Chapter M: Livius Drusus, 340 (11)

Before Metellus reached the Isthmus, Mummius hastened to take the command of the army. Mummius was not of so mild a disposition as Metellus; he sought laurels for himself, and booty for the Romans. He tried to come up before Metellus could have concluded a peace: for the latter, although a plebeian like Mummius, was of a family which had long been in possession of the curule dignities, and being a _nobilis_, he could easily have carried the peace in the senate; Mummius was a _novus homo_, and not one of the aristocracy. Diæus had enlisted all the slaves who were able to bear arms, and yet he had only got together an army of fourteen thousand men, though there had been more than half a century of peace: this, more than anything, shows in what a wretched moral and political condition the country was; for wealthy the Achæans undoubtedly were. These had their heads turned by an advantage which they won in a cavalry fight, and they provoked the Romans to a battle, which was soon so utterly lost as to leave no hope of safety. They ought to have defended the impregnable Acrocorinthus; but the whole population of Corinth fled into the Arcadian mountains, and the town and the citadel were abandoned, not a soul having remained behind. On the third day after the battle, Mummius, who would not believe it possible that they had given up every thought of defence, ordered the gates to be broken open, and convinced himself that the city was deserted. The pillage of Corinth; Mummius’ barbarian honesty; and the burning of the most wealthy commercial town then in Europe, are well known facts. The booty was immense: all the Corinthians were sold for slaves, and the most noble works of art were carried away. In the same manner, Thebes and Chalcis were destroyed: with regard to other towns, we have no distinct information. Thebes, in Pausanias’ times, was only a small village within the Cadmea. The inhabitants of the whole of the Peloponnesus would have been sold into slavery, had not Polybius, through his friend Scipio, managed to get some merciful decrees from the senate.

Greece was changed into a Roman province, a few places only, like Sparta and Athens, remaining _liberæ civitates_: the real province was Achaia, the prætor of which had the other Greek districts under his rule as dependencies. Phocis and Bœotia were to pay tribute, a thing which they had never done even in the days of the Macedonian sway. Moreover, they got a uniform constitution, which Polybius had a hand in bringing about, and which is said to have contributed greatly towards the reviving of the country. But the national strength was paralysed by the law, that no one should possess landed property in a state to which he did not politically belong; all the συστήματα of the peoples were done away with; all _concilia_, and most likely, all _connubia_ and _commercia_ were forbidden: the territory of Corinth was added to the _ager publicus_. Polybius now returned to the land of his fathers, to obtain for his unhappy countrymen as fair conditions as he could. But his lot was that of a physician who performs on his wife or his child the most painful and dangerous cure: it is his love which animates him in his task; and yet it is that very love which, in such an operation, rends his heart with thrice the agony that it does that of others. This courage is more than heroism: to bear up under such a trial, where once he had lived happily; not to despair amid the general dismay, and even then only to get the tyrants to keep within bounds; and after all to attain at last to a certain end, truly bespeaks a great soul. The author of a petulant essay on Polybius which was published a few years ago, has only exposed himself by his incapability of understanding the sterling greatness of the man. It was through Polybius that the statue of Philopœmen was restored; and all the concessions which were at all favourable to Greece, were owing to nothing but his endeavours alone.

WARS IN SPAIN. VIRIATHUS. DESTRUCTION OF NUMANTIA.

In Spain, fortune was so far from smiling on the Romans, that it seemed as if fate wished to remind them of a Nemesis, as the slave did the warrior in his triumph. The Spanish wars may be divided into periods. The first goes down to the end of the second Punic war; the second, to the treaty of Gracchus by which the Romans ruled over Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia, as well as western Aragon and eastern Castile, and also acquired a kind of supremacy over the Celtiberians. The violation of this peace by the fortification of Segida, called forth a fresh struggle which we may name as the first Celtiberian war: M. Claudius Marcellus had then the command; it lasted three or four years.

