XV. THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
It appears that before the time of Scipio’s election to conduct the Numantian War, it had become a prevalent opinion that some measures were necessary to arrest the prevailing social evils. The frightful excesses of the Servile War called attention still more strongly to the subject; and in the year that Scipio achieved the conquest of Numantia a leader appeared who was endowed with courage, firmness, self-confidence, ability, eloquence, and every requisite for political success, except a larger experience and a larger share of patience and self-control.[b] A. H. Beesley thus vividly paints the crying evils of the Roman state:
“Everywhere Rome was failing in her duties as mistress of the civilised world. Her own internal degeneracy was faithfully reflected in the abnegation of her imperial duties. When in any country the small farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man’s lips, but ideas of true beauty in very few men’s souls; when the business sharper is the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts; when class magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief gamblers; when, in short, ‘corruption is universal, when there is increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation; when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the footpad or burglar’--when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.
“A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined. A mob, a moneyed class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other, and hated by the rest of the world; Italians bitterly jealous of Romans, and only in better plight than the provinces beyond the sea; more miserable than either, swarms of slaves beginning to brood revenge as a solace to their sufferings; the land going out of cultivation; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to organised pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, wholesale luxury, and monstrous vice. The hour for reform had surely come. Who was to be the man?”[c]
Ti. Sempronius Gracchus was son of one of the few Romans in whom public spirit prevailed over the spirit of party. Though personally hostile to the great Scipio, we saw him interfere between him and his foes. After the death of Africanus, the chiefs of the party offered him the hand of Cornelia, the only surviving daughter of the hero; and from this marriage twelve sons and one daughter were born in rapid succession. The eldest, Tiberius, saw the light about 166 B.C., but the father died before his eldest son reached man’s estate, and Cornelia was left a widow with her children. The daughter lived; but of all the twelve sons only two grew up--Tiberius, and Caius who was nine years younger. To the education of these precious relics Cornelia devoted all the energies of her masculine mind. She even refused an offer to share the throne of the king of Egypt. Her dearest task was to watch the opening capacities of her boys. Such was her hope of their greatness that she used to say she would be known not as the daughter of Scipio, but as the mother of the Gracchi.
According to the fashion of the day, Greek teachers were called in to educate the boys. Blossius of Cumæ, and Diophanes a Mytilenean exile, are mentioned as the instructors, and in later life as the friends, of Tiberius. Scarcely had Tiberius assumed the garb of manhood when he was elected into the college of augurs. At the banquet given to celebrate his installation, App. Claudius, the chief of the senate, offered him his daughter’s hand in marriage.
When the proud senator returned home, he told his wife that he had that day betrothed their daughter. “Ah!” she cried, “she is too young; it had been well to wait a while--unless, indeed, young Gracchus is the man.” Soon after his marriage he accompanied Scipio to Carthage, where he was the first to scale the walls.
The personal importance of Gracchus was strengthened by the marriage of Scipio with his only sister. But this marriage proved unhappy. Sempronia had no charms of person, and her temper was not good; Scipio’s austere manners were little pleasing to a bride; nor were children born to form a bond of union between them.
[Sidenote: [137-133 B.C.]]
It was when Gracchus was about thirty years old (137 B.C.) that he served as quæstor in Spain. Before this, when he travelled through Etruria to join the army, he had noted her broad lands tilled not by free yeomen as of old, but by slaves. Soon after this the Slave War broke out. He spoke his sentiments freely, and public opinion designated him as the man who was to undertake the thankless office of reformer. In all places of public resort the walls were covered with inscriptions calling on Gracchus to vindicate the rights of all Roman citizens to a share in the state lands. He presented himself as a candidate for the tribunate, and was elected.
On December 10th, 134 B.C., he entered upon office. He had already prepared men for his projected legislation by eloquent speeches, in which he compared the present state of Italy with her olden time, deplored the decay of her yeomen and farmers, and the lack of freemen to serve in the legions. All his arguments pointed towards some measures for restoring the class of small landed proprietors who were dwindling fast away.
[Sidenote: [133 B.C.]]
In a short time his plan was matured and his bill brought forward. He proposed to revise the Licinian law of 364 B.C., by which it was enacted that no head of a family should hold more than five hundred jugera (nearly 320 acres) of the public land; but to render the rule less stringent, he added that every son of the family might, on becoming his own master, hold half that quantity in addition.[74] Whoever was in possession of more was to give up the excess at once to the state; but to obviate complaints of injustice, he proposed that those who gave up possession should be entitled to a fair compensation for any improvements they had made during the term of their possession. All public lands were to be vested in three commissioners (triumviri), who were to be elected by the tribes. Their business was to distribute the public lands to all citizens in needy circumstances, and to prevent lands so distributed being again absorbed into the estates of the rich land owners; the sale of the new allotments was altogether prohibited.
The greater part of these public lands had fallen into the hands of the rich land owners. They had held them, on payment of a small yearly rent, for generations; and many of these persons had forgotten perhaps that their possession could be disturbed. After the first surprise was over, the voices of these land holders began to be heard; but as yet the majority of the senate showed no disfavour to the law of Gracchus. The persons interested alleged that the measure, though it pretended only to interfere with state lands, did in fact interfere with the rights of private property; for these lands were held on public lease and had been made matters of purchase and sale, moneys were secured on them for the benefit of widows and orphans, tombs had been erected on them: if this law passed, no man’s land could be called his own.
If Gracchus had proposed a forcible and immediate resumption of all state lands, without compensation for moneys spent on them, these arguments would have had more weight. Rights arise by prescription; and if the state had for a long course of time tacitly recognised a right of private property in these lands, it would have been a manifest injustice thus abruptly to resume possession. But the Licinian law was evidence that the state claimed a right to interfere with the tenure of the public lands. That the Romans felt no doubt about the right is shown by the fact that in framing his law Tiberius was assisted by his father-in-law App. Claudius, the chief of the senate, and by P. Mucius Scævola, consul of the year.
It was certain that the law would be carried in all the country tribes, because it was precisely in these tribes that the strength of Gracchus lay, and all his arguments show that he knew it. It was to the country people, who had lost or were afraid of losing their little farms, that he spoke.[b] A few specimens of the fervent eloquence of Tiberius still remain in the fragments[75] quoted in Plutarch[e] and Appian.[g] Plutarch describes the present event as follows:
“Tiberius defending the matter, which of itself was good and just, with such eloquence as might have justified an evil cause, was invincible; and no man was able to argue against him to confute him, when, speaking in the behalf of the poor citizens of Rome (the people being gathered round about the pulpit for orations), he told them, that the wild beasts through Italy had their dens and caves of abode, and the men that fought, and were slain for their country, had nothing else but air and light, and so were compelled to wander up and down with their wives and children, having no resting-place nor house to put their heads in. And that the captains do but mock their soldiers, when they encourage them in battle to fight valiantly for the graves, the temples, their own houses, and their predecessors. For, said he, of such a number of poor citizens as there be, there cannot a man of them show any ancient house or tomb of their ancestors, because the poor men go to the wars, and are slain for the rich men’s pleasures and wealth; besides, they falsely call them lords of the earth, where they have not a handful of ground that is theirs. These and such other like words being uttered before all the people with such vehemency and truth, so moved the common people withal, and put them in such a rage, that there was no adversary of his able to withstand him. Therefore, leaving to contradict and deny the law by argument, the rich men put all their trust in Marcus Octavius, colleague and fellow-tribune with Tiberius in office, who was a grave and wise young man, and Tiberius’ very familiar friend. That the first time they came to him, to oppose him against the confirmation of this law, he prayed them to hold him excused, because Tiberius was his very friend. But in the end, being compelled to it through the great number of the rich men that were importunate with him, he withstood Tiberius’ law, which was enough to overthrow it.”[e]
The morning came. The Forum was crowded with people expecting the completion of the great measure which was to restore some share in the broad lands of Italy to the sons of those who had won them. Strange faces were seen everywhere: vine-dressers from Campania and the Auruncan hills, peasants from the Sabine and Æquian valleys, farmers of valley and plain from the Clanis to the Vulturnus.
Gracchus rose. His speech was received with loud applause by the eager multitude. When he had ended, he turned to the clerk, and bade him read over the words of the law before it was put to the vote. Then Octavius stood up and forbade the man to read. Gracchus was taken by surprise. After much debate he broke up the assembly, declaring that he would again bring on his defeated bill upon the next regular day of meeting.
The intervening time was spent in preparing for the contest. Gracchus retaliated upon the veto of Octavius by laying an interdict on all public functionaries, shut up the courts of justice and the offices of police, and put a seal upon the doors of the treasury. Further, he struck the compensation clauses out of his bill, and now simply proposed that the state should resume possession of all lands held by individuals in contravention of the Licinian law.
On the day of the second assembly Gracchus appeared in the Forum escorted by a bodyguard. Again he ordered the clerk to read the bill; again Octavius stood forth, and barred all proceedings. A violent scene followed, and a riot seemed inevitable, when two senators, friends of Gracchus--one named Fulvius Flaccus--earnestly besought him to refer the whole matter to the senate. Gracchus consented. But his late impatient conduct had weakened whatever influence his name possessed in the great council, and his appearance was the signal for a burst of reproaches. He hastily left the house, and returning to the Forum gave out that on the next day of assembly he would for the third time propose his measure; and that, if Octavius persisted in opposition, he would move the people to depose their unfaithful tribune.
As the day approached, Gracchus made every effort to avoid this desperate necessity; but Octavius repelled every advance, and on the morning of the third assembly, Gracchus rose at once and moved that Octavius should be deprived of the trust which he had betrayed.
The country tribe, which obtained by lot the prerogative of voting first, was called, and its suffrage was unanimous for the deposition of Octavius; sixteen tribes followed in the same sense; the eighteenth would give a majority of the thirty-five, and its vote would determine the question. As this tribe came up to vote, Gracchus stopped the proceedings, and besought Octavius not to force on the irrevocable step. The tribune wavered; but he caught the eye of one of his rich friends, and turned coldly from Tiberius. Then the eighteenth tribe was called, and by its vote Octavius was in a moment stripped of his sacred office.[b]
“These acts of Tiberius Gracchus,” says Beesly, “are commonly said to have been the beginning of revolution at Rome; and the guilt of it is accordingly laid at his door. And there can be no doubt that he was guilty in the sense that a man is guilty who introduces a light into some chamber filled with explosive vapour, which the stupidity or malice of others has suffered to accumulate. But, after all, too much is made of this violation of constitutional forms and the sanctity of the tribunate. The first were effete, and all regular means of renovating the republic seemed to be closed to the despairing patriot, by stolid obstinacy sheltering itself under the garb of law and order. The second was no longer what it had been--the recognised refuge and defence of the poor. The rich, as Tiberius in effect argued, had found out how to use it also. If all men who set the example of forcible infringement of law are criminals, Gracchus was a criminal. But in the world’s annals he sins in good company; and when men condemn him, they should condemn Washington also. Perhaps his failure has had most to do with his condemnation. Success justifies, failure condemns, most revolutions in most men’s eyes. But if ever a revolution was excusable this was; for it was carried not by a small party for small aims, but by national acclamation, by the voices of Italians who flocked to Rome to vote. How far Gracchus saw the inevitable effects of his acts is open to dispute. But probably he saw it as clearly as any man can see the future. Because he was generous and enthusiastic, it is assumed that he was sentimental and weak, and that his policy was guided by impulse rather than reason. There seems little to sustain such a judgment other than the desire of writers to emphasise a comparison between him and his brother.”[c]
The bill itself was then passed by acclamation, and three commissioners destined to execute its provisions were elected--Tiberius himself, his father-in-law App. Claudius, his brother Caius, then a youth of twenty, serving under Scipio in Spain. The law was not deemed safe unless it was intrusted for execution to Tiberius and his kinsmen.
In a few weeks Gracchus had risen to the summit of power. He seldom stirred from home without being followed by a crowd. The Numantian War and the Servile War still lingered, and the government of the senate was not in a condition to defy attack. That body now was thoroughly alarmed, and Gracchus soon proceeded to measures which touched them in their tenderest point. Attalus Philometor, king of Pergamus, the last of the line of Eumenes, was just dead, and had bequeathed his kingdom with all his lands and treasure to the Roman people. In ordinary times the senate would at once have assumed the disposition of this bequest; but Gracchus gave notice that he would propose a bill to enact that the moneys should be distributed to those who were to receive allotments of public land, in order to assist them in purchasing stock, in erecting farm buildings, and the like; and he added that he would bring the subject of its future government before the people without allowing the senate to interfere. He thus openly announced a revolution.
When Gracchus next appeared in the senate house, he was accused of receiving a purple robe and diadem from the envoy of the late king of Pergamus. T. Annius, an old senator, who had been consul twenty years before, openly taxed the tribune with violating the constitution. Gracchus, stung to the quick by this last assault, indicted the old consular for treason against the majesty of the people. Annius appeared; but before Gracchus could speak, he said: “I suppose, if one of your brother tribunes offers to protect me, you will fly into a passion and depose him also.” Gracchus saw the effect produced, and broke up the assembly.
Moreover, many of his well-wishers had been alarmed by a law, by which he had made the triumviri absolute judges, without appeal, on disputed questions with regard to property in land. Many allotments of public land had been granted, whose titles had been lost; and every person holding under such condition saw his property at the mercy of irresponsible judges.
Gracchus felt that his popularity was shaken, and at the next assembly he thought it necessary to make a set speech to vindicate his conduct in deposing Octavius. The sum of his arguments amounts to a plea of necessity. It is true that the constitution of Rome provided no remedy against the abuse of power by an officer, except the shortness of time during which he held office and his liability to indictment at the close of that time. The tribunician authority, originally demanded to protect the people, might have turned against the people. But was it not open to Gracchus to propose a law by which the veto of a single tribune might be limited in its effect? Or might he not have waited for the election of new tribunes, and taken care that all were tried friends of his law? Instead of this he preferred a coup-d’état, and thus set an example which was sure to be turned against himself.[76]
The violent language of Nasica and his party made it plain that in the next year, when his person was no longer protected by the sanctity of the tribunician office, he would be vigorously assailed. He therefore determined to offer himself for re-election at the approaching assembly of the tribes. But his election was far from secure. Harvest-work occupied the country voters; many had grown cold; the mass of those who resided in the city were clients and dependents of the nobility. It was to regain and extend his popularity that he now brought forward three measures calculated to please all classes except the senatorial families. First, he proposed to diminish the necessary period of military service. Secondly, he announced a reform of the superior law courts, by which the juries were to be taken not from the senators only, but from all persons possessing a certain amount of property. Thirdly, he provided an appeal in all cases from the law courts to the assembly of the people.
These measures, which in altered forms were afterwards carried by his brother Caius, were only brought forward by Tiberius. But this was enough. His popularity returned in full tide.
When the day of the election came, the prerogative tribe gave its vote for Gracchus and his friends; so also the next. But it was objected that the same man could not be chosen in two successive years; and after a hot debate the assembly was adjourned till next day.
It wanted yet some hours of nightfall. Gracchus came forth into the Forum, clad in black, and leading his young son by the hand. In anticipation of his untimely end, he committed his precious charge to his fellow-citizens. All hearts were touched. The people surrounded him with eager gesticulations, and escorted him home, bidding him be of good cheer for the morrow. Many of his warmest adherents kept guard at his doors all night.[b]
“The father’s affection and the statesman’s bitter dismay,” says Beesly, “at finding the dearest object of his life about to be snatched from him by violence need not have been tinged with one particle of personal fear. A man of tried bravery, like Gracchus, might guard his own life indeed, but only as he regarded it as indispensable to a great cause. That evening he told his partisans he would give them a sign next day if he should think it necessary to use force at his election. It has been assumed that this proves he was meditating treason. But it proves no more than that he meant to repel force forcibly if, as was only too certain, force should be used, and this is not treason. No other course was open to him. The one weak spot in his policy was that he had no material strength at his back. Even Sulla would have been a lost man at a later time, if he had not had an army at hand to which he could flee for refuge, just as without the army Cromwell would have been powerless. But it was harvest-time now, and the Italian allies of Gracchus were away from home in the fields. The next day dawned, and with it occurred omens full of meaning to the superstitious Romans.”[c]
The adjourned assembly met that morning upon the Capitol, and the area in front of the temple of Jupiter was filled chiefly by the adherents of Gracchus, among whom the tribune was himself conspicuous, in company with his Greek friend and preceptor Blossius of Cumæ. The senate also assembled hard by in the temple of Faith. Nasica rose and urged the presiding consul to stop the re-election. But Scævola declined.[77]
On this, Fulvius Flaccus left the senate, informed Gracchus of the speech of Nasica, and told him that his death was resolved upon. Then the friends of Gracchus girded up their gowns and armed themselves with staves, for the purpose of repelling force by force. In the midst of the uproar Gracchus raised his hand to his head. His enemies cried that he was asking for a crown. Exaggerated reports were carried into the senate house, and Nasica exclaimed, “The consul is betraying the republic: those who would save their country, follow me!” So saying, he drew the skirt of his gown over his head, after the manner used by the pontifex maximus in solemn acts of worship. A number of senators followed, and the people respectfully made way. But the nobles and their partisans broke up the benches that had been set out for the assembly, and began an assault upon the adherents of Gracchus, who fled in disorder. Gracchus abandoned all thoughts of resistance; he left his gown in the hands of a friend who sought to detain him, and made towards the temple of Jupiter. But the priests had closed the doors; and in his haste he stumbled over a bench and fell. As he was rising, one of his own colleagues struck him on the head with a stool; another claimed the honour of repeating the blow; and before the statues of the old kings at the portico of the temple the tribune lay dead. Many of his adherents were slain with him; many were forced over the wall at the edge of the Tarpeian rock, and were killed by their fall. Not fewer than three hundred lost their lives in the fray.
Caius had just returned from Spain,[78] and asked leave to bury his brother’s corpse. This was refused. The triumphant party ordered the bodies of Tiberius and his friends to be thrown into the Tiber before morning. Thus flowed the first blood that was shed in civil strife at Rome.
Tiberius Gracchus must be allowed the name of Great, if greatness be measured by the effects produced upon society by the action of a single mind, rather than by the length of time during which power is held, or the success that follows upon bold enterprises. He held office not more than seven months; and in that short time he so shook the power of the senate, that it never entirely recovered from the blow. His nature was noble; his views and wishes those of a true patriot. But he was impatient of opposition, and by his abrupt and violent conduct provoked a resistance which he might have avoided. When the moment of action came, his temper was too gentle, or his will too irresolute, to take the bold course which his own conduct and that of the senate had rendered necessary.
When Scipio, in the camp before Numantia, heard of his kinsman’s end, he exclaimed in the words of Homer:
“So perish all and every one who dares such deeds as he!”
But the sequel will show that it was not so much of the political measures of Gracchus that Scipio disapproved, as of the impatience which he had shown and the violence which he had used in carrying them. Such defects of character were of all most displeasing to a soldier and a stoic.
RETURN AND DEATH OF SCIPIO THE YOUNGER
[Sidenote: [133-132 B.C.]]
The struggle had now commenced between the oligarchy and the democracy. This struggle was to last till the dictator Sulla for a time restored the senate to sovereignty, which was wrested from them again by a dictator yet more potent than Sulla. But we should be wrong to assume that the senate and the oligarchy were always identical. At times they were so, for at times the violent party among the nobles were in command of a majority in the senate; but a moderate party always existed, who stood between the nobility and the democracy. It was the violent party, headed by Nasica, not the body itself, which was responsible for the death of Gracchus. The senate did not support them.
The people were allowed to proceed quietly to the election of a new commissioner in the place of Gracchus, and their choice fell on P. Licinius Crassus, brother by blood of the consul Scævola, who had been adopted into the family of the Crassi. His daughter had lately been married to young Caius Gracchus, and he now became the acknowledged leader of the party.
Nor did the senate attempt to shield Nasica from popular indignation. He was branded as the murderer of Gracchus, and his friends advised him to quit Italy, though, as chief pontifex, he was prohibited from doing so. No long time after he died at Pergamus, and Crassus succeeded him in the pontificate.
But in the course of the next year (132 B.C.) the senate was induced to give the new consuls a commission to inquire into the conduct of those who had abetted Gracchus. They began their proceedings by associating with themselves C. Lælius, a man of known moderation. Before the inquiry commenced, Lælius sent for Blossius, and questioned him privately as to his part in the late disturbances. He excused himself on the ground that he had only followed the tribune’s orders.
