123 B.C.

greatest speakers Rome ever saw. He had none of the sentimental good-nature of his brother; fully and firmly resolved, he entered on the career of revolution with vengeance as his goal and aim. To attain this end he counted not too great the price of his own fall and the ruin of the state. His mother's creed, that the country should at all cost be saved, was nobler, but posterity has been right in rather lamenting than blaming the course taken by her son.

The proposals now made by Gracchus were nothing less than a new constitution, the foundation-stone of which rested upon the legal right of the same man to be elected tribune for two or more years in succession. This having been carried, the next object was to attach the multitude of the capital to the holder of the tribunate. This was first of all effected by distributions of corn. Gaius enacted that every burgess, on personal application, should receive a monthly allowance of 1 bushels at the extremely low rate of 24 cents a bushel. This measure would both attract into the capital the whole mass of the burgess proletariate, and would make them dependent on the tribune, and supply him with a bodyguard and a firm majority in the comitia. Though thus securing his position in Rome, he did not neglect to legislate for the existing social evils. His agrarian law only revived that of his brother, and he did not proceed any further in the distribution of domain land. But by establishing colonies at Tarentum and Capua, he rendered that land, which had been let on lease by the state and had been exempt from distribution, liable to be divided; and no doubt he intended these colonies to aid in defending the revolution to which they owed their existence. He also opened a new outlet for the Italian proletariate by sending six thousand colonists chosen from Italian allies as well as from Roman citizens-to the site of Carthage. Further, Gracchus attempted to restrict capital punishment as far as possible, by withdrawing the cognizance of such crimes as poisoning and murder from the popular assemblies and intrusting it to permanent judicial commissions. These tribunals could only sentence a man to exile, and their sentence could not be appealed from, nor could they, like the tribunals of the people, be broken up by the intercession of a tribune.

In order to work the ruin of the aristocracy, Gracchus took advantage of the already existing elements favorable to a rupture in that body. The aristocracy of the rich consisted of two classes, the governing senatorial families whose capital was invested in

123 B.C.

land, and the wealthy merchants and speculators, who conducted all the money transactions of the empire, and who had gradually risen to take their place by the side of the older aristocracy. At the present time the latter class was generally known as the equestrian order, which title had gradually come to be used of all who possessed an estate of at least twenty thousand dollars, and as such were liable to cavalry service. Already senators had been marked off from this body by a law passed in 129 B.C., but many members of senatorial families, not yet members of the senate, were included in the equites. The natural antipathy between the aristocrats of blood and those of wealth was adroitly increased by Gracchus, until the equestrian order ranged itself on his side. Partly by conferring on them various insignia, but still more by offering them the revenues of Asia and the jury courts, Gracchus won over the class of material interests. Hitherto the direct taxes of each province had been farmed by the provincials themselves, and thus the Roman publicani had been kept at a distance. Gracchus now enacted that Asia should be burdened with the heaviest taxes, both direct and indirect, and that these taxes should be put up for auction in Rome; he thus excluded the provincials from participation, and gave the capitalists an opening for the farming of these various taxes, of which they did not fail to avail themselves.

Having thus opened up a gold mine for the merchant princes, Gracchus gave them a sphere for public action in the jury courts. Most processes, alike civil and criminal, were up to this time decided by single jurymen or by commissioners, whether permanent or extraordinary, and in both cases the members had been exclusively taken from the senate. Gracchus now transferred the functions of jurymen, both in strictly civil processes and in the various commissions, to the equestrian order, and directed a new list of judices to be made out annually from all persons of equestrian rating. The result of these measures was that not only was the moneyed class united into a compact and privileged order on the solid basis of material interests, but that also, as a judicial and controlling power, it was almost on a footing of equality with the ruling aristocracy. All the old antipathies found expression in the sentences of the new jurymen, and the senator, on his return from governing a province, had no longer to pass the scrutiny of his brother peers, but of merchants and bankers.

For the complete overthrow of the senate, Gracchus not only

Hist. Nat. III

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123-122 B.C.

had to deprive it of the substance of its powers by legislative changes, but also to ruin the existing aristocracy by more personal and less permanent measures. He did both. For not only did he deprive the senate of administrative power by settling questions by comitial laws, dictated as a rule by the tribune, but also by taking the business of the state into his own hands. He had meddled with the state finances by his distributions of corn; with the domain lands by sending out colonies, not at the decree of the senate, but of the people; with the provincial administration by overturning the provincial constitution of Asia and substituting his own for that of the senate. The marvelous activity Gracchus showed in all his new functions quite threw into the shade the lax administration of the senate, and began to make it clear to the people that one vigorous man could control the business of the state better than a college of effete aristocrats. Still more vigorous was his interference with the jurisdiction of the senate. He forbade their appointing any extraordinary commission of high treason, such as had tried his brother's adherents, and he even planned to reinforce the senate by three hundred new members, to be elected by the comitia from the equestrian order.