Out of the war against the Lusitanians, in which Galba by his faithlessness had branded the Roman name with dishonour, that of Viriathus sprang. This man, who was a Lusitanian, had been a common shepherd and also a robber, as is very often the case with herdsmen in southern Europe, even as it is to this very day in Italy; and having been among those Lusitanians towards whom Galba had behaved with such infamous treachery, he had vowed implacable revenge against the Romans. He placed himself at the head of a small band; for in Spain it is characteristic of the nation to have a continual guerilla warfare, for which the Spaniards have a turn, owing to the nature of their country, and also from their disposition, law and order not having the least power over them, while personal qualities are everything. Viriathus enjoyed unbounded confidence as the hero of the nation. He seldom engaged with the Romans in a pitched battle; but to lie in ambush, to cut off supplies, to go round the enemy, to scatter quickly after a defeat, were the ways in which he would wage war. By his great skill he wore out the Roman generals, more than one of whom lost his life against him. The history of his achievements, imperfectly as we know it, is exceedingly interesting. For eight years[61] (605-612), he maintained himself against the Romans; they would march against him with a superior force, and yet he always got out of their reach, and then would suddenly show himself in their rear, or hem them in on impassable roads, and rob them of their baggage, and cut them to pieces in detail. By these means, he gained the whole of the country for himself; only the inhabitants of the coast of Andalusia, who had ever been the least warlike, remained subject to the Romans, being quickly latinized. Among these, therefore, Viriathus made his appearance as a foe; but the ground which was particularly friendly to him, lay from Portugal, all through Estremadura, as far as Aragon: here he moved remarkably quickly with his light horse and foot. Seldom did he meet with loss against the Romans. The Celtiberians also he managed to win over to his side: they did not indeed carry on their warfare according to his plan, but still, as is always the case with Spaniards, they sought the same end in a way of their own. The Romans saw themselves reduced to the necessity of concluding with him a formal peace, in which they acknowledge him as _socius_ and _amicus populi Romani æquissimo jure_, and by which he and his people became completely sovereign,--a peace the like of which the Romans had hardly ever made before. On his side it was honestly meant; whereas the Romans, on the contrary, did not deem themselves bound to keep a treaty which was so utterly at variance with their maxims. The Roman proconsul Cæpio wished for a triumph and booty, like all the Roman generals of that time; and so he rekindled the war, having with an utter want of faith been authorized by the senate to do harm to Viriathus, wherever it was in his power. Thus the war broke out anew, though negotiations were seemingly going on. Traitors were found who offered to murder Viriathus: they accomplished the deed in his tent, and, before any body was aware of his death, escaped to the Romans, from whom they received the price of blood. All that the Lusitanians could now do, was to bury him with an enthusiasm which has become famous in history (612): the friends of this great man fought with each other over his grave, until they fell. Treachery like this is often met with among the Iberians:--the Celtiberians, however, are to be excepted. The character of the Spaniards has in many points remained entirely the same; and though we must lay not a few such cases to the charge of that fearful party spirit of theirs, which still displays itself as strong as ever, of them most particularly the saying holds good, that friendship dies, but that hatred is immortal. Another characteristic has continued to distinguish them even to this day: they are hardly fit for any thing in the lines, and they have shown themselves great in battles only at times, and under great generals,--under Hamilcar and Hannibal, in ancient history; in the middle ages and afterwards, under Gonsalvo de Cordova who formed the Spanish infantry, down to the duke of Alva, under whom it still was excellent: from thence it began to decline.[62]

The Lusitanians now went on with the war under several other generals; but none of the successors of Viriathus was as great as he was,--there was not the same confidence in their personal qualities. D. Junius Brutus Callaicus concluded a peace with them, and they accepted the offer of settling as a sort of Roman colony in Valencia, where they founded the town of that name: the climate there is most softening, so that they soon lost their warlike character. It is remarkable with what ease the same Brutus made conquests in the north-west of Spain, and the north-east of Portugal; and also in modern times, these peoples have shown little perseverance, except against the Moorish rule. He is the first Roman who advanced beyond the Minho into the country of the Callæcians; but his campaign did not leave any lasting consequences, although it made a deep impression in those parts.

These conquests, which shed such lustre upon Rome, took place at the very time when the wars with the Celtiberians were carrying on so unsuccessfully. This people was divided in several small tribes, of which the Belli, Titthi, and Arevaci were the chief. Of their constitution we have no satisfactory idea. Southern Spain seems to have been ruled by kings; the Celtiberians were republican, and perhaps had highly popular institutions: besides which, as in Greece, the most important towns had a free and independent existence of their own, Termantia or Termestia, and Numantia being in the first rank among those of the Arevaci. The Celtiberian wars began in 609, and ended in 619 or 620: when we bear in mind what the races were which held out in them, their great length is well nigh inconceivable. At first, most of the Celtiberians were under arms; little by little, one place after the other fell off. Numantia lay in a very strong position, amid ravines and torrents, near the spot where Soria now stands: whether it is true that it had no walls, or whether this be only said in imitation of the accounts of Sparta, can no longer be made out. They were able to send but eight thousand men into the field, a number which was greatly lessened in the course of the war: at the time of the blockade, there were not more than four thousand left. Twice the Romans make a peace with them, and twice did they break it again: at last, Scipio was once more charged with the commission of torturing to death a noble people.

