The party of opposition in the state was composed of two elements of widely different character. In the first place, there was the patriotic party, whose cry for reform arose from a genuine distrust and hatred of the prevailing corruption. The moving spirit and typical representative of this party was Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.). This rough Sabine farmer had been induced to enter upon a political career by a noble of the old stamp, Lucius Valerius Flaccus. He saw active service throughout the whole of the second Punic war, and in all countries and in every capacity had won equal distinction. He was the same in the Forum as in the battlefield. His prompt and intrepid address, his rough but pungent rustic wit, his knowledge of Roman law and Roman affairs, his. incredible activity and his iron frame, first brought him into notice in the neighboring towns; and when at length he made his appearance on the greater arena of the Forum and the senate-house in the capital, constituted him the most influential pleader and public orator of his time. Thoroughly narrow in his political and moral views, and having the ideal of the good old times always before his eyes and on his lips, he cherished an obstinate contempt for everything new. Deeming himself entitled, by virtue of his own austere life, to manifest an unrelenting severity and harshness towards everything and everybody; upright and honorable, but without a glimpse of any duty beyond the sphere of police discipline and of mercantile integrity; an enemy to all villainy and vulgarity as well as to all genius and refinement; and, above all things, a foe to those who were his foes, he never made an attempt to stop evils at their source, but waged war throughout life against mere symptoms, and especially against persons. Not only did he attack the most powerful aristocrats, such as the Scipios and the Flaminini, but he never shrank from abusing his own supporters did he deem they deserved it. Still, so staunch were the farmers in their support, that when Cato and his friend and colleague, Lucius Flaccus, stood as candidates for the censorship in 184 B.C., all the exertions of the aristocrats were powerless to prevent their return.

The reforms introduced by Cato and his party were aimed at arresting the spread of decay and at checking the preponderating influence of the aristocracy in politics. In view of the first object, police regulations were enacted to restrict the luxurious style of living, and to introduce a frugal economy into Roman households. More successful and more practical were the efforts made to revive

the farmer class by founding Latin colonies in the north, and by large and numerous assignations of the domain land. Although Cato failed to carry his proposal to institute four hundred new equestrian stalls, and thus remedy the decline of the burgess cavalry, the necessities of war had long before compelled the government to reduce the rating which allowed a man to serve in the army from $210 to $30, and to abolish the other qualification of free birth. The admission of the poor and of freedmen into the army gave them a new importance in the state, and was one of the chief causes of the changes introduced into the comitia centuriata. These changes, accomplished about 241 B.C., at the close of the first Punic war, placed all five classes composing the comitia on an equal footing as regarded number of votes, and took away from the equites their old priority in voting, and gave the freedmen the same power as the freeborn.

This reform was the first victory won by the new democracy over the aristocracy, but its effects were greatly neutralized by the fact that, though priority of voting was taken away from the equites or aristocratic voters, it was still confined to a division chosen by lot from the first or richest class; and further, the equalization of the freedmen with the freeborn was set aside twenty years later, in 220 B.C., by the censor Gaius Flaminius, and the freedmen were excluded from the centuries. A proof that the reform did not at any rate greatly affect the power of the aristocracy is furnished by the fact that the second consulship and second censorship, although in law open to both patricians and plebeians, were almost invariably filled by patricians; the second consulship was held by patricians down to 172 B.C., and the second censorship down to 131 B.C.

Viewed as a whole, the reforms of Cato and his party, distinguished as they were by great energy and a noble wish to counteract the evident evils of the time, were unfortunately marred by a want of clear insight into the source of those evils, and by the failure to devise, in a large and statesmanlike spirit, some comprehensive plan for their remedy.

In the second place, the party of opposition contained a far less reputable element, the outcome of the city rabble. The spirit of demagogism was abroad; men, cursed with a love of empty speechmaking, pretended to be ardent reformers, but in their harangues dwelt only on the excessive powers of the aristocratic

