Chapter IV (1)

Rome had lived for nine years in a feverish atmosphere of projected reform; yet not a single question raised by her bolder spirits had received its final answer. The agrarian legislation had indeed run a successful course; yet the very hindrance to its operation at a critical moment had, in the eyes of the discontented, turned success into failure and left behind a bitter feeling of resentment at the treacherous dexterity of the government. The men, in whose imagined interests the people had been defrauded of their coveted land, had by a singular irony of fortune been driven ignominiously from Rome and were now the victims of graver suspicions on the part of the government than on that of the Roman mob. The effect of the late senatorial diplomacy had been to create two hostile classes instead of one. From both these classes the aristocrats drew their soldiers for the constant campaigns that the needs of Empire involved: and both were equally resentful of the burdens and abuses of military service, for which no one was officially directed to suggest a cure. The poorest classes had been given the ballot when they wanted food and craved a less precarious sustenance than that afforded by the capricious benevolence of the rich. The friction between the senatorial government and the upper middle class was probably increasing. The equites must have been casting hungry eyes at the new province of Asia and asking themselves whether commercial interests were always to be at the mercy of the nobility as represented by the senate, the provincial administrators and the courts of justice. It was believed that governors, commissioners and senators were being bought by the gold of kings, and that mines of wealth were being lost to the honest capitalist through the utter corruption of the governing few. The final threats of Tiberius Gracchus were still in the air, and a vast unworked material lay ready to the hand of the aspiring agitator. In an ancient monarchy or aristocracy of the feudal type, where abuses have become sanctified by tradition, or in a modern nation or state with its splendid capacity for inertia due to the habitual somnolence of the majority of its electors, such questions may vaguely suggest themselves for half a century without ever receiving an answer. But Rome could only avoid a revolution by discarding her constitution. The sovereignty of the people was a thesis which the senate dared not attack; and this sovereignty had for the first time in Roman history become a stern reality. The city in its vastness now dominated the country districts: and the sovereign, now large, now small, now wild, now sober, but ever the sovereign in spite of his kaleidoscopic changes, could be summoned at any moment to the Forum. Democratic agitation was becoming habitual. It is true that it was also becoming unsafe. But a man who could hold the wolf by the ears for a year or two might work a revolution in Rome and perhaps be her virtual master.

It was no difficult task to find the man, for there was one who was marked out by birth, traditions, temperament and genius as the fittest exponent of a cause which, in spite of its intricate complications that baffled the analysis of the ordinary mind, could still in its essential features be described as the cause of the people. It is indeed singular that, in a political civilisation so unkind as the Roman to the merits of youth, hopes should be roused and fear inspired by a man so young and inexperienced as Caius Gracchus. But the popular fancy is often caught by the immaturity that is as yet unhampered by caution and undimmed by disillusion, and by the fresh young voice that has not yet been attuned to the poor half-truths which are the stock-in-trade of the worldly wise. And those who were about Gracchus must soon have seen that the traces of youth were to be found only in his passion, his frankness, his impetuous vigour; no discerning eye could fail to be aware of the cool, calculating, intellect which unconsciously used emotion as its mask, of a mind that could map and plan a political campaign in perfect self-confident security, view the country as a whole and yet master every detail, and then leave the issue of the fight to burning words and passionate appeals. This supreme combination of emotional and artistic gifts, which made Gracchus so irresistible as a leader, was strikingly manifested in his oratory. We are told of the intensity of his mien, the violence of his gestures, the restlessness that forced him to pace the Rostra and pluck the toga from his shoulder, of the language that roused his hearers to an almost intolerable tension of pity or indignation.[568] Nature had made him the sublimest, because the most unconscious of actors; eyes, tone, gesture all answered the bidding of the magic words.[569] Sometimes the emotion was too highly strung; the words would become coarser, the voice harsher, the faultless sentences would grow confused, until the soft tone of a flute blown by an attendant slave would recall his mind to reason and his voice to the accustomed pitch.[570] Men contrasted him with his gentle and stately brother Tiberius, endowed with all the quiet dignity of the Roman orator, and diverging only from the pure and polished exposition of his cause to awake a feeling of commiseration for the wrongs which he unfolded.[571] Tiberius played but on a single chord; Caius on many. Tiberius appealed to noble instincts, Caius appealed to all and his Protean manifestations were a symbol of a more complex creed, a wider knowledge of humanity, a greater recklessness as to his means, and of that burning consciousness, which Tiberius had not, that there were personal wrongs to be avenged as well as political ideas to be realised. To a narrow mind the vendetta is simply an act of justice; to an intellectual hater such as Gracchus it is also a work of reason. The folly of crime but exaggerates its grossness, and the hatred for the criminal is merged in an exalting and inspiring contempt. Yet the man thus attuned to passion was, what every great orator must be, a painful student of the most delicate of arts. The language of the successful demagogue seldom becomes the study of the schools; yet so it was with Gracchus. The orators of a later age, whose critical appreciation was purer than their practice, could find no better guide to the aspirant for forensic fame than the speeches of the turbulent tribune. Cicero dwells on the fulness and richness of his flow of words, the grandeur and dignity of the expression, the acuteness of the thought.