The year 611 was that of the consulship of Q. Pompeius, who, to distinguish him from another of the same name, is called _Auli filius_: he was appointed to the command in Spain. He is the ancestor of Cn. Pompeius Magnus, who stood at the head of the aristocracy of his day, and he himself figured as one of the leaders of that class, although the son of a very humble musician. As he leagued himself with the _nobiles_, he was welcome to them, and was received into their ranks; so that even before he was consul, he had already a powerful party. How he raised himself, is uncertain: according to some, he did it by dishonourable means; yet he was a man of talent. His very opposite was Tib. Sempronius Gracchus, who was of a plebeian house, but of most ancient nobility: the latter was at the head of the popular party. Q. Pompeius led his army against the Numantines, and was unsuccessful: they took his camp, and brought him to very great straits. Being in this plight, he offered peace: the Numantines, but only for form’s sake, were to give hostages, whom he was to return to them; they were also to pay a certain sum, and to promise to serve in the field. This they also did. But this most reasonable peace did not please at Rome, nor was Pompeius fool enough to believe that it would; his successor, by order of the senate, disregarded it altogether. The Numantines sent ambassadors to Rome, and appealed to the treaties, in which they were borne out by the Roman staff-officers: but the senate annulled the peace, Pompeius himself doing his utmost to bring this about, that he might not be called to account for the way in which he had conducted the war. Hostilities were renewed on a greater scale; and a few years afterwards the command fell to C. Hostilius Mancinus, a man who had the ill luck to gain a great celebrity and a sort of moral notoriety which indeed is of a very doubtful nature. The frightened Spaniards had abandoned Numantia to its fate, and Mancinus had reached as far as the _suburbana_, the gardens and cemeteries of the town: there he was driven back in an engagement; the Numantines pursued, and the Romans, retreating in blind haste, got into a place from which there was no way out, so that they had to make up their minds either to sue for peace or perish. At first, the Numantines would have nothing to say to the conditions offered by Mancinus, favourable as they were; it was only Tib. Gracchus, then serving as a quæstor, who could save the army. The Numantines had not forgotten the equitable peace which his father had made, but the remembrance of his upright conduct towards all the Celtiberians was so dear to them, that they accepted the son as a mediator, being convinced that he meant honestly. So great was the respect in which he was held by them, that he betook himself in the midst of them to Numantia, to get back his account-books, which, as well as the camp, had fallen into their hands; and these were also returned to him uninjured. The army, which, without reckoning the allies, numbered twenty thousand men, was allowed to march off without disgrace, and independence and friendship were stipulated for Numantia. Mancinus afterwards played at Rome the same part which Sp. Postumius had done after the Caudine peace: he recommended the senate to yield up himself and the officers, to atone for the unauthorized peace. The people agreed to this, so far as he was concerned; but it threw out the clause as to the officers, out of regard for Tib. Gracchus. Mancinus was delivered up: the noble-minded Numantines would not have him, that the curse of a broken oath might fall upon those who were guilty.

The war lasted yet a few years longer without any result; so that the Romans were driven, in spite of the laws, (as Appian says,) to elect Scipio Africanus consul. Ten years had already passed away since his first consulship, and the _leges annales_ could not have prescribed an age which he had not reached already; perhaps there was a law that no one should be consul twice. Scipio went forth with many recruits, allies, and volunteers from all parts, with Numidians and men from the far East, against that small people, to root it out from the earth. All the proffers of the Numantines were rejected. Scipio found a great degeneracy in the Roman troops; and it cost him a vast deal of trouble to restore discipline, as the loose morals and the luxury which were rife among individuals, were likewise spreading in the army: he purified it, and then marched with sixty thousand men against Numantia. This city was surrounded on three sides by the Douro, and it lay therefore on an isthmus, which was strongly fortified. Around the town, the circumference not being more than three Roman miles, (one German,) Scipio now drew a line of pallisades with a rampart, and behind it a second one,--just as Platææ was shut in by the Spartans,--and here he distributed his army. On these lines, he placed engines for hurling missiles, with which the Romans tried to keep off their desperate foes, as they wanted to destroy them by hunger. For a while, some of them escaped on the Douro, by which the besieged also got supplies; but he cut them off even from this, by sinking above the town huge beams armed with saws into the river, so that the rafts with flour could no longer float down that way. How long this dreadful blockade lasted, is more than we can tell. Once, however, some Numantines climbed over the walls, and came to a distant town where some hundred youths enthusiastically took up arms; and thus a general rising against the Romans was on the eve of bursting forth. When Scipio found this out, he forthwith marched thither, and had the hands of those who were guilty cut off. Such an atrocity stamps the man. The Numantines, when they had fed, first on the dead bodies of the enemy, and then on those of their own countrymen, and gone through all those horrors which Missolunghi had to suffer, wished at length to capitulate. Scipio demanded that their arms should be given up, and that they should surrender at discretion: they asked for three days, which they spent in freeing their wives and children by death from slavery; so that a few of them only came out, who were like skeletons. Of these, Scipio picked out fifty for his triumph, who seem to have been beheaded afterwards: the rest were sold; but they are said to have broken out with such rage, some of them killing themselves, and others murdering their masters, that after a short time not a Numantine was left alive. The place where the town had stood, from henceforth became a waste.

THE SERVILE WAR IN SICILY. ACQUISITION OF THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS. ARISTONICUS. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS.

