Chapter IV: CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.――Federalists and anti-Federalists―― (5)

The increasing numbers of the plebs, the result of fresh wars, and the value of their services to the community, entitled them to possess, and emboldened them to claim, some political consideration. Accordingly, in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth of the legendary kings, and in whose reputed Etruscan lineage historians fancy that they can discern a time when Etruscan influence, if not Etruscan arms, reigned paramount in Rome, a modification of the original constitution took place. A number of the richest plebeian families were drafted into the populus, to supply the blanks caused by the dying out of many of the ancient gentes of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres; and at the same time the number of senators was increased to 300, by the admission of the Luceres to the same rights as the other two tribes. Even this modification was insufficient; and in order to do justice to the claims of the plebs, Servius Tullius, the successor of Tarquinius, and who is gratefully celebrated in Roman history as ‘the King of the Commons,’ proposed and effected an entire renovation of the political system of the state. His first reform consisted in giving the plebs a regular internal organization for its own purposes, by dividing it into thirty tribes or parishes――four for the town, and twenty-six for the country――each provided with an officer or tribe convener called the Tribune, as well as with a detailed machinery of local government; and all permitted to assemble in a general meeting called the _Comitia Tributa_, to discuss matters purely affecting the plebs. But this was not all. To admit the plebs to a share in the general legislative power of the community, he instituted a third legislative body, called the _Comitia Centuriata_, in addition to the two――the senate and the comitia curiata――already existing. The comitia centuriata was an assembly of the whole free population of the Roman territory――patricians, plebeians, and clients――arranged, according to the amount of their taxable property, in five classes, which again were subdivided into 195 bodies, called _Centuries_, each century possessing a vote, but the centuries of the rich being much smaller than those of the poor, so as to secure a preponderance to wealth. The powers of the comitia centuriata were similar to those of the comitia curiata under the former system. They had the right to elect supreme magistrates, and to accept or reject a measure referred to them by the king and senate. The comitia curiata, however, still continued to be held; and a measure, even after it had passed the comitia centuriata, had still to be approved by the curies ere it could become a law. Notwithstanding this restriction, the constitution of Servius Tullius was a great concession to the popular spirit, as it virtually admitted every free individual within the Roman territory to a share in the government.

An attempt on the part of Tarquinius Superbus, the successor of Servius Tullius, to undo the reforms of his predecessor, and to establish what the ancients called a tyranny, or a government of individual will, led to the expulsion of him and his family, and to the abolition of the kingly form of government at Rome, B. C. 509, or in the year of the city 245. Instead of a king, two annual magistrates called Consuls were appointed, in whom were vested all the kingly functions, with the exception of the pontifical, for which special functionaries were created. Otherwise, the Servian constitution remained in full operation.

THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE GAULISH INVASION――STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS.

After the expulsion of the kings, the little republic had to struggle through many difficulties arising from the attacks of the neighboring nations, incited thereto by the Tarquinii. Ten of the twenty-six rural parishes were torn away in the contest――a loss equivalent to a full third part of the Roman territory. It would have required a prophetic eye to foresee that, of all the states into which Italy was then divided, this little struggling republic was to obtain the preëminence. One would have been disposed to promise the supremacy of the peninsula rather to the cultured and large-brained Etruscans, already masters of the north of Italy; to the hardy and valiant Samnites, who were fast overspreading the southern interior; or, most probably of all, to the Greeks, who, after adding Sicily to the empire of their gifted race, were rapidly establishing colonies on the southern coasts of the peninsula. Nay, clustered round the Roman territories there were various petty states, any one of which might have appeared a match for Rome――the Latins, the Æquians, the Volcians, the Hernicans, the Sabines, and the Etruscans of Veii on the right bank of the Tiber. Who could have predicted that, bursting this cincture of nations, the men of the Tiber would overspread the peninsula, and, by the leavening influence of their character and institutions, throw first it and then all Europe, into fermentation?

It required a period of 119 years (B. C. 509-390) to enable the Romans to burst the chain of petty nations――Latins, Volscians, Vejentes, etc.――which girdled in their strength. This was a period of almost incessant warfare; the last glorious act of which was the siege and capture of Veii by the hero Camillus, B. C. 395, or in the year of the city 359. By this capture part of Etruria was added to the Roman dominions, and the influence of the state considerably extended on all sides. This conquest, as well as the career of victory against Æquians, Volscians, etc., which had preceded it, was greatly facilitated by a confederacy, offensive and defensive, which had subsisted between the Romans and the adjacent nations of the Latins and the Hernicans from the year of the city 268, the twenty-third year after the expulsion of the kings, when it had been established by the instrumentality of an able patrician named Spurius Cassius, who was three times, in cases of difficulty, elected to the consulship. This confederacy with two powerful nations had insured the stability of the infant republic against all assaults.

