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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Rome, Vol 1, by A H.J. Greenidge
+
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+Title: A History of Rome, Vol 1
+       During the late Republic and early Principate
+
+Author: A H.J. Greenidge
+
+Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9781]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 15, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF ROME, VOL 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon,
+Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           A HISTORY OF ROME
+
+                     DURING THE LATER REPUBLIC AND
+                            EARLY PRINCIPATE
+
+                                   BY
+
+                   A. H. J. GREENIDGE, M. A., D. LITT.
+   TUTOR AND LATE FELLOW OF HERTFORD COLLEGE AND LECTURER IN ANCIENT
+                 HISTORY AT BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD
+
+
+                                VOLUME I
+
+               FROM THE TRIBUNATE OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS TO
+                    THE SECOND CONSULSHIP OF MARIUS
+                              B.C. 133-104
+
+                             WITH TWO MAPS
+
+
+                                  TO
+
+                                 B. G.
+
+                                  AND
+
+                                 T. G.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+This work will be comprised in six volumes. According to the plan which
+I have provisionally laid down, the second volume will cover the period
+from 104 to 70 B.C., ending with the first consulship of Pompeius and
+Crassus; the third, the period from 70 to 44 B.C., closing with the
+death of Caesar; the fourth volume will probably be occupied by the
+Third Civil War and the rule of Augustus, while the fifth and sixth will
+cover the reigns of the Emperors to the accession of Vespasian.
+
+The original sources, on which the greater part of the contents of the
+present volume is based, have been collected during the last few years
+by Miss Clay and myself, and have already been published in an
+abbreviated form. Some idea of the debt which I owe to modern authors
+may be gathered from the references in the footnotes. As I have often,
+for the sake of brevity, cited the works of these authors by shortened
+and incomplete titles, I have thought it advisable to add to the volume
+a list of the full titles of the works referred to. But the list makes
+no pretence to be a full bibliography of the period of history with
+which this volume deals. The map of the Waed Mellag and its surrounding
+territory, which I have inserted to illustrate the probable site of the
+battle of the Muthul, is taken from the map of the "Medjerda superieure"
+which appears in M. Salomon Reinach's _Atlas de la Province Romaine
+d'Afrique_.
+
+I am very much indebted to my friend and former pupil, Mr. E.J. Harding,
+of Hertford College, for the ungrudging labour which he has bestowed on
+the proofs of the whole of this volume. Many improvements in the form of
+the work are due to his perspicacity and judgment.
+
+A problem which confronts an author who plunges into the midst of the
+history of a nation (however complete may be the unity of the period
+with which he deals) is that of the amount of introductory information
+which he feels bound to supply to his readers. In this case, I have felt
+neither obligation nor inclination to supply a sketch of the development
+of Rome or her constitution up to the period of the Gracchi. The amount
+of information on the general and political history of Rome which the
+average student must have acquired from any of the excellent text-books
+now in use, is quite sufficient to enable him to understand the
+technicalities of the politics of the period with which I deal; and I
+was very unwilling to burden the volume with a _precis_ of a subject
+which I had already treated in another work. On the other hand, it is
+not so easy to acquire information on the social and economic history of
+Rome, and consequently I have devoted the first hundred pages of this
+book to a detailed exposition of the conditions preceding and
+determining the great conflict of interests with which our story opens.
+
+A. H. J. G.
+
+
+OXFORD,
+_August_, 1904
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I: Characteristics of the period. Recent changes in the
+conditions of Roman life. Close of the period of expansion by means of
+colonies or land assignments. Reasons for social discontent. The life of
+the wealthier classes. The expenses of political life. Attempts to check
+luxury. Motives for gain amongst the upper classes. Means of acquiring
+wealth open to members of the nobility; those open to members of the
+commercial class. The political influence of the Equites. The business
+life of Rome; finance and banking. Foreign trade. The condition of the
+small traders. Agriculture. Diminution in the numbers of peasant
+proprietors. The Latifundium and the new agricultural ideal. Growth of
+pasturage. Causes of the changes in the tenure of land. The system of
+possession. Future prospects of agriculture. Slave labour; dangers
+attending its employment; revolts of slaves in Italy. The servile war in
+Sicily (_circa_ 140-131 B.C.). The need for reform.
+
+CHAPTER II: The sources from which reform might have come, too. Attitude
+of Scipio Aemilianus. Tiberius Gracchus; his youth and early career. The
+affair of the Numantine Treaty. Motives that urged Tiberius Gracchus to
+reform. His tribunate (B.C. 133). Terms of the agrarian measure which he
+introduced. Creation of a special agrarian commission. Opposition to the
+bill. Veto pronounced by Marcus Octavius. Tiberius Gracchus declares a
+Justitium. Fruitless reference to the senate. Deposition of Octavius.
+Passing of the agrarian law; appointment of the commissioners; judicial
+power given to the commissioners. Employment of the bequest of Attalus.
+Attacks on Tiberius Gracchus. His defence of the deposition of Octavius.
+New programme of Tiberius Gracchus; suggestion of measures dealing with
+the army, the law-courts and the Italians. Tiberius Gracchus's attempt
+at re-election to the tribunate. Riot at the election and death of
+Tiberius Gracchus, Consequences of his fall.
+
+CHAPTER III: Attitude of the senate after the fall of Tiberius Gracchus.
+Special commission appointed for the trial of his adherents (B.C. 132).
+Fate of Scipio Nasica. Permanence of the land commission and
+thoroughness of its work. Difficulties connected with jurisdiction on
+disputed claims. The Italians appeal to Scipio Aemilianus. His
+intervention; judicial power taken from the commissioners (B.C. 129).
+Death of Scipio Aemilianus. Tribunate of Carbo (B.C. 131); ballot law
+and attempt to make the tribune immediately re-eligible. The Italian
+claims; negotiations for the extension of the franchise. Alien act of
+Pennus (B.C. 126). Proposal made by Flaccus to extend the franchise
+(B.C. 125). Revolt of Fregellae. Foundation of Fabrateria (B.C. 124).
+Foreign events during this period; the kingdom of Pergamon. Bequest of
+Attains the Third (B.C. 133). Revolt of Aristonicus (B.C. 132-130).
+Organisation of the province of Asia (B.C. 129-126). Sardinian War (B.C.
+126-125). Conquest and annexation of the Balearic Islands
+(B.C. 123-132).
+
+CHAPTER IV: The political situation at the time of the appearance of
+Caius Gracchus as a candidate for the tribunate (B.C. 124). Early career
+of Caius Gracchus. First tribunate of Caius Gracchus (B.C. 123). Laws
+passed or proposed during this tribunate; law protecting the Caput of a
+Roman citizen. Impeachment of Popillius. Law concerning magistrates who
+had been deposed by the people. Social reforms. Law providing for the
+cheapened sale of corn. Law mitigating the conditions of military
+service, 208. Agrarian law. Judiciary law. Law permitting a criminal
+prosecution for corrupt judgments. Law concerning the province of Asia.
+The new balance of power created by these laws in favour of the Equites.
+Law about the consular provinces. Colonial schemes of Caius Gracchus.
+The Rubrian law for the renewal of Carthage. Law for the making of
+roads. Election of Fannius to the consulship and of Caius Gracchus and
+Flaccus to the tribunate. Activity of Caius Gracchus during his second
+tribunate (B.C. 122). The franchise bill. Opposition to the bill.
+Exclusion of Italians from Rome; threat of the veto, and suspension of
+the measure. Proposal for a change in the order of voting in the Comitia
+Centuriata. New policy of the senate; counter-legislation of Drusus.
+Colonial proposals of Drusus. His measure for the protection of the
+Latins. The close of Caius Gracchus's second tribunate. His failure to
+be elected tribune for the third time. Proposal for the repeal of the
+Rubrian law. The meeting on the Capitol and its consequences (B.C. 121).
+Declaration of a state of siege. The seizure of the Aventine; defeat of
+the Gracchans; death of Caius Gracchus and Flaccus. Judicial prosecution
+of the adherents of Caius Gracchus. Future judgments on the Gracchi. The
+closing years of Cornelia. Estimate of the character and consequences of
+the Gracchan reforms.
+
+CHAPTER V: The political situation after the fall of Caius Gracchus.
+Prosecution and acquittal of Opimius (B.C. 120). Publius Lentulus dies
+in exile. Prosecution and condemnation of Carbo (B.C. 119). Lucius
+Crassus. Policy of the senate towards the late schemes of reform. Two
+new land laws (_circa_ 121-119 B.C.). The settlement of the land
+question with respect to Ager Publicus in Italy (B.C. III). Limitations
+on the power of the nobility; the Equestrian courts; trials of Scaevola
+(B.C. 120) and Cato (B.C. 113). Consulship of Scaurus (B.C. 115); law
+concerning the voting power of freedmen. Sumptuary law; activity of the
+censors Metellus and Domitius (B.C. 115). Triumphs of Domitius, Fabius
+(B.C. 120) and Scaurus (B.C. 115), for military successes. Confidence of
+the electors in the ancient houses. Recognition of talent by the
+nobility; career of Scaurus (B.C. 163-115). The rise of Marius; his
+early career (B.C. 157-119). Tribunate of Marius (B.C. 119). His law
+about the method of voting in the Comitia carried in spite of the
+opposition of the senate. He opposes a measure for the distribution of
+corn. Marius elected praetor; accused and acquitted of Ambitus (B.C.
+116). His praetorship (B.C. 115), and pro-praetorship in Spain (B.C.
+114). Further opposition to the senate; foundation of Narbo Martius
+(B.C. 118). Glaucia; his tribunate and his law of extortion (_circa_ 111
+B.C.). The spirit of unrest; religious fears at Rome (B.C. 114). First
+trial of the vestals (B.C. 114). Second trial of the vestals (B.C. 113).
+Human sacrifice. Great fire at Rome (B.C. III).
+
+CHAPTER VI: The kingdom of Numidia. The races of North Africa. The
+Numidians. The Numidian monarchy. Reign of Micipsa (B.C. 148-118). Early
+years of Jugurtha. Jugurtha at Numantia (B.C. 134-133). Joint rule of
+Jugurtha, Adherbal and Hiempsal (B.C. 118). Murder of Hiempsal (_circa_
+116 B.C.); war between Jugurtha and Adherbal. Both kings send envoys to
+Rome; the appeal of Adherbal. Decision of the senate. Numidia divided
+between the claimants. Renewal of the war between Jugurtha and Adherbal
+(_circa_ 114 B.C.). Siege of Cirta (B.C. 112). Embassy from Rome
+neglected by Jugurtha. Renewed appeal of Adherbal. Another commission
+sent by Rome. Surrender of Cirta and murder of Adherbal. Massacre of
+Italian traders. Its influence on the commercial classes at Rome;
+protest by Memmius. Declaration of war against Jugurtha. Command of
+Bestia in Numidia (B.C. III). Attitude of Bocchus of Mauretania.
+Negotiations of Bestia with Jugurtha; conclusion of peace. Excitement in
+Rome on the news of the agreement with Jugurtha. Activity of Memmius.
+Jugurtha induced to come to Rome (B.C. III). Jugurtha at Rome; the scene
+at the Contio. Murder of Massiva. Jugurtha leaves Rome and the war is
+renewed, 365. Spurius Albinus in Numidia. He returns to Rome leaving
+Aulus Albinus in command. Enterprise of Aulus Albinus; his defeat and
+compact with Jugurtha (B.C. 109). Reception of the news at Rome; the
+senate invalidates the treaty. Return of Spurius Albinus to Africa. The
+Mamilian Commission (B.C. 110). Metellus appointed to Numidia
+(B.C. 109).
+
+CHAPTER VII: Metellus restores discipline in the army. Jugurtha attempts
+negotiation; Metellus intrigues with the envoys. First campaign of
+Metellus (B.C. 109). Seizure of Vaga. Battle of the Muthul. Reception of
+the news at Rome. Second campaign of Metellus (B.C. 108). Siege of Zama.
+Correspondence of Metellus with Bomilcar. Negotiations with Jugurtha.
+Discontent in the province of Africa at the progress of the war;
+ambitions of Marius. Plans for securing the command for Marius. Massacre
+of the Roman garrison at Vaga. Recovery of Vaga by Metellus. Trial and
+execution of Turpilius, Intrigues of Bomilcar. Bomilcar put to death by
+Jugurtha. Marius returns to Rome. His election to the consulship (B.C.
+108 or 107); Numidia assigned as his province. Enrolment of the Capite
+Censi in the legions. Metellus's expedition to Thala (B.C. 107); capture
+of the town, Leptis Major appeals for, and receives, Roman help.
+Jugurtha finds help amongst the Gaetulians. Junction of Jugurtha and
+Bocchus. Metellus moves to Cirta. Close of Metellus's command.
+
+CHAPTER VIII: Marius arrives in Africa (B.C. 107). Return of Metellus to
+Rome: his triumph. First campaign of Marius. Expedition to Capsa and
+destruction of the town. Second campaign of Marius (B.C. 106);
+operations on the Muluccha. Arrival of Sulla with cavalry from Italy.
+Early career of Sulla. Renewed coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus.
+Retirement of Marius on Cirta; battles on the route. Marius approached
+by Bocchus; Sulla and Manlius sent to interview Bocchus. Envoys from
+Bocchus reach Sulla in the Roman winter-camp (B.C. 105). Armistice made
+with Bocchus; he is then granted conditional terms of alliance by the
+Roman senate. The mission of Sulla to Bocchus. The advocates of Numidia
+and Rome at the Mauretanian court. Sulla urges Bocchus to surrender
+Jugurtha. Betrayal of the Numidian king; conclusion of the war;
+settlement of Numidia. Fate of Jugurtha. Triumph of Marius. Lessons of
+the Numidian War. Growing rivalry between Marius and Sulla. Internal
+politics of Rome; reaction in favour of the nobility; election of
+Serranus and Caepio (B.C. 107). The judiciary law of Caepio (B.C. 106).
+The measure supported by Crassus. Reaction against the proposal; victory
+of the Equites; renewed coalition against the senate due to the conduct
+of the campaign in the North. The consular elections for the year 105
+B.C. Effect of the defeat at Arausio (6th Oct. 105 B.C.). Election of
+Marius to a second consulship.
+
+
+MAPS
+
+The Waed Mellag and the surrounding territory.
+Numidia and the Roman Province of Africa.
+Titles of modern works referred to in the notes.
+
+
+     _Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
+        Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
+      Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
+        Or Love in a golden bowl?_
+                                        BLAKE
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ROME
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The period of Roman history on which we now enter is, like so many that
+had preceded it, a period of revolt, directly aimed against the existing
+conditions of society and, through the means taken to satisfy the fresh
+wants and to alleviate the suddenly realised, if not suddenly created,
+miseries of the time, indirectly affecting the structure of the body
+politic. The difference between the social movement of the present and
+that of the past may be justly described as one of degree, in so far as
+there was not a single element of discontent visible in the revolution
+commencing with the Gracchi and ending with Caesar that had not been
+present in the earlier epochs of social and political agitation. The
+burden of military service, the curse of debt, the poverty of an
+agrarian proletariate, the hunger for land, the striving of the artisan
+and the merchant after better conditions of labour and of trade--the
+separate cries of discontent that find their unison in a protest against
+the monopoly of office and the narrow or selfish rule of a dominant
+class, and thus gain a significance as much political as social--all
+these plaints had filled the air at the time when Caius Licinius near
+the middle of the fourth century, and Appius Claudius at its close,
+evolved their projects of reform. The cycle of a nation's history can
+indeed never be broken as long as the character of the nation remains
+the same. And the average Roman of the middle of the second century
+before our era[1] was in all essential particulars the Roman of the
+times of Appius and of Licinius, or even of the epoch when the ten
+commissioners had published the Tables which were to stamp its perpetual
+character on Roman law. He was in his business relations either
+oppressor or oppressed, either hammer or anvil. In his private life he
+was an individualist whose sympathies were limited to the narrow circle
+of his dependants; he was a trader and a financier whose humanitarian
+instincts were subordinated to a code of purely commercial morality, and
+who valued equity chiefly because it presented the line of least
+resistance and facilitated the conduct of his industrial operations.
+Like all individualists, he was something of an anarchist, filled with
+the idea, which appeared on every page of the record of his ancestors
+and the history of his State, that self-help was the divinely given
+means of securing right, that true social order was the issue of
+conflicting claims pushed to their breaking point until a temporary
+compromise was agreed on by the weary combatants; but he was hampered in
+his democratic leanings by the knowledge that democracy is the fruit of
+individual self-restraint and subordination to the common
+will--qualities of which he could not boast and symbols of a prize which
+he would not have cared to attain at the expense of his peculiar ideas
+of personal freedom--and he was forced, in consequence of this
+abnegation, to submit to an executive government as strong, one might
+almost say as tyrannous, as any which a Republic has ever displayed--a
+government which was a product of the restless spirit of self-assertion
+and self-aggrandisement which the Roman felt in himself, and therefore
+had sufficient reason to suspect in others.
+
+The Roman was the same; but his environment had changed more startlingly
+during the last fifty or sixty years than in all the centuries that had
+preceded them in the history of the Republic. The conquest of Italy had,
+it Is true, given to his city much that was new and fruitful in the
+domains of religion, of art, of commerce and of law. Bat these
+accretions merely entailed the fuller realisation of a tendency which
+had been marked from the earliest stage of Republican history--the
+tendency to fit isolated elements in the marvellous discoveries made by
+the heaven-gifted race of the Greeks into a framework that was
+thoroughly national and Roman. Ideas had been borrowed, and these ideas
+certainly resulted in increased efficiency and therefore in increased
+wealth. But the gross material of Hellenism, whether as realised in
+intellectual ideas or (the prize that appealed more immediately to the
+practical Roman with his concrete mind) in tangible things, had not been
+seized as a whole as the reward of victory: and no great attempt had
+been made in former ages to assimilate the one or to enjoy the other.
+The nature of the material rewards which had been secured by the epochs
+of Italian conquest had indeed made such assimilation or enjoyment
+impossible. They would have been practicable only in a state which
+possessed a fairly complete urban life; and the effect of the wars which
+Rome waged with her neighbours in the peninsula had been to make the
+life of the average citizen more purely agricultural than it had been in
+the early Republic, perhaps even in the epoch of the Kings. The course
+of a nation's political, social and intellectual history is determined
+very largely by the methods which it adopts for its own expansion at the
+inevitable moment when its original limits are found to be too narrow to
+satisfy even the most modest needs of a growing population. The method
+chosen will depend chiefly on geographical circumstances and on the
+military characteristics of the people which are indissolubly connected
+with these. When the city of Old Greece began to feel the strength of
+its growing manhood, and the developing hunger which was both the sign
+and the source of that strength, it looked askance at the mountain line
+which cut it off from the inland regions, it turned hopeful eyes on the
+sea that sparkled along its coasts; it manned its ships and sent its
+restless youth to a new and distant home which was but a replica of the
+old. The results of this maritime adventure were the glories of urban
+life and the all-embracing sweep of Hellenism. The progress of Roman
+enterprise had been very different. Following the example of all
+conquering Italian peoples,[2] and especially of the Sabellian invaders
+whose movements immediately preceded their own, the Romans adopted the
+course of inland expansion, and such urban unity as they had possessed
+was dissipated over the vast tract of territory on which the legions
+were settled, or to which the noble sent his armed retainers, nominally
+to keep the land as the public domain of Rome, in reality to hold it for
+himself and his descendants. At a given moment (which is as clearly
+marked in Roman as in Hellenic history) the possibility of such
+expansion ceased, and the necessity for its cessation was as fully
+exhibited in the policy of the government as in the tastes of the
+people. No Latin colony had been planted later than the year 181, no
+Roman colony later than 157,[3] and the senate showed no inclination to
+renew schemes for the further assignment of territory amongst the
+people. There were many reasons for this indifference to colonial
+enterprise. In the first place, although colonisation had always been a
+relief to the proletariate and one of the means regularly adopted by
+those in power for assuaging its dangerous discontent, yet the
+government had always regarded the social aspect of this method of
+expansion as subservient to the strategic.[4] This strategic motive no
+longer existed, and a short-sighted policy, which looked to the present,
+not to the future, to men of the existing generation and not to their
+sons, may easily have held that a colony, which was not needed for the
+protection of the district in which it was settled, injuriously affected
+the fighting-strength of Rome. The maritime colonies which had been
+established from the end of the great Latin war down to the close of the
+second struggle with Carthage claimed, at least in many cases, exemption
+from military service,[5] and a tradition of this kind tends to linger
+when its justification is a thing of the past. But, even if such a view
+could be repudiated by the government, it was certain that the levy
+became a more serious business the greater the number of communities on
+which the recruiting commander had to call, and it was equally manifest
+that the veteran who had just been given an allotment on which to
+establish his household gods might be inclined to give a tardy response
+to the call to arms. The Latin colony seemed a still greater anachronism
+than the military colony of citizens. The member of such a community,
+although the state which he entered enjoyed large privileges of
+autonomy, ceased to be a Roman citizen in respect to political rights,
+and even at a time when self-government had been valued almost more than
+citizenship, the government had only been able to carry out its project
+of pushing these half-independent settlements into the heart of Italy by
+threatening with a pecuniary penalty the soldier who preferred his
+rights as a citizen to the benefits which he might receive as an
+emigrant.[6] Now that the great wars had brought their dubious but at
+least potential profits to every member of the Roman community, and the
+gulf between the full citizens and the members of the allied communities
+was ever widening, it was more than doubtful whether a member of the
+former class, however desperate his plight, would readily condescend to
+enroll himself amongst the latter. But, even apart from these
+considerations, it must have seemed very questionable to any one, who
+held the traditional view that colonisation should subserve the purposes
+of the State, whether the landless citizen of the time could be trusted
+to fulfil his duties as an emigrant. As early as the year 186 the consul
+Spurius Postumius, while making a judicial tour in Italy, had found to
+his surprise that colonies on both the Italian coasts, Sipontum on the
+Upper, and Buxentum on the Lower Sea, had been abandoned by their
+inhabitants: and a new levy had to be set on foot to replace the
+faithless emigrants who had vanished into space.[7] As time went on the
+risk of such desertion became greater, partly from the growing
+difficulty of maintaining an adequate living on the land, partly from
+the fact that the more energetic spirits, on whom alone the hopes of
+permanent settlement could depend, found a readier avenue to wealth and
+a more tempting sphere for the exercise of manly qualities in the
+attractions of a campaign that seemed to promise plunder and glory,
+especially when these prizes were accompanied by no exorbitant amount of
+suffering or toil. Thus when it had become known that Scipio Africanus
+would accompany his brother in the expedition against Antiochus, five
+thousand veterans, both citizens and allies, who had served their full
+time under the command of the former, offered their voluntary services
+to the departing consul,[8] and nineteen' years later the experience
+which had been gained of the wealth that might be reaped from a campaign
+in Macedonia and Asia drew many willing recruits to the legions which
+were to be engaged in the struggle with Perseus.[9] The
+semi-professional soldier was in fact springing up, the man of a spirit
+adventurous and restless such as did not promise contentment with the
+small interests and small rewards of life in an Italian outpost. But, if
+the days of formal colonisation were over, why might not the concurrent
+system be adopted of dividing conquered lands amongst poorer citizens
+without the establishment of a new political settlement or any strict
+limitation of the number of the recipients? This 'viritane' assignation
+had always run parallel to that which assumed the form of colonisation;
+it merely required the existence of land capable of distribution, and
+the allotments granted might be considered merely a means of affording
+relief to the poorer members of existing municipalities. The system was
+supposed to have existed from the times of the Kings; it was believed to
+have formed the basis of the first agrarian law, that of Spurius Cassius
+in 486;[10] it had been employed after the conquest of the Volscians in
+the fourth century and that of the Sabines in the third;[11] it had
+animated the agrarian legislation of Flaminius when in 232 he romanised
+the _ager Gallicus_ south of Ariminum without planting a single colony
+in this region;[12] and a date preceding the Gracchan legislation by
+only forty years had seen the resumption of the method, when some Gallic
+and Ligurian land, held to be the spoil of war and declared to be
+unoccupied, had been parcelled out into allotments, of ten _jugera_ to
+Roman citizens and of three to members of the Latin name.[13] But to the
+government of the period with which we are concerned the continued
+pursuance of such a course, if it suggested itself at all, appealed in
+the light of a policy that was unfamiliar, difficult and objectionable.
+It is probable that this method of assignment, even in its later phases,
+had been tinctured with the belief that, like the colony, it secured a
+system of military control over the occupied district: and that the
+purely social object of land-distribution, if it had been advanced at
+all, was considered to be characteristic rather of the demagogue than
+the statesman. From a strategic point of view such a measure was
+unnecessary; from an economic, it assumed, not only a craving for
+allotments amongst the poorer class, of which there was perhaps little
+evidence, but a belief, which must have been held to be sanguine in the
+extreme, that these paupers, when provided for, would prove to be
+efficient farmers capable of maintaining a position which many of them
+had already lost. Again, if such an assignment was to be made, it should
+be made on land immediately after it had passed from the possession of
+the enemy to that of Rome; if time had elapsed since the date of
+annexation, it was almost certain that claims of some kind had been
+asserted over the territory, and shadowy as these claims might be, the
+Roman law had, in the interest of the State itself, always tended to
+recognise a _de facto_ as a _de jure_ right. The claims of the allies
+and the municipalities had also to be considered; for assignments to
+Roman citizens on an extensive scale would inevitably lead to difficult
+questions about the rights which many of these townships actually
+possessed to much of the territory whose revenue they enjoyed. If the
+allies and the municipal towns did not suffer, the loss must fall on the
+Roman State itself, which derived one of its chief sources of stable and
+permanent revenue--the source which was supposed to meet the claims for
+Italian administration[14]--from its domains in Italy, on the
+contractors who collected this revenue, and on the Enterprising
+capitalists who had put their wealth and energy into the waste places to
+which they had been invited by the government, and who had given these
+devastated territories much of the value which they now possessed.
+Lastly, these enterprising possessors were strongly represented in the
+senate; the leading members of the nobility had embarked on a new system
+of agriculture, the results of which were inimical to the interest of
+the small farmer, and the conditions of which would be undermined by a
+vast system of distribution such as could alone suffice to satisfy the
+pauper proletariate. The feeling that a future agrarian law was useless
+from an economic and dangerous from a political point of view, was
+strengthened by the conviction that its proposal would initiate a war
+amongst classes, that its failure would exasperate the commons and that
+its success would inflict heavy pecuniary damage on the guardians of
+the State.
+
+Thus the simple system of territorial expansion, which had continued in
+an uninterrupted course from the earliest days of conquest, might be now
+held to be closed for ever. From the point of view of the Italian
+neighbours of Rome it was indeed ample time that such a closing period
+should be reached. If we possessed a map of Italy which showed the
+relative proportions of land in Italy and Cisalpine Gaul which had been
+seized by Rome or left to the native cities or tribes, we should
+probably find that the possessions of the conquering State, whether
+occupied by colonies, absorbed by the gift of citizenship, or held as
+public domain, amounted to nearly one half of the territory of the whole
+peninsula.[15] The extension of such progress was clearly impossible
+unless war were to be provoked with the Confederacy which furnished so
+large a proportion of the fighting strength of Rome; but, if it was
+confessed that extension on the old lines was now beyond reach of
+attainment and yet it was agreed that the existing resources of Italy
+did not furnish an adequate livelihood to the majority of the citizens
+of Rome, but two methods of expansion could be thought of as practicable
+in the future. One was agrarian assignation at the expense either of the
+State or of the richer classes or of both; the other was enterprise
+beyond the sea. But neither of these seemed to deserve government
+intervention, or regulation by a scheme which would satisfy either
+immediate or future wants. The one was repudiated, as we have already
+shown, on account of its novelty, its danger and its inconvenience; the
+other seemed emphatically a matter for private enterprise and above all
+for private capital. It could never be available for the very poor
+unless it assumed the form of colonisation, and the senate looked on
+transmarine colonisation with the eye of prejudice.[16] It took a
+different view of the enterprise of the foreign speculator and merchant;
+this it regarded with an air of easy indifference. Their wealth was a
+pillar on which the State might lean in times of emergency, but, until
+the disastrous effects of commercial enterprise on foreign policy were
+more clearly seen, it was considered to be no business of the government
+either to help or to hinder the wealthy and enterprising Roman in his
+dealings with the peoples of the subject or protected lands.
+
+Rome, if by this name we mean the great majority of Roman citizens, was
+for the first time for centuries in a situation in which all movement
+and all progress seemed to be denied. The force of the community seemed
+to have spent itself for the time; as a force proceeding from the whole
+community it had perhaps spent itself for ever. A section of the
+nominally sovereign people might yet be welded into a mighty instrument
+that would carry victory to the ends of the earth, and open new channels
+of enterprise both for the men who guided their movements and for
+themselves. But for the moment the State was thrown back upon itself; it
+held that an end had been attained, and the attainment naturally
+suggested a pause, a long survey of the results which had been reached
+by these long years of struggle with the hydra-headed enemy abroad. The
+close of the third Macedonian war is said by a contemporary to have
+brought with it a restful sense of security such as Rome could not have
+felt for centuries.[17] Such a security gave scope to the rich to enjoy
+the material advantages which their power had acquired; but it also gave
+scope to the poor to reflect on the strange harvest which the conquest
+of the great powers of the world had brought to the men whose stubborn
+patience had secured the peace which they were given neither the means
+nor the leisure to enjoy. The men who evaded or had completed their
+service in the legions lacked the means, although they had the leisure;
+the men who still obeyed the summons to arms lacked both, unless the
+respite between prolonged campaigns could be called leisure, or the
+booty, hardly won and quickly squandered, could be described as means.
+Even after Carthage had been destroyed Rome, though doubly safe, was
+still busy enough with her legions; the government of Spain was one
+protracted war, and proconsuls were still striving to win triumphs for
+themselves by improving on their predecessors' work.[18] But such war
+could not absorb the energy or stimulate the interest of the people as a
+whole. The reaction which had so often followed a successful campaign,
+when the discipline of the camp had been shaken off and the duties of
+the soldier were replaced by the wants of the citizen, was renewed on a
+scale infinitely larger than before--a scale proportioned to the
+magnitude of the strain which had been removed and the greatness of the
+wants which had been revived. The cries for reform may have been of the
+old familiar type but their increased intensity and variety may almost
+be held to have given them a difference of quality. There is a stage at
+which a difference of degree seems to amount to one of kind: and this
+stage seems certainly to have been reached in the social problems
+presented by the times. In the old days of the struggle between the
+orders the question of privilege had sometimes overshadowed the purely
+economic issue, and although a close scrutiny of those days of turmoil
+shows that the dominant note in the conflict was often a mere pretext
+meant to serve the personal ambition of the champions of the Plebs, yet
+the appearance rather than the reality of an issue imposes on the
+imagination of the mob, and political emancipation had been thought a
+boon even when hard facts had shown that its greater prizes had fallen
+to a small and selfish minority. Now, however, there could be no
+illusion. There was nothing but material wants on one side, there was
+nothing but material power on the other. The intellectual claims which
+might be advanced to justify a monopoly of office and of wealth, could
+be met by an intellectual superiority on the part of a demagogue
+clamouring for confiscation. The ultimate basis of the life of the State
+was for the first time to be laid bare and subjected to a merciless
+scrutiny; it remained to be seen which of the two great forces of
+society would prevail; the force of habit which had so often blinded the
+Roman to his real needs; or the force of want which, because it so
+seldom won a victory over his innate conservatism, was wont, when that
+victory had been won, to sweep him farther on the path of reckless and
+inconsistent reform than it would have carried a race better endowed
+with the gift of testing at every stage of progress the ends and needs
+of the social organism considered as a whole.
+
+An analysis of social discontent at any period of history must take the
+form of an examination of the wants engendered by the age, and of the
+adequacy or inadequacy of their means of satisfaction. If we turn our
+attention first to the forces of society which were in possession of the
+fortress and were to be the object of attack, we shall find that the
+ruling desires which animated these men of wealth and influence were
+chiefly the product of the new cosmopolitan culture which the victorious
+city had begun to absorb in the days when conquest and diplomacy had
+first been carried across the seas. To this she fell a willing victim
+when the conquered peoples, bending before the rude force which had but
+substituted a new suzerainty for an old and had scarcely touched their
+inner life, began to display before the eyes of their astonished
+conquerors the material comfort and the spiritual charm which, in the
+case of the contact of a potent but narrow civilisation with one that is
+superbly elastic and strong in the very elegance of its physical
+debility, can always turn defeat into victory. But the student who
+begins his investigation of the new Roman life with the study of Roman
+society as it existed in the latter half of the second century before
+our era, cannot venture to gather up the threads of the purely
+intellectual and moral influences which were created by the new
+Hellenistic civilisation. He feels that he is only at the beginning of a
+process, that he lacks material for his picture, that the illustrative
+matter which he might employ is to be found mainly in the literary
+records of a later age, and that his use of this matter would but
+involve him in the historical sins of anticipation and anachronism. Of
+some phases of the war between the old spirit and the new we shall find
+occasion to speak; but the culminating point attained by the blend of
+Greek with Roman elements is the only one which is clearly visible to
+modern eyes. This point, however, was reached at the earliest only in
+the second half of the next century. It was only then that the fusion of
+the seemingly discordant elements gave birth to the new "Romanism,"
+which was to be the ruling civilisation of Italy and the Western
+provinces and, in virtue of the completeness of the amalgamation and the
+novelty of the product, was itself to be contrasted and to live for
+centuries in friendly rivalry with the more uncompromising Hellenism of
+Eastern lands. But some of the economic effects of the new influences
+claim our immediate attention, for we are engaged in the study of the
+beginnings of an economic revolution, and an analysis must therefore be
+attempted of some of the most pressing needs and some of the keenest
+desires which were awakened by Hellenism, either in the purer dress
+which old Greece had given it or in the more gorgeous raiment which it
+had assumed during its sojourn in the East.
+
+A tendency to treat the city as the home, the country only as a means of
+refreshment and a sphere of elegant retirement during that portion of
+the year when the excitement of the urban season, its business and its
+pleasure, were suspended, began to be a marked feature of the life of
+the upper classes. The man of affairs and the man of high finance were
+both compelled to have their domicile in the town, and, if agriculture
+was still the staple or the supplement of their wealth, the needs of the
+estate had to be left to the supervision of the resident bailiff.[19]
+This concentration of the upper classes in the city necessarily entailed
+a great advance in the price and rental of house property within the
+walls. It is true that the reckless prices paid for houses, especially
+for country villas, by the grandees and millionaires of the next
+generation,[20] had not yet been reached; but the indications with which
+we are furnished of the general rise of prices for everything in Rome
+that could be deemed desirable by a cultivated taste,[21] show that the
+better class of house property must already have yielded large returns,
+whether it were sold or let, and we know that poor scions of the
+nobility, if business or pleasure induced them to spend a portion of the
+year in Rome, had soon to climb the stairs of flats or lodgings.[22] The
+pressure for room led to the piling of storey on storey. On The roof of
+old houses new chambers were raised, which could be reached by an
+outside stair, and either served to accommodate the increased retinue of
+the town establishment or were let to strangers who possessed no
+dwelling of their own;[23] the still larger lodging-houses or "islands,"
+which derived their name from their lofty isolation from neighbouring
+buildings,[24] continued to spring up, and even private houses soon came
+to attain a height which had to be restrained by the intervention of the
+law. An ex-consul and augur was called on by the censors of 125 to
+explain the magnitude of a villa which he had raised, and the altitude
+of the structure exposed him not only to the strictures of the guardians
+of morals but to a fine imposed by a public court.[25] Great changes
+were effected in the interior structure of the houses of the
+wealthy--changes excused by a pardonable desire for greater comfort and
+rendered necessary both by the growing formality of life and the large
+increase in the numbers of the resident household, but tending, when
+once adopted, to draw the father of the family into that most useless
+type of extravagance which takes the form of a craze for building. The
+Hall or Atrium had once been practically the house. It opened on the
+street. It contained the family bed and the kitchen fire. The smoke
+passed through a hole in the roof and begrimed the family portraits that
+looked down on the members of the household gathered round the hearth
+for their common meal. The Hall was the chief bedroom, the kitchen, the
+dining-room and the reception room, and it was also the only avenue from
+the street to the small courtyard at the back. The houses of the great
+had hitherto differed from those of the poor chiefly in dimensions and
+but very slightly in structure. The home of the wealthy patrician had
+simply been on a larger scale of primitive discomfort; and if his large
+parlour built of timber could accommodate a vast host of clients, the
+bed and the cooking pots were still visible to every visitor. The chief
+of the early innovations had been merely a low portico, borrowed from
+the Greeks by the Etruscans and transmitted by them to Rome, which ran
+round the courtyard, was divided into little cells and chambers, and
+served to accommodate the servants of the house.[26] But now fashion
+dictated that the doorway should not front the street but should be
+parted from it by a vestibule, in which the early callers gathered
+before they were admitted to the hall of audience. The floor of the
+Atrium was no longer the common passage to the regions at the back, but
+a special corridor lying either on one or on both sides of the Hall[27]
+led past the Study or Tablinum, immediately behind it, to the inner
+court beyond. Even the sanctity of the nuptial couch could not continue
+to give it the publicity which was irksome to the taste of an age which
+had acquired notions of the dignity of seclusion, of the comfort that
+was to be found in retirement, and of the convenience of separating the
+chambers that were used for public from those which were employed for
+merely private purposes. The chief bedrooms were shifted to the back,
+and the sides of the courtyard were no longer the exclusive abode of the
+dependants of the household. The common hearth could no longer serve as
+the sphere of the culinary operations of an expensive cook with his
+retinue of menials; the cooking fire was removed to one of the rooms
+near the back-gate of the house, which finally became an ample kitchen
+replete with all the imported means of satisfying the growing luxury of
+the table; and the member of the family loitering in the hall, or the
+visitor admitted through its portals, was spared the annoyances of
+strong smells and pungent smoke. The Roman family also discovered the
+discomfort of dining in a large and scantily furnished room, not too
+well lit and accessible to the intrusions of the chance domestic and the
+caller. It was deemed preferable to take the common meal in a light and
+airy upper chamber, and the new type of Coenaculum satisfied at once the
+desire for personal comfort and for that specialisation in the use of
+apartments which is one of the chief signs of an advancing material
+civilisation. The great hall had become the show-room of the house, but
+even for this purpose its dimensions proved too small. Such was the
+quantity of curios and works of art collected by the conquering or
+travelled Roman that greater space was needed for the exhibition of
+their rarity or splendour. This space was gained by the removal from the
+Atrium of all the domestic obstacles with which it had once been
+cumbered. It might now be made slightly smaller in its proportion to the
+rest of the house and yet appear far more ample than before. The space
+by which its sides were diminished could now be utilised for the
+building of two wings or Alae, which served the threefold purpose of
+lighting the hall from the sides, of displaying to better advantage, as
+an oblong chamber always does, the works of art which the lord of the
+mansion or his butler[28] displayed to visitor or client, and lastly of
+serving as a gallery for the family portraits, which were finally
+removed from the Atrium, to be seen to greater advantage and in a better
+light on the walls of the wings. These now displayed the family tree
+through painted lines which connected the little shrines holding the
+inscribed _imagines_ of the great ancestors of the house.[29] It is also
+possible that the Alae served as rooms for more private audiences than
+were possible in the Atrium.[30] From the early morning crowd which
+thronged the hall individuals or groups might have been detached by the
+butler, and led to the presence of the great statesman or pleader who
+paced the floor in the retirement of one of these long side-galleries.
+[31] Business of a yet more private kind was transacted in the still
+greater security of the Tablinum, the archive room and study of the
+house. Here were kept, not only the family records and the family
+accounts, but such of the official registers and papers as a magistrate
+needed to have at hand during his year of office.[32] The domestic
+transaction of official business was very large at Rome, for the State
+had given its administrators not even the skeleton of a civil service,
+and it was in this room that the consul locked himself up with his
+quaestor and his scribes, as it was here that, as a good head of the
+family and a careful business man, he carefully perused the record of
+income and expenditure, of gains and losses, with his skilled Greek
+accountant.
+
+The whole tendency of the reforms in domestic architecture was to
+differentiate between the public and private life of the man of business
+or affairs. His public activity was confined to the forepart of the
+house; his repose, his domestic joys, and his private pleasures were
+indulged in the buildings which lay behind the Atrium and its wings. As
+each of the departments of life became more ambitious, the sphere for
+the exercise of the one became more magnificent, and that which fostered
+the other the scene of a more perfect, because more quiet, luxury. The
+Atrium was soon to become a palatial hall adorned with marble
+colonnades;[33] the small yard with its humble portico at the back was
+to be transformed into the Greek Peristyle, a court open to the sky and
+surrounded by columns, which enclosed a greenery of shrubs and trees and
+an atmosphere cooled and freshened by the constant play of fountains.
+The final form of the Roman house was an admirable type of the new
+civilisation. It was Roman and yet Greek[34]--Roman in the grand front
+that it, presented to the world, Greek in the quiet background of
+thought and sentiment.
+
+The growing splendour of the house demanded a number and variety in its
+human servitors that had not been dreamed of in a simpler age. The slave
+of the farm, with his hard hands and weather-beaten visage, could no
+longer be brought by his elegant master to the town and exhibited to a
+fastidious society as the type of servant that ministered to his daily
+needs. The urban and rustic family were now kept wholly distinct; it was
+only when some child of marked grace and beauty was born on the farm,
+that it was transferred to the mansion as containing a promise that
+would be wasted on rustic toil.[35] In every part of the establishment
+the taste and wealth of the owner might be tested by the courtliness and
+beauty of its living instruments. The chained dog at the gate had been
+replaced by a human janitor, often himself in chains.[36] The visitor,
+when he had passed the porter, was received by the butler in the hall,
+and admitted to the master's presence by a series of footmen and ushers,
+the show servants of the fore-part of the house, men of the impassive
+dignity and obsequious repose that servitude but strengthens in the
+Oriental mind.[37] In the penetralia of the household each need created
+by the growing ideal of comfort and refinement required its separate
+band of ministers. The body of the bather was rubbed and perfumed by
+experts in the art; the service of the table was in the hands of men who
+had made catering and the preparation of delicate viands the sole
+business of their lives. The possession of a cook, who could answer to
+the highest expectations of the age, was a prize beyond the reach of all
+but the most wealthy; for such an expert the sum of four talents had to
+be paid;[38] he was the prize of the millionaire, and families of more
+moderate means, if they wished a banquet to be elegantly served, were
+forced to hire the temporary services of an accomplished artist.[39] The
+housekeeper,[40] who supervised the resources of the pantry, guided the
+destinies of the dinner in concert with the _chef_; and each had under
+him a crowd of assistants of varied names and carefully differentiated
+functions.[41] The business of the outer world demanded another class of
+servitors. There were special valets charged with the functions of
+taking notes and invitations to their masters' friends; there was the
+valued attendant of quick eye and ready memory, an incredibly rich
+store-house of names and gossip, an impartial observer of the ways and
+weaknesses of every class, who could inform his master of the name and
+attributes of the approaching stranger. There were the lackeys who
+formed the nucleus of the attendant retinue of clients for the man when
+he walked abroad, the boys of exquisite form with slender limbs and
+innocent faces, who were the attendant spirits of the lady as she passed
+in her litter down the street. The muscles of the stouter slaves now
+offered facilities for easy journeying that had been before unknown. The
+Roman official need not sit his horse during the hot hours of the day as
+he passed through the hamlets of Italy, and the grinning rustic could
+ask, as he watched the solemn and noiseless transit of the bearers,
+whether the carefully drawn curtains did not conceal a corpse.[42]
+
+The internal luxury of the household was as fully exhibited in lifeless
+objects as in living things. Rooms were scented with fragrant perfumes
+and hung with tapestries of great price and varied bloom. Tables were
+set with works of silver, ivory and other precious material, wrought
+with the most delicate skill. Wine of moderate flavour was despised;
+Falernian and Chian were the only brands that the true connoisseur would
+deem worthy of his taste. A nice discrimination was made in the
+qualities of the rarer kinds of fish, and other delicacies of the table
+were sought in proportion to the difficulty of their attainment. The
+fashions of dress followed the tendency of the age; the rarity of the
+material, its fineness of texture, the ease which it gave to the body,
+were the objects chiefly sought. Young men were seen in the Forum in
+robes of a material as soft as that worn by women and almost transparent
+in its thinness. Since all these instruments of pleasure, and the luxury
+that appealed to ambition even more keenly than to taste, were pursued
+with a ruinous competition, prices were forced up to an incredible
+degree. An amphora of Falernian wine cost one hundred denarii, a jar of
+Pontic salt-fish four hundred; a young Roman would often give a talent
+for a favourite, and boys who ranked in the highest class for beauty of
+face and elegance of form fetched even a higher price than this.[43] Few
+could have been inclined to contradict Cato when he said in the
+senate-house that Rome was the only city in the world where a jar of
+preserved fish from the Black Sea cost more than a yoke of oxen, and a
+boy-favourite fetched a higher price than a yeoman's farm.[44] One of
+the great objects of social ambition was to have a heavier service of
+silver-plate than was possessed by any of one's neighbours. In the good
+old days,--days not so long past, but severed from the present by a gulf
+that circumstances had made deeper than the years--the Roman had had an
+official rather than a personal pride in the silver which he could
+display before the respectful eyes of the distinguished foreigner who
+was the guest of the State; and the Carthaginian envoys had been struck
+by the similarity between the silver services which appeared at the
+tables of their various hosts. The experience led them to a higher
+estimate of Roman brotherhood than of Roman wealth, and the silver-plate
+that had done such varied duty was at least responsible for a moral
+triumph.[45] Only a few years before the commencement of the first war
+with Carthage Rufinus a consular had been expelled from the senate for
+having ten pounds of the wrought metal in his keeping,[46] and Scipio
+Aemilianus, a man of the present age, but an adherent of the older
+school, left but thirty-two pounds' weight to his heir. Less than forty
+years later the younger Livius Drusus was known to be in possession of
+plate that weighed ten thousand pounds,[47] and the accretions to the
+primitive hoard which must have been made by but two or three members of
+this family may serve as an index of the extent to which this particular
+form of the passion for display had influenced the minds and practice of
+the better-class Romans of the day.
+
+There were other objects, valued for their intrinsic worth as much as
+for the distinction conveyed by their possession, which attracted the
+ambition and strained the revenues of the fashionable man. Works of art
+must once have been cheap on the Roman market; for, even if we refuse to
+credit the story of Mummius' estimate of the prize which fallen Corinth
+had delivered into his hands,[48] yet the transhipment of cargoes of the
+priceless treasures to Rome is at least an historic fact, and the
+Gracchi must themselves have seen the trains of wagons bearing their
+precious freight along the Via Sacra to the Capitol. The spoils of the
+generous conqueror were lent to adorn the triumphs, the public buildings
+and even the private houses, of others; but much that had been yielded
+by Corinth had become the property neither of the general nor of the
+State. Polybius had seen the Roman legionaries playing at draughts on
+the Dionysus of Aristeides and many another famous canvas which had been
+torn from its place and thrown as a carpet upon the ground;[49] but many
+a camp follower must have had a better estimate of the material value of
+the paintings of the Hellenic masters, and the cupidity of the Roman
+collector must often have been satisfied at no great cost to his
+resources. The extent to which a returning army could disseminate its
+acquired tastes and distribute its captured goods had been shown some
+forty years before the fall of Corinth when Manlius brought his legions
+back from the first exploration of the rich cities of Asia. Things and
+names, of which the Roman had never dreamed, soon gratified the eye and
+struck the ear with a familiar sound. He learnt to love the bronze
+couches meant for the dining hall, the slender side tables with the
+strange foreign name, the delicate tissues woven to form the hangings of
+the bed or litter, the notes struck from the psalter and the harp by the
+fingers of the dancing-women of the East.[50] This was the first
+irruption of the efflorescent luxury of Eastern Hellenism; but some
+five-and-twenty years before this date Rome had received her first
+experience of the purer taste of the Greek genius in the West. The whole
+series of the acts of artistic vandalism which marked the footsteps of
+the conquering state could be traced back to the measures taken by
+Claudius Marcellus after the fall of Syracuse. The systematic plunder of
+works of art was for the first time given an official sanction, and the
+public edifices of Rome were by no means the sole beneficiaries of this
+new interpretation of the rights of war. Much of the valuable plunder
+had found its way into private houses,[51] to stimulate the envious
+cupidity of many a future governor who, cursed with the taste of a
+collector and unblessed by the opportunity of a war, would make subtle
+raids on the artistic treasures of his province a secret article of his
+administration. When the ruling classes of a nation have been
+familiarised for the larger part of a century with the easy acquisition
+of the best material treasures of the world, things that have once
+seemed luxuries come to fill an easy place in the category of accepted
+wants. But the sudden supply has stopped; the market value, which
+plunder has destroyed or lessened, has risen to its normal level;
+another burden has been added to life, there is one further stimulus to
+wealth and, so pressing is the social need, that the means to its
+satisfaction are not likely to be too diligently scrutinised before they
+are adopted.
+
+More pardonable were the tastes that were associated with the more
+purely intellectual elements in Hellenic culture--with the influence
+which the Greek rhetor or philosopher exercised in his converse with the
+stern but receptive minds of Rome, the love of books, the new lessons
+which were to be taught as to the rhythmic flow of language and the
+rhythmic movement of the limbs. The Greek adventurer was one of the most
+striking features of the epoch which immediately followed the close of
+the great wars. Later thinkers, generally of the resentfully national,
+academic and pseudo-historical type, who repudiated the amenities of
+life which they continued to enjoy, and cherished the pleasing fiction
+of the exemplary _mores_ of the ancient times, could see little in him
+but a source of unmixed evil;[52] and indeed the Oriental Greek of the
+commoner type, let loose upon the society of the poorer quarters, or
+worming his way into the confidence of some rich but uneducated master,
+must often have been the vehicle of lessons that would better have been
+unlearnt. But Italy also saw the advent of the best professors of the
+age, golden-mouthed men who spoke in the language of poetry, rhetoric
+and philosophy, and who turned from the wearisome competition of their
+own circles and the barren fields of their former labours to find a
+flattering attention, a pleasing dignity, and the means of enjoying a
+full, peaceful and leisured life in the homes of Roman aristocrats,
+thirsting for knowledge and thirsting still more for the mastery of the
+unrivalled forms in which their own deeds might be preserved and through
+which their own political and forensic triumphs might be won. Soon towns
+of Italy--especially those of the Hellenic South--would be vying with
+each other to grant the freedom of their cities and other honours in
+their gift to a young emigrant poet who hailed from Antioch, and members
+of the noblest houses would be competing for the honour of his
+friendship and for the privilege of receiving him under their roof.[53]
+The stream of Greek learning was broad and strong;[54] it bore on its
+bosom every man and woman who aimed at a reputation for elegance, for
+wit or for the deadly thrust in verbal fence which played so large a
+part in the game of politics; every one that refused to float was either
+an outcast from the best society, or was striving to win an eccentric
+reputation for national obscurantism and its imaginary accompaniment of
+honest rustic strength.
+
+Acquaintance with professors and poets led to a knowledge of books; and
+it was as necessary to store the latter as the former under the
+fashionable roof. The first private library in Rome was established by
+Aemilius Paulus, when he brought home the books that had belonged to the
+vanquished Perseus;[55] and it became as much a feature of conquest
+amongst the highly cultured to bring home a goodly store of literature
+as to gather objects of art which might merely please the sensuous taste
+and touch only the outer surface of the mind.[56]
+
+But it was deemed by no means desirable to limit the influences of the
+new culture to the minds of the mature. There was, indeed, a school of
+cautious Hellenists that might have preferred this view, and would at
+any rate have exercised a careful discrimination between those elements
+of the Greek training which would strengthen the young mind by giving it
+a wider range of vision and a new gallery of noble lives and those which
+would lead to mere display, to effeminacy, nay (who could tell?) to
+positive depravity. But this could not be the point of view of society
+as a whole. If the elegant Roman was to be half a Greek, he must learn
+during the tender and impressionable age to move his limbs and modulate
+his voice in true Hellenic wise. Hence the picture which Scipio
+Aemilianus, sane Hellenist and stout Roman, gazed at with astonished
+eyes and described in the vigorous and uncompromising language suited to
+a former censor. "I was told," he said, "that free-born boys and girls
+went to a dancing school and moved amidst disreputable professors of the
+art. I could not bring my mind to believe it; but I was taken to such a
+school myself, and Good Heavens! What did I see there! More than fifty
+boys and girls, one of them, I am ashamed to say, the son of a candidate
+for office, a boy wearing the golden boss, a lad not less than twelve
+years of age. He was jingling a pair of castanets and dancing a step
+which an immodest slave could not dance with decency." [57] Such might
+have been the reflections of a puritan had he entered a modern
+dancing-academy. We may be permitted to question the immorality of the
+exhibition thus displayed, but there can be no doubt as to the social
+ambition which it reveals--an ambition which would be perpetuated
+throughout the whole of the life of the boy with the castanets, which
+would lead him to set a high value on the polish of everything he called
+his own--a polish determined by certain rigid external standards and to
+be attained at any hazard, whether by the ruinous concealment of honest
+poverty, or the struggle for affluence even by the most
+questionable means.
+
+But the burdens on the wealth of the great were by no means limited to
+those imposed by merely social canons. Political life at Rome had always
+been expensive in so far as office was unpaid and its tenure implied
+leisure and a considerable degree of neglect of his own domestic
+concerns in the patriot who was willing to accept it. But the State had
+lately taken on itself to increase the financial expenditure which was
+due to the people without professing to meet the bill from the public
+funds. The 'State' at Rome did not mean what it would have meant in such
+a context amongst the peoples of the Hellenic world. It did not mean
+that the masses were preying on the richer classes, but that the richer
+classes were preying on themselves; and this particular form of
+voluntary self-sacrifice amongst the influential families in the senate
+was equivalent to the confession that Rome was ceasing to be an
+Aristocracy and becoming an Oligarchy, was voluntarily placing the
+claims of wealth on a par with those of birth and merit, or rather was
+insisting that the latter should not be valid unless they were
+accompanied by the former. The chief sign of the confession that
+political advancement might be purchased from the people in a legitimate
+way, was the adoption of a rule, which was established about the time of
+the First Punic War, that the cost of the public games should not be
+defrayed exclusively by the treasury.[58] It was seldom that the people
+could be brought to contribute to the expenses of the exhibitor by
+subscriptions collected from amongst themselves;[59] they were the
+recipients, not the givers of the feast, and the actual donors knew that
+the exhibition was a contest for favour, that reputations were being won
+or lost on the merits of the show, and that the successful competitor
+was laying up a store-house of gratitude which would materially aid his
+ascent to the highest prizes in the State. The personal cost, if it
+could not be wholly realised on the existing patrimony of the
+magistrate, must be assisted by gifts from friends, by loans from
+money-lenders at exorbitant rates of interest and, worst but readiest of
+all methods, by contributions, nominally voluntary but really enforced,
+from the Italian allies and the provincials. As early as the year 180
+the senate had been forced to frame a strong resolution against the
+extravagance that implied oppression;[60] but the resolution was really
+a criticism of the new methods of government; the roots of the evil (the
+burden on the magistracy, the increase in the number of the regularly
+recurring festivals) they neither cared nor ventured to remove. The
+aedileship was the particular magistracy which was saddled with this
+expenditure on account of its traditional connection with the conduct of
+the public games; and although it was neither in its curule nor plebeian
+form an obligatory step in the scale of the magistracies, yet, as it was
+held before the praetorship and the consulship, it was manifest that the
+brilliant display given to the people by the occupant of this office
+might render fruitless the efforts of a less wealthy competitor who had
+shunned its burdens.[61] The games were given jointly by the respective
+pairs of colleagues,[62] the _Ludi Romani_ being under the guidance of
+the curule,[63] the _Ludi Plebeii_ under that of the plebeian
+aediles.[64] Had these remained the only annual shows, the cost to the
+exhibitor, although great, would have been limited, But other festivals,
+which had once been occasional, had lately been made permanent. The
+games to Ceres (_Cerialia_), the remote origins of which may have dated
+back to the time of the monarchy, first appear as fully established in
+the year 202;[65] the festival to Flora (_Floralia_) dates from but 238
+B.C.,[66] but probably did not become annual until 173;[67] while the
+games to the Great Mother (_Megalesia_) followed by thirteen years the
+invitation and hospitable reception of that Phrygian goddess by the
+Romans, and became a regular feature in their calendar in 191.[68] This
+increase in the amenities of the people, every item of which falls
+within a term of fifty years, is a remarkable feature of the age which
+followed Rome's assumption of imperial power. It proved that the Roman
+was willing to bend his austere religion to the purposes of
+gratification, when he could afford the luxury, that the enjoyment of
+this luxury was considered a happy means of keeping the people in good
+temper with itself and its rulers, and that the cost of providing it was
+considered, not merely as compatible with the traditions of the existing
+regime, but as a means of strengthening those traditions by closing the
+gates of office to the poor.
+
+The types of spectacle, in which the masses took most delight, were also
+new and expensive creations. These types were chiefly furnished by the
+gladiatorial shows and the hunting of wild beasts. Even the former and
+earlier amusement had had a history of little more than a hundred years.