“That,” said Lælius, “is no excuse. What would you have done if he had ordered you to set the Capitol on fire?”
“Gracchus,” replied Blossius, “could never have given such an order.”
“But if he had?” insisted Lælius.
“Then,” said Blossius, “I would have done it.”
This bold partisan, however, was suffered to escape. Diophanes of Mytilene, another of the preceptors of Gracchus, was arrested by the consuls and put to death. Others also lost their lives, and some escaped death by exile. These whole proceedings were in violation of the laws of appeal; for the consuls had no legal power to try and condemn within the city.
It was not probably till the autumn of this year that Scipio celebrated his Numantian triumph. It was not gorgeous with spoils and a long train of captives, for the Numantians had buried themselves and their possessions beneath the ruins of their city. But the presence of Scipio, at this moment, was or might be pregnant with results; and as he passed in procession to the Capitol, many eyes turned to him with expectation. It might be thought that his approval of the death of Gracchus sufficiently indicated what part he intended to take. But it was possible for him to disapprove of the conduct of Gracchus without disapproving of his purpose. The countrymen of Latium and Italy had fought under him at Carthage and at Numantia. It was known that among the rest he had shown especial honour to a young soldier of Arpinum, of humble birth and rude manners. On one occasion he had invited this youth to supper, and placed him by his side; and when some flatterer asked where a general could be found to succeed him, “Perhaps here,” he said, laying his hand on the young soldier’s arm. This youth was C. Marius.
Whatever doubt might rest on Scipio’s intentions, he soon made it clear that he had no intention of holding out a hand to the civic populace. One of the partisans of Gracchus, by name C. Papirius Carbo, a man of ready wit, but in character turbulent, reckless, and unprincipled, hoped to raise himself to importance by means of this rabble. He was tribune for the year, and had carried a law for extending the use of the ballot into the legislative assemblies of the people. He now brought forward another bill, making it legal to re-elect a tribune to a second year of office. Scipio and Lælius opposed the measure, and the former spoke so warmly against it, that it was rejected by the tribes, though young C. Gracchus made his first public speech in its favour. It was then that Carbo publicly demanded of Scipio what he thought of the death of Gracchus. “That he was rightly put to death,” Scipio promptly replied. At these words an angry shout was raised. Scipio turned sternly to the quarter from which it came. “Peace,” he said, “ye stepsons of Italy; remember who it was that brought you in chains to Rome.”
[Sidenote: [131-130 B.C.]]
Early in the same year, however (131 B.C.), an incident occurred which also parted Scipio from Crassus. The consuls for the year were Crassus himself and L. Valerius Flaccus. The former was pontifex maximus, the latter was flamen of Mars. It happened that one Aristonicus, a bastard son of the last Eumenes, had raised an insurrection in the mountain districts near Pergamus, and matters had become so serious that a consular army was required. Both consuls were eager for command; but by reason of their sacred offices they were both legally unable to leave Italy, and Scipio’s tried skill in war pointed him out as the fittest man for command. Yet such was the popularity of Crassus, that out of thirty-five tribes, two only voted for Scipio and the rest for him. Considering a vote of the people as superior to the law, he completed his levies and set out for Pergamus, never to return. Scipio retired from Rome in disgust.
In this same year the censorship was held by Q. Metellus and Q. Pompeius--an event noted by all the historians as memorable, since now for the first time two men of plebeian blood were elected to the most august magistracy of the state. It is rather matter of wonder that an artificial distinction, which for all practical purposes was obsolete, should have been so long retained in the censorship, than that it should now have ceased.
If Crassus had returned, he might have taken more active steps to diminish the violence which the democratic leaders were beginning to encourage. But early in the year 130 B.C. he was defeated by Aristonicus in a pitched battle, and taken prisoner. The Roman statesman and jurist, deeming slavery intolerable, purposely struck the barbarian who had captured him in the face with his sword-belt, and was instantly cut down. His head was carried to Aristonicus, his body interred at Smyrna.
About the same time died App. Claudius. The natural leader of the Gracchan party would now have been C. Gracchus. But this young man had withdrawn from public life at the advice of his mother Cornelia. Consequently fresh power fell into the hands of the reckless Carbo, who was supported by Fulvius Flaccus; and the whole character of the party became more positively democratic.
These leaders sought to recover their popularity with the country tribes by calling the Agrarian law into fresh life. Of the three commissioners elected for the year C. Gracchus still appeared on the list; the vacancies made by the deaths of Crassus and App. Claudius were filled by Carbo and Flaccus.
The rich landholders had endeavoured to baffle the law by passive resistance. To foil this policy, Carbo and his colleagues issued a proclamation, calling for information against all who had not duly registered themselves as holders of public land. The call was readily obeyed, and the triumvirs were soon overburdened with names. The next step was to decide on the rights of the present holders, and to determine the boundaries between the private and the public lands in each estate. This was a task of extreme delicacy, and here the loss of Crassus was sensibly felt. The ignorant and reckless Carbo raised up a host of formidable opponents.
[Sidenote: [130-129 B.C.]]
Portions of the public land had often been alienated by grant or sale. The holders were now, in consequence of Carbo’s proclamation, suddenly called upon to produce their title deeds, which in many cases were missing; so that a vast number of these holders were liable to be stripped of lands which were undoubtedly their own. Further, in cases where persons held property partly public and partly private, there were often no documents to show which part was public and which private. The commissioners acted in the most arbitrary way, and exasperated a vast number of persons throughout all Italy; and thus a new popular party was called forth, which exercised a most important influence on the events of the next fifty years. In Carbo’s rash haste to win the Roman countrymen he recked not of the hostility of Latins and Italians; and those who had lately worshipped Gracchus now rose like one man to oppose those who now pretended to represent Gracchus.
These new opponents of the Agrarian law had no mind to join the Roman oligarchs, but turned to Scipio and supplicated him to undertake their cause. They had claims upon him, for they had volunteered to fill his army when the senate had no money to give him, and he had always manifested sympathy with them. Averse as he was from party politics, he did not shrink from the task, and the moderate party in the senate welcomed his return. He began by moving that a decree should issue for withdrawing from the triumvirs the judicial power with which they had been invested by Gracchus, and transferring the jurisdiction to the consuls. The decree passed, and the task was committed to C. Sempronius Tuditanus, a man of refined taste, fonder of art and literature than of business. But news came of a movement among the Iapydes, a people on the Illyrian frontier; and Tuditanus eagerly seized this excuse for hastening to Aquileia, feeling confident that he could better cope with barbarous enemies than with the more barbarous perplexities of the law.
[Sidenote: [129 B.C.]]
All proceedings were thus cut short. The senate had taken away jurisdiction from the triumvirs; the consul to whom it was committed had fled. General discontent arose. Scipio was accused of having betrayed Roman interests to the Italians. His enemies spread reports that he had sold himself to the oligarchy, that he intended to repeal the Sempronian law by force, and let loose his Italian soldiery upon the people of Rome.
Scipio felt that it was necessary to explain his motives, and announced his purpose of delivering set speeches, one day in the senate, and the day after in the Forum. The first only of these purposes was fulfilled. By his speech in the senate he pledged himself to maintain the rights of the Latins and Italians against the triumvirs, and to prevent the unjust resumption of the lands that had been granted to them. The senate loudly applauded; and Scipio was escorted home by the mass of the senators with a jubilant crowd of Italians. Many thought this the most glorious day of his life. He retired to rest early, in good health. In the morning he was found dead in his bed. By his side lay the tablets on which he had been noting down the heads of the oration which he had intended to make next day.
The death of Scipio struck consternation into the hearts of the senators. Metullus exclaimed that he had been murdered. It is said that on the neck marks as of strangulation appeared; and when he was carried out to burial the head was covered, contrary to custom. At the moment suspicion attached to C. Gracchus, and to his sister Sempronia, the wife of Scipio. But these unfounded rumours soon passed over; and it was confidently affirmed that Carbo was the murderer. Cicero speaks of it as an undoubted fact; the character, as well as the subsequent history, of the man justifies the belief.[b] Appian,[g] on the other hand, is non-committal, mentioning rumours against Cornelia as well as Sempronia, and adding that “some believe he gave himself this death, because he saw he could not perform what he promised”; while others assert “that Scipio’s slaves under torment confessed that some unknown men they had let in at the back door had strangled him, and that they dared not disclose the murder, because they knew that the people, hating Scipio, rejoiced at his death.” Of modern authorities, George Long[d] thinks “the circumstances of Scipio’s death were suspicious.” But he doubts even that Cicero believed his own charge against Carbo; and adds “the conclusion should be that Scipio died a natural death.” Ihne[f] says: “After a minute and careful examination of the circumstances, there appears to be no reason to doubt that Scipio’s death was natural.” This, however, is perhaps stating the case a little too strongly. Whatever the balance of probability, it can never be proven conclusively whether Scipio died naturally or by violence: in the minds of some investigators, the question will always hold a place in the long list of historical uncertainties.[a]
Thus died the younger Africanus. No public honours attested his public services. The funeral feast was furnished in the most thrifty manner by his nephew Q. Tubero, a rigid stoic, who was glad thus to remind the people of their ingratitude.
Scipio possessed no lofty genius like the great man whose name he bore; yet there was at Rome no one of his own time to be compared with him. To say that he was the best general of the day is little praise, for military talent was at that time scarce; but no doubt his abilities for war would have won him glory in the best times of the republic. His disinterested generosity has been already noticed; at his death he was found to be no richer than when he succeeded to the inheritance of the great Scipio. His love of the country and his habitual reserve led him to shun public life. But the austere manner and severe gravity which he commonly affected gave way among his friends; and there is nothing that more raises our esteem for Scipio than the warm attachment borne to him by such men as Polybius, as well as Lælius, Rupilius, and others, whom Cicero has introduced into his beautiful dialogues. Scipio has usually been represented as a stiff adherent of the oligarchy, but the facts of history disprove this opinion. He might have lived some years to moderate the fury of party strife, to awe the factious, and to support just claims; for at his death he numbered no more than six-and-fifty years. His death at this moment was perhaps the greatest loss that the republic could have suffered.[b]
The general verdict on Scipio is laudatory. Even George Long,[d] who ridicules the usual historical summing-up of great men, finds Scipio worthy of much praise, but Beesly is of such contrary mind that he may well be quoted:
“He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once stepped into the arena as their champion. In reality he was a reactionist who, when the inevitable results of those liberal ideas which had been broached in his own circle stared him in the face, seized the first available means of stifling them. The world had moved too fast for him. As censor, instead of beseeching the gods to increase the glory of the State, he begged them to preserve it. Brave as a man, he was a pusillanimous statesman. It was well for his reputation that he died just then. Without Sulla’s personal vices he might have played Sulla’s part as a politician, and his atrocities in Spain as well as his remark on the death of Tiberius Gracchus--words breathing the very essence of a narrow swordman’s nature--showed that from bloodshed at all events he would not have shrunk. It is hard to respect such a man in spite of all his good qualities. Fortune gave him the opportunity of playing a great part, and he shrank from it. When the crop sprang up which he had himself helped to sow, he blighted it. But because he was personally respectable, and because he held a middle course between contemporary parties, he has found favour with historians, who are too apt to forget that there is in politics, as in other things, a right course and a wrong, and that to attempt to walk along both at once proves a man to be a weak statesman, and does not prove him to be a great or good man.”[c]
CAIUS GRACCHUS AND HIS TIMES
[Sidenote: [129-126 B.C.]]
The sudden death of Scipio was followed by a calm. The turbulent Carbo vanishes from the scene, till nine years later he reappears as a champion of the violent oligarchical party. C. Gracchus was still living in retirement. Fulvius Flaccus was content to let the Agrarian law sleep in face of the portentous difficulties created by the measures of the triumvirs. Nor was there anything in foreign affairs to ruffle the general calm. But under this external tranquillity a leaven of agitation was at work. It was not to be expected that the new-born jealousy which had sprung up between the Romans on the one side and the Latins and Italians on the other, would fall asleep. Proposals, however, were set afloat for reconciling these two opposing interests. The Italians were led to hope that they might be made citizens of Rome, on condition that they should not resist the execution of the Agrarian law.
But the burgesses of Rome soon perceived that the admission of the Latins and Italians to the Roman franchise would reduce them to comparative insignificance. All the benefits now derived from the provinces by Romans exclusively must then be shared with a vastly increased number of citizens, and the profits as well as the power of a Roman must be materially diminished. In the year 126 B.C. a large number of Italian strangers flocked to Rome, eager for the promised boon. But by this time public opinion at Rome was so far changed that M. Junius Pennus, one of the tribunes, brought forward what we may call a severe alien-act, by which all strangers were compelled to quit Rome. The successors of Gracchus, however, remained constant to their new policy, and Caius himself was induced to speak in public for the second time. But he was unsuccessful. The law of Pennus was passed; and from this time may be dated that angry contest of feeling between the Romans and the Italians which after thirty-eight years found vent in a bloody war.
When Caius delivered this speech he was quæstor-elect for the next year. He was appointed to serve under the consul L. Aurelius Orestes, when this officer undertook to reduce the Sardinian mountaineers, who had been subjugated by the father of young Gracchus fifty years before. After the first year’s operations Orestes was at a loss for supplies and clothing; and from this difficulty he was relieved by his quæstor, who by the memory of his father and his own persuasive eloquence induced the Sardinian colonists to give voluntarily what the soldiers wanted. Shortly after, envoys arrived at Rome from Micipsa, son of Masinissa, offering, from respect (as they said) for the name of Gracchus, to send supplies of corn to Sardinia. The senate angrily dismissed the embassy. Orestes was directed to remain as proconsul in his province, and his quæstor was ordered to continue in office for a second year.
[Sidenote: [126-123 B.C.]]
Meanwhile the country party had succeeded in carrying the election of their present chief, Fulvius Flaccus, to the consulship for 125 B.C. He was a man with little force of oratory, but his activity and audacity gave him power, and his unchangeable attachment to the memory of Ti. Gracchus made him respectable. No sooner was he in the consul’s chair than he gave full proof of his headlong temerity by giving notice of a bill for extending the franchise to all the Latin and Italian allies. It was a reform bill sweeping beyond all example. No addition had been made to the Roman territory or the number of tribes since 241 B.C., a period of 116 years, and now at one stroke it was proposed to add to the register a population much more numerous than the whole existing number of Roman burgesses. The tribes felt their interests to be at stake, and the measure of Flaccus was highly unpopular at Rome.
At this moment, the senate adroitly contrived to detach Flaccus upon foreign service. The people of Massilia, old allies of Rome, sent to demand protection against the Salluvians, a Ligurian tribe of the Maritime Alps, and Flaccus was ordered to take command of the army destined to relieve them. He remained in Gaul for more than two years, and was honoured with a triumph in the year 123 B.C. Meantime his great measure for extending the franchise fell to the ground.
But the hopes excited by the impetuous consul were not easily relinquished. The excitement was great throughout Italy, and in one of the Latin colonies the smouldering fire burst into flame.
Fregellæ was a large and flourishing city on the Latin road. It was one of the eighteen colonies which had remained faithful to Rome in the Hannibalic War. It had seen the full franchise conferred on its neighbours at Formiæ, Fundi, and Arpinum at the close of that war. And now the cup was dashed from the very lip. Fregellæ flew to arms, without concert with any other towns; and L. Opimius, one of the prætors, a man of prompt resolution and devoid of pity, was ordered by the senate to crush the insurrection. The gates were opened to him by treachery. Opimius took his seat in the Forum, and exercised a fearful vengeance on the inhabitants, for which he was rewarded by the senate with a triumph. The walls were pulled down, and the colony, stripped of all its rights, was reduced to the condition of a mere market-town (conciliabulum). The example of Fregellæ for a time silenced the claims of the Italians.
Thus triumphant, the senate determined to keep the chiefs of the Gracchan party absent from Rome. Flaccus had not yet finished his Gallic wars; and an order was sent to detain C. Gracchus for a third year in Sardinia. But the young quæstor perceived the drift of this order, and returned to Rome about the middle of the year 124 B.C., to the no small consternation of the senate. He was instantly summoned before the censors then in office to account for his conduct, in order that he might be branded with a public stigma, and thus disqualified from taking his seat in the senate house. He made his defence to the people in a set speech, in which he declared that the senate had no right to keep him employed as quæstor for more than one year. “No one,” he added, “can say that I have received a penny in presents, or have put any one to charges on my own account. The purse which I took out full I have brought back empty; though I could name persons who took out casks filled with wine and brought them home charged with money.” He was triumphantly acquitted, and at once came forward as candidate for the tribunate. The senate exerted all their influence to prevent his election, and succeeded so far that his name stood only fourth on the list. But as soon as he entered office, no one disputed his title to be first.
[Sidenote: [123 B.C.]]
The die was now cast. For ten years he had held back from public life; but the vexatious course pursued by the senate roused him to action; the pent-up energy of his passionate nature burst forth, and he threw aside all restraints both of fear and of prudence.
Hitherto there had been no proof of the young speaker’s powers. Twice only had he spoken in public, and both times he had been on the losing side. But years of diligent study had passed, and he became the greatest orator that Rome had yet seen. Much as Cicero disliked Gracchus, he speaks with lively admiration of his genius, and laments the loss which Latin literature had sustained by his early death. The care which the young orator bestowed on preparation was extraordinary; he was the first to use regular gesticulation, and in his most fiery outbursts his voice was so modulated as never to offend the ear.
His first measures are marked by that which was the ruling passion of his life--a burning desire to avenge his brother’s death. Nasica was beyond his reach. But others, who had persecuted the friends and followers of Tiberius, were yet alive, and he inveighed against their cruel severity on all occasions. “Your ancestors,” he exclaimed, “suffered not their tribunes to be trampled down. But you--you let these men beat Tiberius to death, and murder his friends without a trial!”
Accordingly he brought a bill aimed at Popilius, who had been the head of the special commission appointed after the death of Tiberius. It declared any magistrate guilty of treason who had punished a citizen capitally without the consent of the people. Before it passed, Popilius left Rome; and the tribes, on the motion of Caius, banished him.
The young tribune next moved that any one who should have been deprived of office by a vote of the people should be incapable of holding any other office--an enactment evidently pointed at his brother’s old opponent Octavius. Fortunately for the honour of Gracchus, he was stopped in his career of vengeance by the intercession of his mother.
He now turned his thoughts to measures of a public nature, and brought forward a series of important bills, long known as the Sempronian laws, so sweeping in their design, as to show that he meditated no less than a revolution in the government of Rome. They may be divided into two classes: first, those which were intended to ameliorate the condition of the people; secondly, those which aimed at diminishing the power of the senate.
(1) Foremost in the first class we may place a bill for renewing and extending the agrarian law of his brother, which was coupled with a measure for planting new colonies in divers parts of Italy, and even in the provinces. The execution of this law was deferred till the next year.
(2) The second Sempronian law was the famous measure by which the state undertook to furnish corn at a low price to all Roman citizens. It provided that any one possessing the Roman franchise should be allowed to purchase grain from public stores at 6⅓ asses the modius, or about twenty-five asses the bushel; the losses being borne by the treasury.
Public measures for distributing corn in times of scarcity had long been familiar to Roman statesmen, and individuals had more than once sought popularity by doles to the poor. But now, for the first time, was a right established by law. The necessary results of such a measure must have been, and were, very fatal. Fifty years later, it was found necessary to limit the quantity sold to five modii (1¼ bushels) a month for each person; and forty thousand citizens were habitual purchasers. Successively demagogues reduced the price, till the profligate Clodius enacted that these 1¼ bushels should be given away without any payment. The dictator Cæsar found no fewer than 320,000 citizens in the monthly receipt of this dole. He reduced the number to 150,000, and Augustus fixed it at a maximum of 200,000 souls. Such was the mass of paupers saddled upon the imperial government by the unwise law of Gracchus.[79]
We now pass on to the measures which aimed at depriving the senate of the great administrative power which of late years it had engrossed.
(1) The first of these touched their judicial power. It has been mentioned that by the famous Calpurnian law (149 B.C.) all provincial magistrates accused of corrupt dealings in their government were to be tried before the prætor peregrinus as presiding judge, and a jury of senators. This was the first regular and permanent court of justice established at Rome. The principle of the Calpurnian law was gradually extended to other grave offences, and in all the superior courts the juries were composed of senators.
