danger; they had braved the anger of the n.o.bles to put power into his hands; they had twice raised him to the consuls.h.i.+p in violation of the const.i.tution. And now what was their reward? He had deliberately chosen to espouse the cause of the allies and oppose the interests of the Roman electorate. Scipio's enemies had good material to work upon. The casual grumblings of the streets were improved on, and formulated in the openly expressed belief that his real intention was the repeal of the Semp.r.o.nian law, and in the more far-fetched suspicion that he meant to bring a military force to bear on the Roman mob, with its attendant horrors of street ma.s.sacre or hardly less b.l.o.o.d.y persecution.[457]

The attacks on Scipio were not confined to the informal language of private intercourse. Hostile magistrates introduced his enemies to the Rostra, and men like Fulvius Flaccus inveighed bitterly against him.[458] On the day when one of these attacks was made, Scipio was defending his position before the people; he had been stung by the charge of ingrat.i.tude, for he retorted it on his accusers; he complained that an ill return was being made to him for his many services to the State. In the evening Scipio was escorted from the senate to his house by a crowd of sympathisers. Besides senators and other Romans the escort comprised representatives of his new clients, the Latins and the Italian allies.[459] His mind was full of the speech which he meant to deliver to the people on the following day. He retired early to his sleeping chamber and placed his writing tablet beside his bed, that he might fix the sudden inspirations of his waking hours. When morning dawned, he was found lying on his couch but with every trace of life extinct. The family inquisition on the slaves of the household was held as a matter of course. Their statements were never published to the world, but it was believed that under torture they had confessed to seeing certain men introduced stealthily during the night through the back part of the house; these, they thought, had strangled their master.[460] The reason which they a.s.signed for their reticence was their fear of the people; they knew that Scipio's death had not appeased the popular fury, that the news had been received with joy, and they did not wish by invidious revelations to become the victims of the people's hate. The fears of the slaves were subsequently reflected in the minds of those who would have been willing to push the investigation further. There was ground for suspicion; for Scipio, although some believed him delicate,[461] had shown no sign of recent illness. A scrutiny of the body is even said to have revealed a livid impress near the throat.[462] The investigation which followed a sudden death within the walls of a Roman household, if it revealed the suspicion of foul play, was usually the preliminary to a public inquiry. The duty of revenge was sacred; it appealed to the family even more than to the public conscience. But there was no one to raise the cry for retribution. He had no sons, and his family was represented but by his loveless wife Semp.r.o.nia. His many friends must indeed have talked of making the matter public, and perhaps began at once to give vent to those dark suspicions which down to a late age clouded the names of so many of the dead man's contemporaries. But the project is said to have been immediately opposed by representatives of the popular party;[463] the crime, if crime there was, had been no vulgar murder; a suspicion that violence had been used was an insult to the men who had fought him fairly in the political field; a _quaestio_ inst.i.tuted by the senate might be a mere pretext for a judicial murder; it might be the ruse by which the n.o.bles sought to compa.s.s the death of the people's new favourite and rising hope, Caius Gracchus. Ultimately those who believed in the murder and pined to avenge it, were constrained to admit that it was wiser to avoid a disgraceful political wrangle over the body of their dead hero. But, for the retreat to be covered, it must be publicly announced by those who had most authority to speak, that Scipio had died a natural death. This was accordingly the line taken by Laelius, when he wrote the funeral oration which Quintus Fabius Maximus delivered over the body of his uncle;[464] ”We cannot sufficiently mourn this death by disease” were words purposely spoken to be an index to the official version of the decease. The fear of political disturbance which veiled the details of the tragedy, also dictated that the man, whom friends and enemies alike knew to have been the greatest of his age, should have no public funeral.[465]

The government might well fear a scandalous scene--the Forum with its lanes and porticoes crowded by a snarling holiday crowd, the laudation of the speakers interrupted by gibes and howls, the free-fight that would probably follow the performance of the obsequies.

