Chapter II (1)

A cause never lacks a champion, nor a great cause one whom it may render great. Failure is in itself no sign of lack of spirit and ability, and when a vast reform is the product of a mean personality, the individual becomes glorified by identification with his work. From this point of view it mattered little who undertook the task of the economic regeneration of the Roman world. Any senator of respectable antecedents and moderate ability, who had a stable following amongst the ruling classes, might have succeeded where Tiberius Gracchus failed; it was a task in which authority was of more importance than ability, and the sense that the more numerous or powerful elements of society were united in the demand for reform, of more value than individual genius or honesty of purpose. This was the very circumstance that foreshadowed failure, for the men of wide connections and established fame had shrunk from an enterprise with which they sympathised in various degrees. In the proximate history of the Republic there had been three men who showed an unwavering belief in the Italian farmer and the blessings of agriculture. These were M. Porcius Cato, P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti. Sempronius Gracchus. But the influence of Cato's house had become extinct with its first founder. The elder son, an amiable man and an accomplished jurist, had not out-lived his father; the second still survived, but seems to have inherited little of the fighting qualities of the terrible censor. The traditions of a Roman house needed to be sustained by the efforts of its existing representative, and the "newness" of the Porcii might have necessitated generations of vigorous leaders to make them a power in the land. Scipionic traditions were now represented by Aemilianus, and the glow of the luminary was reflected in paler lights, who received their lustre from moving in that charmed orbit. One of these, the indefatigable henchman Laelius, had risen to the rank of consul, and stimulated by the vigorous theorisings of his hellenised environment, he contemplated for a moment the formation of a plan which should deal with some of the worst evils of the agrarian question. But he looked at the problem only to start back in affright. The strength and truculency of the vested interests with which he would have to deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by philosophy and experience, and Laelius by his retreat justified, if he did not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his "sapience".[299] But why was Scipio himself idle? The answer is to be found both in his temperament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, he was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted him in his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its cruelties, he gloried in its excitement, and the discipline of the camp was more to his mind than the turbulence of an assembly. His mind, too, belonged to that class which finds it almost impossible to emancipate itself from traditional politics. His vast knowledge of the history of other civilisations may have taught him, as it taught Polybius, that Rome was successful because she was unique.[300] Here there was to be no break with the past, no legislator posing as a demi-god, no obedience to the cries of the masses who, if they once got loose, might turn and rend the enlightened few, and reproduce on Italian soil the shocking scenes of Greek socialistic enterprise. As things were, to be a reformer was to be a partisan, and Scipio loved the prospect of his probable supporters as little as that of his probable opponents. The fact of the Empire, too, must have weighed heavily with a man who was no blind imperialist. Even though economic reform might create an added efficiency in the army, Scipio must have known, as Polybius certainly knew, that soldiers are but pawns in the great game, and that the controlling forces were the wisdom of the conservative senator, the ambition of the wealthy noble, and the capital of the enterprising knight. The wisdom of disturbing their influence, and awakening their resentment, could scarcely appeal to a mind so perfectly balanced and practical as Scipio's. Circumstances, too, must have had their share in determining his quiescence. The Scipios had been a power in Rome in spite of the nobility. They were used because they were needed, not because they were loved, and the necessary man was never in much favour with the senate. Although there was no tie of blood between Aemilianus and the elder Scipio, they were much alike both in fortune and in temperament. They had both been called upon to save military situations that were thought desperate; their reputation had been made by successful war; and though neither was a mere soldier, they lacked the taste and the patience for the complicated political game, which alone made a man a power amidst the noble circles and their immediate dependants at Rome.