+It was believed to be a relic of that realistic view of the after life
+which lingered in Italy long after it had passed from the more spiritual
+civilisation of the Greeks. The men who put each other to the sword
+before the eyes of the sorrowing crowd were held to be the retinue which
+passed with the dead chieftain beyond the grave, and it was from the
+sombre rites of the Etruscans that this custom of ceremonial slaying was
+believed to have been transferred to Rome. The first year of the First
+Punic War witnessed the earliest combat that accompanied a Roman
+funeral,[69] and, although secular enjoyment rapidly took the place of
+grim funereal appreciation, and the religious belief that underlay the
+spectacle may soon have passed away, neither the State nor the relatives
+were supposed to have done due honour to the illustrious dead if his own
+decease were not followed by the death-struggle of champions from the
+rival gladiatorial schools, and men who aspired to a decent funeral made
+due provision for such combats in their wills. The Roman magistrate
+bowed to the prevalent taste, and displays of gladiators became one of
+the most familiar features of the aediles' shows. Military sentiment was
+in its favour, for it was believed to harden the nerves of the race that
+had sprung from the loins of the god of war,[70] and humane sentiment
+has never in any age been shocked at the contemporary barbarities which
+it tolerates or enjoys. But a certain element of coarseness in the
+sport, and perhaps the very fact that it was of native Italian growth,
+might have given it a short shrift, had the cultured classes really
+possessed the power of regulating the amusements of the public. Leaders
+of society would have preferred the Greek _Agon_ with its graceful
+wrestling and its contests in the finer arts. But the Roman public would
+not be hellenised in this particular, and showed their mood when a
+musical exhibition was attempted at the triumph of Lucius Anicius Gallus
+in 167. The audience insisted that the performers should drop their
+instruments and box with one another.[71] This, although not the best,
+was yet a more tolerable type of what a contest of skill should be. It
+was natural, therefore, that the professional fighting man should become
+a far more inevitable condition of social and political success than the
+hunter or the race-horse has ever been with us. Some enterprising
+members of the nobility soon came to prefer ownership to the hire system
+and started schools of their own in which the _lanista_ was merely the
+trainer. A stranger element was soon added to the possessions of a Roman
+noble by the growing craze for the combats of wild beasts. The first
+recorded "hunt" of the kind was that given in 186 by Marcus Fulvius at
+the close of the Aetolian war when lions and panthers were exhibited to
+the wondering gaze of the people.[72] Seventeen years later two curule
+aediles furnished sixty-three African lions and forty bears and
+elephants for the Circensian games.[73] These menageries eventually
+became a public danger and the curule aedile (himself one of the chief
+offenders) was forced to frame an edict specifying the compensation for
+damage that might be committed by wild beasts in their transit through
+Italy or their residence within the towns.[74] The obligation of wealth
+to supply luxuries for the poor--a splendid feature of ancient
+civilisation in which it has ever taken precedence of that of the modern
+world--was recognised with the utmost frankness in the Rome of the day;
+but it was an obligation that had passed the limits at which it could be
+cheerfully performed as the duty of the patriot or the patron; it had
+reached a stage when its demoralising effects, both to giver and to
+receiver, were patent to every seeing eye, but when criticism of its
+vices could be met by the conclusive rejoinder that it was a vital
+necessity of the existing political situation.[75]
+
+The review which we have given of the enormous expenditure created by
+the social and political appetites of the day leads up to the
+consideration of two questions which, though seldom formulated or faced
+in their naked form, were ever present in the minds of the classes who
+were forced to deem themselves either the most responsible authors, or
+the most illustrious victims, of the existing standards both of politics
+and society. These questions were "Could the exhausting drain be
+stopped?" and "If it could not, how was it to be supplied?" A city in a
+state of high fever will always produce the would-be doctor; but the
+curious fact about the Rome of this and other days is that the doctor
+was so often the patient in another form. Just as in the government of
+the provinces the scandals of individual rule were often met by the
+severest legislation proceeding from the very body which had produced
+the evil-doers, so when remedies were suggested for the social evils of
+the city, the senate, in spite of its tendency to individual
+transgression, generally displayed the possession of a collective
+conscience. The men who formulated the standard of purity and
+self-restraint might be few in number; but, except they displayed the
+irritating activity and the uncompromising methods of a Cato, they
+generally secured the support of their peers, and the sterner the
+censor, the more gladly was he hailed as an ornament to the order. This
+guardian of morals still issued his edicts against delicacies of the
+table, foreign perfumes and expensive houses;[76] as late as the year
+169 people would hastily put out their lights when it was reported that
+Tiberius Sempronius Graccus was coming up the street on his return from
+supper, lest they should fall under the suspicion of untimely
+revelry,[77] and the sporadic activity of the censorship will find ample
+illustration in the future chapters of our work. Degradation from the
+various orders of the State was still a consequence of its
+animadversions; but a milder, more universal and probably far more
+efficacious check on luxury--the system, pursued by Cato, of adopting an
+excessive rating for articles of value[78] and thus of shifting the
+incidence of taxation from the artisan and farmer to the shoulders of
+the richest class[79]--had been taken out of its hands by the complete
+cessation of direct imposts after the Third Macedonian War.[80]
+
+Meanwhile sumptuary laws continued to be promulgated from the Rostra and
+accepted by the people. All that are known to have been initiated or to
+have been considered valid after the close of the great wars have but
+one object--an attack on the expenses of the table, a form of sensuous
+enjoyment which, on account of the ease and barbaric abundance with
+which wealth may vaunt itself in this domain, was particularly in vogue
+amongst the upper classes in Rome. Other forms of extravagance seem for
+the time to have been left untouched by legislation, for the Oppian law
+which had been due to the strain of the Second Punic War had been
+repealed after a fierce struggle in 193, and the Roman ladies might now
+adorn themselves with more than half an ounce of gold, wear robes of
+divers colours and ride in their carriages through any street they
+pleased.[81] The first enactment which attempted to control the
+wastefulness of the table was an Orchian law of 181, limiting the number
+of guests that might be invited to entertainments. Cato was consistent
+in opposing the passing of the measure and in resisting its repeal. He
+recognised a futile law when he saw it, but he did not wish this
+futility to be admitted.[82] Twenty years later[83] a Fannian law grew
+out of a decree of the senate which had enjoined that the chief men
+(_principes_) of the State should take an oath before the consuls not to
+exceed a certain limit of expense in the banquets given at the
+Megalesian Games. Strengthened with a measure which prescribed more
+harassing details than the Orchian law. The new enactment actually
+determined the value and nature of the eatables whose consumption was
+allowed. It permitted one hundred asses to be spent on the days of the
+Roman Games, the Plebeian Games and the Saturnalia, thirty asses on
+certain other festival occasions, and but ten asses (less than twice the
+daily pay of a Roman soldier) on every other meal throughout the year;
+it forbade the serving of any fowl but a single hen, and that not
+fattened; it enjoined the exclusive consumption of native wine.[84] This
+enactment was strengthened eighteen years later by a Didian law, which
+included in the threatened penalties not only the giver of the feast
+which violated the prescribed limits, but also the guests who were
+present at such a banquet. It also compelled or induced the Italian
+allies to accept the provisions of the Fannian law[85]--an unusual step
+which may show the belief that a luxury similar to that of Rome was
+weakening the resources of the confederacy, on whose strength the
+leading state was so dependent, or which may have been induced by the
+knowledge that members of the Roman nobility were taking holiday trips
+to country towns, to enjoy the delights which were prohibited at home
+and to waste their money on Italian caterers.[86]
+
+The frequency of such legislation, which we shall find renewed once
+again before the epoch of the reforms of Sulla[87] seems to prove its
+ineffectiveness,[88] and indeed the standard of comfort which it desired
+to enjoin was wholly incompatible with the circumstances of the age. The
+desire to produce uniformity[89] of standard had always been an end of
+Roman as of Greek sumptuary regulation, but what type of uniformity
+could be looked for in a community where the extremes of wealth and
+poverty were beginning to be so strongly marked, where capital was
+accumulating in the hands of the great noble and the great trader and
+being wholly withdrawn from those of the free-born peasant and artisan?
+The restriction of useless consumption was indeed favourable to the more
+productive employment of capital; but we shall soon see that this
+productive use, which had as its object the deterioration of land by
+pasturage and the purchase of servile labour, was as detrimental to the
+free citizen as the most reckless extravagance could have been. There is
+no question, however, that both the sumptuary laws and the censorian
+ordinances of the period did attempt to attain an economic as well as a
+social end; and, however mistaken their methods may have been, they
+showed some appreciation of the industrial evils of the time. The
+provision of the Fannian law in favour of native wines suggests the
+desire to help the small cultivator who had substituted vine-growing for
+the cultivation of cereals, and foreshadows the protective legislation
+of the Ciceronian period.[90] Much of this legislation, too, was
+animated by the "mercantile" theory that a State is impoverished by the
+export of the precious metals to foreign lands[91]--a view which found
+expression in a definite enactment of an earlier period which had
+forbidden gold or silver to be paid to the Celtic tribes in the north of
+Italy in exchange for the wares or slaves which they sold to Roman
+merchants.[92]
+
+Another series of laws aimed at securing the purity of an electorate
+exposed to the danger of corruption by the overwhelming influence of
+wealth. Laws against bribery, unknown in an earlier period,[93] become
+painfully frequent from the date at which Rome came into contact with
+the riches of the East. Six years after the close of the great Asiatic
+campaign the people were asked, on the authority of the senate, to
+sanction more than one act which was directed against the undue
+influence exercised at elections;[94] in 166 fresh scandals called for
+the consideration of the Council of State;[95] and the year 159 saw the
+birth of another enactment.[96] Yet the capital penalty, which seems to
+have been the consequence of the transgression of at least one of these
+laws,[97] did not deter candidates from staking their citizenship on
+their success. The still-surviving custom of clientship made the object
+of largesses difficult to establish, and the secrecy of the ballot,
+which had been introduced for elections in 139, made it impossible to
+prove that the suspicious gift had been effective and thus to construct
+a convincing case against the donor.
+
+The moral control exercised by the magistrate and the sumptuary or
+criminal ordinances expressed in acts of Parliament might serve as
+temporary palliatives to certain pronounced evils of the moment; but
+they were powerless to check the extravagance of an expenditure which
+was sanctioned by custom and in some respects actually enforced by law.
+One of the greatest of the practical needs of the new Roman was to
+increase his income in every way that might be deemed legitimate by a
+society which, even in its best days, had never been overscrupulous in
+its exploitation of the poor and had been wont to illustrate the
+sanctity of contract by visible examples of grinding oppression. The
+nature and intensity of the race for wealth differed with the needs of
+the anxious spendthrift; and in respect both to needs and to means of
+satisfaction the upper middle class was in a far more favourable
+position than its noble governors. It could spend its unfettered
+energies in the pursuit of the profits which might be derived from
+public contracts, trade, banking and money-lending, while it was not
+forced to submit to the drain created by the canvass for office and the
+exorbitant demands made by the electorate on the pecuniary resources of
+the candidate. The brilliancy of the life of the mercantile class, with
+its careless luxury and easy indifference to expenditure, set a standard
+for the nobility which was at once galling and degrading. They were
+induced to apply the measure of wealth even to members of their own
+order, and regarded it as inevitable that any one of their peers, whose
+patrimony had dwindled, should fill but a subordinate place both in
+politics and society;[98] while the means which they were sometimes
+forced to adopt in order to vie with the wealth of the successful
+contractor and promoter were, if hardly less sound from a moral point of
+view, at least far more questionable from a purely legal standpoint.
+
+A fraction of the present wealth which was in the possession of some of
+the leading families of the nobility may have been purely adventitious,
+the result of the lucky accident of command and conquest amidst a
+wealthy and pliant people. The spoils of war were, it is true, not for
+the general but for the State; yet he exercised great discretionary
+power in dealing with the movable objects, which in the case of Hellenic
+or Asiatic conquest formed one of the richest elements in the prize, and
+the average commander is not likely to have displayed the self-restraint
+and public spirit of the destroyer of Corinth. Public and military
+opinion would permit the victor to retain an ample share of the fruits
+of his prowess, and this would be increased by a type of contribution to
+which he had a peculiar and unquestioned claim. This consisted in the
+honorary offerings made by states, who found themselves at the feet of
+the victor and were eager to attract his pity and to enlist on their
+behalf his influence with the Roman government. Instances of such
+offerings are the hundred and fourteen golden crowns which were borne in
+the triumph of Titus Quinctius Flamininus,[99] those of two hundred and
+twelve pounds' weight shown in the triumph of Manlius,[100] and the
+great golden wreath of one hundred and fifty pounds which had been
+presented by the Ambraciots to Nobilior.[101] But the time had not yet
+been reached when the general on a campaign, or even the governor of a
+district which was merely disturbed by border raids, could calmly demand
+hard cash as the equivalent of the precious metal wrought into this
+useless form, and when the "coronary gold" was to be one of the regular
+perquisites of any Roman governor who claimed to have achieved military
+success.[102] Nor is it likely that the triumphant general of this
+period melted down the offerings which he might dedicate in temples or
+reserve for the gallery of his house, and we must conclude that the few
+members of the nobility who had conducted the great campaigns were but
+slightly enriched by the offerings which helpless peoples had laid at
+their feet. It would be almost truer to say that the great influx of the
+precious metals had increased the difficulties of their position; for,
+if the gold or silver took the form of artistic work which remained in
+their possession, it but exaggerated the ideal to which their standard
+of life was expected to conform; and if it assumed the shape of the
+enormous amount of specie which was poured into the coffers of the State
+or distributed amongst the legionaries, its chief effects were the
+heightening of prices and a showy appearance of a vast increase of
+wealth which corresponded to no real increase in production.
+
+But, whatever the effects of the metallic prizes of the great campaigns,
+these prizes could neither have benefited the members of the nobility as
+a whole nor, in the days of comparative peace which had followed the
+long epoch of war with wealthy powers, could they be contemplated as a
+permanent source of future capital or income. When the representative of
+the official caste looked round for modes of fruitful investment which
+might increase his revenues, his chances at first sight appeared to be
+limited by legal restrictions which expressed the supposed principles of
+his class. A Clodian law enacted at the beginning of the Second Punic
+War had provided that no senator or senator's son should own a ship of a
+burden greater than three hundred amphorae. The intention of the measure
+was to prohibit members of the governing class from taking part in
+foreign trade, as carriers, as manufacturers, or as participants in the
+great business of the contract for corn which placed provincial grain on
+the Roman market; and the ships of small tonnage which they were allowed
+to retain were intended to furnish them merely with the power of
+transporting to a convenient market the produce of their own estates in
+Italy.[103] The restriction was not imposed in a self-regarding spirit;
+it was odious to the nobility, and, as it was supported by Flaminius,
+must have been popular with the masses, who were blind to the fact that
+the restriction of a senator's energies to agriculture would be
+infinitely more disastrous to the well-being of the average citizen than
+the expenditure of those energies in trade. The restriction may have
+received the support of the growing merchant class, who were perhaps
+pleased to be rid of the competition of powerful rivals, and it
+certainly served, externally at least, to mark the distinction between
+the man of large industrial enterprises and the man whose official rank
+was supported by landed wealth--a distinction which, in the shape of the
+contrast drawn between knights and senators, appears at every turn in
+the history of the later Republic. But, whatever the immediate motives
+for the passing of the measure, a great and healthy principle lay behind
+it. It was the principle that considerations of foreign policy should
+not be directly controlled or hampered by questions of trade, that the
+policy of the State should not become the sport of the selfish vagaries
+of capital. The spirit thus expressed was directly inimical to the
+interests of the merchant, the contractor and the tax-farmer. How
+inimical it was could not yet be clearly seen; for the transmarine
+interests of Rome had not at the time attained a development which
+invited the mastery of conquered lands by the Roman capitalist. But,
+whether this Clodian law created or merely formulated the antithesis
+between land and trade, between Italian and provincial profits, it is
+yet certain that this antithesis was one of the most powerful of the
+animating factors of Roman history for the better part of the two
+centuries which were to follow the enactment. It produced the conflict
+between a policy of restricted enterprise, pursued for the good of the
+State and the subject, and a policy of expansion which obeyed the
+interests of capital, between a policy of cautious protection and that
+madness of imperialism which is ever associated with barbarism,
+brigandage or trade.
+
+But, if we inquire whether this enactment attained its ostensible object
+of completely shutting out senators from the profits of any enterprise
+that could properly be described as commercial, we shall find an
+affirmative answer to be more than dubious. The law was a dead letter
+when Cicero indicted Verres,[104] but its demise may have been reached
+through a long and slow process of decline. But, even if the provisions
+of the law had been adhered to throughout the period which we are
+considering, the avenue to wealth derived from business intercourse with
+the provinces would not necessarily have been closed to the official
+class. We shall soon see that the companies which were formed for
+undertaking the state-contracts probably permitted shares to be held by
+individuals who never appeared in the registered list of partners at
+all, and we know that to hold a share in a great public concern was
+considered one of the methods of business which did not subject the
+participant to the taint of a vulgar commercialism.[105] And, if the
+senator chose to indulge more directly in the profits of transmarine
+commerce, to what extent was he really hindered by the provisions of the
+law? He might not own a ship of burden, but his freedmen might sail to
+any port on the largest vessels, and who could object if the returns
+which the dependant owed his lord were drawn from the profits of
+commerce? Again there was no prohibition against loans on bottomry, and
+Cato had increased his wealth by becoming through his freedman a member
+of a maritime company, each partner in which had but a limited liability
+and the prospect of enormous gains.[106] The example of this energetic
+money-getter also illustrates many ways in which the nobleman of
+business tastes could increase his profits without extending his
+enterprises far from the capital. It was possible to exploit the growing
+taste in country villas, in streams and lakes and natural woods; to buy
+a likely spot for a small price, let it at a good rental, or sell it at
+a larger price. The ownership of house property within the town, which
+grew eventually into the monopoly of whole blocks and streets by such a
+man as Crassus,[107] was in every way consistent with the possession of
+senatorial rank. It was even possible to be a slave-dealer without loss
+of dignity, at least if one transacted the sordid details of the
+business through a slave. The young and promising boy required but a
+year's training in the arts to enable the careful buyer to make a large
+profit by his sale.[108] Yet such methods must have been regarded by the
+nobility as a whole as merely subsidiary means of increasing their
+patrimony: and, in spite of the fact that Cato took the view that
+agriculture should be an amusement rather than a business,[109] there
+can be no doubt that the staple of the wealth of the official class was
+still to be found in the acres of Italy. It was not, however, the wealth
+of the moderate homestead which was to be won from a careful tillage of
+the fields; it was the wealth which, as we shall soon see, was
+associated with the slave-capitalist, the overseer, a foreign method of
+cultivation on the model of the grand plantation-systems of the East,
+and a belief in the superior value of pasturage to tillage which was to
+turn many a populous and fertile plain into a wilderness of danger and
+desolation.
+
+But, strive as he would, there was many a nobleman who found that his
+expenditure could not be met by dabbling in trade where others plunged,
+or by the revenues yielded by the large tracts of Italian soil over
+which he claimed exclusive powers. The playwright of the age has figured
+Indigence as the daughter of Luxury;[110] and a still more terrible
+child was to be born in the Avarice which sprang from the useless
+cravings and fierce competitions of the time.[111] The desire to get and
+to hold had ever been a Roman vice; but, it had also been the unvarying
+assumption of the Roman State, and the conviction of the Roman
+official--a conviction so deeply seated and spontaneous as to form no
+ground for self-congratulation that the lust for acquisition should
+limit itself to the domain of private right, and never cross the rigid
+barrier which divided that domain from the sphere of wealth and power
+which the city had committed to its servant as a solemn trust. The
+better sort of overseer was often found in the crabbed man of
+business--a Cato, for example--who would never waive a right of his own
+and protected those of his dependants with similar tenacity and passion.
+The honour which prevailed in the commercial code at home was considered
+so much a matter of course in all dealings with the foreign world, that
+the State scorned to scrutinise the expenditure of its ministers and was
+spared the disgrace of a system of public audit. Even in this age, which
+is regarded by the ancient historians as marking the beginning of the
+decline in public virtue, Polybius could contrast the attitude of
+suspicion towards the guardians of the State, which was the
+characteristic of the official life of his own unhappy country, with the
+well-founded confidence which Rome reposed in the honour of her
+ministers, and could tell the world that "if but a talent of money were
+entrusted to a magistrate of a Greek state, ten auditors, as many seals
+and twice as many witnesses are required for the security of the bond;
+yet even so faith is not observed; while the Roman in an official or
+diplomatic post, who handles vast sums of money, adheres to his duty
+through the mere moral obligation of the oath which he has sworn"; that
+"amongst the Romans the corrupt official is as rare a portent as is the
+financier with clean hands amongst other peoples".[112] When the elder
+Africanus tore up the account books of his brother--books which recorded
+the passage of eighteen thousand talents from an Asiatic king to a Roman
+general and from him to the Roman State[113]--he was imparting a lesson
+in confidence, which was immediately accepted by the senate and people.
+And it seems that, so far as the expenditure of public moneys was
+concerned, this confidence continued to be justified. It is true that
+Cato had furiously impugned the honour of commanders in the matter of
+the distribution of the prizes of war amongst the soldiers and had drawn
+a bitter contrast between private and official thieves. "The former," he
+said, "pass their lives in thongs and iron fetters, the latter in purple
+and gold." [114] But there were no fixed rules of practice which guided
+such a distribution, and a commander, otherwise honest, might feel no
+qualms of conscience in exercising a selective taste on his own behalf.
+On the other hand, deliberate misappropriation of the public funds seems
+to have been seldom suspected or at least seldom made the subject of
+judicial cognisance, and for many years after a standing court was
+established for the trial of extortion no similar tribunal was thought
+necessary for the crime of peculation.[115] Apart from the long,
+tortuous and ineffective trial of the Scipios,[116] no question of the
+kind is known to have been raised since Manius Acilius Glabrio, the
+conqueror of Antiochus and the Aetolians, competed for the censorship.
+Then a story, based on the existence of the indubitable wealth which he
+was employing with a lavish hand to win the favour of the people, was
+raked up against him by some jealous members of the nobility. It was
+professed that some money and booty, found in the camp of the king, had
+never been exhibited in the triumph nor deposited in the treasury. The
+evidence of legates and military tribunes was invited, and Cato, himself
+a competitor for the censorship, was ready to testify that gold and
+silver vases, which he had seen in the captured camp, had not been
+visible in the triumphal procession. Glabrio waived his candidature, but
+the people were unwilling to convict and the prosecution was
+abandoned.[117] Here again we are confronted by the old temptation of
+curio-hunting, which, the nobility deemed indecent in so "new" a man as
+Glabrio; the evidence of Cato--the only testimony which proved
+dangerous--did not establish the charge that money due to the State had
+been intercepted by a Roman consul.
+
+But the regard for the property of the State was unfortunately not
+extended to the property of its clients. Even before the provinces had
+yielded a prey rendered easy by distance and irresponsibility, Italian
+cities had been forced to complain of the violence and rapacity of Roman
+commanders quartered in their neighbourhood,[118] and the passive
+silence with which the Praenestines bore the immoderate requisitions of
+a consul, was a fatal guarantee of impunity which threatened to alter
+for ever the relations of these free allies to the protecting
+power.[119] But provincial commands offered greater temptations and a
+far more favourable field for capricious tyranny; for here the exactions
+of the governor were neither repudiated by an oath of office nor at
+first even forbidden by the sanctions of a law. Requisitions could be
+made to meet the needs of the moment, and these needs were naturally
+interpreted to suit the cravings and the tastes of the governor of the
+moment.[120] Cato not only cut down the expenses that had been
+arbitrarily imposed on the unhappy natives of Sardinia,[121] but seems
+to have been the author of a definite law which fixed a limit to such
+requisitions in the future.[122] But it was easier to frame an ordinance
+than to guarantee its observation, and, at a time when the surrounding
+world was seething with war, the regulations made for a peaceful
+province could not touch the actions of a victorious commander who was
+following up the results of conquest. Complaints began to pour in on
+every hand--from the Ambraciots of Greece, the Cenomani of Gaul[123]
+--and the senate did its best, either by its own cognisance or by the
+creation of a commission of investigation, to meet the claims of the
+dependent peoples. A kind of rude justice was the result, but it was
+much too rude to meet an evil which was soon seen to be developing into
+a trade of systematic oppression. A novel step was taken when in 171
+delegates from the two Spains appeared in the Curia to complain of the
+avarice and insolence of their Roman governors. A praetor was
+commissioned to choose from the senatorial order five of such judges as
+were wont to be selected for the settlement of international disputes
+(_recuperatores_), to sit in judgment on each of the indicted
+governors,[124] and the germ of a regular court for what had now become
+a regular offence was thus developed. The further and more shameful
+confession, that the court should be permanent and interpret a definite
+statute, was soon made, and the Calpurnian law of 149[125]was the first
+of that long series of enactments for extortion which mark the futility
+of corrective measures in the face of a weak system of legal, and a
+still weaker system of moral, control. Trials for extortion soon became
+the plaything of politics, the favourite arena for the exercise of the
+energies of a young and rising politician, the favourite weapon with
+which old family feuds might be at once revenged and perpetuated. They
+were soon destined to gain a still greater significance as furnishing
+the criteria of the methods of administration which the State was
+expected to employ, as determining the respective rights of the
+administrator and the capitalist to guide the destinies of the
+inhabitants of a dependent district. Their manifold political
+significance destroys our confidence in their judgments, and we can
+seldom tell whether the acquittal or the condemnation which these courts
+pronounced was justified on the evidence adduced. But there can be no
+question of the evil that lay behind this legislative and judicial
+activity. The motive which led men to assume administrative posts abroad
+was in many cases thoroughly selfish and mean,--the desire to acquire
+wealth as rapidly as was consistent with keeping on the safe side of a
+not very exacting law. No motive of this kind can ever be universal in a
+political society, and in Rome we cannot even pronounce it to be
+general. Power and distinction attracted the Roman as much as wealth,
+and some governors were saved from temptation by the colossal fortunes
+which they already possessed. But how early it had begun to operate in
+the minds of many is shown by the eagerness which, as we shall see, was
+soon to be displayed by rival consuls for the conduct of a war that
+might give the victor a prolonged control over the rich cities which had
+belonged to the kingdom of Pergamon, if it is not proved by the strange
+unwillingness which magistrates had long before exhibited to assume some
+commands which had been entrusted to their charge.[126]
+
+A suspicion of another type of abuse of power, more degrading though not
+necessarily more harmful than the plunder of subjects, had begun to be
+raised in the minds of the people and the government. It was held that a
+Roman might be found who would sell the supposed interests of his
+country to a foreign potentate, or at any rate accept a present which
+might or might not influence his judgment, A commissioner to Illyria had
+been suspected of pocketing money offered him by the potentates of that
+district in 171,[127] and the first hint was given of that shattering of
+public confidence in the integrity of diplomatists which wrought such
+havoc in the foreign politics of the period which forms the immediate
+subject of our work. The system of the Protectorate, which Rome had so
+widely adopted, with its secret diplomatic dealings and its hidden
+conferences with kings, offered greater facilities for secret
+enrichment, and greater security for the enjoyment of the acquired
+wealth, even than the plunder of a province. The proof of the committal
+of the act was difficult, in most cases impossible. We must be content
+to chronicle the suspicion of its growing frequency, and the suspicion
+is terrible enough. If the custom of wringing wealth from subjects and
+selling support to potentates continued to prevail, the stage might soon
+be reached at which it could be said, with that element of exaggeration
+which lends emphasis to a truth, that a small group of men were drawing
+revenues from every nation in the world.[128]
+
+Such were the sources of wealth that lay open to men, to whom commerce
+was officially barred and who were supposed to have no direct interest
+in financial operations. Far ampler spheres of pecuniary enrichment,
+more uniformly legal if sometimes as oppressive, were open to the class
+of men who by this time had been recognised as forming a kind of second
+order in the State. The citizens who had been proved by the returns at
+the census to have a certain amount of realisable capital at their
+disposal--a class of citizens that ranged from the possessors of a
+moderate patrimony, such as society might employ as a line of
+demarcation between an upper and a lower middle class, to the
+controllers of the most gigantic fortunes--had been welded into a body
+possessing considerable social and political solidarity. This solidarity
+had been attained chiefly through the community of interest derived from
+the similar methods of pecuniary investment which they employed, but
+also through the circumstance (slight in itself but significant in an
+ancient society which ever tended to fall into grades) that all the
+members of this class could describe themselves by the courtesy title of
+"Knights"--a description justified by the right which they possessed of
+serving on their own horses with the Roman cavalry instead of sharing
+the foot-service of the legionary. A common designation was not
+inappropriate to men who were in a certain sense public servants and
+formed in a very real sense a branch of the administration. The knight
+might have many avocations; he might be a money-lender, a banker, a
+large importer; but he was preeminently a farmer of the taxes. His
+position in the former cases was simply that of an individual, who might
+or might not be temporarily associated with others; his position in the
+latter case meant that he was a member of a powerful and permanent
+corporation, one which served a government from which it might wring
+great profits or at whose hands it might suffer heavy loss--a government
+to be helped in its distress, to be fought when its demands were
+overbearing, to be encouraged when its measures seemed progressive, to
+be hindered when they seemed reactionary from a commercial point of
+view. A group of individuals or private firms could never have attained
+the consistency of organisation, or maintained the uniformity of policy,
+which was displayed by these societies of revenue-collectors; even a
+company must have a long life before it can attain strength and
+confidence sufficient to act in a spirited manner in opposition to the
+State; and it seems certain that these societies were wholly exempted
+from the paralysing principle which the Roman law applied to
+partnership--a principle which dictated that every partnership should be
+dissolved by the death or retirement of one of the associates.[129] The
+State, which possessed no civil service of its own worthy of the name,
+had taken pains to secure permanent organisations of private
+share-holders which should satisfy its needs, to give them something of
+an official character, and to secure to each one of them as a result of
+its permanence an individual strength which, in spite of the theory that
+the taxes and the public works were put up to auction, may have secured
+to some of these companies a practical monopoly of a definite sphere of
+operations. But a company, at Rome as elsewhere, is powerful in
+proportion to the breadth of its basis. A small ring of capitalists may
+tyrannise over society as long as they confine themselves to securing a
+monopoly over private enterprises, and as long as the law permits them
+to exercise this autocratic power without control; but such a ring is
+far less capable of meeting the arbitrary dictation of an aristocratic
+body of landholders, such as the senate, or of encountering the
+resentful opposition of a nominally all-powerful body of consumers, such
+as the Comitia, than a corporation which has struck its roots deeply in
+society by the wide distribution of its shares. We know from the
+positive assurance of a skilled observer of Roman life that the number
+of citizens who had an interest in these companies was particularly
+large.[130] This observer emphasises the fact in order to illustrate the
+dependence of a large section of society on the will of the senate,
+which possessed the power of controlling the terms of the agreements
+both for the public works which it placed in the hands of contractors
+and for the sources of production which it put out to lease;[131] but it
+is equally obvious that the large size of the number of shareholders
+must have exercised a profoundly modifying influence on the arbitrary
+authority of a body such as the senate which governed chiefly through
+deference to public opinion; and we know that, in the last resort, an
+appeal could be made to the sovereign assembly, if a magistrate could be
+found bold enough to carry to that quarter a proposal that had been
+discountenanced by the senate.[132] In such crises the strength of the
+companies depended mainly on the number of individual interests that
+were at stake; the shareholder is more likely to appear at such
+gatherings than the man who is not profoundly affected by the issue, and
+it is very seldom that the average consumer has insight enough to see,
+or energy enough to resist, the sufferings and inconveniences which
+spring from the machinations of capital. It may have been possible at
+times to pack a legislative assembly with men who had some financial
+interest, however slight, in a dispute arising from a contract calling
+for decision; and the time was soon to come when such questions of
+detail would give place to far larger questions of policy, when the
+issues springing from a line of foreign activity which had been taken by
+the government might be debated in the cold and glittering light of the
+golden stakes the loss or gain of which depended upon the policy
+pursued. Nor could it have been easy even for the experienced eye to see
+from the survey of such a gathering that it represented the army of
+capital. Research has rendered it probable that the companies of the
+time were composed of an outer as well as of an inner circle; that the
+mass of shareholders differed from those who were the promoters,
+managers and active agents in the concern, that the liability of the
+former at least was limited and that their shares, whether small or
+great, were transmissible and subject to the fluctuations of the
+market.[133] But, even if we do not believe that this distinction
+between _socii_ and _participes_ was legally elaborated, yet there were
+probably means by which members of the outside public could enter into
+business relations with the recognised partners in one of these concerns
+to share its profits and its losses.[134] The freedman, who had invested
+his small savings in the business of an enterprising patron, would
+attach the same mercantile value to his own vote in the assembly as
+would be given to his suffrage in the senate by some noble peer, who had
+bartered the independence of his judgment for the acquisition of more
+rapid profits than could be drawn from land.
+
+The farmers of the revenue fell into three broad classes. First there
+were the contractors for the creation, maintenance and repair of the
+public works possessed or projected by the State, such as roads,
+aqueducts, bridges, temples and other public buildings. Gigantic profits
+were not possible in such an enterprise, if the censors and their
+advisers acted with knowledge, impartiality and discretion; for the
+lowest possible tender was obtained for such contracts and the results
+might be repudiated if inspection proved them to be unsatisfactory.
+Secondly there were the companies which leased sources of production
+that were owned by the State such as fisheries, salt-works, mines and
+forest land. In some particular cases even arable land had been dealt
+with in this way, and the confiscated territories of Capua and Corinth
+were let on long leases to _publicani_. Thirdly there were the
+societies, which did not themselves acquire leases but acted as true
+intermediaries between the State and individuals[135] who paid it
+revenue whether as occupants of its territory, or as making use of sites
+which it claimed to control, or as owing dues which had been prescribed
+by agreement or by law. These classes of debtors to the State with whom
+the middlemen came into contact may be illustrated respectively by the
+occupants of the domain land of Italy, the ship-masters who touched at
+ports, and the provincials such as those of Sicily or Sardinia who were
+burdened with the payment of a tithe of the produce of their lands.[136]
+If we consider separately the characteristics of the three classes of
+state-farmers, we find that the first and the second are both direct
+employers of labour, the third reaping only indirect profits from the
+production controlled by others. It was in this respect, as employers of
+labour, that the societies of the time were free from the anxieties and
+restrictions that beset the modern employment of capital. Except in the
+rare case where the contractors had leased arable land and sublet it to
+its original occupants,--the treatment which seems to have been adopted
+for the Campanian territory[137]--there can be no question that the
+work which they controlled was done mainly by the hands of slaves. They
+were therefore exempt from the annoyance and expense which might be
+caused by the competition and the organised resistance of free labour.
+The slaves employed in many of these industries must have been highly
+skilled; for many of these spheres of wealth which the State had
+delegated to contractors required peculiar industrial appliances and
+unusual knowledge in the foremen and leading artificers. The weakness of
+slave-labour,--its lack of intelligence and spirit--could not have been
+so keenly felt as it was on the great agricultural estates, which
+offered employment chiefly for the unskilled; and the difficulties that
+might arise from the lack of strength or interest, from the possession
+of hands that were either feeble or inert, were probably overcome in the
+same uncompromising manner in the workshop of the contractor and on the
+domains of the landed gentry. The maxim that an aged slave should be
+sold could not have been peculiar to the dabbler in agriculture, and the
+_ergastulum_ with its chained gangs must have been as familiar to the
+manufacturer as to the landed proprietor.[138] As to the promoters and
+the shareholders of these companies, it could not be expected that they
+should trace in imagination, or tremble as they traced, the heartless,
+perhaps inhuman, means by which the regular returns on their capital
+were secured.[139] Nor is it probable that the government of this period
+took any great care to supervise the conditions of the work or the lot
+of the workman. The partner desired quick and great returns, the State
+large rents and small tenders. The remorseless drain on human energy,
+the waste of human life, and the practical abeyance of free labour which
+was flooding the towns with idlers, were ideas which, if they ever
+arose, were probably kept in the background by a government which was
+generally in financial difficulties, and by individuals animated by all
+the fierce commercial competition of the age.
+
+The desire of contractors and lessees for larger profits naturally took
+the form of an eagerness to extend their sphere of operations. Every
+advance in the Roman sphere of military occupation implied the making of
+new roads, bridges and aqueducts; every extension of this sphere was
+likely to be followed by the confiscation of certain territories, which
+the State would declare to be public domains and hand over to the
+company that would guarantee the payment of the largest revenue. But the
+sordid imperialism which animated the contractor and lessee must have
+been as nothing to that which fed the dreams of the true
+state-middleman, the individual who intervened between the taxpayer and
+the State, the producer and the consumer. Conquest would mean fresh
+lines of coast and frontier, on which would be set the toil-houses of
+the collectors with their local directors and their active "families" of
+freedmen and slaves. It might even mean that a more prolific source of
+revenue would be handed over to the care of the publican. The spectacle
+of the method in which the land-tax was assessed and collected in Sicily
+and Sardinia may have already inspired the hope that the next instance
+of provincial organisation might see greater justice done to the
+capitalists of Rome. When Sicily had been brought under Roman sway, the
+aloofness of the government from financial interests, as well as its
+innate conservatism, justified by the success of Italian organisation,
+which dictated the view that local institutions should not be lightly
+changed, had led it to accept the methods for the taxation of land which
+it found prevalent in the island at the time of its annexation. The
+methods implied assessment by local officials and collection by local
+companies or states.[140] It is true that neither consequence entirely
+excluded the enterprise of the Roman capitalists; they had crossed the
+Straits of Messina on many a private enterprise and had settled in such
+large numbers in the business centres of the island that the charter
+given to the Sicilian cities after the first servile war made detailed
+provision for the settlement of suits between Romans and natives.[141]
+It was not to be expected that they should refrain from joining in, or
+competing with, the local companies who bid for the Sicilian tithes, nor
+was such association or competition forbidden by the law. But the
+scattered groups of capitalists who came into contact with the Sicilian
+yeomen did not possess the official character and the official influence
+of the great companies of Italy. No association, however powerful, could
+boast a monopoly of the main source of revenue in the island. But what
+they had done was an index of what they might do, if another opportunity
+and a more complaisant government could be found. Any individual or any
+party which could promise the knights the unquestioned control of the
+revenues of a new province would be sure of their heartiest sympathy
+and support.
+
+And it would be worth the while of any individual or party which
+ventured to frame a programme traversing the lines of political
+orthodoxy, to bid for the co-operation of this class. For recent history
+had shown that the thorough organisation of capital, encouraged by the
+State to rid itself of a tiresome burden in times of peace and to secure
+itself a support in times of need, might become, as it pleased, a
+bulwark or a menace to the government which had created it. The useful
+monster had begun to develop a self-consciousness of his own. He had his
+amiable, even his patriotic moments; but his activity might be
+accompanied by the grim demand for a price which his nominal master was
+not prepared to pay. The darkest and the brightest aspects of the
+commercial spirit had been in turn exhibited during the Second Punic
+War. On the one hand we find an organised band of publicans attempting
+to break up an assembly before which a fraudulent contractor and wrecker
+was to be tried;[142] on the other, we find them meeting the shock of
+Cannae with the offer of a large loan to the beggared treasury, lent
+without guarantee and on the bare word of a ruined government that it
+should be met when there was money to meet it.[143] Other companies came
+forward to put their hands to the public works, even the most necessary
+of which had been suspended by the misery of the war, and told the
+bankrupt State that they would ask for their payment when the struggle
+had completely closed.[144] A noble spectacle! and if the positions of
+employer and employed had been reversed only in such crises and in such
+a way, no harm could come of the memory either of the obligation or the
+service. But the strength shown by this beneficence sometimes exhibited
+itself in unpleasant forms and led to unpleasant consequences. The
+censorships of Cato and of Gracchus had been fierce struggles of
+conservative officialdom against the growing influence and (as these
+magistrates held) the swelling insolence of the public companies; and in
+both cases the associations had sought and found assistance, either from
+a sympathetic party within the senate, or from the people. Cato's
+regulations had been reversed and their vigorous author had been
+threatened with a tribunician prosecution before the Comitia;[145] while
+Gracchus and his colleague had actually been impeached before a popular
+court.[146] The reckless employment of servile labour by the companies
+that farmed the property of the State had already proved a danger to
+public security. The society which had purchased from the censors the
+right of gathering pitch from the Bruttian forest of Sila had filled the
+neighbourhood with bands of fierce and uncontrolled dependants, chiefly
+slaves, but partly men of free birth who may have been drawn from the
+desperate Bruttians whom Rome had driven from their homes. The
+consequences were deeds of violence and murder, which called for the
+intervention of the senate, and the consuls had been appointed as a
+special commission to inquire into the outrages.[147] Nor were
+complaints limited to Italy; provincial abuses had already called for
+drastic remedies. A proof that this was the case is to be found in the
+striking fact that on the renewed settlement of Macedonia in 167 it was
+actually decreed that the working of the mines in that country, at least
+on the extended scale which would have required a system of contract,
+should be given up. It was considered dangerous to entrust it to native
+companies, and as to the Roman-their mere presence in the country would
+mean the surrender of all guarantees of the rule of public law or of the
+enjoyment of liberty by the provincials.[148] The State still preferred
+the embarrassments of poverty to those of overbearing wealth; its choice
+proved its weakness; but even the element of strength displayed in the
+surrender might soon be missed, if capital obtained a wider influence
+and a more definite political recognition. As things were, these
+organisations of capital were but just becoming conscious of their
+strength and had by no means reached even the prime of their vigour. The
+opening up of the riches of the East were required to develop the
+gigantic manhood which should dwarf the petty figure of the agricultural
+wealth of Italy.
+
+Had the state-contractors stood alone, or had not they engaged in varied
+enterprises for which their official character offered a favourable
+point of vantage, the numbers and influence of the individuals who had
+embarked their capital in commercial enterprise would have been far
+smaller than they actually were. But, in addition to the publican, we
+must take account of the business man (_negotiator_) who lent money on
+interest or exercised the profession of a banker. Such men had pecuniary
+interests which knew no geographical limits, and in all broad questions
+of policy were likely to side with the state-contractor.[149] The
+money-lender (_fenerator_) represented one of the earliest, most
+familiar and most courted forms of Roman enterprise--one whose intrinsic
+attractions for the grasping Roman mind had resisted every effort of the
+legislature by engaging in its support the wealthiest landowner as well
+as the smallest usurer. It is true that a taint clung to the trade--a
+taint which was not merely a product of the mistaken economic conception
+of the nature of the profits made by the lender, but was the more
+immediate outcome of social misery and the fulminations of the
+legislature. Cato points to the fact that the Roman law had stamped the
+usurer as a greater curse to society than the common thief, and makes
+the dishonesty of loans on interest a sufficient ground for declining a
+form of investment that was at once safe and profitable.[150] Usury, he
+had also maintained, was a form of homicide.[151] But to the majority of
+minds this feeling of dishonour had always been purely external and
+superficial. The proceedings were not repugnant to the finer sense if
+they were not made the object of a life-long profession and not
+blatantly exhibited to the eyes of the public. A taint clung to the
+money-lender who sat in an office in the Forum, and handed his loans or
+received his interest over the counter;[152] it was not felt by the
+capitalist who stood behind this small dealer, by the nobleman whose
+agent lent seed-corn to the neighbouring yeomen, by the investor in the
+state-contracts who perhaps hardly realised that his profits represented
+but an indirect form of usury. But, whatever restrictions public opinion
+may have imposed on the money-lender as a dealer in Rome and with
+Romans, such restrictions were not likely to be felt by the man who had
+the capital and the enterprise to carry his financial operations beyond
+the sea. Not only was he dealing with provincials or foreigners, but he
+was dealing on a scale so grand that the magnitude of the business
+almost concealed its shame. Cities and kings were now to be the
+recipients of loans and, if the lender occupied a political position
+that seemed inconsistent with the profession of a usurer, his
+personality might be successfully concealed under the name of some local
+agent, who was adequately rewarded for the obloquy which he incurred in
+the eyes of the native populations, and the embarrassing conflicts with
+the Roman government which were sometimes entailed by an excess of zeal.
+Cato had swept both principals and agents out of his province of
+Sardinia;[153] but he was a man who courted hostility, and he lived
+before the age when the enmity of capital would prove the certain ruin
+of the governor and a source of probable danger to the senate. In the
+operations of the money-lender we find the most universal link between
+the Forum and the provinces. There was no country so poor that it might
+not be successfully exploited, and indeed exploitation was often
+conditioned by simplicity of character, lack of familiarity with the
+developed systems of finance, and the lack of thrift which amongst
+peoples of low culture is the source of their constant need. The
+employment of capital for this purpose was always far in advance of the
+limits of Roman dominion. A protectorate might be in the grasp of a
+group of private individuals long before it was absorbed into the
+empire, the extension of the frontiers was conditioned by considerations
+of pecuniary, not of political safety, and the government might at any
+moment be forced into a war to protect the interests of capitalists
+whom, in its collective capacity as a government, it regarded as the
+greatest foes of its dominion.
+
+A more beneficent employment of capital was illustrated by the
+profession of banking which, like most of the arts which exhibit the
+highest refinement of the practical intellect, had been given to the
+Romans by the Greeks.[154] It had penetrated from Magna Graecia to
+Latium and from Latium to Rome, and had been fully established in the
+city by the time of the Second Punic War.[155] The strangers, who had
+introduced an art which so greatly facilitated the conduct of business
+transactions, had been welcomed by the government, and were encouraged
+to ply their calling in the shops rented from the State on the north and
+south sides of the Forum. These _argentarii_ satisfied the two needs of
+the exchange of foreign money, and of advances in cash on easier terms
+than could be gained from the professional or secret usurer, to citizens
+of every grade[156] who did not wish, or found it difficult, to turn
+their real property into gold. Similar functions were at a somewhat
+later period usurped by the money-testers (_nummularii_), who perhaps
+entered Rome shortly after the issue of the first native silver coinage,
+and competed with the earlier-established bankers in most of the
+branches of their trade.[157] Ultimately there was no department of
+business connected with the transference and circulation of money which
+the joint profession did not embrace. Its representatives were concerned
+with the purchase and sale of coin, and the equalisation of home with
+foreign rates of exchange; they lent on credit, gave security for
+others' loans, and received money on deposit; they acted as
+intermediaries between creditors and debtors in the most distant places
+and gave their travelling customers circular notes on associated houses
+in foreign lands; they were equally ready to dissipate by auction an
+estate that had become the property of a congress of creditors or a
+number of legatees. Their carefully kept books improved even the
+methodical habits of the Romans in the matter of business entries, and
+introduced the form of "contract by ledger" (_litterarum obligatio_),
+which greatly facilitated business operations on an extended scale by
+substituting the written record of obligation for other bonds more
+difficult to conclude and more easy to evade.
+
+The business life of Rome was in every way worthy of her position as an
+imperial city, and her business centre was becoming the greatest
+exchange of the commercial world of the day. The forum still drew its
+largest crowds to listen to the voice of the lawyer or the orator; but
+these attractions were occasional and the constant throng that any day
+might witness was drawn thither by the enticements supplied by the
+spirit of adventure, the thirst for news and the strain of business
+life. The comic poet has drawn for us a picture of the shifting crowd
+and its chief elements, good and bad, honest and dishonest. He has shown
+us the man who mingles pleasure with his business, lingering under the
+Basilica in extremely doubtful company; there too is a certain class of
+business men giving or accepting verbal bonds. In the lower part of the
+Forum stroll the lords of the exchange, rich and of high repute; under
+the old shops on the north sit the bankers, giving and receiving loans
+on interest.[158]
+
+The Forum has become in common language the symbol of all the ups and
+downs of business life,[159] and the moralist of later times could refer
+all students, who wish to master the lore of the quest and investment of
+money, to the excellent men who have their station by the temple of
+Janus.[160] The aspect of the market place had altered greatly to meet
+the growing needs. Great Basilicae--sheltered promenades which probably
+derived their names from the Royal Courts of the Hellenic East--had
+lately been erected. Two of the earliest, the Porcian and Sempronian,
+had been raised on the site of business premises which had been bought
+up for the purpose,[161] and were meant to serve the purposes of a
+market and an exchange.[162] Their sheltering roofs were soon employed
+to accommodate the courts of justice, but it was the business not the
+legal life of Rome that called these grand edifices into existence.
+
+The financial activity which centred in the Forum was a consequence, not
+merely of the contract-system encouraged by the State and of the
+business of the banker and the money-lender, but of the great foreign
+trade which supplied the wants and luxuries of Italy and Rome. This was
+an import trade concerned partly with the supply of corn for a nation
+that could no longer feed itself, partly with the supply of luxuries
+from the East and of more necessary products, including instruments of
+production, from the West. The Eastern trade touched the Euxine Sea at
+Dioscurias, Asia Minor chiefly at Ephesus and Apamea, and Egypt at
+Alexandria. It brought Pontic fish, Hellenic wines, the spices and
+medicaments of Asia and of the Eastern coast of Africa, and countless
+other articles, chiefly of the type which creates the need to which it
+ministers. More robust products were supplied by the West through the
+trade-routes which came down to Gades, Genua and Aquileia. Hither were
+brought slaves, cattle, horses and dogs; linen, canvas and wool; timber
+for ships and houses, and raw metal for the manufacture of implements
+and works of art. Neither in East nor West was the product brought by
+the producer to the consumer. In accordance with the more recent
+tendencies of Hellenistic trade, great emporia had grown up in which the
+goods were stored, until they were exported by the local dealers or
+sought by the wholesale merchant from an Italian port. As the Tyrrhenian
+Sea became the radius of the trade of the world, Puteoli became the
+greatest staple to which this commerce centred; thence the goods which
+were destined for Rome were conveyed to Ostia by water or by land, and
+taken by ships which drew no depth of water up the Tiber to the
+city.[163] But it must not be supposed that this trade was first
+controlled by Romans and Italians when it touched the shores of Italy.
+Groups of citizens and allies were to be found in the great staples of
+the world, receiving the products as they were brought down from the
+interior and supplying the shipping by which they were transferred to
+Rome.[164] They were not manufacturers, but intermediaries who reaped a
+larger profit from the carrying trade than could be gained by any form
+of production in their native land. The Roman and Italian trader was to
+be inferior only to the money-lender as a stimulus and a stumbling-block
+to the imperial government; he was, like the latter, to be a cause of
+annexation and a fire-brand of war, and serves as an almost equal
+illustration of the truth that a government which does not control the
+operations of capital is likely to become their instrument.[165]
+
+If we descend from the aristocracy of trade to its poorer
+representatives, we find that time had wrought great changes in the lot
+of the smaller manufacturer and artisan. It is true that the old
+trade-gilds of Rome, which tradition carried back to the days of Numa,
+still maintained their existence. The goldsmiths, coppersmiths,
+builders, dyers, leather-workers, tanners and potters[166] still held
+their regular meetings and celebrated their regular games. But it is
+questionable whether even at this period their collegiate life was not
+rather concerned with ceremonial than with business, whether they did
+not gather more frequently to discuss the prospects of their social and
+religious functions than to consider the rules and methods of their
+trades. We shall soon see these gilds of artificers a great political
+power in the State--one that often alarmed the government and sometimes
+paralysed its control of the streets of Rome. But their political
+activity was connected with ceremonial rather than with trade; it was as
+religious associations that they supported the demagogue of the moment
+and disturbed the peace of the city. They made war against any
+aristocratic abuse that was dangled for the moment before their eyes;
+but they undertook no consistent campaign against the dominance of
+capital. Their activity was that of the radical caucus, not of the
+trade-union. But, if even their industrial character had been fully
+maintained and trade interests had occupied more of their attention than
+street processions and political agitation, they could never have posed
+as the representatives of the interests of the free-born sons of Rome.
+The class of freedmen was freely admitted to their ranks, and the
+freedman was from an economic point of view the greatest enemy of the
+pure-blooded Italian. We shall also see that the freedman was usually
+not an independent agent in the conduct of the trade which he professed.
+He owed duties to his patron which limited his industrial activity and
+rendered a whole-hearted co-operation with his brother-workers
+impossible. It is questionable whether any gild organisation could have
+stood the shock of the immense development of industrial activity of
+which the more fortunate classes at Rome were now reaping the fruits.
+The trades represented by Numa's colleges would at best have formed a
+mere framework for a maze of instruments which formed the complex
+mechanism needed to satisfy the voracious wants of the new society. The
+gold-smithery of early times was now complicated by the arts of chasing
+and engraving on precious stones; the primitive builder, if he were
+still to ply his trade with profit, must associate it with the skill of
+the men who made the stuccoed ceilings, the mosaic pavements, the
+painted walls. The leather-worker must have learnt to make many a kind
+of fashionable shoe, and the dyer to work in violet, scarlet or saffron,
+in any shade or colour to which fashion had given a temporary vogue.
+Tailoring had become a fine art, and the movable decorations of houses
+demanded a host of skilled workmen, each of whom was devoted to the
+speciality which he professed. It would seem as though the very
+weaknesses of society might have benefited the lower middle class, and
+the siftings of the harvest given by the spoils of empire might have
+more than supplied the needs of a parasitic proletariate. It is an
+unquestioned fact that the growing luxury of the times did benefit trade
+with that doubtful benefit which accompanies the diversion of capital
+from purposes of permanent utility to objects of aesthetic admiration or
+temporary display; but it is an equally unquestioned fact that this
+unhealthy nutriment did not strengthen to any appreciable extent such of
+the lower classes as could boast pure Roman blood. The military
+conscription, to which the more prosperous of these classes were
+exposed, was inimical to the constant pursuit of that technical skill
+which alone could enable its possessor to hold the market against freer
+competitors. Such of the freedmen and the slaves as were trained to
+these pursuits--men who would not have been so trained had they not
+possessed higher artistic perception and greater deftness in execution
+than their fellows--were wholly freed from the military burden which
+absorbed much of the leisure, and blunted much of the skill, possessed
+by their free-born rivals. The competition of slaves must have been
+still more cruel in the country districts and near the smaller country
+towns than in the capital itself. At Rome the limitations of space must
+have hindered the development of home-industries in the houses of the
+nobles, and, although it is probable that much that was manufactured by
+the slaves of the country estate was regularly supplied to the urban
+villa, yet for the purchase of articles of immediate use or of goods
+which showed the highest qualities of workmanship the aristocratic
+proprietor must have been dependent on the competition of the Roman
+market. But the rustic villa might be perfectly self-supporting, and the
+village artificer must have looked in vain for orders from the spacious
+mansion, which, once a dwelling-house or farm, had become a factory as
+well. Both in town and country the practice of manumission was
+paralysing the energies of the free-born man who attempted to follow a
+profitable profession. The frequency of the gift of liberty to slaves is
+one of the brightest aspects of the system of servitude as practised by
+the Romans; but its very beneficence is an illustration of the
+aristocrat's contempt for the proletariate; for, where the ideal of
+citizenship is high, manumission--at least of such a kind as shall give
+political rights, or any trading privileges, equivalent to those of the
+free citizen--is infrequent. In the Rome of this period, however, the
+liberation of a slave showed something more than a mere negative neglect
+of the interests of the citizen. The gift of freedom was often granted
+by the master in an interested, if not in a wholly selfish, spirit. He
+was freed from the duty of supporting his slave while he retained his
+services as a freedman. The performance of these services was, it is
+true, not a legal condition of manumission; but it was the result of the
+agreement between master and slave on which the latter had attained his
+freedom. The nobleman who had granted liberty to his son's tutor, his
+own doctor or his barber, might still bargain to be healed, shaved or
+have his children instructed free of expense. The bargain was just in so
+far as the master was losing services for which he had originally paid,
+and juster still when the freedman set up business on the _peculium_
+which his master had allowed him to acquire during the days of his
+servitude. But the contracting parties were on an unequal footing, and
+the burden enforced by the manumittor was at times so intolerable that
+towards the close of the second century the praetor was forced to
+intervene and set limits to the personal service which might be expected
+from the gratitude of the liberated slave.[167] The performance of such
+gratuitous services necessarily diminished the demand for the labour of
+the free man who attempted to practise the pursuit of an art which
+required skill and was dependent for its returns on the custom of the
+wealthier classes; and even such needs as could not be met by the
+gratuitous services of freedmen or the purchased labour of slaves, were
+often supplied, not by the labour of the free-born Roman, but by that of
+the immigrant _peregrinus_. The foreigner naturally reproduced the arts
+of his own country in a form more perfect than could be acquired by the
+Roman or Italian, and as Rome had acquired foreign wants it was
+inevitable that they should be mainly supplied by foreign hands. We
+cannot say that most of the new developments in trade and manufacture
+had slipped from the hands of the free citizens; it would be truer to
+maintain that they had never been grasped by them at all. And, worse
+than this, we must admit that there was little effort to attain them.
+Both the cause and the consequence of the monopoly of trade and
+manufacture of a petty kind by freedmen and foreigners is to be found in
+the contempt felt by the free-born Roman for the "sordid and illiberal
+sources of livelihood." [168] This prejudice was reflected in public law,
+for any one who exercised a trade or profession was debarred from office
+at Rome.[169] As the magistracy had become the monopoly of a class, the
+prejudice might have been little more than one of the working principles
+of an aristocratic government, had not the arts which supplied the
+amenities of life actually tended to drift into the hands of the
+non-citizen or the man of defective citizenship. The most abject Roman
+could in his misery console himself with the thought that the hands,
+which should only touch the plough and the sword, had never been stained
+by trade. His ideal was that of the nobleman in his palace. It differed
+in degree but not in kind. It centred round the Forum, the battlefield
+and the farm.
+
+For even the most lofty aristocrat would have exempted agriculture from
+the ban of labour;[170] and, if the man of free birth could still have
+toiled productively on his holding, his contempt for the rabble which
+supplied the wants of his richer fellow-citizens in the towns would have
+been justified on material, if not on moral, grounds. He would have held
+the real sources of wealth which had made the empire possible and still
+maintained the actual rulers of that empire. Italian agriculture was
+still the basis of the brilliant life of Rome. Had it not been so, the
+epoch of revolution could not have been ushered in by an agrarian law.