But suppression means rumour. The mystery was profoundly enjoyed by this and subsequent ages. Every name that political or domestic circ.u.mstances could conveniently suggest, was brought into connection with Scipio's death. Caius Gracchus,[466] Fulvius Flaccus,[467] Caius Papirius Carbo[468] were all indifferently mentioned. Suspicion clung longest to Carbo, probably as the man who had lately come into the most direct conflict with his supposed victim; even Carbo's subsequent conversion to conservatism could not clear his name, and his guilt seems to have been almost an article of faith amongst the optimates of the Ciceronian period. But there were other versions which hinted at domestic crime.

Did not Cornelia have an interest in removing the man who was undoing the work of her son, and might she not have had a willing accomplice in Scipio's wife Semp.r.o.nia?[469] It was believed that this marriage of arrangement had never been sanctioned by love; Semp.r.o.nia was plain and childless, and the absence of a husband's affection may have led her to think only of her duties as a daughter and a sister.[470] People who were too sane for these extravagances, but were yet unwilling to accept the prosaic solution of a natural death and give up the pleasant task of conjecture, suggested that Scipio had found death by his own hand. The motive a.s.signed was the sense of his inability to keep the promises which he had made.[471] These promises may have been held to be certain suggestions for the amelioration of the condition of the Latin and Italian allies.

But it required no conjecture and no suspicion to emphasise the tragic nature of Scipio's death. He was but fifty-six; he was by far the greatest general that Rome could command, a champion who could spring into the breach when all seemed lost, make an army out of a rabble and win victory from defeat; he was a great moral force, the scourge of the new vices, the enemy of the provincial oppressor; he was the greatest intellectual influence in aristocratic Rome, embellis.h.i.+ng the staid rigour of the ancient Roman with something of the humanism of the Greek; Xenophon was the author who appealed most strongly to his simple and manly tastes; and his purity of soul and clearness of intellect were fitly expressed in the chasteness and elegance of his Latin style. The modern historian has not to tax his fancy in discovering great qualities in Scipio; the mind of every unprejudiced contemporary must have echoed the thought of Laelius, when he wrote in his funeral speech ”We cannot thank the G.o.ds enough that they gave to Rome in preference to other states a man with a heart and intellect like this”.[472] But the dominant feeling amongst thinking men, who had any respect for the empire and the const.i.tution, was that of panic at the loss. Quintus Metellus Macedonicus had been his political foe; but when the tidings of death were brought him, he was like one distraught. ”Citizens,” he wailed, ”the walls of our city are in ruins.” [473] And that a great breach had been made in the political and military defences of Rome is again the burden of Laelius's complaint, ”He has perished at a time when a mighty man is needed by you and by all who wish the safety of this commonwealth.” These utterances were not merely a lament for a great soldier, but the mourning for a man who might have held the balance between cla.s.ses and saved a situation that was becoming intolerable. We cannot say whether any definite means of escape from the brewing storm was present to Scipio's mind, or, if he had evolved a plan, whether he was master of the means to render it even a temporary success. Perhaps he had meddled too little with politics to have acquired the dexterity requisite for a reconciler. Possibly his pride and his belief in the aristocracy as an aggregate would have stood in his way. But he was a man of moderate views who led a middle party, and he attracted the anxious attention of men who believed that salvation would not come from either of the extremes. He had once been the favourite of the crowd, and might be again, he commanded the distant respect of the n.o.bility, and he had all Italy at his side. Was there likely to be a man whose position was better suited to a reconciliation of the war of jarring interests?

Perhaps not; but at the time of his death the first steps which he had taken had only widened the horizon of war. He found a struggle between the commons and the n.o.bles; he emphasised, although he had not created, the new struggle between the commons and Italy. His next step would have been decisive, but this he was not fated to take.

