Chapter VI: The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla (1)

(621-676.)

[Sidenote: State of the Republic.]

I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.

“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi, acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of the best cause.

As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited power.[625]

Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When, freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it.”[626]

The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues, in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true, superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit, and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had taken possession of all classes.

Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a purchaser!”[628]

Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions: for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified; the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly, the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire, without participating in the rights of Roman citizens.[629] There were, as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation, followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and Norba.[631]

The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy.[632] At a later time, when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received, either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general (_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.

Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of 619.[634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been carried away for slaves by Roman collectors.[635] In the great market of Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy.[636]

The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore always the stigma of their origin.[638] Confined to the urban tribes, they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a veritable disdain: “Silence!” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken.”[639] When the people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when, crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.

On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a democracy without people.

There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.

All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms, but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles.[641]

[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621).]

II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages as well as eloquence,[642] he was son of the Gracchus who was twice consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus.[643] At the age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the first to mount to the assault.[644] Questor of the Consul Mancinus in Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the love of virtue,[645] far from being dazzled by the splendour of the moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been entertained by Scipio Æmilianus[646] to distribute the public domain among the poor.[647] The people themselves demanded the concession with great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with inscriptions calling for it.[648]

Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war, after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts.[649]

He then spoke with contempt of the slaves, of that restless, uncertain class, invading the rural districts, useless for the recruitment of the armies, dangerous to society, as the last insurrection in Sicily clearly proved. He ended by proposing a law, which was simply a reproduction of that of Licinius Stolo, that had fallen into disuse. Its object was to withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which they had unjustly seized. No landholder should retain more than five hundred _jugera_ for himself and two hundred and fifty for each of his sons. These lands should belong to them for ever; the part confiscated should be divided into lots of thirty _jugera_ and farmed hereditarily, either to Roman citizens, or to Italiote auxiliaries, on condition of a small rent to the treasury, and with an express prohibition to alienate. The proprietors were to be indemnified for the part of their lands which they so lost. This project, which all the old writers judged to be just and moderate, raised a tempest among the aristocracy. The Senate rejected it, and, when the people were on the point of adopting it, the tribune Octavius, gained over by the rich citizens,[650] opposed to it his inflexible veto. Suddenly interrupted in his designs, Tiberius embraced the resolution, as bold as it was contrary to the laws, of obtaining a vote of the tribes to depose the tribune. These having pronounced accordingly, the new law was published, and three triumvirs appointed for carrying it into execution: they were, Tiberius, his brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Upon another proposition, he obtained a decision that the money left by the King of Pergamus to the Roman people should be employed for the expenses of establishing those who were to receive the lands.[651]

The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the country tribes.[652] Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm, carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.

The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests, were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the assassination of Tiberius.[653] In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have recourse to extremities.”[654]

The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty.[655] The latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies. The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey the call.[656]

Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head to explain by signs the danger which threatened him.[657] Then his enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate, preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain, with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.

The man had succumbed, but the cause remained standing, and public opinion forced the Senate to discontinue its opposition to the execution of the agrarian law, to substitute for Tiberius, as commissioner for the partition of lands, Publius Crassus, an ally of the Gracchi; the people commiserated the fate of the victims and cursed the murderers. Scipio Nasica gained nothing by his triumph; to withdraw him from the general resentment he was sent to Asia, where he died miserably.

The execution of the law encountered, nevertheless, many obstacles. The limits of the _ager publicus_ had never been well defined; few title-deeds existed, and those which could be produced were often unintelligible. The value of this property, too, had changed prodigiously. It was necessary to indemnify those who had cleared uncultivated grounds or made improvements. Most of the lots contained religious buildings and sepulchres. According to the antique notions, it was a sacrilege to give them any other destination. The possessors of the _ager publicus_, supported by the Senate and the equestrian order, made the most of all these difficulties. The Italiotes showed no less ardour in protesting against the partition of the lands, knowing well that it would be less favourable to them than to the Romans.