+Had the interest in the land been small, no fierce attack would have
+been made and no encroachment stoutly resisted. We are at the
+commencement of the epoch of the dominance of trade, but we have not
+quitted the epoch of the supremacy of the landed interest.
+
+The vital question connected with agriculture was not that of its
+failure or success, but that of the individuals who did the work and
+shared the profits. The labourer, the soil, the market stand in such
+close relations to one another that it is possible for older types of
+cultivation and tenure to be a failure while newer types are a brilliant
+success. But an economic success may be a social failure. Thus it was
+with the greater part of the Italian soil of the day which had passed
+into Roman hands. Efficiency was secured by accumulation and the smaller
+holdings were falling into decay.
+
+A problem so complex as that of a change in tenure and in the type of
+productive activity employed on the soil is not likely to yield to the
+analysis of any modern historian who deals with the events of the
+ancient world. He is often uncertain whether he is describing causes or
+symptoms, whether the primary evil was purely economic or mainly social,
+whether diminished activity was the result of poverty and decreasing
+numbers, or whether pauperism and diminution of population were the
+effects of a weakened nerve for labour and of a standard of comfort so
+feverishly high that it declined the hard life of the fields and induced
+its possessors to refuse to propagate their kind. But social and
+economic evils react so constantly on one another that the question of
+the priority of the one to the other is not always of primary
+importance. A picture has been conjured up by the slight sketches of
+ancient historians and the more prolonged laments of ancient writers on
+agriculture, which gives us broad outlines that we must accept as true,
+although we may refuse to join in the belief that these outlines
+represent an unmixed and almost incurable evil. These writers even
+attempt to assign causes, which convince by their probability, although
+there is often a suspicion that the ultimate and elusive truth has not
+been grasped.
+
+The two great symptoms which immediately impress our imagination are a
+decline, real or apparent, in the numbers of the free population of
+Rome, and the introduction of new methods of agriculture which entailed
+a diminution in the class of freehold proprietors who had held estates
+of small or moderate size. The evidence for an actual decline of the
+population must be gathered exclusively from the Roman census
+lists.[171] At first sight these seem to tell a startling tale. At the
+date of the outbreak of the First Punic War (265 B.C.) the roll of Roman
+citizens had been given as 382,284,[172] at a census held but three
+years before the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus (136 B.C.) the numbers
+presented by the list were 307,833.[173] In 129 years the burgess roll
+had shrunk by nearly 75,000 heads of the population. The shrinkage had
+not always been steadily progressive; sometimes there is a sudden drop
+which tells of the terrible ravages of war. But the return of peace
+brought no upward movement that was long maintained. In the interval of
+comparative rest which followed the Third Macedonian War the census
+rolls showed a decrease of about 13,000 in ten Years.[174] Seven years
+later 2,000 more have disappeared,[175] and a slight increase at the
+next _lustrum_ is followed by another drop of about 14,000.[176] The
+needs of Rome had increased, and the means for meeting them were
+dwindling year by year. This must be admitted, however we interpret the
+meaning of these returns. A hasty generalisation might lead us to infer
+that a wholesale diminution was taking place in the population of Rome
+and Italy. The returns may add weight to other evidence which points
+this way; but, taken by themselves, they afford no warrant for such a
+conclusion. The census lists were concerned, not only purely with Roman
+citizens, but purely with Roman citizens of a certain type. It is
+practically certain that they reproduce only the effective fighting
+strength of Rome,[177] and take no account of those citizens whose
+property did not entitle them to be placed amongst the _classes_.[178]
+But, if it is not necessary to believe that an actual diminution of
+population is attested by these declining numbers, the conclusion which
+they do exhibit is hardly less serious from an economic and political
+point of view. They show that portions of the well-to-do classes were
+ceasing to possess the property which entitled them to entrance into the
+regular army, and that the ranks of the poorer proletariate were being
+swelled by their impoverishment. It is possible that such impoverishment
+may have been welcomed as a boon by the wearied veterans of Rome and
+their descendants. It meant exemption from the heavier burdens of
+military service, and, if it went further still, it implied immunity
+from the tribute as long as direct taxes were collected from Roman
+citizens.[179] As long as service remained a burden on wealth, however
+moderate, there could have been little inducement to the man of small
+means to struggle up to a standard of moderately increased pecuniary
+comfort, which would certainly be marred and might be lost by the
+personal inconvenience of the levy.
+
+The decline in the numbers of the wealthier classes is thus attested by
+the census rolls. But indications can also be given which afford a
+slight probability that there was a positive diminution in the free
+population of Rome and perhaps of Italy. The carnage of the Hannibalic
+war may easily be overemphasised as a source of positive decline. Such
+losses are rapidly made good when war is followed by the normal
+industrial conditions which success, or even failure, may bring. But, as
+we shall soon see reason for believing that these industrial conditions
+were not wholly resumed in Italy, the Second Punic War may be regarded
+as having produced a gap in the population which was never entirely
+refilled. We find evidences of tracts of country which were not annexed
+by the rich but could not be repeopled by the poor. The policy pursued
+by the decaying Empire of settling foreign colonists on Italian soil had
+already occurred to the statesmen of Rome in the infancy of her imperial
+expansion. In 180 B.C. 40,000 Ligurians belonging to the Apuanian people
+were dragged from their homes with their wives and children and settled
+on some public land of Rome which lay in the territory of the Samnites.
+The consuls were commissioned to divide up the land in allotments, and
+money was voted to the colonists to defray the expense of stocking their
+new farms.[180] Although the leading motive for this transference was
+the preservation of peace amongst the Ligurian tribes, yet it is
+improbable that the senate would have preferred the stranger to its
+kindred had there been an outcry from the landless proletariate to be
+allowed to occupy and retain the devastated property of the State.
+
+But moral motives are stronger even than physical forces in checking the
+numerical progress of a race. Amongst backward peoples unusual
+indulgence and consequent disease may lead to the diminution or even
+extinction of the stock; amongst civilised peoples the motives which
+attain this result are rather prudential, and are concerned with an
+ideal of life which perhaps increases the efficiency of the individual,
+but builds up his healthy and pleasurable environment at the expense of
+the perpetuity of the race. The fact that the Roman and Italian physique
+was not degenerating is abundantly proved by the military history of the
+last hundred years of the Republic. This is one of the greatest periods
+of conquest in the history of the world. The Italy, whom we are often
+inclined to think of as exhausted, could still pour forth her myriads of
+valiant sons to the confines marked by the Rhine, the Euphrates and the
+Sahara; and the struggle of the civil wars, which followed this
+expansion, was the clash of giants. But this vigour was accompanied by
+an ideal, whether of irresponsibility or of comfort, which gave rise to
+the growing habit of celibacy--a habit which was to stir the eloquence
+of many a patriotic statesman and finally lead to the intervention of
+the law. When the censor of 131 uttered the memorable exhortation "Since
+nature has so ordained that we cannot live comfortably with a wife nor
+live at all without one, you should hold the eternal safety of the State
+more dear than your own brief pleasure," [181] it is improbable that he
+was indulging in conscious cynicism, although there may have been a
+trace of conscious humour in his words. He was simply bending to the
+ideal of the people whom he saw, or imagined to be, before him. The
+ideal was not necessarily bad, as one that was concerned with individual
+life. It implied thrift, forethought, comfort--even efficiency of a
+kind, for the unmarried man was a more likely recruit than the father of
+a family. But it sacrificed too much--the future to the present; it
+ignored the undemonstrable duty which a man owes to the permanent idea
+of the State through working for a future which he shall never see. It
+rested partly on a conviction of security; but that feeling of security
+was the most perilous sign of all.
+
+The practice of celibacy generally leads to irregular attachments
+between the sexes. In a society ignorant of slavery, such attachments,
+as giving rise to social inconveniences far greater than those of
+marriage, are usually shunned on prudential grounds even where moral
+motives are of no avail. But the existence in Italy of a large class of
+female dependants, absolutely outside the social circle of the citizen
+body, rendered the attachment of the master to his slave girl or to his
+freedwoman fatally easy and unembarrassing. It was unfortunately as
+attractive as it was easy. Amidst the mass of servile humanity that had
+drifted to Italy from most of the quarters of the world there was
+scarcely a type that might not reproduce some strange and wonderful
+beauty. And the charm of manner might be secured as readily as that of
+face and form. The Hellenic East must often have exhibited in its women
+that union of wit, grace and supple tact which made even its men so
+irresistible to their Roman masters. The courtesans of the capital,
+whether of high or low estate,[182] are from the point of view which we
+are considering not nearly so important as the permanent mistress or
+"concubine" of the man who might dwell in any part of Italy. It was the
+latter, not the former, that was the true substitute for the wife. There
+is reason to believe that it was about this period that "concubinage"
+became an institution which was more than tolerated by society.[183] The
+relation which it implied between the man and his companion, who was
+generally one of his freedwomen, was sufficiently honourable. It
+excluded the idea of union with any other woman, whether by marriage or
+temporary association; it might be more durable than actual wedlock, for
+facilities for divorce were rapidly breaking the permanence of the
+latter bond; it might satisfy the juristic condition of "marital
+affection" quite as fully as the type of union to which law or religion
+gave its blessing. But it differed from marriage in one point of vital
+importance for the welfare of the State. Children might be the issue of
+_concubinatus_, but they were not looked on as its end. Such unions were
+not formed _liberum quaerendorum causa_.
+
+The decline, or at least the stationary character, of the population may
+thus be shown to be partly the result of a cause at once social and
+economic; for this particular social evil was the result of the economic
+experiment of the extended use of slavery as a means of production. This
+extension was itself partly the result of the accidents of war and
+conquest, and in fact, throughout this picture of the change which was
+passing over Italy, we can never free ourselves from the spectres of
+militarism and hegemony. But an investigation of the more purely
+economic aspects of the industrial life of the period affords a clear
+revelation of the fact that the effects of war and conquest were merely
+the foundation, accidentally presented, of a new method of production,
+which was the result of deliberate design and to some extent of a
+conscious imitation of systems which had in turn built up the colossal
+wealth, and assisted the political decay, of older civilisations with
+which Rome was now brought into contact. The new ideal was that of the
+large plantation or _latifundium_ supervised by skilled overseers,
+worked by gangs of slaves with carefully differentiated duties, guided
+by scientific rules which the hoary experience of Asia and Carthage had
+devised, but, in unskilled Roman hands, perhaps directed with a reckless
+energy that, keeping in view the vast and speedy returns which could
+only be given by richer soils than that of Italy, was as exhaustive of
+the capacities of the land as it was prodigal of the human energy that
+was so cheaply acquired and so wastefully employed. The East, Carthage
+and Sicily had been the successive homes of this system, and the Punic
+ideal reached Rome just at the moment when the tendency of the free
+peasantry to quit their holdings as unprofitable, or to sell them to pay
+their debts, opened the way for the organisation of husbandry on the
+grand Carthaginian model.[184] The opportunity was naturally seized with
+the utmost eagerness by men whose wants were increasing, whose incomes
+must be made to keep pace with these wants, and whose wealth must
+inevitably be dependent mainly on the produce of the soil. Yet we have
+no warrant for accusing the members of the Roman nobility of a
+deliberate plan of campaign stimulated by conscious greed and
+selfishness. For a time they may not have known what they were doing.
+Land was falling in and they bought it up; domains belonging to the
+State were so unworked as to be falling into the condition of rank
+jungle and pestilent morass. They cleared and improved this land with a
+view to their own profit and the profit of the State. Free labour was
+unattainable or, when attained, embarrassing. They therefore bought
+their labour in the cheapest market, this market being the product of
+the wars and slave-raids of the time. They acted, in fact, as every
+enlightened capitalist would act under similar circumstances. It seemed
+an age of the revival of agriculture, not of its decay. The official
+class was filled with a positive enthusiasm for new and improved
+agricultural methods. The great work of the Carthaginian Mago was
+translated by order of the senate.[185] Few of the members of that body
+would have cared to follow the opening maxim of the great expert, that
+if a man meant to settle in the country he should begin by selling his
+house in town;[186] the men of affairs did not mean to become gentlemen
+farmers, and it was the hope of profitable investment for the purpose of
+maintaining their dignity in the capital, not the rustic ideal of the
+primitive Roman, that appealed to their souls. But they might have hoped
+that most of the golden precepts of the twenty-eight books, which
+unfolded every aspect of the science of the management of land, would be
+assimilated by the intelligent bailiff, and they may even have been
+influenced by a patriotic desire to reveal to the small holder
+scientific methods of tillage, which might stave off the ruin that they
+deplored as statesmen and exploited as individuals. But the lessons were
+thrown away on the small cultivator; they probably presupposed the
+possession of capital and labour which were far beyond his reach; and
+science may have played but little part even in the accumulations of the
+rich, although the remarkable spectacle of small holdings, under the
+personal supervision of peasant proprietors, being unable to hold their
+own against plantations and ranches managed by bailiffs and worked by
+slaves, does suggest that some improved methods of cultivation were
+adopted on the larger estates. The rapidity with which the plantation
+system spread must have excited the astonishment even of its promoters.
+Etruria, in spite of the fact that three colonies of Roman citizens had
+lately been founded within its borders,[187] soon showed one continuous
+series of great domains stretching from town to town, with scarcely a
+village to break the monotonous expanse of its self-tilled plains.
+Little more than forty years had elapsed since the final settlement of
+the last Roman colony of Luna when a young Roman noble, travelling along
+the Etruscan roads, strained his eyes in vain to find a free labourer,
+whether cultivator or shepherd.[188] In this part of Italy it is
+probable that Roman enterprise was not the sole, or even the main, cause
+of the wreckage of the country folk. The territory had always been
+subject to local influences of an aristocratic kind; but the Etruscan
+nobles had stayed their hand as long as a free people might help them to
+regain their independence.[189] Now subjection had crushed all other
+ambition but that of gain and personal splendour, while the ravages of
+the Hannibalic war had made the peasantry an easy victim of the
+wholesale purchaser. Farther south, in Bruttii and Apulia, the hand of
+Rome had co-operated with the scourge of war to produce a like result.
+The confiscations effected in the former district as a punishment for
+its treasonable relations with Hannibal, the suitability of the latter
+for grazing purposes, which had early made it the largest tract of land
+in Italy patrolled by the shepherd slave,[190] had swept village and
+cultivator away, and left through whole day's journeys but vast
+stretches of pasture between the decaying towns.
+
+For barrenness and desolation were often the results of the new and
+improved system of management. There were tracts of country which could
+not produce cereals of an abundance and quality capable of competing
+with the corn imported from the provinces; but even on territories where
+crops could be reared productively, it was tempting to substitute for
+the arduous processes of sowing and reaping the cheaper and easier
+industry of the pasturage of flocks. We do not know the extent to which
+arable land in fair condition was deliberately turned into pasturage;
+but we can imagine many cases in which the land recently acquired by
+capitalists, whether from the State or from smaller holders, was in such
+a condition, either from an initial lack of cultivation or from neglect
+or from the ravages of war, that the new proprietor may well have shrunk
+from the doubtful enterprise of sinking his capital in the soil, for the
+purpose of testing its productive qualities. In such cases it was
+tempting to treat the great domain as a sheep-walk or cattle-ranch. The
+initial expenses of preparation were small, the labour to be employed
+was reduced to a minimum, the returns in proportion to the expenses were
+probably far larger than could be gained from corn, even when grown
+under the most favourable conditions. The great difficulty in the way of
+cattle-rearing on a large scale in earlier times had been the treatment
+of the flocks and herds during the winter months. The necessity for
+providing stalls and fodder for this period must have caused the
+proprietor to limit the heads of cattle which he cared to possess. But
+this constraint had vanished at once when a stretch of warm coast-line
+could be found, on which the flocks could pasture without feeling the
+rigour of the winter season. Conversely, the cattle-rearer who possessed
+the advantage of such a line of coast would feel his difficulties
+beginning when the summer months approached. The plains of the Campagna
+and Apulia could have been good neither for man nor beast during the
+torrid season. The full condition which freed a grazier from all
+embarrassment and rendered him careless of limiting the size of his
+flocks, was the combined possession of pastures by the sea for winter
+use, and of glades in the hills for pasturage in summer.[191] Neither
+the men of the hills nor the men of the plains, as long as they formed
+independent communities, could become graziers on an extensive scale,
+and it has been pointed out that even a Greek settlement of the extent
+of Sybaris had been forced to import its wool from the Black Sea through
+Miletus.[192] But when Rome had won the Apennines and extended her
+influence over the coast, there were no limits to the extent to which
+cattle rearing could be carried.[193] It became perhaps the most
+gigantic enterprise connected with the soil of Italy. Its cheapness and
+efficiency appealed to every practical mind. Cato, who had a sentimental
+attachment to agriculture, was bound in honesty to reply to the question
+"What is the best manner of investment?" by the words "Good pasturage."
+To the question as to the second-best means he answered "Tolerable
+pasturage." When asked to declare the third, he replied "Bad pasturage."
+To ploughing he would assign only the fourth place in the descending
+Scale.[194] Bruttii and Apulia were the chief homes of the ranch and the
+fold. The Lucanian conquest of the former country must, even at a time
+preceding the Roman domination, have formed a connection between the
+mountains and the plains, and pasturage on a large scale in the mountain
+glades of the Bruttian territory may have been an inheritance rather
+than a creation of the Romans; but the ruin caused in this district by
+the Second Punic War, the annexation to the State of large tracts of
+rebel land,[195] and the reduction of large portions of the population
+to the miserable serf-like condition of _dediticii_,[196] must have
+offered the capitalists opportunities which they could not otherwise
+have secured; and both here and in Apulia the tendency to extend the
+grazing system to its utmost limits must have advanced with terrible
+rapidity since the close of the Hannibalic war. It was the East coast of
+Southern Italy that was chiefly surrendered to this new form of
+industry, and we may observe a somewhat sharp distinction between the
+pastoral activity of these regions and the agricultural life which still
+continued, although on a diminished scale, in the Western
+districts.[197]
+
+We have already made occasional reference to the accidents on which the
+new industrial methods that created the _latifundia_ were designedly
+based. It is now necessary to examine these accidents in greater detail,
+if only for the purpose of preparing the ground for a future estimate of
+the efficacy of the remedies suggested by statesmen for a condition of
+things which, however naturally and even honestly created, was
+deplorable both on social and political grounds. The causes which had
+led to the change from one form of tenure and cultivation to another of
+a widely different kind required to be carefully probed, if the
+Herculean task of a reversion to the earlier system was to be attempted.
+The men who essayed the task had unquestionably a more perfect knowledge
+of the causes of the change than can ever be possessed by the student of
+to-day; but criticism is easier than action, and if it is not to become
+shamelessly facile, every constraining element in the complicated
+problem which is at all recoverable (all those elements so clearly seen
+by the hard-headed and honest Roman reformers, but known by them to
+possess an invulnerability that we have forgotten) must be examined by
+the historian in the blundering analysis which is all that is permitted
+by his imperfect information, and still more imperfect realisation, of
+the temporary forces that are the millstones of a scheme of reform.
+
+The havoc wrought by the Hannibalic invasion[198] had caused even
+greater damage to the land than to the people. The latter had been
+thinned but the former had been wasted, and in some cases wasted, as
+events proved, almost beyond repair. The devastation had been especially
+great in Southern Italy, the nations of which had clung to the Punic
+invader to the end. But such results of war are transitory in the
+extreme, if the numbers and energy of the people who resume possession
+of their wrecked homes are not exhausted, and if the conditions of
+production and sale are as favourable after the calamity as they were
+before. The amount of wealth which an enemy can injure, lies on the mere
+surface of the soil, and is an insignificant fraction of that which is
+stored in the bosom of the earth, or guaranteed by a favourable
+commercial situation and access to the sea. Carthage could pay her war
+indemnity and, in the course of half a century, affright Cato by her
+teeming wealth and fertility. Her people had resumed their old habits,
+bent wholeheartedly to the only life they loved, and the prizes of a
+crowded haven and bursting granaries were the result. If a nation does
+not recover from such a blow, there must be some permanent defect in its
+economic life or some fatal flaw in its administrative system. The
+devastation caused by war merely accelerates the process of decay by
+creating a temporary impoverishment, which reveals the severity of the
+preceding struggle for existence and renders hopeless its resumption.
+Certainly the great war of which Italy had been the theatre did mark
+such an epoch in the history of its agricultural life. A lack of
+productivity began to be manifested, for which, however, subsequent
+economic causes were mainly responsible. The lack of intensity, which is
+a characteristic of slave labour, lessened the returns, while the
+secondary importance attached to the manuring of the fields was a
+vicious principle inherent in the agricultural precepts of the
+time.[199] But it is probable that from this epoch there were large
+tracts of land the renewed cultivation of which was never attempted; and
+these were soon increased by domains which yielded insufficient returns
+and were gradually abandoned. The Italian peasant had ever had a hard
+fight with the insalubrity of his soil. Fever has always been the
+dreaded goddess of the environs of Rome. But constant labour and
+effective drainage had kept the scourge at bay, until the evil moment
+came when the time of the peasant was absorbed, and his energy spent, in
+the toils of constant war, when his land was swallowed up in the vast
+estates that had rapid profits as their end and careless slaves as their
+cultivators. Then, the moist fields gave out their native pestilence,
+and malaria reigned unchecked over the fairest portion of the Italian
+plain.[200]
+
+One of the leading economic causes, which had led to the failure of a
+certain class of the Italian peasant-proprietors, was the competition to
+which they were exposed from the provinces. Rome herself had begun to
+rely for the subsistence of her increasing population on corn imported
+from abroad, and many of the large coast-towns may have been forced to
+follow her example. The corn-producing powers of the Mediterranean lands
+had now definitely shifted from the regions of the East and North to
+those of the South.[201] Greece, which had been barely able to feed
+itself during the most flourishing period of its history, could not
+under any circumstances have possessed an importance as a country of
+export for Italy; but the economic evils which had fallen on this
+unhappy land are worthy of observation, as presenting a forecast of the
+fate which was in store for Rome. The decline in population, which could
+be attributed neither to war nor pestilence, the growing celibacy and
+childlessness of its sparse inhabitants,[202] must have been due to an
+agricultural revolution similar to that which was gradually being
+effected on Italian soil. The plantation system and the wholesale
+employment of slave labour must have swept across the Aegean from their
+homes in Asia Minor. Here their existence is sufficiently attested by
+the servile rising which was to assume, shortly after the tribunate of
+Tiberius Gracchus, the pretended form of a dynastic war; and the
+troubles which always attended the collection of the Asiatic tithes, in
+the days when a Roman province had been established in those regions,
+give no favourable impression of the agricultural prosperity of the
+countries which lay between the Taurus and the sea. As far south as
+Sicily there was evidence of exhaustion of the land, and of unnatural
+conditions of production, which excluded the mass of the free
+inhabitants from participation both in labour and profits. But even
+Sicily had learned from Carthage the evil lesson that Greece had
+acquired from Asia; the plantation system had made vast strides in the
+island, and the condition of the _aratores_, whether free-holders or
+lessees, was not what it had been in the days of Diocles and Timoleon.
+The growing economic dependence of Rome on Sicily was by no means wholly
+due to any exceptional productive capacities in the latter, but was
+mainly the result of proximity, and of administrative relations which
+enabled the government and the speculator in corn to draw definite and
+certain supplies of grain from the Sicilian cultivators. This was true
+also, although to a smaller degree, of Sardinia. But Sicily and Sardinia
+do mark the beginning of the Southern zone of lands which were capable
+of filling the markets of the Western world. It was the Northern coast
+of Africa which rose supreme as the grain-producer of the time. In the
+Carthaginian territory the natural absence of an agricultural peasantry
+amidst a commercial folk, and the elaboration of a definite science of
+agriculture, had neutralised the ill effects which accompanied the
+plantation system amongst other peoples less business-like and
+scientific; the cultivators had shown no signs of unrest and the soil no
+traces of exhaustion. It has been inferred with some probability that
+the hostility of Cato, the friend of agriculture and of the Italian
+yeoman, to the flourishing Punic state was directed to some extent by
+the fear that the grain of Africa might one day drive from the market
+the produce of the Italian fields;[203] and, if this view entered into
+the calculations which produced the final Punic War, the very
+short-sightedness of the policy which destroyed a state only to give its
+lands to African cities and potentates or to Roman speculators, who
+might continue the methods of the extinct community, is only too
+characteristic of that type of economic jealousy which destroys an
+accidental product and leaves the true cause of offence unassailed. The
+destruction of Carthage had, as a matter of fact, aggravated the danger;
+for the first use which Masinissa of Numidia made of the vast power with
+which Rome had entrusted him, was an attempt to civilise his people by
+turning them into cultivators;[204] and the virgin soil of the great
+country which stretched from the new boundaries of Carthage to the
+confines of the Moors, was soon reckoned amongst the competing elements
+which the Roman agriculturist had to fear.
+
+But the force of circumstances caused the Sicilian and Sardinian
+cultivator to be the most formidable of his immediate competitors. The
+facility of transport from Sicily to Rome rendered that island superior
+as a granary to even the more productive portions of the Italian
+mainland. Sicily could never have revealed the marvellous fertility of
+the valley of the Po, where a bushel and a half of wheat could be
+purchased for five pence half-penny, and the same quantity of barley was
+sold for half this price;[205] but it was easier to get Sicilian corn to
+Rome by sea than to get Gallic corn to Rome by land; and the system of
+taxation and requisitions which had grown out of the provincial
+organisation of the island, rendered it peculiarly easy to place great
+masses of corn on the Roman market at very short notice. Occasionally
+the Roman government enforced a sale of corn from the province
+(_frumentum emptum_),[206] a reasonable price being paid for the grain
+thus demanded for the city or the army; but this was almost the only
+case in which the government intervened to regulate supplies. In the
+ordinary course of things the right to collect the tithes of the
+province was purchased by public companies, who paid money, not grain,
+into the Roman treasury, and these companies placed their corn on the
+market as best they could. The operations of the speculators in grain
+doubtless disturbed the price at times. But yet the certainty, the
+abundance and the facilities for transport of this supply were such as
+practically to shut out from competition in the Roman market all but the
+most favourably situated districts of Italy. Their chance of competition
+depended mainly on their accidental possession of a good road, or their
+neighbourhood to the sea or to a navigable river.[207] The larger
+proprietors in any part of Italy must have possessed greater facilities
+for carrying their grain to a good market than were enjoyed by the
+smaller holders. The Clodian law on trade permitted senators to own
+sea-going ships of a certain tonnage; they could, therefore, export
+their own produce without any dependence on the middle-man, while the
+smaller cultivators would have been obliged to pay freight, or could
+only have avoided such payment by forming shipping-companies amongst
+themselves. But such combination was not to be looked for amongst a
+peasant class, barely conscious even of the external symptoms of the
+great revolution which was dragging them to ruin, and perhaps almost
+wholly oblivious of its cause.
+
+It required less penetration to fathom the second of the great reasons
+for the accumulation of landed property in the hands of the few; for
+this cause had been before the eyes of the Roman world, and had been
+expounded by the lips of Roman statesmen, for generations or, if we
+credit a certain class of traditions,[208] even for centuries. This
+cause of the growing monopoly of the land by the few was the system of
+possession which the State had encouraged, for the purpose of securing
+the use and cultivation of its public domain. The policy of the State
+seems to have changed from time to time with reference to its treatment
+of this particular portion of its property, which it valued as the most
+secure of its assets and one that served, besides its financial end, the
+desirable purpose of assisting it to maintain the influence of Rome
+throughout almost every part of Italy. When conquered domain had first
+been declared "public," the government had been indifferent to the type
+of occupier which served it by squatting on this territory and
+reclaiming land that had not been divided or sold chiefly because its
+condition was too unattractive to invite either of these processes.[209]
+It had probably extended its invitation even to Latin allies,[210] and
+looked with approval on any member of the burgess body who showed his
+enterprise and patriotism by the performance of this great public
+service. If the State had a partiality, it was probably for the richer
+and more powerful classes of its citizens. They could embrace a greater
+quantity of land in their grasp, and so save the trouble which attended
+an estimate of the returns of a great number of small holdings; they
+possessed more effective means of reclaiming waste or devastated land,
+for they had a greater control of capital and labour; lastly, through
+their large bands of clients and slaves, they had the means of
+efficiently protecting the land which they had occupied, and this must
+have been an important consideration at a time when large tracts of the
+_ager publicus_ lay amidst foreign territories which were barely
+pacified, and were owned by communities that often wavered in their
+allegiance to Rome. But, whatever the views of the government, it is
+tolerably clear that the original occupiers must have chiefly
+represented men of this stamp. These were the days when the urban and
+the rustic tribes were sharply divided, as containing respectively the
+men of the town and the men of the country, and when there were
+comparatively few of the latter folk that did not possess some holding
+of their own. It was improbable that a townsman would often venture on
+the unfamiliar task of taking up waste land; it was almost as improbable
+that a small yeoman would find leisure to add to the unaided labour on
+his own holding the toil of working on new and unpromising soil, except
+in the cases where some unclaimed portion of the public domain was in
+close proximity to his estate.
+
+We may, therefore, infer that from very early times the wealthier
+classes had asserted themselves as the chief occupiers of the public
+domain. And this condition of things continued to be unchallenged until
+a time came[211] when the small holders, yielding to the pressure of
+debt and bankruptcy, sought their champions amongst the tribunes of the
+Plebs. The absolute control of the public domain by the State, the
+absolute insecurity of the tenure of its occupants, furnished an
+excellent opportunity for staving off schemes of confiscation and
+redistribution of private property, such as had often shaken the
+communities of Greece, and even for refusing to tamper with the existing
+law of debtor and creditor.[212] It was imagined that bankrupt yeomen
+might be relieved by being allowed to settle on the public domain, or
+that the resumption or retention of a portion of this domain by the
+State might furnish an opportunity for the foundation of fresh colonies,
+and a law was passed limiting the amount of the _ager publicus_ that any
+individual might possess. The enactment, whatever its immediate results
+may have been, proved ineffective as a means of checking the growth of
+large possessions. No special commission was appointed to enforce
+obedience to its terms, and their execution was neglected by the
+ordinary magistrates. The provisions of the law were, indeed, never
+forgotten, but as a rule they were remembered only to be evaded. Devious
+methods were adopted of holding public land through persons who seemed
+to be _bona fide_ possessors in their own right, but were in reality
+merely agents of some planter who already held land up to the permitted
+limit.[213] Then came the agricultural crisis which followed the Punic
+Wars. The small freeholds, mortgaged, deserted or selling for a fraction
+of their value, began to fall into the meshes of the vast net which had
+spread over the public domain. In some cases actual violence is said to
+have been used to the smaller yeomen by their neighbouring tyrants,[214]
+and we can readily imagine that, when a holding had been deserted for a
+time through stress of war or military service, it might be difficult to
+resume possession in the face of effective occupation by the bailiff of
+some powerful neighbour. The _latifundium_--acquired, as it was
+believed, in many cases by force, fraud and shameless violation of the
+law--was becoming the standard unit of cultivation throughout
+Italy.[215] When we consider the general social and economic
+circumstances of the time, it is possible to imagine that large
+properties would have grown in Italy, as in Greece, had Rome never
+possessed an inch of public domain; but the occupation of _ager
+publicus_ by the rich is very important from two points of view. On the
+one hand, it unquestionably accelerated the process of the formation of
+vast estates; and a renewed impulse had lately been given to this
+process by the huge confiscations in the South of Italy, and perhaps by
+the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul; for it is improbable that the domain
+possessed by the State in this fertile country had been wholly parcelled
+out amongst the colonies of the northern frontier.[216] But on the other
+hand, the fact that the kernel of these estates was composed of public
+land in excess of the prescribed limit seemed to make resumption by the
+State and redistribution to the poor legally possible. The _ager
+publicus_, therefore, formed the basis for future agitation and was the
+rallying point for supporters and opponents of the proposed methods of
+agricultural reform.
+
+But it was not merely the negligence of the State which led to the
+crushing of the small man by the great; the positive burdens which the
+government was forced to impose by the exigencies of the career of
+conquest and hegemony into which Rome had drifted, rendered the former
+an almost helpless competitor in the uneven struggle. The conscription
+had from early days been a source of impoverishment for the commons and
+of opportunity for the rich. The former could obey the summons of the
+State only at the risk of pledging his credit, or at least of seeing his
+homestead drift into a condition of neglect which would bring the
+inevitable day when it could only be rehabilitated by a loan of seed or
+money. The lot of the warrior of moderate means was illustrated by the
+legend of Regulus. He was believed to have written home to the consuls
+asking to be relieved of his command in Africa. The bailiff whom he had
+left on his estate of seven _jugera_ was dead, the hired man had stolen
+the implements of agriculture and run away; the farm lay desolate and,
+were its master not permitted to return, his wife and children would
+lack the barest necessaries of existence.[217] The struggle to maintain
+a household in the absence of its head was becoming more acute now that
+corn-land was ceasing to pay, except under the most favourable
+conditions, and now that the demand for conscripts was sometimes heavier
+and always more continuous than it had ever been before. Perhaps
+one-tenth of the adult male population of Rome was always in the
+field;[218] the units came and went, but the men who bore the brunt of
+the long campaigns and of garrison duty in the provinces were those to
+whom leisure meant life--the yeomen who maintained their place in the
+census lists by hardy toil, and who risked their whole subsistence
+through the service that had been wrested from them as a reward for a
+laborious career. When they ceased to be owners of their land, they
+found it difficult to secure places even as labourers on some rich man's
+property. The landholder preferred the services of slaves which could
+not be interrupted by the call of military duty.[219]
+
+The economic evils consequent on the conscription must have been felt
+with hardly less severity by such of the Italian allies as lived in the
+regions within which the _latifundia_ were growing up. To these were
+added the pecuniary burdens which Rome had been forced to impose during
+the Second Punic War. These burdens were for the most part indirect, for
+Rome did not tax her Italian _socii_, but they were none the less
+severe. Every contingent supplied from an allied community had its
+expenses, except that of food during service, defrayed from the treasury
+of its own state,[220] and ten continuous years of conscription and
+requisition had finally exhausted the loyalty even of Rome's Latin
+kindred.[221] It is true that the Italians were partially, although not
+wholly, free from the economic struggle between the possessors of the
+public land and the small freeholders; but there is no reason for
+supposing that those of Western Italy were exempt from the consequences
+of the reduction in price that followed the import of corn from abroad,
+and the drain on their incomes and services which had been caused by war
+could scarcely have fitted them to stand this unexpected trial. Rome's
+harsh dealings with the treasonable South, although adopted for
+political motives, was almost unquestionably a political blunder. She
+confiscated devastated lands, and so perpetuated their devastation. She
+left ruined harbours and cities in decay. She crippled her own resources
+to add to the pastoral wealth of a handful of her citizens. In the East
+of Italy there was a far greater vitality than elsewhere in agriculture
+of the older type. The Samnites in their mountains, the Peligni,
+Marrucini, Frentani and Vestini between the Apennines and the sea still
+kept to the system of small freeholds. Their peasantry had perhaps
+always cultivated for consumption rather than for sale; their
+inhabitants were rather beyond the reach of the ample supply from the
+South; and for these reasons the competition of Sicilian and African
+corn did not lead them to desert their fields. They were also less
+exposed than the Romans and Latins to the aggressions of the great
+_possessor_; for, since they possessed no _commercium_ with Rome, the
+annexation of their property by legal means was beyond the reach even of
+the ingenious cupidity of the times.[222] The proof of the existence of
+the yeoman in these regions is the danger which he caused to Rome. The
+spirit which had maintained his economic independence was to aim at a
+higher goal, and the struggle for equality of political rights was to
+prove to the exclusive city the prowess of that class of peasant
+proprietors which she had sacrificed in her own domains.
+
+But, although this sacrifice had been great, we must not be led into the
+belief that there was no hope for the agriculturist of moderate means
+either in the present or in the future. Even in the present there were
+clear indications that estates of moderate size could under careful
+cultivation hold their own. The estate of Lucius Manlius, which Cato
+sketches in his work on agriculture,[223] was far from rivalling the
+great demesnes of the princes of the land. It consisted of 240 _jugera_
+devoted to the olive and of 100 _jugera_ reserved for the vine.
+Provision was made for a moderate supply of corn and for pasturage for
+the cattle that worked upon the fields. But the farm was on the whole a
+representative of the new spirit, which saw in the vine and the olive a
+paying substitute for the decadent culture of grain. Even on an estate
+of this size we note as significant that the permanent and even the
+higher personnel of the household (the latter being represented by the
+_villici_ and the _villicae_) was composed of slaves; yet hirelings were
+needed for the harvest and the corn was grown by cottagers who held
+their land on a _metayer_ tenure. But such an estate demanded unusual
+capital as well as unusual care. On the tiny holdings, which were all
+that the poorest could afford, the scanty returns might be eked out by
+labour on the fields of others, for the small allotment did not demand
+the undivided energies of its holder.[224] There was besides a class of
+_politores_[225] similar to that figured as cultivating the Cornland on
+the estate of Manlius, who received in kind a wage on which they could
+at least exist. They were nominally _metayer_ tenants who were provided
+with the implements of husbandry by their landlord; but the quantity of
+grain which they could reserve to their own use was so small, varying as
+it did from a ninth to a fifth of the whole of the crop which they had
+reaped,[226] that their position was little better than that of the
+poorest labourer by the day.[227] The humblest class of freemen might
+still make a living in districts where pasturage did not reign supreme.
+But it was a living that involved a sacrifice of independence and a
+submission to sordid needs that were unworthy of the past ideal of Roman
+citizenship. It was a living too that conferred little benefit on the
+State; for the day-labourers and the _politores_ could scarcely have
+been in the position on the census list which rendered them liable to
+the conscription.
+
+If it were possible to lessen the incidence of military service and to
+secure land and a small amount of capital for the dispossessed, the
+prospects for the future were by no means hopeless. The smaller culture,
+especially the cultivation of the vine and the olive, is that to which
+portions of Italy are eminently suited. This is especially true of the
+great volcanic plain of the West extending from the north of Etruria to
+the south of Campania and comprising, besides these territories, the
+countries of the Latins, the Sabines, the Volsci and the Hernici. The
+lightness and richness of the alluvion of this volcanic soil is almost
+as suited to the production of cereals as to that of the vine and the
+olive or the growth of vegetables.[228] But, even on the assumption that
+corn-growing would not pay, there was nothing to prevent, and everything
+to encourage the development of the olive plantation, the vineyard and
+the market garden throughout this region. It was a country sown with
+towns, and the vast throat of Rome alone would cry for the products of
+endless labour. Even Cato can place the vine and the olive before
+grazing land and forest trees in the order of productivity,[229] and
+before the close of the Republic the government had learnt the lesson
+that the salvation of the Italian peasantry depended on the cultivation
+of products like these. The conviction is attested by the protective
+edict that the culture of neither the vine nor the olive was to be
+extended in Transalpine Gaul.[230] Market gardening was also to have a
+considerable future, wherever the neighbourhood of the larger towns
+created a demand for such supplies.[231] A new method of tenure also
+gave opportunities to those whose capital or circumstances did not
+enable them to purchase a sufficient quantity of land of their own.
+Leaseholds became more frequent, and the _coloni_ thus created[232]
+began to take an active share in the agricultural life of Italy. Like
+the _villici_, they were a product, of the tendency to live away from
+the estate; but they gained ground at the expense of the servile
+bailiffs, probably in consequence of their greater trustworthiness and
+keener interest in the soil.
+
+But time was needed to effect these changes. For the present the reign
+of the capitalist was supreme, and the plantation system was dominant
+throughout the greater part of Italy. The most essential ingredient in
+this system was the slave,--an alien and a chattel, individually a thing
+of little account, but reckoned in his myriads the most powerful factor
+in the economic, and therefore in the political, life of the times, the
+gravest of the problems that startled the reformer. The soil of Italy
+was now peopled with widely varied types, and echoes of strange tongues
+from West and East could be heard on every hand. Italy seemed a newly
+discovered country, on which the refuse of all lands had been thrown to
+become a people that could never be a nation. The home supply of slaves,
+so familiar as to seem a product of the land, was becoming a mere trifle
+in comparison with the vast masses that were being thrust amongst the
+peasantry by war and piracy. At the time of the protest of Tiberius
+Gracchus against the dominance of slave labour in the fields scarcely
+two generations had elapsed since the great influx had begun. The Second
+Punic War had spread to every quarter of the West; Sicily, Sardinia,
+Cisalpine Gaul and Spain all yielded their tribute in the form of human
+souls that had passed from the victor to the dealer, from the dealer to
+the country and the town. Only one generation had passed since a great
+wave had swept from Epirus and Northern Greece over the shores of Italy.
+In Epirus alone one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners had been
+sold.[233] Later still the destruction of Carthage must have cast vast
+quantities of agricultural slaves upon the market.[234] Asia too had
+yielded up her captives as the result of Roman victories; but the
+Oriental visages that might be seen in the streets of Rome or the plains
+of Sicily, were less often the gift of regular war than of the piracy
+and the systematised slave-hunting of the Eastern Mediterranean. Rome,
+who had crushed the rival maritime powers that had attempted, however
+imperfectly, to police the sea, had been content with the work of
+destruction, and seemed to care nothing for the enterprising buccaneers
+who sailed with impunity as far west as Sicily. The pirates had also
+made themselves useful to the Oriental powers which still retained their
+independence; they had been tolerated, if they had not been employed, by
+Cyprus and Egypt when these states were struggling against the Empire of
+the Seleucids.[235] But another reason for their immunity was the view
+held in the ancient world that slave-hunting was in itself a legitimate
+form of enterprise.[236] The pirate might easily be regarded as a mere
+trader in human merchandise. As such, he had perhaps been useful to
+Carthage;[237] and, as long as he abstained from attacking ports or
+nationalities under the protectorate of Rome, there was no reason why
+the capitalists in power should frown on the trade by which they
+prospered. For the pirates could probably bring better material to the
+slave market than was usually won in war.[238] A superior elegance and
+culture must often have been found in the helpless victims on whom they
+pounced; beauty and education were qualities that had a high marketable
+value, and by seizing on people of the better class they were sure of
+one of two advantages--either of a ransom furnished by the friends of
+the captives, or of a better price paid by the dealer. There was
+scarcely a pretence that the traders were mere intermediaries who bought
+in a cheap market and sold in a dear. They were known to be raiders as
+well, and numbers of the captives exhibited in the mart at Side in
+Pamphylia were known to have been freemen up to the moment of the
+auction.[239] The facility for capture and the proximity of Delos, the
+greatest of the slave markets which connected the East with the West,
+rendered the supply enormous; but it was equalled by the demand, and
+myriads of captives are said to have been shipped to the island and to
+have quitted it in a single day. The ease and rapidity of the business
+transacted by the master of a slave-ship became a proverb;[240] and
+honest mercantile undertakings with their tardy gains must have seemed
+contemptible in comparison with this facile source of wealth.
+
+An abundant supply and quick returns imply reasonable prices; and the
+cheapness of the labour supplied by the slave-trade, whether as a
+consequence of war or piracy, was at once a necessary condition of the
+vitality of the plantation system and a cause of the recklessness and
+neglect with which the easily replaced instruments might be used. Cato,
+a shrewd man of business, never cared to pay more than fifteen hundred
+denarii for his slaves.[241] This must have been the price of the best
+type of labourer, of a man probably who was gifted with intelligence as
+well as strength. Ordinary unskilled labour must have fetched a far
+smaller sum; for the prices which are furnished by the comic poetry of
+the day--prices which are as a rule conditioned by the value of personal
+services or qualities of a particular kind, by the attractions of sex
+and the competition for favours--do not on the average far exceed the
+limit fixed by Cato.[242] For common work newly imported slaves were
+actually preferred, and purchasers were shy of the _veterator_ who had
+seen long service.[243] Employment in the fashionable circles of the
+town doubtless enhanced the value of a slave, when he was known to have
+been in possession of some peculiar gift, whether it were for cookery,
+medicine or literature; but the labours of the country could easily be
+drilled into the newest importation, and prices diminished instead of
+rising with the advancing age and experience of the rustic slave.[244]
+
+The cheapened labour which was now spread over Italy presented as many
+varieties of moral as of physical type, and these came to be well known
+to the prospective owner, not because he aimed at being a moral
+influence, but because he objected to being worried by the vagaries of
+an eccentric type. Sardinians were always for sale, not because they
+were specially abundant, but because they showed an indocility that
+rendered them a sorry possession.[245] The passive Oriental, the
+Spaniard fierce and proud, required different methods of management and
+inspired different precautions; yet experience soon proved that the
+hellenised sons of the East had a better capacity for organising revolt
+than their fellow-sufferers from the North and West, and much of the
+harshness of Roman slavery was prompted by the panic which is the
+nemesis of the man who deals in human lives. But more of it was due to
+the indifference which springs from familiarity, and from the cold
+practical spirit in which the Roman always tended to play with the pawns
+of his business game, even when they were freemen and fellow-citizens. A
+man like Cato, who had sense and honesty enough to look after his own
+business, elaborated a machine-like system for governing his household,
+the aim of which was the maximum of profit with the minimum amount of
+humanity which is consistent with the attainment of such an end. The
+element of humanity is, however, accidental. There is no conscious
+appeal to such a feeling. The slaves seem to be looked on rather as
+automata who perform certain mental and physical processes analogous to
+those of men. Cato's servants were never to enter another house except
+at his bidding or at that of his wife, and were to express utter
+ignorance of his domestic history to all inquirers; their life was to
+alternate between working and sleeping, and the heavy sleeper was valued
+as presumably a peaceful character; little bickerings between the
+servants were to be encouraged, for unanimity was a matter for suspicion
+and fear; the death sentence pronounced on any one of them by the law
+was carried out in the presence of the assembled household, so as to
+strike a wholesome terror into the rest. If they wished to propagate
+their kind, they must pay for the privilege, and a fixed sum was
+demanded from the slave who desired to find a mate amongst his
+fellow-servants.[246] The rations were fixed and only raised at the
+people's festivals of the Saturnalia and Compitalia;[247] a sick slave
+was supposed to need less than his usual share[248]--perhaps an
+excellent hygienic maxim, but one scarcely adopted on purely hygienic
+grounds. Such a life was an emphatic protest against the indulgence of
+the city, the free and careless intercourse which often reversed the
+position of master and slave and formed part of the stock-in-trade of
+the comedian. Yet, even when the bond between the man of fashion and his
+artful Servants had merely a life of pleasure and of mischief as its
+end, we Are at least lifted by such relations into a human sphere, and
+it is exceedingly questionable whether the warped humanity of the city
+did mark so low a level as the brutalised life of the estate over which
+Cato's fostering genius was spread. If we develop Cato's methods but a
+little, if we admit a little more rigour and a little less
+discrimination, we get the dismal barrack-like system of the great
+plantations--a barrack, or perhaps a prison, nominally ruled by a
+governor who might live a hundred miles away, really under the control
+of an anxious and terrified slave, who divided his fears between his
+master who wanted money and his servants who wanted freedom. The
+_villicus_ had been once the mere intendant of the estate on which his
+master lived; he was now sole manager of a vast domain for his absent
+lord,[249] sole keeper of the great _ergastulum_ which enclosed at
+nightfall the instruments of labour and disgorged them at daybreak over
+the fields. The gloomy building in which they were herded for rest and
+sleep showed but its roof and a small portion of its walls above the
+earth; most of it lay beneath the ground, and the narrow windows were so
+high that they could not be reached by the hands of the inmates.[250]
+There was no inspection by the government, scarcely any by the
+owners.[251] There was no one to tell the secrets of these dens, and if
+the unwary traveller were trapped and hidden behind their walls, all
+traces of him might be for ever lost.[252] When the slaves were turned
+out into the fields, the safety of their drivers was secured by the
+chains which bound their limbs, but which were so adjusted as not to
+interfere with the movements necessary to their work.[253] Some whose
+spirit had been broken might be left unbound, but for the majority bonds
+were the only security against escape or vengeance.[254]
+
+There was, however, one type of desperate character who was permitted to
+roam at large. This was the guardian of the flocks, who wandered
+unrestrained over the mountains during the summer months and along the
+prairies in the winter season. These herdsmen formed small bands. It was
+reckoned that there should be one for every eighty or hundred sheep and
+two for every troop of fifty horses.[255] It was sometimes found
+convenient that they should be accompanied by their women who prepared
+their meals--women of robust types like the Illyrian dames to whom
+child-birth was a mere incident in the daily toils.[256] Such a life of
+freedom had its attractions for the slave, but it had its drawbacks too.
+The landowner who preferred pasturage to tillage, saved his capital, not
+only by the small number of hands which the work demanded, but also by
+the niggardly outlay which he expended on these errant serfs. It was not
+needful to provide them with the necessaries of life when they could
+take them for themselves. When Damophilus of Enna was entreated by his
+slaves to give them something better than the rags they wore, his answer
+was: "Do travellers then travel naked through the land? Have they
+nothing for the man who wants a coat?" [257] Brigandage, in fact, was an
+established item In the economic creed of the day.
+
+The desolation of Italy was becoming dangerous, and the master of the
+lonely villa barred himself in at nights as though an enemy were at his
+gates. On one occasion Scipio Africanus was disturbed in his retreat at
+Liternum by a troop of bandits. He placed his armed servants on the roof
+and made every preparation for repelling the assault. But the visitors
+proved to be pacific. They were the very _elite_ of the fraternity of
+brigands and had merely come to do honour to the great man. They sent
+back their troops, threw down their arms, laid presents before his door
+and departed in joyous mood.[258] The immunity of such bands proved that
+a slave revolt might at any moment imperil every life and every dwelling
+in some unprotected canton. It was indeed the epoch of peace, when Roman
+and Phoenician armies no longer held the field in Italy, that first
+suggested the hope of liberation to the slave. Hannibal would have
+imperilled his character of a protector of Italian towns had he
+encouraged a slave revolt, even if the Phoenician had not shrunk from a
+precedent so fatal to his native land. But one of the unexpected results
+of the Second Punic War was to kindle a rising in the very heart of
+Latium, and it was the African slave, not the African freeman, that
+stirred the last relics of the war in Italy. At Setia were guarded the
+noble Carthaginians who were a pledge of the fidelity of their state.
+These hostages, the sons of merchant princes, were allowed to retain the
+dignity of their splendid homes, and a vast retinue of slaves from
+Africa attended on their wants. The number of these was swelled by
+captive members of the same nationalities whom the people of Setia had
+acquired in the recent war.[259] A spirit of camaraderie sprung up
+amongst men who understood one another's language and had acquired the
+spurious nationality that comes from servitude in the same land. Their
+numbers were obvious, the paucity of the native Setians was equally
+clear, and no military force was close at hand. They planned to increase
+their following by spreading disaffection amongst the servile
+populations of the neighbouring country towns, and emissaries were sent
+to Norba in the North and Circei in the South. Their project was to wait
+for the rapidly approaching games of the Setian folk and to rush on the
+unarmed populace as they were gazing at the show; when Setia had been
+taken, they meant to seize on Norba and Circei. But there was treason in
+their ranks. The urban praetor was roused before dawn by two slaves who
+poured the whole tale of the impending massacre into his ear. After a
+hasty consultation of the senate he rushed to the threatened district,
+gathering recruits as he swept with his legates through the country
+side, binding them with the military oath, bidding them arm and follow
+him with all speed. A hasty force of about two thousand men was soon
+gathered; none knew his destination till he reached the gates of Setia.
+The heads of the conspiracy were seized, and such of their followers as
+learnt the fact fled incontinently from the town. From this point onward
+it was only a matter of hunting down the refugees by patrols sent round
+the country districts. Southern Latium was freed from its terror; but it
+was soon found that the evil had spread almost to the gates of Rome. A
+rumour had spread that Praeneste was to be seized by its slaves, and it
+was sufficient to stimulate a praetor to execute nearly five hundred of
+the supposed delinquents.[260]
+
+Two years later a rising, which almost became a war, shook the great
+plantation lands of Etruria.[261] Its suppression required a legion and
+a pitched battle. The leaders were crucified; others of the slaves who
+had escaped the carnage were restored to their masters. But these
+disturbances, that may have seemed mere sporadic relics of the havoc and
+exhaustion left by the Hannibalic war, were only quelled for the moment.
+It was soon found that the seeds of insecurity were deeply planted in
+the settlement that was called a peace. During the year 185 the
+shepherds of Apulia were found to have formed a great society of
+plunder, and robbery with violence was of constant occurrence on the
+grazing lands and public roads. The praetor who was in command at
+Tarentum opened a commission which condemned seven thousand men. Many
+were executed, although a large number of the criminals escaped to other
+regions.[262]
+
+These movements in Italy were but the symptoms of a spirit that was
+spreading over the Mediterranean lands. The rising of the serfs only
+just preceded the great awakening of the masses of the freemen.[263]
+Both classes were ground down by capital; both would make an effort to
+shake the burden from their shoulders; and, as regards the methods of
+assertion, it is a matter of little moment whether they took the form of
+a national rising against a government or a protectorate, a sanguinary
+struggle in the Forum against the dominance of a class, or an attack by
+chattels, not yet brutalised by serfdom but full of the traditions and
+spirit of freemen, against the cruelty and indifference of their owners.
+In one sense the servile movements were more universal, and perhaps
+better organised, than those of the men to whom, free birth gave a
+nominal superiority. A sympathy for each other's sufferings pervaded the
+units of the class who were scattered in distant lands. Sometimes it was
+a sympathy based on a sense of nationality, and the Syrian and Cilician
+in Asia would feel joy and hope stirring in his heart at the doings of
+his brethren who had been deported to the far West. The series of
+organised revolts in the Roman provinces and protectorate which commence
+shortly after the fall of Carthage and close for the moment with the war
+of resistance to the Romans in Asia, forms a single connected chain.
+Dangerous risings had to be repressed at the Italian coast towns of
+Minturnae and Sinuessa; at the former place four hundred and fifty
+slaves were crucified, at the latter four thousand were crushed by a
+military force; the mines of Athens, the slave market of Delos,
+witnessed similar outbreaks,[264] and we shall find a like wave of
+discontent spreading over the serf populations of the countries of the
+Mediterranean just before the second great outbreak in Sicily which
+darkens the close of the second century. The evil fate which made this
+island the theatre of the two greatest of the servile wars is explicable
+on many grounds. The opportunity offered by the sense of superiority in
+numbers was far ampler here than in any area of Italy of equal size. For
+Sicily was a wheat-growing country, and the cultivated plains demanded a
+mass of labour which was not needed in more mountainous or less fertile
+lands, where pasturage yielded a surer return than the tilling of the
+soil. The pasture lands of Sicily were indeed large, but they had not
+yet dwarfed the agriculture of the island. The labour of the fields was
+in the hands of a vast horde of Asiatics, large numbers of whom may
+conceivably have been shipped from Carthage across the narrow sea, when
+that great centre of the plantation system had been laid low and the
+fair estates of the Punic nobles had been seized and broken up by their
+conquerors.[265] In the history of the great Sicilian outbreaks Syrians
+and Cilicians meet us at every turn. These Asiatic slaves had different
+nationalities and they or their fathers had been citizens of widely
+separated towns. But there were bonds other than a common suffering
+which produced a keen sense of national union and a consequent feeling
+of ideal patriotism in the hearts of all. They were the products of the
+common Hellenism of the East; they or their fathers could make a claim
+to have been subjects of the great Seleucid monarchy; many, perhaps most
+of them, could assert freedom by right of birth and acknowledged slavery
+only as a consequence of the accidents of war or piracy. The mysticism
+of the Oriental, the political ideal of the Hellene, were interwoven in
+their moral nature--a nature perhaps twisted by the brutalism of slavery
+to superstition in the one direction, to licence in the other, but none
+the less capable of great conceptions and valiant deeds. The moment for
+both would come when the prophet had appeared, and the prophet would
+surely show himself when the cup of suffering had overflowed.[266]
+
+The masters who worked this human mechanism were driving it at a pace
+which must have seemed dangerous to any human being less greedy, vain
+and confident than themselves. The wealth of these potentates was
+colossal, but it was equalled by their social rivalry and consequent
+need of money. A contest in elegance was being fought between the
+Siceliot and the Italian.[267] The latter was the glass of fashion, and
+the former attempted to rival, first his habits of domestic life and, as
+a consequence, the economic methods which rendered these habits
+possible. Here too, as in Italy, whole gangs of slaves were purchased
+like cattle or sheep; some were weighed down with fetters, others ground
+into subordination by the cruel severity of their tasks. All without
+exception were branded, and men who had been free citizens in their
+native towns, felt the touch of the burning iron and carried the stigma
+of slavery to their graves.[268] Food was doled out in miserable
+quantities,[269] for the shattered instrument could so easily be
+replaced. On the fields one could see little but abject helplessness, a
+misery that weakened while it tortured the soul. But in some parts of
+Sicily bodily want was combined with a wild daring that was fostered by
+the reckless owners, whose greed had overcome all sense of their own
+security or that of their fellow-citizens. The treatment of pastoral
+slaves which had been adopted by the Roman graziers was imitated
+faithfully by the Italians and Siceliots of the island. These slaves
+were turned loose with their flocks to find their food and clothing
+where and how they could. The youngest and stoutest were chosen for this
+hard, wild life: and their physical vigour was still further increased
+by their exposure to every kind of weather, by their seldom finding or
+needing the shelter of a roof, and by the milk and meat which formed
+their staple food. A band of these men presented a terrifying aspect,
+suggesting a scattered invasion of some warlike barbarian tribe. Their
+bodies were clad in the skins of wolves and boars; slung at their sides
+or poised in their hands were clubs, lances and long shepherds' staves.
+Each squadron was followed by a pack of large and powerful hounds.
+Strength, leisure, need, all suggested brigandage as an integral part of
+their profession. At first they murdered the wayfarer who went alone or
+with but one companion. Then their courage rose and they concerted
+nightly attacks on the villas of the weaker residents. These villas they
+stormed and plundered, slaying any one who attempted to bar their way.