[572] They seemed to some to lack the finishing touch;[573] which is equivalent to saying that with him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few fragments that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous simplicity and clearness: then, for the dexterous perfection of their form. The balance of the rhythmic clauses never obscures or overloads the sense. Gracchus could tell a tale, like that of the cruel wrongs inflicted on the allies, which could arouse a thrill of horror without also awakening the reflection that the speaker was a man of great sensibility and had a wonderful command of commiserative terminology. He could ask the crowd where he should fly, whether to the Capitol dripping with a brother's blood, or to the home where the widowed mother sat in misery and tears;[574] and no one thought that this was a mere figure of speech. It all seemed real, because Gracchus was a true artist as well as a true man, and knew by an unerring instinct when to pause. This type of objective oratory, with its simple and vivid pictures, its brilliant but never laboured wit, its capacity for producing the illusion that the man is revealed in the utterance, its suggestion of something deeper than that which the mere words convey--a suggestion which all feel but only the learned understand--is equally pleasing to the trained and the unlettered mind. The polished weapon, which dazzled the eyes of the crowd, was viewed with respect even by the cultured nobles against whom it was directed.

Caius's qualities had been tested for some years before he attained the tribunate, and the promise given by his name, his attitude and his eloquence was strengthened by the fact that he had no rival in the popular favour. Carbo was probably on his way to the Optimates, and Flaccus's failure was too recent to make him valuable in any other quality than that of an assistant. But Caius had risen through the opportunities given by the agitation which these men had sustained, although his advance to the foremost place seemed more like the work of destiny than of design. When a youth of twenty-one, he had found himself elevated to the rank of a land commissioner;[575] but this accidental identification with Tiberius's policy was not immediately followed by any action which betrayed a craving for an active political career. He is said to have shunned the Forum, that training school and advertising arena where the aspiring youth of Rome practised their litigious eloquence, and to have lived a life of calm retirement which some attributed to fear and others to resentment. It was even believed by a few that he doubted the wisdom of his brother's career.[576] But It was soon found that the leisure which he cultivated was not that of easy enjoyment and did not promise prolonged repose. He was grappling with the mysteries of language, and learning by patient study the art of finding the words that would give to thought both form and wings. The thought, too, must have been taking a clearer shape: for Tiberius had left a heritage of crude ideas, and men were trying to introduce some of these into the region of practical politics. The first call to arms was Carbo's proposal for legalising re-election to the tribunate. It drew from Gracchus a speech in its support, which contained a bitter indictment of those who had been the cause of the "human sacrifice" fulfilled in his brother's murder.[577] Five years later he was amongst the foremost of the opponents of the alien-act of Pennus, and exposed the dangerous folly involved in a jealous policy of exclusion. But the courts of law are said to have given him the first great opportunity of revealing his extraordinary powers to the world. As an advocate for a friend called Vettius, he delivered a speech which seemed to lift him to a plane unapproachable by the other orators of the day. The spectacle of the crowd almost raving with joy and frantically applauding the new-found hero, showed that a man had appeared who could really touch the hearts of the people, and is said to have suggested to men of affairs that every means must be used to hinder Gracchus's accession to the tribunate.[578] The chance of the lot sent him as quaestor with the consul Orestes to Sardinia. It was with joyful hearts that his enemies saw him depart to that unhealthy clime,[579] and to Caius himself the change to the active life of the camp was not unpleasing. He is said still to have dreaded the plunge into the stormy sea of politics, and in Sardinia he was safe from the appeals of the people and the entreaties of his friends.[580] Yet already he had received a warning that there was no escape. While wrestling with himself as to whether he should seek the quaestorship, his fevered mind had conjured up a vision. The phantom of his brother had appeared and addressed him in these words "Why dost thou linger, Caius? It is not given thee to draw back. One life, one death is fated for us both, as defenders of the people's rights." His belief in the reality of this warning is amply attested;[581] but the sense that he was predestined and foredoomed, though it may have given an added seriousness to his life, left him as calm and vigorous as before. Like Tiberius he was within a sphere of his father's influence, and this memory must have stimulated his devotion to his military and provincial duties. He won distinction in the field and a repute for justice in his dealings with the subject tribes, while his simplicity of life and capacity for toil suggested the veteran campaigner, not the tyro from the most luxurious of cities.