But the last generation had seen in Tiberius Gracchus a man whose political influence had been vast, a noble with but scant respect for the indefeasible rights of the nobility and as stern as Cato in his animadversions on the vices of his order, a man whose greatest successes abroad had been those of diplomacy rather than of war, one who had established firm connections and a living memory of himself both in West and East, whose name was known and loved in Spain, Sardinia, Asia and Egypt. It would have been too much to hope that this honest old aristocrat would attempt to grapple with the evils which had first become manifest during his own long lifetime; but it was not unnatural that people should look to a son of his for succour, especially as this son represented the blood of the Scipios as well as of the Gracchi. The marriage of the elderly Gracchus with the young Cornelia had marked the closing of the feud, personal rather than political, which had long separated him from the elder Scipio: and a further link between the two families was subsequently forged by the marriage of Sempronia, a daughter of Cornelia, to Scipio Aemilianus. The young Tiberius Gracchus may have been born during one of his father's frequent absences on the service of the State.[301] Certainly the elder Gracchus could have seen little of his son during the years of his infancy. But the closing years of the old man's life seem to have been spent uninterruptedly in Italy, and Tiberius must have been profoundly influenced by the genial and stately presence that Rome loved and feared. But he was little more than a boy when his father died, and the early influences that moulded his future career seem to have been due mainly to his mother. Cornelia would have been the typical Roman matron, had she lived a hundred years earlier; she would then have trained sons for the battlefield, not for the Forum. As it was, the softening influences of Greek culture had tempered without impairing her strength of character, had substituted rational for purely supernatural sanctions, and a wide political outlook for a rude sense of civic duty. Herself the product of an education such as ancient civilisations rarely bestowed upon their women, she wrote and spoke with a purity and grace which led to the belief that her sons had learnt from her lips and from her pen their first lessons in that eloquence which swayed the masses and altered the fortunes of Rome.[302] But her gifts had not impaired her tenderness. Her sons were her "Jewels," and the successive loss of nine of the children which she had borne to Gracchus must have made the three that remained doubly dear. The two boys had a narrow escape from becoming Eastern princes: for the hand of the widow Cornelia was sought in marriage by the King of Egypt.[303] Such an alliance with the representative of the two houses of the Gracchi and the Scipios might easily seem desirable to a protected king, although the attractions of Cornelia may also have influenced his choice. She, however, had no aspirations to share the throne of the Lagidae, and the hellenism of Tiberius and of his younger brother Caius, though deep and far-reaching, was of a kind less violent than would have been gained by transportation to Alexandria. They were trained in rhetoric by Diophanes an exile from Mitylene, and in philosophy by Blossius of Cumae, a stoic of the school of Antipater of Tarsus.[304] Many held the belief that Tiberius was spurred to his political enterprise by the direct exhortation of these teachers; but, even if their influence was not of this definite kind, there can be little doubt that the teaching of the two Greeks exercised a powerful influence on the political cast of his mind. Ideals of Greek liberty, speeches of Greek statesmen who had come forward as champions of the oppressed, stories of social ruin averted by the voice and hand of the heaven-sent legislator, pictures of self-sacrifice and of resigned submission to a standard of duty--these were lessons that may have been taught both by rhetorician and philosopher. Nor was the teaching of history different. In the literary environment in which the Gracchi moved, ready answers were being given to the most vital questions of politics and social science. Every one must have felt that the approaching struggle had a dual aspect, that it was political as well as social. For social conservatism was entrenched behind a political rampart: and if reform, neglected by the senate, was to come from the people, the question had first to be asked, Had the people a legal right to initiate reform? The historians of that and of the preceding generation would have answered this question unhesitatingly in the affirmative. The _de facto_ sovereignty of the senate had not even received a sanction in contemporary literature, while to that of the immediate past it was equally unknown. The Roman annalists from the time of the Second Punic War had revealed the sovereignty of the people as the basis of the Roman constitution,[305] and the history of the long struggle of the Plebs for freedom made the protection of the commons the sole justification of the tribunate. From the lips of Polybius himself Tiberius may have heard the impression which the Roman polity made on the mind of the educated Greek: and the fact that this was a Greek picture did not lessen its validity; for the Greek was moulding the orthodox history of Rome, and the victims of his genius were the best Roman intellects of the day. He might have learnt how in this mixed constitution the people still retained their inalienable rights, how they elected, ratified, and above all how they punished.[306] He might have gathered that the identification of the tribunate with the interests of the nobility was a perversion of its true and vital function: that the tribune exists but to assist the commons and can be subject to no authority but the people's will, whether expressed directly by them or indirectly through his colleagues.[307] The history of the Punic wars did indeed reveal, in the fate of a Varro or a Minucius, how popular insubordination might be punished, when its end was wrong. Polybius's own voice was raised in prophetic warning against a possible demagogy of the future.[308] But that history showed the healthy discipline of a healthy people--a people that had vanquished genius through subordination, a peasant class whose loyalty and tenacity were as great as those of its leaders, and without whom those leaders would have been helpless. Where was such a class to be found now? Change the subject or turn the page, and the Greek statesman and historian could point to the dreadful reverse of this picture.[309] He could show a Greek nation, gifted with political genius but doomed to political decay--a nation whose sons accumulated money, lived in luxury with little forethought for the future, and refused to beget children for the State: a nation with a wealthy and cultured upper class, but one that was literally perishing for the lack of men.[310] Was this the fate in store for Rome? A temperament that was merely vigorous and keen might not have been affected by such reflections. One that was merely contemplative might have regarded them only as a subject for curious study. But Tiberius's mind ran to neither of these two extremes. He was a thoughtful and sensitive man of action. Sweet in temper, staid in deportment, gentle in language, he attracted from his dependants a loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that of the man who burdens society with the impression that he has a solemn mission to perform. Such men are rarely taken as seriously as they take themselves; they do not win aged men of experience to support their cause; the demeanour that wearies their friends is even likely to be found irksome by the mob.