+As their impunity increased, Sicily became impracticable to travellers
+by night, and residence in the country districts became a tempting of
+providence. There was violence, brigandage or murder on every hand. The
+governors of Sicily occasionally interposed, but they were almost
+powerless to check the mischief. The influence of the slave-owners was
+such that it was dangerous to inflict an adequate punishment.[270]
+
+The proceedings of these militant shepherds must have opened the eyes of
+the mass of the slaves to the possibilities of the position. Secret
+meetings began to be held at which the word "revolt" was breathed. An
+occasion, a leader, a divine sanction were for the moment lacking. The
+first requisite would follow the other two, and these were soon found
+combined in the person of Eunus. This man was a Syrian by birth, a
+native of Apamea, and he served Antigenes of Enna. He was more than a
+believer in the power of the gods to seize on men and make them the
+channel of their will; he was a living witness to it in his own person.
+At first he saw shadows of superhuman form and heard their voices in his
+dreams. Then there were moments when he would be seized with a trance;
+he was wrapt in contemplation of some divine being. Then the words of
+prophecy would come; they were not his utterance but the bidding of the
+great Syrian goddess. Sometimes the words were preceded by a strange
+manifestation of supernatural power; smoke, sparks or flame would issue
+from his open mouth.[271] The clairvoyance may have been a genuine
+mental experience, the thaumaturgy the type of fiction which the best of
+_media_ may be tempted to employ; but both won belief from his fellows,
+eager for any light in the darkness, and a laughing acceptance from his
+master, glad of a novelty that might amuse his leisure. As a matter of
+fact, Eunus's predictions sometimes came true. People forgot (as people
+will) the instances of their falsification, but applauded them heartily
+when they were fulfilled. Eunus was a good enough _medium_ to figure at
+a fashionable _seance_. His latest profession was the promise of a
+kingdom to himself; it was the Syrian goddess who had held out the
+golden prospect. The promise he declared boldly to his master, knowing
+perhaps the spirit in which the message would be received. Antigenes was
+delighted with his prophet king. He showed him at his own table, and
+took him to the banquets given by his friends. There Eunus would be
+questioned about his kingdom, and each of the guests would bespeak his
+patronage and clemency. His answers as to his future conduct were given
+without reserve. He promised a policy of mercy, and the quaint
+earnestness of the imposture would dissolve the company in laughter.
+Portions of food were handed him from the board, and the donors would
+ask that he should remember their kindness when he came into his
+kingdom. These were requests which Eunus did not forget.
+
+With such an influence in its centre, Enna seemed destined to be the
+spring of the revolt. But there was another reason which rendered it a
+likely theatre for a deed of daring. The broad plateau on which the town
+was set was thronged with shepherds in the winter season,[272] and some
+of the great graziers of Enna owned herds of these bold and lawless men.
+Conspicuous amongst these graziers for his wealth, his luxury and his
+cruelty was one Damophilus, the man who had formulated the theory that
+the shepherd slave should keep himself by robbing others. Damophilus was
+a Siceliot, but none of the Roman magnates of the island could have
+shown a grander state than that which he maintained. His finely bred
+horses, his four-wheeled carriages, his bodyguard of slaves, his
+beautiful boys, his crowd of parasites, were known all over the broad
+acres and huge pasture lands which he controlled. His town house and
+villas displayed chased silverwork, rich carpets of purple dye and a
+table of royal elegance. He surpassed Roman luxury in the lavishness of
+his expense, Roman pride in his sense of complete independence of
+circumstance, and Roman niggardliness and cruelty in his treatment of
+his slaves. Satiety had begotten a chronic callousness and even savagery
+that showed itself, not merely in the now familiar use of the
+_ergastulum_ and the brand, but in arbitrary and cruel punishments which
+were part of the programme of almost every day. His wife Megallis,
+hardened by the same influences, was the torment of her maidens and of
+such domestics as were more immediately under her control. The servants
+of this household had one conviction in common--that nothing worse than
+their present evils could possibly be their lot.
+
+This is the conviction that inspires acts of frenzy; but the madness of
+these slaves was of the orderly, systematic and therefore dangerous
+type. They would not act without a divine sanction to their whispered
+plans. Some of them approached Eunus and asked him if their enterprise
+was permitted by the gods. The prophet first produced the usual
+manifestations which attested his inspiration and then replied that the
+gods assented, if the plan were taken in hand forthwith. Enna was the
+destined place; it was the natural stronghold of the whole island; it
+was foredoomed to be the capital of the new race that would rule over
+Sicily.[273] Heartened by the belief that Heaven was aiding their
+efforts, the leaders then set to work. They secretly released such of
+Damophilus's household as were in bonds; they gathered others together,
+and soon a band to the number of about four hundred were mustered in a
+field in the neighbourhood of Enna. There in the early hours of the
+night they offered a sacrifice and swore their solemn compact. They had
+gathered everything which could serve as a weapon, and when midnight was
+approaching they were ready for the first attempt. They marched swiftly
+to the sleeping town and broke its stillness with their cries of
+exhortation. Eunus was at their head, fire streaming from his mouth
+against the darkness of the night. The streets and houses were
+immediately the scene of a pitiless massacre. The maddened slaves did
+not even spare the children at the breast; they dragged them from their
+mothers' arms and dashed them upon the ground. The women were the
+victims of unspeakable insult and outrage.[274] Every slave had his own
+wrongs to avenge, for the original assailants had now been joined by a
+large number of the domestics of the town. Each of these wreaked his own
+peculiar vengeance and then turned to take his share in the
+general massacre.
+
+Meanwhile Eunus and his immediate following had learnt news of the
+arch-enemy Damophilus, He was known to be staying in his pleasance near
+to the city. Thence he and his wife were fetched with every mark of
+ignominy, and the unhappy pair were dragged into the town with their
+hands bound behind their backs. The masters of the city now mustered in
+the theatre for an act of justice; but Damophilus did not lose his wits
+even when he scanned that sea of hostile faces and accusing eyes. He
+attempted a defence and was listened to in silence--nay, with approval,
+for many of his auditors were visibly stirred by his words. But some
+bolder spirits were tired of the show or fearful of its issue. Hermeias
+and Zeuxis, two of his bitterest enemies, shouted out that he was an
+Impostor[275] and rushed upon him. One of the two thrust a sword through
+his side, the other smote his head off with an axe. It was then the
+women's turn. Megallis's female slaves were given the power to treat her
+as they would. They first tortured her, then led her up to a high place
+and dashed her to the ground. Eunus avenged his private wrongs by the
+death of his own masters, Antigenes and Python. The scene in the theatre
+had perhaps revealed more than the desire for a systematised revenge. It
+may have shown that there was some sense of justice, of order in the
+savage multitude. And indeed vengeance was not wholly indiscriminate.
+Eunus concealed and sent secretly away the men who had given him meat
+from their tables.[276] Even the whole house of Damophilus did not
+perish. There was a daughter, a strange product of such a home, a maiden
+with a pure simplicity of character and a heart that melted at the sight
+of pain. She had been used to soothe the anguish of those who had been
+scourged by her parents and to relieve the necessities of such as were
+put in bonds. Hence the abounding love felt for her by the slaves, the
+pity that thrilled them when her home was doomed. An escort was selected
+to convey her in safety to some relatives at Catana. Its most devoted
+member was Hermeias,[277] perhaps the very man whose hands were stained
+by her father's blood.
+
+The next step in the progress of the revolt was to form a political and
+military organisation that might command the respect of the countless
+slaves who were soon to break their bonds in the other districts of
+Sicily. Eunus was elected king. His name became Antiochus, his subjects
+were "Syrians." [278] It was not the first time that a slave had assumed
+the diadem; for was it not being worn for the moment by Diodotus
+surnamed Tryphon, the guardian and reputed murderer of Alexander of
+Syria?[279] The elevation of Eunus to the throne was due to no belief in
+his courage or his generalship. But he was the prophet of the movement,
+the cause of its inception, and his very name was considered to be of
+good omen for the harmony of his subjects. When he had bound the diadem
+on his brow and adopted regal state, he elevated the woman who had been
+his companion (a Syrian and an Apamean like himself) to the rank of
+queen. He formed a council of such of his followers as were thought to
+possess wits above the average, and he set himself to make Enna the
+adequate centre of a lengthy war. He put to death all his captives in
+Enna who had no skill in fashioning arms; the residue he put in bonds
+and set to the task of forging weapons.
+
+Eunus was no warrior, but he had the regal gift of recognising merit.
+The soul of the military movement which spread from Enna was
+Achaeus,[280] a man pre-eminent both in counsel and in action,[281] one
+who did not permit his reason to be mastered by passion and whose anger
+was chiefly kindled by the foolish atrocities committed by some of his
+followers.[282] Under such a leader the cause rapidly advanced. The
+original four hundred had swelled in three days to six thousand; it soon
+became ten thousand. As Achaeus advanced, the _ergastula_ were broken
+open and each of these prison-houses furnished a new multitude of
+recruits.[283] Soon a vast addition to the available forces was effected
+by a movement in another part of the island. In the territory of
+Agrigentum one Cleon a Cilician suddenly arose as a leader of his
+fellows. He was sprung from the regions about Mount Taurus and had been
+habituated from his youth to a life of brigandage. In Sicily he was
+supposed to be a herdsman of horses. He was also a highwayman who
+commanded the roads and was believed to have committed murders of varied
+types. When he heard of the success of Eunus, he deemed that the moment
+had come for raising a revolt on his own account. He gathered a band of
+followers, overwhelmed the city of Agrigentum and ravaged the
+surrounding territory.[284]
+
+The terrified Siceliots, and perhaps some of the slaves themselves,
+believed that this dual movement might ruin the servile cause. There
+were daily expectations that the armies of Eunus and Cleon would meet in
+conflict. But such hopes or fears were disappointed. Cleon put himself
+absolutely under the authority of Eunus and performed the functions of a
+general to a king. The junction of the forces occurred about thirty days
+after the outbreak at Enna, and the Cilician brought five thousand men
+to the royal standard. The full complement of the slaves when first they
+joined battle with the Roman power amounted to twenty thousand men;
+before the close of the war their army numbered over sixty
+thousand.[285]
+
+The Roman government exhibited its usual slowness in realising the
+gravity of the situation; yet it may be excused for believing that it
+had only to deal with local tumults such as those which had been so
+easily suppressed in Italy. The force of eight thousand men which it put
+into the field under the praetor Lucius Hypsaeus may have seemed more
+than sufficient. Yet it was routed by the insurgent army, now numbering
+twenty thousand men, and in the skirmishes which followed the balance of
+success inclined to the rebels. The immediate progress of the struggle
+cannot be traced in any detail, but there is a general record of the
+storming of Roman camps and the flight of Roman generals.[286]
+
+The theatre of the war was certainly extending at an alarming rate. The
+rebels had first controlled the centre and some part of the South
+Western portion of the island, the region between Enna and Agrigentum;
+but now they had pushed their conquests up to the East, had reached the
+coast and had gained possession of Catana and Tauromenium.[287] The
+devastation of the conquered districts is said to have been more
+terrible than that which followed on the Punic War.[288] But for this
+the slaves were not wholly, perhaps not mainly, responsible. The rebel
+armies, looking to a settlement in the future when they should enjoy the
+fruit of their victories, left the villas standing, their furniture and
+stores uninjured, and did no harm to the implements of husbandry. It was
+the free peasantry of Sicily that now showed a savage resentment at the
+inequality of fortune and of life which severed them from the great
+landholders. Under pretext of the servile war[289] they sallied out, and
+not only plundered the goods of the conquered, but even set fire to
+their villas.
+
+The words of Eunus when, at the beginning of the revolt, he claimed Enna
+as the metropolis of the new nation, and the conduct of his followers in
+sparing the grandeur and comfort which had fallen into their hands, are
+sufficient proofs that the revolted slaves, in spite of their possession
+of the seaports of Catana and Tauromenium, had no intention of escaping
+from Sicily. Perhaps even if they had willed it, such a course might
+have been impossible. They had no fleet of their own; the Cilician
+pirates off the coast might have refused to accept such dangerous
+passengers and to imperil their reputation as honest members of the
+slave trade. And, if the fugitives crossed the sea, what homes had they
+to which they could return? To their own cities they were dead, and the
+long arm of Rome stretched over her protectorates in the East.[290]
+
+It was therefore with a power which intended a permanent settlement in
+Sicily, that the Roman government had to cope. Its sense of the gravity
+of the situation was seen in the despatch of consular armies. The first
+under Caius Fulvius Flaccus seems to have effected little.[291] The
+second under Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the consul of the following year,
+laid siege to Enna,[292] and captured a stronghold of the rebels. Eight
+thousand of the slaves were slain by the sword, all who could be seized
+were nailed to the cross.[293] The crowning victories, and the nominal
+pacification of the island, remained for Piso's successor, Publius
+Rupilius. He drove the rebels into Tauromenium and sat down before the
+city until they were reduced to unspeakable straits by famine. The town
+was at length yielded through treachery; Sarapion a Syrian betrayed the
+acropolis, and the Roman commander found a multitude of starving men at
+his mercy, He was pitiless in his use of victory. The captives were
+first tortured, then taken up to a high place and dashed downwards to
+the ground. The consul then moved on Enna. The rebels defended their
+last stronghold with the utmost courage and persistence. Achaeus seems
+to have already fallen, but the brave Cilician leaders still held out
+with all the native valour of their race. Cleon made a sortie from the
+town and fought heroically until he fell covered with wounds. Cleon's
+brother Coma[294] was captured during the siege and brought before
+Rupilius, who questioned him about the strength and the plans of the
+remaining fugitives. He asked for a moment to collect his thoughts,
+covered his head with his cloak, and died of suffocation, in the hands
+of his guard and in sight of the general, before a compromising word had
+passed his lips. King Eunus was not made of such stern stuff. When Enna,
+impregnable in its natural strength, had been taken by treachery, he
+fled with his bodyguard of a thousand men to still more precipitous
+regions. His companions, knowing that it was impossible to escape their
+fate (for Rupilius was already moving) fell on each others swords. But
+Eunus could not face this death. He took refuge in a cave, from which he
+was dragged with the last poor relics of his splendid court--his cook,
+his baker, his bath attendant and his buffoon. The Romans for some
+reason spared his life, or at least did not doom him to immediate death.
+He was kept a prisoner at Morgantia, where he died shortly afterwards
+of disease.
+
+It is said that by the date of the fall of Enna more than twenty
+thousand slaves had perished.[295] Even without this slaughter, the
+capture of their seaport and their armoury would have been sufficient to
+break the back of the revolt.[296] It only remained to scour the country
+with picked bands of soldiers for organised resistance to be shattered,
+and even for the curse of brigandage to be rooted out for a while. Death
+was no longer meted out indiscriminately to the rebels. Such of the
+slave-owners as survived would probably have protested against wholesale
+crucifixion, and the destruction of all of the fugitives would have
+impaired the resources of Sicily. Thus many were spared the cross and
+restored to their bonds.[297] The extent to which reorganisation was
+needed before the province could resume its normal life, is shown by the
+fact that the senate thought it worth while to give Sicily a new
+provincial charter. Ten commissioners were sent to assist Rupilius in
+the work, which henceforth bore the proconsul's name.[298] The work, as
+we know it, was of a conservative character; but it is possible that no
+complete charter had ever existed before, and the war may have revealed
+defects in the arrangements of Sicily that had heretofore been
+unsuspected.
+
+A climax of the type of the servile war in Sicily was perhaps needed to
+bring the social problem home to thinking men in Rome. Not that it by
+any means sufficed for all who pondered on the public welfare or
+laboured at the business of the State. The men who measured happiness by
+wealth and empire might still have retained their unshaken confidence in
+the Fortune of Rome. Had a Capys of this class arisen, he might have
+given a thrilling picture of the immediate future of his city, dark but
+grimly national in its emergence from trial to triumph. He might have
+seen her conquering arms expanding to the Euphrates and the Rhine, and
+undreamed sources of wealth pouring their streams into the treasury or
+the coffers of the great. If there was blood in the picture, when had it
+been absent from the annals of Rome? Even civil strife and a new Italian
+war might be a hard but a necessary price to pay for a strong government
+and a grand mission. If an antiquated constitution disappeared in the
+course of this glorious expansion, where was the loss?
+
+But there were men in Rome who measured human life by other canons: who
+believed that the State existed for the individual at least as much as
+the individual for the State: who, even when they were imperialists, saw
+with terror the rotten foundations on which the empire rested, and with
+indignation the miserable returns that had been made to the men who had
+bought it with their blood. To them the brilliant present and the
+glorious future were veiled by a screen that showed the ghastly spectres
+of commercial imperialism. It showed luxury running riot amongst a
+nobility already impoverished and ever more thievishly inclined, a
+colossal capitalism clutching at the land and stretching out its
+tentacles for every source of profitable trade, the middle class fleeing
+from the country districts and ousted from their living in the towns,
+and the fair island that was almost a part of their Italian home, its
+garden and its granary, in the throes of a great slave war.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A cause never lacks a champion, nor a great cause one whom it may render
+great. Failure is in itself no sign of lack of spirit and ability, and
+when a vast reform is the product of a mean personality, the individual
+becomes glorified by identification with his work. From this point of
+view it mattered little who undertook the task of the economic
+regeneration of the Roman world. Any senator of respectable antecedents
+and moderate ability, who had a stable following amongst the ruling
+classes, might have succeeded where Tiberius Gracchus failed; it was a
+task in which authority was of more importance than ability, and the
+sense that the more numerous or powerful elements of society were united
+in the demand for reform, of more value than individual genius or
+honesty of purpose. This was the very circumstance that foreshadowed
+failure, for the men of wide connections and established fame had shrunk
+from an enterprise with which they sympathised in various degrees. In
+the proximate history of the Republic there had been three men who
+showed an unwavering belief in the Italian farmer and the blessings of
+agriculture. These were M. Porcius Cato, P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti.
+Sempronius Gracchus. But the influence of Cato's house had become
+extinct with its first founder. The elder son, an amiable man and an
+accomplished jurist, had not out-lived his father; the second still
+survived, but seems to have inherited little of the fighting qualities
+of the terrible censor. The traditions of a Roman house needed to be
+sustained by the efforts of its existing representative, and the
+"newness" of the Porcii might have necessitated generations of vigorous
+leaders to make them a power in the land. Scipionic traditions were now
+represented by Aemilianus, and the glow of the luminary was reflected in
+paler lights, who received their lustre from moving in that charmed
+orbit. One of these, the indefatigable henchman Laelius, had risen to
+the rank of consul, and stimulated by the vigorous theorisings of his
+hellenised environment, he contemplated for a moment the formation of a
+plan which should deal with some of the worst evils of the agrarian
+question. But he looked at the problem only to start back in affright.
+The strength and truculency of the vested interests with which he would
+have to deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by
+philosophy and experience, and Laelius by his retreat justified, if he
+did not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his "sapience".[299] But
+why was Scipio himself idle? The answer is to be found both in his
+temperament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, he
+was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted him in
+his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its cruelties, he
+gloried in its excitement, and the discipline of the camp was more to
+his mind than the turbulence of an assembly. His mind, too, belonged to
+that class which finds it almost impossible to emancipate itself from
+traditional politics. His vast knowledge of the history of other
+civilisations may have taught him, as it taught Polybius, that Rome was
+successful because she was unique.[300] Here there was to be no break
+with the past, no legislator posing as a demi-god, no obedience to the
+cries of the masses who, if they once got loose, might turn and rend the
+enlightened few, and reproduce on Italian soil the shocking scenes of
+Greek socialistic enterprise. As things were, to be a reformer was to be
+a partisan, and Scipio loved the prospect of his probable supporters as
+little as that of his probable opponents. The fact of the Empire, too,
+must have weighed heavily with a man who was no blind imperialist. Even
+though economic reform might create an added efficiency in the army,
+Scipio must have known, as Polybius certainly knew, that soldiers are
+but pawns in the great game, and that the controlling forces were the
+wisdom of the conservative senator, the ambition of the wealthy noble,
+and the capital of the enterprising knight. The wisdom of disturbing
+their influence, and awakening their resentment, could scarcely appeal
+to a mind so perfectly balanced and practical as Scipio's.
+Circumstances, too, must have had their share in determining his
+quiescence. The Scipios had been a power in Rome in spite of the
+nobility. They were used because they were needed, not because they were
+loved, and the necessary man was never in much favour with the senate.
+Although there was no tie of blood between Aemilianus and the elder
+Scipio, they were much alike both in fortune and in temperament. They
+had both been called upon to save military situations that were thought
+desperate; their reputation had been made by successful war; and though
+neither was a mere soldier, they lacked the taste and the patience for
+the complicated political game, which alone made a man a power amidst
+the noble circles and their immediate dependants at Rome.
+
+But the last generation had seen in Tiberius Gracchus a man whose
+political influence had been vast, a noble with but scant respect for
+the indefeasible rights of the nobility and as stern as Cato in his
+animadversions on the vices of his order, a man whose greatest successes
+abroad had been those of diplomacy rather than of war, one who had
+established firm connections and a living memory of himself both in West
+and East, whose name was known and loved in Spain, Sardinia, Asia and
+Egypt. It would have been too much to hope that this honest old
+aristocrat would attempt to grapple with the evils which had first
+become manifest during his own long lifetime; but it was not unnatural
+that people should look to a son of his for succour, especially as this
+son represented the blood of the Scipios as well as of the Gracchi. The
+marriage of the elderly Gracchus with the young Cornelia had marked the
+closing of the feud, personal rather than political, which had long
+separated him from the elder Scipio: and a further link between the two
+families was subsequently forged by the marriage of Sempronia, a
+daughter of Cornelia, to Scipio Aemilianus. The young Tiberius Gracchus
+may have been born during one of his father's frequent absences on the
+service of the State.[301] Certainly the elder Gracchus could have seen
+little of his son during the years of his infancy. But the closing years
+of the old man's life seem to have been spent uninterruptedly in Italy,
+and Tiberius must have been profoundly influenced by the genial and
+stately presence that Rome loved and feared. But he was little more than
+a boy when his father died, and the early influences that moulded his
+future career seem to have been due mainly to his mother. Cornelia would
+have been the typical Roman matron, had she lived a hundred years
+earlier; she would then have trained sons for the battlefield, not for
+the Forum. As it was, the softening influences of Greek culture had
+tempered without impairing her strength of character, had substituted
+rational for purely supernatural sanctions, and a wide political outlook
+for a rude sense of civic duty. Herself the product of an education such
+as ancient civilisations rarely bestowed upon their women, she wrote and
+spoke with a purity and grace which led to the belief that her sons had
+learnt from her lips and from her pen their first lessons in that
+eloquence which swayed the masses and altered the fortunes of Rome.[302]
+But her gifts had not impaired her tenderness. Her sons were her
+"Jewels," and the successive loss of nine of the children which she had
+borne to Gracchus must have made the three that remained doubly dear.
+The two boys had a narrow escape from becoming Eastern princes: for the
+hand of the widow Cornelia was sought in marriage by the King of
+Egypt.[303] Such an alliance with the representative of the two houses
+of the Gracchi and the Scipios might easily seem desirable to a
+protected king, although the attractions of Cornelia may also have
+influenced his choice. She, however, had no aspirations to share the
+throne of the Lagidae, and the hellenism of Tiberius and of his younger
+brother Caius, though deep and far-reaching, was of a kind less violent
+than would have been gained by transportation to Alexandria. They were
+trained in rhetoric by Diophanes an exile from Mitylene, and in
+philosophy by Blossius of Cumae, a stoic of the school of Antipater of
+Tarsus.[304] Many held the belief that Tiberius was spurred to his
+political enterprise by the direct exhortation of these teachers; but,
+even if their influence was not of this definite kind, there can be
+little doubt that the teaching of the two Greeks exercised a powerful
+influence on the political cast of his mind. Ideals of Greek liberty,
+speeches of Greek statesmen who had come forward as champions of the
+oppressed, stories of social ruin averted by the voice and hand of the
+heaven-sent legislator, pictures of self-sacrifice and of resigned
+submission to a standard of duty--these were lessons that may have been
+taught both by rhetorician and philosopher. Nor was the teaching of
+history different. In the literary environment in which the Gracchi
+moved, ready answers were being given to the most vital questions of
+politics and social science. Every one must have felt that the
+approaching struggle had a dual aspect, that it was political as well as
+social. For social conservatism was entrenched behind a political
+rampart: and if reform, neglected by the senate, was to come from the
+people, the question had first to be asked, Had the people a legal right
+to initiate reform? The historians of that and of the preceding
+generation would have answered this question unhesitatingly in the
+affirmative. The _de facto_ sovereignty of the senate had not even
+received a sanction in contemporary literature, while to that of the
+immediate past it was equally unknown. The Roman annalists from the time
+of the Second Punic War had revealed the sovereignty of the people as
+the basis of the Roman constitution,[305] and the history of the long
+struggle of the Plebs for freedom made the protection of the commons the
+sole justification of the tribunate. From the lips of Polybius himself
+Tiberius may have heard the impression which the Roman polity made on
+the mind of the educated Greek: and the fact that this was a Greek
+picture did not lessen its validity; for the Greek was moulding the
+orthodox history of Rome, and the victims of his genius were the best
+Roman intellects of the day. He might have learnt how in this mixed
+constitution the people still retained their inalienable rights, how
+they elected, ratified, and above all how they punished.[306] He might
+have gathered that the identification of the tribunate with the
+interests of the nobility was a perversion of its true and vital
+function: that the tribune exists but to assist the commons and can be
+subject to no authority but the people's will, whether expressed
+directly by them or indirectly through his colleagues.[307] The history
+of the Punic wars did indeed reveal, in the fate of a Varro or a
+Minucius, how popular insubordination might be punished, when its end
+was wrong. Polybius's own voice was raised in prophetic warning against
+a possible demagogy of the future.[308] But that history showed the
+healthy discipline of a healthy people--a people that had vanquished
+genius through subordination, a peasant class whose loyalty and tenacity
+were as great as those of its leaders, and without whom those leaders
+would have been helpless. Where was such a class to be found now? Change
+the subject or turn the page, and the Greek statesman and historian
+could point to the dreadful reverse of this picture.[309] He could show
+a Greek nation, gifted with political genius but doomed to political
+decay--a nation whose sons accumulated money, lived in luxury with
+little forethought for the future, and refused to beget children for the
+State: a nation with a wealthy and cultured upper class, but one that
+was literally perishing for the lack of men.[310] Was this the fate in
+store for Rome? A temperament that was merely vigorous and keen might
+not have been affected by such reflections. One that was merely
+contemplative might have regarded them only as a subject for curious
+study. But Tiberius's mind ran to neither of these two extremes. He was
+a thoughtful and sensitive man of action. Sweet in temper, staid in
+deportment, gentle in language, he attracted from his dependants a
+loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did
+not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished
+oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the
+harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and
+restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the
+stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral
+and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that of the man who
+burdens society with the impression that he has a solemn mission to
+perform. Such men are rarely taken as seriously as they take themselves;
+they do not win aged men of experience to support their cause; the
+demeanour that wearies their friends is even likely to be found irksome
+by the mob.
+
+Roman society must have seen much promise in his youth, for honours came
+early. A seat at the augural board was regarded as a tribute to his
+merit rather than his birth;[312] and indeed the Roman aristocrats, who
+dispensed such favours, were too clever to be the slaves of a name, when
+political manipulation was in question and talent might be diverted to
+the true cause. His marriage was a more important determinant in his
+career. The bride who was offered him was the daughter of Appius
+Claudius Pulcher, a man of consular and censorian rank and now Princeps
+of the senate,[313] a clever representative of that brilliant and
+eccentric house, that had always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius
+had already displayed some of the restless individuality of his
+ancestors. When the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with
+the Salassi, he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his
+daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the importunate
+tribune who attempted to drag him off.[314] A similar unconventionality
+was manifested in the present betrothal. The story runs that Appius
+broached the question to Tiberius at an augural banquet. The proposition
+was readily accepted, and Appius in his joy shouted out the news to his
+wife as he entered his own front door. The lady was more surprised than
+annoyed. "What need for all this haste," she said, "unless indeed you
+have found Tiberius Gracchus for our girl?" [315] Appius, hasty as he
+was, was probably in this case not the victim of a sudden inspiration.
+The restless old man doubtless pined for reform; but he was weighed down
+by years, honours and familiarity with the senate. He could not be the
+protagonist in the coming struggle; but in Tiberius he saw the man of
+the future.
+
+The chances of the time favoured a military even more than a political
+career; the chief spheres of influence were the province and the camp,
+and it was in these that the earliest distinctions of Tiberius were won.
+When a lad of fifteen he had followed his brother-in-law Scipio to
+Africa, and had been the first to mount the walls of Carthage in the
+vain assault on the fortress of Megara.[316] He had won the approval of
+the commander by his discipline and courage, and left general regret
+amongst the army when he quitted the camp before the close of the
+campaign. But an experience as potent for the future as his first taste
+of war, must have been those hours of leisure spent in Scipio's
+tent.[317] If contact with the great commander aroused emulation, the
+talk on political questions of Scipio and his circle must have inspired
+profound reflection. Here he could find aspirations enough; all that was
+lacking was a leader to translate them into deeds. The quaestorship, the
+first round of the higher official ladder, found him attached to the
+consul Mancinus and destined for the ever-turbulent province of Spain.
+It was a fortunate chance, for here was the scene of his father's
+military and diplomatic triumphs. But the sequel was unexpected. He had
+gone to fulfil the duties of a subordinate; he suddenly found himself
+performing those of a commander-in-chief or of an accredited
+representative of the Roman people. The Numantines would treat only with
+a Gracchus, and the treaty that saved Roman lives but not Roman honour
+was felt to be really his work. In a moment he was involved in a
+political question that agitated the whole of Rome. The Numantine treaty
+was the topic of the day. Was it to be accepted or, if repudiated,
+should the authors of the disaster, the causes of the breach of faith,
+be surrendered in time-honoured fashion to the enemy as an expiation for
+the violated pledge? On the first point there was little hesitation; the
+senate decided for the nullity of the treaty, and it was likely that
+this view would be accepted by the people, if the measures against the
+ratifying officials were not made too stringent. For on this point there
+was a difference of opinion. The poorer classes, whose sons and brothers
+had been saved from death or captivity by the treaty, blamed Mancinus as
+the cause of the disaster, but were grateful to Tiberius as the author
+of the agreement. Others who had less to lose and could therefore afford
+to stand on principle, would have enforced the fullest rigour of the
+ancient rules and have delivered up the quaestor and tribunes with the
+defaulting general.[318] It was thought that the influence of Scipio,
+always great with the agricultural voters, might have availed to save
+even Mancinus, nay that, if he would, he might have got the peace
+confirmed.[319] But his efforts were believed to have been employed in
+favour of Tiberius. The matter ended in an illogical compromise. The
+treaty was repudiated, but it was decreed that the general alone should
+be surrendered.[320] A breach in an ancient rule of religious law had
+been made in favour of Tiberius.
+
+But, in spite of this mark of popular favour, the experience had been
+disheartening and its effect was disturbing. Although it is impossible
+to subscribe to the opinion of later writers, who, looking at the matter
+from a conservative and therefore unfavourable aspect, saw in this early
+check the key to Tiberius's future action,[321] yet anger and fear leave
+their trace even on the best regulated minds. The senate had torn up his
+treaty and placed him for the moment in personal peril. It was to the
+people that he owed his salvation. If circumstances were to develop an
+opposition party in Rome, he was being pushed more and more into its
+ranks. And a coolness seems to have sprung up at this time between him
+and the man who had been his great _exemplar_. Tiberius took no counsel
+of Scipio before embarking on his great enterprise; support and advice
+were sought elsewhere. He may have already tested Scipio's lack of
+sympathy with an active propaganda; shame might have kept back the hint
+of a plan that might seem to imply a claim to leadership. But it is
+possible that there was some feeling of resentment against the warrior
+now before Numantia, who had done nothing to save the last Numantine
+treaty and the honour of the name of Gracchus.
+
+His reticence could scarcely have been due to ignorance of his own
+designs; for his brother Caius left it on record that it was while
+journeying northward from Rome on his way to Numantia that Tiberius's
+eyes were first fully opened to the magnitude of the malady that cried
+aloud for cure.[322] It was in Etruria, the paradise of the capitalist,
+that he saw everywhere the imported slave and the barbarian who had
+replaced the freeman. It was this sight that first suggested something
+like a definite scheme. A further stimulus was soon to be found in
+scraps of anonymous writing which appeared on porches, walls and
+monuments, praying for his succour and entreating that the public land
+should be recovered for the poor.[323] The voiceless Roman people was
+seeking its only mode of utterance, a tribune who should be what the
+tribune had been of old, the servant of the many not the creature of the
+few. To Gracchus's mother his plans could hardly have been veiled. She
+is even said to have stimulated a vague craving for action by the
+playful remark that she was still known as the mother-in-law of Scipio,
+not as the mother of the Gracchi.[324]
+
+But there was need of serious counsel. Gracchus did not mean to be a
+mere demagogue, coming before the people with a half-formed plan and
+stirring up an agitation which could end merely in some idle resolution.
+There were few to whom he could look for advice, but those few were of
+the best. Three venerable men, whose deeds and standing were even
+greater than their names, were ready with their support. There was the
+chief pontiff, P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the man who was said to
+combine in a supreme degree the four great blessings of wealth, birth,
+eloquence and legal lore;[325] there was the brother of Crassus, P.
+Mucius Scaevola,[326] the greatest lawyer of his age and already
+destined to the consulship for the following year; lastly there was
+Tiberius's father-in-law, the restless Appius, now eagerly awaiting the
+fulfilment of a cherished scheme by the man of his own choice.[327]
+
+Thus fortified, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his tribunate, and
+formulated the measure which was to leave large portions of the public
+domain open for distribution to the poor. In the popular gatherings with
+which he opened his campaign, he dwelt on the nature of the evils which
+he proposed to remedy. It was the interest of Italy, not merely of the
+Roman proletariate, that was at stake.[328] He pointed out how the
+Italian peasantry had dwindled in numbers, and how that portion of it
+which still survived had been reduced to a poverty that was irremediable
+by their own efforts. He showed that the slave gangs which worked the
+vast estates were a menace, not a help, to Rome. They could not be
+enlisted for service in the legions; their disaffection to their masters
+was notorious; their danger was being proved even now by the horrible
+condition of Sicily, the fate of its slave-owning landlords, the long,
+difficult and eventful war which had not even yet been brought to a
+close.[329] Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of reason in
+his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the Rostra. "The beasts
+that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking-places where they may make
+their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy but the blessings of
+air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you
+wander to and fro with your wives and children. Our generals are in the
+habit of inspiring their soldiers to the combat by exhorting them to
+repel the enemy in defence of their tombs and ancestral shrines. The
+appeal is idle and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar, you have
+no ancestral tomb. No! you fight and die to give wealth and luxury to
+others. You are called the masters of the world; yet there is no clod of
+earth that you can call your own." [330]
+
+The proposal, which was ushered in by these stirring appeals, seemed at
+first sight to be of a moderate and somewhat conservative character. It
+professed to be the renewal of an older law, which had limited the
+amount of domain land which an individual might possess to five hundred
+_jugera_;[331] it professed, that is, to reinforce an injunction which
+had been persistently disobeyed, for this enactment restricting
+possession had never been repealed. The extent to which a proposal of
+this kind is a re-enactment, in the spirit as well as in the letter,
+depends entirely on the length of time which has elapsed since the
+original proposal has begun to be violated. A political society, which
+recognises custom as one of the bases of law, must recognise desuetude
+as equally valid. A law, which has not been enforced for centuries,
+would, by the common consent of the courts of such nations as favour
+progressive legislation, be regarded as no law at all. Again, the age of
+an ordinance determines its suitability to present conditions. It may be
+justifiable to revive an enactment that is centuries old; but the
+revival should not necessarily dignify itself with that name. It must be
+regarded as a new departure, unless the circumstances of the old and the
+new enactment can be proved to be approximately the same. Our attempts
+to judge the Gracchan law by these considerations are baffled by our
+ignorance of the real date of the previous enactment, the stringency of
+whose measures he wished to renew. If it was the Licinian law of the
+middle of the fourth century,[332] this law must have been renewed, or
+must still have continued to be observed, at a period not very long
+anterior to the Gracchan proposal; for Cato could point his argument
+against the declaration of war with Rhodes by an appeal to a provision
+attributed to this measure[333]--an appeal which would have been
+pointless, had the provision fallen into that oblivion which persistent
+neglect of an enactment must bring to all but the professed students of
+law. We can at least assert that the charge against Gracchus of reviving
+an enactment so hoary with age as to be absurdly obsolete, is not one of
+the charges to be found even in those literary records which were most
+unfriendly to his legislation.[334]
+
+The general principle of the measure was, therefore, the limitation to
+five hundred _jugera_ of the amount of public land that could be
+"possessed" by an individual. The very definition of the tenure
+immediately exempted large portions of the State's domain from the
+operation of this rule.[335] The Campanian land was leased by the State
+to individuals, not merely possessed by them as the result of an
+occupation permitted by the government; it, therefore, fell outside the
+scope of the measure;[336] but, as it was technically public land and
+its ownership was vested in the State, it would have been hazardous to
+presume its exemption; it seems, therefore, to have been specifically
+excluded from the operation of the bill, and a similar exception was
+probably made in favour of many other tracts of territory held under a
+similar tenure.[337] Either Gracchus declined to touch any interest that
+could properly describe itself as "vested," even though it took merely
+the form of a leasehold, or he valued the secure and abundant revenue
+which flowed into the coffers of the State from these domains. There
+were other lands strictly "public" where the claim of the holders was
+still stronger, and where dispossession without the fullest compensation
+must have been regarded as mere robbery. We know from later legislation
+that respect was had to such lands as the Trientabula, estates which had
+been granted by the Roman government at a quit rent to its creditors, as
+security for that portion of a national debt which had never been
+repaid. It is less certain what happened in the case of lands of which
+the usufruct alone had been granted to communities of Roman citizens or
+Latin colonists. Ownership in this case still remained vested in the
+Roman people, and if the right of usufruct had been granted by law, it
+could be removed by law. In the case of Latin communities, however, it
+was probably guaranteed by treaty, which no mere law could touch: and so
+similar were the conditions of Roman and Latin communities in this
+particular, that it is probable that the land whose use was conferred on
+whole communities by these ancient grants, was wholly spared by the
+Gracchan legislation. In the case of those commons which were possessed
+by groups of villagers for the purposes of pasturage (_ager
+compascuus_),[338] it is not likely that the group was regarded as the
+unit: and therefore, even in the case of such an aggregate possessing
+over five hundred _jugera_, their occupation was probably left
+undisturbed.
+
+All other possessors must vacate the land which exceeded the prescribed
+limit. Such an ordinance would have been harsh, had no compensation been
+allowed, and Gracchus proposed certain amends for the loss sustained. In
+the first place, the five hundred _jugera_ retained by each possessor
+were to be increased by half as much again for each son that he might
+possess: although it seems that the amount retained was not to exceed
+one thousand _jugera_.[339] Secondly, the land so secured to existing
+possessors was not to be held on a merely precarious tenure, and was not
+to be burdened by the payment of dues to the State; even if ownership
+was not vested in its holders, they were guaranteed gratuitous
+undisturbed possession in perpetuity.[340] Thirdly, the bill as
+originally drafted even suggested some monetary compensation for the
+land surrendered.[341] This compensation was probably based on a
+valuation of stock, buildings, and recent permanent improvements, which
+were to be found on the territory now reverting to the State. It must
+have applied for the most part only to arable land, and practically
+amounted to a purchase by the State of items to which it could lay no
+legal claim; for it was the soil alone, not the buildings on the soil,
+over which its lordship could properly be asserted.
+
+The object of reclaiming the public land was its future distribution
+amongst needy citizens. This distribution might have taken either of two
+forms. Fresh colonies might have been planted, or the acquired land
+might merely be assigned to settlers who were to belong to the existing
+political organisations. It was the latter method of simple assignation
+that Gracchus chose. There was felt to be no particular need for new
+political creations; for the pacification of Italy seemed to be
+accomplished, and the new farming class would perform their duty to the
+State equally well as members of the territory of Rome or of that of the
+existing municipia and coloniae of Roman citizens. There is some
+evidence that the new proprietors were not all to be attached to the
+city of Rome itself, but that many, perhaps most, were to be attributed
+to the existing colonies and municipia, in the neighbourhood of which
+their allotments lay.[342] The size of the new allotments which Gracchus
+projected is not known; it probably varied with the needs and status of
+the occupier, perhaps with the quality of the land, and there is some
+indication that the maximum was fixed at thirty _jugera_.[343] This is
+an amount that compares favourably with the two, three, seven or ten
+_jugera_ of similar assignments in earlier times, and is at once a proof
+of the decrease in the value of land--a decrease which had contributed
+to the formation of the large estates--and of the large amount of
+territory which was expected to be reclaimed by the provisions of the
+new measure. The allotments thus assigned were not, however, to be the
+freehold property of their recipients. They were, indeed, heritable and
+to be held on a perfectly secure tenure by the assignees and their
+descendants; but a revenue was to be paid to the State for their use:
+and they were to be inalienable--the latter provision being a desperate
+expedient to check the land-hunger of the capitalist, and to save the
+new settlers from obedience to the economic tendencies of the
+times.[344]
+
+It is doubtful whether the social object of Gracchus could have been
+fully accomplished, had he confined his attention wholly to the existing
+citizens of Rome. The area of economic distress was wider than the
+citizen body, and it was the salvation of Italy as a whole that Gracchus
+had at heart.[345] There is much reason for supposing that some of the
+Italian allies were to be recipients of the benefits of the
+measure.[346] In earlier assignations the Latins had not been excluded,
+and it is probable that at least these, whether members of old
+communities or of colonies, were intended to have some share in the
+distribution. There could be no legal hindrance to such participation.
+With respect to rights in land, the Latins were already on a level with
+Roman citizens, and their exclusion from the new allotments would have
+been due to a mere political prejudice which is not characteristic
+either of Gracchus or his plans.
+
+The ineffectiveness of laws at Rome was due chiefly to the apathy of the
+executive authority. Gracchus saw clearly that his measure would, like
+other social efforts of the past, become a mere pious resolution, if its
+execution were entrusted to the ordinary officials of the State.[347]
+But a special commission, which should effectually carry out the work
+which he contemplated, must be of a very unusual kind. The magnitude of
+the task, and the impossibility of assigning any precise limit of time
+to its completion, made it essential that the Triumvirate which he
+established should bear the appearance of a regular but extraordinary
+magistracy of the State. The three commissioners created by the bill
+were to be elected annually by the Comitia of the Tribes.[348]
+Re-election of the same individuals was possible, and the new magistracy
+was to come to an end only with the completion of its work. Its
+occupants, perhaps, possessed the Imperium from the date of the first
+institution of the office; they certainly exercised it from the moment
+when, as we shall see, their functions of assignment were supplemented
+by the addition of judicial powers. Gracchus was doubtless led to this
+new creation purely by the needs of his measure; but he showed to later
+politicians the possibility of creating a new and powerful magistracy
+under the guise of an agrarian law.
+
+Such was the measure that seemed to its proposer a reasonable and
+equitable means of remedying a grave injustice and restoring rather than
+giving rights to the poor. He might, if he would, have insisted on
+simple restitution. Had he pressed the letter of the law, not an atom of
+the public domain need have been left to its present occupiers. The
+possessor had no rights against the State; he held on sufferance, and
+technically he might be supposed to be always waiting for his summons to
+ejectment. To give such people something over and above the limit that
+the laws had so long prescribed, to give them further a security of
+tenure for the land retained which amounted almost to complete
+ownership--were not these unexpected concessions that should be received
+with gratitude? And even up to the eve of the polling the murmurs of the
+opposition were sometimes met by appeals to its nobler sentiments. The
+rich, said Gracchus, if they had the interests of Italy, its future
+hopes and its unborn generations at heart, should make this land a free
+gift to the State; they were vexing themselves about small issues and
+refusing to face the greater problems of the day.[349]
+
+But personal interests can never seem small, and the average man is more
+concerned with the present than with the future. The opposition was
+growing in volume day by day, and the murmurs were rising into shrieks.
+The class immediately threatened must have been numerically small; but
+they made up in combination and influence what they lacked in numbers.
+It was always easy to startle the solid commercial world of Rome by the
+cry of "confiscation". A movement in this direction might have no
+limits; the socialistic device of a "re-division of land," which had so
+often thrown the Greek commonwealths into a ferment, was being imported
+into Roman politics. All the forces of respectability should be allied
+against this sinister innovation. It is probable that many who
+propagated these views honestly believed that they exactly fitted the
+facts of the case. The possessors did indeed know that they were not
+owners. They were reminded of the fact whenever they purchased the right
+of occupation from a previous possessor, for such a title could not pass
+by mancipation; or whenever they sued for the recovery of an estate from
+which they had been ejected, for they could not make the plea before the
+praetor that the land was theirs "according to the right of the
+Quirites," but could rely only on the equitable assistance of the
+magistrate tendered through the use of the possessory interdicts; or,
+more frequently still, whenever they paid their dues to the Publicanus,
+that disinterested middle-man, who had no object in compromising with
+the possessors, and could seldom have allowed an acre of land to escape
+his watchful eye. But, in spite of these reminders, there was an
+impression that the tenure was perfectly secure, and that the State
+would never again re-assert its lordship in the extreme form of
+dispensing entirely with its clients. Gracchus might talk of
+compensation, but was there any guarantee that it would be adequate,
+and, even supposing material compensation to be possible, what solace
+was that to outraged feelings? Ancestral homes, and even ancestral
+tombs, were not grouped on one part of a domain, so that they could be
+saved by an owner when he retained his five hundred _jugera_; they were
+scattered all over the broad acres. Estates that technically belonged to
+a single man, and were therefore subject to the operation of the law,
+had practically ceased to confer any benefit on the owner, and were
+pledged to other purposes. They had been divided as the _peculia_ of his
+sons, they had been promised as the dowry of his daughters. Again those
+former laws may have rightly forbidden the occupation of more than a
+certain proportion of land; but much of the soil now in possession had
+not been occupied by its present inhabitant; he had bought the right to
+be there in hard cash from the former tenant. And think of the invested
+capital! Dowries had been swallowed up in the soil, and the Gracchan law
+was confiscating personal as well as real property, taking the wife's
+fortune as well as the husband's. Nay, if the history of the public land
+were traced, could it not be shown that such value as it now possessed
+had been given it by its occupiers or their ancestors? The land was not
+assigned in early times, simply because it was not worth assignation. It
+was land that had been reclaimed for use, and of this use the authors of
+its value were now to be deprived.[350]
+
+Such was the plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and,
+therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business
+men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found
+their own personal interests at stake. So good had the tenure seemed,
+that it had been accepted as security for debt,[351] and the Gracchan
+attack united for once the usually hostile ranks of mortgagers and
+mortgagees. The alarm spread from Rome to the outlying municipalities.
+[352] Even in the city itself a very imperfect view of the scope of the
+bill was probably taken by the proletariate. We may imagine the
+distorted form in which it reached the ears of the occupants of the
+country towns. "Was it true that the land which had been given them in
+usufruct was to be taken away?" was the type of question asked in the
+municipia and in the colonies, whether Roman or Latin. The needier
+members of these towns received the news with very different feelings.
+They had every chance of sharing in the local division of the spoils,
+and their voices swelled the chorus of approval with which the poorer
+classes everywhere received the Gracchan law. Amidst this proletariate
+certain catch-words--well-remembered fragments of Gracchus's speeches--
+had begun to be the familiar currency of the day. "The numberless
+campaigns through which this land has been won," "The iniquity of
+exclusion from what is really the property of the State," "The disgrace
+of employing the treacherous slave in place of the free-born citizen"--
+such was the type of remark with which the Roman working-man or idler
+now entertained his fellow. All Roman Italy was in a blaze, and there
+must have been a sense of insecurity and anxiety even in those allied
+towns whose interest in Roman domain-land was remote. Might not State
+interests be as lightly violated as individual interests by a sovereign
+people: and was not the example of Rome almost as perilous as her action?
+
+The opponents of Gracchus had no illusions as to the numerical strength
+which he could summon to his aid. If the battle were fought to a finish
+in the Comitia, there could be no doubt as to his triumphant victory.
+Open opposition could serve no purpose except to show what a remnant it
+was that was opposing the people's wishes. But there was a means of at
+least delaying the danger, of staving off the attack as long as Gracchus
+remained tribune, perhaps of giving the people an opportunity of
+recovering completely from their delirium. When the college of tribunes
+moved as a united body, its force was irresistible; but now, as often
+before, there was some division in its ranks. It was not likely that ten
+men, drawn from the order of the nobility, should view with equal favour
+such a radical proposal as that of Tiberius Gracchus. But the popular
+feeling was so strong that for a time even the unsympathetic members of
+the board hesitated to protest, and no colleague of Tiberius is known to
+have opposed the movement in its initial stages. Even the man who was
+subsequently won over to the capitalist interest hesitated long before
+taking the formidable step: It was believed, however, that the hesitancy
+of Marcus Octavius was due more to his personal regard for Tiberius than
+to respect for the people's wishes.[353] The tribune who was to scotch
+the obnoxious measure was an excellent instrument for a dignified
+opposition. He was grave and discreet, a personal friend and intimate of
+Tiberius.[354] It is true that he was a large holder on the public
+domain, and that he would suffer by the operation of the new agrarian
+law. But it was fitting that the landlord class should be represented by
+a landlord, and, if there had been the least suspicion of sordid
+motives, it would have been removed by Octavius's refusal to accept
+private compensation for himself from the slender means of Tiberius
+Gracchus.[355] The offer itself reads like an insult, but it was
+probably made in a moment of passionate and unreflecting fervour.
+Neither the profferer nor the refuser could have regarded it in the
+light of a bribe. Even when the veto had been pronounced, the daily
+contest between the two tribunes in the Forum never became a scene of
+unseemly recrimination. The war of words revolved round the question of
+principle. Both disputants were at white heat; yet not a word was said
+by either which conveyed a reflection on character or motive.[356]
+
+These debates followed the first abortive meeting of the Assembly. As
+the decisive moment approached, streams of country folk had poured into
+Rome to register their votes in favour of the measure.[357] The Contio
+had given way to the Comitia, the people had been ready to divide, and
+Gracchus had ordered his scribe to read aloud the words of the bill.
+Octavius had bidden the scribe to be silent;[358] the vast meeting had
+melted away, and all the labours of the reformer seemed to have been in
+vain. To accept a temporary defeat under such circumstances was in
+accordance with the constitutional spirit of the times. The veto was a
+mode of encouraging reflection; it might yield to a prolonged campaign,
+but it was regarded as a barrier against a hasty popular impulse which,
+if unchecked, might prove ruinous to some portion of the community.
+Gracchus, however, knew perfectly well that it was now being used in the
+interest of a small minority, and he held the rights which it protected
+to be non-existent; he believed the question of agrarian reform to be
+bound up with his own personality, and its postponement to be equivalent
+to its extinction; he had no intention of allowing his own political
+life to be a failure, and, instead of discarding his weapons of attack,
+he made them more formidable than before. Perhaps in obedience to
+popular outcries, he redrafted his bill in a form which rendered it more
+drastic and less equitable.[359] It is possible that some of the
+_douceurs_ given to the possessors by his original proposal were not
+really in accordance with his own judgment. They were meant to disarm
+opposition. Now that opposition had not been disarmed, they could be
+removed without danger. The stricter measure had the same chance of
+success or failure as the less severe. We do not know the nature of the
+changes which were now introduced; but it is possible that the pecuniary
+compensation offered for improvements on the land to be resumed was
+either abolished or rendered less adequate than before.
+
+But even the form of the law was unimportant in comparison with the
+question of the method by which the new opposition was to be met. The
+veto, if persisted in by Octavius, would suspend the agrarian measure
+during the whole of Tiberius's year of office. It could only be
+countered by a device which would make government so impossible that the
+opposition would be forced to come to terms. The means were to be found
+in the prohibitive power of the tribunes, that right, which flowed from
+their _major potestas_, of forbidding under threat of penalties the
+action of all other magistrates. It was now rarely used except at the
+bidding of the senate and for certain specified purposes. It had become,
+in fact, little more than the means of enforcing obedience to a
+temporary suspension of business life decreed by the government. But
+recent events suggested a train of associations that brought back to
+mind the great political struggles of the past, and recalled the mode in
+which Licinius and Sextius had for five years sustained their anarchical
+edict for the purpose of the emancipation of the Plebs. The difference
+between the conditions of life in primitive Rome and in the cosmopolitan
+capital of to-day did not appeal to Tiberius. The Justitium was as
+legitimate a method of political warfare as the Intercessio. He issued
+an edict which forbade all the other magistracies to perform their
+official functions until the voting on the agrarian law should be
+carried through; he placed his own seals on the doors of the temple of
+Saturn to prevent the quaestors from making payments to the treasury or
+withdrawing money from it; he forbade the praetors to sit in the courts
+of justice and announced that he would exact a fine from those who
+disobeyed. The magistrates obeyed the edict, and most of the active life
+of the State was in suspense.[360] The fact of their obedience showed
+the overwhelming power which Tiberius now had behind him; for an
+ill-supported tribune, who adopted such an obsolete method of warfare,
+would have been unable to enforce his decrees and would merely have
+appeared ridiculous. The opponents of the law were now genuinely
+alarmed. Those who would be the chief sufferers put on garments of
+mourning, and paced the silent Forum with gloom and despair written on
+their faces, as though they were the innocent victims of a great wrong.
+But, while they took this overt means of stirring the commiseration of
+the crowd, it was whispered that the last treacherous device for
+averting the danger was being tried. The cause would perish with the
+demagogue, and Tiberius might be secretly removed. Confidence in this
+view was strengthened when it was known that the tribune carried a
+dagger concealed about his person.[361]
+
+An attempt was now made to discover whether the pressure had been
+sufficient and whether the veto would be repeated. Gracchus again
+summoned the assembly, the reading of the bill was again commenced and
+again stopped at the instance of Octavius.[362] This second
+disappointment nearly led to open riot. The vast crowd did not
+immediately disperse; it felt its great physical strength and the utter
+weakness of the regular organs of government. There were ominous signs
+of an appeal to force, when two men of consular rank, Manlius and
+Fulvius,[363] intervened as peacemakers. They threw themselves at the
+feet of Tiberius, they clasped his hands, they besought him with tears
+to pause before he committed himself to an act of violence. Tiberius was
+not insensible to the appeal. The immediate future was dark enough, and
+the entreaties of these revered men had saved an awkward situation. He
+asked them what they held that he should do. They answered that they
+were not equal to advise on a matter of such vast import; but that there
+was the senate. Why not submit the whole matter to the judgment of the
+great council of the State? Tiberius's own attitude to this proposal may
+have been influenced by the fact that it was addressed to his colleagues
+as well as to himself,[364] and that they apparently thought it a
+reasonable means of relieving the present situation. It is difficult to
+believe that the man who had never taken the senate into his confidence
+over so vital a matter as the agrarian law, could have had much hope of
+its sympathy now. But his conviction of the inherent reasonableness of
+his proposal,[365] of his own power of stating the case convincingly,
+and his knowledge that the senate usually did yield at a crisis, that
+its government was only possible because it consistently kept its finger
+on the pulse of popular opinion, may have directed his acceptance of its
+advice. Immediate resort was had to the Curia. The business of the house
+must have been immediately suspended to listen to a statement of the
+merits of the agrarian measure, and to a description of the political
+situation which it had created. When the debate began, it was obvious
+that there was nothing but humiliation in store for the leaders of the
+popular movement. The capitalist class was represented by an
+overwhelming majority; carping protests and riddling criticism were
+heard on every side, and Tiberius probably had never been told so many
+home truths in his life. It was useless to prolong the discussion, and
+Tiberius was glad to get into the open air of the Forum again. He had
+formed his resolution, and now made a proposal which, if carried
+through, might remove the deadlock by means that might be construed as
+legitimate. The new device was nothing less than the removal of his
+colleague Octavius from office. He announced that at the next meeting of
+the Assembly two questions would be put before the Plebs, the acceptance
+of the law and the continuance by Octavius of his tenure of the
+tribunate.[366] The latter question was to be raised on the general
+issue whether a tribune who acted contrary to the interests of the
+people was to continue in office. At the appointed time[367] Octavius's
+constancy was again tested, and he again stood firm. Tiberius broke out
+into one of his emotional outbursts, seizing his colleague's hands,
+entreating him to do this great favour to the people, reminding him that
+their claims were just, were nothing in proportion to their toils and
+dangers. When this appeal had been rejected, Tiberius summed up the
+impossibility of the situation in terms which contained a condemnation
+of the whole growth and structure of the Roman constitution. It was not
+in human power, he said, to prevent open war between magistrates of
+equal authority who were at variance on the gravest matters of
+state;[368] the only way which he saw of securing peace was the
+deposition of one of them from office. He did not care in the present
+instance which it was. The people would be the arbiter. Let his own
+deposition be proposed by Octavius; he would walk quietly away into a
+private station, if this were the will of the citizens. The man who
+spoke thus had more completely emancipated himself from Roman formulae
+than any Roman of the past. To Octavius it must have seemed a mere
+outburst of Greek demagogism. The offer too was an eminently safe one to
+make under the circumstances. On no grounds could it be accepted. At
+this point the proceedings were adjourned to allow Octavius time for
+deliberation.