The struggles which had preceded had so excited men’s passions, that each party, as the opportunity occurred, presented laws the most opposite to each other. At one time, on the motion of the tribune Junius Pennus, it is a question of expelling all foreigners from Rome (628), in order to deprive the party of the people of auxiliaries; at another, on that of M. Fulvius, the right of city is claimed in favour of the Italiotes (629). This demand leads to disturbances: it is rejected, and the Senate, to rid itself of Fulvius, sends him against the Salluvii, who were threatening Massilia. But already the allies themselves, impatient at seeing their rights incessantly despised, were attempting to secure them by force, and the Latin colony of Fregellæ revolts first; but it is soon destroyed utterly by the prætor M. Opimius (629). The rigour of this act of repression was calculated to intimidate the other towns; but there are questions which must be resolved, and cannot be put down. The cause which has been vanquished ten years is on the point of finding in the brother of Tiberius Gracchus a new champion.

[Sidenote: Caius Gracchus (631).]

III. Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs.[658] Invested with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the sanction of the people several laws; some directed merely against the enemies of his brother;[659] others, of great political meaning, which require more particular notice.

First, the importance of the tribunes was increased by the faculty of being re-elected indefinitely,[660] which tended to give a character of permanence to functions which were already so preponderant. Next, the law _frumentaria_, by turn carried into effect and abandoned,[661] gained him adherents by his granting without distinction, to all the poor citizens, the monthly distribution of a certain quantity of wheat; and for this purpose vast public granaries were constructed.[662] The shortening of the time of service of the soldiers,[663] the prohibition to enrol them under seventeen years of age, and the payment by the treasury of their equipment, which was previously deducted from their pay, gained him the favour of the army. The establishment of new tolls (_portoria_) augmented the resources of the State; new colonies were founded,[664] not only in Italy, but in the possessions out of the peninsula.[665] The agrarian law, which was connected with the establishment of these colonies, was confirmed, probably with the view of restoring to the commissioners charged with its execution their judicial powers, which had fallen into disuse.[666] Long and wide roads, starting from Rome, placed the metropolis in easy communication with the different countries of Italy.[667]

Down to this time, the appointments to the provinces had taken place after the consular elections, which allowed the Senate to distribute the great commands nearly according to its own convenience; it was now arranged, in order to defeat the calculations of ambition and cupidity, that the Senate should assign, before the election of the consuls, the provinces which they should administrate.[668] To elevate the title of Roman citizen, the dispositions of the law Porcia were put in force again, and it was forbidden not only to pronounce capital punishment[669] on a Roman citizen, except in case of high treason (_perduellio_), but even for this offence to apply it without the ratification of the people. It was equivalent to repealing the law of provocation, the principle of which had been inscribed in the laws of the Twelve Tables.

C. Gracchus attempted still more in the cause of equality. He proposed to confer the right of city on the allies who enjoyed the Latin law, and even to extend this benefit to all the inhabitants of Italy.[670] He wished that in the comitia all classes should be admitted without distinction to draw lots for the century called _prærogativa_, or which had precedency in voting;[671] this “prerogative” had in fact a great influence, because the suffrage of the first voters was regarded as a divine presage; but these propositions were rejected. Desirous of diminishing the power of the Senate, Gracchus resolved to oppose to it the knights, whose importance he increased by new attributes. He caused a law to be passed which authorised the censor to let to farm, in Asia, the lands taken from the inhabitants of the conquered towns.[672] The knights then took in farm the rents and tithes of those countries, of which the soil belonged of right to the Roman people;[673] the old proprietors were reduced to the condition of simple tenants. Finally, Caius gave the knights a share in the judiciary powers, exercised exclusively by the Senate, the venality of which had excited public contempt.[674] Three hundred knights were joined with three hundred senators, and the cognisance of all actions at law thus devolved upon six hundred judges.[675] These measures gained for him the good-will of an order which, hostile hitherto to the popular party, had contributed to the failure of the projects of Tiberius Gracchus.

The tribune’s success was immense; his popularity became so great that the people surrendered to him the right of naming the three hundred knights among whom the judges were to be chosen, and his simple recommendation was enough to secure the election of Fannius, one of his partisans, to the consulship. Desiring further to show his spirit of justice towards the provinces, he sent back to Spain the wheat arbitrarily carried away from the inhabitants by the proprætor Fabius. The tribunes had thus, at that epoch, a veritable omnipotence: they had charge of the great works; disposed of the public revenues; dictated, so to say, the election of the consuls; controlled the acts of the governors of provinces; proposed the laws, and saw to their execution.