The punishment for so foul a deed was not slow in overtaking the Romans. Even before the fall of Numantia, a servile war broke out in Sicily; though indeed this does not so much belong to Roman, as to Grecian history. It was brought on by the depopulation of the island owing to the many wars in which famine and pestilence were raging, as in Germany during the Thirty Years’ war. Twenty-four years had not yet passed since the first Punic war, when the second completed the misery of Sicily: it was in a state of desolation, like that of Ireland after the peace of Limerick, in the times of William III. Much of the land was made _ager publicus_, and thus fell into the hands of speculators; in this way there arose large estates in Sicily, which were chiefly used for grazing. Thus (according to the _Codex Theodosianus_) nearly the whole of Lucania, Bruttium, and Calabria, in the days of Honorius and Arcadius, was pasture land, of which the owners, who were partly Romans, partly Siciliotes, kept large studs of horses and herds of cattle. Herdsmen in Italy are a degenerate race of men: they are, almost all of them, as far as I know, (in the States of the Church and in the kingdom of Naples,--in Tuscany there are few of them,) the associates of robbers: the herdsman is as bad and as robber-like, as the peasant, on the other hand, is respectable. On these large estates, there was an immense number of slaves,--often as many as thousands together on one alone. The traffic in slaves, owing to the wars and the continual piracy of those times, had reached a fearful height; so that at the slave-market in Delos, ten thousand are said to have been sold in one day, and they were to be had for a mere trifle. They were treated with the greatest cruelty, and had to work in the fields in chains; of course, there were among them many respectable men from all parts, Carthaginians, Achæans, Macedonians, Celtiberians, and others, who deserved quite a different fate, and could not but thirst for the blood of their tyrants. Thus the Servile war broke out in Sicily, and it is not to be wondered at that there was then another of these risings in Greece: the cause was everywhere the same. In Greece, tillage had formerly been mostly the business of the freedmen, and it was only of late that it had fallen into the hands of the slaves. The war had now reached its fourth year; several Roman armies had been utterly routed, and it required a consular one under P. Rupilius to reduce the island (620): for the slaves were masters of the strongest places, Enna and Tauromenium, and they had for their leader Eunus (Εὔνους), a Syrian, who, like Jean François at St. Domingo in the year 1791, put on the diadem in due form. The struggle was carried on with the same relentless cruelty which slaves have met with everywhere, as in the West Indies and in North America. Sicily was laid utterly waste by it, and thirty years afterwards, the same circumstances led to the same results. The details are awfully interesting; yet, as we have said before, they are not in their place here.

In the meanwhile, Attalus Philometor of Pergamus, the son of Eumenes, died, and with him the race of Philetærus became extinct. The first kings of Pergamus whom the Romans had raised to greatness, were on the whole clever men and mild princes; and under their rule the country flourished: this state of things was a desirable one, although, if looked upon in a moral point of view, much might be said against it. But the last Attalus was a tyrant and a wicked wretch, such as is only to be met with in the East, where a certain perversity reaches its highest pitch, and takes delight in what is most unnatural and revolting: in a word, he was an incarnate fiend, like Sultan Ibrahim. The only art in which he employed himself, was that of cultivating deadly plants and of preparing poison: it was sport to him, to get those who were his nearest kindred out of the world. He bequeathed the whole of his kingdom to the Romans; and indeed he could not well have done otherwise, as every one of his dispositions had still to be approved of by the Romans, who would hardly have acknowledged the rule of any one else. They took it as a property which of right belonged to them, very much as a master might take the goods of one of his freedmen who had not been fully emancipated, and had died without leaving a will. Thus Rome had a new province, which, however, was to be won by the sword, as Aristonicus, a bastard son of Eumenes, laid claim to the throne. According to the notions of the East, this defect of birth was not a bar to the succession, so that, but for the will of Attalus, he would have been the lawful heir. He had very little trouble in getting hold of the diadem soon after the death of his brother; for the people had a horror of the Roman rule, and they had learned to know the tyranny and rapacity of the Roman prætors and proconsuls who made their appearance every year: many towns declared for him; others, like Ephesus, which had lately gained their freedom by the help of Rome, took up arms against him. How he came to believe that he could hold out, is quite inconceivable. He had no aid whatever: in his neighbourhood were Pontus, Cappadocia, and Bithynia, all three of which were only small kingdoms, and the two last quite unwarlike; the Syrian kings were likewise tottering to their fall, and their whole attention was turned to the East, where the Parthian empire was spreading farther and farther, and Babylon was already conquered. There was not a soul in the world who could help Andronicus; and yet he would engage in the mad undertaking of raising war against the Romans. But the struggle lasted longer than one would have thought: not only did the womanish inhabitants of Lydia and Ionia, countries which are an earthly paradise, carry it on with great resolution, but the pretender had likewise many Thracians in his pay. The Romans, on the other hand, were badly commanded: their leaders thought of nothing but enriching themselves; they were very glad when wealthy towns rebelled, as they could then plunder them. Rome had not only a consular army, but also troops from Bithynia and Pontus; a Roman general, P. Licinius Crassus, was even defeated and taken prisoner. This man has some name in history; and yet, his rapacity was so abominable, that the Asiatics ill-treated his dead body because of it: so cheap was it at that time to be deemed a man of honour. He died, however, a noble death, himself asking to be killed. At length, M. Perperna overcame Aristonicus, and took him prisoner; but M. Aquillius snatched the triumph from him. This is of later date than the tribuneship of Tib. Gracchus (619); that is to say, in 622.[63]