+
+On the following day Gracchus announced that the question of deposition
+would be taken first, and a fresh and equally vain appeal was made to
+the feelings of the unshaken Octavius.[369] The question was then put,
+not as a vague and general resolution, but as a determinate motion that
+Octavius be deprived of the tribunate. The thirty-five tribes voted, and
+when the votes of seventeen had been handed up and proclaimed,[370] and
+the voice of but one was Lacking to make Octavius a private citizen,
+Tiberius as the presiding tribune stopped for a moment the machinery of
+the election. He again showed himself as a revolutionist unfortunate in
+the possession of a political and personal conscience. The people were
+witnessing a more passionate scene than ever, one that may appear as the
+last effort of reconciliation between the two social forces that were to
+meet in terrible conflict. Gracchus's arms were round his opponent's
+neck; broken appeals fell from his lips--the old one that he should not
+break the heart of the people: the new one that he should not cause his
+own degradation, and leave a bitter memory in the mind of the author of
+his fall. Observers saw that Octavius's heart was touched; his eyes were
+filled with tears, and for some time he kept a troubled silence. But he
+soon remembered his duty and his pledge. Tiberius might do with him what
+he would. Gracchus called the gods to witness that he would willingly
+have saved his colleague from dishonour, and ordered the resumption of
+the announcement of the votes. The bill became law and Octavius was
+stripped of his office. It was probably because he declined to recognise
+the legality of the act that he still lingered on the Rostra. One of the
+tribunician _viatores_, a freedman of Gracchus, was commanded to fetch
+him down. When he reached the ground, a rush was made at him by the mob;
+but his supporters rallied round him, and Tiberius himself rushed from
+the Rostra to prevent the act of violence. Soon he was lost in the crowd
+and hurried unobserved from the tumult.[371] His place in the
+tribunician college was filled up by the immediate election of one
+Quintus Mummius.[372]
+
+The members of the assembly that deposed Octavius may have been the
+spectators and authors of a new precedent in Roman history, one that was
+often followed in the closing years of the Republic, but one that may
+have received no direct sanction from the records of the past. The
+abrogation of the imperium of a proconsul had indeed been known,[373]
+but the deposition of a city magistrate during his year of office seems
+to have been a hitherto untried experiment. We cannot on this ground
+alone pronounce it to have been illegal; for an act never attempted
+before may have perfect legal validity, as the first occasion on which a
+legitimate deduction has been made from admitted principles of the
+constitution. It had always been allowed that under certain
+circumstances (chiefly the neglect of the proper formalities of
+election) a magistrate might be invited to abdicate his office; but the
+fact of this invitation is itself an evidence for the absence of any
+legal power of suspension. Tradition, however, often supplemented the
+defects of historical evidence, and one, perhaps the older, tale of the
+removal of the first consul Collatinus stated that it was effected by a
+popular measure introduced by his colleague.[374] This story was a
+fragment of that tradition of popular sovereignty which animated the
+historical literature of the age of the Gracchi: and one deduction from
+that theory may well have seemed to be that the sovereign people could
+change its ministers as it pleased. It was a deduction, however, that
+was not drawn even in the best period of democratic Athens; it ran
+wholly counter to the Roman conception of the magistracy as an authority
+co-ordinate with the people and one that, if not divinely appointed,
+received at least something of a sacred character from the fact of
+investiture with office. Even the prosecution of a magistrate for the
+gravest crime, although technically permissible during his year of
+office, had as a rule been relegated to the time when he again became a
+private citizen; the tribunician college, in particular, had generally
+thrown its protecting shield around its offending members, and had thus
+sustained its own dignity and that of the people. But, even if it be
+supposed that the sovereign could, at any moment and without any of the
+due formalities, proclaim itself a competent court of justice, and even
+though removal from office might be improperly represented as a
+punishment, there was the question of the offence to be considered. No
+crime known to the law had been charged against Octavius. In the
+exercise of his admitted right, or, as he might have expressed it, of
+his sacred duty, he had offended against the will of a majority. The
+analogy of the criminal law was from this point of view hopeless, and
+was therefore not pressed on this occasion. From another point of view
+it was not quite so remote. The tumultuous popular assemblages that had,
+on the bidding of a prosecuting tribune, often condemned commanders for
+vague offences hardly formulated in any particular law, scarcely
+differed, except in the fact that no previous magisterial inquiry had
+been conducted, from the meeting that deposed Octavius. The gulf that
+lies between proceedings in a parliament and proceedings in a court of
+law, was far less in Rome than it would have been in those Hellenic
+communities that possessed a developed system of criminal judicature.
+
+If criminal analogies failed, a purely political ground of defence must
+be adduced. This could hardly be based on considerations of abstract
+justice, although, as we shall see, an attempt was made by Tiberius
+Gracchus to give it even this foundation. Could it be based on
+convenience? Obviously, as Gracchus saw, his act was the only effective
+means of removing a deadlock created by a constitution which knew only
+magistrates and people and had effectively crippled both. So far, it
+might be defended on grounds of temporary necessity. But an act of this
+kind could not die. To what consequences might not its repetition lead?
+Imagine a less serious question, a less representative assembly. Think
+of the possibility of a few hundred desperate members of the
+proletariate gathering on the Capitoline hill and deposing a tribune who
+represented the interests of the vast outlying population of Rome. This
+is a consequence which, it is true, was not realised in the future. But
+that was only because the tribunate was more than Gracchus conceived it,
+and was too strong in tradition and associations of sanctity to be
+broken even by his attack. The scruples which troubled him most arose
+from the suspicion that the sacred office itself might have been held to
+suffer by the deposition of Octavius, and it was to a repudiation of
+this view that he subsequently devoted the larger part of his systematic
+defence of his action.
+
+At the same meeting at which Octavius was deposed, the agrarian bill was
+for the first time read without interruption to the people and
+immediately became law. Shortly after, the election of the commissioners
+was proceeded with and resulted in the appointment of Tiberius Gracchus
+himself, of his father-in-law Appius Claudius and of Gracchus's younger
+brother Caius.[375] It was perhaps natural that the people should pin
+their faith on the family of their champion; but it could hardly have
+increased the confidence of the community as a whole in the wisdom with
+which this delicate task would be executed, to find that it was
+entrusted to a family party, one of which was a mere boy; and the
+mistrust must have been increased when, somewhat later in the course of
+the year, the thorny questions which immediately encompassed the task of
+distribution led to the introduction by Tiberius of another law, which
+gave judicial power to the triumvirs, for the purpose of determining
+what was public land and what was private.[376] The fortunes of the
+richer classes seemed now to be entrusted to one man, who combined in
+his own person the tribunician power and the imperium, whose
+jurisdiction must have seriously infringed that of the regular courts,
+and who was assisted in issuing his probably inappellable decrees by a
+father-in-law and a younger brother. But, although effective protest was
+impossible, the senate showed its resentment by acts that might appear
+petty and spiteful, did we not remember that they were the only means
+open to this body of passing a vote of censure on the recent
+proceedings. The senate controlled every item of the expenditure; and
+when the commissioners appealed to it for their expenses, it refused a
+tent and fixed the limit of supplies at a denarius and a half a day. The
+instigator of this decree was the ex-consul Scipio Nasica, a heavy loser
+by the agrarian law, a man of strong and passionate temper who was every
+day becoming a more infuriated opponent of Tiberius Gracchus.[377]
+
+Meanwhile the latter had celebrated a peaceful triumph which far
+eclipsed the military pageants of the imperators of the past. The
+country people, before they returned to their farms, had escorted him to
+his house; they had hailed him as a greater than Romulus, as the
+founder, not of a city nor of a nation, but of all the peoples of
+Italy.[378] It is true that his escort was only the poor, rude mob.
+Stately nobles and clanking soldiers were not to be seen in the
+procession. But they were better away. This was the true apotheosis of a
+real demagogism. And the suspicion of the masses was as readily fired as
+their enthusiasm. A friend of Tiberius died suddenly and ugly marks were
+seen upon the body. There was a cry of poison; the bier was caught up on
+the shoulders of the crowd and borne to the place of burning. A vast
+throng stood by to see the corpse consumed, and the ineffectiveness of
+the flames was held a thorough confirmation of the truth of their
+suspicions.[379] It remained to see how far this protective energy would
+serve to save their favourite when the day of reckoning came.
+
+Tiberius could hardly have shared in the general elation. To make
+promises was one thing, to fulfil them another. Everything depended on
+the effectiveness of the execution of the agrarian scheme; and, although
+the mechanism for distribution was excellent, some of the material
+necessary for its successful fulfilment was sadly lacking. There were
+candidates enough for land, and there was sufficient land for the
+candidates. But whence were the means for starting these penniless
+people on their new road to virtue and prosperity to be derived? To give
+an ardent settler thirty _jugera_ of soil and to withhold from him the
+means of sowing his first crop or of making his first effort to turn
+pasture into arable land, was both useless and cruel; and we may imagine
+that the evicted possessors had not left their relinquished estates in a
+very enviable condition. The doors of the Aerarium were closed, for its
+key was in the hands of the senate; and Gracchus had to cast an anxious
+eye around for means for satisfying the needs of his clients.
+
+The opportunity was presented when the Roman people came into the
+unexpected inheritance of Attalus the Third, king of Pergamon. The
+testament was brought to Rome by Eudemus the Pergamene, whose first
+business was with the senate. But, when Eudemus arrived in the city, he
+saw a state of things which must have made him doubt whether the senate
+was any longer the true director of the State. It sat passive and
+sullen, while an energetic _prostates_ of the Greek type was doing what
+he liked with the land of Italy. No sane ambassador could have refused
+to neglect Gracchus, and it is practically certain that Eudemus
+approached him. This fact we may believe, even if we do not accept the
+version that the envoy had taken the precaution of bringing in his
+luggage a purple robe and a diadem, as symbols that might be necessary
+for a fitting recognition of Tiberius's future position.[380] It is also
+possible that suspicion of the rule of senators and capitalists may also
+have prompted the Greek to attempt to discover whether a more tolerable
+settlement might not be gained for his country through the leader of the
+popular party.[381] We cannot say whether Gracchus ever contemplated a
+policy with respect to the province as a whole. His mind was probably
+full of his immediate needs. He saw in the treasures of Attalus more
+than an equivalent for the revenues enclosed in the locked Aerarium, and
+he announced his intention of promulgating a plebiscite that the money
+left by the king should be assigned to the settlers provided for by his
+agrarian law.[382] It is possible that he contemplated the application
+of the future revenues of the kingdom of Pergamon to this or some
+similar purpose; and it was perhaps partly for this reason, partly in
+answer to the objection that the treasure could not be appropriated
+without a senatorial decree, that he announced the novel doctrine that
+it was no business of the senate to decide the fate of the cities which
+had belonged to the Attalid monarchy, and that he himself would prepare
+for the people a measure dealing with this question.[383]
+
+This was the fiercest challenge that he had yet flung to the senate.
+There might be a difference of opinion as to the right of a magistrate
+to put a question to the people without the guidance of a senatorial
+decree; the assignment of land was unquestionably a popular right in so
+far as it required ratification by the commons; even the deposition of
+Octavius was a matter for the people and would avenge itself. But there
+were two senatorial rights--the one usurped, the other created--whose
+validity had never been questioned. These were the control of finance
+and the direction of provincial administration. Were the possibility
+once admitted that these might be dealt with in the Comitia, the
+magistrates would cease to be ministers of the senate; for it was
+chiefly through a system of judicious prize-giving that the senate
+attached to itself the loyalty of the official class. There was perhaps
+less fear of what Gracchus himself might do than of the spectre which he
+was raising for the future. For in Roman history the events of the past
+made those of the future; there were few isolated phenomena in its
+development.
+
+From this time the attacks of individual senators on Gracchus became
+more vehement and direct. They proceeded from men of the highest rank. A
+certain Pompeius, in whom we may probably see an ex-consul and a future
+censor, was not ashamed of raising the spectre of a coming monarchy by
+reference to the story of the sceptre and the purple robe, and is said
+to have vowed to impeach Gracchus as soon as his year of magistracy had
+expired;[384] the ex-consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, of Macedonian
+fame, reproached Tiberius with his rabble escort. He compared the
+demeanour of the father and the son. In the censorship of the former the
+citizens used to quench their lights at night, as they saw him pass up
+the street to his house, that they might impress the censorial mind with
+the ideas of early hours and orderly conduct; now the son of this man
+might be seen returning home amidst the blaze of torches, held in the
+stout arms of a defiant body-guard drawn from the neediest classes.[385]
+These arrows may have Missed the mark; the one that hit was winged by an
+aged senator, Titus Annius Luscus, who had held the consulship twenty
+years before. His wit is said to have been better established than his
+character. He excelled in that form of ready altercation, of impaling
+his opponent on the horns of a dilemma by means of some innocent
+question, which, both in the courts and the senate, was often more
+effective than the power of continuous oratory. He now challenged
+Tiberius to a wager (_sponsio_), such as in the public life of Rome was
+often employed to settle a disputed point of honour or of fact, to
+determine the question whether he had dishonoured a colleague, who was
+holy in virtue of his office and had been made sacrosanct by the laws.
+The proposal was received by the senators with loud cries of
+acclamation. A glance at Tiberius would probably have shown that Annius
+had found the weak spot, not merely in his defensive armour, but in his
+very soul. The deposition of Octavius was proving a very nemesis; it was
+a democratic act that was in the highest degree undemocratic, an
+assertion and yet a gross violation of popular liberty.[386] The
+superstitious masses were in the habit of washing their hands and
+purifying their bodies before they entered into the presence of a
+tribune.[387] Might there not be a thrill of awe and repentance when the
+idea was brought home to them that this holy temple had been violated:
+and must not this be followed by a sense of repugnance to the man who
+had prompted them to the unhallowed deed? Tiberius sprang to his feet,
+quitted the senate-house and summoned the people. The majesty of the
+tribunate in his person had been outraged by Annius. He must answer for
+his words. The aged senator appeared before the crowd; he knew his
+disadvantage if the ordinary weapons of comitial strife were employed.
+In power of words and in repute with the masses he stood far behind
+Tiberius. But his presence of mind did not desert him. Might he ask a
+few questions before the regular proceedings began? The request was
+allowed and there was a dead silence. "Now suppose," said Annius, "you,
+Tiberius, were to wish to cover me with shame and abuse, and suppose I
+were to call on one of your colleagues for help, and he were to come up
+here to offer me his assistance, and suppose further that this were to
+excite your displeasure, would you deprive that colleague of yours of
+his office?" To answer that question in the affirmative was to admit
+that the tribunician power was dead; to answer it in the negative was to
+invite the retort that the _auxilium_ was only one form of the
+_intercessio_. The quick-witted southern crowd must have seen the
+difficulty at once, and Tiberius himself, usually so ready and bold in
+speech, could not face the dilemma. He remained silent and dismissed the
+assembly.[388]
+
+But matters could not remain as they were. This new aspect of Octavius's
+deposition was the talk of the town, and there were many troubled
+consciences amongst the members of his own following. Something must be
+done to quiet them; he must raise the question himself. The situation
+had indeed changed rapidly. Tiberius Gracchus was on his defence. Never
+did his power of special pleading appear to greater advantage than in
+the speech which followed. He had the gift which makes the mighty
+Radical, of diving down and seizing some fundamental truth of political
+science, and then employing it with merciless logic for the illustration
+or refutation of the practice of the present. The central idea here was
+one gathered from the political science of the Greeks. The good of the
+community is the only test of the rightness of an institution. It is
+justified if it secures that end, unjustified if it does not: or, to use
+the language of religion, holy in the one case, devoid of sanctity in
+the other. And an institution is not a mere abstraction; we must judge
+it by its use. We must, therefore, say that when it obeys the common
+interest, it is right: when it ceases to obey it, it is wrong. But the
+right must be preserved and the wrong plucked out. So Gracchus
+maintained that the tribune was holy and sacrosanct because he had been
+sanctified to the people's service and was the people's head. If then he
+change his character and do the people wrong, cutting down its strength
+and silencing its voice as expressed through the suffrage, he has
+deprived himself of his office, for he has ceased to conform to the
+terms on which he received it. Should we leave a tribune alone who was
+pulling down the Capitolium or burning the docks? And yet a tribune who
+did these things would remain a tribune, though a bad one. It is only
+when a tribune is destroying the power of the people that he is no
+longer a tribune at all. The laws give the tribune the power to arrest
+the consul. It is a power given against a man elected by the people; for
+consul and tribune are equally mandataries of the people. Shall not then
+the people have the right of depriving the tribune of his authority,
+when he uses this authority in a way prejudicial to the interests of the
+giver? What does the history of the past teach us? Can anything have
+been more powerful or more sacred than the ancient monarchy of Rome? The
+Imperium of the king was unlimited, the highest priestly offices were
+his. Yet the city expelled Tarquin for his crimes. The tyranny of a
+single man was alone sufficient to bring to an end a government which
+had its roots in the most distant past, which had presided over the very
+birth of the city. And, if sanctity alone is to be the ground of
+immunity, what are we to think of the punishment of a vestal virgin? Is
+there anything in Rome more holy and awe-inspiring than the maidens who
+tend and guard the eternal flame? Yet their sin is visited by the most
+horrible of deaths. They hold their sacrosanct character through the
+gods; they lose it, therefore, when they sin against the gods. Should
+the same not be true of the tribune? It is on account of the people that
+he is sacred; he cannot retain this divine character when he wrongs the
+people; he is a man engaged in destroying the very power which is the
+source of his strength. If the tribunate can justly be gained by a
+favourable vote of the majority of the tribes, can it not with greater
+justice be taken away by an adverse vote of all of them? Again, what
+should be the limits of our action in dealing with sacred things? Does
+sanctity mean immobility? By no means. What are more holy and inviolable
+than things dedicated to the gods? Yet this character does not prevent
+the people from handling, moving, transferring them as it pleases. In
+the case of the tribunate, it is the office, not the man, that is
+inviolable; it may be treated as an object of dedication and transferred
+to another. The practice of our own State proves that the office is not
+inviolable in the sense of being inalienable, for its holders have often
+forsworn it and asked to be divested of it.[389]
+
+The strongest part of this utterance was that which dealt with the
+sacred character of office; it was a mere emanation from the performance
+of certain functions; the protection, not the reality, of the thing.
+Gracchus might have added that even a treaty might under certain
+circumstances be legitimately broken. The weakest, from a Roman
+standpoint or indeed from that of any stable political society, was the
+identification of the permanent and temporary character of an
+institution, the assumption that a meeting of the people was the people,
+that a tribune was the tribune. How far the speech was convincing we do
+not know; it certainly did not relieve Tiberius of his embarrassments,
+which were now thickening around him.
+
+Tiberius's success had been mainly due to the country voters. It is true
+that he had a large following in the city; but this was numerically
+inferior to a mass of urban folk, whose attitude was either indifferent
+or hostile. They were indifferent in so far as they did not want
+agrarian assignments, and hostile in so far as they were clients of the
+noble houses which opposed Tiberius's policy. This urban party was now
+in the ascendant, for the country voters had scattered to their
+homes.[390] The situation demanded that he should work steadily for two
+objects, re-election to the tribunate and the support of the city
+voters. If, in addition to this support, he could hold out hopes that
+would attract the great capitalists to his side, his position would be
+impregnable. Hence in his speeches he began to throw out hints of a new
+and wide programme of legislation.[391] There was first the military
+grievance. Recent regulations, by the large decrease which they made in
+the property qualifications required for service,[392] had increased the
+liability to the conscription of the manufacturing and trading classes
+of Rome. Gracchus proposed that the period of service should be
+shortened--his suggestion probably being, not that the years of
+liability to service (the seventeenth to the forty-sixth) should be
+lessened, but that within these years a limited number of campaigns
+should be agreed on, which should form the maximum amount of active
+service for every citizen.[393] Two other proposals dealt with the
+question of criminal jurisdiction. The first allowed an appeal to the
+people from the decision of _judices_. The form in which this proposal
+is stated by our authority, would lead us to suppose that the courts to
+be rendered appellable were those constituted under standing laws. The
+chief of these _quaestiones_ or _judicia publica_ was the court which
+tried cases for extortion, established in the first instance by a Lex
+Calpurnia, and possibly reconstituted before this epoch by a Junian
+law.[394] A permanent court for the trial of murder may also have
+existed at this time.[395] The judges of these standing commissions were
+drawn from the senatorial order; and Gracchus, therefore, by suggesting
+an appeal from their judgment to the people, was attacking a senatorial
+monopoly of the most important jurisdiction, and perhaps reflecting on
+the conduct of senatorial _judices_, as displayed especially in relation
+to the grievances of distressed provincials. But it is probable that he
+also meant to strike a blow at a more extraordinary prerogative claimed
+by the senate, and to deny the right of that body to establish special
+commissions which could decide without appeal on the life and fortunes
+of Roman citizens.[396] So far his proposals, whether based on a
+conviction of their general utility or not, were a bid for the support
+of the average citizen. But when he declared that the qualification for
+the criminal judges of the time could not be allowed to stand, and that
+these judges should be taken either from a joint panel of senators and
+knights, or from the senate increased by the addition of a number of
+members of the equestrian order equal to its present strength, he was
+holding out a bait to the wealthy middle class, who were perhaps already
+beginning to feel senatorial jurisdiction in provincial matters irksome
+and disadvantageous to their interests. We are told by one authority
+that Gracchus's eyes even ranged beyond the citizen body and that he
+contemplated the possibility of the gift of citizenship to the whole of
+Italy.[397] This was not in itself a measure likely to aid in his
+salvation by the people; if it was not a disinterested effort of
+far-sighted genius, it may have been due to the gathering storm which
+his experience showed him the agrarian commission would soon be forced
+to meet.[398] Certainly, if all these schemes are rightly attributed to
+Tiberius Gracchus, it was he more than any man who projected the great
+programme of reform that the future had in store.
+
+Unfortunately for Gracchus the time was short for nursing a new
+constituency or spreading a new ideal. The time for the tribunician
+elections was approaching, an active canvass was being carried on by the
+candidates, and the aggrieved landowners were throwing the whole weight
+of their influence into the opposite scale.[399] Wild rumours of his
+plans were being circulated. The family clique that filled the agrarian
+commission was to snatch at other offices; Gracchus's brother, a youth
+still unqualified even for the quaestorship,[400] was to be thrust into
+the tribunate, and his father-in-law Appius was destined for the
+consulate.[401] Rome was to be ruled by a dynasty, and the tyranny of
+the commission was to extend to every department of the State. Gracchus
+felt that the city-combination against him was too strong, and sent an
+earnest summons to his supporters in the country. But practical needs
+were stronger than gratitude; the farmers were busy with their harvest;
+and it was plain that on this occasion the man of the street was to have
+the decisive voice. The result showed that even he was not unmoved by
+Gracchus's services, and by his last appeal that a life risked on behalf
+of the people should be protected by a renewed investiture with the
+tribunate.[402]
+
+The day of the election arrived and the votes were taken. When they came
+to be read out, it was found that the two first tribes had given their
+voice for Gracchus. Then there was a sudden uproar. The votes were going
+against the landlords; a legal protest must be made. Men rose in the
+assembly, and shouted out that immediate re-election to the tribunate
+was forbidden by the law. They were probably both right and wrong in
+their protest, as men so often were who ventured to make a definite
+assertion about the fluid public law of Rome. There was apparently no
+enactment forbidding the iteration of this office, and appointment to
+the tribunate must have been governed by custom. But recent custom seems
+to have been emphatically opposed to immediate re-election, and the
+appeal was justified on grounds of public practice.[403] It would
+probably have been disregarded, had the Gracchan supporters been in an
+overwhelming majority, or Gracchus's colleagues unanimous in their
+support. But the people were divided, and the president was not
+enthusiastic enough in the cause to risk his future impeachment.
+Rubrius, to whom the lot had assigned the conduct of the proceedings on
+that day, hesitated as to the course which he ought to follow. A bolder
+spirit Mummius, the man who had been made by the deposition of Octavius,
+asked that the conduct of the assembly should be handed over to him.
+Rubrius, glad to escape the difficulty, willingly yielded his place; but
+now the other members of the college interposed. The forms of the
+Comitia were being violated; a president could not be chosen without the
+use of the lot. The resignation of Rubrius must be followed by another
+appeal to sortition. The point of order raised, as usual, a heated
+discussion; the tribunes gathered on the Rostra to argue the matter out.
+Nothing could be gained by keeping the people as the spectators of such
+a scene, and Gracchus succeeded in getting the proceedings adjourned to
+the following day.[404]
+
+The situation was becoming more desperate; for each delay was a triumph
+for the opposition, and could only strengthen the belief in the
+illegality of Gracchus's claim. He now resorted to the last device of
+the Roman; he ceased to be a protector and became a suppliant. Although
+still a magistrate, he assumed the garb of mourning, and with humbled
+and tearful mien begged the help of individuals in the market
+place.[405]
+
+He led his son by the hand; his children and their mother were to be
+wards of the people, for he had despaired of his own life. Many were
+touched; to some the tribunate of Gracchus seemed like a rift in a dark
+cloud of oppression which would close around them at his fall, and their
+hearts sank at the thought of a renewed triumph of the nobility. Others
+were moved chiefly by the fears and sufferings of Gracchus. Cries of
+sympathy and defiance were raised in answer to his tears, and a large
+crowd escorted him to his house at nightfall and bade him be confident
+of their support on the following day. During his appeals he had hinted
+at the fear of a nocturnal attack by his foes: and this led many to form
+an encampment round his house and to remain as its vigilant defenders
+throughout the night.[406]
+
+Before day-break he was up and engaged in hasty colloquy with his
+friends. The fear of force was certainly present; and definite plans may
+have been now made for its repulsion. Some even believed that a signal
+for battle was agreed on by Gracchus, if matters should come to that
+extreme.[407] With a true Roman's scruples he took the omens before he
+left his house. They presaged ill. The keeper of the sacred chickens,
+which Gracchus's Imperium now permitted him to consult, could get
+nothing from the birds, even though he shook the cage. Only one of the
+fowls advanced, and even that would not touch the food. And the unsought
+omens were as evil as those invited. Snakes were found to have hatched a
+brood in his helmet, his foot stumbled on the threshold with such
+violence that blood flowed from his sandal; he had hardly advanced on
+his way when crows were seen struggling on his left, and the true object
+of the sign was pointed when a stone, dislodged by one of them from a
+roof, fell at his own feet. This concourse of ill-luck frightened his
+boldest comrades; but his old teacher, Blossius of Cumae, vehemently
+urged the prosecution of the task. Was a son of Gracchus, the grandson
+of Africanus, chief minister of the Roman people,[408] to be deterred by
+a crow from listening to the summons of the citizens? If the disgrace of
+his absence amused his enemies, they would keep their laughter to
+themselves. They would use that absence seriously, to denounce him to
+the people as a king who was already aping the luxury of the tyrant. As
+Blossius spoke, men were seen running from the direction of the Capitol;
+they came up, they bade him press on, as all was going well. And, in
+fact, it seemed as if all might turn out brightly. The Capitoline
+temple, and the level area before it, which was to be the scene of the
+voting, were filled with his supporters. A hearty cheer greeted him as
+he appeared, and a phalanx closed round him to prevent the approach of
+any hostile element. Shortly after the proceedings began, the senate was
+summoned by the consul to meet in the temple of Fides.[409] A few yards
+of sloping ground was all that now separated the two hostile camps.[410]
+
+The interval for reflection had strengthened the belief of some of the
+tribunes that Gracchus's candidature was illegal, and they were ready to
+support the renewed protests of the rich. The election, however, began;
+for the faithful Mummius was now presiding, and he proceeded to call on
+the tribes to vote. But the business of filing into their separate
+compartments, always complicated, was now impossible. The fringe of the
+crowd was in a continual uproar; from its extremities the opponents of
+the measure were wedging their way in. As his supporters squared their
+shoulders, the whole mass rocked and swayed. There was no hope of
+eliciting a decision from this scuffling and pushing throng. Every
+moment brought the assembly nearer to open riot. Suddenly a man was seen
+at some distance from Tiberius gesticulating with his hand as though he
+had something to impart. He was recognised as Fulvius Flaccus, a
+senator, a man perhaps already known as a sympathiser with schemes of
+reform. Gracchus asked the crowd immediately around him to give way a
+little, and Fulvius fought his way up to the tribune. His news was that
+in the sitting of the senate the rich proprietors had asked the consul
+to use force, that he had declined, and that now they were preparing on
+their own motion to slay Tiberius. For this purpose they had collected a
+large band of armed slaves and retainers.[411] Tiberius immediately
+imparted the news to his friends. Preparations for defence were hastily
+made: an improvised body-guard was formed; togas were girt up, and the
+staves of the lictors were broken into fragments to serve as clubs. The
+Gracchans more distant from the centre of the scene were meanwhile
+marvelling at the strange preparations of which they caught but
+glimpses, and could be seen asking eager questions as to their meaning.
+To reach these distant supporters by his voice was impossible; Tiberius
+could but touch his forehead with his hand to indicate that his life was
+in danger. Immediately a shout went up from the opposite side "Tiberius
+is asking for the diadem," and eager messengers sped with the news to
+the senate.[412] There was probably a knowledge that physical support
+for their cause would be found in that quarter, and the exodus of these
+excited capitalists was apparently assisted by an onslaught from the
+mob. A regular tumult was brewing, and the tribunes, instead of striving
+to preserve order, or staying to interpose their sacred persons between
+the enraged combatants, fled incontinently from the spot. Their fear was
+natural, for by remaining they might seem to be identifying themselves
+with a cause that was either lost or lawless. With the tribunes vanished
+the last trace of legality. The priests closed the temple to keep its
+precincts from the mob. The more timorous of the crowd fled in wild
+disorder, spreading wilder rumours. Tiberius was deposing the remaining
+tribunes from office; he was appointing himself to a further tribunate
+without the formalities of election.[413]
+
+Meanwhile the senate was deliberating in the temple of Fides. In the old
+days their deliberations might have resulted in the appointment of a
+dictator, and one of the historians who has handed down the record of
+these facts marvels that this was not the case now.[414] But the
+dictatorship had been weakened by submission to the appeal, and long
+before it became extinct had lost its significance as a means of
+repressing sedition within the city. The Roman constitution had now no
+mechanism for declaring a state of siege or martial law. From one point
+of view the extinction of the dictatorship was to be regretted. The
+nomination of this magistrate would have involved at least a day's
+delay;[415] some further time would have been necessary before he had
+collected round him a sufficient force in a city which had neither
+police nor soldiers. Had it been decided to appoint a dictator, the
+outrages of the next hour could never have occurred. As things were, it
+seemed as though the senate had to choose between impotence and murder.
+There was indeed another way. Such was the respect for members of the
+senatorial order, that a deputation of that body, headed by the consul,
+would probably have led to the dispersal of the mob. But passions were
+inflamed and it was no time for peaceful counsels. The advocate of
+summary measures was the impetuous Nasica. He urged the consul to save
+the city and to put down the tyrant. He demanded that the sense of the
+house should be taken as to whether extreme measures were now necessary.
+Even at this time a tradition may have existed that a magic formula by
+which the senate advised the magistrates "to see to it that the State
+took no harm," [416] could justify any act of violence in an emergency.
+The sense of the house was with Nasica, but a resolution could not be
+framed unless the consul put the question. The answer of Scaevola was
+that of a lawyer. He would commence no act of violence, he would put to
+death no citizen uncondemned. If, however, the people, through the
+persuasion or compulsion of Tiberius, should come to any illegal
+decision, he would see that such a resolution was not observed. Nasica
+sprang to his feet. "The consul is betraying the city; those who wish
+the salvation of the laws, follow me." [417] With this he drew the hem
+of his toga over his head,[418] and rushed from the door in the
+direction of the Capitoline temple. He was followed by a crowd of
+senators, all wrapping the folds of their togas round their left arms.
+Outside the door they were joined by their retainers armed with clubs
+and staves.[419]
+
+Meanwhile the proceedings in the Area Capitolii had been becoming
+somewhat less turbulent. The turmoil had quieted down with the exclusion
+of the more violent members of the opposition. Gracchus had called a
+Contio, for the purpose, it was said, of encouraging his supporters and
+asserting his own constancy and defiance of senatorial authority. The
+gathering had become a mere partisan mass meeting, such as had often
+been seen in the course of the current year, and the herald was crying
+"Silence," [420] when suddenly the men on the outskirts of the throng
+fell back to right and left. A long line of senators had been seen
+hastening up the hill. A deputation from the fathers had come. That must
+have been the first impression: and the crowd fell back before its
+masters. But in a moment it was seen that the masters had come to
+chastise, not to plead. With set faces and blazing eyes Nasica and his
+following threw themselves on the yielding mass. The unarmed senators
+snatched at the first weapons that lay to hand, the fragments of the
+shattered furniture of the meeting, severed planks and legs of benches,
+while their retinue pressed on with clubs and sticks. The whole column
+made straight for Tiberius and his improvised body-guard. Resistance was
+hopeless, and the tribune and his friends turned to flee. But the idea
+of restoring order occupied but a small place in the minds of the
+maddened senators, The accumulated bitterness of a year found its outlet
+in one moment of glorious vengeance. The fathers were behaving like a
+Greek street mob of the lowest type which had turned against an
+oppressive oligarchy. They were clubbing the Gracchans to death.
+Tiberius was in flight when some one seized his toga. He slipped it off
+and fled, clad only in his tunic, when he stumbled over a prostrate body
+and fell. As he rose, a rain of blows descended on his head.[421] The
+man who was seen to strike the first blow is said to have been Publius
+Saturius, one of his own colleagues. The glory of his death was
+vehemently disputed; one Rufus, since he could not claim the first blow,
+is said to have boasted of being the author of the second. Tiberius is
+said to have fallen by the very doors of the Capitoline temple, not far
+from the statues of the Kings.[422] The number of his adherents that
+perished was over three hundred, and it was noted that not one of these
+was slain by the sword.[423] Their bodies were thrown into the
+Tiber--not by the mob but by the magistrates; the hand of an aedile
+committed that of Tiberius to the stream.[424]
+
+The murder of a young man, who was still under thirty at the time of his
+death,[425] and the slaughter of a few hundreds of his adherents, may
+not seem to be an act of very great significance in the history of a
+mighty empire. Yet ancient historians regarded the event as
+epoch-marking, as the turning point in the history of Rome, as the
+beginning of the period of the civil wars.[426] To justify this
+conclusion it is not enough to point to the fact that this was the first
+blood shed in civic discord since the age of the Kings;[427] for it
+might also have been the last. Though the vendetta is a natural
+outgrowth of Italian soil, yet masses of men are seldom, like
+individuals, animated solely by the spirit of revenge. The blood of the
+innocent is a good battle-cry in politics, but it is little more; it is
+far from being the mere pretext, but it is equally far from being the
+true cause, of future revolution. Familiarity with the use of force in
+civic strife is also a fatal cause of its perpetuation; but familiarity
+implies its renewed employment: it can hardly be the result of the first
+experiment in murder. The repetition of this ghastly phenomenon in Roman
+politics can only be accounted for by the belief that the Gracchan
+_emeute_ was of its very nature an event that could not be isolated:
+that Gracchus was a pioneer in a hostile country, and that his opponents
+preserved all their inherent weakness after the first abortive
+manifestation of their pretended strength. A bad government may be
+securely entrenched. The senate, whether good or bad, had no defences at
+all. Its weakness had in the old days been its pride. It ruled by
+influencing opinion. Now that it had ceased to influence, it ruled by
+initiating a riot in the streets. It had no military support except such
+as was given it by friendly magistrates, and this was a dangerous weapon
+which it hesitated to use. To ignore militarism was to be at the mercy
+of the demagogue of the street, to admit it was found subsequently to be
+equivalent to being at the mercy of the demagogue of the camp. In either
+case authority must be maintained at the cost of civil war. But the
+material helplessness of the senate was only one factor in the problem.
+More fatal flaws were its lack of insight to discover that there were
+new problems to be faced, and lack of courage in facing them. This moral
+helplessness was due partly to the selfishness of individuals, but
+partly also to the fixity of political tradition. In spite of the
+brilliancy and culture of some of its members, the senate in its
+corporate capacity showed the possession of a narrow heart and an
+inexpansive intelligence. Its sympathies were limited to a class; it
+learnt its new lessons slowly and did not see their bearing on the
+studies of the future. Imperialism abroad and social contentment at home
+might be preserved by the old methods which had worked so well in the
+past. But to the mind of the masses the past did not exist, and to the
+mind of the reformer it had buried its dead. The career of Tiberius
+Gracchus was the first sign of a great awakening; and if we regard it as
+illogical, and indeed impossible, to pause here and estimate the
+character of his reforms, it is because the more finished work of his
+brother was the completion of his efforts and followed them as
+inexorably as the daylight follows the dawn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The attitude of the senate after the fall of Gracchus was not that of a
+combatant who had emerged secure from the throes of a great crisis. A
+less experienced victor would have dwelt on the magnitude of the
+movement and been guilty of an attempt at its sudden reversal. But the
+government pretended that there had been no revolution, merely an
+_emeute_. The wicked authors of the sedition must be punished; but the
+Gracchan legislation might remain untouched. More than one motive
+probably contributed to shape this view. In the first place, the
+traditional policy of Rome regarded reaction as equivalent to
+revolution. A rash move should be stopped in its inception; but, had it
+gone a little way and yielded fruit in the shape of some permanent
+organisation, it would be well to accept and, if possible, to weaken
+this product; it would be the height of rashness to attempt its
+destruction. The recognition of the _fait accompli_ had built up the
+Roman Empire, and the dreaded consequences had not come. Why should not
+the same be true of a new twist in domestic policy? Secondly, the
+opposition of the senate to Gracchus's reforms was based far more
+decidedly on political than on economic grounds. The frenzy which seized
+the fathers during the closing act of the tribune's life, was excited by
+his comprehensive onslaught on their monopoly of provincial, fiscal and
+judicial administration. His attempt to annex their lands had aroused
+the resentment of individuals, but not the hatred of a corporation. The
+individual was always lost in the senate, and the wrongs of the
+landowner could be ignored for the moment and their remedy left to time,
+if political prudence dictated a middle course. Again, reflection may
+have suggested the thought whether these wrongs were after all so great
+or so irremediable. The pastoral wealth of Italy was much; but it was
+little compared with the possibilities of enterprise in the provinces.
+Might not the bait of an agrarian law, whose chances of success were
+doubtful and whose operation might in time be impeded by craftily
+devised legislation, lull the people into an acceptance of that
+senatorial control of the foreign world, which had been so scandalously
+threatened by Gracchus? There was a danger in the very raising of this
+question; there was further danger in its renewal. A party cry seldom
+becomes extinct; but its successful revival demands the sense of some
+tangible grievance. To remove the grievance was to silence the
+demagogue; what the people wanted was comfort and not power. And lastly,
+the senate was not wholly composed of selfish or aggrieved land-holders.
+Amongst the sternest upholders of its traditions there were probably
+many who were immensely relieved that the troublesome land question had
+received some approach to a solution. There are always men hide-bound by
+convention and unwilling to move hand or foot in aid of a remedial
+measure, who are yet profoundly grateful to the agitator whom they
+revile, and profoundly thankful that the antics which they deem
+grotesque, have saved themselves from responsibility and their country
+from a danger.
+
+It was with such mixed feelings that the senate viewed the Gracchan
+_debacle_. It was impossible, however, to accept the situation in its
+entirety; for to recognise the whole of Gracchus's career as legitimate
+was to set a dangerous precedent for the future. The large army of the
+respectable, the bulwark of senatorial power, had not been sufficiently
+alarmed. It was necessary to emphasise the fact that there had been an
+outrageous sedition on the part of the lower classes. With this object
+the senate commanded that the new consuls Popillius and Rupilius should
+sit as a criminal commission for the purpose of investigating the
+circumstances of the outbreak.[428] The commission was empowered to
+impose any sentence, and it is practically certain that it judged
+without appeal. The consuls, as usual, exercised their own discretion in
+the choice of assessors. The extreme party was represented by Nasica.
+Laelius, who also occupied a place on the judgment-seat, might have been
+regarded as a moderate;[429] although, as popular sedition and not the
+agrarian question was on its trial, there is no reason to suppose that a
+member of the Scipionic circle would be less severe than any of his
+colleagues in his animadversions on the wretched underlings of the
+Gracchan movement whom it was his duty to convict of crime. It was in
+fact the street cohort of Tiberius, men whose voices, torches and sticks
+had so long insulted the feelings of respectable citizens, that seems to
+have been now visited with the penalties for high treason; for no
+illustrious name is found amongst the victims of the commission. On some
+the ban of interdiction was pronounced, on others the death penalty was
+summarily inflicted. Amongst the slain was Diophanes the rhetor; and one
+Caius Villius, by some mysterious effort of interpretation which baffles
+our analysis, was doomed to the parricide's death of the serpent and the
+sack.[430] Blossius of Cumae was also arraigned, and his answer to the
+commission was subsequently regarded as expressing the deepest villainy
+and the most exalted devotion. His only defence was his attachment to
+Gracchus, which made the tribune's word his law. "But what," said
+Laelius "if he had willed that you should fire the Capitol?" "That would
+never have been the will of Gracchus," was the reply, "but had he willed
+it, I should have obeyed".[431] Blossius escaped the immediate danger,
+but his fears soon led him to leave Rome, and now an exile from his
+adopted as well as from his parent state, he could find no hope but in
+the fortunes of Aristonicus, who was bravely battling with the Romans in
+Asia. On the collapse of that prince's power he put himself to
+death.[432]
+
+The government may have succeeded in its immediate object of proving
+itself an effective policeman. The sense of order may have been
+satisfied, and the spirit of turbulence, if it existed, may have been
+for the moment cowed. But the memory of the central act of the ghastly
+tragedy on the Capitoline hill could not be so easily obliterated, and
+the chief actor was everywhere received with lowered brows and
+ill-omened cries.[433] It was superstition as well as hatred that
+sharpened the popular feeling against Nasica. A man was walking the
+streets of Rome whose hands were stained by a tribune's blood. He
+polluted the city wherein he dwelt and the presence of all who met him.
+The convenient theory that a mere street riot had been suppressed might
+have been accepted but for the awkward fact that the sanctity of the
+tribunate had been trodden under foot by its would-be vindicators. A
+prosecution of Nasica was threatened; and in such a case might not the
+arguments that vindicated Octavius be the doom of the accused? Popular
+hatred finds a convenient focus in a single man; it is easier to loathe
+an individual than a group. But for this very reason the removal of the
+individual may appease the resentment that the group deserves. Nasica
+was an embarrassment to the senate and he might prove a convenient
+scapegoat. It was desirable that he should be at once rewarded and
+removed; and the opportunity for an honourable banishment was easily
+found. The impending war with Aristonicus necessitated the sending of a
+commission to Asia, and Nasica was included amongst the five members of
+this embassy.[434] There was honour in the possession of such a post and
+wealth to be gained by its tenure; but the aristocracy had eventually to
+pay a still higher price for keeping Nasica beyond the borders of Italy.
+When the chief pontificate was vacated by the fall of Crassus in 130
+B.C., the refugee was invested with the office so ardently sought by the
+nobles of Rome.[435] He was forced to be contented with this shadow of a
+splendid prize, for he was destined never to exercise the high functions
+of his office in the city. He seems never to have left Asia and, after a
+restless change of residence, he died near the city of Pergamon.[436]
+
+The permanence of the land commission was the most important result of
+the senate's determination to detach the political from the economic
+consequences of the Gracchan movement.[437] But they tolerated rather
+than accepted it. Had they wished to make it their own, every nerve
+would have been strained to secure the three places at the annual
+elections for men who represented the true spirit of the nobility. But
+there was every reason for allowing the people's representatives to
+continue the people's work. The commission was an experiment, and the
+government did not wish to participate in possible failure; a seasonable
+opportunity might arise for suspending or neutralising its activities,
+and the senate did not wish to reverse its own work; whether success or
+failure attended its operations, the task of the commissioners was sure
+to arouse fears and excite odium, especially amongst the Italian allies;
+and the nobility were less inclined to excite such sentiments than to
+turn them to account. So the people were allowed year after year to
+perpetuate the Gracchan clique and to replace its members by avowed
+sympathisers with programmes of reform. Tiberius's place was filled by
+Crassus, whose daughter Licinia was wedded to Caius Gracchus.[438] Two
+places were soon vacated by the fall of Crassus in Asia and the death of
+Appius Claudius. They were filled by Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius
+Papirius Carbo.[439] The Former had already proved his sympathy with
+Gracchus, the latter had Just brought to an end an agitating tribunate,
+which had produced a successful ballot law and an abortive attempt to
+render the tribune re-eligible. The personnel of the commission was,
+therefore, a guarantee of its good faith. Its energy was on a level with
+its earnestness. The task of annexing and distributing the domain land
+was strenuously undertaken, and other officials, on whom fell the purely
+routine function of enforcing the new limit of occupation, seem to have
+been equally faithful to their work. Even the consul Popillius, one of
+the presidents of the commission that tried the Gracchan rioters, has
+left a record of his activity in the words that he was "the first to
+expel shepherds from their domains and install farmers in their
+stead".[440] The boundary stones of the commissioners still survive to
+mark the care with which they defined the limits of occupied land and of
+the new allotments; and the great increase in the census roll between
+the years 131 and 125 B.C. finds its best explanation in the steady
+increase of small landholders effected by the agrarian law. In the
+former year the register had shown rather less than 319,000 citizens; in
+the latter the number had risen to somewhat more than 394,000.[441] If
+this increase of nearly 76,000 referred to the whole citizen body, it
+would be difficult to connect it with the work of the commission, except
+on the hypothesis that numerous vagrants, who did not as a rule appear
+at the census, now presented themselves for assessment; but, when it is
+remembered that the published census list of Rome merely contained the
+returns of her effective military strength, and that this consisted
+merely of the _assidui_, it is clear that a measure which elevated large
+portions of the _capite censi_ to the position of yeoman farmers must
+have had the effect of increasing the numbers on the register; and this
+sudden leap in the census roll may thus be attributed to the successful
+working of the new agrarian scheme.[442] A result such as this could not
+have been wholly transitory; in tracing the agrarian legislation of the
+post-Gracchan period we shall indeed find the trial of experiments which
+prove that no final solution of the land question had been reached; we
+shall see the renewal of the process of land absorption which again led
+to the formation of gigantic estates; but these tendencies may merely
+mark the inevitable weeding-out of the weaker of the Gracchan colonists;
+they do not prove that the sturdier folk failed to justify the scheme,
+to work their new holdings at a profit, and to hand them down to their
+posterity. It is true that the landless proletariate of the city
+continued steadily to increase; but the causes which lead to the
+plethora of an imperial capital are too numerous to permit us to explain
+this increase by the single hypothesis of a renewed depopulation of the
+country districts.
+
+The distribution of allotments, however, represented but the simpler
+element of the scheme. The really arduous task was to determine in any
+given case what land could with justice be distributed. The judicial
+powers of the triumvirs were taxed to the utmost to determine what land
+was public, and what was private. The possessors would at times make no
+accurate profession of their tenure; such as were made probably in many
+cases aroused distrust. Information was invited from third parties, and
+straightway the land courts were the scene of harrowing litigation.[443]
+It could at times be vaguely ascertained that, while a portion of some
+great domain was held on occupation from the State, some other portion
+had been acquired by purchase; but what particular part of the estate
+was held on either tenure was undiscoverable, for titles had been lost,
+or, when preserved, did not furnish conclusive evidence of the justice
+of the original transfer. Even the ascertainment of the fact that a
+tract of land had once belonged to the State was no conclusive proof
+that the State could still claim rights of ownership; for some of it had
+in early times been assigned in allotments, and no historical record
+survived to prove where the assignment had ended and the permission of
+occupation had begun. The holders of private estates had for purposes of
+convenience worked the public land immediately adjoining their own
+grounds, the original landmarks had been swept away, and, although they
+had paid their dues for the possession of so many acres, it was
+impossible to say with precision which those acres were. The present
+condition of the land was no index; for some of the possessors had
+raised their portion of the public domain to as high a pitch of
+cultivation as their original patrimonies: and, as the commissioners
+were naturally anxious to secure arable land in good condition for the
+new settlers, the original occupiers sometimes found themselves in the
+enjoyment of marsh or swamp or barren soil,[444] which remained the sole
+relics of their splendid possessions. The judgments of the court were
+dissolving ancestral ties, destroying homesteads, and causing the
+transference of household gods to distant dwellings. Such are the
+inevitable results of an attempt to pry into ancient titles, and to
+investigate claims the basis of which lies even a few decades from the
+period of the inquisition.
+
+But, while these consequences were unfortunate, they were not likely to
+produce political complications so long as the grievances were confined
+to members of the citizen body. The vested interests which had been
+ignored in the passing of the measure might be brushed aside in its
+execution. Had the territory of Italy belonged to Rome, there would have
+been much grumbling but no resistance; for effective resistance required
+a shadow of legal right. But beyond the citizen body lay groups of
+states which were interested in varying degrees in the execution of the
+agrarian measure: and their grievances, whether legitimate or not,
+raised embarrassing questions of public law. The municipalities composed
+of Roman citizens or of half-burgesses had, as we saw, been alarmed at
+the introduction of the measure, perhaps through a misunderstanding of
+its import and from a suspicion that the land which had been given them
+in usufruct was to be resumed. Possibly the proceedings of the
+commission may have done something to justify this fear, for the limits
+of this land possessed by corporate bodies had probably become very
+ill-defined in the course of years. But, although a corporate was
+stronger than an individual interest and rested on some public
+guarantee, the complaints of these townships, composed as they were of
+burgesses, were merely part of the civic question, and must have been
+negligible in comparison with the protests of the federate cities of
+Italy and the Latins. We cannot determine what grounds the Italian Socii
+had either for fear or protest. It is not certain that land had been
+assigned to them in usufruct,[445] and such portions of their conquered
+territories as had been restored to them by the Roman State were their
+own property. But, whether the territories which they conceived to be
+threatened were owned or possessed by these communities, such ownership
+or possession was guaranteed to them by a sworn treaty, and it is
+inconceivable that the Gracchan legislation, the strongest and the
+weakest point of which was its strict legality, should have openly
+violated federative rights. When, however, we consider the way in which
+the public land of Rome ran in and out of the territories of these
+allied communities, it is not wonderful that doubts should exist as to
+the line of demarcation between state territories and the Roman domain.
+Vexed questions of boundaries might everywhere be raised, and the
+government of an Italian community would probably find as much
+difficulty as a private possessor in furnishing documentary evidence of
+title. The fears of the Latin communities are far more comprehensible,
+and it was probably in these centres that the Italian revolt against the
+proceedings of the commission chiefly originated. The interests of the
+Latins in this matter were almost precisely similar to those of the
+Romans: and this identity of view arose from a similarity of status. The
+Latin colonies had had their territories assigned by Roman
+commissioners: and it is probable, although it cannot be proved, that
+doubts arose as to the legitimate extent of these assignments in
+relation to the neighbouring public land. Many of these territories may
+have grown mysteriously at the expense of Rome in districts far removed
+from the capital: and in Gaul especially encroachments on the Roman
+domain by municipalities or individuals of the Latin colonies most
+recently established may have been suspected. But the Latin community
+had another interest in the question, which bore a still closer
+resemblance to that shown by the Roman burgesses. As the individual
+Latin might be a recipient of the favour of the commissioners, so he
+might be the victim of their legal claims. The fact that he shared the
+right of commerce with Rome and could acquire and sue for land by Roman
+forms, makes it practically certain that he could be a possessor of the
+Roman domain. So eager had been the government in early times to see
+waste land reclaimed and defended, that it could hardly have failed to
+welcome the enterprising Latin who crossed his borders, threw his
+energies into the cultivation of the public land, and paid the required
+dues. Many of the wealthier members of Latin communities may thus have
+been liable to the fate of the ejected possessors of Rome; but even
+those amongst them whose possessions did not exceed the prescribed limit
+of five hundred _jugera_, may have believed that their claims would
+receive, or had received, too little attention from the Roman
+commission, while the difficulties resulting from the fusion of public
+and private land in the same estates may have been as great in these
+communities as they were in the territory of Rome. Such grievances
+presented no feature of singularity; they were common to Italy, and one
+might have thought that a Latin protest would have been weaker than a
+Roman. But there was one vital point of difference between the two. The
+Roman could appeal only as an individual; the Latin appealed as a member
+of a federate state. He did not pause to consider that his grievance was
+due to his being half a Roman and enjoying Roman rights. The truth that
+a suzerain cannot treat her subjects as badly as she treats her citizens
+may be morally, but is not legally, a paradox. The subjects have a
+collective voice, the citizens have ceased to have one when their own
+government has turned against them. The position of these Latins,
+illogical as it may have been, was strengthened by the extreme length to
+which Rome had carried her principle of non-interference in ail dealings
+with federate allies. The Roman Comitia did not legislate for such
+states, no Roman magistrate had jurisdiction in their internal concerns.
+By a false analogy it could easily be argued that no Roman commission
+should be allowed to disturb their peaceful agricultural relations and
+to produce a social revolution within their borders. The allies now
+sought a champion for their cause, since the constitution supplied no
+mechanism for the direct expression of Italian grievances. The
+complaints of individual cities had in the past been borne to the senate
+and voiced by the Roman patrons of these towns. Now that a champion for
+the confederacy was needed, a common patron had to be created. He was
+immediately found in Scipio Aemilianus.[446]
+
+The choice was inevitable and was dictated by three potent
+considerations. There was the dignity of the man, recently raised to its
+greatest height by the capture of Numantia; there was his known
+detachment from the recent Gracchan policy and his forcibly expressed
+dislike of the means by which it had been carried through; there was the
+further conviction based on his recent utterances that he had little
+liking for the Roman proletariate. The news of Gracchus's fall had been
+brought to Scipio in the camp before Numantia; his epitaph on the
+murdered tribune was that which the stern Hellenic goddess of justice
+and truth breathes over the slain Aegisthus:--
+
+    So perish all who do the like again.[447]
+
+To Scipio Gracchus's undertaking must have seemed an act of impudent
+folly, its conduct must have appeared something worse than madness. In
+all probability it was not the agrarian movement which roused his
+righteous horror, but the gross violation of the constitution which
+seemed to him to be involved in the inception and consequences of the
+plan. Of all political temperaments that of the Moderate is the least
+forgiving, just because it is the most timorous. He sees the gulf that
+yawns at his own feet, he lacks the courage to take the leap, and sets
+up his own halting attitude, of which he is secretly ashamed, as the
+correct demeanour for all sensible and patriotic men. The Conservative
+can appreciate the efforts of the Radical, for each is ennobled by the
+pursuit of the impossible; but the man of half measures and
+indeterminate aims, while contemning both, will find the reaction from
+violent change a more potent sentiment even than his disgust at corrupt
+immobility. Probably Scipio had never entertained such a respect for the
+Roman constitution as during those busy days in camp, when the incidents
+of the blockade were varied by messages describing the wild proceedings
+of his brother-in-law at Rome. Yet Scipio must have known that an
+unreformed government could give him nothing corresponding to his
+half-shaped ideals of a happy peasantry, a disciplined and effective
+soldiery, an uncorrupt administration that would deal honestly and
+gently with the provincials. His own position was in itself a strong
+condemnation of the powers at Rome. They were relying for military
+efficiency on a single man. Why should not they rely for political
+efficiency on another? But the latter question did not appeal to Scipio.
+To tread the beaten path was not the way to make an army; but it was
+good enough for politics.
+
+Scipio did not scorn the honours of a triumph, and the victory of
+Numantia was followed by the usual pageant in the streets.[448] He was
+unquestionably the foremost man of Rome, and senate and commons hung on
+his lips to catch some definite expression of his attitude to recent
+events, or to those which were stirring men's minds in the present. They
+had not long to wait, for a test was soon presented. When in 131 Carbo
+introduced his bill permitting re-election to the tribunate, all the
+resources of Scipio's dignified oratory were at the disposal of the
+senate, and the coalition of his admirers with the voters whom the
+senate could dispose of, was fatal to the chances of the bill.[449] Such
+an attitude need not have weakened his popularity; for excellent reasons
+could be given, in the interest of popular government itself, against
+permitting any magistracy to become continuous, But his political
+enemies were on the watch, and in one of the debates on the measure care
+was taken that a question should be put, the answer to which must either
+identify or compromise him with the new radicalism. Carbo asked him what
+he thought about the death of Tiberius Gracchus. Scipio's answer was
+cautious but precise; "If Gracchus had formed the intention of seizing
+on the administration of the State, he had been justly slain." It was
+merely a restatement of the old constitutional theory that one who aimed
+at monarchy was by that very fact an outlaw. But the answer,
+hypothetical as was its expression, implied a suspicion of Gracchus's
+aims. It did not please the crowd; there was a roar of dissent. Then
+Scipio lost his temper. The contempt of the soldier for the civilian, of
+the Roman for the foreigner, of the man of pure for the man of mixed
+blood--a contempt inflamed to passion by the thought that men such as he
+were often at the mercy of these wretches--broke through all reserve. "I
+have never been frightened by the clamour of the enemy in arms," he
+shouted, "shall I be alarmed by your cries, ye step-sons of Italy?" This
+reflection on the lineage of his audience naturally aroused another
+protest. It was met by the sharp rejoinder, "I brought you in chains to
+Rome; you are freed now, but none the more terrible for that!" [450] It
+was a humiliating spectacle. The most respected man in Rome was using
+the vulgar abuse of the streets to the sovereign people; and the man who
+used this language was so blinded by prejudice as not to see that the
+blood which he reviled gave the promise of a new race, that the mob
+which faced him was not a crowd of Italian peasants, willing victims of
+the martinet, that the Asiatic and the Greek, with their sordid clothes
+and doubtful occupations, possessed more intelligence than the Roman
+members of the Scipionic circle and might one day be the rulers of Rome.