[582] The extent of the services in Sardinia and neighbouring lands which his name and character enabled him to render to the State, has been perhaps exaggerated, or at least faultily stated, by our authority; but, in view of the unquestioned confidence shown by the Numantines in his brother when as young a man, there is no reason to doubt their reality. It is said that, when the treacherous winter of Sardinia had shaken the troops with chills, the commander sent to the cities asking for a supply of clothing. These towns, which were probably federate communities and exempt by treaty from the requisitions of Rome, appealed to the senate. They feared no doubt the easy lapse of an act of kindness into a burden fixed by precedent. The senate, as in duty bound, upheld their contention; and suffering and disease would have reigned in the Roman camp, had not Gracchus visited the cities in person and prevailed on them to send the necessary help.[583] On another occasion envoys from Micipsa of Numidia are said to have appeared at Rome and offered a supply of corn for the Sardinian army. The request had perhaps been made by Gracchus. To the Numidian king he was simply the grandson of the elder Africanus: And the envoys in their simplicity mentioned his name as the Intermediary of the royal bounty. The senate, we are told, rejected the Proffered help. The curious parallelism between the present career of Caius and the early activities of his brother must have struck many; to the senate these proofs of energy and devotion seemed but the prelude to similar ingenious attempts to capture public favour at home: and their fears are said to have helped them to the decision to keep Orestes for a further year as proconsul in Sardinia.[584] It is possible that the resolution was partly due to military exigencies; the fact that the troops were relieved was natural in consideration of the sufferings which they had undergone, but the retention of the general to complete a desultory campaign which chiefly demanded knowledge of the country, was a wise and not unusual proceeding. It was, however, an advantage that, as custom dictated, the quaestor must remain in the company of his commander. Gracchus's reappearance in Rome was postponed for a year. It was a slight grace, but much might happen in the time.

It was in this latter sense that the move was interpreted by the quaestor. A trivial wrong inflamed the impetuous and resentful nature which expectation and entreaty had failed to move. Stung by the belief that he was the victim of a disgraceful subterfuge, Gracchus immediately took ship to Rome. His appearance in the capital was something of a shock even to his friends.[585] Public sentiment regarded a quaestor as holding an almost filial relation to his superior; the ties produced by their joint activity were held to be indissoluble,[586] and the voluntary departure of the subordinate was deemed a breach of official duty. Lapses in conduct on the part of citizens engaged in the public service, which fell short of being criminal, might be visited with varying degrees of ignominy by the censorship: and it happened that this court of morals was now in existence in the persons of the censors Cn. Servilius Caepio and L. Cassius Longinus, who had entered office in the previous year. The censorian judgments, although arbitrary and as a rule spontaneous, were sometimes elicited by prosecution: and an accuser was found to bring the conduct of Gracchus formally before the notice of the magistrates. Had the review of the knights been in progress after his arrival, his case would have been heard during the performance of this ceremony; for he was as yet but a member of the equestrian order, and the slightest disability pronounced against him, had he been found guilty, would have assumed the form of the deprivation of his public horse and his exclusion from the eighteen centuries. But it is possible that, at this stage of the history of the censorship, penalties could be inflicted upon the members of all classes at any date preceding the lustral sacrifice, that the usual examination of the citizen body had been completed, and that Gracchus appeared alone before the tribunal of the censors. His defence became famous;[587] its result is unknown. The trial probably ended in his acquittal,[588] although condemnation would have exercised little influence on his subsequent career, for the ignominy pronounced by the censors entailed no disability for holding a magistracy. But, whatever may have been the issue, Gracchus improved the occasion by an harangue to the people,[589] in which he defended his conduct as one of their representatives in Sardinia. The speech was important for its caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the self-seeking, the luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of the average provincial despot. His auditors learnt the details of a commander's environment--the elaborate cooking apparatus, the throng of handsome favourites, the jars of wine which, when emptied, returned to Rome as receptacles of gold and silver mysteriously acquired. Gracchus must have delighted his audience with a subject on which the masses love to dwell, the vices of their superiors. The luridness of the picture must have given it a false appearance of universal truth. It seemed to be the indictment of a class, and suggested that the speaker stood aloof from his own order and looked only to the pure judgment of the people. His enemies tried a new device. They knew that one flaw in his armour was his sympathy with the claims of the allies. Could he be compromised as an agent in that dark conspiracy which had prompted the impudent Italian claims and ended in open rebellion, his credit would be gone, even if his career were not closed by exile. He was accordingly threatened with an impeachment for complicity in the movement which had issued in the outbreak at Fregellae. It is uncertain whether he was forced to submit to the judgment of a court; but we are told that he dissipated every suspicion, and surmounted the last and most dangerous of the obstacles with which his path was blocked.