The province of Asia was now regularly formed, but within narrower limits. Rome was generous to the native princes: Nicomedes had his territory enlarged, and Great Phrygia was given to Mithridates of Pontus. But in the latter case, this was not done before the tribuneship of C. Gracchus, who, however, seems to have spoken against it, Mithridates having perhaps gotten this quite unnecessary cession of land by bribing the Roman commissioners.

The changes in the constitution of Rome in those days, are most of them unimportant, as the distinction between patrician and plebeian was now at an end. In 622, for the first time, two plebeians are censors; in 580 already, both the consuls were from the same order. Here we find this entry in the Capitoline Fasti, _ambo primi de plebe_: Livy makes no remark whatever about it, circumstances having become so ripe for the change, that no one even thought any longer of putting any obstacle in the way of a plebeian. Dionysius says, that in his time not more than fifty patrician families were still left, which is to be understood of actual families, and not of _gentes_, of which there may have been only about fifteen. As _gentes_, they are no longer held in any account: these had lost their importance together with the curies. In a _gens_, moreover, all the families were not ennobled: of the Claudia, there was only one; of the Valeria, the Messalæ; the Cornelia consisted of Scipiones, Lentuli, Cethegi, Sullæ (these last being added but of late); in the Æmilia, were the Lepidi, and perhaps also the Scauri. But of the plebeian _familiæ nobiles_ there was a very great number, and they were still ever increasing. Of the senate, by far the larger part belonged to them; ever since the end of the war with Hannibal, most of the prætors were likewise plebeians, scarcely one out of six being a patrician: nor does it seem as if any stress had been laid on it; it was merely the effect of time. In the troubles of the Gracchi, we find the families quite indiscriminately in both parties. Appius Claudius, sprung from a family which in former times had headed the patricians against the plebeians, was the father-in-law of Tib. Gracchus, and sided with him, and carried through all the laws put forth by him; whilst, on the other hand, those, who were the most enraged against the Gracchi, and the most interested in withstanding them, were, with the exception of Scipio Nasica, all of them plebeians. The feuds had long been settled, and they had passed to the _novi homines_ and _nobiles_, the latter of whom were in the last century very incorrectly called patricians, especially by foreigners (the French). This change has been known ever since the revival of learning. The censorship remained forty years longer than the consulship in the possession of the patricians; for as the elections for this were only every five years, there were still men enough to fill it.

About the same time, the holding the ædileship by turns must have been done away with; and certainly this office must of late have been a heavy burthen upon the patricians, as it entailed considerable expense.

The tribuneship of the people had quite changed character; the tribune holding arbitrary sway just like any tyrant. A tribune (C. Atinius Labeo), a few years after Gracchus, wanted to have the censor Metellus thrown from the Tarpeian rock for having excluded him from the senate; and it was only with difficulty that his family succeeded in getting another tribune to intercede for him. Such instances are not unseldom met with, as the tribunes themselves no longer knew what their office meant. It was very likely the same Atinius, who brought in the law that the tribunes were _eo ipso_ senators, and could only be excluded by the same rules as other senators.

TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS.

There was a time when the name of the Gracchi was cried down, when they were looked upon as the leaders of a tyrannical onslaught upon the property of others; and there was another time, when they had a renown which would have certainly been most hateful to themselves. Both of these opinions are now entirely exploded; and, although the complicated system of the _ager publicus_ is not yet understood everywhere, still I do not believe that any one in Germany--unless indeed it be in some corner of Austria--holds the old views with regard to the Gracchi. The French still cling a little to their false prejudices; but in America my account of the matter is already the one generally received, as a reviewer of my history in a North American periodical has especially pointed out.