+The new race was one of infinite possibilities. It needed guidance, not
+abuse. Carbo and his friends must have been delighted with the issue of
+their experiment. Scipio had paid the first instalment to that treasury
+of hatred, which was soon to prove his ruin and to make his following a
+thing of the past.
+
+Such was the position of Scipio when he was approached by the Italians.
+His interest in their fortunes was twofold. First he viewed them with a
+soldier's eye.[451] They were tending more and more to form the flower
+of the Roman armies abroad: and, although in obedience to civic
+sentiment he had employed a heavier scourge on the backs of the
+auxiliaries than on those of the Roman troops before Numantia,[452] the
+chastisement, which he would have doubtless liked to inflict on all, was
+but an expression of his interest in their welfare. Next he admired the
+type for its own sake. The sturdy peasant class was largely represented
+here, and he probably had more faith in its permanence amongst the
+federate cities than amongst the needy burgesses whom the commissioners
+were attempting to restore to agriculture. He could not have seen the
+momentous consequences which would follow from a championship of the
+Italian allies against the interests of the urban proletariate; that
+such a dualism of interests would lead to increased demands on the part
+of the one, to a sullen resistance on the part of the other; that in
+this mere attempt to check the supposed iniquities of a too zealous
+commission lay the germ of the franchise movement and the Social War.
+His protection was a matter of justice and of interest. The allies had
+deserved well and should not be robbed; they were the true protectors of
+Rome and their loyalty must not be shaken. Scipio, therefore, took their
+protest to the senate. He respected the susceptibilities of the people
+so far as to utter no explicit word of adverse criticism on the Gracchan
+measure; but he dwelt on the difficulties which attended its execution,
+and he suggested that the commissioners were burdened with an invidious
+task in having to decide the disputed questions connected with the land
+which they annexed. By the nature of the case their judgments might
+easily appear to the litigants as tinged with prejudice. It would be
+better, he suggested, if the functions of jurisdiction were separated
+from those of distribution and the former duties given to some other
+authority.[453] The senate accepted the suggestion, and its
+reasonableness must have appealed even to the people, for the measure
+embodying it must have passed the Comitia, which alone could abrogate
+the Gracchan law.[454] Possibly some recent judgments of the
+commissioners had produced a sense of uneasiness amongst large numbers
+of the citizen body, and there may have been a feeling that it would be
+to the advantage of all parties if the cause of scandal were removed.
+Perhaps none but the inner circle of statesmen could have predicted the
+consequences of the change. The decision of the agrarian disputes was
+now entrusted to the consuls, who were the usual vehicles of
+administrative jurisdiction. The history of the past had proved over and
+over again the utter futility of entrusting the administration of an
+extraordinary and burdensome department to the regular magistrates. They
+were too busy to attend to it, even if they had the will. But in this
+case even the will was lacking. Of the two consuls Manius Aquillius was
+destined for the war in Asia, and his colleague Caius Sempronius
+Tuditanus had no sooner put his hand to the new work than he saw that
+the difficulties of adjudication had been by no means the creation of
+the commissioners. He answered eagerly to the call of a convenient
+Illyrian war and quitted the judgment seat for the less harassing
+anxieties of the camp.[455] The functions of the commissioners were
+paralysed; they seem now to have reached a limit where every particle of
+land for distribution was the subject of dispute, and, as there was no
+authority in existence to settle the contested claims, the work of
+assignation was brought to a sudden close. The masses of eager
+claimants, that still remained unsatisfied, felt that they had been
+betrayed; the feeling spread amongst the urban populace, and the name of
+Scipio was a word that now awoke suspicion and even execration.[456] It
+was not merely the sense of betrayal that aroused this hostile
+sentiment; the people charged him with ingratitude. Masses of men, like
+individuals, love a _protege_ more than a benefactor. They have a pride
+in looking at the colossal figure which they have helped to create. And
+had not they in a sense made Scipio? Their love had been quickened by
+the sense of danger; they had braved the anger of the nobles to put
+power into his hands; they had twice raised him to the consulship in
+violation of the constitution. And now what was their reward? He had
+deliberately chosen to espouse the cause of the allies and oppose the
+interests of the Roman electorate. Scipio's enemies had good material to
+work upon. The casual grumblings of the streets were improved on, and
+formulated in the openly expressed belief that his real intention was
+the repeal of the Sempronian law, and in the more far-fetched suspicion
+that he meant to bring a military force to bear on the Roman mob, with
+its attendant horrors of street massacre or hardly less bloody
+persecution.[457]
+
+The attacks on Scipio were not confined to the informal language of
+private intercourse. Hostile magistrates introduced his enemies to the
+Rostra, and men like Fulvius Flaccus inveighed bitterly against
+him.[458] On the day when one of these attacks was made, Scipio was
+defending his position before the people; he had been stung by the
+charge of ingratitude, for he retorted it on his accusers; he complained
+that an ill return was being made to him for his many services to the
+State. In the evening Scipio was escorted from the senate to his house
+by a crowd of sympathisers. Besides senators and other Romans the escort
+comprised representatives of his new clients, the Latins and the Italian
+allies.[459] His mind was full of the speech which he meant to deliver
+to the people on the following day. He retired early to his sleeping
+chamber and placed his writing tablet beside his bed, that he might fix
+the sudden inspirations of his waking hours. When morning dawned, he was
+found lying on his couch but with every trace of life extinct. The
+family inquisition on the slaves of the household was held as a matter
+of course. Their statements were never published to the world, but it
+was believed that under torture they had confessed to seeing certain men
+introduced stealthily during the night through the back part of the
+house; these, they thought, had strangled their master.[460] The reason
+which they assigned for their reticence was their fear of the people;
+they knew that Scipio's death had not appeased the popular fury, that
+the news had been received with joy, and they did not wish by invidious
+revelations to become the victims of the people's hate. The fears of the
+slaves were subsequently reflected in the minds of those who would have
+been willing to push the investigation further. There was ground for
+suspicion; for Scipio, although some believed him delicate,[461] had
+shown no sign of recent illness. A scrutiny of the body is even said to
+have revealed a livid impress near the throat.[462] The investigation
+which followed a sudden death within the walls of a Roman household, if
+it revealed the suspicion of foul play, was usually the preliminary to a
+public inquiry. The duty of revenge was sacred; it appealed to the
+family even more than to the public conscience. But there was no one to
+raise the cry for retribution. He had no sons, and his family was
+represented but by his loveless wife Sempronia. His many friends must
+indeed have talked of making the matter public, and perhaps began at
+once to give vent to those dark suspicions which down to a late age
+clouded the names of so many of the dead man's contemporaries. But the
+project is said to have been immediately opposed by representatives of
+the popular party;[463] the crime, if crime there was, had been no
+vulgar murder; a suspicion that violence had been used was an insult to
+the men who had fought him fairly in the political field; a _quaestio_
+instituted by the senate might be a mere pretext for a judicial murder;
+it might be the ruse by which the nobles sought to compass the death of
+the people's new favourite and rising hope, Caius Gracchus. Ultimately
+those who believed in the murder and pined to avenge it, were
+constrained to admit that it was wiser to avoid a disgraceful political
+wrangle over the body of their dead hero. But, for the retreat to be
+covered, it must be publicly announced by those who had most authority
+to speak, that Scipio had died a natural death. This was accordingly the
+line taken by Laelius, when he wrote the funeral oration which Quintus
+Fabius Maximus delivered over the body of his uncle;[464] "We cannot
+sufficiently mourn this death by disease" were words purposely spoken to
+be an index to the official version of the decease. The fear of
+political disturbance which veiled the details of the tragedy, also
+dictated that the man, whom friends and enemies alike knew to have been
+the greatest of his age, should have no public funeral.[465]
+
+The government might well fear a scandalous scene--the Forum with its
+lanes and porticoes crowded by a snarling holiday crowd, the laudation
+of the speakers interrupted by gibes and howls, the free-fight that
+would probably follow the performance of the obsequies.
+
+But suppression means rumour. The mystery was profoundly enjoyed by this
+and subsequent ages. Every name that political or domestic circumstances
+could conveniently suggest, was brought into connection with Scipio's
+death. Caius Gracchus,[466] Fulvius Flaccus,[467] Caius Papirius
+Carbo[468] were all indifferently mentioned. Suspicion clung longest to
+Carbo, probably as the man who had lately come into the most direct
+conflict with his supposed victim; even Carbo's subsequent conversion to
+conservatism could not clear his name, and his guilt seems to have been
+almost an article of faith amongst the optimates of the Ciceronian
+period. But there were other versions which hinted at domestic crime.
+Did not Cornelia have an interest in removing the man who was undoing
+the work of her son, and might she not have had a willing accomplice in
+Scipio's wife Sempronia?[469] It was believed that this marriage of
+arrangement had never been sanctioned by love; Sempronia was plain and
+childless, and the absence of a husband's affection may have led her to
+think only of her duties as a daughter and a sister.[470] People who
+were too sane for these extravagances, but were yet unwilling to accept
+the prosaic solution of a natural death and give up the pleasant task of
+conjecture, suggested that Scipio had found death by his own hand. The
+motive assigned was the sense of his inability to keep the promises
+which he had made.[471] These promises may have been held to be certain
+suggestions for the amelioration of the condition of the Latin and
+Italian allies.
+
+But it required no conjecture and no suspicion to emphasise the tragic
+nature of Scipio's death. He was but fifty-six; he was by far the
+greatest general that Rome could command, a champion who could spring
+into the breach when all seemed lost, make an army out of a rabble and
+win victory from defeat; he was a great moral force, the scourge of the
+new vices, the enemy of the provincial oppressor; he was the greatest
+intellectual influence in aristocratic Rome, embellishing the staid
+rigour of the ancient Roman with something of the humanism of the Greek;
+Xenophon was the author who appealed most strongly to his simple and
+manly tastes; and his purity of soul and clearness of intellect were
+fitly expressed in the chasteness and elegance of his Latin style. The
+modern historian has not to tax his fancy in discovering great qualities
+in Scipio; the mind of every unprejudiced contemporary must have echoed
+the thought of Laelius, when he wrote in his funeral speech "We cannot
+thank the gods enough that they gave to Rome in preference to other
+states a man with a heart and intellect like this".[472] But the
+dominant feeling amongst thinking men, who had any respect for the
+empire and the constitution, was that of panic at the loss. Quintus
+Metellus Macedonicus had been his political foe; but when the tidings of
+death were brought him, he was like one distraught. "Citizens," he
+wailed, "the walls of our city are in ruins." [473] And that a great
+breach had been made in the political and military defences of Rome is
+again the burden of Laelius's complaint, "He has perished at a time when
+a mighty man is needed by you and by all who wish the safety of this
+commonwealth." These utterances were not merely a lament for a great
+soldier, but the mourning for a man who might have held the balance
+between classes and saved a situation that was becoming intolerable. We
+cannot say whether any definite means of escape from the brewing storm
+was present to Scipio's mind, or, if he had evolved a plan, whether he
+was master of the means to render it even a temporary success. Perhaps
+he had meddled too little with politics to have acquired the dexterity
+requisite for a reconciler. Possibly his pride and his belief in the
+aristocracy as an aggregate would have stood in his way. But he was a
+man of moderate views who led a middle party, and he attracted the
+anxious attention of men who believed that salvation would not come from
+either of the extremes. He had once been the favourite of the crowd, and
+might be again, he commanded the distant respect of the nobility, and he
+had all Italy at his side. Was there likely to be a man whose position
+was better suited to a reconciliation of the war of jarring interests?
+Perhaps not; but at the time of his death the first steps which he had
+taken had only widened the horizon of war. He found a struggle between
+the commons and the nobles; he emphasised, although he had not created,
+the new struggle between the commons and Italy. His next step would have
+been decisive, but this he was not fated to take.
+
+When we turn from the history of the agrarian movement and its
+unexpected consequences to other items in the internal fortunes of Rome
+during this period, we find that Tiberius Gracchus had left another
+legacy to the State. This was the idea of a magistracy which, freed from
+the restraint of consulting the senate, should busy itself with
+political reform, remove on its own initiative the obstacles which the
+constitution threw in the path of its progress, and effect the
+regeneration of Rome and even of Italy by means of ordinances elicited
+from the people. The social question was here as elsewhere the efficient
+cause; but it left results which seemed strangely disproportionate to
+their source. The career of Gracchus had shown that the leadership of
+the people was encumbered by two weaknesses. These were the packing of
+assemblies by dependants of the rich, whose votes were known and whose
+voices were therefore under control, and the impossibility of
+re-election to office, which rendered a continuity of policy on the part
+of the demagogue impossible. It was the business of the tribunate of
+Carbo to remove both these hindrances to popular power. His first
+proposal was to introduce voting by ballot in the legislative
+assemblies;[474] it was one that could not easily be resisted, since the
+principle of the ballot had already been recognised in elections, and in
+all judicial processes with the exception of trials for treason. These
+measures seem to have had the support of the party of moderate reform:
+and Scipio and his friends probably offered no resistance to the new
+application of the principle. Without their support, and unprovided with
+arguments which might excite the fears or jealousy of the people, the
+nobility was powerless: and the bill, therefore, easily became law. The
+change thus introduced was unquestionably a great one. Hitherto the
+country voters had been the most independent; now the members of the
+urban proletariate were equally free, and from this time forth the voice
+of the city could find an expression uninfluenced by the smiles or
+frowns of wealthy patrons. The ballot produced its intended effect more
+fully in legislation than in election; its introduction into the latter
+sphere caused the nobility to become purchasers instead of directors;
+but it was seldom that a law affected individual interests so directly
+as to make a bargain for votes desirable. The chief bribery found in the
+legislative assemblies was contained in the proposal submitted by the
+demagogue.
+
+Carbo's second proposal, that immediate and indefinite re-election to
+the tribunate should be permitted, was not recommended on the same
+grounds of precedent or reason. The analogies of the Roman constitution
+were opposed to it, and the rules against the perpetuity of office which
+limited the patrician magistracies, and made even a single re-election
+to the consulship illegal,[475] while framed in support of aristocratic
+government, had had as their pretext the security of the Republic, and
+therefore ostensibly of popular freedom and control. Again, the people
+might be reminded that the tribunate was not always a power friendly to
+their interests, and that the veto which blocked the expression of their
+will might be continued to a second year by the obstinate persistence of
+a minority of voters. Excellent arguments of a popular kind could be,
+and probably were, employed against the proposal. Certainly the
+sentiment which really animated the opposition could have found little
+favour with the masses, who ultimately voted for the rejection of the
+bill. All adherents of senatorial government must have seen in the
+success of the measure the threat of a permanent opposition, the
+possibility of the rise of official demagogues of the Greek type,
+monarchs in reality though, not in name, the proximity of a Gracchan
+movement unhampered by the weakness which had led to Gracchus's fall. It
+is easier for an electorate to maintain a principle by the maintenance
+of a personality than to show its fervour for a creed by submitting new
+and untried exponents to a rigid confession of faith. The senate knew
+that causes wax and wane with the men who have formulated them, and it
+had always been more afraid of individuals than of masses. Scipio's view
+of the Gracchan movement and his acceptance of the cardinal maxims of
+existing statecraft, prepare us for the attitude which he assumed on
+this occasion. His speech against the measure was believed to have been
+decisive in turning the scale. He was supported by his henchmen, and the
+faithful Laelius also gave utterance to the protests of the moderates
+against the unwelcome innovation. This victory, if decisive, would have
+made the career of Caius Gracchus impossible--a career which, while it
+fully justified the attitude of the opposition, more than fulfilled the
+designs of the advocates of the change. But the triumph was evanescent.
+Within the next eight years re-election to the tribunate was rendered
+possible under certain circumstances. The successful proposal is said to
+have taken the form of permitting any one to be chosen, if the number of
+candidates fell short of the ten places which were to be filled.[476]
+This arrangement was probably represented as a corollary of the ancient
+religious injunction which forbade the outgoing tribunes to leave the
+Plebs unprovided with guardians; and this presentment of the case
+probably weakened the arguments of the opposition. The aristocratic
+party could hardly have misconceived the import of the change. It was
+intended that a party which desired the re-election of a tribune should,
+by withdrawing some of its candidates at the last moment,[477] qualify
+him for reinvestiture with the magistracy.
+
+The party of reform were rightly advised in attempting to secure an
+adequate mechanism for the fulfilment of a democratic programme before
+they put their wishes into shape. That they were less fortunate in the
+proposals that they formulated, was due to the fact that these proposals
+were at least as much the result of necessity as of deliberate choice.
+The agrarian question was still working its wicked will. It hung like an
+incubus round the necks of democrats and forced them into most
+undemocratic paths. The legacy left by Scipio had become the burdensome
+inheritance of his foes. Italian claims were now the impasse which
+stopped the present distribution and the future acquisition of land. The
+minds of many were led to inquire whether it might not be possible to
+strike a bargain with the allies, and thus began that mischievous
+co-operation between a party in Rome and the protected towns in Italy,
+which suggested hopes that could not be satisfied, led to open revolt as
+the result of the disappointment engendered by failure, and might easily
+be interpreted as veiling treasonable designs against the Roman State,
+The franchise was to be offered to the Italian towns on condition that
+they waived their rights in the public land.[478] The details of the
+bargain were probably unknown, even to contemporaries, for the
+negotiations demanded secrecy; but it is clear that the arrangements
+must have been at once general and complex; for no organisation is
+likely to have existed that could bind each Italian township to the
+agreement, nor could any town have undertaken to prejudice all the
+varying rights of its individual citizens. When the Italians eagerly
+accepted the offer, a pledge must have been got from their leading men
+that the local governments would not press their claims to the disputed
+land as an international question; for it was under this aspect that the
+dispute presented the gravest difficulties. The commons of these states
+might be comforted by the assurance that, when they had become Roman
+citizens, they would themselves be entitled to share in the
+assignations. These negotiations, which may have extended over two or
+three years, ended by bringing crowds of Italians to Rome. They had no
+votes; but the moral influence of their presence was very great. They
+could applaud or hiss the speakers in the informal gatherings of the
+Contio; it was not impossible that in the last resort they might lend
+physical aid to that section of the democrats which had advocated their
+cause. It might even have been possible to manufacture votes for some of
+these immigrants. A Latin domiciled in Rome always enjoyed a limited
+suffrage in the Comitia, and a pretended domicile might easily be
+invented for a temporary resident. Nor was it even certain that the
+wholly unqualified foreigner might not give a surreptitious vote; for
+the president of the assembly was the man interested in the passing of
+the bill, and his subordinates might be instructed not to submit the
+qualifications of the voters to too strict a scrutiny. It was under
+these circumstances that the senate resorted to the device, rare but not
+unprecedented, of an alien act. Following its instructions, the tribune
+Marcus Junius Pennus introduced a proposal that foreigners should be
+excluded from the city.[479] We know nothing of the wording of the act.
+It may have made no specific mention of Italians, and its operation was
+presumably limited to strangers not domiciled before a certain date.
+But, like all similar provisions, it must have contained further
+limitations, for it is inconceivable that the foreign trader, engaged in
+legitimate business, was hustled summarily from the city. But, however
+limited its scope, its end was clear: and the fact that it passed the
+Comitia shows that the franchise movement was by no means wholly
+popular. A crowd is not so easy of conversion as an individual. Recent
+events must have caused large numbers of the urban proletariate to hate
+the very name of the Italians, and the idea of sharing the privileges of
+empire with the foreigner must already have been distasteful to the
+average Roman mind. It was in vain that Caius Gracchus, to whom the
+suggestion of his brother was already becoming a precept, tried to
+emphasise the political ruin which the spirit of exclusiveness had
+brought to cities of the past.[480] The appeal to history and to nobler
+motives must have fallen on deaf ears. It is possible, however, that the
+personality of the speaker might have been of some avail, had he been
+ably supported, and had the people seen all their leaders united on the
+question of the day. But there is reason for supposing that serious
+differences of opinion existed amongst these leaders as to the wisdom of
+the move. Some may have held that the party of reform had merely drifted
+in this direction, that the proposal for enfranchisement had never been
+considered on its own merits, and that they had no mandate from the
+people for purchasing land at this costly price. It may have been at
+this time that Carbo first showed his dissatisfaction with the party, of
+which he had almost been the accepted leader. If he declined to
+accompany his colleagues on this new and untried path, the first step in
+his conversion to the party of the optimates betrays no inconsistency
+with his former attitude; for he could maintain with justice that the
+proposal for enfranchising Italy was not a popular measure either in
+spirit or in fact.
+
+It was, therefore, with more than doubtful chances of success that
+Fulvius Flaccus, who was consul in the following year, attempted to
+bring the question to an issue by an actual proposal of citizenship for
+the allies. The details of his scheme of enfranchisement have been very
+imperfectly preserved.[481] We are unaware whether, like Caius Gracchus
+some three years later, he proposed to endow the Latins with higher
+privileges than the other allies: and, although he contemplated the
+non-acceptance of Roman citizenship by some of the allied communities,
+since he offered these cities the right of appeal to the people as a
+substitute for the status which they declined, we do not know whether
+his bill granted citizenship at once to all accepting states, or merely
+opened a way for a request for this right to come from individual cities
+to the Roman people. But it is probable that the bill in some way
+asserted the willingness of the people to confer the franchise, and
+that, if any other steps were involved in the method of conferment, they
+were little more than formal. The fact that the _provocatio_ was
+contemplated as a substitute for citizenship is at once a proof that the
+old spirit of state life, which viewed absorption as extermination, was
+known still to be strong in some of the Italian communes, and that many
+of the individual Italians were believed to value the citizenship mainly
+as a means of protecting their persons against Roman officialdom. That
+the democratic party was strong at the moment when this proposal was
+given to the world is shown by the fact that Flaccus filled the
+consulship; that it had little sympathy with his scheme is proved by the
+isolation of the proposer and by the manner in which the senate was
+allowed to intervene. The conferment of the franchise had been proved to
+be essentially a popular prerogative;[482] the consultation of the
+senate on such a point might be advisable, but was by no means
+necessary; for, in spite of the ruling theory that the authority of the
+senate should be respected in all matters of legislation, the complex
+Roman constitution recognised shades of difference, determined by the
+quality of the particular proposal, with respect to the observance of
+this rule. The position of Flaccus was legally stronger than that of
+Tiberius Gracchus had been. Had he been well supported by men of
+influence or by the masses, the senate's judgment might have been set at
+naught. But the people were cold, Carbo had probably turned away, and
+Caius Gracchus had gone as quaestor to Sardinia. The senate was
+emboldened to adopt a firm attitude. They invited the consul to take
+them into his confidence. After much delay he entered the senate house;
+but a stubborn silence was his only answer to the admonitions and
+entreaties of the fathers that he would desist from his purpose.[483]
+Flaccus knew the futility of arguing with people who had adopted a
+foregone conclusion; he would not even deign to accept a graceful
+retreat from an impossible position. The matter must be dropped; but to
+withdraw it at the exhortation of the senate, although complimentary to
+his peers and perhaps not unpleasing even to the people in their present
+humour, would prejudice the chances of the future. In view of better
+days it was wiser to shelve than to discard the measure. His attitude
+may also have been influenced by pledges made to the allies; to these,
+helpless as he was, he would yet be personally faithful. His fidelity
+would have been put to a severe test had he remained in Italy; but the
+supreme magistrate at Rome had always a refuge from a perplexing
+situation. The voice of duty called him abroad,[484] and Flaccus set
+forth to shelter Massilia from the Salluvii and to build up the Roman
+power in Transalpine Gaul.[485] Perhaps only a few of the leading
+democrats had knowledge enough to suspect the terrible consequences that
+might be involved in the failure of the proposal for conferring the
+franchise. To the senate and the Roman world they must have caused as
+much astonishment as alarm. It could never have been dreamed that the
+well-knit confederacy, which had known no spontaneous revolt since the
+rising of Falerii in the middle of the third century, could again be
+disturbed by internal war. Now the very centre of this confederacy, that
+loyal nucleus which had been unshaken by the victories of Hannibal, was
+to be the scene of an insurrection, the product of hope long deferred,
+of expectations recently kindled by injudicious promises, of resentment
+at Pennus's success and Flaccus's failure. Fregellae, the town which
+assumed the lead in the movement and either through overhaste or faulty
+information alone took the fatal step,[486] was a Latin colony which had
+been planted by Rome in the territory of the Volsci in the year 328
+B.C.[487] The position of the town had ensured its prosperity even
+before it fell into the hands of Rome. It lay on the Liris in a rich
+vine-growing country, and within that circle of Latin and Campanian
+states, which had now become the industrial centre of Italy. It was
+itself the centre of the group of Latin colonies that lay as bulwarks of
+Rome between the Appian and Latin roads, and had in the Hannibalic war
+been chosen as the mouthpiece of the eighteen faithful cities, when
+twelve of the Latin states grew weary of their burdens and wavered in
+their allegiance.[488] The importance of the city was manifest and of
+long-standing, its self-esteem was doubtless great, and it perhaps
+considered that its signal services had been inadequately recompensed by
+Rome. But its peculiar grievances are unknown, or the particular reasons
+which gave Roman citizenship such an excessive value in its eyes. It is
+possible that its thriving farmer class had been angered by the agrarian
+commission and by undue demands for military service, and, in spite of
+the commercial equality with the Romans which they enjoyed in virtue of
+their Latin rights, they may have compared their position unfavourably
+with that of communities in the neighbourhood which had received the
+Roman franchise in full. Towns like Arpinum, Fundi and Formiae had been
+admitted to the citizen body without forfeiting their self-government.
+Absorption need not now entail the almost penal consequences of the
+dissolution of the constitution; while the possession of citizenship
+ensured the right of appeal and a full participation in the religious
+festivals and the amenities of the capital. It is also possible that, in
+the case of a prosperous industrial and agricultural community situated
+actually within Latium, the desire for actively participating in the
+decisions of the sovereign people may have played its part. But
+sentiment probably had in its councils as large a share as reason: and
+the fact that this sentiment led to premature action, and that the fall
+of the state was due to treason, may lead as to suppose that the Romans
+had to deal with a divided people and that one section of the community,
+perhaps represented by the upper or official class, although it may have
+sympathised with the general desire for the attainment of the franchise,
+was by no means prepared to stake the ample fortunes of the town on the
+doubtful chance of successful rebellion. A prolonged resistance of the
+citizens within their walls might have given the impulse to a general
+rising of the Latins. Had Fregellae played the part of a second
+Numantia, the Social War might have been anticipated by thirty-five
+years. But the advantage to be gained from time was foiled by treason. A
+certain Numitorius Pullus betrayed the state to the praetor Lucius
+Opimius, who had been sent with an army from Rome. Had Fregellae stood
+alone, it might have been spared; but it was felt that some extreme
+measure either of concession or of terrorism was necessary to keep
+discontent from assuming the same fiery form in other communities. In
+the later war with the allies a greater danger was bought off by
+concession. But there the disease had run its course; here it was met in
+its earliest stage, and the familiar devise of excision was felt to be
+the true remedy. The principle of the "awful warning," which Alexander
+had applied to Thebes and Rome to Corinth, doomed the greatest of the
+Latin cities to destruction. Regardless of the past services of
+Fregellae and of the fact that the passion for the franchise was the
+most indubitable sign of the loyalty of the town, the government ordered
+that the walls of the surrendered city should be razed and that the town
+should become a mere open village undistinguished by any civic
+privilege.[489] A portion of its territory was during the next year
+employed for the foundation of the citizen colony of Fabrateria.[490]
+The new settlement was the typical Roman garrison in a disaffected
+country. But it proved the weakness of the present regime that such a
+crude and antiquated method should have to be employed in the heart of
+Latium. Security, however, was perhaps not the sole object of the
+foundation. The confiscated land of Fregellae was a boon to a government
+sadly in need of popularity at home.
+
+An excellent opportunity was now offered for impressing the people with
+the enormity of the offence that had been committed by some of their
+leaders, and prosecutions were directed against the men who had been
+foremost in support of the movement for extending the franchise. It was
+pretended that they had suggested designs as well as kindled hopes. The
+fate of the lesser advocates of the Italian cause is unknown; but Caius
+Gracchus, against whom an indictment was directed, cleared his name of
+all complicity in the movement.[491] The effect of these measures of
+suppression was not to improve matters for the future. The allies were
+burdened with a new and bitter memory; their friends at Rome were
+furnished with a new cause for resentment. If the Roman people continued
+selfish and apathetic, a leader might arise who would find the Italians
+a better support for his position than the Roman mob. If he did not
+arise or if he failed, the sole but certain arbitrament was that of
+the sword.
+
+The foreign activity of Rome during this period did not reflect the
+troubled spirit of the capital. It was of little moment that petty wars
+were being waged in East and West, and that bulletins sometimes brought
+news of a general's defeat. Rome was accustomed to these things; and her
+efforts were still marked by their usual characteristics of steady
+expansion and decorous success. To predicate failure of her foreign
+activity for this period is to predicate it for all her history, for
+never was an empire more slowly won or more painfully preserved. It is
+true that at the commencement of this epoch an imperialist might have
+been justified in taking a gloomy view of the situation. In Spain
+Numantia was inflicting more injury on Roman prestige than on Roman
+power, while the long and harassing slave-war was devastating Sicily.
+But these perils were ultimately overcome, and meanwhile circumstances
+had led to the first extension of provincial rule over the wealthy East.
+
+The kingdom of Pergamon had long been the mainstay of Rome's influence
+in the Orient. Her contact with the other protected princedoms was
+distant and fitful; but as long as her mandates could be issued through
+this faithful vassal, and he could rely on her whole-hearted support in
+making or meeting aggressions, the balance of power in the East was
+tolerably secure. It had been necessary to make Eumenes the Second see
+that he was wholly in the power of Rome, her vassal and not her ally. He
+had been rewarded and strengthened, not for his own deserts, but that he
+might be fitted to become the policeman of Western Asia, and it had been
+successfully shown that the hand which gave could also take away. The
+lesson was learnt by the Pergamene power, and fortunately the dynasty
+was too short-lived for a king to arise who should forget the crushing
+display of Roman power which had followed the Third Macedonian War, or
+for the realisation of that greater danger of a protectorate--a struggle
+for the throne which should lead one of the pretenders to appeal to a
+national sentiment and embark on a national war. Eumenes at his death
+had left a direct successor in the person of his son Attalus, who had
+been born to him by his wife Stratonice, the daughter of Ariarathes King
+of Cappadocia.[492] But Attalus was a mere boy at the time of his
+father's death, and the choice of a guardian was of vital importance for
+the fortunes of the monarchy. Every consideration pointed to the uncle
+of the heir, and in the strong hands of Attalus the Second the regency
+became practically a monarchy.[493] The new ruler was a man of more than
+middle age, of sober judgment, and deeply versed in all the mysteries of
+kingcraft; for a mutual trust, rare amongst royal brethren in the East,
+had led Eumenes to treat him more as a colleague than as a lieutenant.
+He had none of the insane ambition which sees in the diadem the good to
+which all other blessings may be fitly sacrificed, and had resisted the
+invitation of a Roman coterie that he should thrust his suspected
+brother from the throne and reign himself as the acknowledged favourite
+of Rome. In the case of Attalus familiarity with the suzerain power had
+not bred contempt. He had served with Manlius in Galatia[494] and with
+Paulus in Macedonia,[495] and had been sent at least five times as envoy
+to the capital itself.[496] The change from a private station to a
+throne did not alter his conviction that the best interests of his
+country would be served by a steady adherence to the power, whose
+marvellous development to be the mainspring of Eastern politics was a
+miracle which he had witnessed with his own eyes. He had grasped the
+essentials of the Roman character sufficiently to see that this was not
+one of the temporary waves of conquest that had so often swept over the
+unchangeable East and spent their strength in the very violence of their
+flow, nor did he commit the error of mistaking self-restraint for
+weakness. Monarchs like himself were the necessary substitute for the
+dominion which the conquering State had been strong enough to spurn; and
+he threw himself zealously into the task of forwarding the designs of
+Rome in the dynastic struggles of the neighbouring nations. He helped to
+restore Ariarathes the Fifth to his kingdom of Cappadocia,[497] and
+appealed to Rome against the aggressions of Prusias the Second of
+Bithynia. He was saved by the decisive intervention of the senate, but
+not until he had been twice driven within the walls of his capital by
+his victorious enemy.[498] His own peace and the interests of Rome were
+now secured by his support of Nicomedes, the son of Prusias, who had won
+the favour of the Romans and was placed on the throne of his father. He
+had even interfered in the succession to the kingdom of the Seleucidae,
+when the Romans thought fit to support the pretensions of Alexander
+Balas to the throne of Syria.[499] Lastly he had sent assistance to the
+Roman armies in the conflict which ended in the final reduction of
+Greece.[500] There was no question of his abandoning his regency during
+his life-time. Rome could not have found a better instrument, and it was
+perhaps in obedience to the wishes of the senate, and certainly in
+accordance with their will, that he held the supreme power until his
+reign of twenty-one years was closed by his death.[501] Possibly the
+qualities of the rightful heir may not have inspired confidence, for a
+strong as well as a faithful friend was needed on the throne of
+Pergamon. The new ruler, Attalus the Third, threatened only the danger
+that springs from weakness; but, had not his rule been ended by an early
+death, it is possible that Roman intervention might have been called in
+to save the monarchy from the despair of his subjects, to hand it over
+to some more worthy vassal, or, in default of a suitable ruler, to
+reduce it to the form of a province. The restraint under which Attalus
+had lived during his uncle's guardianship, had given him the sense of
+impotence that issues in bitterness of temper and reckless suspicion.
+The suspicion became a mania when the death of his mother and his
+consort created a void in his life which he persisted in believing to be
+due to the criminal agency of man. Relatives and friends were now the
+immediate victims of his disordered mind,[502] and the carnival of
+slaughter was followed by an apathetic indifference to the things of the
+outer world. Dooming himself to a sordid seclusion, the king solaced his
+gloomy leisure with pursuits that had perhaps become habitual during his
+early detachment from affairs. He passed his time in ornamental
+gardening, modelling in wax, casting in bronze and working in
+metal.[503] His last great object in life was to raise a stately tomb to
+his mother Stratonice. It was while he was engaged in this pious task
+that exposure to the sun engendered an illness which caused his death.
+When the last of the legitimate Attalids had gone to his grave, it was
+found that the vacant kingdom had been disposed of by will, and that the
+Roman people was the nominated heir.[504] The genuineness of this
+document was subsequently disputed by the enemies of Rome, and it was
+pronounced to be a forgery perpetrated by Roman diplomats.[505] History
+furnishes evidence of the reality of the testament, but none of the
+influences under which it was made.[506] It is quite possible that the
+last eccentric king was jealous enough to will that he should have no
+successor on the throne, and cynical enough to see that it made little
+difference whether the actual power of Rome was direct or indirect. It
+is equally possible that the idea was suggested by the Romanising party
+in his court; although, when we remember the extreme unwillingness that
+Rome had ever shown to accept a position of permanent responsibility in
+the East, we can hardly imagine the plan to have received the direct
+sanction of the senate. It is conceivable, however, that many leading
+members of the government were growing doubtful of the success of merely
+diplomatic interference with the troubled politics of the East; that
+they desired a nearer point of vantage from which to watch the movements
+of its turbulent rulers; and that, if consulted on the chances of
+success which attended the new departure, they may have given a
+favourable reply. It was impossible by the nature of the case to
+question the validity of the act. The legatees were far too powerful to
+make it possible for their living chattels to raise an effective protest
+except by actual rebellion. But, from a legal point of view, a
+principality like Pergamon that had grown out of the successful seizure
+of a royal estate by its steward some hundred and fifty years before
+this time, might easily be regarded as the property of its kings;[507]
+and certainly if any heirs outside the royal family were to be admitted
+to the bequest, these would naturally be sought in the power, which had
+increased its dominions, strengthened its position and made it one of
+the great powers of the world. Neglected by Rome the principality would
+have become the prey of neighbouring powers; whilst the institution of a
+new prince, chosen from some royal house, would, have excited the
+jealousy and stimulated the rapacity of the others. The acceptance of
+the bequest was inevitable, although by this acceptance Rome was
+departing from the beaten track of a carefully chosen policy. It is
+hinted that Attalus in his bequest, or the Romans in their acceptance,
+stipulated for the freedom of the dominion.[508] This freedom may be
+merely a euphemism for provincial rule when contrasted with absolute
+despotism; but we may read a truer meaning into the term. Rome had often
+guaranteed the liberty of Asiatic cities which she had wrested from
+their overlord, she had once divided Macedonia into independent
+Republics, she still maintained Achaea in a condition which allowed a
+great deal of self-government to many of its towns, and the system of
+Roman protectorate melted by insensible degrees into that of provincial
+government. It is possible that her treatment of the bequeathed
+communities might have been marked by greater liberality than was
+actually shown, had not the dominion been immediately convulsed by a war
+of independence.
+
+A pretender had appeared from the house of the Attalids. He could show
+no legitimate scutcheon; but this was a small matter. If there was a
+chance of a national outbreak, it could best be fomented by a son of
+Eumenes. Aristonicus was believed to have been born of an Ephesian
+concubine of the king.[509] We know nothing of his personality, but the
+history of his two years' conflict with the Roman power proves him to
+have been no figure-head, but a man of ability, energy and resource. A
+strictly national cause was impossible in the kingdom of Pergamon; for
+there was little community of sentiment between the Greek coast line and
+the barbaric interior. But the commercial prosperity of the one, and the
+agricultural horrors of the other, might justify an appeal to interest
+based on different grounds. At first Aristonicus tried the sea. Without
+venturing at once into any of the great emporia, he raised his standard
+at Leucae, a small but strongly defended seaport lying almost midway
+between Phocaea and Smyrna, and placed on a promontory just south of the
+point where the Hermus issues into its gulf. Some of the leading towns
+seem to have answered to his call.[510] But the Ephesians, not content
+with mere repudiation, manned a fleet, sailed against him, and inflicted
+a severe defeat on his naval force off Cyme.[511] Evidently the
+commercial spirit had no liking for his schemes; it saw in the Roman
+protectorate the promise of a wider commerce and a broader civic
+freedom. Aristonicus moved into the interior, at first perhaps as a
+refugee, but soon as a liberator. There were men here desperate enough
+to answer to any call, and miserable enough to face any danger. Sicily
+had shown that a slave-leader might become a king; Asia was now to prove
+that a king might come to his own by heading an army of the
+outcasts.[512] The call to freedom met with an eager response, and the
+Pergamene prince was soon marching to the coast at the head of "the
+citizens of the City of the Sun," the ideal polity which these remnants
+of nationalities, without countries and without homes, seem to have made
+their own.[513] His success was instantaneous. First the inland towns of
+Northern Lydia, Thyatira, and Apollonis, fell into his hands.[514]
+Organised resistance was for the moment impossible. There were no Roman
+troops in Asia, and the protected kings, to whom Rome had sent an urgent
+summons, could not have mustered their forces with sufficient speed to
+prevent Aristonicus sweeping towards the south. Here he threatened the
+coast line of Ionia and Caria; Colophon and Myndus fell into his power:
+he must even have been able to muster something of a fleet; for the
+island of Samos was soon joined to his possessions.[515] It is probable
+that the co-operation of the slave populations in these various cities
+added greatly to his success. His conquests may have been somewhat
+sporadic, and there is no reason to suppose that he commanded all the
+country included in the wide range of his captured cities and extending
+from Thyatira to the coast and from the Gulf of Hermus to that of
+Iassus. The forces which he could dispose of seem to have been
+sufficiently engaged in holding their southern conquests; there is no
+trace of his controlling the country north of Phocaea or of his even
+attempting an attack on Pergamon the capital of his kingdom. His army,
+however, must have been increasing in dimensions as well as in
+experience. Thracian mercenaries were added to his servile bands,[516]
+and the movement had assumed dimensions which convinced the Romans that
+this was not a tumult but a war. Their earlier efforts were apparently
+based on the belief that local forces would be sufficient to stem the
+rising. Even after the revolt of Aristonicus was known, they persisted
+in the idea that the commission, which would doubtless in any case have
+been sent out to inspect the new dependency, was an adequate means of
+meeting the emergency. This commission of five,[517] which included
+Scipio Nasica, journeyed to Asia only to find that they were attending
+on a civil war, not on a judicial dispute, and that the country which
+was to be organised required to be conquered. The client kings of
+Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia and Pontus, all eager for praise or
+for reward, had rallied loyally to the cause of Rome;[518] but the
+auxiliary forces that they brought were quite unable to pacify a country
+now in the throes of a servile war, and they lacked a commander-in-chief
+who would direct a series of ordered operations. Orders were given for
+the raising of a regular army, and in accordance with the traditions of
+the State this force would be commanded by a consul.
+
+The heads of the State for this year were Lucius Valerius Flaccus and
+Publius Licinius Crassus. Each was covetous of the attractive command;
+for the Asiatic campaigns of the past had been easy, and there was no
+reason to suppose that a pretender who headed a multitude of slaves
+would be more difficult to vanquish than a king like Antiochus who had
+had at his call all the forces of Asia. The chances of a triumph were
+becoming scarcer; here was one that was almost within the commander's
+grasp. But there were even greater prizes in store. The happy conqueror
+would be the first to touch the treasure of the Attalids, and secure for
+the State a prize which had already been the source of political strife;
+he would reap for himself and his army a royal harvest from the booty
+taken in the field or from the sack of towns, and he would almost
+indubitably remain in the conquered country to organise, perhaps to
+govern for years, the wealthiest domain that had fallen to the lot of
+Rome, and to treat like a king with the monarchs of the protected states
+around. These attractions were sufficient to overcome the religious
+scruples of both the candidates; for it chanced that both Crassus and
+Flaccus were hampered by religious law from assuming a command abroad.
+The one was chief pontiff and the other the Flamen of Mars; and, if the
+objections were felt or pressed, the obvious candidate for the Asiatic
+campaign was Scipio Aemilianus, the only tried general of the time. But
+Scipio's chances were small. The nature of the struggle did not seem to
+demand extraordinary genius, and Scipio, although necessary in an
+emergency, could not be allowed to snatch the legitimate prizes of the
+holders of office.[519] So the contest lay between the pontiff and the
+priest. The controversy was unequal, for, while the pontiff was the
+disciplinary head of the state religion, the Flamen was in matters of
+ritual and in the rules appertaining to the observance of religious law
+subject to his jurisdiction. Crassus restrained the ardour of his
+colleague by announcing that he would impose a fine if the Flamen
+neglected his religious duties by quitting the shores of Italy. The
+pecuniary penalty was only intended as a means of stating a test case to
+be submitted, as similar cases had been twice before,[520] to the
+decision of the people. Flaccus entered an appeal against the fine, and
+the judgment of the Comitia was invited. The verdict of the people was
+that the fine should be remitted, but that the Flamen should obey the
+pontiff.[521] As Crassus had no superior in the religious world, it was
+difficult, if not impossible, for the objections against his own tenure
+of the foreign command to be pressed.[522] The people, perhaps grateful
+for the Gracchan sympathies of Crassus, felt no scruple about dismissing
+their pontiff to a foreign land, and readily voted him the conduct
+of the war.
+
+The story of the campaign which followed is confined to a few personal
+anecdotes connected with the remarkable man who led the Roman armies.
+The learning of Crassus was attested by the fact that, when he held a
+court in Asia, he could not only deliver his judgments in Greek, but
+adapt his discourse to the dialect of the different litigants.[523] His
+discipline was severe but indiscriminating; it displayed the rigour of
+the erudite martinet, not the insight of the born commander. Once he
+needed a piece of timber for a battering ram, and wrote to the architect
+of a friendly town to send the larger of two pieces which he had seen
+there. The trained eye of the expert immediately saw that the smaller
+was the better suited to the purpose; and this was accordingly sent. The
+intelligence of the architect was his ruin. The unhappy man was stripped
+and scourged, on the ground that the exercise of judgment by a
+subordinate was utterly subversive of a commander's authority.[524]
+Another account represents such generalship as he possessed as having
+been diverted from its true aim by the ardour with which, in spite of
+his enormous wealth, he followed up the traces of the spoils of
+war.[525] But his death, which took place at the beginning of the second
+year of his command,[526] was not unworthy of one who had held the
+consulship. He was conducting operations in the territory between Elaea
+and Smyrna, probably in preparation for the siege of Leucae,[527] still
+a stronghold of the pretender. Here he was suddenly surprised by the
+enemy. His hastily formed ranks were shattered, and the Romans were soon
+in full retreat for some friendly city of the north. But their lines
+were broken by uneven ground and by the violence of the pursuit. The
+general was detached from the main body of his army and overtaken by a
+troop of Thracian horse. His captors were probably ignorant of the value
+of their prize; and, even had they known that they held in their hands
+the leader of the Roman host, the device of Crassus might still have
+saved him from the triumph of a rebel prince and shameful exposure to
+the insults of a servile crowd. He thrust his riding whip into the eye
+of one of his captors. Frenzied with pain, the man buried his dagger in
+the captive's side.[528]
+
+The death of Crassus created hardly a pause in the conduct of the
+campaign; for Marcus Perperna, the consul for the year, was soon in the
+field and organising vigorous measures against Aristonicus. The details
+of the campaign have not been preserved, but we are told that the first
+serious encounter resulted in a decisive victory for the Roman
+arms.[529] The pretender fled, and was finally hunted down to the
+southern part of his dominions. His last stand was made at Stratonicea
+in Caria. The town was blockaded and reduced by famine, and Aristonicus
+surrendered unconditionally to the Roman power.[530] Perperna reserved
+the captive for his triumph, he visited Pergamon and placed on shipboard
+the treasures of Attalus for transport to Rome;[531] by these decisive
+acts he was proving that the war was over, for yet a third eager consul
+was straining every nerve to get his share of glory and of gain. Manius
+Aquillius was hastening to Asia to assume a command which might still be
+interpreted as a reality;[532] the longer he allowed his predecessor to
+remain, the more unsubstantial would his own share in the enterprise
+become. A triumph would be the prize of the man who had finished the
+war, and perhaps even Aristonicus's capture need not be interpreted as
+its close. A scene of angry recrimination might have been the result of
+an encounter between the rival commanders; but this was avoided by
+Perperna's sudden death at Pergamon.[533] It is possible that
+Aristonicus was saved the shame of a Roman triumph, although one
+tradition affirms that he was reserved for the pageant which three years
+later commemorated Aquillius's success in Asia.[534] But he did not
+escape the doom which the State pronounced on rebel princes, and was
+strangled in the Tullianum by the orders of the senate.[535]
+
+Aquillius found in his province sufficient material for the prolongation
+of the war. Although the fall of Aristonicus had doubtless brought with
+it the dissolution of the regular armies of the rebels, yet isolated
+cities, probably terrorised by revolted slaves who could expect no mercy
+from the conqueror, still offered a desperate resistance. In his
+eagerness to end the struggle the Roman commander is said to have shed
+the last vestiges of international morality, and the reduction of towns
+by the poisoning of the streams which provided them with water,[536]
+while it inflicted an indelible stain on Roman honour, was perhaps
+defended as an inevitable accompaniment of an irregular servile war. The
+work of organisation had been begun even before that of pacification had
+been completed. The State had taken Perperna's success seriously enough
+to send with Aquillius ten commissioners for the regulation of the
+affairs of the new province,[537] and they seem to have entered on their
+task from the date of their arrival.[538] There was no reason for delay,
+since the kingdom of Pergamon had technically become a province with the
+death of Attalus the Third.[539] The Ephesians indeed even antedated
+this event, and adopted an era which commenced with the September of the
+year 134,[540] the reason for this anticipation being the usual Asiatic
+custom of beginning the civil year with the autumnal equinox. The real
+point of departure of this new era of Ephesus was either the death of
+Attalus or the victory of the city over the fleet of Aristonicus. But,
+though the work of organisation could be entered on at once, its
+completion was a long and laborious task, and Aquillius himself seems to
+have spent three years in Asia.[541] The limits of the province, which,
+like that of Africa, received the name of the continent to which it
+belonged, required to be defined with reference to future possibilities
+and the rights of neighbouring kingdoms; the taxation of the country had
+to be adjusted; and the privileges of the different cities proportioned
+to their capacity or merits. The law of Aquillius remained in essence
+the charter of the province of Asia down to imperial times, although
+subsequent modifications were introduced by Sulla and Pompeius. The new
+inheritance of the Romans comprised almost all the portion of Asia Minor
+lying north of the Taurus and west of Bithynia, Galatia and Cappadocia.
+Even Caria, which had been declared free after the war with Perseus,
+seems to have again fallen under the sway of the Attalid kings. The
+monarchy also included the Thracian Chersonese and most of the Aegean
+islands.[542] But the whole of this territory was not included in the
+new province of Asia. The Chersonese was annexed to the province of
+Macedonia,[543] a small district of Caria known as the Peraea and
+situated opposite the island of Rhodes, became or remained the property
+of the latter state; in the same neighbourhood the port and town of
+Telmissus, which had been given to Eumenes after the defeat of
+Antiochus, were restored to the Lycian confederation.[544] With
+characteristic caution Rome did not care to retain direct dominion over
+the eastern portions of her new possessions, some of which, such as
+Isauria, Pisidia and perhaps the eastern portion of Cilicia, may have
+rendered a very nominal obedience to the throne of the Attalids. She
+kept the rich, civilised and easily governed Hellenic lands for her own,
+but the barbarian interior, as too great and distant a burden for the
+home government, was destined to enrich her loyal client states.
+Aquillius and his commissioners must have received definite instructions
+not to claim for Rome any territory lying east of Mysia, Lydia and
+Caria; but they seem to have had no instructions as to how the discarded
+territories were to be disposed of. The consequence was that the kings
+of the East were soon begging for territory from a Roman commander and
+his assistants. Lycaonia was the reward of proved service; it was given
+to the sons of Ariarathes the Fifth, King of Cappadocia, who had fallen
+in the war.[545] Cilicia is also said to have accompanied this gift, but
+this no man's land must have been regarded both by donor and recipient
+as but a nominal boon. For Phrygia proper, or the Greater Phrygia as
+this country south of Bithynia and west of Galatia was called,[546]
+there were two claimants.[547] The kings of Pontus and Bithynia competed
+for the prize, and each supported his petition by a reference to the
+history of the past. Nicomedes of Bithynia could urge that his grandsire
+Prusias had maintained an attitude of friendly neutrality during Rome's
+struggle with Antiochus. The Pontic king, Mithradates Euergetes,
+advanced a more specious pretext of hereditary right. Phrygia, he
+alleged, had been his mother's dowry, and had been given her by her
+brother, Seleucus Callinicus, King of Syria.[548] We do not know what
+considerations influenced the judgment of Aquillius in preferring the
+claim of Mithradates. He may have considered that the Pontic kingdom, as
+the more distant, was the less dangerous, and he may have sought to
+attract the loyalty of its monarch by benefits such as had already been
+heaped on Nicomedes of Bithynia. His political enemies and all who in
+subsequent times resisted the claim of the Pontic kings, alleged that he
+had put Phrygia up to auction and that Mithradates had paid the higher
+price; this transaction doubtless figured in the charges of corruption,
+on which he was accused and acquitted: and, doubtful as the verdict
+which absolved him seemed to his contemporaries and successors, we have
+no proof that the desire for gain was the sole or even the main cause of
+his decision. Had he considered that the investiture of Nicomedes would
+have been more acceptable to the home government, the King of Bithynia
+would probably have been willing to pay an adequate sum for his
+advocacy. He may have been guilty of a wilful blunder in alienating
+Phrygia at all. The senate soon discovered his and its own mistake. The
+disputed territory was soon seen to be worthy of Roman occupation.
+Strategically it was of the utmost importance for the security of the
+Asiatic coast, as commanding the heads of the river valleys which
+stretched westward to the Aegean, while its thickly strewn townships,
+which opened up possibilities of inland trade, placed it on a different
+plane to the desolate Lycaonia and Cilicia. It is possible that the
+capitalist class, on whose support the senate was now relying for the
+maintenance of the political equilibrium in the capital, may have joined
+in the protest against Aquillius's mistaken generosity. But, though the
+government rapidly decided to rescind the decision of its commissioners,
+it had not the strength to settle the matter once for all by taking
+Phrygia for itself. A decree of the people was still technically
+superior to a resolution of the senate; it was always possible for
+dissentients to urge that the people must be consulted on these great
+questions of international interest; and Phrygia became, like Pergamon a
+short time before, the sport of party politics. The rival kings
+transferred their claims, and possibly their pecuniary offers, from the
+province to the capital, and the network of intrigue which soon shrouded
+the question was brutally exhibited by Caius Gracchus when, in his first
+or second tribunate, he urged the people to reject an Aufeian law, which
+bore on the dispute. "You will find, citizens," he urged, "that each one
+of us has his price. Even I am not disinterested, although it happens
+that the particular object which I have in view is not money, but good
+repute and honour. But the advocates on both sides of this question are
+looking to something else. Those who urge you to reject this bill are
+expecting hard cash from Nicomedes; those who urge its acceptance are
+looking for the price which Mithradates will pay for what he calls his
+own; this will be their reward. And, as for the members of the
+government who maintain a studious reserve on this question, they are
+the keenest bargainers of all; their silence simply means that they are
+being paid by every one and cheating every one." This cynical
+description of the political situation was pointed by a quotation of the
+retort of Demades to the successful tragedian "Are you so proud of
+having got a talent for speaking? why, I got ten talents from the king
+for holding my peace".[549] This sketch was probably more witty than
+true; condemnation, when it becomes universal, ceases to be convincing,
+and cynicism, when it exceeds a certain degree, is merely the revelation
+of a diseased or affected mental attitude. Gracchus was too good a
+pleader to be a fair observer. But the suspicion revealed by the
+diatribe may have been based on fact; the envoys of the kings may have
+brought something weightier than words or documents, only to find that
+the balance of their gilded arguments was so perfect that the original
+objection to Phrygia being given to any Eastern potentate was the only
+issue which could still be supported with conviction. Yet the government
+still declined to annex. Its hesitancy was probably due to its
+unwillingness to see a new Eastern province handed over to the
+equestrian tax-farmers, to whom Caius Gracchus had just given the
+province of Asia. The fall of Gracchus made an independent judgment by
+the people impossible, and, even had it been practicable for the Comitia
+to decide, their judgment must have been so perplexed by rival interests
+and arguments that they would probably have acquiesced in the equivocal
+decision of the senate. This decision was that Phrygia should be
+free.[550] It was to be open to the Roman capitalist as a trader, but
+not as a collector; it was not to be the scene of official corruption or
+regal aggrandisement. It was to be an aggregate of protected states
+possessing no central government of its own. Yet some central control
+was essential; and this was perhaps secured by attaching Phrygia to the
+province of Asia in the same loose condition of dependence in which
+Achaea had been attached to Macedonia. In one other particular the
+settlement of Aquillius was not final. We shall find that motives of
+maritime security soon forced Rome to create a province of Cilicia, and
+it seems that for this purpose a portion of the gift which had been just
+made to the kings of Cappadocia was subsequently resumed by Rome. The
+old Pergamene possessions in Western Cilicia were probably joined to
+some towns of Pamphylia to form the kernel of the new province. When
+Rome had divested herself of the superfluous accessories of her bequest,
+a noble residue still remained. Mysia, Lydia and Caria with their
+magnificent coast cities, rich in art, and inexhaustible in wealth,
+formed, with most of the islands off the coast,[551] that "corrupting"
+province which became the Favourite resort of the refined and the
+desperate resource of the needy. Its treasures were to add a new word to
+the Roman vocabulary of wealth;[552] its luxury was to give a new
+stimulus to the art of living and to add a new craving or two to the
+insatiable appetite for enjoyment; while the servility of its population
+was to create a new type of Roman ruler in the man who for one glorious
+year wielded the power of a Pergamene despot, without the restraint of
+kingly traditions or the continence induced by an assured tenure
+of rule.
+
+The western world witnessed the beginning of an equally remarkable
+change. On both sides of Italy accident was laying the foundation for a
+steady advance to the North, and forcing the Romans into contact with
+peoples, whose subjection would never have been sought except from
+purely defensive motives. The Iapudes and Histri at the head of the
+Adriatic were the objects of a campaign of the consul Tuditanus,[553]
+while four years later Fulvius Flaccus commenced operations amongst the
+Gauls and Ligurians beyond the Alps,[554] which were to find their
+completion seventy-five years later in the conquests of Caesar. But
+neither of these enterprises can be intelligently considered in
+isolation; their significance lies in the necessity of their renewal,
+and even the proximate results to which they led would carry us far
+beyond the limits of the period which we are considering. The events
+completely enclosed within these limits are of subordinate importance.