[590] Straightway he offered himself for the tribunate, and, as the day of the election approached, every effort was made by the nobility to secure his defeat. Old differences were forgotten; a common panic produced harmony amongst the cliques; it even seems as if his opponents agreed that no man of extreme views should be advanced against him, for Gracchus in his tribunate had to contend with no such hostile colleague as Octavius. The candidature of an extremist might mean votes for Gracchus: and it was preferable to concentrate support on neutral men, or even on men of liberal views who were known to be in favour with the crowd. The great _clientele_ of the country districts was doubtless beaten up; and we know that, on the other side, the hopes of the needy agriculturist, and the gratitude of the newly established peasant farmer, brought many a supporter to Gracchus from distant Italian homesteads. The city was so flooded by the inrush of the country folk that many an elector found himself without a roof to shelter him, and the place of voting could accommodate only a portion of the crowd. The rest climbed on roofs and tiles, and filled the air with discordant party cries until space was given for a descent to the voting enclosures. When the poll was declared, it was found that the electoral manoeuvres of the nobility had been so far successful that Gracchus occupied but the fourth place on the list.[591] But, from the moment of his entrance on office, his predominance was assured. We hear nothing of the colleagues whom he overshadowed. Some may have been caught in the stream of Gracchus's eloquence; others have found it useless or dangerous to oppose the enthusiasm which his proposals aroused, and the formidable combination which he created by the alluring prospects that he held out to the members of the equestrian order. The collegiate character of the magistracy practically sank into abeyance, and his rule was that of a single man. First he gave vent to the passions of the mob by dwelling, as no one had yet dared to do, on the gloomy tragedy of his brother's fall and the cruel persecution which had followed the catastrophe. The blood of a murdered tribune was wholly unavenged in a state which had once waged war with Falerii to punish a mere insult to the holy office, and had condemned a citizen to death because he had not risen from his place while a tribune walked through the Forum. "Before your very eyes," he said, "they beat Tiberius to death with cudgels; they dragged his dead body from the Capitol through the midst of the city to cast it into the river; those of his friends whom they seized, they put to death untried. And yet think how your constitution guards the citizen's life! If a man is accused on a capital charge and does not immediately obey the summons, it is ordained that a trumpeter come at dawn before his door and summon him by sound of trumpet; until this is done, no vote may be pronounced against him. So carefully and watchfully did our ancestors regulate the course of justice." [592] A cry for vengeance is here merged in a great constitutional principle; and these utterances paved the way for the measure immediately formulated that no court should be established to try a citizen on a capital charge, unless such a court had received the sanction of the people.[593] The power of the Comitia to delegate its jurisdiction without appeal is here affirmed; the right of the senate to institute an inquisition without appeal is here denied. The measure was a development of a suggestion which had been made by Tiberius Gracchus, who had himself probably called attention to the fact that the establishment of capital commissions by the senate was a violation of the principle of the _provocatio_ Caius Gracchus, however, did not attempt to ordain that an appeal should be possible from the judgment of the standing commissions (_quaestiones perpetuae_); for, though the initiative in the creation of these courts had been taken by the senate, they had long received the sanction of law, and their self-sufficiency was perhaps covered by the principle that the people, in creating a commission, waived its own powers of final jurisdiction. But there were other technical as well as practical disadvantages in instituting an appeal from these commissions. The _provocatio_ had always been the challenge to the decision of a magistrate; but in these standing courts the actions of the president and of the _judices_ who sat with him were practically indistinguishable, and the sentence pronounced was in no sense a magisterial decision. The courts had also been instituted to avoid the clumsiness of popular jurisdiction; but this clumsiness would be restored, if their decision was to be shaken by a further appeal to the Comitia. Gracchus, in fact, when he proposed this law, was not thinking of the ordinary course of jurisdiction at all. He had before his mind the summary measures by which the senate took on itself to visit such epidemics of crime as were held to be beyond the strength of the regular courts, and more especially the manner in which this body had lately dealt with alleged cases of sedition or treason. The investigation directed against the supporters of his brother was the crucial instance which he brought before the people, and it is possible that, at a still later date, the inquiry which followed the fall of Fregellae had been instituted on the sole authority of the senate and had found a certain number of victims in the citizen body. Practically, therefore, Gracchus in this law wholly denied, either as the result of experience or by anticipation, the legality of the summary jurisdiction which followed a declaration of martial law.