Roman society must have seen much promise in his youth, for honours came early. A seat at the augural board was regarded as a tribute to his merit rather than his birth;[312] and indeed the Roman aristocrats, who dispensed such favours, were too clever to be the slaves of a name, when political manipulation was in question and talent might be diverted to the true cause. His marriage was a more important determinant in his career. The bride who was offered him was the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, a man of consular and censorian rank and now Princeps of the senate,[313] a clever representative of that brilliant and eccentric house, that had always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius had already displayed some of the restless individuality of his ancestors. When the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with the Salassi, he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the importunate tribune who attempted to drag him off.[314] A similar unconventionality was manifested in the present betrothal. The story runs that Appius broached the question to Tiberius at an augural banquet. The proposition was readily accepted, and Appius in his joy shouted out the news to his wife as he entered his own front door. The lady was more surprised than annoyed. "What need for all this haste," she said, "unless indeed you have found Tiberius Gracchus for our girl?" [315] Appius, hasty as he was, was probably in this case not the victim of a sudden inspiration. The restless old man doubtless pined for reform; but he was weighed down by years, honours and familiarity with the senate. He could not be the protagonist in the coming struggle; but in Tiberius he saw the man of the future.

The chances of the time favoured a military even more than a political career; the chief spheres of influence were the province and the camp, and it was in these that the earliest distinctions of Tiberius were won. When a lad of fifteen he had followed his brother-in-law Scipio to Africa, and had been the first to mount the walls of Carthage in the vain assault on the fortress of Megara.[316] He had won the approval of the commander by his discipline and courage, and left general regret amongst the army when he quitted the camp before the close of the campaign. But an experience as potent for the future as his first taste of war, must have been those hours of leisure spent in Scipio's tent.[317] If contact with the great commander aroused emulation, the talk on political questions of Scipio and his circle must have inspired profound reflection. Here he could find aspirations enough; all that was lacking was a leader to translate them into deeds. The quaestorship, the first round of the higher official ladder, found him attached to the consul Mancinus and destined for the ever-turbulent province of Spain. It was a fortunate chance, for here was the scene of his father's military and diplomatic triumphs. But the sequel was unexpected. He had gone to fulfil the duties of a subordinate; he suddenly found himself performing those of a commander-in-chief or of an accredited representative of the Roman people. The Numantines would treat only with a Gracchus, and the treaty that saved Roman lives but not Roman honour was felt to be really his work. In a moment he was involved in a political question that agitated the whole of Rome. The Numantine treaty was the topic of the day. Was it to be accepted or, if repudiated, should the authors of the disaster, the causes of the breach of faith, be surrendered in time-honoured fashion to the enemy as an expiation for the violated pledge? On the first point there was little hesitation; the senate decided for the nullity of the treaty, and it was likely that this view would be accepted by the people, if the measures against the ratifying officials were not made too stringent. For on this point there was a difference of opinion. The poorer classes, whose sons and brothers had been saved from death or captivity by the treaty, blamed Mancinus as the cause of the disaster, but were grateful to Tiberius as the author of the agreement. Others who had less to lose and could therefore afford to stand on principle, would have enforced the fullest rigour of the ancient rules and have delivered up the quaestor and tribunes with the defaulting general.[318] It was thought that the influence of Scipio, always great with the agricultural voters, might have availed to save even Mancinus, nay that, if he would, he might have got the peace confirmed.[319] But his efforts were believed to have been employed in favour of Tiberius. The matter ended in an illogical compromise. The treaty was repudiated, but it was decreed that the general alone should be surrendered.[320] A breach in an ancient rule of religious law had been made in favour of Tiberius.

But, in spite of this mark of popular favour, the experience had been disheartening and its effect was disturbing. Although it is impossible to subscribe to the opinion of later writers, who, looking at the matter from a conservative and therefore unfavourable aspect, saw in this early check the key to Tiberius's future action,[321] yet anger and fear leave their trace even on the best regulated minds. The senate had torn up his treaty and placed him for the moment in personal peril. It was to the people that he owed his salvation. If circumstances were to develop an opposition party in Rome, he was being pushed more and more into its ranks. And a coolness seems to have sprung up at this time between him and the man who had been his great _exemplar_. Tiberius took no counsel of Scipio before embarking on his great enterprise; support and advice were sought elsewhere. He may have already tested Scipio's lack of sympathy with an active propaganda; shame might have kept back the hint of a plan that might seem to imply a claim to leadership. But it is possible that there was some feeling of resentment against the warrior now before Numantia, who had done nothing to save the last Numantine treaty and the honour of the name of Gracchus.