These courts had given little satisfaction. In all important cases of corruption, especially such as occurred in the provinces, the offenders were themselves senators. Some of the judges had been guilty of like offences, others hoped for opportunities of committing like offences; extortion was looked upon as a venial crime; prosecutions became a trial of party strength, and the culprit was usually absolved.
Gracchus now took the judicial power altogether out of the hands of the senate, and transferred it to a body of three hundred persons, to be chosen periodically from all citizens who possessed the equestrian rate of property. By this measure he smote the senate with a two-edged sword. For not only did he deprive it of the means of shielding its own members, but he also gave a political constitution to a rival order. The equestrian order, as a political body, entirely distinct from a mere military class, now first received distinct recognition.
It is doubtful whether this measure of reform was followed by the good effects intended by Gracchus. If the governors of provinces were senators, the farmers of the taxes were equites. The new juries had their personal reasons for acquitting corrupt magistrates; for without the countenance of these magistrates they could not demand money from the provincials beyond what was strictly legal. The constitution of these juries formed a chief ground of political contest for the next fifty years.
(2) Another measure which fettered the power and patronage of the senate was the Sempronian law for the assignment of the consular provinces. Hitherto the senate had refrained from determining these provinces till after the elections, and they thus had a ready way of marking displeasure by allotting unprofitable governments to consuls whom they disliked. But Gracchus now ordained that the two consular provinces should be fixed before the elections, and that the new consuls, immediately upon their election, should settle between themselves what provinces each was to administer, either by lot or by agreement (sortitio or comparatio). It was a wise and equitable provision, which remained in force as long as the republic lasted.
(3) A great blow was given to senatorial power by a measure for improving the roads of Italy. Public works of all kinds had hitherto been left to the censors, subject to the approval of the senate. Gracchus now transferred the business to the tribunes.
This account of the chief Sempronian laws shows the spirit which animated Gracchus. It is plain that his main purpose was to diminish the increased and increasing power of the senate. It was no doubt a confusion between the purposes and the results of the Sempronian legislation that swelled the cry against Gracchus in after-times. It is clear, however, that he had no chance of amending the corrupt government of the senatorial oligarchy, unless he first weakened their power; and if he fancied that administrative functions might safely be controlled by a large and fluctuating popular assembly, something may be forgiven to political inexperience. Representative bodies are a modern invention, and the wisest of the ancients found no halting-place between aristocracy and democracy. Gracchus was not without misgivings as to the effects of his legislation. But it was too late to draw back, and his zeal was quickened by the return of Fulvius Flaccus from Gaul. By his measures Gracchus had so won all suffrages, that he and his friend Flaccus were absolute masters of the comitia. Gracchus told the people he had a favour to ask; he proposed as candidate for the consulship C. Fannius, an old comrade of his brother. Fannius was elected as a matter of course, to the rejection of L. Opimius, the senatorial candidate.
[Sidenote: [123-121 B.C.]]
The tribunician elections followed. Flaccus, though he had been consul, appeared as candidate for an office that had been raised by the Gracchi to sovereign power. But Gracchus was not by his side; for it had been made illegal that the same man should be re-elected tribune. However, there were not candidates enough for the ten places; and the people, exercising the absolute right of choice which in this contingency was allowed, re-elected Gracchus by a unanimous vote.[80] Not more than seven months of his first year’s tribunate were over, and he was secure of power for the next seventeen months at least. He now put forth all the tremendous power of the office. The senate sat powerless, and Caius Gracchus became for a time the virtual sovereign of the empire.
Immediately on re-election, Gracchus came forward with a bill for extending the Roman franchise, certainly to the citizens of all Latin colonies, probably to all free Italian communities. Here we recognise the hand of Flaccus, who had in his consulship raised this momentous question, and resumed the project on the first opportunity after his return.
There can be no doubt that some change in this direction was necessary. The admission of the Latins and Italians to full citizenship would infuse a quantity of new blood into the decaying frame of the Roman people; and, by extending to all Italians the benefits of the agrarian law, there was really a good hope of reviving that hardy race of yeomen who were regretted by all Roman statesmen. Scipio had induced the senate for a moment to take up this cause; but after the revolt of Fregellæ, all thoughts of an extension of the franchise had been dropped. The difficulty was how to favour the Italians without provoking the Roman tribesmen. It is manifest that the project was still unpopular in the Forum, for Gracchus laboured to show that the Roman people and the Italians had one grievance in common--namely, the tyranny of the senatorial oligarchy. “The other day,” he told them, “the magistrates of Teanum had been stripped naked and scourged, because the consul’s lady complained that the public baths there had not been properly cleaned for her use. How great is the insolence of the young nobles, a single example would show. One of them was travelling through Apulia in a litter, and a countryman, meeting the bearers, asked whether they had got a dead man inside. For this word, the young lord ordered the poor man to be beaten to death with the cords of the litter.”
The chiefs of the senate perceived that the proposal to enfranchise the Italians had sapped his popularity at Rome. The consul Fannius, notwithstanding the part Gracchus had taken in his election, vehemently opposed the measure. He declared that he would again bring forward the alien act of Pennus, and expel all foreigners from Rome. The senate soon after ventured a step farther. One of the new tribunes, M. Livius Drusus by name, a young man of high birth, rich, eloquent, ambitious and determined, undertook to thwart the progress of his great colleague, and he put a veto on the law for enfranchising the Latins.
We must now return to the agrarian law. In furtherance of this law, Caius proposed to plant colonies in divers parts of Italy; Capua and Tarentum were fixed upon as the first of these new settlements: but here he showed no democratic tendencies; for no allotments were given to citizens, however poor, unless their character was respectable; and only a small number of colonists were to be sent to each place.
Drusus was not slow to take advantage of these unpopular provisions. He resolved to outbid Gracchus, and the agent of the nobility became a demagogue. He proposed to found no fewer than twelve colonies at once, each to consist of three thousand families, to be chosen without respect to character. All these colonists were to hold their allotments rent-free. Drusus openly avowed that he made these propositions in favour of the poor on the part of the senate, and declared in significant terms that he would not himself accept any part in the honour or emolument to be derived from the office of founding these colonies; whereas Gracchus had himself superintended all the public works which he had originated.
At this time, plans were on foot for extending the Italian system of colonisation to the provinces. In this very year, C. Sextius Calvinus, who had succeeded Flaccus as proconsul in Gaul, founded the town of Aquæ Sextiæ, still called Aix, in southern Gaul; four years later Narbo Martius, or Narbonne, was planted farther westward in the same country. But Gracchus himself was the first who had proposed to plant a colony beyond the Italian peninsula; and the place he fixed upon was Carthage. The plan was taken up by the senate. The new colony was to be called Junonia, and it was dexterously contrived that Gracchus himself, with Flaccus and another, should be the commissioners for distributing the lands and marking the limits of the settlement. In this way the formidable tribune and his most active supporter were obliged to quit Rome just when their presence was most needed to revive their drooping popularity.
The commissioners applied themselves to their task with so much assiduity that they returned to Rome in time for the consular elections. The ruthless Opimius was again candidate, and Gracchus exerted himself to the utmost to reorganise his party, but in vain. Popular feeling was strongly marked by the triumphant election of Opimius to the consulship, in company with Q. Fabius, son of Scipio’s elder brother, a man personally hostile to Gracchus.
The tribunician elections followed, and were equally significant of the temper of the people. Neither Gracchus nor Flaccus was re-elected. The remainder of the year indeed passed by quietly. But at the beginning of the year 121 B.C. Opimius became consul, and it was evident that danger was at hand.
[Sidenote: [121 B.C.]]
Gracchus and his friends prudently refrained from all offensive steps; but as he would give no grounds for proceeding against him, Opimius resolved to make them. News arrived from the new colony at Carthage to the effect that it had been planted on the ground cursed by Scipio; the wrath of the gods had been shown by the fact that wolves had torn down the boundary-posts. The senate met, and on the motion of Opimius ordered the tribunes to call a meeting of the tribes upon the Capitol, to rescind the law for colonising Carthage. The place was ominous, for there Ti. Gracchus had been slain.
On the appointed morning the impetuous Flaccus appeared with a large retinue armed with daggers. Gracchus followed with a considerable suite. Flaccus spoke vehemently to the tribes, while Gracchus stood aloof in the portico of the temple, in which Opimius was offering sacrifice. Here he was encountered by a retainer of the consul, who insolently pushed Gracchus aside, crying, “Make way for honest men!” Gracchus cast an angry look upon the man, who presently fell stabbed to the heart by an unknown hand. A cry of murder was raised, and the crowd fled in alarm to the Forum. Gracchus retired to his house, regretting the rash imprudence of his followers. Meantime the body of the slain man was paraded before the eyes of the terrified people. The senate armed the consuls with a decree, by which Gracchus was proclaimed a public enemy, and Opimius took station during the night in the temple of Castor, by the side of the Forum. He summoned the senate to a special sitting early next morning, and also sent to all on whom he could rely, desiring them to come armed to the Forum, and each man to bring two armed slaves. With this force he occupied the Capitol at daybreak, and prepared to execute the will of the senate.
Gracchus was irresolute; but Flaccus summoned to his house all who were ready to resist senatorial authority. Here he armed them with the Celtic weapons which he had brought home from his Gallic campaigns, and kept up their courage by deep potations of wine. Early in the morning he occupied a strong position on the Aventine, where he was joined by Gracchus, who sighed over the necessity of using force.
When the senate met, the popular leaders were summoned to attend in their places, and explain the proceedings of the previous day. They answered by proclaiming liberty to all slaves who should join them. Nothing could more show the desperate aspect which the struggle had assumed. Yet before blood flowed, Gracchus insisted on trying negotiation, and Q. Flaccus, a handsome youth of eighteen, son of the ex-tribune, was sent. But already the senate had invested Opimius with dictatorial power. The only answer the consul returned was that the leaders must appear before the senate, and explain their conduct; and when young Quintus came back with a fresh message, Opimius arrested him. He now set a price on the heads of Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus, and ordered an immediate attack upon the Aventine. Under arms appeared the noblest men at Rome, P. Lentulus, chief of the senate, old Metellus Macedonicus, and many others. For their leader they chose not the consul, but L. Junius Brutus, the Spanish conqueror. The attack was opened under cover of a shower of arrows from a body of Cretan bowmen. Little or no resistance was offered. Flaccus fled with his eldest son. Gracchus retired into the temple of Diana, where he was hardly prevented from putting an end to his own life by two faithful friends, the knights Pomponius and Lætorius. Urged by them to flee, he threw himself on his knees, and prayed the goddess to punish the unworthy people of Rome by everlasting slavery. All three then took their way down to the Porta Trigemina, hotly pursued. Pomponius made a stand in the gateway to cover his friend’s escape across the Sublician bridge, and fell pierced with many wounds. Lætorius showed no less devotion by gallantly turning to bay upon the bridge till he knew that Gracchus was safe over, when he sprang into the river and perished. Gracchus with a single slave reached the Grove of the Furies, and here both were found dead. The faithful slave had first held the sword to his master’s heart, and then fallen upon it himself. One Septimuleius cut off the head of Gracchus, and was rewarded by the fierce Opimius with its weight in gold.[81]
Flaccus and his eldest son had found shelter in the bath-house of a friend. The consul’s myrmidons tracked them, and threatened to set fire to the house. The owner, alarmed for his property, allowed another to disclose the secret, though he did not choose to speak the word himself. They were dragged forth and slain with every mark of indignity. The handsome youth who had been arrested before the assault commenced was allowed to put himself to death.
Great numbers of the partisans of Gracchus were thrown into prison, and put to death without trial. The stream of Tiber flowed thick with corpses. The inconstant mob plundered their houses without molestation. The widows and friends of the slain were forbidden by consular edict to wear mourning. When the bloody work was done, the city was purged by a formal lustration; and the consul, by order of the senate, laid the foundations of a temple of Concord. Under the inscription placed on it by Opimius was found next morning another to this effect:
“Workers of Discord raise a shrine to Concord.”
But none dared openly to avow themselves friends of the Gracchi. The son of Caius died soon after; and except Sempronia, the widow of Scipio, none of the race remained. Cornelia retired to Misenum, where she lived for many years, not so much sorrowing for the loss of her sons as dwelling with delight on the memory of their acts. Many visited her in retirement, chiefly learned Greeks, to hear the story of the bold reformers. Calmly and loftily she told the tale, declaring that her sons had found worthy graves in the temples of the gods. In after days her statue in bronze was set up in the Forum, with the Greek sandals on her feet which had been made a reproach to her illustrious father. Beneath it were placed these words only: To Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi.[b]
To quote again from Beesly’s[c] acute summing-up of Caius Gracchus.
“The man who originates is always so far greater than the man who imitates, and Caius only followed where his brother led. The very dream which Caius told to the people shows that his brother’s spell was still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason. But no doubt he profited by experience of the past. He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity wasted on the murderous crew whom he had sworn to punish. Pure in life, perfectly prepared for a death to which he considered himself foredoomed, glowing with one fervent passion, he took up his brother’s cause with a double portion of his brother’s spirit, because he had thought more before action, because he had greater natural eloquence, and because being forewarned he was forearmed.
“In spite of the labours of recent historians, the legislation of Caius Gracchus is still hard to understand. Where the original authorities contradict each other, as they often do, probable conjecture is the most which can be attained, and no attempt will be made here to specify what were the measures of the first tribunate of Caius and what of the second. The general scope and tendency of his legislation is clear enough. It was to overthrow the senatorial government, and in the new government to give the chief share of the executive power to the mercantile class, and the chief share of the legislative power to Italians. These were his immediate aims. Probably he meant to keep all the strings he thus set in motion in his own hands, so as to be practically monarch of Rome. But whether he definitely conceived the idea of monarchy, and, looking beyond his own requirements, pictured to himself a successor at some future time inheriting the authority which he had established, no one can say. In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative. But had he lived and retained his influence we may be sure that the Empire would have been established a century earlier than it was.”[c]
George Long[d] says: “We may acquit the Gracchi of the Roman vice of greediness, but not of ill-directed ambition. Their object was not to enrich themselves, but to destroy the power of the Optimates by rousing against them the people, and using their votes to make a revolution. But this popular agitation increased an evil which already existed. The Gracchi used the popular vote for their purpose, as the nobles had long used it for their ends. Under the name of the public interest men on both sides sought their own.”
FOOTNOTES
[74] [The number of sons qualified to hold public property was two.]
[75] [George Long[d] defends their authenticity, saying: “The critics whose eyes are so sharp that they cannot see what is before them and see what is not, tell us that these fragments are rhetorical inventions. Now Gracchus’ speeches were read in Cicero’s time and later; and it is as reasonable to suppose that Appian and Plutarch used these speeches, as to suppose that they invented speeches or copied from those who invented them. The speeches are like genuine stuff.”]
[76] [The difficulty in the way of the first alternative here suggested is that in all probability Octavius would have vetoed any proposal for reform. The second alternative was impracticable because Tiberius was constitutionally ineligible to re-election. It is doubtful whether any constitutional means of reform existed.]
[77] Piso, the other consul, was employed in extinguishing the Slave War in Sicily.
[78] [George Long[d] doubts this, saying that Caius was still in Spain.]
[79] [It is now generally agreed that various classes of poor people should be supported by the government; the question is whether the Romans were wise in supporting so many and in such a way.]
[80] [Appian,[g] the authority for this matter, more probably means that before the tribuneship of Caius a law had been passed permitting the re-election of a tribune in case of a lack of candidates.]
[81] [“This,” says Long,[d] “is the first instance in Roman history of head-money being offered and paid, but it was not the last.”]
XVI. THE JUGURTHINE AND OTHER WARS
[Sidenote: [123-112 B.C.]]
The cruel times which followed made the best men of both parties regret the untimely end of those who had sacrificed wealth, rank, tranquillity, in the hope of reforming the state by peaceful methods. But Marius was not the worst of the successors of the Gracchi. So savage were the party quarrels which followed, that good men shrank in despair from the cause of reform, and the conduct of the popular party was abandoned to needy demagogues. Such is the common course of revolutions. They begin with noble aspirations; they end in reckless violence. At length public spirit is lost, and all men, sighing for tranquillity, seek it in the strong rule of an armed soldier. It is a thrice-told tale.
As the murder of Tiberius had been avenged upon Nasica, so there was even now found a tribune bold enough to indict Opimius. The accuser bore the time-honoured name of Decius; the defender was that Carbo who was more than suspected of Scipio’s murder, and who was now consul (120 B.C.); his eloquence and the terror that prevailed procured an acquittal. But Carbo, though he earned the gratitude of the nobility by defending their champion, did not find his eloquence equally effectual in defending himself. It was at that time the practice of young Romans who aspired to distinction to attract public notice by indicting some great offender before the people. L. Licinius Crassus, son of Crassus the pontifex, and brother-in-law of C. Gracchus, though only one-and-twenty years of age, felt within him that power of speech which in later days gained him the appellation of the orator; and he singled out Carbo for attack. So fierce was the invective of the young accuser that Carbo put an end to his own life by poison.
The nobility probably cared little for the life of a worthless renegade. The best men in the senate, indeed, regretted what they considered the necessity of taking up arms against Gracchus. First among these was old Metellus Macedonicus, who died full of honours and years seven years after the death of C. Gracchus. He left four sons. Before his death three of them had been consuls; the fourth was candidate for the consulship at his father’s death; but his two nephews, sons of his brother Calvus, were more distinguished than his own offspring. Quintus the younger, under the title of Numidicus, shortly afterwards became the most eminent man in the ranks of the nobility. In the course of twenty years the Metelli enjoyed six consulships and four censorships, besides five triumphs. Such an aggregation of honours in one family was without example. The worst fault of the Metelli was pride; but if they were not beloved, they were at least respected by the people.
A person who plays a large part in the events of the next years was M. Æmilius Scaurus, a man of more dubious character. Horace names him with some of the greatest men of olden time; Sallust represents him as disgracing high qualities by an inordinate love for money. The facts we shall have to record will show that in his earlier days he was infected by the corruption of his compeers, while in later life his prudence was so great as to stand for principle. He was born in 163 B.C., so that at the fall of C. Gracchus he had reached that ripe age which was required for the consulship. Though he belonged to a great patrician gens, his family was so obscure that he was accounted a new man. His father had been a charcoal merchant, and left his son so poor that the future ruler of the empire had at one time contemplated following the trade of a money-changer. But he was encouraged to try the chances of political life, and in 115 B.C. he reached the consulate. By his ability and discretion he so won the confidence of the senate that at the first vacancy he was named princeps. He was a man less seen than felt. His oratory wanted fire; but his talents for business, and his dexterity in the management of parties, made him the most important person in the field of politics from the fall of Gracchus to the rise of Sulla.
The more prudent or more severe among the senators believed that reform in the state might be averted by a reformation of manners. But in vain. The business of Jugurtha brought into full light the venality and corruption of the dominant statesmen.
We have said little of the wars of Rome since the fall of Numantia and the termination of the Servile War. They were not considerable. The kingdom of Pergamus had formed the tenth province. The eldest son of old Metellus earned the title of Balearicus for subduing the Balearic Isles (121 B.C.); his eldest nephew that of Dalmaticus for putting down an outbreak of the Dalmatians (117 B.C.).