Tiberius Gracchus was the son of Tiberius Gracchus the elder who had made the peace with the Celtiberians, and of Cornelia, the daughter of the first Scipio Africanus, who was given in marriage to her husband, not, as Livy says, by her father, but, after his death, by her family: both of these were, even in the midst of the thorough corruption of that age, acknowledged to have been people of the highest virtue, in whom the olden times were living again. Of their many children, few only remained alive--in fact, out of twelve not more than three, namely the two brothers, Tiberius and Caius, and the daughter, who was married to the younger Scipio (_Paulli fil._). The sons were brought up under the eye of the mother by distinguished Greeks, and by a Campanian, C. Blossius, who was a perfect Grecian, writing Greek, and even composing poetry in Greek: he was, as we now know, the author of Rhintonian comedies,[64] a proof of the flourishing state of Greek literature at that time in Italy, of which Cicero also informs us. He was the teacher and friend of Tiberius of whom he was somewhat the elder, and a follower of Stoic philosophy, a system which in those days was congenial to the aspirations of all generous minds, and was particularly welcome to a nation like the Romans. When Tiberius, owing to the great favour which he had with the people, had been raised step by step to honours, and he had gained glory already at Carthage, where with C. Fannius he was the first to mount the wall, he became a quæstor and made the peace with Numantia. Its not being ratified greatly exasperated him. Unfortunately, we have for this period only desultory works from second or third hand, such as those of Appian and Plutarch: the latter of these wrote the lives of the Gracchi with much feeling, but without any knowledge of the true state of affairs, the moral part in him, being, however, really beautiful; moreover, like Appian, he is led astray by the gossip of any writer. Thus Plutarch allows himself to be beguiled into the belief that the vanity of Tiberius had been hurt by the repudiation of the peace; but of a soul such as that of Tiberius, we may safely say that its motives for anger were different. He had concluded the peace as an honest man, and to see it trampled upon in defiance of all good faith, embittered him against the men who then were in power. How a character like Gracchus in such times as those must have felt bound to take in hand these dangerous πολιτεύματα, may best be shown from the Servile war in Sicily, where the real canker which lay at the root of the whole state of society is laid bare.

The _ager publicus_[65] was the land taken in war, of which the ownership belonged to the commonwealth, but the possession was given up to Roman citizens, or to foreigners, on the payment of certain outgoings, such as the tithes on the produce of the arable land and of the live stock; a _scriptura_ on the pasture land according to the number of the cattle; and other things of the kind. By the Licinian law[66] it had been enacted that no one should possess more than five hundred _jugera_ of the _ager publicus_, but that he might transfer the occupancy as if it were his property: yet the possessor was, after all, only a precarious occupant, _a tenant at will_,[67] whom the real owner might turn out, whenever he liked. If he possessed more than was allowed by law, he was liable to punishment, and what was above the quantity was to be confiscated: the state, however, might, of course, at any time take back the whole.

The way in which the Licinian law was kept, was just what might be expected under such circumstances: one or two incidents give us light enough to see this. P. Postumius Megillus, for instance, was fined for having employed the soldiers of the legion in converting a large forest into arable land; Licinius Stolo himself was accused of having tried by emancipating his son to evade his own law, as under his name he held more than its clauses would have allowed him. The amount of land was everywhere exceeded; and the very fact of these estates being no freeholds, as they had the authority of the prætor for their only title, so that, where they were situated, there existed no jurisdiction, gave to those who wished to enrich themselves a great means of driving out the small farmers, which was now done more and more. Whilst in Germany, as well as in France and in England, the small estates are worth much more taken singly, than when combined in large masses; in the South, particularly in Italy, the larger properties are more profitable, and thus the small estates go on decaying, and all the land keeps falling into the hands of a few owners. Until the war with Pyrrhus, an immense deal of land had been won, and so likewise after the war with Hannibal: part of it was taken up for colonies, and another share was left to the Latin allies, whose claims were thereby satisfied, though even in this case also, the right of ownership seems to have been reserved to the Roman commonwealth. Only in Samnium and Apulia, and I believe also in Lucania,[68] had an extraordinary distribution been made to the veterans of Scipio’s army; but besides this, no general assignment had been made to the plebeians _viritim_, as in olden times.

It is in the nature of things, that the husbandman is able to pay a far higher rent for a piece of land, than we could, who do not till it ourselves, provided, however, that no capital is needed for it. We have to pay the labourer, whereas the other gets the double gain of the labourer and of the farmer. I know the farming in Italy well, having taken much trouble to become acquainted with all kinds of land-owners and farmers there, particularly with the larger ones, who understand husbandry very well. The latter manage their farms in an excellent style, and yet they are a curse to the country: on the other hand, I quite love the poor peasants. Among others, I knew of a small farmer at Tivoli, who did his very utmost to get himself out of the clutches of the usurers, and to free his bit of ground; on which occasion I fully learnt how great the value of labour is in Italy, and what an advantage it is there for a man to farm his own land. But as the money is in very few hands, only indeed in those of the men of rank, the small proprietor, if any ill luck befalls him, is unable to keep his freehold, and therefore this class of men dwindles faster and faster every year. The poor man, for instance, lived near the rich one; the former in hard times had taxes to pay, but, having had losses owing to murrain among the cattle and other visitations, he could not raise the money: thus he borrowed from his wealthy neighbour, and as he had no other pledge to offer but his farm, he had to pay a heavy rate of interest. Nor was this the whole of his troubles: his son, perhaps, served in a legion, in which case, if the father was taken ill and had to keep labourers, he could not pay the interest; and now, if his neighbour called upon him for the principal and interest, he must needs give up to him the possession of his land at a low price. He who is once in the fangs of the large proprietors, will never get out again. And so Tib. Gracchus found the many small allotments on which the soldiers had settled, either burthened with debt after the long series of disasters during the late campaigns (in which the war-taxes moreover were most heavily felt), or already fallen into the hands of the rich. Such a change of property goes on increasing like an avalanche. In Tivoli, the number of land-owners is now perhaps not a fifth of what it was forty years back, and not one-fiftieth of what it was four hundred years ago; as I have learned from an old survey of the fifteenth century. I made inquiries to know what became of many of the olive-yards there, which (in former times) belonged to certain families in the town, and one by one have been got hold of by the rich. Sonnino[69] has four thousand inhabitants, and some five or six men own the whole of the land: all the rest are beggars and robbers.