The second consulship of Spurius Cassius (year of Rome 261, or B. C. 493) had also been remarkable as the epoch of a formidable civic tumult――the first of that long series of struggles between the patricians and the plebeians which constitutes the most interesting portion of the annals of the early Commonwealth. Not long after the expulsion of the kings, the patrician gentes had begun to show a disposition to tamper with the Servian constitution, or at least to prevent the plebs from obtaining more power than they already possessed. The principal instrument by which they were able to cripple the energies of the plebs was the operation of the law of debt. In primitive Rome, as in other ancient states, an insolvent debtor was liable to be seized by his creditor, and kept in chains, or made to work as his slave. Now, such had been the distress of the first years of the republic, that multitudes of the plebeians, deprived, by the casualties of war, of their little properties, had been obliged, in order to preserve the lives of their families, to become debtors to the patricians, the exclusive proprietors of the state lands. Hundreds had, in consequence, fallen into a condition of slavery; and many more, fearing to offend their patrician creditors by opposing their designs, had become mere ciphers in the comitia centuriata. In short, the plebs, as a body, were disintegrated and disheartened. Some instances of oppression, more flagrant than ordinary, led to an outbreak, and a clamor for the abolition of all existing debts; and to enforce their demands, the plebeians adopted a method of agitation which seems singular enough to our modern conceptions; they, or at least such of them as were in arms for military service, retired in a mass from the city at a time when it was threatened with invasion, and encamped on a hill near, declaring they would starve sooner than live in such a place as Rome was. The government was thus reduced to a dead lock; Spurius Cassius was chosen consul by the patricians; and by his instrumentality an arrangement was come to, by which the demands of the commons were conceded, existing debts abolished, a treaty of mutual obligation for the future agreed to between the populus and the plebs as between two independent communities, and a new office instituted, under the title of the _Tribuneship of the Common People_, for the express purpose of protecting the interests of the plebs. The commons then returned to the city; two tribunes of the people were appointed; and their number was subsequently increased first to five, and afterwards to ten. No one could have foreseen how important this office would become.

Not content with alleviating the temporary distresses of the plebeians, Spurius Cassius wished permanently to ameliorate their condition; and accordingly, in his third consulship, in the year of the city 268, or B. C. 486, he boldly proposed and carried what was called an _Agrarian Law_. It is absolutely necessary that the reader of Roman history should understand this term. According to the early Roman constitution, the lands acquired in war became the property of the whole populus, or body of patricians, in common. Portions of the conquered lands might be purchased from the state by rich persons; and in such cases the purchaser, whether patrician or plebeian, became absolute owner. Usually, however, the lands were not sold, but were annexed to the unallotted property already belonging to the populus. With regard to this state land, a very curious system prevailed. Any patrician (but none else) was allowed to occupy and cultivate as much of it as he chose, on condition of paying to the state a tithe of the annual produce if it were arable land, and a fifth if it were laid out in oliveyards or vineyards. The land thus occupied did not, by right of possession, become the property of the individual: he was liable to be turned out of it at the pleasure of the state――his landlord; and it was entirely at his own risk that he laid out capital in improving it. As, however, it rarely happened that an individual was ejected from land which he had thus occupied, large tracts of the state land were speedily occupied by enterprising patricians. Such being the plan of distribution, it is evident that in the state lands, occupied and unoccupied, the government possessed a constant fund upon which they could draw in cases of emergency. By selling portions of it, they could raise money; and by assigning portions of it to indigent families, they could permanently provide for them. Several times, it appears, this had been done in the case of indigent plebeian families; and the agrarian law of Spurius Cassius was simply a proposal that――a large accession to the state lands having just taken place――the government should seize the opportunity to provide for the distressed plebeians, by apportioning them small portions of these state lands. To the plebeians this proposal was exceedingly agreeable; not so, however, to the patricians, who possessed the right of occupying and farming as much of the public territory as they chose, but who lost that right from the moment that the land was apportioned by the state. The patricians, accordingly, resisted the proposal with all their might; and Spurius Cassius having carried it notwithstanding, they caused him to be impeached and put to death as soon as his consulship had expired.