More attention was excited by wars in the south of Gaul, and more permanent effects followed. The success of Fulvius Flaccus, the friend of the Gracchi, in defending Marseilles, has been already noticed. C. Sextius, who succeeded Flaccus in 123 B.C., secured his conquests by founding the colony of Aquæ Sextiæ, which under the name of Aix still attracts visitors for the sake of its hot springs. These conquests brought the Romans in contact with the Allobrogians, between the Rhone and the Isère; and this people threw themselves on the protection of Bituitus, chief of the Arvernians (Auvergne). Q. Fabius, while Opimius was crushing C. Gracchus, crossed the Isère. A desperate battle ensued, in which the proconsul, with 30,000 men, is said to have so completely routed 200,000 Gauls that in the battle and pursuit no less than 130,000 fell. Fabius was suffering from a quartan ague, but in the heat of conflict shook off his disease. He assumed the title of Allobrogicus with better right than many who were decorated with these national surnames. The war was now carried into the Arvernian country, and the great triumphs of Cæsar might have been anticipated by some senatorial commander, when it was brought to a sudden end. An enemy, formidable alike to Romans and Gauls, well known a few years later under the dreaded names of Cimbrians and Teutones, had appeared on the northeastern frontier of Gaul, and threatened to overrun all southern Europe. But circumstances deferred for a time the conflict between Italy and those barbarous hordes, and for the present the dominion of Rome was firmly established in the southern angle of Gaul, between the Alps and Pyrenees, a district which still preserves its Roman name, “the province,” in the French Provence. The whole northern coast of the Mediterranean, from the Pillars of Hercules to Syria, now owned the sovereignty of Rome.[b]
THE JUGURTHINE WAR
The miserable inefficiency and complete worthlessness of the Roman government was especially noticeable in the Jugurthine War, which on that account, and not because of its magnitude or dangerous character, is of interest.
Masinissa, known to us as king of Numidia, died in the year 148 and left the government of his kingdom to be shared in common by his three sons, Micipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal. The death of the last two following soon after, Micipsa, the eldest, was left to reign alone. He was a feeble, peacefully inclined old man, who preferred devoting himself to Greek philosophy; and, as his two sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal, were not yet of age, he abandoned the administration to his nephew Jugurtha, an illegitimate son of Mastanabal. Jugurtha was a magnificent type of man, bold and full of talent, well versed in all the arts of war, and held in high esteem by the Numidians.
As leader of the Numidian auxiliary forces in the Numantian War, he had distinguished himself in Scipio’s army by his bravery, and had won many friends among the Romans of name. When he returned home he brought Micipsa a letter from Scipio, in which the latter congratulates Micipsa on his gallant nephew, who, he declares, has endeared himself to every Roman by his services. Micipsa now began to fear lest this youth, standing so high in the favour of both Romans and Numidians, might become dangerous to his own two sons. He therefore thought it best to propitiate him by benefits; he adopted him, and in his will provided that Jugurtha should share his kingdom with his sons.
[Sidenote: [118-112 B.C.]]
Micipsa died in the year 118. His eyes were scarcely closed when his two sons, grudging Jugurtha his share in the kingdom, fell out with him so that the idea of mutual government seemed no longer feasible.
But before a division of kingdom and treasure could be arranged, Jugurtha, who had been infuriated by irritating words which Hiempsal had uttered in a rage, caused Hiempsal to be set upon in his house and murdered. He then began war against Adherbal, intending to obtain mastery over the entire kingdom. Adherbal, driven from the kingdom, fled to Rome, where he laid his complaint before the senate, which had taken upon itself to carry out the provisions of Micipsa’s will. Jugurtha had taken the measure of the Romans before Numantia; he now sent an embassy with a quantity of money to Rome, and this soon convinced those who had just been pleading Adherbal’s cause of the injustice of his complaint.
Jugurtha was now pronounced blameless; Adherbal had himself commenced the war, and his brother had been murdered by his own followers because of his cruelties towards them. The Roman senate was quite willing to hand over the whole kingdom to the open-handed Jugurtha, but the evidence of bribery was somewhat too strong. So in order that the scandal might not become too flagrant, the leaders of the senate decided to send a commission of ten men to Numidia, who should divide that kingdom equally between the two pretenders. L. Opimius, the conqueror of C. Gracchus, was placed at the head of the commission, and neither he nor the others let slip the opportunity of turning the occasion to their own profits.
In exchange for Jugurtha’s money, it was arranged that the western half of Numidia, which was fertile and well populated, should be his portion; whilst to Adherbal was assigned the eastern part, chiefly consisting of sandy deserts. Jugurtha was not content with the half. Emboldened by his previous successes, he made inroads into Adherbal’s territory, seeking plunder and hoping that Adherbal by way of revenge would make an attack on him on his own ground, and so give him a pretext for taking his lands from him.
As, however, Adherbal contented himself with making complaints to Rome, he began the war without pretext. He invaded Adherbal’s territory at the head of a large force, and taking him by surprise in a night attack near Cirta (now Constantine) defeated him utterly. Adherbal with a few horsemen sought refuge in the capital. Whilst this was besieged by Jugurtha, and defended by the numerous Italians resident in the town, there appeared envoys from Rome who had been appointed to receive Adherbal’s first complaints. These demanded that Jugurtha should discontinue the war, and accept their mediation. The envoys were young men who made little impression on the king; he refused their demand and the siege was continued with redoubled vigour, without the Roman senate appearing to take any further interest in the matter.
It was only after five months of siege--when Adherbal had sent a fresh appeal to Rome imploring help in the most urgent manner, pointing out that Jugurtha’s aggression affected not only him but the Roman people also--that a decision was arrived at. They did not decide, however, as the honour of the state required, and the minority urged a declaration of war; but they sent a fresh embassy consisting of men of the highest consideration. At the head they sent M. Æmilius Scaurus, at that time the most honoured and influential man in Rome, but no better than the others, only possessed of more charm and experienced in the art of disguising his inward viciousness under the cloak of worth and dignity.
Jugurtha appeared in Utica at the summons of Scaurus; there were long consultations, and finally the embassy took its departure without gaining anything and without declaring war. The honourable Scaurus and his worthy companions had also permitted themselves to be bribed. The siege of Cirta was continued till Adherbal, urged by the Italian merchants who were settled in the town, and who believed their lives to be safe, surrendered on condition that his life and the lives of the garrison should be spared.
Scarcely was the surrender accomplished, when Jugurtha had Adherbal tortured to death, and the inhabitants, Africans and Italians, slaughtered. This monstrous crime of the barbarian king, which would not have been possible but for the laxity and infamous venality of the Roman government, raised a storm of indignation throughout Italy. In Rome the people clamoured for war, and were loud in their denunciation of the senate, which had so shamefully sacrificed the honour of the state and the lives of so many Italian citizens. Still the senate hesitated to yield to the anger of the populace and declare war against Jugurtha. It was only when C. Memmius--a man of action and eloquence, who was elected for the next year to the tribuneship of the people--threatened publicly that as tribune he would call the guilty to account, that the senate became frightened, yielded, and declared war (112).
[Sidenote: [112-111 B.C.]]
The consul L. Calpurnius Bestia undertook the direction of the war, and preparations were made with great ardour; Scaurus himself going with the force as legate. Bestia pressed forward into Numidia, and fortune favoured him, so that Jugurtha lost courage and asked for a suspension of hostilities. During the conference Jugurtha bribed Scaurus and through him the consul, so that the matter was arranged. Jugurtha was to throw himself on his conqueror’s mercy, and the Roman renegade, in exchange for an insignificant sum of money and some elephants, was to give him his freedom and to leave him in unrestricted possession of his kingdom.
When this bargain became known in Rome, C. Memmius, now tribune, insisted on a judicial inquiry and on Jugurtha being summoned before the assembly of the Roman people that he might give information as to the share taken by each of the different parties in the peace conference. “If the king really surrendered unconditionally,” said he, “he will not refuse to appear; if he refuses, you may learn from that fact the nature of this peace and this surrender, which has brought to Jugurtha amnesty for his crimes, to a small number of our nobles exceeding riches, and to our fatherland shame and disgrace.”[c] For this picturesque incident we may turn to Sallust, the original authority.
SALLUST’S ACCOUNT OF JUGURTHA AT ROME
[Sidenote: [111-110 B.C.]]
During the course of these proceedings at Rome, those whom Bestia had left in Numidia in command of the army, following the example of their general, had been guilty of many scandalous transactions. Some, seduced by gold, had restored Jugurtha his elephants; others had sold him his deserters; others had ravaged the lands of those at peace with us; so strong a spirit of rapacity, like the contagion of a pestilence, had pervaded the breasts of all.
Cassius, when the measure proposed by Memmius had been carried, and whilst all the nobility were in consternation, set out on his mission to Jugurtha, whom, alarmed as he was, and despairing of his fortune, from a sense of guilt, he admonished “that, since he had surrendered himself to the Romans, he had better make trial of their mercy than their power.” He also pledged his own word, which Jugurtha valued not less than that of the public, for his safety. Such at that period, was the reputation of Cassius.
Jugurtha, accordingly, accompanied Cassius to Rome, but without any mark of royalty, and in the garb, as much as possible, of a suppliant; and, though he felt great confidence on his own part, and was supported by all those through whose power or villainy he had accomplished his projects, he purchased, by a vast bribe, the aid of Caius Bæbius, a tribune of the people, by whose audacity he hoped to be protected against the law, and against all harm.
An assembly of the people being convoked, Memmius, although they were violently exasperated against Jugurtha (some demanding that he should be cast into prison, others that, unless he should name his accomplices in guilt, he should be put to death, according to the usage of their ancestors, as a public enemy), yet, regarding rather their character than their resentment, endeavoured to calm their turbulence and mitigate their rage; and assured them that, as far as depended on him, the public faith should not be broken. At length, when silence was obtained, he brought forward Jugurtha, and addressed them. He detailed the misdeeds of Jugurtha at Rome and in Numidia, and set forth his crimes towards his father and brothers; and admonished the prince, “that the Roman people, though they were well aware by whose support and agency he had acted, yet desired further testimony from himself; that, if he disclosed the truth, there was great hope for him in the honour and clemency of the Romans; but if he concealed it, he would certainly not save his accomplices, but ruin himself and his hopes forever.”
But when Memmius had concluded his speech, and Jugurtha was expected to give his answer, Caius Bæbius, the tribune of the people, whom I have just noticed as having been bribed, enjoined the prince to hold his peace; and though the multitude who formed the assembly were desperately enraged, and endeavoured to terrify the tribune by outcries, by angry looks, by violent gestures, and by every other act to which anger prompts, his audacity was at last triumphant. The people, mocked and set at naught, withdrew from the place of assembly; and the confidence of Jugurtha, Bestia, and the others whom this investigation had alarmed, was greatly augmented.
There was at this period in Rome a certain Numidian named Massiva, a son of Gulussa and grandson of Masinissa, who, from having been, in the dissensions among princes, opposed to Jugurtha, had been obliged, after the surrender of Cirta and the murder of Adherbal, to make his escape out of Africa. Spurius Albinus, who was consul with Quintus Minucius Rufus the year after Bestia, prevailed upon this man, as he was of the family of Masinissa, and as odium and terror hung over Jugurtha for his crimes, to petition the senate for the kingdom of Numidia. Albinus, being eager for the conduct of a war, was desirous that affairs should be disturbed, rather than sink into tranquillity; especially as, in the division of the provinces, Numidia had fallen to himself, and Macedonia to Minucius.
When Massiva proceeded to carry these suggestions into execution, Jugurtha, finding that he had no sufficient support in his friends, as a sense of guilt deterred some and evil report or timidity others from coming forward in his behalf, directed Bomilcar, his most attached and faithful adherent, to procure by the aid of money, by which he had already effected so much, assassins to kill Massiva; and to do it secretly if he could, but if secrecy should be impossible, to cut him off in any way whatsoever. This commission Bomilcar soon found means to execute; and, by the agency of men versed in such service, ascertained the direction of his journeys, his hours of leaving home, and the times at which he resorted to particular places, and, when all was ready, placed his assassins in ambush. One of their number sprang upon Massiva, though with too little caution, and killed him; but being himself caught, he made at the instigation of many, and especially of Albinus the consul, a full confession. Bomilcar was accordingly committed for trial, though rather on the principles of reason and justice than in accordance with the law of nations, as he was in the retinue of one who had come to Rome on a pledge of the public faith for his safety. But Jugurtha, though clearly guilty of the crime, did not cease to struggle against the truth, until he perceived that the infamy of the deed was too strong for his interest or his money. For which reason, although at the commencement of the proceedings he had given fifty of his friends as bail for Bomilcar, yet thinking more of his kingdom than of the sureties, he sent him off privately into Numidia, for he feared that if such a man should be executed, his other subjects would be deterred from obeying him. A few days after, he himself departed, having been ordered by the senate to quit Italy. But, as he was going from Rome, he is said, after frequently looking back on it in silence, to have at last exclaimed that “it was a venal city, and would soon perish, if it could but find a purchaser!”[82][d]
A WAR OF BRIBERY
The war accordingly recommenced. Spurius Postumius Albinus took the command. But the African force was so demoralised that nothing was to be done with it, and moreover Albinus also allowed himself to be bribed. Nothing was done during the whole summer. When, however, the consul went to Rome, where the election of consuls for the ensuing year demanded his presence, and gave the command into the hands of his brother Aulus Postumius--the latter, a foolhardy and incompetent man, endeavoured to make use of this short interval for his own glory and enrichment. In the middle of winter he marched to the interior of Numidia, bent on surprising and overthrowing the inaccessible fortress of Suthul, where Jugurtha kept his treasures. All went well till he came in front of the town; but as he was not able to take it, he pursued Jugurtha, who drew him into unknown parts of the country, and suddenly, one stormy night, having won over some of the Roman officers and men by bribes, attacked him in his camp. The Romans fled, mostly unarmed, and took refuge on a neighbouring hill, where they were surrounded. Nothing remained to their leader but surrender, and under conditions dictated by Jugurtha as follows: “The Roman army to withdraw under the yoke, and to quit Numidia; the treaty of peace annulled by the senate to be again in force.”
The disgrace could not have been greater. In Rome the displeasure of the people could no longer be kept within bounds. In accordance with the proposal of the people’s tribune, C. Mamilius Limetamus, there was instituted a judicial examination of all those through whose fault Jugurtha had been able to defy the senate, and those generals and envoys who had taken money from him. An extraordinary commission of inquiry was convened, and Calpurnius Bestia, Spurius Albinus, L. Opimius--who was especially odious to the people--as well as several less celebrated men, were sentenced to exile.
That cunning scoundrel, Æmilius Scaurus, got off clear; he had indeed so managed that he was one of those chosen to act on the board of the commission of inquiry. The treaty of peace of Aulus Postumius was naturally declared inoperative, and the war was renewed. In order completely to put an end to the disgrace, the command was given to Q. Cæcilius Metellus, consul for the year 109, another, certainly, of the rigid and callous patricians, but one of the few men in the government inaccessible to bribes, and known to be an experienced and prudent general.
METELLUS IN COMMAND
[Sidenote: [109 B.C.]]
Accompanied by capable lieutenants such as C. Marius and P. Rutilius Rufus, he arrived in Africa in the year 109; but he found the army in such a state of demoralisation and confusion that he needed more time to restore it to discipline, and by dint of severe measures render it fit for service. When he entered Numidia, Jugurtha quickly recognised that the condition of affairs was changed, and he repeatedly proffered Metellus his submission, merely demanding a guarantee for his life. But Metellus intended the war to end in one way only--with the execution of Jugurtha, and he did not scruple during the negotiations to endeavour to induce the servants of the king to deliver their master dead or living into his hands. When Jugurtha realised the intentions of the Romans, he broke off negotiations and prepared himself for a desperate resistance.
During his march to the interior of Numidia, Metellus crossed a range of barren mountains, on the other side of which flowed the river Muthul, in a wide plain, a few miles distant from the mountains; from the mountains to the river a low chain of partly wooded hills traversed the plain obliquely. On these hills Jugurtha had stationed his troops, in two divisions, in order to surprise the Romans. One under Bomilcar waited near the river, but the larger division, under Jugurtha himself, was ambushed nearer the mountains.
The choice of the place and the way in which he drew up his forces proved the king’s military talent. Metellus could not remain stationary on the mountains; he must try to reach the river across the waterless plain. He therefore sent a portion of his force under the legate Rufus in a straight line to the river, there to pitch their camp; he himself marched with the remainder of his army across the plain toward the line of hills on the right, intending to drive the foe from their position. But he had scarcely descended to the plain, when he was attacked on all sides by Jugurtha’s men and prevented from advancing. At the same time Bomilcar threw himself upon the force under Rufus. In both places the Romans were sorely harassed, and the event long remained doubtful; at last the ability and endurance of the Roman foot soldiers conquered. When Metellus and Marius with part of their force reached the foot of the chain of hills and set themselves to storm the heights held by the enemy, the latter fled, making scarcely any resistance. Meanwhile Rufus likewise came off conqueror; and so, late that evening, the two divisions of the Roman army met in the glory of victory.
After this encounter at Muthul, Jugurtha dismissed the greater part of his troops, and confined himself to guerilla warfare. Skirmishing round Numidia, wherever the Romans were devastating the country and destroying towns, he harassed and annoyed them in every possible way. As winter approached, and Metellus, in order to facilitate the collection of supplies, withdrew his troops into the Roman provinces, Jugurtha again made overtures of peace. Metellus declared himself inclined to come to terms. First of all he demanded the surrender of the elephants, some of the horses and weapons and three hundred hostages; also that of the Roman deserters, three thousand in number, who were to be executed. Next he demanded two hundred thousand pounds of silver, and his demand was agreed to by the king; but when finally Metellus demanded that the king himself should become his prisoner, Jugurtha broke off the negotiations.
At the same time Bomilcar, Jugurtha’s most trusted friend, who took an active part in the negotiations, was secretly suborned by Metellus to deliver the king into his hands dead or alive. Bomilcar might have feared that, in the case of peace being again concluded, Jugurtha would denounce him to the Romans as the murderer of Massiva; and was therefore ready to betray his master, if Metellus guaranteed him his own safety. But Jugurtha discovered the plot and had Bomilcar executed. The war still continued.
[Sidenote: [109-108 B.C.]]
Jugurtha, though weakened, was not at the end of his resources. In that country--furrowed with deserts, as well as surrounded by them--he could long maintain the war, more particularly as not only his own subjects but the free neighbouring races were his enthusiastic followers, adoring the hero who so bravely and with such success had defended his native country against its hated enemies.
When in the year 108 Metellus again opened the campaign and engaged Jugurtha in a pitched battle, Jugurtha fled far to the south, to the confines of the great desert, where in an oasis was a fortified town called Thala. Here he retired with his children, his treasure, and his best troops; an arid desert, ten miles broad, was between him and the pursuing enemy. Still Metellus marched through the desert, taking water for his men in skins, and after forty days’ siege he took Thala. But he failed to catch Jugurtha; at the critical moment he had escaped with his children and his treasure. He fled through the district south of Mount Atlas--to the Belidulgerid of to-day--and called on the hordes that dwelt there to take arms against the national enemy.
He returned to his kingdom with a force composed of Gætulians, and still further strengthened by a new ally--King Bocchus of Mauretania, his father-in-law, who, after long hesitation, had finally decided to make common cause with him against the Romans. The two monarchs led their troops to the neighbourhood of Cirta, then in the hands of the Romans, and Metellus advanced to meet them. But nothing decisive happened; for meanwhile Metellus had heard from Rome that Marius, his former lieutenant, had been chosen consul for the year 107, and had been given the chief command in Africa by the people, and so all operations were suspended.
MARIUS APPEARS AS COMMANDER
[Sidenote: [108-107 B.C.]]
Caius Marius, who in the next few years was to play so conspicuous a part in Roman history, was a man of low birth, the son of a Latin peasant from the village of Cereatæ, near Arpinum. He was lacking in all higher culture. He was essentially a soldier, with the inborn faculty for war. When only twenty-two, he distinguished himself in the army of Scipio Æmilianus in Numantia by his bravery and by his soldierly bearing. Ambition drove him into the service of the state. In 119, supported by the powerful Metellus, he became a tribune of the people, and at that time, with much determination and military impetuosity, he carried through a law directed against the nobles, dealing with bribery and the fraudulent acquisition of office. When the consul Cotta prevailed upon the senate to oppose the law and to call Marius to account, the latter appeared in the senate and threatened to imprison Cotta by force, if he did not abandon his resolve. Cotta appealed to his fellow consul, L. Cæcilius Metellus; and when the latter agreed with Cotta, Marius ordered his servant to conduct Metellus to prison. As no tribune would intercede on Metellus’ behalf, the senate gave way and the law took its course.
From that time Marius was established in the favour of the people; but the nobility worked against the ambitious aspirant where they could, and they succeeded in defeating him when he stood for the curule chair, and again when he sought the plebeian ædileship. The prætorship he succeeded in obtaining in the year 115, but with the greatest difficulty.