Such was the political constitution projected and carried by Gaius Gracchus, as tribune, in 123 and 122 B.C., without any serious resistance or recourse to force. It is clear that he did not wish to place the Roman Republic on a new democratic basis, but that he wished to abolish it and introduce in its stead an absolute despotism, in the form of an unlimited tribuneship for life. Nor can he be blamed for it; as, though an absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a nation, it is a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy. Besides this, he was fired with the passion for a speedy vengeance, and was in fact a political incendiary,-the author not only of the one hundred years' revolution, which dates from him, but the founder of that terrible urban proletariate which, utterly demoralized by corn largesses and the flattery of the classes above it, and at the same time conscious of its power, lay like an incubus for five hundred years on the Roman commonwealth, and only perished with it.

Many of the fundamental maxims of Roman monarchy may be traced to Gracchus. He first laid down that all the land of subject communities was to be regarded as the private property of the state-a maxim first applied to vindicate the right of the state to

122 B.C.

tax the land and then to send out colonies to it, which later became a fundamental principle of law under the empire. He invented the tactics by which his successors broke down the governing aristocracy, and substituted strict and judicious administration for the previous misgovernment. He first opened the way to a reconciliation between Rome and the provinces, and his attempt to rebuild Carthage and to give an opportunity for Italian emigration to the provinces was the first link in the chain of that beneficial course of action. Right and wrong, fortune and misfortune, were so inextricably blended in this singular man and in this marvelous political constellation, that it may well beseem history in this casethough it beseems her but seldom-to reserve her judgment.

Having thus established his new constitution, Gracchus turned to the task of enfranchising the Italian allies, which had been proposed and rejected in 125 B.C. But a considerable section of the mob, thinking that their own interests would be seriously injured by a new influx of men to share the profits they were enjoying, combined with the senate in rejecting the proposal, made by Gracchus in 122 B. C., that the Latins should receive the full franchise. This encouraged the senate to work his ruin. Another tribune, Marcus Livius Drusus, was put forward to outbid him for the popular favor by offering the proletariate more than he had done. Those who had received land under the Gracchan laws were to be freed from their rent, and twelve new Italian colonies were to be founded. Gracchus was away at the time in Africa, founding the Carthaginian colony, and the incapacity of his lieutenant, Marcus Flaccus, made all easy for his opponents. The people ratified the Livian laws as readily as they had the Sempronian, and then declined to reëlect Gracchus, when he stood for the third time for office. On December 10, 122 B.C., therefore, he ceased to be tribune and so lay exposed to the vengeance of the enemies he had made.

The first attack was directed against the most unpopular measure of Gracchus, the restoration of Carthage. National superstition was invoked, and the senate proposed a law to prevent the planting of the colony. Gracchus, attended by an armed crowd of partisans, appeared on the day of voting at the Capitol, to procure the rejection of the law. The sight of his armed adherents, and the intense excitement which prevailed, could hardly have failed to result in a collision between the two sides. A tumult broke out, in which a lictor attending the consul was killed, but a heavy rain dis

121 B.C.

persed the people for the time. Next day the consul, Lucius Opimius, a personal enemy of Gracchus, took vigorous measures to put down the insurrection, and the Gracchan party, under the command of Flaccus, took refuge on the Aventine, where they entrenched themselves. Gracchus was averse to resistance, but Flaccus hoped to come to a compromise with his foes. The aristocrats rejected all his proposals, and ordered an attack on the Aventine. The defenders of the mount were speedily dispersed, and Flaccus was killed after vainly seeking concealment. Gracchus was persuaded to fly, but sprained his foot in the attempt. The devotion of two of his attendants, who sacrificed their lives to give him time to escape, enabled him and his slave to cross the Tiber. Here, in a grove, both he and his slave were found dead. The Gracchan party was hunted down by prosecutions, and three thousand are said to have been strangled in prison. The memory of the Gracchi was officially proscribed, and Cornelia was forbidden to put on mourning for the death of her son; but, despite the precautions of the police, the common people continued to pay a religious veneration to the spots where the two leaders of the revolution had perished.