By the Licinian law it was enacted, that on every five hundred _jugera_, a certain number of free labourers (_cottagers_)[70] should be employed, that slaves might not work on them. But the rule had not been kept: thousands of slaves came in, as was also the case in Portugal from the sixteenth century to Pombal’s days, when negro slaves were so very cheap within the kingdom, owing to which indeed so many mulattoes are found there. The condition of Italy was now this: on the one hand, the number of Roman citizens had increased, partly--which was desirable--from the allies, but chiefly in a worse way from the freedmen, the common run of whom bore the brand of slavery; and on the other hand, the numbers of the hereditary land-holders and land-owners were dwindling fast. It is very likely that the first thought of amending this state of things, came into the mind of Tib. Gracchus on his return from Spain through Etruria, where he saw large tracts of country with nothing but slaves, who worked at the ground in chains, while the free-born men were begging and starving. The population of Rome had become more and more a true rabble, and in the country the poor increased at a fearful rate, an evil which alas! is now a growing one in Europe. The Romans did not blind themselves to the condition in which they were; they mourned over it, and acknowledged that, if the Licinian law had been observed and the poor had been allowed to occupy the land, there never would have been that wretchedness. Every body wished, like the king[71] in Goethe’s play, that “all were otherwise;” but no one had the courage to do anything. There is no doubt that just after the war with Hannibal, it would not have been hard to stop the mischief, and that was one of those momentous periods which sometimes follow after great convulsions, and must be taken advantage of, or else they are irrecoverably lost: one ought then to have created a magistracy to watch over the way in which the Licinian law was kept, and to distribute part of the conquered _ager publicus_, and to see that the occupation was fairly managed. Since that time, seventy years had passed, and every one must have looked blank at the very mention of a reform. C. Lælius is said to have thought of it, but to have given up the plan as impracticable; so that he got the surname of _Sapiens_. This was either a nickname, or else _sapiens_ here means prudent; for prudent it is not to stir up a wasp’s nest. There were now but few great families indeed which did not possess far more than the lawful quantity, and which did not keep more than a hundred head of cattle, and five hundred sheep and goats, upon their estates: all these were sure to be offended, if the Licinian law were carried out in all its rigour. As our governments have now the right, when a lease is out, of warning off a tenant on the crown-land, although his forefathers held it perhaps for many years before him; thus also the Roman government had never given up its right to the _ager publicus_, although it had not exercised it for a long time. The law was quite clear; yet as it had not been enforced for ages, it might be said on the other side, that it was only common equity not to root out an old abuse at once, and thus wound many interests. The rich might plead, that “when C. Flaminius made his agrarian law to apply to the new conquests only, he thereby tacitly acknowledged what had hitherto been held by right of possession; moreover when the loan was contracted in the war with Hannibal the _ager publicus_ was pledged to us, and has thus become our property.” A hundred years had already passed since then; some of the estates had also been laid waste during the war; in the full trust that every one would remain in possession of what belonged to him, they had planted them anew,[72] they had raised buildings on them, they had drained fens: and now they were to sacrifice all this, and to be turned out of what was their own.

Of purer intentions than Tiberius Gracchus, no man could ever have been: even they have owned it, who a long time after, blinded by party spirit, have railed against this undertaking; nay, Cicero himself, whose generous heart always gets the better of him whenever he views a subject with unprejudiced eyes, calls him _sanctissimus homo_. The statesmen of old were not such as our fancy would generally lead us to paint them; but they had the self-same ends in view as those of our times: Tiberius Gracchus saw clearly, that, if things were to go on in this way, utter ruin must follow, and Rome would fall into despotism. Had he now wished to enforce the Licinian rogations to the very letter, this would indeed have been just in law, but in reality most unfair. He therefore laid down the rule, that every one should be allowed to have, and that as freehold property, five hundred _jugera_ for himself, and two hundred and fifty for every son who was still _in patria potestate_, though as it seems, not for more than two of these (for so must the passage in the Epitome of Livy be interpreted according to the correct reading);[73] and moreover, that buildings erected on that part of the land which was to be given up, should be valued, and an indemnity paid to those who had owned them. Thus, instead of infringing upon vested rights, he, on the contrary, converted a mere tenure at will into a regular freehold which no man could touch. One case, however, Gracchus had not considered: many had bought the _ager publicus_ of the former occupant for ready money, or had taken it at its value as their share of an inheritance; these could not be expected to lose their capital. When this had happened, the overplus ought to have been bought in at a fair price by the state, and then there would have been nothing to say against the law: the great wealth of the state would have certainly sufficed for this, as there could not, after all, have been so many cases of people having more than a thousand _jugera_. Five hundred _jugera_ are a very good-sized estate, as much as seventy _rubbii_ are now, which is still looked upon as not a bad property in Italy. I should not in that country wish for a larger one: one may get from it in a fruitful district, if well managed, a net income of five thousand crowns, merely by letting it out in farms. That the money which was hoarded up in the treasury, could not have been better spent than for such a purpose, is as clear as day. In this way it might have become possible to remove from the city the _sentina rei publicæ_, the disgrace of the Roman people, which weighed like a heavy burthen upon it, and which always sold its votes in the _comitia_. To this class allotments ought to have been given, but with the condition that they should never be alienated, as otherwise they would have fallen again into the hands of the rich. It is ever to be lamented that Gracchus did not do this: however great the cost might have been, the state ought to have borne it. In all likelihood he would have escaped the fate which befell him, though indeed the hatred against him would always have been bitter.