government and on the rights of the citizens, not on the urgent need for moral reform in every section of the state. The evils which arose out of this new spirit have already been indicated in the history of the war with Hannibal: the appointment of mere party leaders, such as Flaminius and Varro, to the supreme command; the absurd decree which made Minucius co-dictator with Fabius in 217 B.C., and which gave the deathblow to the dictatorship; the charge of embezzlement laid against Marcellus in 219 B.C.,—these and other acts all proceeded from the wanton interference of the demagogues. The citizens were even tempted to interfere with the administration of the finances, the oldest and most important prerogative of the government; and, in 232 B.C., Gaius Flaminius, owing to the fatal obstinacy of the senate, went to the burgesses with his proposal to distribute the domain-lands in Picenum. Nor was this new system of politics confined to its author, Gaius Flaminius; aristocrats, such as Scipio, in their efforts to place themselves and their families in a position superior to that of the rest of the senate, condescended to vie with demagogues in their flattery of the city rabble. We have already pointed out the impotence of the comitia; as a rule, indeed, the burgesses had the good sense and sufficient patriotism to give a hearty support to that senate which had weathered the storm of Hannibal's invasion. But appeals to selfishness and avarice could not fail to demoralize the best citizens; and sudden caprice or violent outbursts of jealousy or hatred from time to time showed that the old foundations of the Republic were being undermined. To the later generations, who survived the storms of revolution, the period after the Hannibalic war appeared the golden age of Rome, and Cato seemed the model of the Roman statesman. It was in reality the calm before the storm, and the epoch of political mediocrities. The seeming outward stability of the Roman constitution, during the years 266-146 B.C., was a sign, not of health, but of incipient sickness and revolution.

A review of this period would be incomplete unless it presented a brief notice of the economic troubles produced by the system of farming on a large scale, and by the power of capital. The importation of corn from the provinces, and the sale of it at a merely nominal price for the benefit of the idle proletariat of the capital, naturally ruined the market for the growers of Italian corn. evil was all the worse and all the more inexcusable in a country like Italy, where there were hardly any manufactures, and, consequently,

The

no large industrial population whose needs, as in England, could not be supplied by home-grown grain. On the contrary, agriculture was the mainstay of the Roman state, and the short-sighted policy of the government in this matter sacrificed the soundest to the most worthless part of the nation. The small farmers were gradually ruined, and their holdings became merged in the large estates of the landlords, who, by cultivating their lands by means of large gangs of slaves, were able to produce at a cheaper rate than the farmer. But even the large landlord was unable to compete with foreign grain, and devoted himself almost entirely to stock-raising and the production of oil and wine; and thus it was that arable land to a great extent was converted into pasture, while, owing to the increased use of slaves, free labor became almost unknown. The power of the capitalist was alike evinced in the speculative management of land, in the increase of money-lenders, and in the enormous extent of all mercantile transactions; and, as in the end the gains from commercial enterprise flowed into Rome, the result was that Rome, compared with the rest of the world, stood as superior in point of wealth as in political and military power. In fact, the whole Roman nation became possessed with the mercantile spirit, and, while money served to create a new social barrier between rich and poor, that deep-rooted immorality, which is inherent in an economy of pure capital, ate into the heart of society and of the commonwealth, and substituted an absolute selfishness for humanity and patriotism.

Moreover, the very population of Italy began to decline, and Cato and Polybius agree in stating that at the end of the sixth century of the city Italy was far weaker in population than at the end of the fifth; and although it was, in the first instance, the two long wars with Carthage that decimated and ruined both the burgesses and the allies, the Roman capitalists beyond doubt contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and Hannibal to the decline in the vigor and the numbers of the Italian people.

Chapter XVII

THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES DOWN TO THE GRACCHAN EPOCH. 168-133 B.C.

B

EFORE we enter upon the period of change which takes its name from the family of the Gracchi, it is necessary to pre

sent a picture of the state of things in the subject countries. Trivial and dreary as the separate conflicts in these remote lands between weakness and power may seem, yet collectively they are of great historical significance; and the reaction which the provinces exercised on the mother country alone renders intelligible the condition of Italy at this period.

At first the only two recognized provinces of Rome, if we except what may be regarded as the natural appendages of Italy, i. e., Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, were the two Spains; and they were the scene of many wars and the cause of much trouble to Rome. In 154 B.C. the peaceful state of the Spanish provinces, which had lasted for nearly thirty years, was broken by the successful invasion of the Lusitanians. The complete defeat of the governor of Farther Spain, in 153 B.C., emboldened the Celtiberians to join against the common foe; and the successes achieved by the powerful tribe of the Arevacae over the Consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior even eclipsed the previous victories of the Lusitanians. But the advent of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who combined skillful generalship with humane treatment, terminated the Celtiberian war in 151 B.C. After a brief interval of peace another outbreak occurred, due to the weakness and perfidy of the Roman commanders. The withdrawal of the regular military forces during the last Macedonian and Punic wars in 149 B.C., and the appearance of a Spanish national leader in the person of the famous Viriathus, gave a dangerous character to the revolt. It seemed as if at last Spain had found a champion able to break the fetters of Rome; general after general, army after army, both in northern and southern Spain, recoiled in utter discomfiture before the ability and enthusiasm of the Spanish leader. For about ten