His reticence could scarcely have been due to ignorance of his own designs; for his brother Caius left it on record that it was while journeying northward from Rome on his way to Numantia that Tiberius's eyes were first fully opened to the magnitude of the malady that cried aloud for cure.[322] It was in Etruria, the paradise of the capitalist, that he saw everywhere the imported slave and the barbarian who had replaced the freeman. It was this sight that first suggested something like a definite scheme. A further stimulus was soon to be found in scraps of anonymous writing which appeared on porches, walls and monuments, praying for his succour and entreating that the public land should be recovered for the poor.[323] The voiceless Roman people was seeking its only mode of utterance, a tribune who should be what the tribune had been of old, the servant of the many not the creature of the few. To Gracchus's mother his plans could hardly have been veiled. She is even said to have stimulated a vague craving for action by the playful remark that she was still known as the mother-in-law of Scipio, not as the mother of the Gracchi.[324]

But there was need of serious counsel. Gracchus did not mean to be a mere demagogue, coming before the people with a half-formed plan and stirring up an agitation which could end merely in some idle resolution. There were few to whom he could look for advice, but those few were of the best. Three venerable men, whose deeds and standing were even greater than their names, were ready with their support. There was the chief pontiff, P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the man who was said to combine in a supreme degree the four great blessings of wealth, birth, eloquence and legal lore;[325] there was the brother of Crassus, P. Mucius Scaevola,[326] the greatest lawyer of his age and already destined to the consulship for the following year; lastly there was Tiberius's father-in-law, the restless Appius, now eagerly awaiting the fulfilment of a cherished scheme by the man of his own choice.[327]

Thus fortified, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his tribunate, and formulated the measure which was to leave large portions of the public domain open for distribution to the poor. In the popular gatherings with which he opened his campaign, he dwelt on the nature of the evils which he proposed to remedy. It was the interest of Italy, not merely of the Roman proletariate, that was at stake.[328] He pointed out how the Italian peasantry had dwindled in numbers, and how that portion of it which still survived had been reduced to a poverty that was irremediable by their own efforts. He showed that the slave gangs which worked the vast estates were a menace, not a help, to Rome. They could not be enlisted for service in the legions; their disaffection to their masters was notorious; their danger was being proved even now by the horrible condition of Sicily, the fate of its slave-owning landlords, the long, difficult and eventful war which had not even yet been brought to a close.[329] Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of reason in his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the Rostra. "The beasts that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking-places where they may make their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy but the blessings of air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you wander to and fro with your wives and children. Our generals are in the habit of inspiring their soldiers to the combat by exhorting them to repel the enemy in defence of their tombs and ancestral shrines. The appeal is idle and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar, you have no ancestral tomb. No! you fight and die to give wealth and luxury to others. You are called the masters of the world; yet there is no clod of earth that you can call your own." [330]

The proposal, which was ushered in by these stirring appeals, seemed at first sight to be of a moderate and somewhat conservative character. It professed to be the renewal of an older law, which had limited the amount of domain land which an individual might possess to five hundred _jugera_;[331] it professed, that is, to reinforce an injunction which had been persistently disobeyed, for this enactment restricting possession had never been repealed. The extent to which a proposal of this kind is a re-enactment, in the spirit as well as in the letter, depends entirely on the length of time which has elapsed since the original proposal has begun to be violated. A political society, which recognises custom as one of the bases of law, must recognise desuetude as equally valid. A law, which has not been enforced for centuries, would, by the common consent of the courts of such nations as favour progressive legislation, be regarded as no law at all. Again, the age of an ordinance determines its suitability to present conditions. It may be justifiable to revive an enactment that is centuries old; but the revival should not necessarily dignify itself with that name. It must be regarded as a new departure, unless the circumstances of the old and the new enactment can be proved to be approximately the same. Our attempts to judge the Gracchan law by these considerations are baffled by our ignorance of the real date of the previous enactment, the stringency of whose measures he wished to renew. If it was the Licinian law of the middle of the fourth century,[332] this law must have been renewed, or must still have continued to be observed, at a period not very long anterior to the Gracchan proposal; for Cato could point his argument against the declaration of war with Rhodes by an appeal to a provision attributed to this measure[333]--an appeal which would have been pointless, had the provision fallen into that oblivion which persistent neglect of an enactment must bring to all but the professed students of law. We can at least assert that the charge against Gracchus of reviving an enactment so hoary with age as to be absurdly obsolete, is not one of the charges to be found even in those literary records which were most unfriendly to his legislation.[334]