Gracchus is said also to have thought of widening the extent of the Roman franchise; yet this is only dimly hinted at, as, generally speaking, the accounts which we have of the whole of his undertaking are so very scanty. He saw clearly that the middle class of the Roman people had almost entirely disappeared, and that its restoration was one of the principal wants of the time; and therefore he wished to open the citizenship to the allies. This regeneration is quite in the spirit of the old laws: its aim was to infuse fresh blood into the higher orders, and to enlarge their numbers; just as in former times the Licinian laws gave new life to the republic which was dwindling to an oligarchy, and began the second brilliant epoch of Rome. There were in Italy thirty Latin colonies, and in these there were many citizens of great respectability, who might vote among the tribes in the Roman assemblies, and who felt second only to the Romans, if not quite their equals. These Latins actually now held the same rank which the plebeians did two hundred and fifty years before: there was even much more refinement in those towns than in Rome. Tiberius Gracchus wished therefore to admit these to the full rights of Roman citizens, and he likewise undoubtedly meant to grant the _suffragium_ to any _municipia sine suffragio_ which at that time may have still existed.

On the side of Gracchus were many of the most eminent men, who certainly were owners of large estates as well as the Scipios, but who gave up their private advantage for the common good. There was even his father-in-law Appius Claudius, who in other respects was just as proud as any of his forefathers, but who in this behaved as Appius Claudius Cæcus had done in his most glorious moments; moreover, there was the great P. Mucius Scævola who was then consul; there was also the father-in-law of his brother, P. Licinius Crassus, and others. The rage which broke out against Tib. Gracchus in the senate, is difficult to describe; it went beyond all the bounds of decency. Men of rank, when they are the champions of oligarchy, as soon as ever their interests are touched, not only display the same greedy covetousness as the worst bred, but likewise a fury which one could hardly have believed. Hitherto no one had lost sight of what was due to Gracchus and his family: he enjoyed the same respect among the Romans, as among barbarians; every one acknowledged his virtue, and even those who looked upon all virtue as folly, were forced to own that he was afflicted with that folly. But now the heroes of triumphs, and the first men of the state, railed against him as a mutinous fellow who was actuated by the most detestable motives. P. Cornelius Nasica, he who was grandson of him who in the war with Hannibal had been declared to be the most virtuous of men; and son of Scipio Nasica, who was likewise said to have been an example to the whole nation, and who had tried hard to bring back the good ways of the olden time; a man who himself also was deemed to be the very soul of honour, and perhaps deserved to be so in many respects--became hand and glove with the infamous Q. Pompeius. From this it does not follow that he was a knave; it may be that, hardened in his oligarchical notions, he really saw Ti. Gracchus as he fancied him to be. The senate did not possess the same means which the patricians once had against the plebeians: it had not the old negative of the curies, the Hortensian law having conceded to the tribes the most unbounded power of legislation, so that the senate could not step in with a senatus consultum. By the strangest anomaly, the tribunes could now only check each other, since there was no veto where it would have been most needed: the only means of defeating a law was the intercession of a tribune.

There are hereditary family principles in Rome, as there were also family characters; and these are more than mere political maxims.[74] Throughout the family of the Gracchi, as has been already mentioned, we find a certain mildness, and an unaffected kindliness towards those who were in need of help. This is shown in the three generations which are remarkable in history, by Tib. Gracchus in the Second Punic War, by Tib. Gracchus the censor, and by the two unfortunate brothers Tiberius and Caius; it is a disposition moreover which in Rome was not often met with, and which had now disappeared entirely. The same thing is to be seen in every free state, and it is one of those spells by which a commonwealth is upheld. Those who are born in certain families, are, as it were, predestined to such and such political principles: thus in England it is known at once to which party a Russel is sure to belong, just as every one receives from his church the doctrines which he is to follow.[75]