In the creation of these extraordinary commissions the senate never took upon itself the office of judge, nor was the commission itself composed of senators appointed by the house. The jurisdiction was exercised by a magistrate at the bidding of the senate, and the court thus constituted selected its assessors, who formed a mere council for advice, at its own discretion. It was plain that, if the law was to be effective, its chief sanction must be directed, not against the corporation which appointed, but against the judge. The responsibility of the individual is the easiest to secure, and no precautions against martial law can be effective if a division of authority, or even obedience to authority, is once admitted. Gracchus, therefore, pronounced that criminal proceedings should be possible against the magistrate who had exercised the jurisdiction now pronounced illegal.[594] The common law of Rome went even further, and pronounced every individual responsible for illegal acts done at the bidding of a magistrate. The crime which the magistrate had committed by the exercise of this forbidden jurisdiction was probably declared to be treason: and, as there was no standing court at Rome which took cognisance of this offence, the jurisdiction of the Comitia was ordained. The penalty for the crime was doubtless a capital one, and by ancient prescription such a punishment necessitated a trial before the Assembly of the Centuries. It is, however, possible that Gracchus rendered the plebeian assembly of the Tribes competent to pronounce the capital sentence against the magistrate who had violated the prescriptions of his law. But, although the magistrate was the chief, he appears not to have been the sole offender under the provisions of this bill. In spite of the fact that the senate as a whole was incapable of being punished for the advice which had prompted the magistrate to an illegal course of action, it seems that the individual senator who moved, or perhaps supported, the decree which led to the forbidden jurisdiction, was made liable to the penalties of the law.[595] The operation of the enactment was made retrospective, or was perhaps conceived by its very nature to cover the past abuses which had called it into being; for in a sense it created no new crime, but simply restated the principle of the appeal in a form suited to the proceedings against which it wished to guard. It might have been argued that customary law protected the consul who directed the proceedings of the court which doomed the supporters of Tiberius Gracchus; but the argument, if used, was of no avail. Popillius was to be the witness to all men of the reality of this reassertion of the palladium of Roman liberty. An impeachment was framed against him, and either before or after his withdrawal from Rome, Caius Gracchus himself formulated and carried through the Plebs the bill of interdiction which doomed him to exile.[596] It was in vain that Popillius's young sons and numerous relatives besought the people for mercy.[597] The memory of the outrage was too recent, the joyful sense of the power of retaliation too novel and too strong. All that was possible was a counter demonstration which should emphasise the sympathy of loyalists with the illustrious victim, and Popillius was escorted to the gates by a weeping crowd.[598] We know that condemnation also overtook his colleague Rupilius,[599] and it is probable that he too fell a victim to the sense of vengeance or of justice aroused by the Gracchan law.

A less justifiable spirit of retaliation is exhibited by another enactment with which Gracchus inaugurated his tribunate, although in this, as in ail his other acts, the blow levelled at his enemies was not devoid of a deep political significance. He introduced a proposal that a magistrate who had been deposed by the people should not be allowed to hold any further office.[600] Octavius was the obvious victim, and the mere personal significance of the measure does not necessarily imply that Gracchus was burning with resentment against a man, whose opposition to his brother had rapidly been forgotten in the degradation which he had experienced at that brother's hands. Hatred to the injured may be a sentiment natural to the wrongdoer, but is not likely to be imparted even to the most ardent supporter of the author of the mischief. It were better to forget Octavius, if Octavius would allow himself to be forgotten; but the sturdy champion of the senate, still in the middle of his career, may have been a future danger and a present eyesore to the people: Gracchus's invectives probably carried him and his auditors further than he intended, and the rehabilitation of his brother's tribunate in its integrity may have seemed to demand this strong assertion of the justice of his act. But the legality of deposition by the people was a still more important point. Merely to assert it would be to imply that Tiberius had been wrong. How could it be more emphatically proclaimed than by making its consequences perpetual and giving it a kind of penal character? But the personal aspect of the measure proved too invidious even for its proposer. A voice that commanded his respect was raised against it: and Gracchus in withdrawing the bill confessed that Octavius was spared through the intercession of Cornelia.[601]

So far his legislation had but given an outlet to the justifiable resentment of the people, and a guarantee for the security of their most primitive rights. This was to be followed by an appeal to their interests and a measure for securing their permanent comfort. The wonderful solidarity of Gracchus and his supporters, the crowning triumph of the demagogue which is to make each man feel that he is an agent in his own salvation, have been traced to this constructive legislation for the benefit of classes, which ancient authors, writing under aristocratic prepossessions, have described by the ugly name of bribery.