These measures taken together, from the circumstance that they were favourable to a great number of interests, calmed for some time the ardour of the opposition, and reduced it to silence. Even the Senate became reconciled in appearance with Caius Gracchus; but under the surface the feeling of hatred still existed, and another tribune was raised up against him, Livius Drusus, whose mission was to propose measures destined to restore to the Senate the affection of the people. C. Gracchus had designed that the allies enjoying Latin rights should be admitted to the right of city. Drusus caused it to be declared that, like the Roman citizens, they should no longer be subject to be beaten with rods. According to the law of the Gracchi, the lands distributed to the poor citizens were burdened with a small rent for the profit of the public treasury; Drusus freed them from it.[676] In rivalry to the agrarian law, he obtained the creation of twelve colonies of three thousand citizens each. Lastly, it was thought necessary to remove Caius Gracchus himself out of the way, by appointing him to lead to Carthage, to raise it from its ruins, the colony of six thousand individuals, taken from all parts of Italy,[677] of which he had obtained the establishment.

During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal, compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.

The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate tyrants--a treacherous qualification always employed against the defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph, they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly. Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius underwent a similar fate. The head of the tribune was carried in triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to torment the Senate.

Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,[678] “because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent measure.”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them faithfully, or to have an army at command.

Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part, inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions of lands which had been taken from them,[680] and its effects were only destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak, the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they combated with arms ideas which arms could not destroy. When, in the midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them; but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a hundred others grow up in its place.

[Sidenote: War of Jugurtha (637).]

IV. An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party: will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their ancestors.

Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine, had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia. Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children, Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death also. The Senate sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius, who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul, on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:--

“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law, but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I acknowledge that _to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to the kingly power_; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance obtained by the blood of the citizens.... In these last years you groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free people made the tributaries of a few nobles--of those who alone are in possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and men.... But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic? Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity, the most criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic. Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety.... Ah! could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your enemies as allies.”[681]

He then reminded his audience of all Jugurtha’s crimes. The latter rose to justify himself; but the tribune C. Bæbius, with whom he was in league, ordered the king to keep silence. The Numidian was on the point of gathering the fruit of such an accumulation of corruptions, when, having caused a dangerous rival, Massiva, the grandson of Masinissa, to be assassinated at Rome, he became the object of public reprobation, and was compelled to return to Africa. War then re-commences; the consul Albinus lets it drag on in length. Recalled to Rome to hold the comitia, he entrusts the command to his brother, the proprætor Aulus, whose army, soon seduced by Jugurtha, lets itself be surrounded, and is under the necessity of making a dishonourable capitulation. The indignation at Rome is at its height. On the proposal of a tribune, an inquiry is opened against all the presumed accomplices in the misdeeds of Jugurtha; they were punished, and, as often happens under such circumstances, the vengeance of the people passed the limits of justice. At last, after warm debates, an honourable man is chosen, Metellus, belonging to the faction of the nobles, and he is charged with the war in Africa. Public opinion, by forcing the Senate to punish corruption, had triumphed over bad passions; and “it was the first time,” says Sallust, “that the people put a bridle on the tyrannical pride of the nobility.”[682]

[Sidenote: Marius (647).]

V. The Gracchi had made themselves, so to say, the civil champions of the popular cause: Marius became its stern soldier. Born of an obscure family, bred in camps, having arrived by his courage at high grades, he had the roughness and the ambition of the class which feels itself oppressed. A great captain, but a partisan in spirit, naturally inclined to good and to justice, he became, towards the end of his life, through love of power, cruel and inexorable.[683]

After having distinguished himself at the siege of Numantia, he was elected tribune of the people, and displayed in that office a great impartiality.[684] It was the first step of his fortune. Having become the lieutenant of Metellus, in the war against Jugurtha he sought to supplant his general; and, at a later period, succeeded in allying himself to an illustrious family by marrying Julia, paternal aunt of the great Cæsar. Guided by his instinct or intelligence, he had learnt that beneath the official people there existed a people of proletaries and of allies which demanded a consideration in the State.

Having reached the consulship through his high military reputation, backed by intrigues, he was charged with the war of Numidia, and, before his departure, expressed with energy, in an address to the people, the rancours and principles of the democratic party of that time.