When we turn from the history of the agrarian movement and its unexpected consequences to other items in the internal fortunes of Rome during this period, we find that Tiberius Gracchus had left another legacy to the State. This was the idea of a magistracy which, freed from the restraint of consulting the senate, should busy itself with political reform, remove on its own initiative the obstacles which the const.i.tution threw in the path of its progress, and effect the regeneration of Rome and even of Italy by means of ordinances elicited from the people. The social question was here as elsewhere the efficient cause; but it left results which seemed strangely disproportionate to their source. The career of Gracchus had shown that the leaders.h.i.+p of the people was enc.u.mbered by two weaknesses. These were the packing of a.s.semblies by dependants of the rich, whose votes were known and whose voices were therefore under control, and the impossibility of re-election to office, which rendered a continuity of policy on the part of the demagogue impossible. It was the business of the tribunate of Carbo to remove both these hindrances to popular power. His first proposal was to introduce voting by ballot in the legislative a.s.semblies;[474] it was one that could not easily be resisted, since the principle of the ballot had already been recognised in elections, and in all judicial processes with the exception of trials for treason. These measures seem to have had the support of the party of moderate reform: and Scipio and his friends probably offered no resistance to the new application of the principle. Without their support, and unprovided with arguments which might excite the fears or jealousy of the people, the n.o.bility was powerless: and the bill, therefore, easily became law. The change thus introduced was unquestionably a great one. Hitherto the country voters had been the most independent; now the members of the urban proletariate were equally free, and from this time forth the voice of the city could find an expression uninfluenced by the smiles or frowns of wealthy patrons. The ballot produced its intended effect more fully in legislation than in election; its introduction into the latter sphere caused the n.o.bility to become purchasers instead of directors; but it was seldom that a law affected individual interests so directly as to make a bargain for votes desirable. The chief bribery found in the legislative a.s.semblies was contained in the proposal submitted by the demagogue.

Carbo's second proposal, that immediate and indefinite re-election to the tribunate should be permitted, was not recommended on the same grounds of precedent or reason. The a.n.a.logies of the Roman const.i.tution were opposed to it, and the rules against the perpetuity of office which limited the patrician magistracies, and made even a single re-election to the consuls.h.i.+p illegal,[475] while framed in support of aristocratic government, had had as their pretext the security of the Republic, and therefore ostensibly of popular freedom and control. Again, the people might be reminded that the tribunate was not always a power friendly to their interests, and that the veto which blocked the expression of their will might be continued to a second year by the obstinate persistence of a minority of voters. Excellent arguments of a popular kind could be, and probably were, employed against the proposal. Certainly the sentiment which really animated the opposition could have found little favour with the ma.s.ses, who ultimately voted for the rejection of the bill. All adherents of senatorial government must have seen in the success of the measure the threat of a permanent opposition, the possibility of the rise of official demagogues of the Greek type, monarchs in reality though, not in name, the proximity of a Gracchan movement unhampered by the weakness which had led to Gracchus's fall. It is easier for an electorate to maintain a principle by the maintenance of a personality than to show its fervour for a creed by submitting new and untried exponents to a rigid confession of faith. The senate knew that causes wax and wane with the men who have formulated them, and it had always been more afraid of individuals than of ma.s.ses. Scipio's view of the Gracchan movement and his acceptance of the cardinal maxims of existing statecraft, prepare us for the att.i.tude which he a.s.sumed on this occasion. His speech against the measure was believed to have been decisive in turning the scale. He was supported by his henchmen, and the faithful Laelius also gave utterance to the protests of the moderates against the unwelcome innovation. This victory, if decisive, would have made the career of Caius Gracchus impossible--a career which, while it fully justified the att.i.tude of the opposition, more than fulfilled the designs of the advocates of the change. But the triumph was evanescent.

Within the next eight years re-election to the tribunate was rendered possible under certain circ.u.mstances. The successful proposal is said to have taken the form of permitting any one to be chosen, if the number of candidates fell short of the ten places which were to be filled.[476]

This arrangement was probably represented as a corollary of the ancient religious injunction which forbade the outgoing tribunes to leave the Plebs unprovided with guardians; and this presentment of the case probably weakened the arguments of the opposition. The aristocratic party could hardly have misconceived the import of the change. It was intended that a party which desired the re-election of a tribune should, by withdrawing some of its candidates at the last moment,[477] qualify him for reinvest.i.ture with the magistracy.