After this event, the patricians renewed their efforts to suppress the plebs, proceeding so far as to transfer the right of electing the consuls from the centuries to the purely patrician body of the curies. The plebeians, however, behaved resolutely, asserting their rights through their tribunes, and by clamors in the comitia tributa, where none but plebeians had a right to take a part. In the year of the city 271, or B. C. 483, they regained the power of choosing one of the consuls; and in the year 283, or B. C. 471, they wrung from the patricians the right of electing their tribunes in their own comitia tributa, instead of the centuries, at the same time obtaining the right to discuss in the comitia tributa affairs affecting the whole Commonwealth. Other concessions followed; and at length, in the year 292, or B. C. 462, a tribune named Caius Terentilius Harsa was so bold as to propose a complete revision of the constitution in all its parts. It was not desirable, he said, that the old distinction between populus and plebs, which had originated in war, should be longer kept up; let, therefore, a revision of the whole body of the laws be undertaken, with a view to put the plebeians on a legal equality with the patricians, and let some more limited form of supreme magistracy be substituted for the consulship. After a protracted opposition, this proposal resulted, in the year 303, or B. C. 452, in the appointment of the famous _First Decemvirate_; a board of ten patricians, who were to revise the entire body of the laws, as well as the political machinery of the state, superseding in the meantime all other authority. The digest of Roman law prepared by these decemvirs became the foundation of all subsequent jurisprudence among the Romans; the amendments which they effected on the old laws were favorable to the plebeians. The principal constitutional changes which they carried out were the incorporation of patricians and clients with the plebeian tribes; the investment of the centuries with the powers of an ultimate court of appeal; and the substitution of the decemviral office, of which they themselves were an example, for the consulship, five of the decemvirs to be plebeians. This last change, however, was of short duration; for the second decemvirate was brought to an end by its own depravity. Compelled, by a new secession of the commons, to abdicate, the decemvirs of 305 were succeeded by two popular consuls, under whose auspices several important privileges were obtained for the plebeians, the most important of which was a law conferring on a _plebiscitum_, or resolution of the tribes, the right to become law on receiving the sanction of the patricians, thus enabling the whole people to originate measures as well as the senate. In 310, the plebeians mustered courage to demand that one of the consuls should thenceforward be chosen from their order. To divert them from this, the patricians yielded to another demand――the repeal of the law prohibiting intermarriage between the two orders. The plebeians, however, still persisting in their demand regarding the consulship, the patricians, in 311, offered a compromise, which consisted in breaking down the supreme authority, hitherto concentrated in the consulship, into three offices――the Censorship, the Quæstorship, and the Military Tribunate――with consular powers. The _censors_ were to be two in number, chosen for a period of five years, by the curies from among the patricians, subject to the approval of the centuries. The ostensible duty of the censors was the administration of the public revenues; but as they were intrusted with the task of determining the rank of every citizen, and of rating his taxable property, their power was, in reality, enormous. To watch over the moral conduct of the citizens, and to degrade such senators or knights as disgraced their order, were parts of their understood duty. The _quæstors_, two in number, were to keep the public accounts; they were likewise to be patricians, but were to be chosen by the centuries. Regarding the third office, the _military tribunate_, the plebeians were to have the option of this office, consisting of an indefinite number of persons of somewhat less dignity than the consuls, but to be chosen by the centuries from either order indiscriminately, or of consuls to be chosen, as before, from among the patricians only.

This compromise having been accepted, the period from 311 to 350 was one of incessant agitation on the part of the plebeians, of incessant opposition on the part of the patricians, of incessant shifting between the consulship and the military tribunate, according as the patricians or the plebeians were the stronger. On the whole, however, the plebeians gained ground. In 321, the active authority of the censors was limited to eighteen months out of the five years for which they were appointed. In 328, the tribes obtained the right of deliberating on questions of peace and war. In 334, the number of the quæstors was increased to four, to be chosen indiscriminately from either order. Lastly, in 350, or B. C. 404, the system of payment for military service became common. During these forty years the patricians had frequently had recourse to the expedient of appointing a _Dictator_, or supreme magistrate, with unlimited authority for six months. Such an appointment almost always proved a temporary check to the political advancement of the plebeians. In cases of difficulty also, arising from external danger, it was usual to appoint some able man dictator; and it was at such a juncture, in the year 359, that, determined to bring the siege of Veii to a close, the Romans appointed Camillus to this high office.

The siege of Veii having terminated so successfully, the Romans were prepared to resume their career of conquest without, and their political agitations within, when both the one and the other received a check from an unexpected quarter. Some cause, now unknown, had thrown the Gauls, or Celtic populations inhabiting the western portion of Central Europe, into commotion; and bursting from their native haunts, a mass of these savages crossed the Alps in quest of plunder and settlements, established a permanent abode in the country adjacent to the Po, and pushed their destructive way through almost the whole length of the peninsula. Rome suffered more severely than any other city. For several months (364-5, or B. C. 390-89) it was in the possession of the savages――its rightful inhabitants, routed in the battle, having dispersed themselves for safety through the surrounding country. At length, however, the Gauls were bribed to return to their homes in the north, leaving Rome in ruins.

GRADUAL CONQUEST OF THE PENINSULA――ITALY UNDER THE ROMAN RULE.

The invasion of the Gauls is a great notch in the line of the Roman annals. From this epoch to the time of the complete subjugation of the peninsula by the Romans (365-490, or――B. C. 389-264) is a period of 125 years. Of this period, the first fifty years were spent in repairing the shattered Commonwealth. Her strength having been fairly renewed, the republic shook off all impediments, announced to Latins and Hernicans that she required their coöperation no longer, and boldly declared her resolution to conquer central Italy. The series of wars against Etruscans, Latins, Hernicans, Gauls, Volscians, and Samnites, sometimes singly, sometimes in combination, by which she carried her resolution into effect, is usually known in Roman history by the general designation of ‘the Samnite Wars’ (412-463), the Samnites being the leaders in this onset of the nations on Rome, the issue of which was to determine whether Rome or Samnium should govern Italy. Extricating herself by her valor from this confused conflict of nations, Rome, about the year 463, found herself mistress of Central Italy――Samnites, Latins, etc., all her subjects. A consequence of the conduct of the Latins and Hernicans during these Samnite wars was, that the famous triple confederacy between these two nations and the Romans was brought to an end precisely when it had fully served its purpose, and when its longer continuance would have impeded the growth in Italy of that Roman unity which it had fostered. ‘The Samnite Wars’ were succeeded by a short but brisk war, designated in Roman history ‘the War with Pyrrhus and the Greeks in Italy.’ Pyrrhus was an able and enterprising Greek prince, whom the Greek towns of southern Italy――fearful of being overwhelmed by the conquering barbarians, as they called them, of the Tiber, before whom even the Samnites had given way――had invited over from his native kingdom of Epirus, that he might place himself at the head of a confederacy which they were forming against Rome. Full of enmity towards their conquerers, all the recently-subdued nations of Central and Northern Italy welcomed the arrival of Pyrrhus; and all Southern Italy followed his standard. His enterprise, however, failed, notwithstanding several victories; and about the year B. C. 275, Pyrrhus having withdrawn from Italy, the confederacy against the Roman Commonwealth crumbled to pieces, and the whole peninsula lay at their mercy. Before describing the manner in which the peninsula, thus acquired, was laid out and governed by the Romans, it will be necessary to continue our narrative of the gradual development of the constitution within, during the period which had elapsed since the Gaulish invasion.