The general principle of the measure was, therefore, the limitation to five hundred _jugera_ of the amount of public land that could be "possessed" by an individual. The very definition of the tenure immediately exempted large portions of the State's domain from the operation of this rule.[335] The Campanian land was leased by the State to individuals, not merely possessed by them as the result of an occupation permitted by the government; it, therefore, fell outside the scope of the measure;[336] but, as it was technically public land and its ownership was vested in the State, it would have been hazardous to presume its exemption; it seems, therefore, to have been specifically excluded from the operation of the bill, and a similar exception was probably made in favour of many other tracts of territory held under a similar tenure.[337] Either Gracchus declined to touch any interest that could properly describe itself as "vested," even though it took merely the form of a leasehold, or he valued the secure and abundant revenue which flowed into the coffers of the State from these domains. There were other lands strictly "public" where the claim of the holders was still stronger, and where dispossession without the fullest compensation must have been regarded as mere robbery. We know from later legislation that respect was had to such lands as the Trientabula, estates which had been granted by the Roman government at a quit rent to its creditors, as security for that portion of a national debt which had never been repaid. It is less certain what happened in the case of lands of which the usufruct alone had been granted to communities of Roman citizens or Latin colonists. Ownership in this case still remained vested in the Roman people, and if the right of usufruct had been granted by law, it could be removed by law. In the case of Latin communities, however, it was probably guaranteed by treaty, which no mere law could touch: and so similar were the conditions of Roman and Latin communities in this particular, that it is probable that the land whose use was conferred on whole communities by these ancient grants, was wholly spared by the Gracchan legislation. In the case of those commons which were possessed by groups of villagers for the purposes of pasturage (_ager compascuus_),[338] it is not likely that the group was regarded as the unit: and therefore, even in the case of such an aggregate possessing over five hundred _jugera_, their occupation was probably left undisturbed.

All other possessors must vacate the land which exceeded the prescribed limit. Such an ordinance would have been harsh, had no compensation been allowed, and Gracchus proposed certain amends for the loss sustained. In the first place, the five hundred _jugera_ retained by each possessor were to be increased by half as much again for each son that he might possess: although it seems that the amount retained was not to exceed one thousand _jugera_.[339] Secondly, the land so secured to existing possessors was not to be held on a merely precarious tenure, and was not to be burdened by the payment of dues to the State; even if ownership was not vested in its holders, they were guaranteed gratuitous undisturbed possession in perpetuity.[340] Thirdly, the bill as originally drafted even suggested some monetary compensation for the land surrendered.[341] This compensation was probably based on a valuation of stock, buildings, and recent permanent improvements, which were to be found on the territory now reverting to the State. It must have applied for the most part only to arable land, and practically amounted to a purchase by the State of items to which it could lay no legal claim; for it was the soil alone, not the buildings on the soil, over which its lordship could properly be asserted.

The object of reclaiming the public land was its future distribution amongst needy citizens. This distribution might have taken either of two forms. Fresh colonies might have been planted, or the acquired land might merely be assigned to settlers who were to belong to the existing political organisations. It was the latter method of simple assignation that Gracchus chose. There was felt to be no particular need for new political creations; for the pacification of Italy seemed to be accomplished, and the new farming class would perform their duty to the State equally well as members of the territory of Rome or of that of the existing municipia and coloniae of Roman citizens. There is some evidence that the new proprietors were not all to be attached to the city of Rome itself, but that many, perhaps most, were to be attributed to the existing colonies and municipia, in the neighbourhood of which their allotments lay.[342] The size of the new allotments which Gracchus projected is not known; it probably varied with the needs and status of the occupier, perhaps with the quality of the land, and there is some indication that the maximum was fixed at thirty _jugera_.[343] This is an amount that compares favourably with the two, three, seven or ten _jugera_ of similar assignments in earlier times, and is at once a proof of the decrease in the value of land--a decrease which had contributed to the formation of the large estates--and of the large amount of territory which was expected to be reclaimed by the provisions of the new measure. The allotments thus assigned were not, however, to be the freehold property of their recipients. They were, indeed, heritable and to be held on a perfectly secure tenure by the assignees and their descendants; but a revenue was to be paid to the State for their use: and they were to be inalienable--the latter provision being a desperate expedient to check the land-hunger of the capitalist, and to save the new settlers from obedience to the economic tendencies of the times.[344]

It is doubtful whether the social object of Gracchus could have been fully accomplished, had he confined his attention wholly to the existing citizens of Rome. The area of economic distress was wider than the citizen body, and it was the salvation of Italy as a whole that Gracchus had at heart.[345] There is much reason for supposing that some of the Italian allies were to be recipients of the benefits of the measure.[346] In earlier assignations the Latins had not been excluded, and it is probable that at least these, whether members of old communities or of colonies, were intended to have some share in the distribution. There could be no legal hindrance to such participation. With respect to rights in land, the Latins were already on a level with Roman citizens, and their exclusion from the new allotments would have been due to a mere political prejudice which is not characteristic either of Gracchus or his plans.