“You have charged me,” he said, “with the war against Jugurtha; the nobility is irritated at your choice: but why do you not change your decree, by going to seek for this expedition a man among that crowd of nobles, of old lineage, who counts many ancestors, but not a single campaign?... It is true that he would have to take among the people an adviser who could teach him his business. With these proud patricians compare Marius, a new man. What they have heard related by others, what they have read of, I have seen in part, I have in part done.... They reproach me with the obscurity of my birth and fortune; I reproach them with their cowardice and personal infamy. Nature, our common mother, has made all men equal, and the bravest is the most noble.... If they think they are justified in despising me, let them also despise their ancestors, ennobled like me by their personal merits.... And is it not more worthy to be oneself the author of his name than to degrade that which has been transmitted to you?

“I cannot, to justify your confidence, make a display of images, nor boast of the triumphs or consulships of my ancestors; but I can produce, if necessary, javelins, a standard, the trappings of war, twenty other military gifts, besides the scars which furrow my breast. These are my images, these my nobility, not left by inheritance, but won for myself by great personal labours and perils.”[685]

After this oration, in which is revealed the legitimate ardour of those who, in all aristocratic countries, demand equality, Marius, contrary to the ancient system, enrolled more proletaries than citizens. The veterans also crowded under his standards. He conducted the war of Africa with skill; but he was robbed of part of his glory by his questor, P. Cornelius Sylla. This man, called soon afterwards to play so great a part, sprung from an illustrious patrician family, ambitious, ardent, full of boldness and confidence in himself, recoiled before no obstacle. The successes, which cost so many efforts to Marius, seemed to come of themselves to Sylla. Marius defeated the Numidian prince, but, by an adventurous act of boldness, Sylla received his submission, and ended the war. From that time began, between the proconsul and his young questor, a rivalry which, in time, was changed into violent hatred. They became, one, the champion of the democracy; the other, the hope of the oligarchic faction. So the Senate extolled beyond measure Metellus and Sylla, in order that the people should not consider Marius as the first of the generals.[686] The gravity of events soon baffled this manœuvre.

While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia (in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls.[687] In their passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul; returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri, followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger, sought no longer to seize the power.[688] Marius was, contrary to the law, named a second time consul, in 650, and charged with the war in Gaul.

This great captain laboured during several years to restore military discipline, practise his troops, and familiarise them with their new enemies, whose aspect filled them with terror. Marius, considered indispensable, was re-elected from year to year; from 650 to 654, he was five times elected consul, and beat the Cimbri, united with the Ambrones and Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (_Aix_), re-passed into Italy, and exterminated, near Vercellæ, the Cimbri who had escaped from the last battle and those whom the Celtiberians had driven back from Spain. These immense butcheries, these massacres of whole peoples, removed for some time the barbarians from the frontiers of the Republic.

Consul for the sixth time (654), the saviour of Rome and Italy, by a generous deference, would not triumph without his colleague Catulus,[689] and did not hesitate to exceed his powers in granting to two auxiliary cohorts of Cameria, who had distinguished themselves, the rights of city.[690] But his glory was obscured by culpable intrigues. Associated with the most turbulent chiefs of the democratic party, he excited them to revolt, and sacrificed them as soon as he saw that they could not succeed. When governments repulse the legitimate wishes of the people and true ideas, then factious men seize on them as a powerful arm to serve their passions and personal interests; the Senate having rejected all the proposals of reform, those who sought to raise disorders found in them a pretext and support in their perverse projects. L. Appuleius Saturninus, one of Marius’s creatures, and Glaucia, a fellow of loose manners, were guilty of incredible violences. The first revived the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, and went beyond them in proposing the partition of the lands taken from the Cimbri; a measure which he sought to impose by terror and murder. In the troubles which broke out at the election of the consuls for 655, the urban tribes came to blows with the country tribes. In the midst of the tumult, Saturninus, followed by a troop of desperadoes, made himself master of the Capitol, and fortified himself in it. Charged, in his quality of consul, with the repression of sedition, Marius first favoured it by an intentional inaction; then, seeing all good citizens run to arms, and the factious without support, even deserted by the urban plebeians, he placed himself at the head of some troops, and occupied the avenues to the Capitol. From the first moment of the attack, the rebels threw down their arms and demanded quarter. Marius left them to be massacred by the people, as though he had wished that the secret of the sedition might die with them.