[602] The poor of Rome, if we include in this designation those who lived on the margin as well as those who were sunk in the depths of destitution, probably included the majority of the inhabitants of the town. The city had practically no organised industries. The retail trader and the purveyor of luxuries doubtless flourished; but, in the scanty manufactures which the capital still provided, the army of free labour must have been always worsted by the cruel competition of the cheaper and more skilful slave or freedman. But the poor of Rome did not form the cowed and shivering class that are seen on the streets of a northern capital. They were the merry and vivacious lazzaroni of the pavement and the portico, composite products of many climes, with all the lively endurance of the southerner and intellects sharpened by the ingenious devices requisite for procuring the minimum sustenance of life. Could they secure this by the desultory labour which alone was provided by the economic conditions of Rome, their lot was far from unhappy. As in most ancient civilisations, the poor were better provided with the amenities than with the bare necessities of existence. Although the vast provision for the pleasures of the people, by which the Caesars maintained their popularity, was yet lacking, and even the erection of a permanent theatre was frowned on by the senate,[603] yet the capital provided endless excitement for the leisured mind and the observant eye. It was for their benefit that the gladiatorial show was provided by the rich, and the gorgeous triumph by the State; but it was the antics of the nobility in the law courts and at the hustings that afforded the more constant and pleasing spectacle. Attendance at the Contiones and the Comitia not only delighted the eye and ear, but filled the heart with pride, and sometimes the purse with money. For here the units, inconsiderable in themselves, had become a collective power; they could shout down the most dignified of the senators, exalt the favourite of the moment, reward a service or revenge a slight in the perfect security given by the secrecy of the ballot. Large numbers of the poorer class were attached to the great houses by ancestral ties; for the descendants of freedmen, although they could make no legal claim on the house which represented the patron of their ancestors, were too valuable as voting units to be neglected by its representatives, even when the sense of the obligations of wealth, which was one of the best features of Roman civilisation, failed to provide an occasional alleviation for the misery of dependants. From a political point of view, this dependence was utterly demoralising; for it made the recipients of benefits either blind supporters of, or traitors to, the personal cause which they professed. It was on the whole preferable that, if patronage was essential, the State should take over this duty; the large body of the unattached proletariate would be placed on a level with their more fortunate brethren, and the latter would be freed from a dependence which merely served private and selfish interests. A semi-destitute proletariate can only be dealt with in three ways. They may be forced to work, encouraged to emigrate, or partially supported by the State. The first device was impossible, for it was not a submerged fraction with which Rome had to deal, but the better part of the resident sovereign body; the second, although discredited by the senate, had been tried in one form by Tiberius Gracchus and was to be attempted in another shape by Caius; but it is a remedy that can never be perfect, for it does not touch the class, more highly strung, more intelligent, and at the same time more capable of degradation, which the luxury of the capital enthrals. The last device had not yet been attempted. It remained for Gracchus to try it. We have no analysis of his motives; but many provocatives to his modest attempt at state socialism may be suggested. There was first the Hellenic ideal of the leisured and independent citizen, as exemplified by the state payments and the "distributions" which the great leaders of the old world had thought necessary for the fulfilment of democracy. There was secondly the very obvious fact that the government was reaping a golden harvest from the provinces and merely scattering a few stray grains amongst its subjects. There was thirdly the consideration that much had been done for the landed class and nothing for the city proletariate. Other considerations of a more immediate and economic character were doubtless present. The area of corn production was now small. Sicily was still perhaps beggared by its servile war, and the granary of Rome was practically to be found in Africa. The import of corn from this quarter, dependent as it was on the weather and controlled purely by considerations of the money-market, was probably fitful, and the price must have been subject to great variations. But, at this particular time, the supply must have been diminished to an alarming extent, and the price proportionately raised, by the swarm of locusts which had lately made havoc of the crops of Africa.[604] Lastly, the purely personal advantage of securing a subsidised class for the political support of the demagogue of the moment--a consideration which is but a baser interpretation of the Hellenic ideal--must have appealed to the practical politician in Gracchus as the more impersonal view appealed to the statesman. He would secure a permanent and stable constituency, and guard against the danger, which had proved fatal to his brother, of the absence from Rome of the majority of his supporters at some critical moment.

From the imperfect records of Gracchus's proposal we gather that a certain amount of corn was to be sold monthly at a reduced price to any citizen who offered himself as a purchaser.[605] The rate was fixed at 6-1/3 asses the modius, which is calculated to have been about half the market-price.[606] The monthly distribution would practically have excluded all but the urban proletariate, and would thus have both limited the operation of the relief to the poor of the city and invited an increase in its numbers. But the details of the measure, which would be decisive as to its economic character, are unknown to us. We are not told what proportion the monthly quantity of grain sold at this cheap rate bore to the total amount required for the support of a family; whether the relief was granted only to the head of a house or also to his adult sons; whether any one who claimed the rights of citizenship could appear at the monthly sale, or only those who had registered their names at some given time. The fact of registration, if it existed, might have been regarded as a stigma and might thus have limited the number of recipients. Some of the economic objections to his scheme were not unknown to Gracchus; indeed they were pressed home vigorously by his opponents. It was pointed out that he was enervating the labourer and exhausting the treasury, The validity of the first objection depends to a large extent on the unknown "data" which we have just mentioned. Gracchus may have maintained that a greater standard of comfort would be secured for the same amount of work. The second objection he was so far from admitting that he asserted that his proposal would really lighten the burdens of the Aerarium.