The ineffectiveness of laws at Rome was due chiefly to the apathy of the executive authority. Gracchus saw clearly that his measure would, like other social efforts of the past, become a mere pious resolution, if its execution were entrusted to the ordinary officials of the State.[347] But a special commission, which should effectually carry out the work which he contemplated, must be of a very unusual kind. The magnitude of the task, and the impossibility of assigning any precise limit of time to its completion, made it essential that the Triumvirate which he established should bear the appearance of a regular but extraordinary magistracy of the State. The three commissioners created by the bill were to be elected annually by the Comitia of the Tribes.[348] Re-election of the same individuals was possible, and the new magistracy was to come to an end only with the completion of its work. Its occupants, perhaps, possessed the Imperium from the date of the first institution of the office; they certainly exercised it from the moment when, as we shall see, their functions of assignment were supplemented by the addition of judicial powers. Gracchus was doubtless led to this new creation purely by the needs of his measure; but he showed to later politicians the possibility of creating a new and powerful magistracy under the guise of an agrarian law.

Such was the measure that seemed to its proposer a reasonable and equitable means of remedying a grave injustice and restoring rather than giving rights to the poor. He might, if he would, have insisted on simple restitution. Had he pressed the letter of the law, not an atom of the public domain need have been left to its present occupiers. The possessor had no rights against the State; he held on sufferance, and technically he might be supposed to be always waiting for his summons to ejectment. To give such people something over and above the limit that the laws had so long prescribed, to give them further a security of tenure for the land retained which amounted almost to complete ownership--were not these unexpected concessions that should be received with gratitude? And even up to the eve of the polling the murmurs of the opposition were sometimes met by appeals to its nobler sentiments. The rich, said Gracchus, if they had the interests of Italy, its future hopes and its unborn generations at heart, should make this land a free gift to the State; they were vexing themselves about small issues and refusing to face the greater problems of the day.[349]

But personal interests can never seem small, and the average man is more concerned with the present than with the future. The opposition was growing in volume day by day, and the murmurs were rising into shrieks. The class immediately threatened must have been numerically small; but they made up in combination and influence what they lacked in numbers. It was always easy to startle the solid commercial world of Rome by the cry of "confiscation". A movement in this direction might have no limits; the socialistic device of a "re-division of land," which had so often thrown the Greek commonwealths into a ferment, was being imported into Roman politics. All the forces of respectability should be allied against this sinister innovation. It is probable that many who propagated these views honestly believed that they exactly fitted the facts of the case. The possessors did indeed know that they were not owners. They were reminded of the fact whenever they purchased the right of occupation from a previous possessor, for such a title could not pass by mancipation; or whenever they sued for the recovery of an estate from which they had been ejected, for they could not make the plea before the praetor that the land was theirs "according to the right of the Quirites," but could rely only on the equitable assistance of the magistrate tendered through the use of the possessory interdicts; or, more frequently still, whenever they paid their dues to the Publicanus, that disinterested middle-man, who had no object in compromising with the possessors, and could seldom have allowed an acre of land to escape his watchful eye. But, in spite of these reminders, there was an impression that the tenure was perfectly secure, and that the State would never again re-assert its lordship in the extreme form of dispensing entirely with its clients. Gracchus might talk of compensation, but was there any guarantee that it would be adequate, and, even supposing material compensation to be possible, what solace was that to outraged feelings? Ancestral homes, and even ancestral tombs, were not grouped on one part of a domain, so that they could be saved by an owner when he retained his five hundred _jugera_; they were scattered all over the broad acres. Estates that technically belonged to a single man, and were therefore subject to the operation of the law, had practically ceased to confer any benefit on the owner, and were pledged to other purposes. They had been divided as the _peculia_ of his sons, they had been promised as the dowry of his daughters. Again those former laws may have rightly forbidden the occupation of more than a certain proportion of land; but much of the soil now in possession had not been occupied by its present inhabitant; he had bought the right to be there in hard cash from the former tenant. And think of the invested capital! Dowries had been swallowed up in the soil, and the Gracchan law was confiscating personal as well as real property, taking the wife's fortune as well as the husband's. Nay, if the history of the public land were traced, could it not be shown that such value as it now possessed had been given it by its occupiers or their ancestors? The land was not assigned in early times, simply because it was not worth assignation. It was land that had been reclaimed for use, and of this use the authors of its value were now to be deprived.[350]