+They are a war in Sardinia and the conquest of the Balearic isles. The
+former engaged the attention of Lucius Aurelius Orestes as consul in 126
+and as proconsul in the following year.[555] It is perhaps only the
+facts that a consul was deemed necessary for the administration of the
+island, and that he attained a triumph for his deeds,[556] that justify
+us in calling this Sardinian enterprise a war. It was a punitive
+expedition undertaken against some restless tribes, but it was rendered
+arduous by the unhealthiness of the climate and the difficulty of
+procuring adequate supplies for the suffering Roman troops.[557] The
+annexation of the Balearic islands with their thirty thousand
+inhabitants[558] may have been regarded as a geographical necessity, and
+certainly resulted in a military advantage. Although the Carthaginians
+had had frequent intercourse with these islands and a Port of the
+smaller of the two still bears a Punic name,[559] they had done little
+to civilise the native inhabitants. Perhaps the value attached to the
+military gifts of the islanders contributed to preserve them in a state
+of nature; for culture might have diminished that marvellous skill with
+the sling,[560] which was once at the service of the Carthaginian, and
+afterwards of the Roman, armies. But, in spite of their prowess, the
+Baliares were not a fierce people. They would allow no gold or silver to
+enter their country,[561] probably in order that no temptation might be
+offered to pirates or rapacious traders.[562] Their civilisation
+represented the matriarchal stage; their marriage customs expressed the
+survival of polyandric union; they were tenacious of the lives of their
+women, and even invested the money which they gained on military service
+in the purchase of female captives.[563] They made excellent
+mercenaries, but shunned either war or commerce with the neighbouring
+peoples, and the only excuse for Roman aggression was that a small
+proportion of the peaceful inhabitants had lent themselves to piratical
+pursuits.[564] The expedition was led by the consul Quintus Caecilius
+Metellus and resulted in a facile conquest. The ships of the invaders
+were protected by hides stretched above the decks to guard against the
+cloud of well-directed missiles;[565] but, once a landing had been
+effected, the natives, clad only in skins, with small shields and light
+javelins as their sole defensive weapons, could offer no effective
+resistance at close quarters and were easily put to rout. For the
+security of the new possessions Metellus adopted the device, still rare
+in the case of transmarine dependencies, of planting colonies on the
+conquered land. Palma and Pollentia were founded, as townships of Roman
+citizens, on the larger island; the new settlers being drawn from Romans
+who were induced to leave their homes in the south of Spain.[566] This
+unusual effort in the direction of Romanisation was rendered necessary
+by the wholly barbarous character of the country; and the introduction
+into the Balearic isles of the Latin language and culture was a better
+justification than the easy victory for Metellus's triumph and his
+assumption of the surname of "Baliaricus".[567] The islands flourished
+under Roman rule. They produced wine and wheat in abundance and were
+famed for the excellence of their mules. But their chief value to Rome
+must have lain in their excellent harbours, and in the welcome addition
+to the light-armed forces of the empire which was found in their warlike
+inhabitants.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Rome had lived for nine years in a feverish atmosphere of projected
+reform; yet not a single question raised by her bolder spirits had
+received its final answer. The agrarian legislation had indeed run a
+successful course; yet the very hindrance to its operation at a critical
+moment had, in the eyes of the discontented, turned success into failure
+and left behind a bitter feeling of resentment at the treacherous
+dexterity of the government. The men, in whose imagined interests the
+people had been defrauded of their coveted land, had by a singular irony
+of fortune been driven ignominiously from Rome and were now the victims
+of graver suspicions on the part of the government than on that of the
+Roman mob. The effect of the late senatorial diplomacy had been to
+create two hostile classes instead of one. From both these classes the
+aristocrats drew their soldiers for the constant campaigns that the
+needs of Empire involved: and both were equally resentful of the burdens
+and abuses of military service, for which no one was officially directed
+to suggest a cure. The poorest classes had been given the ballot when
+they wanted food and craved a less precarious sustenance than that
+afforded by the capricious benevolence of the rich. The friction between
+the senatorial government and the upper middle class was probably
+increasing. The equites must have been casting hungry eyes at the new
+province of Asia and asking themselves whether commercial interests were
+always to be at the mercy of the nobility as represented by the senate,
+the provincial administrators and the courts of justice. It was believed
+that governors, commissioners and senators were being bought by the gold
+of kings, and that mines of wealth were being lost to the honest
+capitalist through the utter corruption of the governing few. The final
+threats of Tiberius Gracchus were still in the air, and a vast unworked
+material lay ready to the hand of the aspiring agitator. In an ancient
+monarchy or aristocracy of the feudal type, where abuses have become
+sanctified by tradition, or in a modern nation or state with its
+splendid capacity for inertia due to the habitual somnolence of the
+majority of its electors, such questions may vaguely suggest themselves
+for half a century without ever receiving an answer. But Rome could only
+avoid a revolution by discarding her constitution. The sovereignty of
+the people was a thesis which the senate dared not attack; and this
+sovereignty had for the first time in Roman history become a stern
+reality. The city in its vastness now dominated the country districts:
+and the sovereign, now large, now small, now wild, now sober, but ever
+the sovereign in spite of his kaleidoscopic changes, could be summoned
+at any moment to the Forum. Democratic agitation was becoming habitual.
+It is true that it was also becoming unsafe. But a man who could hold
+the wolf by the ears for a year or two might work a revolution in Rome
+and perhaps be her virtual master.
+
+It was no difficult task to find the man, for there was one who was
+marked out by birth, traditions, temperament and genius as the fittest
+exponent of a cause which, in spite of its intricate complications that
+baffled the analysis of the ordinary mind, could still in its essential
+features be described as the cause of the people. It is indeed singular
+that, in a political civilisation so unkind as the Roman to the merits
+of youth, hopes should be roused and fear inspired by a man so young and
+inexperienced as Caius Gracchus. But the popular fancy is often caught
+by the immaturity that is as yet unhampered by caution and undimmed by
+disillusion, and by the fresh young voice that has not yet been attuned
+to the poor half-truths which are the stock-in-trade of the worldly
+wise. And those who were about Gracchus must soon have seen that the
+traces of youth were to be found only in his passion, his frankness, his
+impetuous vigour; no discerning eye could fail to be aware of the cool,
+calculating, intellect which unconsciously used emotion as its mask, of
+a mind that could map and plan a political campaign in perfect
+self-confident security, view the country as a whole and yet master
+every detail, and then leave the issue of the fight to burning words and
+passionate appeals. This supreme combination of emotional and artistic
+gifts, which made Gracchus so irresistible as a leader, was strikingly
+manifested in his oratory. We are told of the intensity of his mien, the
+violence of his gestures, the restlessness that forced him to pace the
+Rostra and pluck the toga from his shoulder, of the language that roused
+his hearers to an almost intolerable tension of pity or
+indignation.[568] Nature had made him the sublimest, because the most
+unconscious of actors; eyes, tone, gesture all answered the bidding of
+the magic words.[569] Sometimes the emotion was too highly strung; the
+words would become coarser, the voice harsher, the faultless sentences
+would grow confused, until the soft tone of a flute blown by an
+attendant slave would recall his mind to reason and his voice to the
+accustomed pitch.[570] Men contrasted him with his gentle and stately
+brother Tiberius, endowed with all the quiet dignity of the Roman
+orator, and diverging only from the pure and polished exposition of his
+cause to awake a feeling of commiseration for the wrongs which he
+unfolded.[571] Tiberius played but on a single chord; Caius on many.
+Tiberius appealed to noble instincts, Caius appealed to all and his
+Protean manifestations were a symbol of a more complex creed, a wider
+knowledge of humanity, a greater recklessness as to his means, and of
+that burning consciousness, which Tiberius had not, that there were
+personal wrongs to be avenged as well as political ideas to be realised.
+To a narrow mind the vendetta is simply an act of justice; to an
+intellectual hater such as Gracchus it is also a work of reason. The
+folly of crime but exaggerates its grossness, and the hatred for the
+criminal is merged in an exalting and inspiring contempt. Yet the man
+thus attuned to passion was, what every great orator must be, a painful
+student of the most delicate of arts. The language of the successful
+demagogue seldom becomes the study of the schools; yet so it was with
+Gracchus. The orators of a later age, whose critical appreciation was
+purer than their practice, could find no better guide to the aspirant
+for forensic fame than the speeches of the turbulent tribune. Cicero
+dwells on the fulness and richness of his flow of words, the grandeur
+and dignity of the expression, the acuteness of the thought.[572] They
+seemed to some to lack the finishing touch;[573] which is equivalent to
+saying that with him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few
+fragments that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous
+simplicity and clearness: then, for the dexterous perfection of their
+form. The balance of the rhythmic clauses never obscures or overloads
+the sense. Gracchus could tell a tale, like that of the cruel wrongs
+inflicted on the allies, which could arouse a thrill of horror without
+also awakening the reflection that the speaker was a man of great
+sensibility and had a wonderful command of commiserative terminology. He
+could ask the crowd where he should fly, whether to the Capitol dripping
+with a brother's blood, or to the home where the widowed mother sat in
+misery and tears;[574] and no one thought that this was a mere figure of
+speech. It all seemed real, because Gracchus was a true artist as well
+as a true man, and knew by an unerring instinct when to pause. This type
+of objective oratory, with its simple and vivid pictures, its brilliant
+but never laboured wit, its capacity for producing the illusion that the
+man is revealed in the utterance, its suggestion of something deeper
+than that which the mere words convey--a suggestion which all feel but
+only the learned understand--is equally pleasing to the trained and the
+unlettered mind. The polished weapon, which dazzled the eyes of the
+crowd, was viewed with respect even by the cultured nobles against whom
+it was directed.
+
+Caius's qualities had been tested for some years before he attained the
+tribunate, and the promise given by his name, his attitude and his
+eloquence was strengthened by the fact that he had no rival in the
+popular favour. Carbo was probably on his way to the Optimates, and
+Flaccus's failure was too recent to make him valuable in any other
+quality than that of an assistant. But Caius had risen through the
+opportunities given by the agitation which these men had sustained,
+although his advance to the foremost place seemed more like the work of
+destiny than of design. When a youth of twenty-one, he had found himself
+elevated to the rank of a land commissioner;[575] but this accidental
+identification with Tiberius's policy was not immediately followed by
+any action which betrayed a craving for an active political career. He
+is said to have shunned the Forum, that training school and advertising
+arena where the aspiring youth of Rome practised their litigious
+eloquence, and to have lived a life of calm retirement which some
+attributed to fear and others to resentment. It was even believed by a
+few that he doubted the wisdom of his brother's career.[576] But It was
+soon found that the leisure which he cultivated was not that of easy
+enjoyment and did not promise prolonged repose. He was grappling with
+the mysteries of language, and learning by patient study the art of
+finding the words that would give to thought both form and wings. The
+thought, too, must have been taking a clearer shape: for Tiberius had
+left a heritage of crude ideas, and men were trying to introduce some of
+these into the region of practical politics. The first call to arms was
+Carbo's proposal for legalising re-election to the tribunate. It drew
+from Gracchus a speech in its support, which contained a bitter
+indictment of those who had been the cause of the "human sacrifice"
+fulfilled in his brother's murder.[577] Five years later he was amongst
+the foremost of the opponents of the alien-act of Pennus, and exposed
+the dangerous folly involved in a jealous policy of exclusion. But the
+courts of law are said to have given him the first great opportunity of
+revealing his extraordinary powers to the world. As an advocate for a
+friend called Vettius, he delivered a speech which seemed to lift him to
+a plane unapproachable by the other orators of the day. The spectacle of
+the crowd almost raving with joy and frantically applauding the
+new-found hero, showed that a man had appeared who could really touch
+the hearts of the people, and is said to have suggested to men of
+affairs that every means must be used to hinder Gracchus's accession to
+the tribunate.[578] The chance of the lot sent him as quaestor with the
+consul Orestes to Sardinia. It was with joyful hearts that his enemies
+saw him depart to that unhealthy clime,[579] and to Caius himself the
+change to the active life of the camp was not unpleasing. He is said
+still to have dreaded the plunge into the stormy sea of politics, and in
+Sardinia he was safe from the appeals of the people and the entreaties
+of his friends.[580] Yet already he had received a warning that there
+was no escape. While wrestling with himself as to whether he should seek
+the quaestorship, his fevered mind had conjured up a vision. The phantom
+of his brother had appeared and addressed him in these words "Why dost
+thou linger, Caius? It is not given thee to draw back. One life, one
+death is fated for us both, as defenders of the people's rights." His
+belief in the reality of this warning is amply attested;[581] but the
+sense that he was predestined and foredoomed, though it may have given
+an added seriousness to his life, left him as calm and vigorous as
+before. Like Tiberius he was within a sphere of his father's influence,
+and this memory must have stimulated his devotion to his military and
+provincial duties. He won distinction in the field and a repute for
+justice in his dealings with the subject tribes, while his simplicity of
+life and capacity for toil suggested the veteran campaigner, not the
+tyro from the most luxurious of cities.[582] The extent of the services
+in Sardinia and neighbouring lands which his name and character enabled
+him to render to the State, has been perhaps exaggerated, or at least
+faultily stated, by our authority; but, in view of the unquestioned
+confidence shown by the Numantines in his brother when as young a man,
+there is no reason to doubt their reality. It is said that, when the
+treacherous winter of Sardinia had shaken the troops with chills, the
+commander sent to the cities asking for a supply of clothing. These
+towns, which were probably federate communities and exempt by treaty
+from the requisitions of Rome, appealed to the senate. They feared no
+doubt the easy lapse of an act of kindness into a burden fixed by
+precedent. The senate, as in duty bound, upheld their contention; and
+suffering and disease would have reigned in the Roman camp, had not
+Gracchus visited the cities in person and prevailed on them to send the
+necessary help.[583] On another occasion envoys from Micipsa of Numidia
+are said to have appeared at Rome and offered a supply of corn for the
+Sardinian army. The request had perhaps been made by Gracchus. To the
+Numidian king he was simply the grandson of the elder Africanus: And the
+envoys in their simplicity mentioned his name as the Intermediary of the
+royal bounty. The senate, we are told, rejected the Proffered help. The
+curious parallelism between the present career of Caius and the early
+activities of his brother must have struck many; to the senate these
+proofs of energy and devotion seemed but the prelude to similar
+ingenious attempts to capture public favour at home: and their fears are
+said to have helped them to the decision to keep Orestes for a further
+year as proconsul in Sardinia.[584] It is possible that the resolution
+was partly due to military exigencies; the fact that the troops were
+relieved was natural in consideration of the sufferings which they had
+undergone, but the retention of the general to complete a desultory
+campaign which chiefly demanded knowledge of the country, was a wise and
+not unusual proceeding. It was, however, an advantage that, as custom
+dictated, the quaestor must remain in the company of his commander.
+Gracchus's reappearance in Rome was postponed for a year. It was a
+slight grace, but much might happen in the time.
+
+It was in this latter sense that the move was interpreted by the
+quaestor. A trivial wrong inflamed the impetuous and resentful nature
+which expectation and entreaty had failed to move. Stung by the belief
+that he was the victim of a disgraceful subterfuge, Gracchus immediately
+took ship to Rome. His appearance in the capital was something of a
+shock even to his friends.[585] Public sentiment regarded a quaestor as
+holding an almost filial relation to his superior; the ties produced by
+their joint activity were held to be indissoluble,[586] and the
+voluntary departure of the subordinate was deemed a breach of official
+duty. Lapses in conduct on the part of citizens engaged in the public
+service, which fell short of being criminal, might be visited with
+varying degrees of ignominy by the censorship: and it happened that this
+court of morals was now in existence in the persons of the censors Cn.
+Servilius Caepio and L. Cassius Longinus, who had entered office in the
+previous year. The censorian judgments, although arbitrary and as a rule
+spontaneous, were sometimes elicited by prosecution: and an accuser was
+found to bring the conduct of Gracchus formally before the notice of the
+magistrates. Had the review of the knights been in progress after his
+arrival, his case would have been heard during the performance of this
+ceremony; for he was as yet but a member of the equestrian order, and
+the slightest disability pronounced against him, had he been found
+guilty, would have assumed the form of the deprivation of his public
+horse and his exclusion from the eighteen centuries. But it is possible
+that, at this stage of the history of the censorship, penalties could be
+inflicted upon the members of all classes at any date preceding the
+lustral sacrifice, that the usual examination of the citizen body had
+been completed, and that Gracchus appeared alone before the tribunal of
+the censors. His defence became famous;[587] its result is unknown. The
+trial probably ended in his acquittal,[588] although condemnation would
+have exercised little influence on his subsequent career, for the
+ignominy pronounced by the censors entailed no disability for holding a
+magistracy. But, whatever may have been the issue, Gracchus improved the
+occasion by an harangue to the people,[589] in which he defended his
+conduct as one of their representatives in Sardinia. The speech was
+important for its caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility
+when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he
+worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a
+scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the
+self-seeking, the luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of
+the average provincial despot. His auditors learnt the details of a
+commander's environment--the elaborate cooking apparatus, the throng of
+handsome favourites, the jars of wine which, when emptied, returned to
+Rome as receptacles of gold and silver mysteriously acquired. Gracchus
+must have delighted his audience with a subject on which the masses love
+to dwell, the vices of their superiors. The luridness of the picture
+must have given it a false appearance of universal truth. It seemed to
+be the indictment of a class, and suggested that the speaker stood aloof
+from his own order and looked only to the pure judgment of the people.
+His enemies tried a new device. They knew that one flaw in his armour
+was his sympathy with the claims of the allies. Could he be compromised
+as an agent in that dark conspiracy which had prompted the impudent
+Italian claims and ended in open rebellion, his credit would be gone,
+even if his career were not closed by exile. He was accordingly
+threatened with an impeachment for complicity in the movement which had
+issued in the outbreak at Fregellae. It is uncertain whether he was
+forced to submit to the judgment of a court; but we are told that he
+dissipated every suspicion, and surmounted the last and most dangerous
+of the obstacles with which his path was blocked.[590] Straightway he
+offered himself for the tribunate, and, as the day of the election
+approached, every effort was made by the nobility to secure his defeat.
+Old differences were forgotten; a common panic produced harmony amongst
+the cliques; it even seems as if his opponents agreed that no man of
+extreme views should be advanced against him, for Gracchus in his
+tribunate had to contend with no such hostile colleague as Octavius. The
+candidature of an extremist might mean votes for Gracchus: and it was
+preferable to concentrate support on neutral men, or even on men of
+liberal views who were known to be in favour with the crowd. The great
+_clientele_ of the country districts was doubtless beaten up; and we
+know that, on the other side, the hopes of the needy agriculturist, and
+the gratitude of the newly established peasant farmer, brought many a
+supporter to Gracchus from distant Italian homesteads. The city was so
+flooded by the inrush of the country folk that many an elector found
+himself without a roof to shelter him, and the place of voting could
+accommodate only a portion of the crowd. The rest climbed on roofs and
+tiles, and filled the air with discordant party cries until space was
+given for a descent to the voting enclosures. When the poll was
+declared, it was found that the electoral manoeuvres of the nobility had
+been so far successful that Gracchus occupied but the fourth place on
+the list.[591] But, from the moment of his entrance on office, his
+predominance was assured. We hear nothing of the colleagues whom he
+overshadowed. Some may have been caught in the stream of Gracchus's
+eloquence; others have found it useless or dangerous to oppose the
+enthusiasm which his proposals aroused, and the formidable combination
+which he created by the alluring prospects that he held out to the
+members of the equestrian order. The collegiate character of the
+magistracy practically sank into abeyance, and his rule was that of a
+single man. First he gave vent to the passions of the mob by dwelling,
+as no one had yet dared to do, on the gloomy tragedy of his brother's
+fall and the cruel persecution which had followed the catastrophe. The
+blood of a murdered tribune was wholly unavenged in a state which had
+once waged war with Falerii to punish a mere insult to the holy office,
+and had condemned a citizen to death because he had not risen from his
+place while a tribune walked through the Forum. "Before your very eyes,"
+he said, "they beat Tiberius to death with cudgels; they dragged his
+dead body from the Capitol through the midst of the city to cast it into
+the river; those of his friends whom they seized, they put to death
+untried. And yet think how your constitution guards the citizen's life!
+If a man is accused on a capital charge and does not immediately obey
+the summons, it is ordained that a trumpeter come at dawn before his
+door and summon him by sound of trumpet; until this is done, no vote may
+be pronounced against him. So carefully and watchfully did our ancestors
+regulate the course of justice." [592] A cry for vengeance is here
+merged in a great constitutional principle; and these utterances paved
+the way for the measure immediately formulated that no court should be
+established to try a citizen on a capital charge, unless such a court
+had received the sanction of the people.[593] The power of the Comitia
+to delegate its jurisdiction without appeal is here affirmed; the right
+of the senate to institute an inquisition without appeal is here denied.
+The measure was a development of a suggestion which had been made by
+Tiberius Gracchus, who had himself probably called attention to the fact
+that the establishment of capital commissions by the senate was a
+violation of the principle of the _provocatio_ Caius Gracchus, however,
+did not attempt to ordain that an appeal should be possible from the
+judgment of the standing commissions (_quaestiones perpetuae_); for,
+though the initiative in the creation of these courts had been taken by
+the senate, they had long received the sanction of law, and their
+self-sufficiency was perhaps covered by the principle that the people,
+in creating a commission, waived its own powers of final jurisdiction.
+But there were other technical as well as practical disadvantages in
+instituting an appeal from these commissions. The _provocatio_ had
+always been the challenge to the decision of a magistrate; but in these
+standing courts the actions of the president and of the _judices_ who
+sat with him were practically indistinguishable, and the sentence
+pronounced was in no sense a magisterial decision. The courts had also
+been instituted to avoid the clumsiness of popular jurisdiction; but
+this clumsiness would be restored, if their decision was to be shaken by
+a further appeal to the Comitia. Gracchus, in fact, when he proposed
+this law, was not thinking of the ordinary course of jurisdiction at
+all. He had before his mind the summary measures by which the senate
+took on itself to visit such epidemics of crime as were held to be
+beyond the strength of the regular courts, and more especially the
+manner in which this body had lately dealt with alleged cases of
+sedition or treason. The investigation directed against the supporters
+of his brother was the crucial instance which he brought before the
+people, and it is possible that, at a still later date, the inquiry
+which followed the fall of Fregellae had been instituted on the sole
+authority of the senate and had found a certain number of victims in the
+citizen body. Practically, therefore, Gracchus in this law wholly
+denied, either as the result of experience or by anticipation, the
+legality of the summary jurisdiction which followed a declaration of
+martial law.
+
+In the creation of these extraordinary commissions the senate never took
+upon itself the office of judge, nor was the commission itself composed
+of senators appointed by the house. The jurisdiction was exercised by a
+magistrate at the bidding of the senate, and the court thus constituted
+selected its assessors, who formed a mere council for advice, at its own
+discretion. It was plain that, if the law was to be effective, its chief
+sanction must be directed, not against the corporation which appointed,
+but against the judge. The responsibility of the individual is the
+easiest to secure, and no precautions against martial law can be
+effective if a division of authority, or even obedience to authority, is
+once admitted. Gracchus, therefore, pronounced that criminal proceedings
+should be possible against the magistrate who had exercised the
+jurisdiction now pronounced illegal.[594] The common law of Rome went
+even further, and pronounced every individual responsible for illegal
+acts done at the bidding of a magistrate. The crime which the magistrate
+had committed by the exercise of this forbidden jurisdiction was
+probably declared to be treason: and, as there was no standing court at
+Rome which took cognisance of this offence, the jurisdiction of the
+Comitia was ordained. The penalty for the crime was doubtless a capital
+one, and by ancient prescription such a punishment necessitated a trial
+before the Assembly of the Centuries. It is, however, possible that
+Gracchus rendered the plebeian assembly of the Tribes competent to
+pronounce the capital sentence against the magistrate who had violated
+the prescriptions of his law. But, although the magistrate was the
+chief, he appears not to have been the sole offender under the
+provisions of this bill. In spite of the fact that the senate as a whole
+was incapable of being punished for the advice which had prompted the
+magistrate to an illegal course of action, it seems that the individual
+senator who moved, or perhaps supported, the decree which led to the
+forbidden jurisdiction, was made liable to the penalties of the
+law.[595] The operation of the enactment was made retrospective, or was
+perhaps conceived by its very nature to cover the past abuses which had
+called it into being; for in a sense it created no new crime, but simply
+restated the principle of the appeal in a form suited to the proceedings
+against which it wished to guard. It might have been argued that
+customary law protected the consul who directed the proceedings of the
+court which doomed the supporters of Tiberius Gracchus; but the
+argument, if used, was of no avail. Popillius was to be the witness to
+all men of the reality of this reassertion of the palladium of Roman
+liberty. An impeachment was framed against him, and either before or
+after his withdrawal from Rome, Caius Gracchus himself formulated and
+carried through the Plebs the bill of interdiction which doomed him to
+exile.[596] It was in vain that Popillius's young sons and numerous
+relatives besought the people for mercy.[597] The memory of the outrage
+was too recent, the joyful sense of the power of retaliation too novel
+and too strong. All that was possible was a counter demonstration which
+should emphasise the sympathy of loyalists with the illustrious victim,
+and Popillius was escorted to the gates by a weeping crowd.[598] We know
+that condemnation also overtook his colleague Rupilius,[599] and it is
+probable that he too fell a victim to the sense of vengeance or of
+justice aroused by the Gracchan law.
+
+A less justifiable spirit of retaliation is exhibited by another
+enactment with which Gracchus inaugurated his tribunate, although in
+this, as in ail his other acts, the blow levelled at his enemies was not
+devoid of a deep political significance. He introduced a proposal that a
+magistrate who had been deposed by the people should not be allowed to
+hold any further office.[600] Octavius was the obvious victim, and the
+mere personal significance of the measure does not necessarily imply
+that Gracchus was burning with resentment against a man, whose
+opposition to his brother had rapidly been forgotten in the degradation
+which he had experienced at that brother's hands. Hatred to the injured
+may be a sentiment natural to the wrongdoer, but is not likely to be
+imparted even to the most ardent supporter of the author of the
+mischief. It were better to forget Octavius, if Octavius would allow
+himself to be forgotten; but the sturdy champion of the senate, still in
+the middle of his career, may have been a future danger and a present
+eyesore to the people: Gracchus's invectives probably carried him and
+his auditors further than he intended, and the rehabilitation of his
+brother's tribunate in its integrity may have seemed to demand this
+strong assertion of the justice of his act. But the legality of
+deposition by the people was a still more important point. Merely to
+assert it would be to imply that Tiberius had been wrong. How could it
+be more emphatically proclaimed than by making its consequences
+perpetual and giving it a kind of penal character? But the personal
+aspect of the measure proved too invidious even for its proposer. A
+voice that commanded his respect was raised against it: and Gracchus in
+withdrawing the bill confessed that Octavius was spared through the
+intercession of Cornelia.[601]
+
+So far his legislation had but given an outlet to the justifiable
+resentment of the people, and a guarantee for the security of their most
+primitive rights. This was to be followed by an appeal to their
+interests and a measure for securing their permanent comfort. The
+wonderful solidarity of Gracchus and his supporters, the crowning
+triumph of the demagogue which is to make each man feel that he is an
+agent in his own salvation, have been traced to this constructive
+legislation for the benefit of classes, which ancient authors, writing
+under aristocratic prepossessions, have described by the ugly name of
+bribery.[602] The poor of Rome, if we include in this designation those
+who lived on the margin as well as those who were sunk in the depths of
+destitution, probably included the majority of the inhabitants of the
+town. The city had practically no organised industries. The retail
+trader and the purveyor of luxuries doubtless flourished; but, in the
+scanty manufactures which the capital still provided, the army of free
+labour must have been always worsted by the cruel competition of the
+cheaper and more skilful slave or freedman. But the poor of Rome did not
+form the cowed and shivering class that are seen on the streets of a
+northern capital. They were the merry and vivacious lazzaroni of the
+pavement and the portico, composite products of many climes, with all
+the lively endurance of the southerner and intellects sharpened by the
+ingenious devices requisite for procuring the minimum sustenance of
+life. Could they secure this by the desultory labour which alone was
+provided by the economic conditions of Rome, their lot was far from
+unhappy. As in most ancient civilisations, the poor were better provided
+with the amenities than with the bare necessities of existence. Although
+the vast provision for the pleasures of the people, by which the Caesars
+maintained their popularity, was yet lacking, and even the erection of a
+permanent theatre was frowned on by the senate,[603] yet the capital
+provided endless excitement for the leisured mind and the observant eye.
+It was for their benefit that the gladiatorial show was provided by the
+rich, and the gorgeous triumph by the State; but it was the antics of
+the nobility in the law courts and at the hustings that afforded the
+more constant and pleasing spectacle. Attendance at the Contiones and
+the Comitia not only delighted the eye and ear, but filled the heart
+with pride, and sometimes the purse with money. For here the units,
+inconsiderable in themselves, had become a collective power; they could
+shout down the most dignified of the senators, exalt the favourite of
+the moment, reward a service or revenge a slight in the perfect security
+given by the secrecy of the ballot. Large numbers of the poorer class
+were attached to the great houses by ancestral ties; for the descendants
+of freedmen, although they could make no legal claim on the house which
+represented the patron of their ancestors, were too valuable as voting
+units to be neglected by its representatives, even when the sense of the
+obligations of wealth, which was one of the best features of Roman
+civilisation, failed to provide an occasional alleviation for the misery
+of dependants. From a political point of view, this dependence was
+utterly demoralising; for it made the recipients of benefits either
+blind supporters of, or traitors to, the personal cause which they
+professed. It was on the whole preferable that, if patronage was
+essential, the State should take over this duty; the large body of the
+unattached proletariate would be placed on a level with their more
+fortunate brethren, and the latter would be freed from a dependence
+which merely served private and selfish interests. A semi-destitute
+proletariate can only be dealt with in three ways. They may be forced to
+work, encouraged to emigrate, or partially supported by the State. The
+first device was impossible, for it was not a submerged fraction with
+which Rome had to deal, but the better part of the resident sovereign
+body; the second, although discredited by the senate, had been tried in
+one form by Tiberius Gracchus and was to be attempted in another shape
+by Caius; but it is a remedy that can never be perfect, for it does not
+touch the class, more highly strung, more intelligent, and at the same
+time more capable of degradation, which the luxury of the capital
+enthrals. The last device had not yet been attempted. It remained for
+Gracchus to try it. We have no analysis of his motives; but many
+provocatives to his modest attempt at state socialism may be suggested.
+There was first the Hellenic ideal of the leisured and independent
+citizen, as exemplified by the state payments and the "distributions"
+which the great leaders of the old world had thought necessary for the
+fulfilment of democracy. There was secondly the very obvious fact that
+the government was reaping a golden harvest from the provinces and
+merely scattering a few stray grains amongst its subjects. There was
+thirdly the consideration that much had been done for the landed class
+and nothing for the city proletariate. Other considerations of a more
+immediate and economic character were doubtless present. The area of
+corn production was now small. Sicily was still perhaps beggared by its
+servile war, and the granary of Rome was practically to be found in
+Africa. The import of corn from this quarter, dependent as it was on the
+weather and controlled purely by considerations of the money-market, was
+probably fitful, and the price must have been subject to great
+variations. But, at this particular time, the supply must have been
+diminished to an alarming extent, and the price proportionately raised,
+by the swarm of locusts which had lately made havoc of the crops of
+Africa.[604] Lastly, the purely personal advantage of securing a
+subsidised class for the political support of the demagogue of the
+moment--a consideration which is but a baser interpretation of the
+Hellenic ideal--must have appealed to the practical politician in
+Gracchus as the more impersonal view appealed to the statesman. He would
+secure a permanent and stable constituency, and guard against the
+danger, which had proved fatal to his brother, of the absence from Rome
+of the majority of his supporters at some critical moment.
+
+From the imperfect records of Gracchus's proposal we gather that a
+certain amount of corn was to be sold monthly at a reduced price to any
+citizen who offered himself as a purchaser.[605] The rate was fixed at
+6-1/3 asses the modius, which is calculated to have been about half the
+market-price.[606] The monthly distribution would practically have
+excluded all but the urban proletariate, and would thus have both
+limited the operation of the relief to the poor of the city and invited
+an increase in its numbers. But the details of the measure, which would
+be decisive as to its economic character, are unknown to us. We are not
+told what proportion the monthly quantity of grain sold at this cheap
+rate bore to the total amount required for the support of a family;
+whether the relief was granted only to the head of a house or also to
+his adult sons; whether any one who claimed the rights of citizenship
+could appear at the monthly sale, or only those who had registered their
+names at some given time. The fact of registration, if it existed, might
+have been regarded as a stigma and might thus have limited the number of
+recipients. Some of the economic objections to his scheme were not
+unknown to Gracchus; indeed they were pressed home vigorously by his
+opponents. It was pointed out that he was enervating the labourer and
+exhausting the treasury, The validity of the first objection depends to
+a large extent on the unknown "data" which we have just mentioned.
+Gracchus may have maintained that a greater standard of comfort would be
+secured for the same amount of work. The second objection he was so far
+from admitting that he asserted that his proposal would really lighten
+the burdens of the Aerarium.[607] He may have taken the view that a
+moderate, steady and calculable loss on corn purchased in large
+quantities, and therefore presumably at a reduced price, would be
+cheaper in the end than the cost entailed by the spasmodic attempts
+which the State had to make in times of crisis to put grain upon the
+market; and there may have been some truth in the idea that, when the
+State became for the first time a steady purchaser, competition between
+the publicans of Sicily or the proprietors of Africa might greatly
+reduce the normal market price. He does not seem to have been disturbed
+by the consideration that the sale of corn below the market price at
+Rome was hardly the best way of helping the Italian farmer. The State
+would certainly buy in the cheapest market, and this was not to be found
+in Italy. But it is probable that under no circumstances could Rome have
+become the usual market for the produce of the recently established
+proprietors, and that, except at times of unusual scarcity in the
+transmarine provinces, imported corn could always have undersold that
+which was grown in Italy. Under the new system the Italian husbandman
+would find a purchaser in the State, if Sicily and Africa were visited
+by some injury to their crops. A vulnerable point in the Gracchan system
+of sale was exhibited in the fact that no inquiry was instituted as to
+the means of the applicants. This blemish was vigorously brought home to
+the legislator when the aged noble, Calpurnius Piso surnamed "the
+Frugal," the author of the first law that gave redress to the
+provincials, and a vigorous opponent of Gracchus's scheme, gravely
+advanced on the occasion of the first distribution and demanded his
+appropriate share.[608] The object lesson would be wasted on those who
+hold that the honourable acceptance of relief implies the universality
+of the gift: that the restraining influences, if they exist, should be
+moral and not the result of inquisition. But neither the possibility nor
+the necessity of discrimination would probably have been allowed by
+Gracchus. It would have been resented by the people, and did not appeal
+to the statesmanship, widely spread in the Greek and not unknown in the
+Roman world, which regarded it as one of the duties of a State to
+provide cheap food for its citizens. The lamentations of a later day
+over a pauperised proletariate and an exhausted treasury[609] cannot
+strictly be laid to the account of the original scheme, Except in so far
+as it served as a precedent; they were the consequence of the action of
+later demagogues who, instructed by Gracchus as to the mode in which an
+easy popularity might be secured, introduced laws which sanctioned an
+almost gratuitous distribution of grain. The Gracchan law contained a
+provision for the building of additional store-houses for the
+accumulation of the great reserve of corn, which was demanded by the new
+system of regular public sales, and the Sempronian granaries thus
+created remained as a witness of the originality and completeness of the
+tribune's work.[610]
+
+The Roman citizen was still frequently summoned from his work, or roused
+from his lethargy, by the call of military service; and the practice of
+the conscription fostered a series of grievances, one of which had
+already attracted the attention of Tiberius Gracchus. Caius was bound to
+deal with the question: and the two provisions of his enactment which
+are known to us, show a spirit of moderation which neither justifies the
+belief that the demagogue was playing to the army, nor accredits the
+view that his interference relaxed the bonds of discipline amongst the
+legions.[611] The most scandalous anomaly in the Roman army-system was
+the miserable pittance earned by the conscript when the legal deductions
+had been made from his nominal rate of pay. His daily wage was but
+one-third of the denarius, or five and one-third asses a day, as it had
+remained unaltered from the times of the Second Punic War, in spite of
+the fact that the conditions of service were now wholly different and
+that garrison duty in the provinces for long periods of years had
+replaced the temporary call-to-arms which the average Italian campaign
+alone demanded; and from this quota was deducted the cost of the
+clothing which he wore and, as there is every reason to believe, of the
+whole of the rations which he consumed. We should have expected a
+radical reformer to have raised his pay or at least to have given him
+free food. But Gracchus contented himself with enacting that the
+soldier's clothing should be given him free of charge by the State.[612]
+Another military abuse was due to the difficulty which commanders
+experienced in finding efficient recruits. The young and adventurous
+supplied better and more willing material than those already habituated
+to the careless life of the streets, or already engaged in some settled
+occupation: and, although it is scarcely credible that boys under the
+age of eighteen were forced to enlist, they were certainly permitted and
+perhaps encouraged to join the ranks. The law of Gracchus forbade the
+enlistment of a recruit at an age earlier than the completion of the
+seventeenth year.[613] These military measures, slight in themselves,
+were of importance as marking the beginning of the movement by which the
+whole question of army reform, utterly neglected by the government, was
+taken up and carried out by independent representatives of the people.
+But a Roman army was to a large extent the creation of the executive
+power; and it required a military commander, not a tribune, to produce
+the radical alterations which alone could make the mighty instrument,
+which had won the empire, capable of defending it.
+
+The last boon of Gracchus to the citizen body as a whole was a new
+agrarian law.[614] The necessity of such a measure was chiefly due to
+the suspension of the work of the agrarian commission, which had proved
+an obstacle to the continued execution of his brother's scheme; and
+there is every reason for believing that the new Sempronian law restored
+their judicial powers to the commissioners. But experience may have
+shown that the substance of Tiberius's enactment required to be
+supplemented or modified; and Caius adopted the procedure usually
+followed by a Roman legislator when he renewed a measure which had
+already been in operation. His law was not a brief series of amendments,
+but a comprehensive statute, so completely covering the ground of the
+earlier Sempronian law that later legislation cites the law of Caius,
+and not that of Tiberius Gracchus, as the authority for the regulations
+which had revolutionised the tenure of the public land.[615] The new
+provisions seem to have dealt with details rather than with principles,
+and there is no indication that they aimed at the acquisition of
+territory which had been exempted from the operation of the previous
+measure, or even touched the hazardous question of the rights of Rome to
+the land claimed by the Italian allies. We cannot attempt to define the
+extent to which the executive power granted by the new agrarian law was
+either necessary or effective. Certainly the returns of the census
+during the next ten years show no increase in the number of registered
+citizens;[616] but this circumstance may be due to the steps which were
+soon to be taken by the opponents of the Gracchi to nullify the results
+of their legislation. It is possible, however, that the new corn law may
+have somewhat damped the ardour of the proletariate for a life of
+agriculture which would have deprived them of its benefits.
+
+The first tribunate of Caius Gracchus doubtless witnessed the completion
+of these four acts of legislation, by which the debt to his supporters
+was lavishly paid and their aid was enlisted for causes which could only
+indirectly be interpreted as their own. But this year probably witnessed
+as well the promulgation of the enactments which were to find their
+fulfilment in a second tribunate.[617] Foremost amongst these was one
+which dealt with the tenure of the judicial power as exercised, not by
+the magistrate, but by the panels of jurors who were interpreters both
+of law and fact on the standing commissions which had recently been
+created by statute. The interest of the masses in this question was
+remote. A permanent murder court seems indeed to have had its place
+amongst the commissions; but, even though the corruption of its
+president had on one occasion been clearly proved,[618] it is not likely
+that senatorial judges would have troubled to expose themselves to undue
+influences when pronouncing on the _caput_ of a citizen of the lower
+class. The fact that this justice was administered by the nobility may
+have excited a certain degree of popular interest; but the question of
+the transference of the courts from the hands of the senatorial
+_judices_ would probably never have been heard of, had not the largest
+item in this judicial competence had a decisively political bearing. The
+Roman State had been as unsuccessful as others of the ancient world in
+keeping its judicial machinery free from the taint of party influences.
+It had been accounted one of the surest signs of popular sovereignty
+that the people alone could give judgment on the gravest crimes and
+pronounce the capital penalty,[619] and recent political thought had
+perhaps wholly adapted itself to the Hellenic view that the government
+of a state must be swayed by the body of men that enforces criminal
+responsibility in political matters. This vital power was still retained
+by the Comitia when criminal justice was concerned with those elemental
+facts which are the condition of the existence of a state. The people
+still took cognisance of treason in all its degrees--a conception which
+to the Roman mind embraced almost every possible form of official
+maladministration--and the gloomy record of trials before the Comitia,
+from this time onward to the close of the Republic, shows that the
+weapon was exercised as the most forcible implement of political
+chastisement. But chance had lately presented the opportunity of making
+the interesting experiment of assimilating criminal jurisdiction in some
+of its branches to that of the civil courts. The president and jurors of
+one of the newly established _quaestiones_ formed as isolated a group as
+the _judex_ of civil justice with his assessors, or the greater panels
+of Centumvirs and Decemvirs. They possessed no authority but that of
+jurisdiction within their special department; there seemed no reason why
+they should be influenced by considerations arising from issues whether
+legislative or administrative. But this appearance of detachment was
+wholly illusory, and the well-intentioned experiment was as vain as that
+of Solon, when he carefully separated the administrative and judicial
+boards in the Athenian commonwealth and composed both bodies of
+practically identical individuals. The new court for the trial of
+extortion, constituted by the Calpurnian and renewed later by a Junian
+law, was controlled by a detachment of the governing body which saw in
+each impeachment a libel on its own system of administration, and in
+each condemnation a new precedent for hampering the uncontrolled power
+exercised in the past or coveted for the future by the individual juror.
+This class spirit may have been more powerful than bribery in its
+production of suspicious acquittals; and the fact that prosecution was
+frankly recognised as the commonest of party weapons, and that speeches
+for the prosecution and defence teemed with irrelevant political
+allusions, reduced the question of the guilt of the accused to
+subordinate proportions in the eyes of all the participants in this
+judicial warfare. Charges of corruption were so recklessly hurled at
+Rome that we can seldom estimate their validity; but the strong
+suspicion of bribery is almost as bad for a government as the proved
+offence; and it was certain that senatorial judges did not yield to the
+evidence which would have supplied conviction to the ordinary man. Some
+recent acquittals furnished an excellent text to the reformer. L.
+Aurelius Cotta had emerged successfully from a trial, which had been a
+mere duel between Scipio Aemilianus for the prosecution and Metellus
+Macedonicus for the defence. The judges had shown their resentment of
+Scipio's influence by acquitting Cotta; and few of the spectators of the
+struggle seem even to have pretended to believe in the innocence of the
+accused.[620] The whole settlement of Asia had been so tainted with the
+suspicion of pecuniary influences that, when Manius Aquillius
+successfully ran the gauntlet of the courts,[621] it was difficult to
+believe that the treasures of the East had not co-operated towards the
+result, especially as the senate itself by no means favoured some of the
+features of Aquillius's organisation of the province. The legates of
+some of the plundered dependencies were still in Rome, bemoaning the
+verdict and appealing for sympathy with their helpless fellow
+subjects[622] Circumstances favoured the reformer; it was possible to
+bring a definite case and to produce actual sufferers before the people;
+while the senate, perhaps in consequence of the attitude of some honest
+dissentients, was unable to make any effectual resistance to the scandal
+and its consequences.
+
+Had Gracchus thought of restoring this jurisdiction to the Comitia, he
+would have taken a step which had the theoretical justification that, of
+all the powers at Rome, the people was the one which had least interest
+in provincial misgovernment. But it would have been a retrograde
+movement from the point of view of procedure; it would not necessarily
+have abolished senatorial influence, and it would not have attained his
+object of holding the government permanently in check by the political
+recognition of a class which rivalled the senate in the definiteness of
+its organisation and surpassed it in the homogeneity of its interests.
+The body of capitalists who had assumed the titular designation of
+knights, had long been chafing at the complete subjection of their
+commercial interests to the caprice of the provincial governor and the
+arbitrary dispositions of the home government. Tiberius Gracchus, when
+he revealed the way to the promised land, had probably reflected rather
+than suggested the ambition of the great business men to have a more
+definite place in the administration assigned them. His appeal had come
+too late, or seemed too hopeless of success, to win their support for a
+reformer who had outraged their feelings as capitalists; but since his
+death ten years for reflection had elapsed, and they were years which
+witnessed a vast extension of their potential activity, and aroused an
+agonised feeling of helplessness at the subordinate part which they
+played both to senate and people when the disposal of kingdoms was in
+question. The suggestions for giving them a share in the control of the
+provincial world may have been numerous, and their variety is reflected
+in the different plans which Caius Gracchus himself advanced. The system
+at which his brother had hinted was that of a joint board composed of
+the existing senators with the addition of an equal number of equites;
+and we have already suggested the possibility that this House of Six
+Hundred was intended to be the senate of the future, efficient for all
+purposes and not exclusively devoted to the work of criminal
+jurisdiction. The same significance may attach to the scheme, which
+seems to have been propounded by Caius Gracchus during, or perhaps even
+before, his first tenure of the tribunate, and appears at intervals in
+proposals made by reformers down to the time of Sulla. Gracchus is said
+to have suggested the increase of the senate by the addition of three,
+or, as one authority states, six hundred members of the equestrian
+order.[623] The proposal, if it was one for an enlarged senate, and not
+for a joint panel of _judices_, in which a changing body of equites
+would act as a check on the permanent senatorial jurors, must soon have
+been seen to be utterly unsuited to its purpose. It is a scheme
+characteristic of the aristocrat who is posing as a friend of the
+mercantile class and hopes to deceive the vigilance of that keen-sighted
+fraternity. To give the senate a permanent infusion of new blood would
+be simply to strengthen its authority, while completely cutting away the
+links which bound the new members to their original class. Even the
+swamping of the existing body by a two-thirds majority of new members
+would have been transitory in its effects. The new member of the Curia
+would soon have shed his old equestrian views and assumed the outlook of
+his older peers. It might indeed have been possible to devise a system
+by which the senate would, at the recurring intervals of the _lustra_,
+have been filled up in equal proportions from ex-magistrates and
+knights: and in this way a constant supply of middle-class sentiment
+might have been furnished to the governing body. But even this scheme
+would have secured to the elected a life-long tenure of power, and this
+was a fatal obstacle both to the intentions of the reformer and the
+aspirations of the equestrian order. While the former desired a balance
+of power, the latter wished that the interests of their class should be
+enforced by its genuine representatives. Both knew that a participation
+in the executive power was immaterial, and that all that was needed
+might be gained by the possession of judicial authority alone.
+Gracchus's final decision, therefore, was to create a wholly new panel
+of _judices_ which should be made up exclusively from the members of the
+titular class of knights.[624]
+
+It was not necessary or desirable that the judiciary law should make any
+mention of a class, or employ the courtesy title of _equites_ to
+designate the new judges. The effect might be less invidiously secured
+by demanding qualifications which were practically identical with the
+social conditions requisite for the possession of titular knighthood.
+One of the determining factors was a property qualification, and this
+was possibly placed at the modest total of four hundred thousand
+sesterces.[625] This was the amount of capital which seems at this
+period to have given its possessor the right of serving on horseback in
+the army and therefore the claim to the title of _eques_, but it was a
+sum that did not convey alarming suggestions of government by
+millionaires, but rather pointed to the upper middle class as the
+fittest depositaries of judicial power. Not only were magistrates and
+ex-magistrates excluded from the Bench, but the disqualification
+extended to the fathers, brothers and sons of magistrates and of past or
+present senators. The ostensible purpose of these provisions was
+doubtless to ensure that the selected jurors should be bound by no tie
+of kindred to the individuals who would appear before their judgment
+seat; but they must have had the effect of excluding from the new panel
+many of the true knights belonging to the eighteen centuries; for this
+select corps was largely composed of members of the noble families. A
+similar effect would have been produced by the age qualification. The
+Gracchan jurors were to be over thirty and under sixty, while a large
+number of the military _equites_ were under the former limit of age, in
+consequence of the practice of retiring from the corps after the
+attainment of the quaestorship or selection into the senate. The
+aristocratic element in the equestrian order, if this latter expression
+be used in its widest sense to include both the military and civilian
+knights, was thus rigorously excluded: and there remained but the men
+whose business interests were in no way complicated by respect for
+senatorial traditions. The official list of the new jurors _(album
+judicum)_ was probably to be made out annually; and there is every
+reason to suppose that there was a considerable change of personnel at
+each revision, since one of the conditions of membership of the
+panel--residence within a mile of Rome--could hardly have been observed
+by business men with world-wide interests for any extended period. The
+conception which still prevailed that judicial service was a burden
+_(munus)_, would alone have led the revising authority to free past
+jurors from the service: and the practice must have been welcome to the
+capitalists themselves, many of whom may well have desired the share of
+power and perhaps of profit which jurisdiction over their superiors
+conferred. We are told that the selection of the first panel was
+entrusted to the legislator himself;[626] for the future the Foreign
+Praetor was to draw up the annual list of four hundred and fifty who
+were qualified to hear cases of extortion.[627] It is not known whether
+this was the full number of the new jurors, or whether there were
+additional members selected by a different authority for the trial of
+other offences. It is not probable that the judiciary law of Gracchus
+imposed the new class of _judices_ directly on the civil courts. The
+_judex_ of private law still retained his character of an arbitrator
+appointed by the consent of the parties, and it would have been improper
+to restrict this choice to a class defined by statute. But the practical
+monopoly of jurisdiction in important cases, which senators seem to have
+acquired, was henceforth broken through, and the _judex_ in civil suits
+was sometimes taken from the equestrian order.[628]
+
+The superficial aspect of this great change seemed full of promise for
+the future. The ample means of the new jurors might be taken as a
+guarantee of their purity; their selection from the middle class, as a
+security of the soundness and disinterestedness of their judgments.
+Perhaps Gracchus himself was the victim of this hope, and believed that
+the scourge of the nobility which he had placed in the hands of the
+knights, might at least be decorously wielded. The judgment of the
+after-world varied as to the mode in which they exercised their power.
+Cicero, in advocating the claims of the order to a renewed tenure of
+authority, could urge that during their possession of the courts for
+nearly fifty years, their judgments had never been tainted by the least
+suspicion of corruption.[629] This was a safe assertion if suspicion is
+only justified by proof; for the Gracchan jurors seem to have been from
+the first exempted from all prosecution for bribery.[630] This legal
+exemption is all the more remarkable as Gracchus himself was the author
+of a law which permitted a criminal prosecution for a corrupt
+judgment.[631] It is difficult to understand the significance of this
+enactment, for the magistrates, against whom it was directed, were in
+few cases judges of fact, except in the military domain. It could not
+have referred to the president of a standing commission who was a mere
+vehicle for the judgment of the jury; but Gracchus probably contemplated
+the occasional revival of special commissions sanctioned by the people,
+and it is possible that even the two praetors who presided over the
+civil courts may have been subject to the operation of the law, which
+may not have been directed merely against corrupt sentences in criminal
+matters, as was subsequently the case when the law was renewed by Sulla.
+It is even possible that the law dates from a period anterior to the
+creation of the equestrian _judices_; but, even on this hypothesis, the
+exclusion of the latter from its operation was something of an anomaly;
+for even the civil _judex_ of Rome, on whose analogy the jurors of the
+standing commissions had been created, was in early times criminally,
+and at a later period at least pecuniarily, liable for an unjust
+sentence.[632] We shall elsewhere have occasion to dwell on the value
+which the equestrian order attached to this immunity, and we shall see
+that its relief at the freedom from vexatious prosecution is of itself
+no sign of corruption. One of our authorities does indeed emphatically
+assert the ultimate prevalence of bribery in the equestrian courts:[633]
+and circumstances may be easily imagined which would have made this
+resort natural, if not inevitable. A band of capitalists eager to secure
+a criminal verdict, which had a purely commercial significance, would
+scarcely be slow to employ commercial methods with their less wealthy
+representatives on the Bench, and votes might have been purchased by
+transactions in which cash payments played no part. But the corruption
+of individuals was of far less moment than the solidarity of interest
+and collective cupidity of the mercantile order as a whole. The verdicts
+of the courts reflected the judgment of the Exchange. It was even
+possible to create a prosecution[634] simply for the purpose of damning
+a man who, in the exercise of his authority, had betrayed tendencies
+which were interpreted as hostile to capitalism.
+
+The future war between the senate and the equites would not have been
+waged so furiously, had not Gracchus given his favoured class the chance
+of asserting a positive control, in virtue of an almost official
+position, over the richest domains of the Roman world. The fatal bequest
+of Attalus was still the plaything of parties; but the prize which
+Tiberius had destined for the people was used by Caius to seal his
+compact with the knights. The concession, which could not be openly
+avowed, was accomplished by means so indirect that its meaning must have
+escaped the majority of the voters who sanctioned it, and its
+consequences may not have been fully grasped by the legislator himself.
+The masses who applauded the new law about the province of Asia, may
+have seen in it but a promise of the increase of their revenues; while
+the desire of swelling the public finances, which he had so heavily
+burdened, of putting an end to the anomalous condition of a district
+which was neither free nor governed, neither protectorate nor province,
+perhaps even of meeting the wishes of some of the Asiatic provincials,
+who preferred regular to irregular exactions, may have been combined in
+the mind of Gracchus with the wish to see the equites confront the
+senate in yet another sphere. The change which he proposed was one
+concerned with the taxation of the province. It cannot be determined how
+far he was responsible for the infliction of new burdens on Rome's
+Asiatic subjects. The increase of the public revenue, of which he
+boasted in one of his speeches to the people,[635] the new harbour dues
+with which he is credited,[636] may point to certain creations of his
+own; but the end at which he aimed seems to have been mainly a revival
+of the system of taxation which had been current in the kingdom of the
+Attalids, accompanied by a new and, as he possibly thought, better
+system of collection. It could not have been he who first burdened the
+taxpayer with the payment of tithes; for this method of revenue was of
+immense antiquity in all Hellenised lands and is not likely to have been
+unknown to the kings of Pergamon. It is a method that, from its elastic
+nature, bears less heavily on the agriculturist than that of a direct
+impost; for the payment is conditioned by the size of the crops and is
+independent of the changing value of money. The chief objection to the
+tax, considered in itself and apart from its accompanying circumstances,
+was the immensity of the revenue which it yielded; the sums exacted by
+an Oriental despot were unnecessary for the economical administration of
+Rome; and the Roman administration of half a century earlier might have
+reduced the tithe to a twentieth as it had actually cut down the taxes
+of Macedonia to one-half of their original amount. Sicily, indeed,
+furnished an example of the tithe system; but the expenses of a
+government decrease in proportion to the area of administration, and
+Sicily could not furnish the ample harbour dues and other payments in
+money, which should have made the commercial wealth of Asia lighten the
+burden on the holder of land. The rating of the new province was, in
+fact, an admission of a change in the theory of imperial taxation. Asia
+was not merely to be self-supporting; her revenues were to yield a
+surplus which should supplement the deficit of other lands, or aid in
+the support of the proletariate of the capital.
+
+The realisation of this principle may not have imposed heavier burdens
+than Asia had known in the time of her kings. But the fiction that the
+new dependency was to be maintained in a state of "freedom," which even
+after the downfall of Aristonicus seems to have exercised some influence
+on Roman policy, had led to a suspension of regular taxation for the
+purposes of the central government, which caused the Gracchan proposals
+to be regarded by certain political circles at Rome in the light of a
+novelty, and probably of a hardship.[637] They could hardly have borne
+either character to the Asiatic provincials themselves. The war
+indemnities and exactions which followed the great struggle, must have
+been a more grievous burden than the system of taxation to which they
+were inured: and it is incredible that during the six years which had
+elapsed since the suppression of the revolt, or even the three years
+that had passed since the completion of Aquillius's organisation, no
+revenues had been raised by Rome from her new subjects for
+administrative purposes. They probably had been raised, but in a manner
+exasperating because irregular. What was needed was a methodical system,
+which should abolish at once the fiction of "freedom" and the reality of
+the exactions meted out at the caprice of the governor of the moment.
+Such a system was supplied by Gracchus, and it was doubtless reached by
+the application of the characteristic Roman method of maintaining,
+whether for good or ill, the principles of organisation which were
+already in existence in the new dependency.
+
+The novelty of the Gracchan system lay, not in the manner of taxation,
+but in the method adopted for securing the returns. The greatest
+obstacle to the tithe system is the difficulty of instituting an
+efficient method of collection. To gather in taxes which are paid in
+kind and to dispose of them to the best advantage, is a heavy burden for
+a municipality. The desire for a system of contract is sure to arise,
+and in an Empire the efficient contractor is more likely to be found in
+the central state than in any of its dependencies. It was of this
+feeling that Gracchus took advantage when he enacted that the taxes of
+Asia should be put up for auction at Rome,[638] and that the whole
+province should be regarded as a single area of taxation at the great
+auction which the censor held in the capital. It was certain that no
+foreign competition could prevail in this sale of a kingdom's revenues.
+The right to gather in the tithes could be purchased only by a powerful
+company of Roman capitalists. The Decumani of Asia would represent the
+heart and brain of the mercantile body; they would form a senate and a
+Principate amongst the Publicani.[639] They would flood the province
+with their local directors, their agents and their freedmen; and each
+station would become a centre for a banking business which would involve
+individuals and cities in a debt, of which the tithe was but a fraction.
+Nor need their operations be confined to the dominions of Rome; they
+would spread over Phrygia, rendered helpless by the gift of freedom, and
+creep into the realms of the neighbouring protected kings, safe in the
+knowledge that the magic name of "citizen of Rome" was a cover to the
+most doubtful transaction and a safeguard against the slightest
+punishment. The collectors were liable to no penalties for extortion,
+for that crime could be committed only by a Roman magistrate: and their
+possession of the courts enabled them to raise the spectre of conviction
+on this very charge before the eyes of any governor who might attempt to
+check the devastating march of the battalions of commerce.