The situation of Rome after the Gaulish invasion was extremely similar to what it had been after the expulsion of the kings――the plebeians distressed, and many of them in slavery for debt, and the patricians disposed to tyrannize. As on the former occasion there had risen up, as the best friend of the plebs, the noble patrician Spurius Cassius, so on this occasion there appeared as their champion a prudent and brave plebeian, Caius Licinius Stolo, a tribune of the people. His measures were very similar to those of Spurius Cassius――namely, a compromise on the subject of debts (not, however, an abolition of them); and an agrarian law, prohibiting any citizen from occupying any more than five hundred jugera (about 330 acres) of the public land, and depriving all who exceeded that quantity of the surplus for distribution among indigent commons. To these he added a proposal for constitutional reform――namely, that the military tribunate should be abolished, and that the consulship should be reverted to, one of the consuls to be of necessity a plebeian. After a hard struggle, these important measures were carried in the year 384, nineteen years after the Gaulish invasion. Under these Licinian Laws, as they were called, the state enjoyed tolerable repose for a long period of years――the principal source of disturbance being the attempts of the wealthy citizens to evade the operation of the agrarian law. The next great movement was in the year of the city 416, when, under the auspices of a plebeian dictator (for the dictatorship had also been thrown open to the plebeians), a considerable simplification of the constitution was effected. It was now rendered essential that one of the censors should be a plebeian; and the old patrician body of the curies was struck out of the machinery of the legislature, so as to leave the business of the state in the hands of the senate (itself become partly a plebeian body) and the people. Met in their centuries, the people could only accept or reject the measures proposed by the senate; but met in their tribes, they could originate a measure, and oblige the senate to consider it. Thus sometimes in the shape of a matured scheme descending from the senate to the people, sometimes in the shape of a popular resolution sent up to the senate, a measure became law. From this simplification of the constitution commences, according to historians, the golden age of Roman politics. The extension of dominion in the Samnite wars, by providing a large subject-population inferior both to patricians and plebeians, disposed these bodies to forget their differences, and to fall back upon their common consciousness of Roman citizenship. During the Samnite wars, however, a third party appeared in the field claiming political rights. These were the _Ærarians_, the name applied to all those residents in town pursuing mechanical occupations, who, as not belonging to any of the tribes (now thirty-three in number), did not rank as citizens. The claims of this class――the city rabble, as both patricians and plebeians called it――were supported by a daring and able patrician, Appius Claudius, who, during his censorship, admitted ærarians into all the tribes indiscriminately. Eventually, however, a compromise was effected: the ærarians were enrolled in the four city tribes, thus obtaining some influence, but not so much as Appius seemed to destine for them. It appears to have been at some period also during the Samnite wars that a modification took place in the constitution of the comitia centuriata, the leading feature of which seems to have been a blending of the tribes with the centuries, so as to accommodate the assembly to the altered state of society and the altered scale of wealth. Of the precise nature of this change, however, as of the precise time at which it occurred, we are ignorant. It may be considered, nevertheless, to have perfected the Roman constitution, and to have adapted it for the function of maintaining the government of the entire peninsula.

Italy, once fairly subjugated and laid out by the Romans (B. C. 266), its population may be considered as having been distributed into three political divisions――the _Populus Romanus_, or citizens of Rome, properly so called; the _Socii_, or inhabitants of the allied and dependent Italian states; and the _Nomen Latinum_, or citizens of the ‘Latin name.’

The first of these, the Populus Romanus, included the whole body of the free inhabitants of the thirty-three tribes or parishes north and south of the Tiber, which constituted the Roman territory strictly so called, together with a considerable number of persons scattered over the other parts of Italy, who were also accounted citizens, either because they were colonists of Roman descent, or because the title had been conferred on them as an honorary distinction. The total number of adult Roman citizens towards the close of the fifth century was under 300,000――a small proportion, evidently, of the vast Italian mass, which consisted, including the slaves, of about 5,000,000. Nor were all these equal in point of civil rights, many of them having the _franchise_, as it was called, or legal rights of citizens, without the _suffrage_, or political rights. The citizens with suffrage, those who voted on public questions――the real governing power, therefore, by whose impulses all Italy, with its millions of inhabitants, was swayed, as the body is moved by the beats of the heart――were a mere handful of men, such as might be assembled with ease in any public park or square.

The Italian subjects were the inhabitants of the allied or dependent states. The list of these was a long one, including, as it did, the various communities which made up the populations of Etruria, Umbria, the Sabine territory, Samnium, Campania, Apulia, Lucania, Messapia, and Bruttium. All the allies, however, were not equally subject to Rome: the relations in which they stood to it were determined by the particular treaties which formed the separate alliances, and these, of course, varied according to the circumstances under which they had been concluded. Almost all the allied states, however, were permitted to retain their own laws, their own municipal arrangements, their own judges, etc. Throughout the peninsula, however, care was taken to destroy every vestige of nationality or national legislature among the allies of the same race. Upon the whole, this change from independence to subjection to Rome was beneficial to the Italian nations. Not the least benefit attending it was the total abolition of those wars between neighboring states which, while the peninsula was subdivided into small independent territories, had raged incessantly and fiercely.