Marius remained legate to Q. Metellus in the Jugurthine War because of the opportunities offered for showing military activity. He helped Metellus to re-establish military discipline and to win victory for the Roman standard. His courage and knowledge of warfare, his cunning and intrepidity, and strict military discipline, were everywhere celebrated; he gained the affections of the common soldiers by sharing with them all their hardships and privations. After the battle of Muthul, where he especially distinguished himself, his praise was in every mouth; and the soldiers wrote home that there would be no end to the war unless Marius was made consul and commander-in-chief. This was vexatious to Metellus, and there seems to have been considerable friction between these two proud men. When Marius asked for furlough from the commander-in-chief that he might go to Rome and make application for the consulship, Metellus with the pride of rank annoyed him with the question, “Will you not be content if you become consul with my son?” Metellus’ son was then twenty-two years old.
Metellus only granted Marius leave of absence twelve days before the election to the consulship took place; but Marius travelled the whole way from the camp to Utica in two days and one night, and from Utica he arrived in Rome within four days. On his application for the consulship he did not scruple to disparage Metellus’ conduct of the war, and hinted that he was purposely protracting the struggle so as to remain longer in command; and he promised that with even half the troops he would in a short time deliver Jugurtha, dead or alive, into the hands of the Romans. The people treated the election as a party question, and Marius as one of themselves was chosen consul by unanimous acclamation, and the conduct of the African War transferred into his hands. This was, after a long interval, another case in which a homo novus attained to the consulate--naturally to the great annoyance of the nobility, who however could do nothing against the will of the people, excited as they were at the idea that after long oppression they had found in Marius a chief and a leader of their own.
[Sidenote: [107-104 B.C.]]
Marius made use of the time before his departure for the seat of war to irritate the people in every way against the rule of the nobility. “The haughty nobles,” said he, “passed their youth in luxury and revelling; then, when elected to the post of general, they would hasten to glean from Greek books some information on the subject of the art of war. Let the people leave them to their revels, and choose their generals from men who are inured to heat and cold, and every hardship, who, instead of pictures of ancestors, have honourable wounds and marks of conflict to display.”
When levying the troops he was to lead to Africa, he chose his men contrary to the prevailing system--from the lowest orders of the people, the so-called proletariat. Through this innovation he gained at any rate a number of devoted adherents; but he degraded the tone of the army by putting swords into the hands of people without homes or property, who would seek profit in warfare and be more eager to serve their general than their country.
When Marius came to Africa, he received his army from the hands of the legate Rufus; Metellus, infuriated, had already left, in order to avoid the rival who was to supplant him. He continued the war and was favoured by fortune, though he did not end it immediately, as he had pledged himself to do.
He plundered and devastated the whole Numidian country, and those towns not yet garrisoned he forced to submission; he overshadowed the expedition Metellus had led against Thala by a still bolder and more skilfully conducted campaign against Capsa, a fortified town further south; took a rocky fortress on the river, Mulucha on the borders of Numidia and Mauretania and conquered the two kings opposed to him one after the other in sanguinary battles. But the end of the war was not to be thought of till the person of Jugurtha should be in the hands of the Romans. That was at last compassed in the early part of the year 106.
King Bocchus, discouraged by the defeats he had suffered, had visions of peace and friendship with Rome, and in secret negotiations he treacherously promised to deliver his son-in-law Jugurtha to Marius. He desired that L. Sulla, the quæstor of Marius, and a favourite with him, should be deputed to work with him and capture Jugurtha; and Sulla had courage and determination enough to trust himself with this unknown person, whose intentions were not yet understood.
Accompanied by a son of Bocchus, he undertook the dangerous journey and rode boldly right through the camp of Jugurtha. He had to persuade Bocchus by definite and detailed proposals to decide upon a treaty with Rome. Jugurtha was enticed by Bocchus into ambush and taken prisoner, under the pretext of taking him out of the way of Sulla. “So fell the great traitor by the treachery of those nearest to him.” He was carried with his children to the camp of Marius; and thus the war came to an end.
Marius remained till the following year in Africa, to inaugurate the new order of things there. Numidia was still reckoned a kingdom; but the new king Gauda, a half brother of Jugurtha, and the last descendant of Masinissa, was compelled to relinquish the western portion to Bocchus. Numidia was not converted into a Roman province, because the protection of the border against the hordes of the deserts would always have required a considerable standing army of Roman soldiers.[c]
Ihne[e] says that the Romans were “as ungenerous and as unjust to him as to Hannibal and Perseus and all their great foes. On the whole he inspires less abhorrence than Metellus or Marius or Sulla, or the wretches who took his bribes.”
Plutarch describes the last days of Jugurtha with terrible vigour.
PLUTARCH ON JUGURTHA’S DEATH
“Marius, bringing home his army again out of Libya into Italy, took possession of his consulship the first day of January (on which day the Romans begin their [second] year) 104, and therewithal made his triumph into the city of Rome, shewing that to the Romans, which they thought never to have seen: and that was, King Jugurtha prisoner, who was so subtile a man, and could so well frame himself unto his fortune, and with his craft and subtlety was of so great courage besides, that none of his enemies ever hoped to have had him alive. But it is said, that after he was led in triumph, he fell mad straight upon it. And the pomp of triumph being ended, he was carried into prison, where the sergeants for haste to have the spoil of him, tore his apparel by force from off his back: and because they would take away his rich gold earrings that hung at his ears, they pulled away with them the tip of his ear, and then cast him naked to the bottom of a deep dungeon, his wits being altogether troubled. Yet when they did throw him down, laughing he said: O Hercules, how cold are your stoves! He lived there yet six days, fighting with hunger, and desiring always to prolong his miserable life unto the last hour: the which was a just deserved punishment for his wicked life.”[f]
THE CIMBRIANS AND THE TEUTONS
[Sidenote: [113-105 B.C.]]
Whilst in distant Africa the Romans were engaged in making war upon the various savage hordes of the desert, from the forests of Germany a new danger threatened them on the borders of their empire. For reasons unknown, the Cimbrians (i.e., “the combatants”), a Teutonic tribe, had forsaken their home by the Baltic, and withdrawn to the northern Alpine countries to seek new abiding places. Here they adopted a nomadic form of existence, wandering hither and thither, taking their wives and children and all their possessions with them wherever they went. That they and the other Teutonic tribes afterwards united to them are to be classed as Germans, and not, as the Romans formerly thought, as Celts, is proved by their names, their stature, and others of their characteristics, and further by the fact that still later we find mention of the Cimbrians in the Danish or Cimbrian peninsula, and the Teutons in northeast Germany in the vicinity of the Baltic, together no doubt constituting the last remains of this tribe. But in the course of its long wandering there had been added to this German nucleus not only other German-speaking rovers in search of booty, but also numerous Celtic hordes, so that we even find leaders with Celtic names at the head of the Cimbrians. The Cimbrians and Teutons are described as tall and slightly built men with blue eyes and auburn hair--strong, wild, warlike figures. In battle they fought with impetuous bravery. After a victory they gave themselves up to the lust of cruelty; there was a general destruction and the prisoners were either hanged or butchered to make sacrifices for their gods. From the blood which flowed from the sacrifices, the priestesses, old gray-haired women in white linen garments, foretold the future.
We have no means of ascertaining for how long the Cimbrians wandered through the north and east of Europe, nor do we know which roads they traversed. From what is now Bohemia they wandered southward to Noricum--the Carinthia and Carniola of to-day. Here, on the borders of the Roman Empire, they appeared in the year 113. On being informed of this, the Romans sent out the consul Cn. Papirius Carbo, the son of that Carbo who was a marked figure of the Gracchian period, with an army to guard the Alpine passes of that neighbourhood. When Carbo, approaching from Aquileia, entered Noricum, the Cimbrians, who had heard of the great power of the Romans, sent them envoys, who explained that they, the Cimbrians, desired to be allowed to settle amongst the Noricans, and had no desire to go to war with them. Carbo replied that the Roman people were bound to the Noricans by bonds of hereditary hospitality, and that he had not the right to grant the Cimbrians permission to settle in Noricum. The Cimbrians decided to proceed farther. Carbo gave them guides who were to lead them out of the country; but by his instructions these guides brought them to a place in the neighbourhood of Noreia (now Görz), near which he and his men were ambushed, and as the Cimbrians passed they attacked them. But this piece of treachery recoiled upon the perpetrator. Carbo’s force was beaten and would have been completely destroyed had not a tremendous storm hindered the Cimbrians from pursuit. It was now in the power of the Cimbrians to enter Italy by these Alpine passes, but they preferred to cross the northern Alps and wander westward towards Gaul. In this direction they persuaded two tribes of Helvetia, the Tigurini and Tugeni, to join them, or at any rate to travel the same route. Since the conquests made in western Gaul in the year 125 by Fulvius Flaccus, the friend of C. Gracchus, the Romans had founded a new province between the Alps and the Pyrenees, bounded by the Cevennes and the Mediterranean, with a principal town, Narbo. This was now threatened by the Cimbrians and other wandering tribes, and so in 109 the Romans sent the consul M. Junius Silanus there at the head of an army.
The Cimbrians appealed to him to show them in what part of the country they might be allowed to settle; but instead of answering, he attacked them. He suffered a terrible defeat. Instead of following up their victory, the Cimbrians despatched an embassy to Rome with an appeal to be allowed to settle in that country, and turned to do battle with the neighbouring Celtic tribes. Meanwhile in the year 107 the above-mentioned Helvetian tribes invaded the Roman province under the leadership of Divico, and springing upon the consul, Cassius Longinus, from an ambush, utterly defeated him. The consul himself was killed, and his legate C. Popilius, who had fled into camp with the remainder of the force, could only save his men by a disgraceful treaty. He gave hostages, resigned half his baggage, and withdrew under the yoke.
The position of the Romans in Gaul was so shaken by these numerous defeats that the town of Tolosa (Toulouse) revolted and took the Roman garrison prisoners. As, however, neither the Cimbrians nor the Helvetians troubled the province further, Q. Servilius Cæpio, who was the consul there in the year 106, was able to regain possession of the town by a trick. He took advantage of this opportunity to rifle completely the temple of the Gallic god of healing, called by the Romans Apollo; but when the booty--alleged to be about 100,000 pounds of gold and 110,000 pounds of silver--was sent to Massilia, the convoy was attacked on the road by bandits, who overpowered a weak resistance, and took away gold and silver, at the instigation, it is said, of Cæpio and his officers, who took their share of the plunder.
[Sidenote: [105-103 B.C.]]
In the next year, 105, the Cimbrians again appeared in the province, under their king, Boiorix, this time with the serious intention of going on into Italy. In the province, besides the troops under the proconsul Cæpio, there was now a second force under the consul Cn. Mallius Maximus; this occupied the right bank of the Rhone, the other force the left bank, both being drawn up to await the enemy, without either section paying much attention to the movements of the other. When, however, a corps under the legate M. Aurelius Scaurus was attacked and completely defeated by the Cimbrians, the consul ordered the proconsul to lead his force over the Rhone and unite with his own men. Cæpio, who had a personal enmity against Mallius, and plumed himself on his superior birth, obeyed with reluctance, but could not bring himself to make common cause with Mallius against the enemy and discuss operations with him.
Meantime, the imposing forces of the Romans had induced the Cimbrians to enter into negotiations. Cæpio, seeing the consul in negotiation with the delegates of the barbarians, and thinking that he was desirous of keeping all the honours of victory for himself, attacked them without delay. As a result his troops were entirely destroyed and his camp was taken. After this the Cimbrians engaged in battle with the troop under Mallius and utterly defeated them. The Romans suffered this terrible reverse near the town of Arausio (Orange). On the Roman side eighty thousand soldiers and forty thousand men belonging to the commissariat are said to have been killed, only ten men being saved, amongst whom was Cæpio.
The earlier defeats had already so terrified the Italians that the raising of fresh soldiers presented difficulties; but now, after the defeat of Arausio the “Cimbrian panic” reached its height. Besides panic, the people also felt a burning rage, particularly against the corrupt government of the nobility which had jeopardised the state. Against certain individuals their indignation was extreme, particularly against Cæpio, whose insubordination had been the main cause of the defeat. By decision of the people he was now deposed from the proconsulate, and his property was confiscated; by a second decision of the people he was driven from the senate, and when, long after, in consequence of the malversation and high treason practised in Gaul, a court of judicial inquiry was convened, on the instigation of several of the people’s tribunes, Cæpio narrowly escaped the death sentence. He was banished, and went to Smyrna. Mallius Maximus and several other men of distinction were tried at the same time. The senate and their generals had lost all confidence; only one man seemed to be able to save the state in these perilous times--C. Marius, he who at the end of the Jugurthine War was regarded as the greatest general of his time. Whilst he was still in Africa he was chosen consul for the year 104, although it was against the rule to elect any one who was absent, or any one who had already been a consul at any time during the previous ten years. On the same day--January 1--on which Marius celebrated his triumph over Jugurtha, he entered upon his second consulate; and the same office was conferred upon him every succeeding year until the Cimbrian danger was over.
[Sidenote: [103-102 B.C.]]
When Marius with his force reached the Rhone, the Cimbrians, always hasty in their movements, had wandered off through southern Gaul towards the west and had entered Spain. Marius accordingly spent some time restoring the disorganised and disintegrated Gallic peoples to a sense of their duty; he raised auxiliary troops from the allied states and by dint of unswerving severity and unremitting exertions made his troops once more fit for action. Once let a soldier under Marius be accustomed to his severity of mien, his rough voice and wild looks, once let him learn never to fail in his duty, never to be insubordinate, and his fear of Marius would be changed into confidence; the man of terror would seem formidable only to his enemies. But his chief attraction for his men was his strict justice and impartiality. It was probably in the year 103, that the Cimbrians returned to Gaul from Spain, where they had encountered a stout resistance from the Celtiberians. They marched through the country along the Atlantic coast to the Seine on the borders of Belgium. Here they were joined by Teuton tribes of the same family under their king Teutobodus, tribes which, driven like the Cimbrians from their home on the Baltic, were moving aimlessly about the world. Notwithstanding their united forces they met with such resistance from the brave Belgians that they gave way, and finally decided to go to Italy. They again divided, perhaps for convenience in obtaining supplies, into two hosts. The Cimbrians, with the Helvetian Tigurini, who seem only recently to have joined them, went back to Noricum in order to enter Italy at the same point as before. The Teutones with the Ambrones, probably a Celtic people, proceeded towards the Rhone, in order to go from thence over the western Alps.
In the summer of 102 the Teutones crossed the Rhone and proceeded down the left bank to meet the army of Marius, which was encamped in a strong position at the junction of the Isère and the Rhone and was well provisioned. Here he was barring both the highroads which at that time led to Italy, the route over the Little St. Bernard, and the route along the coast. The barbarians encamped in countless numbers on the wide plain in front of Marius’ camp and challenged him to battle. He, however, following the plan of remaining strictly on the defensive, stayed quietly in camp and let them spend their strength in daily attempts to storm the Roman fortifications. In vain; their impetuosity was wrecked by the arts of war as practised by the Romans and by the prudence of Marius. At last they drew off in the direction of the south, in order to march into Italy by the road along the coast. They were six days marching past the Roman camp in enormous crowds with numberless heavily-laden carts. The Romans from their walls jeered at them as they passed, asking if they had no commands for their wives. When the procession had gone by, Marius followed with his force, and camped always close beside them, but behind strong entrenchments and in favourable positions, so that he was protected against night surprises and could not be forced into an engagement against his will. In this way they travelled until they came to Aquæ Sextiæ (now Aix in Provence); from here it was only a little way to the Alps, and Marius was compelled to consider the question of a decisive battle. He pitched his camp at a place where there was no spring of water, and when his soldiers grumbled and asked him where they could get it, he pointed downwards to the river Canus (now the Arc) which flowed near the enemy’s camp. They demanded that he should at once lead them against the enemy, whilst they had still blood to spend. He answered coolly: “First we must fortify the camp.”
Whilst the soldiers were fortifying the camp Marius sent his camp-followers to the river to fetch water. For their defence they carried hatchets and axes, swords and lances. Soon a scuffle arose on the banks with the roving bands of the Ambrones who, separated from the Teutones, covered the rear of the whole army on the march. As new combatants constantly hurried to the assistance of both sides, the Ambrones at last played their full strength, thirty thousand men, and Marius was no longer able to restrain his men. In crossing the river, the Ambrones fell into disorder and the Romans, in a rush down from the heights attacked them in the rear with such force, that having suffered great loss, they fled back to their camp and barricade of wagons. Here the fight was renewed after a strange fashion, for the wives of the Ambrones, armed with swords and hatchets, rushed with wild cries to meet them as they fled, forcing them back towards the enemy, and those who saw that all was lost, fell into a frenzy and threw themselves into the midst of the combat, letting themselves be cut and hacked to pieces.
The Romans felt encouraged by this victory, but dared not give themselves over to the joy of triumph, for by far the greater number of the enemy had not yet been engaged. The great plain was still covered with myriads of Teutones, who filled the air all night with threatening cries and occupied themselves all the following day preparing for a further encounter. It was not till three days later that the fight recommenced. By break of day, Marius and his men had ranged themselves on the hill in front of the camp in order for battle. As soon as the barbarians saw them they attacked the hill with fury. The Romans waited quietly till they came within range, then threw their lances and seized their swords. There was a long and obstinate fight lasting till midday; then the Germans, weakened by their own impetuosity and the heat of the southern sun, began to give way: as they reached the plain and were in the act of reorganising their front ranks which had fallen into disarray three thousand men under Claudius Marcellus fell on them from an ambush in the rear. That decided the issue; startled at the double attack the barbarians broke up their lines and fled in wild confusion.
[Sidenote: [102-101 B.C.]]
According to Plutarch,[f] over one hundred thousand men were either killed or taken prisoner. Livy[h] gives the numbers in the two battles as two hundred thousand dead and ninety thousand prisoners. Among the prisoners was the gigantic King Teutobodus, among the slain a number of women, some of whom met their death on the wagons in a desperate resistance, others killed themselves to avoid slavery and a life of shame. The battle-field of Aquæ Sextiæ is said to have been so fertilised by the amount of blood and corpses, that in the following summer it bore an utterly disproportionate crop of fruit; the neighbouring Massiliots fenced their vineyards with the enormous bones of the slain.
Meanwhile the Cimbrians had arrived in Noricum without hindrance and crossed into Italy through the Alpine passes. Q. Lutatius Catulus, the second consul of the year 102, had at first held the Alpine passes, but when the enemy appeared in great numbers he withdrew to the Adige and entrenched himself there on the west bank which the enemy was approaching, at the same time securing a retreat to the other side by means of a bridge. Here, too, he was not able to hold his position long. When the Roman soldiers saw these giant barbarians hurling rocks and trunks of trees into the river to make a dam, whilst others amused themselves by sliding down the glacier on their shields as if they were sleighs, when they saw some using great trees as battering-rams against the supports of the bridges whilst others threw themselves into the river and swam across, they were seized with such a panic of terror, that heedless of their general, they fled, abandoning their camp. In order to avoid what was becoming a shameful flight, Catulus raised the standard, and hurrying to the front himself led the men over the bridge. He was, however, obliged to leave a contingent behind in the camp on the left bank. The barbarians seized the camp, but with great generosity they permitted the garrison who had fought for their native country to depart unharmed.
Catulus retreated along the southern bank of the river Po, and left the Cimbrians to plunder and devastate the country north of the river. No actual battle took place; for Catulus was waiting for the approach of Marius, the Cimbrians for the approach of the Teutones.
After Marius, named consul for the fifth time in the year 101, had waited a short time in Rome, whither he had been summoned from Aquæ Sextiæ by the senate, he betook himself to Catulus in upper Italy, and left his own troops to follow him there from Gaul in the spring of 101. After their arrival, he and Catulus together led their troops over the Po and drew near to the enemy. The Cimbrians desired to postpone further fighting till the arrival of the Teutones, and sent envoys to Marius with the demand that he should grant them and their brothers the country and towns they might ask for. Marius asked who their “brothers” might be, and when they named the Teutones, all present laughed, and Marius replied with scorn: “Have no care for your brothers, we have already given them land to dwell in, and they shall keep it forever.”
The envoys, not understanding the jest, threatened him with instant revenge from the Cimbrians, and from the Teutones as soon as they arrived.
“They are already here,” answered Marius, “and it would not be proper that you should go without having greeted your brothers.” And with these words he commanded that King Teutobodus and the other captive leaders of the Teutones should be brought before him.