[607] He may have taken the view that a moderate, steady and calculable loss on corn purchased in large quantities, and therefore presumably at a reduced price, would be cheaper in the end than the cost entailed by the spasmodic attempts which the State had to make in times of crisis to put grain upon the market; and there may have been some truth in the idea that, when the State became for the first time a steady purchaser, competition between the publicans of Sicily or the proprietors of Africa might greatly reduce the normal market price. He does not seem to have been disturbed by the consideration that the sale of corn below the market price at Rome was hardly the best way of helping the Italian farmer. The State would certainly buy in the cheapest market, and this was not to be found in Italy. But it is probable that under no circumstances could Rome have become the usual market for the produce of the recently established proprietors, and that, except at times of unusual scarcity in the transmarine provinces, imported corn could always have undersold that which was grown in Italy. Under the new system the Italian husbandman would find a purchaser in the State, if Sicily and Africa were visited by some injury to their crops. A vulnerable point in the Gracchan system of sale was exhibited in the fact that no inquiry was instituted as to the means of the applicants. This blemish was vigorously brought home to the legislator when the aged noble, Calpurnius Piso surnamed "the Frugal," the author of the first law that gave redress to the provincials, and a vigorous opponent of Gracchus's scheme, gravely advanced on the occasion of the first distribution and demanded his appropriate share.[608] The object lesson would be wasted on those who hold that the honourable acceptance of relief implies the universality of the gift: that the restraining influences, if they exist, should be moral and not the result of inquisition. But neither the possibility nor the necessity of discrimination would probably have been allowed by Gracchus. It would have been resented by the people, and did not appeal to the statesmanship, widely spread in the Greek and not unknown in the Roman world, which regarded it as one of the duties of a State to provide cheap food for its citizens. The lamentations of a later day over a pauperised proletariate and an exhausted treasury[609] cannot strictly be laid to the account of the original scheme, Except in so far as it served as a precedent; they were the consequence of the action of later demagogues who, instructed by Gracchus as to the mode in which an easy popularity might be secured, introduced laws which sanctioned an almost gratuitous distribution of grain. The Gracchan law contained a provision for the building of additional store-houses for the accumulation of the great reserve of corn, which was demanded by the new system of regular public sales, and the Sempronian granaries thus created remained as a witness of the originality and completeness of the tribune's work.[610]

The Roman citizen was still frequently summoned from his work, or roused from his lethargy, by the call of military service; and the practice of the conscription fostered a series of grievances, one of which had already attracted the attention of Tiberius Gracchus. Caius was bound to deal with the question: and the two provisions of his enactment which are known to us, show a spirit of moderation which neither justifies the belief that the demagogue was playing to the army, nor accredits the view that his interference relaxed the bonds of discipline amongst the legions.[611] The most scandalous anomaly in the Roman army-system was the miserable pittance earned by the conscript when the legal deductions had been made from his nominal rate of pay. His daily wage was but one-third of the denarius, or five and one-third asses a day, as it had remained unaltered from the times of the Second Punic War, in spite of the fact that the conditions of service were now wholly different and that garrison duty in the provinces for long periods of years had replaced the temporary call-to-arms which the average Italian campaign alone demanded; and from this quota was deducted the cost of the clothing which he wore and, as there is every reason to believe, of the whole of the rations which he consumed. We should have expected a radical reformer to have raised his pay or at least to have given him free food. But Gracchus contented himself with enacting that the soldier's clothing should be given him free of charge by the State.[612] Another military abuse was due to the difficulty which commanders experienced in finding efficient recruits. The young and adventurous supplied better and more willing material than those already habituated to the careless life of the streets, or already engaged in some settled occupation: and, although it is scarcely credible that boys under the age of eighteen were forced to enlist, they were certainly permitted and perhaps encouraged to join the ranks. The law of Gracchus forbade the enlistment of a recruit at an age earlier than the completion of the seventeenth year.[613] These military measures, slight in themselves, were of importance as marking the beginning of the movement by which the whole question of army reform, utterly neglected by the government, was taken up and carried out by independent representatives of the people. But a Roman army was to a large extent the creation of the executive power; and it required a military commander, not a tribune, to produce the radical alterations which alone could make the mighty instrument, which had won the empire, capable of defending it.

The last boon of Gracchus to the citizen body as a whole was a new agrarian law.[614] The necessity of such a measure was chiefly due to the suspension of the work of the agrarian commission, which had proved an obstacle to the continued execution of his brother's scheme; and there is every reason for believing that the new Sempronian law restored their judicial powers to the commissioners. But experience may have shown that the substance of Tiberius's enactment required to be supplemented or modified; and Caius adopted the procedure usually followed by a Roman legislator when he renewed a measure which had already been in operation. His law was not a brief series of amendments, but a comprehensive statute, so completely covering the ground of the earlier Sempronian law that later legislation cites the law of Caius, and not that of Tiberius Gracchus, as the authority for the regulations which had revolutionised the tenure of the public land.[615] The new provisions seem to have dealt with details rather than with principles, and there is no indication that they aimed at the acquisition of territory which had been exempted from the operation of the previous measure, or even touched the hazardous question of the rights of Rome to the land claimed by the Italian allies. We cannot attempt to define the extent to which the executive power granted by the new agrarian law was either necessary or effective. Certainly the returns of the census during the next ten years show no increase in the number of registered citizens;[616] but this circumstance may be due to the steps which were soon to be taken by the opponents of the Gracchi to nullify the results of their legislation. It is possible, however, that the new corn law may have somewhat damped the ardour of the proletariate for a life of agriculture which would have deprived them of its benefits.