The Nomen Latinum, or Latin name, was a fictitious designation applied to a number of colonies scattered through the peninsula, and which, in respect of privileges, stood in an intermediate position between the Roman citizens and the Italians. The name probably originated in the circumstance, that the original colonists of this description were Latins.

It is a curious fact, that even after Rome had attained the supremacy of the peninsula, there did not exist such a thing as even a dawning Roman literature, although the state had now existed nearly five hundred years; so much earlier than their literary faculty did the native talent of the Romans for governing mankind develop itself. It was by their massive character, more than by their powers of speculation or expression, that they were to impress the world.

THE PUNIC WARS――SUBJUGATION OF FOREIGN NATIONS――ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROVINCES.

Masters of Italy, it was not long before the Romans found themselves in collision with the nations surrounding the great basin of the Mediterranean; and as the last 125 years of the existence of the Roman state had been spent in the gradual conquest of the Italic nations, so the next 130 years (Y. R. 490-620, or B. C. 264-134) were spent in a series of conquests, by which various foreign countries were reduced to the condition of mere provinces of Italy. This series of conquests may be designated generally by the title of ‘the Punic Wars, and the Wars with the Greek States.’ A bare enumeration of them, with a statement of their results, is all that our limits will allow.

The first foreign people with which the Romans came into collision were the Carthaginians――a people of Phœnician lineage, who, settling in that part of Africa now called Tunis, and building a city there, about a century before Rome was founded, had in the interval become a great commercial nation, with ships sailing to all parts of the Mediterranean, and with colonies along the coasts of Algiers, in Sardinia and Corsica, and even in Spain. They had recently gained a footing in Sicily, and now shared it with the Greeks of Syracuse; and it was on this rich island as a battlefield that the Romans first came into conflict with the merchant-people of Africa. Invited over by the Mamertines, a robber-people who inhabited the north-eastern corner of the island, the Roman soldiers fought the armies of mercenaries hired by the Carthaginians. The war thus begun, the ‘First Punic War,’ as it is called, lasted twenty-three years (Y. R. 490-513, or B. C. 264-241). During it the Romans first learned to build ships of war, and to fight naval battles; and they were soon able to defeat the Carthaginians on their own element. On land they were sure of victory against mere mercenaries, collected, as these were, from all nations, and commanded by Carthaginian generals of ordinary capacity. In 249 B. C., however, the Carthaginians sent over the great Hamilcar Barca to command their forces in Sicily; and his efforts checked the Romans, who, meanwhile, had invaded Africa, and been repulsed. A victory or two, however, gained by the Romans over other generals than Hamilcar, disposed the Carthaginians for peace, who accordingly agreed (B. C. 241) to evacuate Sicily, and to pay the victors a large sum of money. The Romans then made themselves masters of Sicily; and shortly afterwards they found a pretext for wresting Corsica and Sardinia from the Carthaginians. For twenty-two years after these conquests (B. C. 241-119) the Romans were engaged in wars with the Cisalpine Gauls and other nations in the north of Italy, the effect of which was to extend their dominion to the foot of the Alps. Beyond the Alps, also, Illyria, a country skirting the east coast of the Adriatic, was at this time annexed to the dominions of the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile the Carthaginians had not been idle. During several years they had, in accordance with the advice of Hamilcar, been establishing their dominion in Spain, intending to repay themselves with that fine peninsula for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia. Killed in battle by a native tribe, Hamilcar was succeeded in Spain by his son-in-law Hasdrubal; and on his death, which took place soon after, Hannibal Barca, the son of Hamilcar, and then only twenty-six years of age, was appointed to the command. The siege by him of Saguntum, an independent Spanish town, which had claimed the assistance of the Romans, led to the Second Punic War (B. C. 218-201). Little did the Romans know what a war it was to be! Crossing the Pyrenees, the young Carthaginian general, the greatest military commander probably, and certainly one of the ablest men the world ever saw, pushed his way through the Gallic tribes, and effecting the passage of the Alps, descended into Italy with an army of 12,000 Africans, 8,000 Spaniards, and 6,000 Carthaginian horse. Rousing the Cisalpine Gauls, and defeating in several successive battles the Roman generals sent against him, he made his way into the south of Italy (B. C. 217); and having in the following year inflicted on the Romans at Cannæ the greatest defeat they had ever received, he remained in Italy fifteen years (B. C. 217-202), moving hither and thither, keeping seven or eight Roman generals, and among them the wary Fabius and the bold Marcellus, continually employed, scattering the Romans like chaff wherever he appeared, exhausting the finances of the state, and detaching the Italian nations from their allegiance. Had he received reinforcements, as he expected, from Spain, where he had left his brother Hasdrubal in command, Rome might have fallen. Fortunately, however, for the Romans, while they were manfully opposing Hannibal in Italy, one of their generals, the great Scipio, was busily engaged in Spain. To prevent Spain from falling into Scipio’s hands, Hasdrubal was obliged to remain in it; and it was not till B. C. 207, when all hope of retaining his footing in that peninsula was lost, that he set out to join his brother. He crossed the Alps in safety, but was attacked, defeated and slain on his march through Italy; and Hannibal was left to his own resources. These, however, were exhaustless; and with the assistance of the Italian nations, who, especially the unprivileged classes, were friendly to the Carthaginians, and hated Rome, he might still have shattered the Commonwealth in pieces, had not Scipio passed over from Spain into Africa, and defeating the Carthaginians in several battles, with the help of a Numidian prince named Masinissa, compelled them to recall their greatest man for the defense of his native city. In B. C. 202, or the year of the city 552, Hannibal quitted Italy, where he had spent the best period of his life. Not long after his landing in Africa, he was defeated by Scipio at Zama, and his countrymen were obliged in consequence to agree to a peace on very severe terms.