The Cimbrians now knew the fate of their brothers and they at once attacked Marius, but he merely defended his camp. Then Boiorix, king of the Cimbrians, with a few attendants came and demanded that Marius should fix a day and hour for battle. Marius chose the third day from then (it was the 30th of July, 101), and named for the place of battle the fields near Vercellæ where the superior horsemanship of the Romans would have free play. Early in the morning of the day appointed the Cimbrian foot-soldiers drew up in a square that was over three miles in breadth and depth. In the front rank the combatants were linked together by chains fastened to their belts that their ranks might not be broken.[83] Their riders, fifteen thousand in number, were, according to Plutarch’s description, armed in most striking fashion. Their helmets were made in the likeness of the jaws of animals or the heads of monsters; and their great height was still further increased by feathers, which were made to soar upwards like enormous wings. They were besides decorated with iron coats of mail and carried shields which dazzled by their whiteness. As missiles, each carried a spear with two barbs, and in fighting hand-to-hand they used great heavy swords. The Roman force, fifty thousand men in all, was so placed by Marius that the sun and the dust came full in the faces of the enemy. Marius’ troops formed the two wings, those under Catulus took the centre.
The Cimbrians sent their cavalry in advance of their foot-soldiers; in the thick fog of the early morning they suddenly fell upon the Roman cavalry and drew them away from their foot. The battle was carried on in some cases with great bravery, but in spite of the numbers and strength of the barbarians the superior knowledge and endurance of the Romans conquered. The greater part of the Cimbrians were killed on the field, Boiorix among the number. Several put an end to their own lives. The scenes of Aquæ Sextiæ were repeated, the women rushed with swords and axes into the midst of the enemy and let themselves be hewn down; they killed those they saw flying, their children and at last themselves. The Cimbrians were destroyed, root and branch; those who were not killed, in number over sixty thousand, were sold as slaves. The Tigurini, who had accompanied the Cimbrians, had remained waiting on the spurs of the Alps; when they saw their friends defeated they fled towards their own homes.
After the battle the two parties in Rome quarrelled as to which of the two leaders could really claim the honours of the victory of Vercellæ. The aristocrats maintained that Catulus, the man of their party, had decided the battle in the centre, he had captured thirty-one standards, whilst Marius had only brought away two; to him therefore the wreath of victory. On the other hand, the people claimed for Marius the great man who had risen from their ranks, that he was the one and only subduer of the Cimbrians and Teutones, and called him the third founder of the city, for the danger which he had averted had been as great as the Gallic peril which Camillus, the “second founder of Rome,” had stamped out. The people judged aright, for Marius fought the battle of Vercellæ as consul, whilst Catulus was only proconsul, and so Marius was the commander-in-chief; and further it is certain that he greatly excelled Catulus in military ability. But most of all it must not be forgotten that but for the victory of Aquæ Sextiæ the victory of Vercellæ could never have been.
On his return to Rome, Marius was accorded a well-deserved triumph, in which he nevertheless insisted that Catulus should share.[c]
THE SECOND SLAVE WAR
[Sidenote: [102-101 B.C.]]
While the arms of the republic were thus triumphant in averting external peril, the fertile province of Sicily was again a prey to the desolating horrors of a slave war.
After the former war had been happily concluded by Piso and Rupilius, several indications of similar troubles appeared in Italy itself. At Capua, a spendthrift knight armed four thousand slaves and assumed the diadem. But by prompt measures the insurrection was put down.
The rising in Sicily might have been checked with no less ease. It originated thus: Marius had been commissioned by the senate to raise troops in foreign countries to meet the difficulties of the Cimbrian War. He applied to the king of Bithynia, among other persons; but the king answered that he had no soldiers, the Roman tax-gatherers had made slaves of them all. The senate, glad to have an opportunity of censuring the equites, passed a decree that all persons unduly detained in slavery should be set free. In Sicily the number of such persons was so large that the prætor suspended the execution of the decree. Great disappointment followed. A body of slaves rose in insurrection near Agrigentum, and beat off the prætor. Their numbers swelled to twenty thousand, and they chose one Salvius, a soothsayer, to be their king. This man showed himself fit to command. He divided his followers into three bodies, regularly officered. He enforced strict discipline. To restrain his men from wine and debauchery, he kept them in the field. He contrived to provide two thousand with horses. When his men seemed sufficiently trained, he laid siege to the city of Murgantia. But the slave-masters of Morgantium offered freedom to all slaves who would remain faithful, and Salvius saw himself compelled to retire. The promise, however, was not kept, and numbers of the deceived men flocked to the insurgent camp.
This success in the east of Sicily gave birth to a similar rising in the west, which was headed by a Cilician slave named Athenion, who pretended to read the future in the stars. He soon found himself at the head of ten thousand soldiers, well found with arms and provisions. He gave out that the stars declared his sovereignty: he therefore forbade all robbery; for, said he, “the property of our masters is now ours.” He now rashly laid siege to the impregnable fortress of Lilybæum; but finding its capture impossible, he drew off, alleging that an impending danger had been revealed to him.
Meanwhile Salvius, who had assumed the name of Tryphon, fixed the seat of his sovereignty at the fortress of Triocala, which had fallen into his hands, and sent orders to Athenion to repair in person to that place. Athenion obeyed the orders of King Tryphon, and appeared at Triocala with three thousand men. The king now occupied himself with adding to the strength of his new capital. He chose a senate out of his followers. On public occasions he wore the toga prætexta of a Roman magistrate, and was attended by the due number of lictors.
The Romans seemed unable to make head against the insurgents, till, in 101 B.C., M. Aquillius, the colleague of Marius in his fifth consulship, took the command. Meanwhile, Tryphon had died, and Athenion had become chief of the insurgents. Aquillius brought them to an engagement, in which he encountered the brave Athenion hand to hand. The consul was severely wounded, but the slave leader was killed. Aquillius remained as proconsul in Sicily for another year, in the course of which time he crushed the last embers of the war. After the fall of Athenion, the insurgents dwindled away to a band of one thousand desperate men commanded by one Satyrus, who at length surrendered to Aquillius, and were by him sent to Rome to serve as gladiators. The story of their end is very touching. Being brought out into the arena to fight with wild beasts, they slew one another at the foot of the altars which stood there; and Satyrus, being left alone, fell upon his own sword.
It is manifest, from the humanity and discipline observed by these unhappy men in their power, that their chiefs must have been originally men of station and education, reduced to slavery by the horrid practice of ancient warfare. The story of their death presents a picture not flattering to Roman civilisation.
Strict measures were adopted in Sicily to prevent a recurrence of these perils. It was made a standing order, confirmed by every successive prætor, that no slave should have a weapon in his possession. Nor was the ordinance suffered to remain a dead letter. Soon after, the prætor L. Domitius received a fine boar as a present. He inquired who had killed it. Finding that it was a slave employed as a shepherd, he summoned the man to his presence. The poor fellow came with alacrity, expecting a reward. The prætor asked him with what he had killed the animal; and finding that it was with a hunting-spear, he ordered the unfortunate wretch to be crucified. Such were the laws by which the masters of the world were obliged to maintain their power.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[82] [To this famous speech the historian Florus[g] retorts: “But if it had been purchasable, it had a purchaser in him, and since he did not escape, it will appear certain that it is not destined to perish.”]
[83] [Such is the story as told by Plutarch (Life of Marius). Ihne[e] (v, 109), commenting on “the nonsense and lies that disfigure this campaign,” which, he thinks, are traceable to Lutatius Catulus, and not to Sulla’s Memoirs, says: “It is difficult to conceive how such stuff could find its way into serious books of history.” To which it may be replied that if all “such stuff” were eliminated, the story of ancient history would take on quite too sober an aspect,--losing picturesqueness without always gaining authenticity. Strange things are done by men in real life; and the critic who rejects a tale simply because it tells of illogical actions is on very dangerous ground. Moreover, it will be noted that the most iconoclastic critics often give their sanction to incidents quite as improbable as others which they reject. Every intelligent reader is competent to draw his own conclusions as to the probabilities involved in these picturesque tales; but one cannot too often be reminded that pure invention is the rarest of human accomplishments. It is easy to pervert or exaggerate; but it is extremely difficult to create a truly novel situation, or to invent for mankind more incongruous actions than are spontaneously blundered into in actual life. It may well be doubted, then, that any Roman would ever have linked the Cimbrian warriors together in imagination unless those warriors had done something suggestive of this strange expedient. But, on the other hand, when we are told, e.g., that after the “greater part of the Cimbrians were killed,” 60,000 survived to be sold into slavery, the scepticism which is disposed to make the mental reservation of a cipher or two may perhaps be pardoned.]
XVII. THE BEGINNING OF CIVIL STRIFE
“When Caius Gracchus fell,” said Mirabeau, “he seized a handful of dust tinged with his blood and flung it toward the sky; from that dust was born Marius.” This phrase of Mirabeau’s, though a whit rhetorical, is historically true. The patricians were willing to cede nothing to the Gracchi, and they were decimated by Marius. The struggle changed its methods: one fought no more with laws as the only weapons, but yet more with proscriptions. Marius was the incarnated pleb; as ignorant, pitiless, formidable, he had something of Danton, except that Danton was no soldier.[b]
Marius had taken no part hitherto in the old contentions of classes at Rome. But his plebeian origin, the attitude of defiance he had assumed towards the nobles on the occasion of his first election to the consulship, the outrage he had done to establish usage in the enlistment of proletarians, above all, perhaps, the arrogance with which he had extorted so many successive consulships from the hands of the most illustrious competitors, all combined to mark him as the champion of the “movement party,” whatever its immediate objects or popular cry might be.
Under the shadow of his anti-oligarchical aggressions, the people and their tribunes renewed the demands of the era of the Gracchi. The knights were irritated by the loss of their monopoly of the judicia, and a cry for a new agrarian distribution was always sure to interest a portion at least of the multitude. But envy and spite against unpopular individuals among the nobles were still more effective instruments to work with. Q. Servilius Cæpio, who had been defeated by the Cimbrians, was selected as an object of popular persecution. A few years before he had captured Tolosa in Gaul by an act of signal treachery, such, however, as the Romans seldom animadverted severely upon as long as they were successful. But Cæpio had forfeited their forbearance by his recent disaster, and the hoards of gold which he had rifled from the temples of the Gallic deities were supposed to have brought the vengeance of Heaven upon him, and the country whose armies were entrusted to him. The people, at the instigation of their demagogues, proposed to deprive him of his imperium, confiscate his property, and declare him incapable of serving the state in future. The senate defended its luckless proconsul, who had helped to restore to it a share in the judicia; but the tribune Vibius Norbanus drove the nobles from the comitium, together with two of his own colleagues who sided with them. In the tumult by which this act of violence was consummated Æmilius Scaurus, the prince of the senate, was wounded on the head by a stone. Cæpio was deprived, cast into prison and subsequently banished, unless indeed, according to another account, he was strangled in his dungeon. The retribution of his crime did not stop here. His noble family was further dishonoured by the licentious conduct of his two daughters, and the gold of Tolosa passed into a proverb, for the unlawful gain which precipitates its possessor into misery and disgrace.
[Sidenote: [102-100 B.C.]]
In the year 102 the tribune Domitius, transferred to the people the election of the chief pontiff, which had formerly been invested in the appointment of the pontifical college. The head of the national religion was an important political personage. He held in his hands the threads of the state policy, which opened or shut the oracular books of the Sibyls, appointed sacrifices and ceremonials, interpreted the will of the gods from portents, and placed the seal of the divine approbation upon every public act, or withheld it from it. This engine of government had been long firmly grasped by the nobles; it could still be handled only by patricians; but the patricians had ceased to be identified in interest and feeling with the ruling oligarchy, and from the hands of patricians the traditions of the old republic were destined to receive their rudest shocks. The appointment of the chief pontiff by the people became eventually an important agent in the overthrow of the Roman constitution. In the year of the battle of Aquæ Sextiæ, Marcius Philippus proposed an agrarian law, which, however, was rejected. But at the same time another tribune, Servilius Glaucia, carried a resolution of the people for wresting the judicia once more from the senators, and conferring them again upon the knights exclusively. He increased the stringency of an existing law against extortion in the provinces; and to the holder of the Latin franchise, who should convict a senator of its violation, he assured the superior privileges of full Roman citizenship.
THE SIXTH CONSULATE OF MARIUS
[Sidenote: [100 B.C.]]
When Marius returned to Rome (101) he was already for the fifth time consul. But he was not satisfied with this extraordinary series of honours, and was not the less anxious to obtain a further renewal of his long lease of office. The nobles, he felt, were his natural opponents. He hastened therefore to connect himself with the leaders of the people, to whom the chief of the aristocracy was personally hostile. Allying himself with the tribunes Servilius Glaucia and Appuleius Saturninus, he mingled his disbanded legionaries with the dissolute mob of the Forum, and by threats, promises, and largesses easily overpowered the votes of the honest citizens.[84] Marius was raised to a sixth consulship: yet he was neither popular in his manners nor eloquent in his address (100). On the contrary, in all civil matters, it is said, and amid the noise of popular assemblies, the conqueror of the Cimbrians was utterly devoid of courage and presence of mind. The undaunted spirit he showed in the field entirely failed him in the Forum, where he was disconcerted by the most ordinary praise or censure.
In his policy also Marius was unfixed and wavering; and instead of steadily courting the prejudices of the Roman rabble, he favoured and rewarded the Italians, of whom the Roman commons now entertained a deep jealousy. After his late victories he ventured to stretch the prerogative of the consulship to confer the citizenship on a thousand soldiers of the state of Camerinum, who had served him well in the field. The act was illegal as well as unpopular, and Marius did not, perhaps, make it more palatable by the excuse he gave for it: “Amid the din of arms,” he said, “I could not hear the voice of the laws.”[85]
The tribunes, however, who wished to strengthen their position by a new alliance, bestowed their countenance upon the Italians also. They caused a measure to be enacted, by which Marius was allowed to create three Roman citizens in every colony which enjoyed the Latin franchise, thus enabling him to bestow the boon they chiefly coveted upon many of the soldiers who had distinguished themselves in his service. With the same view Saturninus carried another measure, by which the unfortunate inhabitants of the trans-Alpine provinces were deprived of their estates, and forced to make room for the victors of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ. The nobles resented these concessions to the conquered Italians, and even the commons regarded them with uneasiness and distrust. They sought to interrupt the proceedings on the occurrence of rain or thunder. “Be still,” cried Saturninus, “or it shall presently hail.” His adherents armed themselves with stones. Tumults arose in the Forum; the senators and their partisans among the populace were driven away by the fury of the veterans, and Saturninus carried his rogation with open violence. Marius kept warily aloof, and affected great horror at the illegal disturbance. He excited the nobles underhand to protest against the execution of a law carried in a manner so irregular, which the tribunes insisted on their accepting under specified penalties. As soon, however, as they had committed themselves, Marius withdrew his countenance from them, and left them the choice of submitting with dishonour, or enduring the punishment of refusal. The senators, entrapped and cowed, took the oath required, till it came to the turn of Metellus; but the haughtiest of the nobles, though urged and entreated by his friends to yield to necessity, disdained to swerve from the principles he had avowed. Saturninus demanded that he should be outlawed, and fire and water forbidden him. His friends were numerous and strong enough to have defended him with arms, but he forbade them to draw their swords, and went proudly into banishment.
Saturninus obtained the renewal of his tribunate. He had carried matters with a high hand: on the occasion of his first election he had daringly murdered an opponent; he had thwarted the nobles, and even risked his popularity with the commons by proclaiming himself the patron of the Italians. It was now requisite, perhaps, to recover his ground with his supporters in the city; and for this purpose he imposed one of his freedmen upon the citizens, as a son of their favourite Tiberius Gracchus. This intrigue, indeed, seems to have had little success; Sempronia, the widow of Scipio Æmilianus, and sister of the murdered tribunes, vehemently denounced it, and the people laughed at the imposture, if they did not resent it. But force, after all, was more familiar to Saturninus than fraud. When C. Memmius, one of his adversaries, was about to be elected consul, he caused him to be poniarded in the Forum by the bandits who surrounded his own person.[86] But he had now gone too far. To save himself he rushed into open revolt. He climbed the Capitol, with his companion Glaucia and his band of ruffians and assassins, seized the citadel, in virtue perhaps of his official dignity, and defied the republic to arms. The nobles retorted upon him with the fatal cry, that he aspired to royalty; and the people, already perplexed at his leaning to the Italians, and shocked, perhaps, at the frantic violence of his proceedings, were not indisposed to listen to it. They acquiesced without a murmur in the decree of the senate, by which the state was declared in danger and Marius charged as consul to provide for its safety.
The city was placed in what in modern times is called a state of siege; that is, the consul, whose ordinary functions within the walls were purely judicial and administrative, received the power of the sword as fully as if he were in the camp. He proceeded to invest the fortress, which was considered impregnable to an attack, and could only be reduced by blockade. By cutting some leaden pipes, upon which, in the security of the times, the citadel of the republic had been allowed to become dependent for water, the insurgents were deprived of the first necessary of life. Saturninus offered to capitulate on the promise of personal safety. Marius guaranteed his life; and in order to preserve him from the fury of the populace, placed him, in the first instance, with his followers, in the Curia Hostilia, a large public building at the foot of the hill. But when the people scaled the walls, tore off the roof, and poured missiles upon the wretched captives, the consul made no effort to save them, and they all perished miserably--a deed of blood which was long remembered, and afforded at a later period the handle for a persecution of the nobles themselves.
No event, perhaps, in Roman history is so sudden, so unconnected, and accordingly so obscure in its origin and causes, as this revolt or conspiracy of Saturninus. The facility with which a favourite champion of the people is abandoned and slain by his own clients, seems to point to some unseen motive, with which history has forgotten to acquaint us. The Roman demagogues were well aware of the inveterate horror with which the people regarded the name of king; and none of them, it may be safely said, notwithstanding the oft-repeated calumnies of their opponents, ever ventured to aspire to it. If it be true then (as the historians represent) that Saturninus was hailed as king by his adherents, and accepted the invidious designation with joy, it is highly probable that his adherents were foreigners and Italians rather than citizens. We have already seen the use which leaders of all parties were making at this time of the claims of the Italians to emancipation from the state of conquered subjects in which they were still held. All in turn pressed these claims, when it suited their particular purpose, nor did most of them scruple to abandon them when their convenience required it. Sometimes the nobles, sometimes the commons, were cajoled into supporting them, as a counterpoise to the aggressions of their immediate opponents; but both the one class and the other were at heart bitterly opposed to them, and the hope of obtaining favour or justice from the republic seems to have gradually disappeared from the minds of the claimants themselves. They hated Rome, and with Rome they identified, perhaps, republican government itself. They could only hope for redress of their grievances from a revolution which should overthrow the supremacy of the senate house and the Forum. This was the menace from which even the licentious rabble of the city recoiled, and which determined Marius to allow the violation of his plighted faith, and the sacrifice of his friend and ally.[87] Even if entirely devoid of patriotic feeling, which we may well believe, Marius was deeply interested in preventing any demagogue from attaining a monarchical ascendency superior to his own.
CLAIMS OF THE LATINS AND ITALIANS TO THE CIVITAS
[Sidenote: [100-90 B.C.]]
The citizen of Rome, in complete possession of that illustrious title, combined the enjoyment of two classes of rights, civil and political. The civil law regulated the forms and effects of marriage, the exercise of paternal authority, the holding of property, the capacity of willing and inheriting; it secured, further, the inviolability of the citizen’s person. The political law, on the other hand, gave the right of suffrage in the election of magistrates, and in voting upon projects of law; it conferred eligibility to public office; it permitted initiation in certain religious rites, and, finally, it conceded the honour and advantage of military service in the legions. The combination of these rights and capacities constituted the complete title to the Roman franchise. It was sometimes thus conferred upon individuals, in reward for special services; in a few cases the inhabitants of a favoured city were invested with it in the mass.
The admission, however, of a foreign city, in alliance with the republic, to the full right of citizenship, required it, in the first place, to renounce its own ancient institutions. The favoured community adopted at once the civil law of Rome, and organised itself internally upon the Roman model, with an assembly of the people, a curia, representing the senate, and superior elective magistrates, generally two in number, corresponding with the consuls. A city thus constituted took the name of a municipium, that is, an office-bearing community. The inhabitants, when they presented themselves in Rome, might exercise the right of suffrage there, and were rendered capable of filling any of its magistracies.