Such was the plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and, therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found their own personal interests at stake. So good had the tenure seemed, that it had been accepted as security for debt,[351] and the Gracchan attack united for once the usually hostile ranks of mortgagers and mortgagees. The alarm spread from Rome to the outlying municipalities. [352] Even in the city itself a very imperfect view of the scope of the bill was probably taken by the proletariate. We may imagine the distorted form in which it reached the ears of the occupants of the country towns. "Was it true that the land which had been given them in usufruct was to be taken away?" was the type of question asked in the municipia and in the colonies, whether Roman or Latin. The needier members of these towns received the news with very different feelings. They had every chance of sharing in the local division of the spoils, and their voices swelled the chorus of approval with which the poorer classes everywhere received the Gracchan law. Amidst this proletariate certain catch-words--well-remembered fragments of Gracchus's speeches-- had begun to be the familiar currency of the day. "The numberless campaigns through which this land has been won," "The iniquity of exclusion from what is really the property of the State," "The disgrace of employing the treacherous slave in place of the free-born citizen"-- such was the type of remark with which the Roman working-man or idler now entertained his fellow. All Roman Italy was in a blaze, and there must have been a sense of insecurity and anxiety even in those allied towns whose interest in Roman domain-land was remote. Might not State interests be as lightly violated as individual interests by a sovereign people: and was not the example of Rome almost as perilous as her action?

The opponents of Gracchus had no illusions as to the numerical strength which he could summon to his aid. If the battle were fought to a finish in the Comitia, there could be no doubt as to his triumphant victory. Open opposition could serve no purpose except to show what a remnant it was that was opposing the people's wishes. But there was a means of at least delaying the danger, of staving off the attack as long as Gracchus remained tribune, perhaps of giving the people an opportunity of recovering completely from their delirium. When the college of tribunes moved as a united body, its force was irresistible; but now, as often before, there was some division in its ranks. It was not likely that ten men, drawn from the order of the nobility, should view with equal favour such a radical proposal as that of Tiberius Gracchus. But the popular feeling was so strong that for a time even the unsympathetic members of the board hesitated to protest, and no colleague of Tiberius is known to have opposed the movement in its initial stages. Even the man who was subsequently won over to the capitalist interest hesitated long before taking the formidable step: It was believed, however, that the hesitancy of Marcus Octavius was due more to his personal regard for Tiberius than to respect for the people's wishes.[353] The tribune who was to scotch the obnoxious measure was an excellent instrument for a dignified opposition. He was grave and discreet, a personal friend and intimate of Tiberius.[354] It is true that he was a large holder on the public domain, and that he would suffer by the operation of the new agrarian law. But it was fitting that the landlord class should be represented by a landlord, and, if there had been the least suspicion of sordid motives, it would have been removed by Octavius's refusal to accept private compensation for himself from the slender means of Tiberius Gracchus.[355] The offer itself reads like an insult, but it was probably made in a moment of passionate and unreflecting fervour. Neither the profferer nor the refuser could have regarded it in the light of a bribe. Even when the veto had been pronounced, the daily contest between the two tribunes in the Forum never became a scene of unseemly recrimination. The war of words revolved round the question of principle. Both disputants were at white heat; yet not a word was said by either which conveyed a reflection on character or motive.[356]

These debates followed the first abortive meeting of the Assembly. As the decisive moment approached, streams of country folk had poured into Rome to register their votes in favour of the measure.[357] The Contio had given way to the Comitia, the people had been ready to divide, and Gracchus had ordered his scribe to read aloud the words of the bill. Octavius had bidden the scribe to be silent;[358] the vast meeting had melted away, and all the labours of the reformer seemed to have been in vain. To accept a temporary defeat under such circumstances was in accordance with the constitutional spirit of the times. The veto was a mode of encouraging reflection; it might yield to a prolonged campaign, but it was regarded as a barrier against a hasty popular impulse which, if unchecked, might prove ruinous to some portion of the community. Gracchus, however, knew perfectly well that it was now being used in the interest of a small minority, and he held the rights which it protected to be non-existent; he believed the question of agrarian reform to be bound up with his own personality, and its postponement to be equivalent to its extinction; he had no intention of allowing his own political life to be a failure, and, instead of discarding his weapons of attack, he made them more formidable than before. Perhaps in obedience to popular outcries, he redrafted his bill in a form which rendered it more drastic and less equitable.[359] It is possible that some of the _douceurs_ given to the possessors by his original proposal were not really in accordance with his own judgment. They were meant to disarm opposition. Now that opposition had not been disarmed, they could be removed without danger. The stricter measure had the same chance of success or failure as the less severe. We do not know the nature of the changes which were now introduced; but it is possible that the pecuniary compensation offered for improvements on the land to be resumed was either abolished or rendered less adequate than before.