The Second Punic War concluded, and Italy once more pacified, the Romans made war on Philip III. king of Macedonia, and virtual ruler of all the Greek states, who had offended them by entering into a treaty with Hannibal. The war was protracted over seventeen years (B. C. 214-197), but ended in the reduction of Macedonia, and the proclamation by the Romans of the independence of the other Greek states. Seized with a desire to assume the place which the Macedonian king had been unable to maintain, Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, and representative therefore of the Greek empire in Asia, crossed into Greece, where he joined the Ætolians against the Romans. Defeated, however, in Greece, and forsaken by the Ætolians, he was pursued into Asia, and after the loss of a great battle at Magnesia, obliged to submit to the Romans, who thus became virtual masters of the various kingdoms and states of Asia Minor (B. C. 188). Meanwhile they had been engaged in suppressing various movements among the Ligurians, Boians, Istrians, and other nations in the north of Italy, as well as among the Spanish tribes and the savages of Sardinia. A declaration of hostilities by Perseus, the successor of Philip in Macedonia, in conjunction with Genthius, king of Illyria, led to another war against these countries, which terminated in their complete subjugation (B. C. 168). The next twenty years were spent in securing these conquests, and in establishing relations, virtually those of sovereignty, with various states of Asia Minor, such as Bithynia and Rhodes; and with various others of Africa, as Egypt and Numidia. The whole circuit of the Mediterranean in their power, and their ships respected in all its ports, as belonging to the ‘sovereign people of Italy,’ the Romans at length executed their long-cherished project, and pounced upon Carthage (B. C. 149), whose existence, even in its fallen condition of a mere commercial capital, they could not tolerate. Hannibal had been dead more than thirty years; but under such generals as they had, the wretched Carthaginians offered a desperate resistance to the Roman commanders. After a horrible siege, the city, containing a population of 700,000, was taken and sacked by Scipio Æmilianus, the adopted son of the son of the great Scipio (B. C. 146). The houses were razed to the ground, and the province of Africa was the prize of this third ‘Punic war.’ The fall of Greece was cotemporary with that of Carthage. The Achaian League, a confederacy of cities in Greece proper and the Peloponnesus, showing a disposition to be independent of the Romans, provoked their vengeance; and the destruction of Corinth in the same year as that of Carthage extinguished the last sparks of liberty in Greece. The whole of the Greek countries were parceled out into Roman provinces, and from that time Greeks became the slave teachers of the Romans, their secretaries, their sycophants, their household wits. Yet out of Greece thus ruined there afterwards arose many great spirits; for no degradation, no series of misfortunes, could eradicate the wondrous intellect which lurked in the fine Greek organization. The last scene in this long series of wars was enacted in Spain, where, roused by a noble patriot called Viriathus――the Wallace of that day――the native tribes had revolted against the Romans. The fate of Spain, however, was sealed by the destruction of Numantia by Scipio Æmilianus (B. C. 133).

By the wars of 130 years which we have thus enumerated, the following countries had become subject to Rome:――Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the smaller islands of the Mediterranean; Macedonia; Illyricum, with Thessaly and Epirus; Greece, including Greece proper and the Peloponnesus; Spain; and the whole northern coast of Africa. The Romans had likewise established their influence in Asia. The conquered countries were divided into provinces, so that the designation for the Roman dominion became ‘Italy and the Provinces.’ The provinces received each an organization at the time of its formation, according to its circumstances. Retaining their national habits, religion, laws, etc., the inhabitants of every province were governed by a military president, sent from Rome, with a staff of officials. Unlike the Italic nations, who furnished only subsidies of men to the sovereign states, the provincials were required to pay taxes in money and kind; and these taxes, were farmed out by the censors――Roman citizens, who, under the name of _Publicans_, settled in the various districts of the provinces, and proved a great scourge by their avarice and rapacity.