The first tribunate of Caius Gracchus doubtless witnessed the completion of these four acts of legislation, by which the debt to his supporters was lavishly paid and their aid was enlisted for causes which could only indirectly be interpreted as their own. But this year probably witnessed as well the promulgation of the enactments which were to find their fulfilment in a second tribunate.[617] Foremost amongst these was one which dealt with the tenure of the judicial power as exercised, not by the magistrate, but by the panels of jurors who were interpreters both of law and fact on the standing commissions which had recently been created by statute. The interest of the masses in this question was remote. A permanent murder court seems indeed to have had its place amongst the commissions; but, even though the corruption of its president had on one occasion been clearly proved,[618] it is not likely that senatorial judges would have troubled to expose themselves to undue influences when pronouncing on the _caput_ of a citizen of the lower class. The fact that this justice was administered by the nobility may have excited a certain degree of popular interest; but the question of the transference of the courts from the hands of the senatorial _judices_ would probably never have been heard of, had not the largest item in this judicial competence had a decisively political bearing. The Roman State had been as unsuccessful as others of the ancient world in keeping its judicial machinery free from the taint of party influences. It had been accounted one of the surest signs of popular sovereignty that the people alone could give judgment on the gravest crimes and pronounce the capital penalty,[619] and recent political thought had perhaps wholly adapted itself to the Hellenic view that the government of a state must be swayed by the body of men that enforces criminal responsibility in political matters. This vital power was still retained by the Comitia when criminal justice was concerned with those elemental facts which are the condition of the existence of a state. The people still took cognisance of treason in all its degrees--a conception which to the Roman mind embraced almost every possible form of official maladministration--and the gloomy record of trials before the Comitia, from this time onward to the close of the Republic, shows that the weapon was exercised as the most forcible implement of political chastisement. But chance had lately presented the opportunity of making the interesting experiment of assimilating criminal jurisdiction in some of its branches to that of the civil courts. The president and jurors of one of the newly established _quaestiones_ formed as isolated a group as the _judex_ of civil justice with his assessors, or the greater panels of Centumvirs and Decemvirs. They possessed no authority but that of jurisdiction within their special department; there seemed no reason why they should be influenced by considerations arising from issues whether legislative or administrative. But this appearance of detachment was wholly illusory, and the well-intentioned experiment was as vain as that of Solon, when he carefully separated the administrative and judicial boards in the Athenian commonwealth and composed both bodies of practically identical individuals. The new court for the trial of extortion, constituted by the Calpurnian and renewed later by a Junian law, was controlled by a detachment of the governing body which saw in each impeachment a libel on its own system of administration, and in each condemnation a new precedent for hampering the uncontrolled power exercised in the past or coveted for the future by the individual juror. This class spirit may have been more powerful than bribery in its production of suspicious acquittals; and the fact that prosecution was frankly recognised as the commonest of party weapons, and that speeches for the prosecution and defence teemed with irrelevant political allusions, reduced the question of the guilt of the accused to subordinate proportions in the eyes of all the participants in this judicial warfare. Charges of corruption were so recklessly hurled at Rome that we can seldom estimate their validity; but the strong suspicion of bribery is almost as bad for a government as the proved offence; and it was certain that senatorial judges did not yield to the evidence which would have supplied conviction to the ordinary man. Some recent acquittals furnished an excellent text to the reformer. L. Aurelius Cotta had emerged successfully from a trial, which had been a mere duel between Scipio Aemilianus for the prosecution and Metellus Macedonicus for the defence. The judges had shown their resentment of Scipio's influence by acquitting Cotta; and few of the spectators of the struggle seem even to have pretended to believe in the innocence of the accused.[620] The whole settlement of Asia had been so tainted with the suspicion of pecuniary influences that, when Manius Aquillius successfully ran the gauntlet of the courts,[621] it was difficult to believe that the treasures of the East had not co-operated towards the result, especially as the senate itself by no means favoured some of the features of Aquillius's organisation of the province. The legates of some of the plundered dependencies were still in Rome, bemoaning the verdict and appealing for sympathy with their helpless fellow subjects[622] Circumstances favoured the reformer; it was possible to bring a definite case and to produce actual sufferers before the people; while the senate, perhaps in consequence of the attitude of some honest dissentients, was unable to make any effectual resistance to the scandal and its consequences.