The question of Italian emancipation was not foreign to the revolt of Saturninus. It is certain that the claims of the Italiotes, rejected after the death of C. Gracchus, and then adjourned at the approach of the Cimbri, who threatened all the peninsula with one common catastrophe, were renewed with more earnestness than ever after the defeat of the barbarians. The earnestness of the allies to come to the succour of Italy, the courage which they had shown in the battle-fields of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ, gave them new claims to become Romans. Yet, if some prudent politicians believed that the time was arrived for yielding to the wishes of the Italiotes, a numerous and powerful party revolted at the idea of such a concession. The more the privileges of the citizens became extended, the more the Roman pride resisted the thought of having sharers in them. M. Livius Drusus (663), tribune of the people, son of the Drusus already mentioned, having under his command in Rome an immense body of clients, the acknowledged patron of all the Italiote cities, dared to attempt this salutary reform, and had nearly carried it by force of party. He was not ignorant that there was already in existence a formidable confederacy of the peoples of the south and east of Italy, and that more than once their chiefs had meditated a general insurrection. Drusus, trusting in their projects, had had the art to restrain them and to obtain from them the promise of a blind obedience. The success of the tribune seemed certain. The people were gained over by distributions of wheat and concessions of lands; the Senate, intimidated, appeared to have become powerless, when, a few days before the vote of the tribes, Drusus was assassinated. All Italy accused the senators of this crime, and war became inevitable.

The obstinate refusal of the Romans to share with the Italiotes all their political rights, had been long a cause of political agitation. More than two hundred years before, the war of the Latins and the revolt of the inhabitants of Campania, after the battle of Cannæ, had no other motives. About the same time (536), Spurius Carvilius proposed to admit into the Senate two senators taken from each people in Latium. “The assembly,” says Livy,[691] “burst into a murmur of indignation, and Manlius, raising his voice over the others, declared that there existed still a descendant of that consul who once, in the Capitol, threatened to kill with his own hand the first Latin he should see in the curia;” a striking proof of this secular resistance of the Roman aristocracy to everything which might threaten its supremacy. But, after this epoch, the ideas of equality had assumed a power which it was impossible to mistake.

[Sidenote: Wars of the Allies (663).]

VI. This civil war, which was called the _War of Allies_,[692] showed once more the impotence of material force against the legitimate aspirations of peoples, and it covered the country with blood and ruins. Three hundred thousand citizens, the choice of the nation, perished on the field of battle.[693] Rome had the superiority, it is true, and yet it was the cause of the vanquished which triumphed, since, after the war, the only object of which was the assertion of the rights of citizenship, these rights were granted to most of the peoples of Italy. Sylla subsequently restricted them, and we may be convinced, by examining the different censuses, that the entire emancipation was only accomplished under Cæsar.[694]

The revolt burst out fortuitously before the day fixed. It was provoked by the violence of a Roman magistrate, who was massacred by the inhabitants of Asculum; but all was ready for an insurrection, which was not long before it became general. The allies had a secret government, chiefs appointed, and an army organised. At the head of the peoples confederated against Rome were distinguished the Marsi and the Samnites; the first excited rather by a feeling of national pride than by the memory of injuries to be revenged; the second, on the contrary, by the hatred which they had vowed against the Romans during long struggles for their independence--struggles renewed on the invasion of Hannibal. Both shared the honour of the supreme command. It appears, moreover, that the system of government adopted by the confederation was a copy of the Roman institutions. To substitute Italy for Rome, and to replace the denomination of a single town by that of a great people, was the avowed aim of the new league. A Senate was named, or rather a Diet, in which each city had its representatives; they elected two consuls, Q. Pompædius Silo, a Marsian, and C. Papius Mutilus, a Samnite. For their capital, they chose Corfinium, the name of which was changed to that of _Italia_, or _Vitelia_, which, in the Oscan language, spoken by a part of the peoples of Southern Italy, had the same signification.[695]

The allies were wanting neither in skilful generals nor in brave and experienced soldiers; in the two camps, the same arms, the same discipline. The war, commenced at the end of the year 663, was pursued on both sides with the utmost animosity. It extended through Central Italy, from the north to the south, from Firmum (_Fermo_) to Grumentum, in Lucania, and from east to west from Cannæ to the Liris. The battles were sanguinary, and often indecisive, and, on both sides, the losses were so considerable, that it soon became necessary to enrol the freedmen, and even the slaves.