To some towns and localities in the provinces, the Italic franchise was extended as a token of favor. Altogether, the government of the provinces was one which, although it led to beneficial results, in binding together a large mass of the human race, and carrying on various races and languages simultaneously in a career of civilization, yet gave great scope for oppression. Like a network proceeding from a centre, the political system of the Romans pervaded the mass of millions of human beings inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean, holding them together by its mechanical tenacity, and slowly working them into union by its own powers of impregnation as well as by means of those ideas and moral agencies whose dissemination and operation over large areas at once it so marvellously facilitated. What a career was thus opened up for those who occupied the centre of this network――the population of Rome! What a grand thing in those days to be a Roman citizen; so that, wherever one walked――in Spain, in Africa, or even in once great Athens――one was followed, feasted, flattered to one’s face, and mocked behind one’s back! What means of moneymaking in the provinces for the avaricious Romans! What opportunities for well-doing for the philanthropic! Alas! a philanthropic Roman was almost a contradiction in terms. To be patriotic was the highest virtue; and if a Roman, along with his patriotism, possessed a just disposition, those who were under his government might consider themselves fortunate. Nor was the career of administration in the provinces open to all Roman citizens. The following passage, which we translate from a French work――(‘Etudes sur l’Histoire Romaine, par Prosper Mérimée, Paris, 1844,’)――will give an idea of the manner in which a Roman citizen attained to public honors, and will illustrate the general spirit of the Roman administration. ‘The laws,’ says this author, ‘opened to all the citizens the career of magistracy; but in reality it was shut against all but those whom fortune or family credit placed in an exceptional situation. As all public offices were obtained by the suffrages of the people, it was of the utmost importance to make creatures in every class of society. In order to muster all these on the great day of election, there were no labors, fatigues, and even meannesses to which Romans of illustrious families did not submit from their earliest boyhood. Some offered the patronage of their families to embarrassed pleaders; others opened their purses to poor artisans; whoever had a vote in the comitia was flattered and cajoled in every possible way. From the time that the candidate had attained the age at which the law permitted him to stand for the dignity of the quæstorship――that by which he must make his debut in public life――he appeared in the Forum clothed in a white robe, shook hands with all the country folks, and with the lowest plebeians, solicited their votes, and often purchased them for money. The quæstor, once appointed, found the doors of the senate open for him. Ordinarily he was attached to the person of a consul, or a magistrate of superior rank, becoming his lieutenant; sometimes he obtained a little government for himself. In these offices he could learn business habits and find occasions for distinguishing himself, and for causing his name to be mentioned often in the senate or the assemblies of the people.

After the quæstorship came the _Curule Edileship_, a purely civil magistracy, whose duties consisted in watching the arrival of provisions, guarding public monuments, seeing to the embellishment of the city, and finally, in preparing the games and solemn shows. This charge entailed enormous expense on those ediles who wished to make themselves popular. They built temples and porticoes at their own cost, opened roads, constructed aqueducts; above all, they tried to surpass their predecessors by the magnificence of the games which they caused to be celebrated, and the truly colossal expense which they in part sustained. A happy man was that edile who had been able to exhibit in the arena the deaths of an unusual number of able gladiators, or who had presented to the people animals of a rare species or unknown before. His name was in every mouth, and all applauded his sprouting ambition. The edileship lasted a year. After it came the prætorship. There were six prætors――two presided over the tribunals at Rome, the others governed provinces or commanded armies. Finally after having successively gone through the three previous stages, one presented himself as a candidate for the consulship. Intriguing, corruption, manœuvring of all kinds was now redoubled; for this was the goal of a Roman’s ambition. The consuls presided over the government of the republic, or directed important wars in person. At the expiration of their magistracy――that is, after a year――they were sent to a province with the title of Proconsuls; often to command military expeditions, almost always to administer an extensive government. In turn to amass and expend great wealth, was thus the chief care of candidates for honors. The profits of the quæstorship enabled one to make a brilliant curule edileship. Ruined by his extravagance, the edile repaired his fortune in the prætorship, and returned to Rome rich enough to buy votes at the consular election. Frequently he staked his all on this last election, confident of more than making it up again in the province which would be assigned him after his consulship. In a word, the career of public employment was a species of gambling, in which one’s profits were proportional to one’s stakes.’

Such a state of things as is here described, implies that an immense change had taken place in the character of the Roman society during the rapid career of foreign conquest which had elevated Rome from the position of metropolis of Italy to that of metropolis of the civilized world. The distinction between patrician and plebeian was now scarcely heard of (in B. C. 172 both consuls had been plebeians for the first time); it was superseded by that between _illustrious_ and _obscure_; _rich_ and _poor_. Although, however, the system of corruption was so general, that scarcely any one could attain to office except by unworthy means, yet there were at that time, and in the midst of that system, many men of really noble character. Among these must not be forgotten the honest old censor Cato, the enemy of Carthage, who kept up a constant protest all his life against what he called the growing luxury of his countrymen, and died declaring that they were a degenerate race. Of equal integrity with Cato, although of altogether a different form of character, were the two brothers of world-famous name, whose actions we shall now briefly notice.

THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE GRACCHI

‘A fatal effect,’ says M. Mérimée, ‘of the Roman domination was the impoverishment and depopulation of Italy. At Rome, where commerce and industry were despised, only one way led to wealth――a career of public service. On his return from his government, a Roman official bought lands, built villas, and all at once became a great proprietor. If he chanced to have in his neighborhood an estate to his taste, he caused it to be ceded to him; sometimes he seized it while the lawful owner was fighting far away under the Roman eagles. By degrees all the small proprietors were despoiled, in order to form vast estates for the privileged class of public functionaries. Parks, gardens, and expensive fish-ponds took the place of cultivated fields. Laborers disappeared, and the country was peopled with slaves, dangerous by their numbers, and also by their robber habits, which they practised with impunity. Some masters, it is said, shared the profits of robbery with these wretches.’