It seems, however, that the petty states of Italy, attached to their own domestic institutions, were frequently unwilling to sacrifice them for these advantages, and rejected the concession of political rights, contenting themselves with the acquisition of the civil; which, while they placed them upon a footing of equality with the inhabitants of the city in respect to marriage, family authority, property, and person, did not require the surrender of their own political customs. Rome herself was not unwilling to recognise this distinction, and was wont to dispense the favour of her franchise with affected coyness, conferring her civil rights upon various states in succession, but reserving her political franchise as a special boon for the most meritorious.
Thus were formed within the bosom of the great Roman Empire various classes of communities, of different grades of civil and political condition; but every one among them, which acquired any portion of Roman rights, obtained the common designation of a municipium. Each municipium retained entire authority over everything relating to (1) the exercise of its religion; (2) the administration of its local finances, the election of its magistrates, the maintenance of its edifices and public works; (3) its internal police. The regulation of these matters appertained generally to the curies or governing bodies, sometimes to the mass of the people. Accordingly, the municipes, or citizens of such a community, possessed, as Cicero proclaims, two countries, the one natural, the other political--the one actual, the other privilegial. Thus, he continues, we regard as our fatherland both the spot where we were born, and that which has adopted us; but that one of the two has the strongest claims upon our affection which, under the name of “commonwealth,” constitutes our own country pre-eminently; it is for that fatherland that we ought to be ready to die. “I shall never deny,” he says, “Arpinum, as my country; but Rome will be always more peculiarly such; for Rome comprehends Arpinum.”
While such were the distinctions introduced by the republic among those whom she adopted as her own citizens, she did not omit to classify also the condition and privileges of the various nations of Latium and Italy which fell successively under her sway.
The first rank among the allies of Rome belonged to the tribes of the Latin confederation; their treaties with the republic contained generally more favourable conditions than were acquired by the other Italian communities. Thus, for instance, the Latins preserved their territory, their laws, their alliances, under the paramount control of Rome; they were placed, as regarded the payment of tribute, upon a footing of almost complete equality with the citizens of the republic; nor could they justly complain of being required to furnish a military contingent to fight side by side with the legions themselves. They could acquire the rights of Roman citizenship by the exercise of certain magistracies in their own state, or by the transfer of their domicile to Rome, provided they left children behind them in their native place, or by the successful impeachment of a Roman officer for political offences. In respect of property they enjoyed a portion of the Roman privileges. But they were excluded from the rights of Roman matrimony, and of paternal authority; from the faculty of willing in favour of a Roman citizen, or inheriting from one; nor could they claim the immunity from stripes and capital punishment, which was counted the most precious of all privileges by a people who invested their highest magistrate with the terrors of the axe and the rod. The condition of the Latin was far better than that of any other subjects of the republic, but it was decidedly inferior to that of the citizen; its most engaging feature was the capacity it conferred of acquiring completer rights, and changing the first foretaste of freedom into its full enjoyment.
This mass of privileges, peculiar, in the first instance, to the Latin cities, and flowing from the rights conceded to them by treaty, became extended in due time, under the general name of jus Latii, or Latinitas, both to individuals and to communities which had no connection with Latium at all. As the Roman law admitted, by a fiction, the existence of Romans without the city itself, so it allowed the name and rights of Latium to be claimed by more distant foreigners. These foreign Latins, under the name of New Latins, became, in process of time, a distinct class of citizens, a special subdivision of the second rank of the republic’s favoured children.
Among the allies of the republic, the Italians occupied a rank next to the Latins. The name of Italy was confined at this period to the peninsula, extending from the rivers Isère and Rubicon on the north to the promontories of Rhegium and Iapygia. The Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Samnites, the Marsians, the Greek communities of Campania and Apulia, in submitting to the Roman arms, had generally made treaties with the republic, but had failed to secure for themselves the advantageous terms extorted by the Latins in the period of her greater weakness or moderation. Yet in transferring their swords to the service of their conquerors, they had merited on many a battle-field the amelioration of their political lot. Accordingly the Italians were allowed, for the most part, to preserve their domestic independence, their laws, magistracies, and tribunals, while they were forbidden to form political alliances among one another; and, though free in outward appearance, they received the commands of Rome, which claimed to decide upon their mutual disputes. Together with domestic liberty they enjoyed, like the Latins, immunity from personal and territorial tribute, and shared with them the same guarantees for the acquisition and enjoyment of property. The chief point in which the Italian was inferior to the Latin was his not possessing the same capacity of becoming a Roman. In the natural order of things, it was requisite for the Italian to pass through the stage of Latinitas, or Latium, to obtain Roman civitas; nevertheless the privileges peculiarly his own were justly regarded as a boon in comparison with mere provinciality; for even within the barrier of the Alps the Gauls and Ligurians hardly escaped the character of enemies of the republic, and were subjected to military control and the severest exactions under the plenary authority of imperators and proconsuls. Accordingly these privileges became an object of desire to the less fortunate subjects of the empire, and, as in the case of the jus Latii, so also the jus Italicum became extended, in many instances, to individuals and communities beyond the limits of Italy.
The development of this political organisation, logical and methodical as it appears, was in fact the result of no theoretical legislation, but the gradual and almost fortuitous effect of a series of revolutions. Up to the moment of its complete accomplishment, even the wisest of the Roman statesmen neither counselled nor foresaw it. But thereupon Italy presented, under the supremacy of the metropolitan city, a hierarchy of communities, of which one was already completely Roman; the others more or less nearly prepared to become so; the whole machine, in all its parts and subordinations, seemed to gravitate with a slow and regular movement towards the central point--the franchise of the republic. But this movement was arrested by domestic jealousies and selfish prejudices. The same spirit of isolation and monopoly which had striven, in the time of the kings, to shut the gates of the city against the Latins and Etruscans, which had conceded so slowly and reluctantly the inferior grades of privilege to the Italians themselves, still arrayed itself against the natural tendency of the principle of assimilation. The jealousy of the Roman commons was blind and ignorant; that of the nobles, who came forward to marshal and direct it, was more consciously selfish and interested. All classes, with few and honourable exceptions of individual statesmen, wished to hinder, as far as they could, the Latins from becoming Romans, the Italians from becoming Latins.
The struggle for these privileges had commenced almost from the period of the first conquest of Latium and Italy; but it was not till after the overthrow of Carthage, and the commencement of a brief period of domestic repose, that it attained force and consistency, and succeeded in enlisting in its favour the leaders of Roman parties. With the extension of her conquests in the rich provinces of the East, the citizenship of Rome became more precious; and amidst the degradation of so many subject nations, the allies who had fought and bled for the republic felt themselves entitled to rise to a higher level. The Latins claimed with urgency and vehemence a perfect equality with the Romans, the Italians pretended to succeed, at least, to the privileges of the Latins; but to make the first concession was clearly no less than to open the door to the abolition of all existing distinctions. The Romans were not unnaturally alarmed at the shape in which the question now presented itself to them. The idea of sacrificing to the conquered the nationality of the conquerors was so new in the history of antiquity that we cannot wonder at the reluctance, the pious horror, with which it was generally regarded. Moreover, practical statesmen, who might soar above the scruples of a mere sentiment, were still perplexed and terrified at the prospect of the administrative difficulties which such a change would introduce. They beheld in their imagination the roads of the peninsula crowded with troops of foreigners hastening to Rome at every recurring election, to swamp the votes of the urban population; or taking up their abode within its walls, and conquering, as it were, the citadel of their conquerors. In the amalgamation of Rome with Italy they could only foresee the annihilation of Rome itself.
Meanwhile the allies, repulsed in every overt attempt to scale the fortress of the constitution, contrived to glide surreptitiously within the sacred pale. As early as the year 286 the censors discovered no less than twelve thousand Latins settled in the city, and pretending to the rank of genuine citizens. The intruders were indignantly expelled. Ten years later a new fraud was exposed. The foreigners sold their children to actual citizens, with the understanding that they should be immediately enfranchised. The stroke of the prætor’s wand conferred upon them the full franchise of the city. The precautions and prohibitions of the senate would have been of little avail, had they not been seconded, in a great measure, by the magistrates of the Italian cities themselves, who regarded with jealousy the flight of their own people to Rome, whereby the burden of their domestic dues were enhanced. The Samnites and Pelignians reclaimed four thousand of their own countrymen who had thus established themselves in the Latin town of Fregellæ, there acquiring the Latin privileges and preparing to sue for the Roman. For half a century, however, these fraudulent acquisitions of the Roman franchise were only partial or individual. The agitation of the Sempronian reforms raised a general ferment in the minds of the Italians, and gave force and volume to the tide of their ambition.
It would seem that while the great Roman nobles pretended to detain vast tracts of public domain, they cultivated and even occupied only small portions. The conquered communities, though nominally dispossessed of their lands, were allowed, by abuse and connivance, to enjoy the use of a large part of them. But when the state should resume her rights over these estates, and actually redistribute them among her poorer citizens, the claims of the intruding natives would meet with no consideration; they would be dispossessed of them a second time, and absolutely excluded from their enjoyment. Accordingly, upon the first mooting of the Agrarian laws of Tiberius, all the Italians found themselves united by the same pressing interest, and they had no other alternative than either to defeat the passing of these laws by combining with the faction opposed to them in Rome itself, or, by obtaining the rights of the city, to acquire a legal title to share with the actual citizens. They hesitated and balanced as to their course; but upon the whole the wish to obtain Roman privileges and Roman exemptions, to escape the tyranny of Roman magistrates and enjoy the fruits of Roman conquest, combined with the legitimate ambition of their soldiers and statesmen to enter upon the noble field of Roman employments, determined them to press their claims to admission. For a hundred and fifty years the various races inhabiting the peninsula, distinct as they were in origin and language, had been arrayed together under the same discipline and a common yoke. The Romans had unconsciously formed their subjects into one nation, and the time was arrived when a common sentiment could arm the whole mighty mass in a combination against them. Italy had at last become a cry and a sentiment not less powerful than Rome herself.
The senate and the nobles, who retained the national feelings in all their strength, girded themselves to resist the threatened innovation; but in the time of the Gracchi, the mass of the commons was already adulterated by foreign admixtures, and felt far less keenly the old prejudices of race and country. Accordingly, when their favourite leaders, overlooking every ulterior consequence rather than justly estimating them, called the Latins and Italians to their standards, the Roman populace were easily persuaded to admit them to a share in their own struggle, and pledged themselves to advance together the respective interests of both. The allies themselves, under the able direction of the Gracchi, turned all their indignation against the aristocracy of the city, which they sought to make their own. They ascribed to the peculiar constitution of Rome the jealous and selfish opposition they encountered, and denounced republican government itself, on account of prejudices incident, in fact, to all conquering races. Monarchy indeed, it may be allowed, is generally more favourable than aristocracy to the surrender of national prejudices; and the Italians acted upon a genuine instinct in invoking kingly rule, and, while the tribunes allured them with the hope of citizenship, seducing the tribunes themselves with the prospect of the regal diadem. It was said that Saturninus was actually saluted king by his seditious followers; and nothing, perhaps, but the deep impression, so sedulously fostered by the nobles, of the traditional tyranny of the Tarquins, prevented the Roman commons from joining generally in the same cry. But the title of king was destined still to remain the popular bugbear for many centuries; and no man had yet arisen with genius to disguise a monarchy under the republican names of dictator or imperator.
The nobles attacked the tribunes with brute violence; the Roman commons and the Italian confederates they managed by craft and intrigue. At one time they sought to sow dissension between them, at another to outbid their own demagogues in the liberality of their offers, which they took care never to fulfil. They debauched the populace by largesses and amusements, and detached them from the cause of the allies. Alarmed at the progress Marius had made in opening the franchise to his Italian veterans, they contrived, at last, to throw a cloud over the brilliancy of his reputation, and availing themselves of the venal voices of the tribes, to recall Metellus from banishment and consummate another aristocratic reaction. In the insolence of their triumph they enjoined the consuls of the year 95 to expel from the city all the Italians who had domiciled themselves within the walls; and the law of Crassus and Scævola, which repeated the harsh enactments of eighty and ninety years before, convinced the injured subjects of the republic that their mistress had learned neither wisdom nor justice by the triumph of her arms and the extension of her empire.
[Sidenote: [95-91 B.C.]]
But though conquered, the Italians had not ceased to be formidable. The free constitution of the generality of their cities had nourished a race of able speakers and statesmen, and the Cimbrian War had trained many thousands of brave veterans, who had been disbanded after the battle of Vercellæ, and not yet recalled to their standards by the urgency of any other foreign contest. With these resources among themselves, they had still, moreover, a powerful friend in the Roman tribunate. M. Livius Drusus, a son of the opponent of the Gracchi, whom the senate had commissioned to promise still ampler concessions to their assailants than the Gracchi themselves, had devoted himself in earnest to the policy which his father only pretended to advocate. But in assuming the patronage of the reformers, the younger Drusus did not abandon the party of the nobles with which he was hereditarily connected. He sought, with every appearance, it may be allowed, of honest zeal,[88] to conciliate the interests of all parties. He restored the judicia to the senators, while, at the same time, he introduced three hundred knights into the senate. He coupled these measures with a promise of lands to the needy citizens, and of the franchise to the Italians and Latins. Of all the Roman demagogues Drusus may justly be esteemed the ablest and the wisest. Full of confidence in himself, his views were large, and his frank and bold demeanour corresponded with them. He affected the generous virtues of the ancient republic. When his architect offered him the plan of a house so disposed as to exclude his neighbours’ supervision, “Build me rather,” he exclaimed, “a dwelling in which all my countrymen may behold everything I do.” His principles however were less rigorous than his pretensions. The necessities of his position, which required him to make friends of all parties, demanded an exorbitant outlay, and the means by which he supplied it were reprobated as dishonourable. His profusion surpassed that of all his predecessors in the arts of popular flattery; and he ventured to vaunt that his successors would have nothing left to give but the skies above and the dust beneath them. His manners were overbearing, and might suggest the idea that he aimed at regal domination. He spoke of the commonwealth as “his own”; and when the senators invited him to attend at their ordinary place of meeting, he replied that he would await their coming in the curia of Hostilius, which happened to be most convenient to himself. Such was the man whom the Italians gladly invoked as their leader. In his sickness all the cities of the peninsula offered vows for his safety. It seemed as if the salvation of the country depended upon his recovery.
Drusus required indeed strong support in that quarter to enable him to bear up against the odium excited by his measures among the privileged orders at home. Even in his own house he was surrounded by timid and murmuring friends; his own family were imbued with hostility to his avowed policy. Among them was his nephew, M. Porcius Cato, at that time about four years old. A chief of the Marsians, admitted to the uncle’s hospitality, amused himself by asking the child to support the cause of the Italians. Cato, so ran the story, frowardly refused; he was offered playthings and sweetmeats; still he refused. At last the Marsian, piqued at his obstinacy, held him from the window by the leg, and again demanded his assent, threatening to cast him headlong unless he yielded. But caresses and menaces were equally fruitless, and the Marsian sighed to think of the resistance he must expect to encounter from the men, if a mere child could display such dogged inflexibility.
[Sidenote: [91 B.C.]]
During the progress of the tribune’s intrigues, the indisposition of both the senate and the knights to his measures became more strongly marked; and notwithstanding the adherence of some of the principal nobles, he was compelled to draw closer the bands of alliance between himself and the Italians. The impatience of his foreign associates was not easily restrained, and he was obliged himself to denounce a plot they formed for murdering the consuls at the great festival of the Latin feriæ. But his influence waxed more and more powerful with them, and the oath they took to promote the common interests of the confederacy expressed their entire devotion to the person of their generous leader. They swore that they would have no other friends than his friends, that they would count his foes their foes, that they would spare nothing, neither their parents, nor their children, nor their own lives, for his advantage together with that of the common cause. “If I become a Roman citizen,” the oath continued, “I will esteem Rome my country and Drusus my benefactor.” The senate heard with indignation of the progress of these intrigues, at the moment when it was called upon to ratify by a vote the proposal for conferring the franchise upon its mutinous subjects. It was informed that Pompædius Silo, the chief of the Marsians, was marching at the head of ten thousand men, along by-roads and with arms concealed, towards the city, to intimidate the nobles. A force was despatched to intercept his progress, and a parley ensued, in which the leader of the Romans assured his adversary that the senate was actually prepared to concede the boon required.
For the moment blows were averted; but in the curia the discussion was still animated and the decision dubious. The classes opposed to the concession had gained some of the Italians to their side, and with the support of the Umbrians and Etruscans, alarmed at the projected foundation of new colonies in their territories, ventured still to withhold the concession. When the day for voting arrived, the consul Marcius Philippus attempted to break up the meeting. One of the tribune’s officers seized and throttled him till the blood sprang from his mouth and eyes. The city was now thrown into a state of the fiercest excitement. Tribunes were arrayed against tribunes, nobles against nobles, Romans against Romans, Italians against Italians. The streets were traversed by armed bands on either side. Everything seemed to portend a bloody solution of the crisis. At this juncture Drusus, attended by a number of his adherents, was returning one evening to his house. Passing along an obscure corridor he was heard suddenly to cry out that he was struck, and fell to the ground with a poniard planted in his groin. In a few hours he expired, exclaiming with his dying breath, “When will Rome again find so good a citizen as myself?” The assassin had escaped in the crowd (91).
The murder was generally imputed to the senatorial party, and especially to the consul Philippus. The magistrates omitted to make inquiry into the circumstances, while the murdered man’s opponents hastened to abrogate such of his measures as had already passed into laws; and his adherents were too stupefied to resist. Severe decrees were speedily issued against the Italians, and they were peremptorily forbidden to interfere in the affairs of the republic. An obscure tribune of foreign extraction, named Varius, was put forward by the knights to impeach some of the principal nobles, as reputed favourers of the movement. A Bestia, a Cotta, a Mummius, a Pompeius and a Memmius were condemned and banished. Among the accused was the illustrious Æmilius Scaurus. The only reply he deigned to make to the charge was this: “Varius the Iberian accuses Scaurus prince of the senate, of exciting the Italians to revolt. Scaurus denies it. Romans! which of the two do you believe?” The people absolved him with acclamations. But the knights still thirsted for vengeance upon their hereditary enemies, and the actual outbreak of the threatened insurrection alone prevented them from effecting a wider proscription of the most unpopular of the nobles.
The allies flew desperately to arms. The death of Drusus and the prostration of his adherents within the city reduced them to their own national resources; but their last scruples vanished with the loss of their Roman associates. The Marsians were summoned to take the lead, and their chief Pompædius Silo was the soul of the confederacy. Eight or more nations, the Picentines, the Vestines, the Marrucines, the Pelignians, the Samnites, the Lucanians and the Apulians, together with the Marsians, gave mutual hostages and concerted a simultaneous rising. Now for the first time they vowed to unite together in a permanent association. They proposed to constitute a great federal republic, organised on the model of Rome herself, with a senate of five hundred, two consuls, twelve prætors, and for their capital the central stronghold of Corfinium in the Apennines, to which they gave the name of Italia. They struck medals bearing the impress of the Sabellian bull trampling under foot the Roman she-wolf. This alliance indeed was confined for the most part to the nations of Sabellian origin, and its decrees were issued in the Oscan language, the common root of the idioms then in use among the central tribes of the peninsula. The Etruscans, the Latins, and the Umbrians held aloof from it, and together with Campania, which was already thoroughly Romanised, adhered to the fortunes of Rome. The Bruttians no longer existed as a nation, and the cities of Magna Græcia had ceased to have any political importance. The Gauls beyond the Rubicon, who had joined Hannibal against the Romans, long since exhausted by their struggles, made no effort now to recover their independence.
