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Chapter XVIII

THE REFORMS OF THE GRACCHI. 133-121 B.C.

E have now reached the epoch in Roman history forever rendered famous by the revolutionary reforms of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. It is our duty to trace the causes which called for those reforms, and to form some judgment both of the measures and their authors. In the preceding chapter we have sketched the evils underlying the outward calm which pervaded the whole Roman empire for a full generation after the battle of Pydna. Cato's question as to the future of Rome, when she no longer had a state of fear, had a profound significance now. The younger generation of aristocrats thought no more of foreign foes, but of maintaining and, if possible, of increasing the privileges they had usurped. The various measures of the opposition-the institution of a standing senatorial commission to try the complaints of provincials touching the extortion of Roman governors; the introduction of the vote by ballot in the burgess-assemblies, the exclusion, a little later, of the senators from the equestrian centuries, failed entirely to emancipate the electors from aristocratic influence, and to restore to the comitia the power and independence they had once possessed. The Romans lacked what alone compensates for the evils of party life, the free and common movement of the masses to some definite aim. Politics were, as a rule, merely partisanship for individuals, not for great principles, and the people arrayed itself now on the side of this aristocratic coterie, now on the side of that. Hence sprang that despicable canvassing of the mob by an aspirant for public office; hence, too, those demagogic cries for reform and attacks on eminent persons to catch the popular ear; hence, again, arose the necessity for providing costly popular amusements, the long-recognized duty of any candidate for the consulship. A still graver evil was the miserable position which the government, by thus cringing for the favor of the mob, was forced to occupy towards the governed. The burgesses became used to the dangerous idea that they were exempt from all direct taxa

133-121 B.C.

tion, and they were no longer forced to enter the hateful military service across the sea. The two factions, which now became known by the names of Optimates and Populares, fought alike for shadows, being completely destitute of political morality and political ideas. It would have been better for Rome had the Optimates substituted hereditary rotation for election by the burgesses, or had the Populares developed a real democratic government.

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The crisis with which the Roman revolution opened arose from the old evil, the land question. The warfare which had for centuries been waged between the small farmer and the capitalist had at last produced the most disastrous results; and as formerly the farmer had been ruined by the chain of debt, so now he was crushed by the competition with transmarine and slave-grown corn. The ultimate result was in both cases the same: Italian farms sank in value; small holdings became merged in large estates; agriculture gave place to stock-raising and the growing of olives and vines; and, finally, free labor was supplanted in Italy, as in the provinces, by that of slaves. The new and huge system of slavery now introduced owed its rise to the all-powerful capitalist. In earlier days captives taken in war and the hereditary transmission of slavery had sufficed, but this new system of servitude was, just like that of America, based on the methodically pursued hunting of man. The negroland" of that period was western Asia, and the Cretan and Cilician corsairs, the professional slave-hunters and slave-dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands. Their example was imitated by the Roman revenue-farmers, who instituted similar human hunts to such an extent that they well-nigh depopulated certain provinces. At the great slave-market at Delos it is said that as many as ten thousand slaves were disembarked in the morning and sold before the evening of the same day. Every financial arrangement, every speculation, every trade, was carried on by means of slaves. Pastoral husbandry, now so common, was almost entirely performed by armed and often mounted slaves. But far worse than any previous form of slavery was the plantation system proper-the cultivation of fields by chained gangs, who worked under overseers and were locked up together at night in the common laborers' prison. This system, introduced from the East into Carthage and thence into Sicily, was developed in that island earlier and more fully than in any other part of the Roman dominions. In fact, for the present, Italy was still substantially free from this worst form

133-121 B.C.

of slave husbandry, though the Roman government was soon aroused to the danger which the system developed elsewhere.

It requires but little imagination to picture the hideous sufferings of the slaves themselves, far exceeding the sum of all negro misery. Slave wars and slave insurrections now became frequent, not only in the provinces, but in Italy itself, though, as was natural, it was in Sicily that the evil results of slavery were most conspicuous. At Enna the slaves rose en masse, murdered their masters, and crowned a Syrian juggler as king. His general Achaeus, a Greek slave, traversed the island, and united under his standard both slaves and free laborers. Agrigentum was seized by another band, under Cleon, a Cilician slave; and the united forces utterly defeated the pretor Lucius Hypsaeus, and reduced the whole island under their sway. It was not until three successive consuls and armies had been dispatched from Rome (134-132 B.C.) that the servile war was ended by the capture of Tauromenium and Enna, the latter stronghold being reduced by famine rather than by Roman arms, after a siege of two years. Such results were due partly to the lax control of the Roman police system as worked by the senate and its officials in the provinces, partly to the disinclination of the government to disoblige Italian planters, to whom revolted slaves were often surrendered for punishment.

The real remedy for these evils doubtless was to be found, not in the severe repression of such revolts, but in the elevation, by the government, of free labor, a natural consequence of which would be the restriction of the slave proletariate. But the difficulty of this measure was beyond the capacity of the senate. In the first social crisis the landholder had been forced by law to employ a number of free laborers in proportion to the number of his slaves. Now the government caused a Punic treatise on agriculture to be translated for the use of Italian speculators, the solitary instance of a literary undertaking suggested by the senate! The same wisdom. was shown in the matter of colonization. It was quite clear that the only real remedy against an agricultural proletariate consisted in a comprehensive and regular system of emigration. Hitherto the constant assignations of land and the establishment of new farm allotments had proved a fairly effective remedy for the evil. But after the founding of Luna in 177 B.C., no further assignations tool: place for a long time, for the simple reason that no new territory was acquired in Italy, with the exception of the unattractive

159-131 B.C.

Ligurian valleys. Therefore there was no other land for distribution except the leased or occupied domain land, with which the aristocracy was as loath to part now as it had been three hundred years before. For political reasons it was deemed impossible to distribute the land in the provinces: Italy was to remain the ruling country, and the wall of partition between the Italian masters and the provincial servants was not to be broken down. The result was inevitable the ruin of the farmer-class in Italy. Even as early as 134 B.C. not a free farmer existed in Etruria, where the old native aristocracy combined with the Roman capitalist; and in the very capital one could hear it said that the beasts had their lairs but the burgesses had nothing left but air and sunshine, and that the so-called masters of the world had no longer a clod they could call their own. The census list supplies a sufficient commentary. From the close of the war with Hannibal down to 159 B.C. the numbers of the burgesses steadily rose, owing to the distributions of the domain land; while from 159 to 131 B.C. they declined from 324,000 to 319,000-an alarming result for a period of profound peace at home and abroad.

The urgent need of reform in the government was patent to every eye. When laying down the censorship in 142 B.C., Scipio Aemilianus called on the gods to deign to preserve the state, whereas all his predecessors had prayed for increased glory to Rome. This expressed the feeling of the experienced and conservative citizens of the state. But, where Scipio despaired, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a youth unmarked by any achievement, dared to hope. His father had been the true model of a Roman aristocrat, and had given proof of his noble and generous feelings both as consul and censor, but, above all, had by his strict integrity and humane governorship of the province of the Ebro not only rendered service to his country, but also endeared himself to the subject Spaniards. His famous mother, Cornelia, was the daughter of the conqueror of Zama, and had been given in marriage to Gracchus in return for his generous intervention on behalf of his political opponent, Scipio, when a petty and miserable charge had been got up against the Scipionic house. Thus Tiberius, who had taken part in the storming of Carthage under his cousin and brother-in-law, Scipio Aemilianus, had been brought up in all the political ideas and social and intellectual refinement of the Scipionic circle. Nor were he and his brother Gaius the only members of

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