The great social evils of the day――the extinction of the old peasant proprietors of Italy; and the vast increase of slaves, the danger of which had been already manifested by several servile revolts in Sicily; and the congregation in the towns, and especially in Rome, of vast masses of population, not living as the artisans and traders in modern towns do, by honest industry, but living in noisy idleness upon the alms of the provinces and the sums they received for their votes――these social evils must have struck many generous hearts among the Romans. The man, however, on whom they produced so decided an impression as to lead him to devote his life to their removal, was Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the son of a plebeian of rank who had attained distinction in the Spanish wars, and of Cornelia, the daughter of the great Scipio. Abandoning, in its first stage, the more tempting career which led through the quæstorship, edileship, and prætorship to the consulship, Tiberius chose rather the office of tribune of the people, which was more suitable for the purposes of political agitation. Elected to this office B. C. 133, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, he propounded his schemes of reform. His grand project was a revival, with some modifications, of the famous agrarian law of Licinius, which had long fallen into tacit desuetude. All citizens who were in possession of a larger extent of the state land than the 500 jugera allowed by the Licinian law (unless in the case of fathers of two sons, who were to be allowed 250 jugera in addition for each of them), were to be deprived of the surplus; the buildings, vine-presses, etc., which were erected on these surplus lands to be purchased at a fair valuation; and the whole land thus seized was to constitute a stock out of which the pauper plebeians of the city were to be furnished with little farms for the honest support of themselves and families, these farms to be incapable of alienation by the persons to whom they should be allotted. Utterly revolutionary as this measure would seem in modern legislation, and sufficiently sweeping as it was, even in a Roman point of view, considering that however unjustly the ancestors of many of the large proprietors had come by their lands, yet long possession and frequent transference had in many cases sanctified the ownership――still the measure was strictly in the spirit of Roman law, and one of the supporters of Gracchus in proposing it was the eminent jurist Mucius Scævola. Tiberius and his associates probably thought that the ends proposed――the removal of the venal mob out of Rome, and the restoration in Italy of a population of hard-working peasant proprietors, instead of the gangs of bandit slaves――were difficult enough to require, and glorious enough to justify, somewhat revolutionary means. Accordingly, advocating by his eloquence in the Forum the scheme which he had matured in private, he did not cease until, in spite of the most obstinate resistance on the part of the senators, who used as their instrument against him one of his own colleagues in the tribuneship, he had gained his end. Three commissioners were appointed to superintend the execution of the law――Tiberius himself, his father-in-law Appius Claudius, and his younger brother Caius. Loud and deep were the vows of vengeance on the part of the senators; and Tiberius saw that his only chance of life lay in being reelected to the tribuneship, the dignity of which was an inviolable protection. To prevent this, the senatorial party mustered all their strength; and a tumult ensuing on one of the days of election, Tiberius, along with about 300 of his followers, was killed.

For about ten years the excitement caused by the law of Gracchus continued, Fulvius Flaccus and Papirius Carbo acting as his successors in the popular interest, and carrying on the struggle against the nobles, who raised up obstacles to the execution of the law. But in the year B. C. 123, Caius Gracchus, who now felt himself old enough to assume the career which his brother had left him as an inheritance, claimed and obtained the tribuneship. Caius was a man of more vehement character and more comprehensive views than his brother, and the schemes which he proposed embraced a great variety of points, besides a reënactment of his brother’s agrarian law. In fact, a reformer by reputation and education, he made it his business to find out abuses, and either declaim against them or propose remedies for them. Perhaps the most objectionable of his measures was a law enacting a monthly distribution of corn among the city population at a nominal price――a poor-law, for such it may be called, which had the effect of attracting all the paupers of Italy to Rome. A more valuable measure was his transference of the judicial power from the senators, who had hitherto held it, and who had been guilty of great corruption in the exercise of it, to the _equites_, or wealthy capitalists, intermediate between the senators and the poorer classes of the community. He also proposed and carried the establishment or various colonies in different parts of the empire, which afforded room for enterprise, thus relieving Rome of part of its overgrown population. More fortunate so far than his brother, he held the tribuneship for two years, and thus had time for more extensive action. Deserted, however, by the people at the end of the second year, in consequence of the policy of his opponents, who adopted the plan of outbidding him for popular favor, he lost his office. The senators, having him at their mercy, spared no means of revenge; and Gracchus, and his friend Fulvius Flaccus, having recourse to the armed assistance of their supporters to preserve their lives when they appeared in public, this was construed into a design of sedition. The consul was empowered to resort to force against them; a terrible fray occurred in one of the quarters of the town, 3000, it is said, being slain; and Gracchus was killed while trying to escape into the country (B. C. 121). He was then only in the thirty-third year of his age.

The aristocracy thus triumphed for the time, and the recent measures of reform were suffered to fall into disuse; but certain portions of the policy of the two brothers had taken full effect, and the agitation which they had originated was not lulled for many years. The seeds of much that afterwards appeared in storm and bloodshed, were sown during these movements of B. C. 133-121; and as long as the world takes an interest in Roman history, or respects disinterested political courage, it will remember the Gracchi.

THE JUGURTHINE, CIMBRIC, AND SOCIAL WARS――MARIUS AND SULLA.