What was the relative strength of the combatants now arrayed against each other? Three centuries earlier, at the date of the great Gaulish invasion, the nations of Sabellia, together with the Apulians, could arm, it is said, 200,000 men, while the Etruscans, Latins, and Umbrians vaunted 120,000 warriors. Supposing, therefore, the proportions to remain the same at the later period, the allies alone who still remained to the republic may have balanced in numbers three-fifths of the whole force opposed to her. At the same time the census of Rome herself gave a total of at least four hundred thousand warriors; and she could draw vast numbers of auxiliaries from her provinces and dependencies beyond the limits of Italy. The forces, therefore, of Rome trebled or quadrupled those of her adversaries. She occupied, moreover, the chief places of strength throughout their territories, securely fortified against sudden attacks, and communicating with one another and the capital by the great military roads. But from this formidable enumeration of her resources great deductions have on the other hand to be made. It was necessary to maintain powerful garrisons at every point of her vast empire. Greece and Spain, Asia and Africa, drew off her life-blood from the heart to the extremities. The disposition of her allies was doubtful and precarious; her own citizens were capricious, and might easily be seduced by the arts of the demagogues, while her internal dissensions had made her suspicious of many of her ablest statesmen. The mass of the commons of Rome took no vital interest in the political question for which the Italians contended, and served in the legions with no other feeling than that of mercenaries.
THE SOCIAL WAR
[Sidenote: [90 B.C.]]
The Social or Marsic War commenced in the year 90. The republic was taken by surprise, while her adversaries had already completed their preparations and hastened to assume the offensive. The Italian consuls, the Marsian Pompædius and Papius Mutilus, a Samnite, commanded two different branches of the confederacy--the one acting in the north between the Adriatic and the frontiers of Etruria, whence he sought to penetrate by the valley of the Tiber to Rome; the other directing himself against Campania and Latium on the south. While such was the disposition of their principal armies, various detachments, led by Judacilius, Lamponius, Afranius, Præsenteius, Vettius Scato, Marius Egnatius, Herius Asinius, and others, were charged with the reduction of the strong places occupied by the Romans in the heart of their own country. The whole confederacy was in a moment in arms, and the final embassy which it despatched to Rome announced the defection of three-fourths of Italy. The senate boldly refused to listen to demands extorted by the sword, and required the allies to lay down their arms before presuming to ask a favour. The consuls summoned the citizens to their standards, and while Alba in the country of the Marsians, Æsernia in Samnium, and Pinna in the Vestinian territory, kept the confederates in check, they drafted a hundred thousand men into the legions, and went forth to confront the enemy. Lucius Julius Cæsar undertook the defence of Campania, Publius Rutilius placed himself on the line of the Liris and Tolenus, which cover Rome in the direction of the Marsians and Pelignians. Perperna, with a smaller detachment, maintained the communications between the consular armies, and guarded the approach to Latium through the frontier of the Volscians. The great Marius himself, of whose fidelity the senate might entertain suspicion, was entrusted with a small force on the flanks of Rutilius, while Cæpio and Pompeius, Sulpicius and Crassus were directed to harass the operation of the enemy by making incursions within their territories, and menacing their armies in the rear. A considerable reserve was kept at the same time in Rome itself, and the gates and walls duly repaired and guarded against a sudden attack. Since the flight of Hannibal the city had forgotten the possibility of being again exposed to a siege.
But the Romans had scarcely time to make these dispositions before the Italians rushed impetuously upon them, and broke their lines in various quarters. The consul Cæsar was routed by Vettius Scato in Samnium, and driven from the gates of Æsernia and Venafrum, which he was anxious to support. While the first of these places continued to hold out against a rigorous blockade, the other was surrendered by treachery and its garrison put to the sword. Mutilus defeated Perperna, turned to the left and threw himself into Campania. Disregarding or masking the fortresses on his flanks and rear, he traversed the country with his troops, received the submission of Nola, Pæstum, Stabiæ, Salernum, massacring some of their defenders, and pressing others into his own ranks. But the hearts of the Campanians were still with Rome. Naples, Nuceria, Capua, and Acerræ remained firm, even while their territories were overrun by the Samnite, their slaves liberated and enlisted by thousands among the soldiers of the confederacy.
The losses and disgraces of the Romans still crowded upon one another. Lamponius defeated Crassus and recovered Grumentum, the strongest place in Lucania; while Canusium and Venusia in the same quarter were taken by Judacilius. Cæsar sustained a second defeat from Egnatius in attempting to relieve Acerræ, Pompeius received a check on the frontiers of Umbria, and lastly the consul Rutilius, drawn into an ambuscade by Vettius Scato, was routed and slain on the Tolenus with a large part of his forces. Marius, who was posted lower down the stream, was advertised of his general’s disaster by the corpses wafted past him by the descending current. He promptly crossed the river, and took possession of the enemy’s camp in their rear, while they were still occupied in gathering the trophies of their victory. But the success of this brilliant manœuvre failed to compensate even one of the many discomfitures the arms of the republic had received.
The spirits of the victors of so many encounters were elated to the highest pitch. The Etruscans and Umbrians began to falter in their allegiance to Rome, while the envoys of the Italians were seeking a more distant and still more formidable alliance at the court of Mithridates, king of Pontus, a chieftain whose power and resources the republic had not yet learned to measure. The Romans on their part, though neither dismayed nor disconcerted, began to feel the imminence of their danger. The sense of peril restored, perhaps, their national feelings of pride and mutual confidence. The bodies of the consul and the brave officers who had fallen had been carried into the city, and had excited the deepest sensations of distress. The senate was compelled to decree that henceforth the dead should be buried on the spot where they fell. As in the days of the Gallic tumults, all the citizens arrayed themselves in arms, and swords were placed in the hands of the freedmen, of whom several corps were formed for the defence of the city and its environs. In this attitude of grave resolution they awaited the arrival of succours from the provinces. Sicily signalised its fidelity by the zeal with which it furnished the necessaries of war. The Cisalpine Gaul sent ten thousand soldiers to the army of Cæsar at Teanum; and he was further reinforced by numerous bodies of Moors and Numidians. Enabled now to reassume the offensive he advanced once more to the relief of Acerræ, defeated Mutilus with great slaughter, and threw succours into the place. The citizens were reassured by this gleam of victory, and resumed within their walls the garb and occupations of peace.
MARIUS ASSUMES THE COMMAND
With this victory of Cæsar fortune began to turn to the side of the Romans, but still with faltering and uncertain steps. After the defeat of Rutilius the senate had united his shattered forces with the divisions of Marius and Cæpio, but so deep was its jealousy of its veteran general that it combined his inexperienced colleague in the command with him with equal authority. Cæpio, dazzled by a trifling success, allowed himself to fall into the snares of Pompædius. The Marsian, pretending to deliver himself up to the republic, came with two young slaves, to personate his own sons, as hostages, with ingots of gilt lead to represent gold, and offered to surrender to the Roman the army confided to him. Cæpio put himself under his guidance, and was led into an ambuscade. Pompædius galloped to an eminence under pretence of reconnoitring, and gave the signal to his troops. The Romans were surrounded, attacked, and cut to pieces, and Cæpio the proconsul with them. This disaster, followed by the surrender of Æsernia, which had suffered the extremity of famine, compelled the senate to transfer to Marius the undivided command of all its forces in that quarter. He commenced his operations with the same circumspection which he had manifested in his campaign against the Teutones. By the able choice of his positions he secured the frontier against the inroads of the victorious Marsians, whom he refused to encounter in the open field with his own beaten and dispirited soldiers. “If you are so great a general,” exclaimed his opponent, “why come you not to the combat?” “So powerful and so victorious, why do you not compel me?” replied Marius.
But when the proper moment arrived, the conqueror of the Cimbri knew how to profit by it. He engaged the enemy and defeated them with great slaughter, including the loss of Herius Asinius, chief of the Marrucinians. But the peasant of Arpinum, the accomplice of Saturninus, the man who had defied the nobles of Rome, who had armed the proletaries, and enfranchised the Italian veterans, could not fail to cherish sympathy with the nations now opposed to him. To Marius at least the war was a civil war, and many of his legionaries appear to have entertained a similar feeling. When his troops found themselves arranged in front of the forces of Pompædius, they recognised in the opposite ranks many of their own guests and kinsmen. They called one another by their names, and made kindly gestures with their hands. The two chiefs came forth from the ranks and entered into conversation together, deploring the unnatural contest which had so long divided them. Encouraged by the familiarity of their leaders the soldiers themselves broke from their lines, and mingled with one another in the plain, like citizens in their common forum. We may believe that Marius would have been well pleased to put an end to the war by the concession upon the spot of demands to which he at least was indifferent or favourable. But he commanded a portion only of the forces of the republic, and besides the army of Cæsar in the south, he was checked by the jealous observation of his own lieutenant Sulla, who had already more than once snatched the laurels from his hand. He was forced to engage the enemy once more; but he fought without spirit, and refused to complete his victory. The honour of the day fell again to his youthful rival, who attacked the Italians in their retreat, and thoroughly routed them. It was the first time, according to the boast of the vanquished Marsians, that the Romans had ever won a battle either against them, or without them.
Marius might plead the languor and ill-training of his raw soldiers for the want of spirit he had himself manifested; but the easy success which followed upon the more decisive blows of his subordinate were sufficient to refute him. The same vacillating and inconsistent politician, who as tribune had repudiated a popular measure, who as consul had launched himself against the senate, who had seconded Saturninus and presently reduced him to submission, who had favoured the Italians and finally had led the legions against them, had now once more abandoned his post, and grounded his arms in the moment of victory. After the affair of Saturninus, suspicious and suspected on all sides, he had retired moodily into voluntary exile. He now renounced the command by which he had made the Italians his enemies without securing the gratitude of the Romans, and pretended that age and infirmities unfitted him for the duties of the camp. He retired to his villa at Misenum, formerly the residence of the mother of the Gracchi, while Sulla sprang into his place at the head of the legions and at the summit of popular favour.
Meanwhile the Roman arms had been crowned with success in other partial encounters. The Umbrians and Etruscans, who had threatened for a moment to join the general defection, were chastised and checked. But fresh dangers were accumulating in the remoter distance. The trans-Alpine province was harassed by an insurrection of the Salyes, which required to be promptly repressed, and the king of Pontus was preparing to take up arms and wrest from the republic her possessions in the East. At such a conjuncture policy might dictate the concessions which pride had so resolutely refused, and in the moment of victory they could be accorded with a better grace. The consul Cæsar was empowered to carry a law for imparting the franchise to all the Italian states which had held aloof from the general insurrection, together with those already in the enjoyment of Latin rights. The lex Julia, both in its principle and its immediate effects one of the most important enactments of the republic, required the citizens of such states, including Umbria, Etruria, and the southern extremities of the peninsula, to come in person to Rome, and demand the freedom of the city within sixty days. The time allowed for deliberation was not long, and the hardships and dangers of the journey might deter many even of those who could resolve at once to renounce their own laws and institutions for the charges and immunities of the metropolis. It is probable therefore that the concession was after all more specious than real; and that the numbers who actually availed themselves of it were but limited. Nevertheless, it served to impart new hopes to the Italians, to distract their councils, and to relax the sinews of resistance.
[Sidenote: [90-88 B.C.]]
With the commencement of the second year of war (89), the Romans were enabled to assume the offensive in every quarter. Cn. Pompeius and Porcius Cato, the consuls of the year, assailed the confederates in the north; the one in Picenum, the other on the banks of the lake Fucinus. Sulla and Cæsar turned their legions against Mutilus in Campania, while the cities of Apulia and Lucania were attacked and recovered by officers of inferior note. Porcius himself was slain in battle with the Marsians, but his death was speedily avenged by his colleague. Judacilius, who commanded in Asculum, unable to repel his besiegers, constructed a pyre in the principal temple of the place, and laid his couch on the summit. He then caused a repast to be served, took poison, and applied the torch. The Romans entered the undefended walls, massacred the inhabitants, and reduced the city to ashes.
Asculum was the bulwark of the Italian confederacy in the north, and its fall opened the heart of their territories to the Romans. Another great defeat, with the loss of Vettius Scato, crushed the spirit of the Marsians, the Pelignians, and the Marrucinians, who hastened to lay down their arms. Pompeius, the victorious general, obtained a triumph, and among the captives who were led in chains before his chariot was a child, carried at his mother’s breast, who lived to become a consul at Rome and to gain the honour of a triumph himself. This was a native of Asculum, by name Ventidius, whose strange reverse of fortune deserved to become the theme of public admiration. The laurelled car was followed by the Roman legionaries, and among them we may suppose was a youth, who gained in after times a far nobler reputation, Cicero, the chief of Roman orators, who earned under the auspices of Pompeius his first and only stipend.
In the south, the death of the late consul Cæsar had thrown upon Sulla the conduct of the war. The cities of Campania fell successively before his prowess and good fortune. Stabiæ was overthrown, Herculaneum and Pompeii capitulated. His progress was checked for a moment by a mutiny in a division of his forces, in which his lieutenant, Postumius, lost his life. Sulla recalled the men to obedience, and required them to expiate the slaughter of a citizen by torrents of hostile blood. Assured of their ardour and devotion to his ascendant genius, he led them against the Samnite general, Cluentius, and gained a sanguinary victory under the walls of Nola. Leaving this impregnable fortress behind him, he next entered the territory of the Hirpinians, and sacked their capital, Æculanum. Meanwhile a Roman officer, named Cosconius, penetrated into Lucania, and defeated Egnatius by treachery. The shattered remnant of the confederate armies, reduced to thirty thousand men, were enclosed in the defiles of the Apennines. Pompædius, the last survivor of the gallant band of Italian generals, sought to envelop the Romans, as his last resource, in the flames of a servile insurrection. He summoned the slaves to rise throughout Italy, and put arms into their hands; at the same time he continued to press Mithridates for succours, and his emissaries solicited the subjects of the republics in Greece, Asia, and Africa. The final struggle of the expiring confederacy was not uncheered by a gleam of sunshine. Pompædius gained a victory, and entered Bovianum with the imitation of a Roman triumph. But his success was transient, and his laurels quickly faded. He was slain in the third year of the war in an encounter with the prætor Metellus, near Teanum in Apulia (88).
Nevertheless the exultation of the Romans at the gradual change in their fortunes had been repressed by the alarming accounts they continued to receive from Asia, where the king of Pontus, the ablest and most powerful opponent they had yet encountered in the East, was shaking the edifice of their dominion to its centre. They hastened to send their best general and their choicest armies to meet him; and they were disposed in the moment of victory to make further concessions, in order to disengage themselves from the hostility of the crushed and broken Italians. The lex Plautia-Papiria extended to all their Italian allies the privilege which had been accorded to Umbria and Etruria by the lex Julia. The franchise, that is, of the city was offered generally to such of the Italians as chose to claim it in person within sixty days. The Romans followed up this specious concession by great moderation in the use of their final victory. Very few, at least, of the captive chiefs of the confederacy were punished with death. The territory of the subjected cities was not confiscated to the state, although the condition of its finances compelled the senate to sell the lands appropriated to the pontiffs and augurs beneath the shadow of the Capitol itself. The Italians, weary of the war, were easily appeased by this politic treatment. Corfinium, the presumptive rival of Rome, dwindled once more into a petty provincial town. The political combination of the states of the peninsula, the offspring of a moment of enthusiasm, fell in pieces, never to be reunited again; and even their common language, proscribed by the Romans in the public instruments of their cities, fell into disuse, and was speedily forgotten. But the results of the war still lingered after the war itself had died away. Bands of armed marauders continued to prowl about the country, exciting partial movements in various quarters. The mountains of Samnium, and the great forests of Sila, continued to harbour the enemies of peace and order rather than the enemies of Rome. There, for more than half a century, the materials of insurrection were never wanting; political outlaws and fugitive slaves still maintained themselves against the regular forces of the republic; life and property were rendered insecure; the rustic labourer and the wayfaring man were kidnapped on the public roads; even in the cities men began to accustom themselves to the wearing of weapons, nor did the dignified and noble venture to travel abroad without an armed retinue of clients and retainers.
[Sidenote: [88 B.C.]]
The lex Plautia-Papiria, so called from the tribunes who effected its enactment, offered, as we have seen, the franchise to all the allies of Rome in Italy. The boon, however, was far from universally accepted. The richest and the poorest classes were those to which alone it proved seductive--to the former, for the sake of sharing the fruits of distant conquest; to the latter, on account of the largess it offered to the dissolute and idle. Of these classes many, we may suppose, flocked to Rome, and took up their residence within reach of the Forum. The names of the chiefs of the Italian confederacy, of Papius and Egnatius, of Asinius and Cluentius, of Vettius and Afranius, rank from henceforth among the aristocracy of Rome; while her orators and historians might plausibly attribute the increasing degeneracy of the inferior populace to the foreign elements which now began so deeply to tinge it. But the middle classes of the Italians, to whom these advantages were less accessible, and to whom constant attendance at assemblies and elections was impossible, found themselves amply compensated for the loss at home, where, content with their own municipal privileges and honours, they could enjoy without rivalry or disturbance the comfort and dignity of self-government. The number of new citizens thus enrolled on the list of the censors was not disproportioned, perhaps, to the new tribes, eight, or as some say ten, which were now added to the existing thirty-five. The citizen was still compelled to present himself in person at the polling-booths; the distance of his actual residence could not plead against inveterate usage and the sanction of the national religion. For the Roman Forum was a holy place, elections and assemblies were holy ordinances, sanctified by auspices and ritual ceremonies; the devices of modern governments, by which the votes of federal communities can be taken on the spot, or their voices represented by local delegates, were inadmissible on the principles of Roman, and indeed generally of all ancient polity.
The theory that the same individual could not be at the same time a citizen of two states, and that in accepting the prerogative of Roman civitas, he forfeited the franchise of his native country, might cause many devoted patriots to hesitate in accepting the proffered boon. Several cities, especially those of Greek origin, to whom the institutions of Hellenic civilisation were justly dear, such as Naples, Heraclea, and Puteoli, continued steadfastly to reject it. Brundusium did not at once accept it, but received the Roman privilege of immunity from the land tax at a later period from Sulla. We are at a loss to ascertain the regulations under which the municipal governments were conducted, where the inhabitants were nearly equally divided between Romans and Italians. It is probable, however, that the concession became speedily accepted almost throughout the peninsula. The right of suffrage might be justly disregarded, but citizenship conferred rights of property, marriage, and immunity from taxation, which were felt to be substantial benefits. The inviolability of the person, and exemption from official caprice and tyranny, were advantages also which could not fail to be highly prized. From henceforth the admissibility of the provincials to the privileges of the capital became more generally recognised as a fundamental principle of policy. The full franchise was conceded in special instances to various states in Spain, Africa, and Gaul, and it became necessary to declare what nations, from their barbarism and inveterate hostility, as for instance the Germans and certain Gaulish tribes, should be formally pronounced ineligible.
The enrolment of the Italians among her own citizens deserves to be regarded as the gravest stroke of policy in the whole history of the republic. In modern times it has been frequently condemned as an unqualified error, and the general approbation it met with from the Roman writers may, doubtless, be explained by the fact that the masters of Roman literature were in almost every case Italians or provincials themselves; but in fact they require no such excuse for the opinions they have so generally expressed. They judged correctly in pronouncing the policy of comprehension upon which the republic now boldly entered, and from which she never long departed till the whole mass of her subjects were incorporated with her own children, both just and salutary. Doubtless it helped in some measure to accelerate the destruction of the old national sentiments; but these were already mortally stricken, and were destined quickly to perish in the general corruption of society. It reduced the legions more directly to instruments of their general’s personal ambition; but the strongest check to that fatal tendency had been already removed by the enlistments of Marius, and these the necessities of the state, as we have seen, had both justified and approved.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[84] [Appian[f] informs us that Saturninus had at his back the country people, who were the honest citizens, whereas the dissolute mob of the Forum supported the senate. This fact has been generally overlooked.]
[85] [As a representative of the rural class, Marius consistently favoured the Italians; he was not so ignorant nor so wavering as has generally been assumed. It was the rabble which opposed Italian interests.]
[86] [His opponents, rightly or wrongly, accused him of this crime.]
[87] [Ihne[d] says: “Marius found himself placed in an awkward dilemma. He was no longer able to control his own party, and was being carried along by them against his will far beyond the point to which he had intended to go.”]
[88] [Ihne[d] says of him, “He had something of the noble enthusiasm of the Gracchi. Generous and free from all selfishness and meanness, but without political experience, adroitness, and knowledge of men, he aspired to a task which surpassed his strength.” Velleius Paterculus[e] calls him “a man of the noblest birth, the greatest eloquence, and the strictest purity of life; but who in all his undertakings was more distinguished by ability and good intention than by success.”]