But even the form of the law was unimportant in comparison with the question of the method by which the new opposition was to be met. The veto, if persisted in by Octavius, would suspend the agrarian measure during the whole of Tiberius's year of office. It could only be countered by a device which would make government so impossible that the opposition would be forced to come to terms. The means were to be found in the prohibitive power of the tribunes, that right, which flowed from their _major potestas_, of forbidding under threat of penalties the action of all other magistrates. It was now rarely used except at the bidding of the senate and for certain specified purposes. It had become, in fact, little more than the means of enforcing obedience to a temporary suspension of business life decreed by the government. But recent events suggested a train of associations that brought back to mind the great political struggles of the past, and recalled the mode in which Licinius and Sextius had for five years sustained their anarchical edict for the purpose of the emancipation of the Plebs. The difference between the conditions of life in primitive Rome and in the cosmopolitan capital of to-day did not appeal to Tiberius. The Justitium was as legitimate a method of political warfare as the Intercessio. He issued an edict which forbade all the other magistracies to perform their official functions until the voting on the agrarian law should be carried through; he placed his own seals on the doors of the temple of Saturn to prevent the quaestors from making payments to the treasury or withdrawing money from it; he forbade the praetors to sit in the courts of justice and announced that he would exact a fine from those who disobeyed. The magistrates obeyed the edict, and most of the active life of the State was in suspense.[360] The fact of their obedience showed the overwhelming power which Tiberius now had behind him; for an ill-supported tribune, who adopted such an obsolete method of warfare, would have been unable to enforce his decrees and would merely have appeared ridiculous. The opponents of the law were now genuinely alarmed. Those who would be the chief sufferers put on garments of mourning, and paced the silent Forum with gloom and despair written on their faces, as though they were the innocent victims of a great wrong. But, while they took this overt means of stirring the commiseration of the crowd, it was whispered that the last treacherous device for averting the danger was being tried. The cause would perish with the demagogue, and Tiberius might be secretly removed. Confidence in this view was strengthened when it was known that the tribune carried a dagger concealed about his person.[361]

An attempt was now made to discover whether the pressure had been sufficient and whether the veto would be repeated. Gracchus again summoned the assembly, the reading of the bill was again commenced and again stopped at the instance of Octavius.[362] This second disappointment nearly led to open riot. The vast crowd did not immediately disperse; it felt its great physical strength and the utter weakness of the regular organs of government. There were ominous signs of an appeal to force, when two men of consular rank, Manlius and Fulvius,[363] intervened as peacemakers. They threw themselves at the feet of Tiberius, they clasped his hands, they besought him with tears to pause before he committed himself to an act of violence. Tiberius was not insensible to the appeal. The immediate future was dark enough, and the entreaties of these revered men had saved an awkward situation. He asked them what they held that he should do. They answered that they were not equal to advise on a matter of such vast import; but that there was the senate. Why not submit the whole matter to the judgment of the great council of the State? Tiberius's own attitude to this proposal may have been influenced by the fact that it was addressed to his colleagues as well as to himself,[364] and that they apparently thought it a reasonable means of relieving the present situation. It is difficult to believe that the man who had never taken the senate into his confidence over so vital a matter as the agrarian law, could have had much hope of its sympathy now. But his conviction of the inherent reasonableness of his proposal,[365] of his own power of stating the case convincingly, and his knowledge that the senate usually did yield at a crisis, that its government was only possible because it consistently kept its finger on the pulse of popular opinion, may have directed his acceptance of its advice. Immediate resort was had to the Curia. The business of the house must have been immediately suspended to listen to a statement of the merits of the agrarian measure, and to a description of the political situation which it had created. When the debate began, it was obvious that there was nothing but humiliation in store for the leaders of the popular movement. The capitalist class was represented by an overwhelming majority; carping protests and riddling criticism were heard on every side, and Tiberius probably had never been told so many home truths in his life. It was useless to prolong the discussion, and Tiberius was glad to get into the open air of the Forum again. He had formed his resolution, and now made a proposal which, if carried through, might remove the deadlock by means that might be construed as legitimate. The new device was nothing less than the removal of his colleague Octavius from office. He announced that at the next meeting of the Assembly two questions would be put before the Plebs, the acceptance of the law and the continuance by Octavius of his tenure of the tribunate.[366] The latter question was to be raised on the general issue whether a tribune who acted contrary to the interests of the people was to continue in office. At the appointed time[367] Octavius's constancy was again tested, and he again stood firm. Tiberius broke out into one of his emotional outbursts, seizing his colleague's hands, entreating him to do this great favour to the people, reminding him that their claims were just, were nothing in proportion to their toils and dangers. When this appeal had been rejected, Tiberius summed up the impossibility of the situation in terms which contained a condemnation of the whole growth and structure of the Roman constitution. It was not in human power, he said, to prevent open war between magistrates of equal authority who were at variance on the gravest matters of state;[368] the only way which he saw of securing peace was the deposition of one of them from office. He did not care in the present instance which it was. The people would be the arbiter. Let his own deposition be proposed by Octavius; he would walk quietly away into a private station, if this were the will of the citizens. The man who spoke thus had more completely emancipated himself from Roman formulae than any Roman of the past. To Octavius it must have seemed a mere outburst of Greek demagogism. The offer too was an eminently safe one to make under the circumstances. On no grounds could it be accepted. At this point the proceedings were adjourned to allow Octavius time for deliberation.