The allies obtained at first brilliant successes. Marius had the glory of arresting their progress, although he had only troops demoralised by reverses. Fortune, this time again, served Sylla better; conqueror wherever he appeared, he sullied his exploits by horrible cruelties to the Samnites, whom he seemed to have undertaken to destroy rather than to subdue. The Senate displayed more humanity, or more policy, in granting spontaneously the right of Roman city to all the allies who remained faithful to the Republic, and in promising it to all those who should lay down their arms. It treated in the same manner the Cisalpine Gauls; as to their neighbours on the left bank of the Po, it conferred upon them the right of Latium. This wise measure divided the confederates;[696] the greater part submitted. The Samnites, almost alone, continued to fight in their mountains with the fury of despair. The emancipation of Italy was accompanied, nevertheless, with a restrictive measure which was designed to preserve to the Romans the preponderance in the comitia. To the thirty-five old tribes, eight new ones were added, in which all the Italiotes were inscribed; and, as the votes were reckoned by tribes, and not by head, it is evident that the influence of the new citizens must have been nearly null.[697]

Etruria had taken no part in the Social War. The nobility was devoted to Rome, and the people lived in a condition approximating to bondage. The law Julia, which gave to the Italiotes the right of Roman city, and which took its name from its author, the consul L. Julius Cæsar, produced among the Etruscans a complete revolution. It was welcomed with enthusiasm.

While Italy was in flames, Mithridates VI., king of Pontus, determined to take advantage of the weakness of the Republic to aggrandise himself. In 664, he invaded Bithynia and Cappadocia, and expelled the kings, allies of Rome. At the same time he entered into communication with the Samnites, to whom he promised subsidies and soldiers. Such was the hatred then inspired by the Romans in foreign countries, that an order of Mithridates was sufficient to raise the province of Asia, where, in one day, eighty thousand Romans were massacred.[698] At this time the Social War was already approaching its end. With the exception of Samnium, all Italy was subdued, and the Senate could turn its attention to the distant provinces.

[Sidenote: Sylla (666).]

VII. Sylla, appointed consul in recompense for his services, was charged with the task of chastising Mithridates. While he was preparing for this mission, the tribune of the people, P. Sulpicius, had formed a powerful party. A remarkable man, though without scruples, he had the qualities and the defects of most of those who played a part in these epochs of dissension.[699] Escorted by six hundred Roman knights, whom he called the Anti-Senate,[700] he sold publicly the right of citizen to freedmen and foreigners, and received the price on tables raised in the middle of the public place.[701] He caused a plebiscitum to be passed to put an end to the subterfuge of the law Julia, which, by an illusory re-partition, cheated the Italiotes of the very rights which it seemed to accord to them; and instead of maintaining them in the eight new tribes, he caused them to be inscribed in the thirty-five old ones. The measure was not adopted without warm discussions; but Sulpicius was supported by all the new citizens, together with the democratic faction and Marius. A riot carried the vote and Sylla, threatened with death, was obliged to take refuge in the house of Marius, and hastily quit Rome. Master of the town, Sulpicius showed the influences he obeyed, by causing to be given to the aged Marius the province of Asia, and the command of the expedition against Mithridates. But Sylla had his army in Campania, and was determined to support his own claims. While the faction of Marius, in the town, indulged in acts of violence against the contrary faction, the soldiers of Sylla were irritated at seeing the legions of his rival likely to snatch from them the rich booty which Asia promised; and they swore to avenge their chief. Sylla placed himself at their head, and marched from Nola upon Rome, with his colleague, Pompeius Rufus, who had just joined him. The greater part of the superior officers dared not follow him, so great was still the prestige of the eternal city.[702] In vain deputations are addressed to him; he marches onwards, and penetrates into the streets of Rome. Assailed by the inhabitants, and attacked by Marius and Sulpicius, he triumphs only by dint of boldness and energy. It was the first time that a general, entering Rome as a conqueror, had seized the power by force of arms.