+
+As merchants and bankers the Knights would be sufficiently protected by
+the judicial powers of their class; but their operations as speculators
+in tithes needed another safeguard. The contracts made with the censor
+would extend over a period of five years, and the keenness of the
+competing companies would generally ensure to the State the promise of
+an enormous sum for the privilege of farming the taxes. But the tithe
+might be reduced in value by a bad harvest or the ravages of war, and
+the successful company might overreach itself in its eagerness to secure
+the contract. The power of revising such bargains had once assured to
+the senate the securest hold which it possessed over the mercantile
+class.[640] This complete dependence was now to be removed, and
+Gracchus, while not taking the power of decision from the senate,
+formulated in his law certain principles of remission which it was
+expected to observe.[641]
+
+By these indirect and seemingly innocent changes in the relations of the
+mercantile order to the senate, a new balance of power had been created
+in the State. The Republic, according to the reflection of a later
+writer, had been given two heads,[642] and this new Janus, more ominous
+than the old, was believed to be the harbinger of deadly conflict
+between the rival powers. In moments of calm Gracchus may have believed
+that his reforms were but a renewed illustration of that genius for
+compromise out of which the Roman constitution had grown, and that he
+had but created new and necessary defences against a recently developed
+absolutism; but, in the heat of the conflict into which he was soon
+plunged, his vindictive fancy saw but the gloomier aspect of his new
+creation, and he boasted that the struggle for the courts was a dagger
+which he had hurled into the Forum, an instrument which the possessor
+would use to mangle the body of his opponent.[643]
+
+But even these limitations of senatorial prerogative were not deemed
+sufficient. A proposal was made which had the ingenious scope of
+limiting the senate's control over the more important provinces in
+favour of the magistrates, the equestrian order and the people. One of
+the most valuable items of patronage which the senate possessed was the
+assignment of the consular provinces. They claimed the right of deciding
+which of the annual commands without the walls should be reserved for
+the consuls of the year, and by their disposition in this matter could
+reward a favourite with wealth or power, and condemn a political
+opponent to impotence or barren exile. This power had long been employed
+as a means of coercing the two chief magistrates into obedience to the
+senate's will, and the equestrian order must have viewed with some alarm
+the possibility of Asia becoming the prize of the candidates favoured by
+the nobility. Had Gracchus declared that the direct election to
+provincial commands should henceforth be in the hands of the people, the
+change would have been but a slight departure from an admitted
+constitutional precedent; for there is little more than a technical
+difference between electing a man for an already ascertained sphere of
+operations, as had been done in the cases of Terentius Varro and the two
+Scipios during the Punic wars, and attaching a special command to an
+individual already elected. But Gracchus preferred the traditional and
+indirect method. He did not question the right of the senate to decide
+what provinces should be assigned to the consuls, but he enacted that
+this decision should be made before these magistrates were elected to
+office.[644] The people would thus, in their annual choice of the
+highest magistrates, be electing not only to a sphere of administration
+at home, but to definite foreign commands as well; the prize which the
+senate had hitherto bestowed would be indirectly the people's gift, and
+the nominees of the Comitia would find themselves in possession of
+departments which were presumably the most important that lay at the
+disposal of the senate. To secure the finality of the arrangement made
+by the senate, and to prevent this body subsequently reversing an
+awkward assignment to which it had unwittingly committed itself,
+Gracchus ordained that the tribunician veto should not be employed
+against the senate's decision as to what provinces should be reserved
+for the future consuls;[645] for he knew that the tribune was often the
+instrument of the government, and that the suspensory veto of this
+magistrate could cause the question of assignment to drag on until after
+the consuls were elected, and thus restore to the senate its ancient
+right of patronage. The change, although it produced the desired results
+of freeing the magistrates from subservience, the mercantile order from
+a reasonable fear, and the people from the pain of seeing their
+favourite nominee rendered useless for the purposes for which he was
+appointed, cannot be said to have added anything to the efficiency of
+provincial administration. It may even be regarded as a retrograde step,
+as the commencement of that system of routine in provincial
+appointments, which regarded proved capacity for the government and
+defence of the subjects of Rome as the last qualification necessary for
+foreign command. The senate in its award may often have been swayed by
+unworthy motives; but it was sometimes moved by patriotic fears. Of the
+two consuls it might send the one of tried military ability to a
+province threatened by war and dismiss the mere politician to a peaceful
+district. But now, without any regard to present conditions or future
+contingencies, it was forced to assign departments to men whose very
+names were unknown. The people, in the exercise of their elective power,
+were acting almost as blindly as the senate; for the issues of a Roman
+election were often so ill-defined, its cross-currents, due to personal
+influence and the power of the canvass, so strong and perplexing, that
+it was rarely possible to predict the issue of the poll. On the other
+hand, if there was a candidate so eminent that his return could be
+predicted as a certainty, the senate might assign some insignificant
+spheres of administration as the provinces of the future consuls; and
+thus, in the one case where the decision might be influenced by
+knowledge and reason, the Gracchan law was liable to defeat its own
+ends. A further weakness of the enactment, from the point of view of
+efficiency, was that it made no attempt to alter the mode in which the
+designated provinces were to be occupied by their claimants. If the
+consuls could not come to an agreement as to which _provincia_ each
+should hold, the chance of the lot still decided a question on which the
+future fortunes of the empire might turn.
+
+It is a relief to turn from this work of demolition, which in spite of
+its many justifications is pervaded by a vindictive suspicion, to some
+great constructive efforts by which Gracchus proved himself an
+enlightened and disinterested social reformer. He did not view agrarian
+assignation as an alternative to colonisation, but recognised that the
+industrial spirit might be awakened by new settlements on sites
+favourable to commerce, as the agricultural interest had been aroused by
+the planting of settlers on the desolated lands. Gracchus was, indeed,
+not the first statesman to employ colonisation as a remedy for social
+evils; for economic distress and the hunger for land had played their
+part from the earliest times in the military settlements which Rome had
+scattered over Italy. But down to his time strategic had preponderated
+over industrial motives, and he was the first to suggest that
+colonisation might be made a means of relief for the better classes of
+the urban proletariate, whose activities were cramped and whose energies
+were stifled by the crowded life and heated atmosphere of the city. His
+settlers were to be carefully selected. They were actually to be men who
+could stand the test of an investigation into character.[646] It seems
+clear that the new opportunities were offered to men of the lower middle
+class, to traders of cramped means or of broken fortunes. His other
+proteges had been cared for in other ways; the urban masses who lived on
+the margin of destitution had been assisted by the corn law, and the
+sturdy son of toil could look for help to the agrarian commission. Of
+the many settlements which he projected for Italy,[647] two which were
+actually established during his second tribunate[648] occupied maritime
+positions favourable for commerce. Scylacium, on the bay which lies
+southward of the Iapygian promontory, was intended to revivify a decayed
+Greek settlement and to reawaken the industries of the desolated
+Bruttian coast; while Neptunia was seemingly the name of the new
+entrepot which he founded at the head of the Tarentine Gulf. It was
+apparently established on the land which Rome had wrested from Tarentum,
+and may have originally formed a town distinct from this Greek city,
+once the great seaport of Calabria, but retaining little of its former
+greatness since its partial destruction in the Punic wars.[649] Its
+Hellenism was on the wane, and this decline in its native civilisation
+may account for the fact that the new and the old foundations seem
+eventually to have been merged into one, and that Tarentum could receive
+a purely Latin constitution after the close of the Social War.[650] Its
+purple fisheries and rich wine-producing territory were worthy objects
+of the enterprise of Gracchus. Capua was a still greater disgrace to the
+Roman administration than Tarentum. Its fertile lands were indeed
+cultivated by lessees of Rome and yielded a large annual produce to the
+State. But the unredeemed site, on which had stood the pride of Southern
+Italy, was still a lamentable witness to the jealousy of the conqueror.
+Here Gracchus proposed to place a settlement[651] which through its
+commercial promise might amply have compensated for a loss of a portion
+of the State's domain. Neither he nor his brother had ever threatened
+the distribution of the territory of Capua, and it is, therefore,
+probable that in this case he did not contemplate a large agricultural
+foundation, but rather one that might serve better than the existing
+village to focus the commerce of the Campanian plain. But the revenue
+from the domain, and the jealousy of Rome's old and powerful rival,
+which might be awakened in all classes, were strong weapons in the hands
+of his opponents, and the renewal of Capua was destined to be the work
+of a later and more fortunate leader of the party of reform. The
+colonising effort of Gracchus was plainly one that had the regeneration
+of Italy, as well as the satisfaction of distressed burgesses, as its
+object; none of the three sites, on which he proposed to establish his
+communes of citizens, possessed at the time an urban centre capable of
+utilising the vast possibilities of the area in which it was placed. But
+this twofold object was not to be limited to Italy. He dreamed of
+transmarine enterprise taking a more solid and more generally useful
+form than that furnished by the vagrant trader or the local agent of the
+capitalist.[652] The idea and practice of colonisation across the sea
+were indeed no new ones; isolated foundations for military purposes,
+such as Palma and Pollentia in the Balearic Isles, were being planted by
+the direction of the government. But these were small settlements
+intended to serve a narrow purpose; they doubtless spread Roman customs
+and formed a basis for Roman trade; but, if these motives had entered
+into their foundation, the experiment would have been tried on a far
+larger scale. In truth the idea of permanent settlement beyond the seas
+did not appeal either to the Roman character or to the political
+theories of the governing classes. It is questionable whether an
+imperial people, forming but a tiny minority amongst its subjects, and
+easily reaping the fruits of its conquests, could ever take kindly to
+the adventure, the initial hardships, and the lasting exclusion from the
+dazzling life of the capital, which are implied in permanent residence
+abroad. The Roman in pursuit of gain was a restless spirit, who would
+voyage to any land that was, or was likely to be, under imperial
+control, establish his banking house and villa under any clime, and be
+content to spend the most active years of his life in the exploitation
+of the alien; but to him it was a living truth that all roads led to
+Rome. The city was the nucleus of enterprise, the heart of commerce; and
+such sentiment as the trader possessed was centred on the commercial
+life of the Forum and the political devices on which it fed. Such a
+spirit is not, favourable to true colonisation, which implies a
+detachment from the affairs of the mother city; and it was not by this
+means, but rather by the spontaneous evolution of natural centres for
+the teeming Italian immigrants already settled in the provinces, that
+the Romanisation of the world was ultimately assisted. Consequently no
+great pressure had ever been put on the government to induce it to relax
+the principles which led it to look with indifference or disfavour on
+the foundation of Roman settlements abroad. There was probably a fear
+that the establishment of communities of Roman citizens in the provinces
+might awaken the desire of the subject states to participate in Roman
+rights. It was deemed better that the highest goal of the provincial's
+ambition should be the freedom of his state, and that he should never
+dream of that absorption into the ruling body to which the Italian alone
+was permitted to aspire. Added to this maxim of statecraft was one of
+those curious superstitions which play so large a part in imperial
+politics and attain a show of truth from the superficial reading of
+history. It was pointed out by the wise that colonies had often proved
+more potent than their parent states, that Carthage had surpassed Tyre,
+Massilia Phocaea, Syracuse Corinth, and Cyzicus Miletus. In the same way
+a daughter of Rome might wax greater than her mother, and the city that
+governed Italy might be powerless to cope with a rebellious dependency
+in the provinces.[653] This was not altogether an idle fear in the
+earlier days of conquest; for at any period before the war with Pyrrhus
+a transmarine city of Italian blood and customs might have proved a
+formidable rival. Nor at the stage which the empire had reached at the
+time of Gracchus was it without its justification; for Rome was by no
+means a convenient centre for a government that ruled in Asia as well as
+in Europe. It is more likely that the dread of rivalry was due to the
+singular defects of the aspect and environment of Rome, of which its
+citizens were acutely conscious, rather than to the awkwardness of its
+geographical position; but, had the latter deficiency been realised, it
+would be unfair to criticise the narrowness of view which failed to see
+that the change of a capital does not necessarily involve the surrender
+of a government. But, whether the objections implied in this
+superstition were shadowy or well defined, they could not have been
+lessened by the choice which was made by Gracchus and his friends of the
+site for their new transmarine settlement. It was none other than
+Carthage, the city which had been destroyed because the blessings of
+nature had made a mockery of conquest, the city that, if revived, would
+be the centre of the granary of Rome. A proposal for the renewal of
+Carthage under the name of Junonia was formulated by Rubrius, one of the
+colleagues of Gracchus in his first tribunate.[654] The number of the
+colonists, which was less than six thousand, was specified in the
+enactment, and the proportion of the emigrants to the immense territory
+at his disposal rendered it possible for the legislator to assign
+unusually large allotments of land. A better and an inferior class of
+settlers were apparently distinguished, the former of whom were to hold
+no less than two hundred _jugera_ apiece.[655] The recipients of all
+allotments were to maintain them in absolute ownership, a system of
+tenure which had hitherto been confined to Italy being thus extended to
+provincial soil.[656] Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus were named
+amongst the triumvirs who were to establish the new colony.[657] It is
+probable that Roman citizens were alone considered eligible for the
+colonies both in Italy and abroad, when these foundations were first
+proposed, and that it was not until Gracchus had embarked on his
+enterprise of enfranchising the Latins, that he allowed them to
+participate in the benefits of his colonial schemes and thus indirectly
+acquire full Roman citizenship.
+
+But the commercial life of Italy might be quickened by other means than
+the establishment of colonies whether at home or abroad. Gracchus saw
+that the question of rapid and easy communication between the existing
+towns was all important. The great roads of Rome betrayed their military
+intent in the unswerving inflexibility of their course. The positions
+which they skirted were of strategic, but not necessarily of industrial,
+importance. To bring the hamlet into connection with the township, and
+the township into touch with the capital, a series of good cross-roads
+was needed; and it was probably to this object that the law of
+Gracchus[658] was directed. But ease of communication may serve a
+political as well as a commercial object. The representative character
+of the Comitia would be increased by the provision of facilities for the
+journey to Rome; and perhaps when Gracchus promulgated his measure,
+there was already before his mind the possibility of the extension of
+the franchise to the Latins, which would vastly increase the numbers of
+the rural electorate. In any case, the measure was one which tended to
+political centralisation, and Gracchus must have known that the
+attainment of this object was essential to the unity and stability of a
+popular government.
+
+The great enterprise was carried through with extraordinary rapidity
+during his second tribunate. But the hastiness of the construction did
+not impair the beauty of the work. We are told that the roads ran
+straight and fair through the country districts, showing an even surface
+of quarried stone and tight-packed earth. Hollows were filled up,
+ravines and torrent beds were bridged, and mounting-blocks for horsemen
+lay at short and easy distances on both sides of the level course.[659]
+Although the initial expense of this construction may have borne heavily
+on the finances of the State, it is probable that the future maintenance
+of the roads was provided for in other ways. The commerce which they
+fostered may have paid its dues at toll-gates erected for the
+purpose:[660] and the ancient Roman device of creating a class of
+settlers on the line of a public road, for the purpose of keeping it in
+repair,[661] was probably extended. Road-making was often the complement
+of agrarian assignation,[662] and the two may have been employed
+concurrently by Gracchus. It was the custom to assign public land on the
+borders of a highway to settlers, the tenure of which was secured to
+them and their heirs on condition of keeping the road in due repair.
+Sometimes their own labour and that of their slaves were reckoned the
+equivalent of the usual dues; at other times the dues themselves were
+used by the public authorities for the purpose. Gracchus may thus have
+turned his agrarian law to an end which was not contemplated by that
+of Tiberius.
+
+The execution of the law must have been a heavy blow to the power and
+prestige of the senate. Its control of the purse was infringed and it
+ceased to be the sole employer of public labour. For Gracchus, in
+defiance of the principle that the author of a measure should not be its
+executant,[663] was his own road-maker, as his brother Tiberius had been
+his own land commissioner. He was the patron of the contractor and the
+benefactor of the Italian artisan. The bounties which he now gave were
+the reward of labour, and not subject to the criticism which had
+attended his earlier efforts for the relief of poverty in Rome; but some
+pretended to take the sinister view that the bands of workmen by which
+he was surrounded might be employed for a less innocent purpose than the
+making of roads.[664].
+
+The proceedings of Gracchus during his first year of office had made it
+inevitable that he should hold the tribunate for a second time. Enough
+had been performed to win him the ardent support of the masses; enough
+had been promised to make his return to office desirable, not only to
+the people, but to the expectant capitalists. The legal hindrances to
+re-election had been removed, or could be evaded, and the continuity of
+power, which was essential to the realisation of an adequate programme
+of reform, could now for the first time be secured. In the present state
+of public feeling there was little probability of the veto being
+employed by any one of his future colleagues, although some of these
+would inevitably be moderates or members of the senatorial party. But
+Gracchus was eager that his cause should be represented in another
+department of the State, which presented possibilities of assistance or
+of mischief, and that the spectacle of the tribunate as the sole focus
+of democratic sentiment, exalting itself in opposition to the higher
+magistracies of the people, should, if possible, be averted. In one of
+his addresses to the commons he said he had to ask a favour of them.
+Were it granted, he would value it above all things; should they think
+good to refuse, he would bear no grudge against them. Here he paused;
+the favour remained undisclosed; and he left popular imagination to
+revel in the possibilities of his claims. It was a happy stroke; for he
+had filled the minds of his auditors with a gratifying sense of their
+own boundless power, and with suspicions of illegal ambitions, with
+which it was well that they should become familiar, but which one
+dramatic moment would for the time dispel. His words were interpreted as
+a request for the consulship: and the prevalent opinion is said to have
+been that he desired to hold this office in combination with the
+tribunate. The time for the consular elections was approaching and
+expectation was roused to its highest pitch, when Gracchus was seen
+conducting Gaius Fannius into the Forum and, with the assistance of his
+own friends, accosting the electors in his behalf.[665] The candidate
+was a man whose political temperament Caius had had full opportunities
+of studying. As a tribune he had been much under the influence of Scipio
+Aemilianus,[666] and as he rose slowly through the grades of curule
+rank,[667] he must still have retained his character as a moderate. He
+was therefore preferable to any candidate put forward by the optimates:
+and the influence of Gracchus secured Fannius the consulship almost at
+the moment when, without the trouble of a canvass or even of a formal
+candidature, he himself secured his second term of office. His position
+was further strengthened by the return of the ex-consul Fulvius Flaccus,
+as one of his colleagues in the tribunate.
+
+It was now, when the grand programme was actually being carried through,
+and the execution of the most varied measures was being pressed on by a
+single hand, that the possibilities of personal government were first
+revealed in Rome. The fiery orator was less to be dreaded than the
+unwearied man of action, whose restless energy was controlled by a
+clearness of judgment and concentration of purpose, which could
+distinguish every item of his vast sphere of administration and treat
+the task of the moment as though it were the one nearest to his heart.
+Even those who hated and feared Gracchus were struck with amazement at
+the practical genius which he revealed; while the sight of the leader in
+the midst of his countless tasks, surrounded by the motley retinue which
+they involved, roused the wondering admiration of the masses.[668] At
+one moment he was being interviewed by a contractor for public works, at
+another by an envoy from some state eager to secure his mediation; the
+magistrate, the artisan, the soldier and the man of letters besieged his
+presence chamber, and each was received with the appropriate word and
+the kindly dignity, which kings may acquire from training, but men of
+kingly nature receive from heaven as a seal of their fitness to rule.
+The impression of overbearing violence which had been given by his
+speeches, was immediately dispelled by contact with the man. The time of
+storm and stress had been passed for the moment, and in the fruition of
+his temporary power the true character of Gracchus was revealed. The
+pure intellectual enjoyment which springs from the sense of efficiency
+and the effective pursuit of a long-desired task, will not be shaken by
+the awkward impediments of the moment. All the human instruments, which
+the work demands, reflect the value of the object to which they
+contribute: and Gracchus was saved from the insolent pride of the
+patrician ruler and the helpless peevishness of the mere agitator whom
+circumstances have thrust into power, by the fact that his emotional
+nature was mastered by an intellect which had outlived prejudice and had
+never known the sense of incapacity. By the very character of its
+circumstances the regal nature was forced into a style of life which
+resembled and foreshadowed that of the coming monarchy. The
+accessibility to his friends and clients of every grade was the pride of
+the Roman noble, and doubtless Gracchus would willingly have modelled
+his receptions on the informal pattern which sufficed the proudest
+patrician at the head of the largest _clientele_. But Gracchus's callers
+were not even limited to the whole of Rome; they came from Italy and the
+provinces: and it was found to be essential to adopt some rules of
+precedence, which would produce a methodical approach to his presence
+and secure each of his visitors an adequate hearing. He was the first
+Roman, we are told, to observe certain rules of audience. Some members
+of the crowd which thronged his ante-chamber, were received singly,
+others in smaller or in larger groups.[669] It is improbable that the
+mode of reception varied wholly with the official or social rank of
+those admitted; the nature of the client's business must also have
+dictated the secrecy or publicity of the interview; but the system must
+have seemed to his baffled enemies a welcome confirmation of their real
+or pretended fears--a symptom of the coming, if not actual, overthrow of
+Republicanism, the suspicion of which might one day be driven even into
+the thick heads of the gaping crowds, who stood by the portals to gaze
+at the ever-shifting throng of callers and to marvel at the power and
+popularity of their leader. Had Gracchus been content to live in the
+present and to regard his task as completed, it is just possible that
+the diverse interests which he had so dexterously welded together might
+have enabled him to secure, not indeed a continuity of power (for that
+would have been as strenuously resisted by the middle as by the upper
+class), but immediate security from the gathering conspiracy, the
+preservation of his life, and the probability of a subsequent political
+career. It is, however, difficult, to conceive that the position which
+Gracchus held could be either resigned or forgiven; and, although we
+cannot credit him with any conscious desire for holding a position not
+admitted by the laws, yet his genius unconsciously led him to identify
+the commonwealth with himself, while his mind, as receptive as it was
+progressive, would not have readily acquiesced in the view that a
+political creation can at any moment be called complete. The
+disinterested statesman will cling to power as tenaciously as one
+devoured by the most sordid ambition: and even on the lowest ground of
+personal security, the possession of authority is perhaps more necessary
+to the one than to the other. So indissolubly blended are the power and
+the projects of a leader, that it is idle to raise the question whether
+personal motives played any part in the project with which Gracchus was
+now about to delight his enemies and alienate his friends. He took up
+anew the question of the enfranchisement of the Italians--a question
+which the merest political tyro could have told him was enough to doom
+the statesman who spoke even a word in its favour. But Caius's position
+was no ordinary one, and he may have regarded his present influence as
+sufficient to induce the people to accept the unpalatable measure, the
+success of which might win for himself and his successors a wider
+constituency and a more stable following. The error in judgment is
+excusable in one who had never veiled his sympathy with the Italian
+cause, and had hitherto found it no hindrance to his popularity; but so
+clear-sighted a man as Gracchus must have felt at times that he was
+staking, not only his own career, but the fate of the programme and the
+party which he had built up, on the chance of securing an end, which had
+ceased to be regarded as the mere removal of an obstacle and had grown
+to be looked on as the coping-stone of a true reformer's work.
+
+The scope of his proposal[670] was more moderate than that which had
+been put forward by Flaccus. He suggested the grant of the full rights
+of citizenship to the Latins, and of Latin rights to the other Italian
+allies.[671] Italy was thus, from the point of view of private law, to
+be Romanised almost up to the Alps;[672] while the cities already in
+enjoyment of some or all of the private privileges of the Roman, were to
+see the one anomaly removed, which created an invidious distinction
+between them and the burgess towns, hampered their commerce, and
+imperilled their landed possessions. The proposal had the further
+advantage that it took account of the possible unwillingness of many of
+the federate cities to accept the Roman franchise; such a refusal was
+not likely to be made to the offer of Latin rights: for the Latin
+community was itself a federate city with its own laws, magistrates and
+courts, and the sense of autonomy would be satisfied while many of the
+positive benefits of Roman citizenship would be gained. Grades of
+privilege would still exist in Italy, and a healthy discontent might in
+time be fostered, which would lead all Italian communities to seek
+absorption into the great city. Past methods of incorporation might be
+held to furnish a precedent; the scheme proposed by Gracchus was hardly
+more revolutionary than that which had, in the third and at the
+beginning of the second centuries, resulted in the conferment of full
+citizenship on the municipalities of half-burgesses. It differed from it
+only in extending the principle to federate towns; but the rights of the
+members of the Latin cities bore a close resemblance to those of the old
+_municipes_, and they might easily be regarded as already enjoying the
+partial citizenship of Rome. The conferment of this partial citizenship
+on the other Italians, while in no way destroying local institutions or
+impairing local privileges, would lead to the possibility of a common
+law for the whole of Italy, would enable every Italian to share in the
+benefits of Roman business life, and appear in the court of the urban
+praetor to defend such rights as he had acquired, by the use of the
+forms of Roman law. The tentativeness of the character of Gracchus's
+proposal, while recommending it as in harmony with the cautious spirit
+of Roman development which had worked the great changes of the past, may
+also have been dictated by the feeling that the more moderate scheme
+stood a better chance of acceptance by the mob of Rome. All he asked was
+that the grievances which had led to the revolt of Fregellae, and the
+dangers revealed by that revolt, should be removed. The numbers of the
+added citizens would not be overwhelming; for the majority of Italians
+all that was asked was the possession of certain private rights, which
+had been so ungrudgingly granted to communities in the past. Throughout
+the campaign he probably laid more stress on the duty of protecting the
+individual than on the right of the individual to power. And the fact
+that the protection was demanded, not against the Roman State, but
+against an oppressive nobility that disgraced it by a misuse of its
+powers, gave a democratic colouring to the demand, and suggested a
+community of suffering, and therefore of sympathy, between the donors
+and recipients of the gift. Even before his franchise law was before the
+world, he seems to have been engaged in educating his auditors up to
+this view of the case; for it was probably in the speeches with which he
+introduced his law for the better protection of the life of the Roman
+citizen, that he illustrated the cruel caprice of the nobility by grisly
+stories of the sufferings of the Italians. He had told of the youthful
+legate who had had a cow-herd of Venusia scourged to death, as an answer
+to the rustic's jesting query whether the bearers of the litter were
+carrying a corpse: and of the consul who had scourged the quaestor of
+Teanum Sidicinum, the man of noblest lineage in his state, because the
+men's baths, in which the consul's wife had elected to bathe, were not
+adequately prepared for her reception.[673] Since the objections of the
+populace to the extension of the franchise were the result of prejudice
+rather than of reason, they might be weakened if the sense of jealousy
+and distrust could be diverted from the people's possible rivals to the
+common oppressors of Rome and Italy.
+
+The appeal to sentiment might have been successful, had not the most
+sordid passions of the mob been immediately inflamed by the oratory of
+the opponents of the measure. The most formidable of these opponents was
+drawn from the ranks of Gracchus's own supporters; for the franchise
+question had again proved a rock which could make shipwreck of the unity
+of the democratic party. His _protege_, the consul Fannius, was not
+ashamed to appeal to the most selfish instincts of the populace. "Do you
+suppose," he said, "that, when you have given citizenship to the Latins,
+there will be any room left for you at public gatherings, or that you
+will find a place at the games or festivals? Will they not swamp
+everything with their numbers?" [674]
+
+Fannius, as a moderate, was an excellent exponent of senatorial views,
+and it was believed that many noble hands had collaborated in the
+crushing speech which inflicted one of its death-blows on the Gracchan
+proposal.[675]
+
+The opportunity for active opposition had at last arrived, and the
+senate was emboldened to repeat the measure which four years earlier had
+swept the aliens out of Rome. Perhaps in consequence of powers given by
+the law of Pennus, the consul Fannius was empowered to issue an edict
+that no Italian, who did not possess a vote in the Roman assemblies,
+should be permitted within five miles of Rome at the time when the
+proposal about the franchise was to be submitted to the Comitia.[676]
+Caius answered this announcement with a fiery edict of his own, in which
+he inveighed against the consul and promised his tribunician help to any
+of the allies who chose to remain in the city.[677] The power which he
+threatened to exercise was probably legal, since there is no reason to
+suppose that the tribunician _auxilium_ could be interposed solely for
+the assistance of members of the citizen body;[678] but he must have
+known that the execution of this promise was impracticable, since the
+injured party could be aided only by the personal interposition of the
+tribune, and it was clear that a single magistrate, burdened with many
+cares, and living a life of the most varied and strenuous activity,
+could not be present in every quarter of Rome and in a considerable
+portion of the surrounding territory. Even the cooperation of his ardent
+colleague Flaccus could not have availed for the protection of many of
+his Italian friends, and the course of events so soon taught him the
+futility of this means of struggling for Italian rights that when,
+somewhat later in the year, one of his Italian friends was seized by a
+creature of Fannius before his eyes, he passed by without an attempt at
+aid. His enemies, he knew, were at the time eager for a struggle in
+which, when they had isolated him from his Italian supporters, physical
+violence would decide the day: and he remarked that he did not wish to
+give them the pretext for the hand-to-hand combat which they
+desired.[679] One motive, indeed, of the invidious edict issued by the
+consul seems to have been to leave Gracchus to face the new position
+which his latest proposal had created, without any external help; but as
+external help, if successfully asserted, could only have taken the form
+of physical violence, there was reasonable ground for holding that the
+decree excluding the Italians was the only means of preventing a serious
+riot or even a civil war. The senate could scarcely have feared the
+moral influence of the Italians on the voting populace of Rome, and they
+knew that, in the present state of public sentiment, the constitutional
+means of resistance which had failed against Tiberius Gracchus might be
+successfully employed against his brother. The whole history of the
+first tribunate of Caius Gracchus proves the frank recognition of the
+fact that the tribunician veto could no longer be employed against a
+measure which enlisted anything like the united support of the people;
+but, like all other devices for suspending legislation, its employment
+was still possible for opponents, and welcome even to lukewarm
+supporters, when the body politic was divided on an important measure
+and even the allies of its advocate felt their gratitude and their
+loyalty submitted to an unwelcome strain. Resistance by means of the
+intercession did not now require the stolid courage of an Octavius, and
+when Livius Drusus threatened the veto,[680] there was no question of
+his deposition. Some nerve might have been required, had he made this
+announcement in the midst of an excited crowd of Italian postulants for
+the franchise; but from this experience he was saved by the
+precautionary measure taken by the senate. It is probable that Drusus's
+announcement caused an entire suspension of the legal machinery
+connected with the franchise bill, and that its author never ventured to
+bring it to the vote.
+
+It is possible that to this stage of Gracchus's career belongs a
+proposal which he promulgated for a change in the order of voting at the
+Comitia Centuriata. The alteration in the structure of this assembly,
+which had taken place about the middle of the third century, had indeed
+done much to equalise the voting power of the upper and lower classes;
+but the first class and the knights of the eighteen centuries were still
+called on to give their suffrage first, and the other classes doubtless
+voted in the order determined by the property qualification at which
+they were rated. As the votes of each century were separately taken and
+proclaimed, the absolute majority required for the decisions of the
+assembly might be attained without the inferior orders being called on
+to express their judgment, and it was notorious that the opinion of
+later voters was profoundly influenced by the results already announced.
+Gracchus proposed that the votes of all the classes should be taken in
+an order determined solely by the lot.[681] His interest in the Comitia
+Centuriata was probably due to the fact that it controlled the consular
+elections, and a democratic consulship, which he had vainly tried to
+secure by his support of Fannius, might be rendered more attainable by
+the adoption of the change which he advocated. The great danger of the
+coming year was the election of a consul strongly identified with the
+senatorial interest--of a man like Popillius who would be keen to seize
+some moment of reaction and attempt to ruin the leaders of the reform
+movement, even if he could not undo their work. It is practically
+certain that this proposal of Gracchus never passed into law, it is
+questionable whether it was ever brought before the Comitia. The
+reformer was immediately plunged into a struggle to maintain some of his
+existing enactments, and to keep the favour of the populace in the face
+of insidious attempts which were being made to undermine their
+confidence in himself.
+
+The senate had struck out a new line of opposition, and they had found a
+willing, because a convinced, instrument for their schemes. It is
+inconceivable that a council, which reckoned within itself
+representatives of all the noblest houses at Rome, should not have
+possessed a considerable number of members who were influenced by the
+political views of a Cato or a Scipio, or by the lessons of that
+humanism which had carried the Gracchi beyond the bounds of Roman
+caution, but which might suffuse a more conservative mind with just
+sufficient enlightenment to see that much was wrong, and that moderate
+remedies were not altogether beyond the limits of practicability. But
+this section of senatorial opinion could find no voice and take no
+independent action. It was crushed by the reactionary spirit of the
+majority of the peers, and frightened at the results to which its
+theories seem to lead, when their cautious qualifications, never likely
+to find acceptance with the masses, were swept away by more
+thorough-going advocates. But the voice, which the senate kept stifled
+during the security of its rule, might prove valuable in a crisis. The
+moderate might be put forward to outbid the extremist; for his
+moderation would certainly lead him to respect the prejudices of the
+mob, while any excesses, which he was encouraged or instructed to
+commit, need not touch the points essential to political salvation, and
+might be corrected, or left to a natural dissolution, when the crisis
+had been passed and the demagogue overthrown. The instrument chosen by
+the senate was Marcus Livius Drusus,[682] the tribune who had threatened
+to interpose his veto on the franchise bill. There is no reason why the
+historian should not treat the political attitude of this rival of
+Gracchus as seriously as it seems to have been treated by Drusus's
+illustrious son, who reproduced, and perhaps borrowed from his father's
+career, the combination of a democratic propaganda, which threw specious
+unessentials to the people, with the design of maintaining and
+strengthening the rule of the nobility. The younger Drusus was, it is
+true, a convert to the Italian claims which his father had resisted; but
+even this advocacy shows development rather than change, for the party
+represented by the elder Drusus was by no means blind to the necessity
+for a better security of Italian rights. The difference between the
+father and the son was that the one was an instrument and the other an
+agent. But a man who is being consciously employed as an instrument, may
+not only be thoroughly honest, but may reap a harvest of moral and
+mental satisfaction at the opportunities of self-fulfilment which chance
+has thrown in his way. The position may argue a certain lack of the
+sense of humour, but is not necessarily accompanied by any conscious
+sacrifice of dignity. Certainly the public of Rome was not in the secret
+of the comedy that was being played. It saw only a man of high birth and
+aristocratic culture, gifted with all the authority which great wealth
+and a command of dignified oratory can give,[683] approaching them with
+bounties greater in appearance than those which Gracchus had recently
+been willing to impart, attaching no conditions to the gift and, though
+speaking in the name of the senate, conveying no hint of the deprivation
+of any of the privileges that had so recently been won. And the new
+largess was for the Roman people alone; it was not depreciated by the
+knowledge that the blessings, which it conferred or to which it was
+added, would be shared by rivals from every part of Italy.
+
+An aspirant for favour, who wished to enter on a race with the recent
+type of popular leader, must inevitably think of provision for the poor;
+but a mere copy or extension of the Gracchan proposals was impossible.
+No measure that had been fiercely opposed by the senate could be
+defended with decency by the representative, and, as Drusus came in
+after time to be styled, the "advocate" of that body.[684] Such a scheme
+as an extension of the system of corn distribution would besides have
+shocked the political sense both of the patron and his clients, and
+would not have served the political purposes of the latter, since such a
+concession could not easily have been rescinded. The system of agrarian
+assignation, in the form in which it had been carried through by the
+hands of the Gracchi, had at the moment a complete machinery for its
+execution, and there was no plausible ground for extending this measure
+of benevolence. The older system of colonisation was the device which
+naturally occurred to Drusus and his advisers, and the choice was the
+more attractive in that it might be employed in a manner which would
+accentuate certain elements in the Gracchan scheme of settlement that
+had not commended themselves to public favour. The masses of Rome
+desired the monopoly of every prize which the favourite of the moment
+had to bestow; but Gracchus's colonies were meant for the middle class,
+not for the very poor, and the preliminary to membership of the
+settlements was an uncomfortable scrutiny into means, habits and
+character.[685] The masses desired comfort. Capua may have pleased them,
+but they had little liking for a journey across the sea to the site of
+desolated Carthage. The very modesty of Gracchus's scheme, as shown in
+the number of the settlements projected and of the colonists who were to
+find a home in each, proved that it was not intended as a benefit to the
+proletariate as a whole. Drusus came forward with a proposal for twelve
+colonies, all of which were probably to be settled on Italian and
+Sicilian soil;[686] each of these foundations was to provide for three
+thousand settlers, and emigrants were not excluded on the ground of
+poverty. An oblique reflection on the disinterestedness of Gracchus's
+efforts was further given in the clause which created the commissioners
+for the foundation of these new colonies, Drusus's name did not appear
+in the list. He asked nothing for himself, nor would he touch the large
+sums of money which must flow through the hands of the commissioners for
+the execution of so vast a scheme.[687] The suspicion of self-seeking or
+corruption was easily aroused at Rome, as it must have been in any state
+where such large powers were possessed by the executive, and where no
+control of the details of execution or expenditure had ever been
+exercised by the people; and Gracchus's all-embracing energy had
+betrayed him into a position, which had been accepted in a moment of
+enthusiasm, but which, disallowed as it was by current sentiment and
+perhaps by the law, might easily be shaken by the first suggestion of
+mistrust. The scheme of Drusus, although it proved a phantom and perhaps
+already possessed this elusive character when the senate pledged its
+credit to the propounder of the measure, was of value as initiating a
+new departure in the history of Roman colonisation. Even Gracchus had
+not proposed to provide in this manner for the dregs of the city, and
+the first suggestion for forming new foundations simply for the object
+of depleting the plethora of Rome--the purpose real or professed of many
+later advocates of colonisation--was due to the senate as an accident in
+a political game, to Drusus perhaps as the result of mature reflection.
+Since his proposal, which was really one for agrarian assignation on an
+enormous scale, was meant to compete with Gracchus's plan for the
+founding of colonies, it was felt to be impossible to burden the new
+settlers with the payment of dues for the enjoyment of their land.
+Gracchus's colonists were to have full ownership of the soil allotted to
+them, and Drusus's could not be placed in an inferior position. But the
+existence of thirty-six thousand settlers with free allotments would
+immediately suggest a grievance to those citizens who, under the
+Gracchan scheme of land-assignment, had received their lots subject to
+the condition of the payment of annual dues to the State. If the new
+allotments were to be declared free, the burden must be removed from
+those which had already been distributed.[688] Drusus and the senate
+thus had a logical ground for the step which seems to have been taken,
+of relieving all the land which had been distributed since the tribunate
+of the elder Gracchus from the payment of _vectigal_. It was a popular
+move, but it is strange that the senate, which was for the most part
+playing with promises, should have made up its mind to a definite step,
+the taking of which must have seriously injured the revenues of the
+State. But perhaps they regarded even this concession as not beyond
+recall, and they may have been already revolving in their minds those
+tortuous schemes of land-legislation, which in the near future were to
+go far to undo the work of the reformers.
+
+The senate also permitted Drusus to propose a law for the protection of
+the Latins, which should prove that the worst abuses on which Gracchus
+dwelt might be removed without the gift of the franchise. The enactment
+provided that no Latin should be scourged by a Roman magistrate, even on
+military service.[689] Such summary punishment must always have been
+illegal when inflicted on a Latin who was not serving as a soldier under
+Roman command and was within the bounds of the jurisdiction of his own
+state; the only conceivable case in which he could have been legally
+exposed to punishment at the hands of Roman officials in times of peace,
+was that of his committing a crime when resident or domiciled in Rome.
+In such circumstances the penalty may have been summarily inflicted, for
+the Latins as a whole did not possess the right of appeal to the Roman
+Comitia.[690] The extension of the magisterial right of coercion over
+the inhabitants of Latin towns, and its application in a form from which
+the Roman citizen could appeal, were mere abuses of custom, which
+violated the treaties of the Latin states and were not first forbidden
+by the Livian law. But the declaration that the Latin might not be
+scourged by a Roman commander even on military service, was a novelty,
+and must have seemed a somewhat startling concession at a time when the
+Roman citizen was himself subject to the fullest rigour of martial law.
+It was, however, one that would appeal readily to the legal mind of
+Rome, for it was a different matter for a Roman to be subject to the
+martial law of his own state, and for the member of a federate community
+to be subjected to the code of this foreign power. It was intended that
+henceforth the Latin should suffer at least the degrading punishment of
+scourging only after the jurisdiction and on the bidding of his own
+native commander; but it cannot be determined whether he was completely
+exempted from the military jurisdiction of the Roman commander-in-chief
+--an exemption which might under many circumstances have proved fatal to
+military discipline and efficiency. There is every reason to suppose
+that this law of Drusus was passed, and some reason to believe that it
+continued valid until the close of the Social War destroyed the
+distinctions between the rights of the Latin and the Roman. Its enactment
+was one of the cleverest strokes of policy effected by Drusus and the
+senate; for it must have satisfied many of the Latins, who were eager
+for protection but not for incorporation, while it illustrated the
+weakness, and as it may have seemed to many, the dishonesty, of
+Gracchus's seeming contention that abuses could only be remedied by the
+conferment of full political rights. The whole enterprise of Drusus
+fully attained the immediate effect desired by the senate. The people
+were too habituated to the rule of the nobility to remember grievances
+when approached as friends; the advances of the senate were received in
+good faith, and Drusus might congratulate himself that a representative
+of the Moderates had fulfilled the appropriate task of a mediator
+between opposing factions.[691]
+
+We might have expected that Gracchus, in the face of such formidable
+competition, would have stood his ground in Rome and would have
+exhausted every effort of his resistless oratory in exhibiting the
+dishonesty of his opponents and in seeking to reclaim the allegiance of
+the people. But perhaps he held that the effective accomplishment of
+another great design would be a better object-lesson of his power as a
+benefactor and a surer proof of the reality of his intentions, as
+contrasted with the shadowy promises of Drusus. He availed himself of
+his position of triumvir for the foundation of the colony of Junonia--an
+office which the senate gladly allowed him to accept--and set sail for
+Africa to superintend in person the initial steps in the creation of his
+great transmarine settlement.[692] His original plan was soon modified
+by the opposition which it encountered; the promised number of
+allotments was raised to six thousand, and Italians were now invited to
+share in the foundation.[693] Both of these steps were doubtless the
+result of the senate's dalliance with colonial schemes and with the
+Latins, but the latter may also be interpreted as a desperate effort to
+get the colony under weigh at any cost. Fulvius Flaccus, who was also
+one of the colonial commissioners, either stayed at Rome during the
+entire period of his colleague's absence or paid but the briefest visit
+to Africa; for he is mentioned as the representative of the party's
+interests in Rome during Gracchus's residence in the province. The
+choice of the delegate was a bad one. Not only was Flaccus hated by the
+senate, but he was suspected by the people. These in electing him to the
+tribunate had forgiven his Italian leanings when the Italian cause was
+held to be extinct; but now the odium of the franchise movement clung to
+him afresh, and suspicion was rife that the secret dealings with the
+allies, which were believed to have led to the outbreak of Fregellae,
+had never been interrupted or had lately been renewed. The difficulties
+of his position were aggravated by faults of manner. He possessed
+immense courage and was an excellent fighter; but, like many men of
+combative disposition, he was tactless and turbulent. His reckless
+utterances increased the distrust with which he was regarded, and
+Gracchus's popularity necessarily waned with that of his
+lieutenant.[694]
+
+Meanwhile the effort was being made to reawaken Carthage and to defy the
+curse in which Scipio had declared that the soil of the fallen city
+should be trodden only by the feet of beasts. No scruple could be
+aroused by the division of the surrounding lands; the site where
+Carthage had stood was alone under the ban,[695] and had Gracchus been
+content with mere agrarian assignment or had he established Junonia at
+some neighbouring spot, his opponents would have been disarmed of the
+potent weapon which superstition invariably supplied at Rome. As it was,
+alarming rumours soon began to spread of dreadful signs which had
+accompanied the inauguration of the colony.[696] When the colonists
+according to ancient custom were marching to their destined home in
+military order with standards flying, the ensign which headed the column
+was caught by a furious wind, torn from the grip of its resisting
+bearer, and shattered on the ground. When the altars had been raised and
+the victims laid upon them, a sudden storm-blast caught the offerings
+and hurled them beyond the boundaries of the projected city which had
+recently been cut by the share. The boundary-stones themselves were
+visited by wolves, who seized them in their teeth and carried them off
+in headlong flight. The reality of the last alarming phenomenon, perhaps
+of all these omens, was vehemently denied by Gracchus and by
+Flaccus;[697] but, even if the reports now flying abroad in Rome had any
+basis in fact, the circumstances of the foundation did not deter the
+leader nor frighten away his colonists. Gracchus proceeded with his work
+in an orderly and methodical manner, and when he deemed his personal
+supervision no longer essential, returned to Rome after an absence of
+seventy days. He was recalled by the news of the unequal contest that
+was being waged between the passionate Fulvius and the adroit Drusus.
+Clearly the circumstances required a cooler head than that possessed by
+Flaccus; and there was the threat of a still further danger which
+rendered Gracchus's presence a necessity. The consulship for the
+following year was likely to be gained by one of the most stalwart
+champions of ultra-aristocratic views. Lucius Opimius had been defeated
+when seeking that office in the preceding year, chiefly through the
+support which Gracchus's advocacy had secured to Fannius. Now there was
+every chance of his success;[698] for Opimius's chief claim to
+distinction was the prompt action which he had shown in the conquest of
+Fregellae, and the large numbers of the populace who detested the
+Italian cause were likely to aid his senatorial partisans in elevating
+him to the consulship. The consular elections might exercise a
+reactionary influence on the tribunician; and, if Gracchus's candidature
+was a failure, he might be at the mercy of a resolute opponent, who
+would regard his destruction as the justifiable act of a saviour
+of society.
+
+When Caius returned, the people as a whole seemed more apathetic than
+hostile. They listened with a cold ear both to appeals and promises, and
+this coldness was due to satiety rather than suspicion. They had been
+promised so much within the last few months that demagogism seemed to be
+a normal feature of existence, and no keen emotion was stirred by any
+new appeal to their vanity or to their interests. Such apathy, although
+it may favour the military pretender, is more to be dreaded than actual
+discontent by the man who rules merely by the force of character and
+eloquence. Criticism may be met and faced, and, the keener it is, the
+more it shows the interest of the critics in their leader. Pericles was
+hated one moment, deified the next; but no man could profess to be
+indifferent to his personality and designs. Gracchus took the lesson to
+heart, and concentrated his attention on the one class of his former
+supporters, whose daily life recalled a signal benefit which he had
+conferred, a class which might be moved by gratitude for the past and
+hope for the future. One of his first acts after his return was to
+change his residence from the Palatine to a site lying below the
+Forum.[699] Here he had the very poor as his neighbours, the true urban
+proletariate which never dreamed of availing itself of agrarian
+assignments or colonial schemes, but set a very real value on the
+corn-distributions, and may have believed that their continuance would
+be threatened by Gracchus's fall from power. It is probable, however,
+that, even without this motive, the characteristic hatred which is felt
+by the partially destitute for the middle class, may have deepened the
+affection with which Gracchus was regarded by the poorer of his
+followers, when they saw him abandoned by the more outwardly respectable
+of his supporters. The present position of Gracchus showed clearly that
+the powerful coalition on which he had built up his influence had
+crumbled away. From a leader of the State he had become but the leader
+of a faction, and of one which had hitherto proved itself powerless to
+resist unaided a sudden attack by the government.
+
+From this democratic stronghold he promulgated other laws, the tenor of
+which is unknown, while he showed his sympathy with the lower orders in
+a practical way which roused the resentment of his fellow-magistrates.
+[700] A gladiatorial show was to be given in the Forum on a certain day,
+and most of the magistrates had erected stands, probably in the form of
+a rude wooden amphitheatre, which they intended to let on hire.[701]
+Gracchus chose to consider this proceeding as an infringement of the
+people's rights. It was perhaps not only the admission by payment, but
+the opinion that the enclosure unduly narrowed the area of observation
+and cut off all view of the performance from the surrounding crowd,[702]
+that aroused Gracchus's protest, and he bade the magistrates pull down
+the erection that the poorer classes might have a free view of the
+spectacle. His request was disregarded, and Gracchus prepared a surprise
+for the obstinate organisers. On the very night before the show he
+sallied out with the workmen that his official duties still placed at his
+disposal; the tiers of seats were utterly demolished, and when day dawned
+the people beheld a vacant site on which they might pack themselves as
+they pleased. To the lower orders it seemed the act of a courageous
+champion, to the officials the wild proceeding of a headstrong
+demagogue. It could not have improved Gracchus's chances with the
+moneyed classes of any grade; he had merged their chances of enjoyment
+with that of the crowd and violated their sense of the prerogatives
+of wealth.
+
+But, although Gracchus may have been acting violently, he was not acting
+blindly. He must have known that his cause was almost lost, but he must
+also have been aware that the one chance of success lay in creating a
+solidarity of feeling in the poorer classes, which could only be
+attained by action of a pronounced and vigorous type. To what extent he
+was successful in reviving a following which furnished numerical support
+superior, or even equivalent to, the classes alienated by his conduct or
+won over by the intrigues of his opponents, is a fact on which we have
+no certain information. Only one mention has been preserved of his
+candidature for a third tribunate: and this narrative, while asserting
+the near approach which Gracchus made to victory, confesses the
+uncertainty of the accounts which had been handed down of the election.
+The story ran that he really gained a majority of the votes, but that
+the tribune who presided, with the connivance of some of his colleagues,
+basely falsified the returns.[703] It is a story that cannot be tested
+on account of our ignorance of the precautions taken, and therefore of
+the possibilities of fraud which might be exhibited, in the elections of
+this period. At a later period actual records of the voting were kept,
+in case a decision should be doubted;[704] and had an appeal to a
+scrutiny been possible at this time, Gracchus was not the man to let the
+dubious result remain unchallenged. But the story, even if we regard it
+as expressing a mere suspicion, suggests the profound disappointment of
+a considerable class, which had given its favourite its united support
+and received the news of his defeat with surprise and resentment. It
+breathes the poor man's suspicion of the chicanery of the rich, and may
+be an index that Gracchus retained the confidence of his humbler
+supporters until the end.
+
+The defeat, although a terrible blow, did not crush the spirit of
+Gracchus; it only rendered it more bitter and defiant. It was now that
+he exulted openly in the destructive character of his work, and he is
+said to have answered the taunts of his enemies by telling them that
+their laughter had a painful ring, and that they did not yet know the
+great cloud of darkness which his political activity had wrapped around
+their lives.[705] The dreaded danger of Opimius's election was soon
+realised, and members of the newly appointed tribunician college were
+willing to put themselves at the orders of the senate. The surest proof
+that Gracchus had fallen would be the immediate repeal of one of his
+laws, and the enactment which was most assailable was that which, though
+passed under another's name, embodied his project for the refoundation
+of Carthage. This Rubrian law might be attacked on the ground that it
+contravened the rules of religious right, the violation of which might
+render any public act invalid;[706] and the stories which had been
+circulated of the evil omens that had attended the establishment of
+Junonia, were likely to cause the scruples of the senate to be supported
+by the superstition of the people. Gracchus still held an official
+position as a commissioner for colonies, if not for land-distribution
+and the making of roads, but none of these positions gave him the
+authority to approach the people or the power to offer effective legal
+resistance to the threatened measure; any further opposition might
+easily take the form of a breach of the peace by a private individual
+and give his enemies the opportunity for which they were watching; and
+it was therefore with good reason that Gracchus at first determined to
+adopt a passive attitude in the face of the proposal of the tribune
+Minucius Rufus for the repeal of the Rubrian law.[707] Even Cornelia
+seems to have counselled prudence, and it was perhaps this crisis in her
+son's career which drew from her the passionate letter, in which the
+mother triumphs over the patriot and she sees the ruin of the Republic
+and the madness of her house in the loss which would darken her
+declining years.[708] This protest is more than consistent with the
+story that she sent country folk[709] to swell the following and protect
+the person of her son, when she saw that he would not yield without
+another effort to maintain his cause. The change of attitude is said to
+have been forced on Gracchus by the exhortations of his friends and
+especially of the impetuous Fulvius. The organisation of a band such as
+Gracchus now gathered round him, although not in itself illegal, was a
+provocation to riot; and a disastrous incident soon occurred which gave
+his opponents the handle for which they had long been groping. At the
+dawn of the day, on which the meeting was to be held for the discussion,
+and perhaps for the voting, on the repeal of the threatened law,
+Gracchus and his followers ascended to the Capitol, where the opposite
+party was also gathering in strength. It seems that the consul Opimius
+himself, although he could not preside at the final meeting of the
+assembly, which was purely plebeian, was about to hold a Contio[710] or
+to speak at one summoned by the tribunes. Gracchus himself did not
+immediately enter the area in which the meeting was to be held, but
+paced the portico of the temple buried in his thoughts.[711] What
+immediately followed is differently told; but the leading facts are the
+same in every version.[712] A certain Antullus or Antullius, spoken of
+by some as a mere unit amongst the people, described by others as an
+attendant or herald of Opimius, spoke some words--the Gracchans said, of
+insolence: their opponents declared, of patriotic protest--to Gracchus
+or to Fulvius, at the same time stretching out his arm to the speaker
+whom he addressed. The gesture was misinterpreted, and the unhappy man
+fell pierced with iron pens, the only weapons possessed by the unarmed
+crowd. There could be no question that the first act of violence had
+come from Gracchus's supporters, and the end for which Opimius had
+waited had been gained. Even the eagerness with which the leader had
+disclaimed the hasty action of his followers might be interpreted as a
+renewed infringement of law. He had hurried from the Capitol to the
+Forum to explain to all who would listen the unpremeditated nature of
+the deed and his own innocence of the murder; but this very action was a
+grave breach of public law, implying as it did an insult to the majesty
+of the tribune in summoning away a section of the people whom he was
+prepared to address.[713]
+
+The meeting on the Capitol was soon dissolved by a shower of rain,[714]
+and the tribunes adjourned the business to another day; while Gracchus
+and Fulvius Flaccus, whose half-formed plans had now been shattered,
+hastened to their respective homes. The weakness of their position had
+been that they refused to regard themselves in their true light as the
+leaders of a revolution against the government. Whatever their own
+intentions may have been, it is improbable that their supporters
+followed them to the Capitol simply with the design of giving peaceful
+votes against the measure proposed: and, had Antullius not fallen, the
+meeting on the Capitol might have been broken up by a rush of Gracchans,
+as that which Tiberius once harangued had been invaded by a band of
+senators. Success and even salvation could now be attained solely by the
+use of force; and the question of personal safety must have appealed to
+the rank and file as well as to the leaders, for who could forget the
+judicial massacre which had succeeded the downfall of Tiberius? But the
+security of their own lives was probably not the only motive which led
+numbers of their adherents to follow the two leaders to their
+homes.[715] Loyalty, and the keen activity of party spirit, which
+stimulates faction into war, must also have led them to make a last
+attempt to defend their patrons and their cause. The whole city was in a
+state of restless anticipation of the coming day; few could sleep, and
+from midnight the Forum began to be filled with a crowd excited but
+depressed by the sense of some great impending evil.[716]
+
+At daybreak the consul Opimius sent a small force of armed men to the
+Capitol, evidently for the purpose of preventing the point of vantage
+being seized by the hostile democrats, and then he issued notices for a
+meeting of the senate. For the present he remained in the temple of
+Castor and Pollux to watch events. When the fathers had obeyed his
+summons, he crossed the Forum and met them in the Curia. Shortly after
+their deliberations had begun, a scene, believed to have been carefully
+prepared, began to be enacted in the Forum.[717] A band of mourners was
+seen slowly making its way through the crowded market-place; conspicuous
+on its bier was the body of Antullius, stripped so that the wound which
+was the price of his loyalty might be seen by all. The bearers took the
+route that led them past the senate-house, sobbing as they went and
+wailing out the mourning cry. The consul was duly startled, and curious
+senators hastened to the door. The bier was then laid on the ground, and
+the horrified aristocrats expressed their detestation of the dreadful
+crime of which it was a witness. Their indignation may have imposed on
+some members of the crowd; others were inclined to mock this outburst of
+oligarchic pathos, and to wonder that the men who had slain Tiberius
+Gracchus and hurled his body into the Tiber, could find their hearts
+thus suddenly dissolved at the death of an unfortunate but
+undistinguished servant. The motive of the threnody was somewhat too
+obvious, and many minds passed from the memory of Tiberius's death to
+the thought of the doom which this little drama was meant to presage for
+his brother.
+
+The senators returned to the Curia, and the final resolution was taken.
+Opimius was willing to venture on the step which Scaevola had declined,
+and a new principle of constitutional law was tentatively admitted. A
+state of siege was declared in the terms that "the consul should see
+that the State took no harm," [718] and active measures were taken to
+prepare the force which this decree foreshadowed. Opimius bade the
+senators see to their arms, and enjoined each of the members of the
+equestrian centuries to bring with him two slaves in full equipment at
+the dawn of the next day.[719] But an attempt was made to avert the
+immediate use of force by issuing a summons to Gracchus and Flaccus to
+attend at the senate and defend their conduct there.[720] The summons
+was perfectly legal, since the consul had the right to demand the
+presence of any citizen or even any inferior magistrate; but the two
+leaders may well be excused for their act of contumacy in disobeying the
+command. They knew that they would merely be putting themselves as
+prisoners into the hands of a hostile force; nor, in the light of past
+events, was it probable that their surrender and punishment would save
+their followers from destruction. Preparations for defence, or a
+counter-demonstration which would prove the size and determination of
+their following, might lead the senate to think of negotiation. Its
+members had an inducement to take this view. Their legal position, with
+respect to the step which they were now contemplating, was unsound; and
+although they might claim that they had the government in the shape of
+its chief executive officer on their side, and that their late policy
+had attracted the support of the majority of the citizens, yet there was
+no uncontested precedent for the legitimacy of waging war against a
+faction at Rome; they had no mandate to perform this mission, and its
+execution, which had lately been rendered illegal by statute law, might
+subsequently be repudiated even by many of those whom they now regarded
+as their supporters. Yet we cannot wonder at the uncompromising attitude
+of the senate. They held themselves to be the legitimate government of
+the State; they had learnt the lesson that a government must rest either
+on its merits or on force; they were unwilling to repeat the scandalous
+scene which, on the occasion of Tiberius Gracchus's death, had proved
+their weakness, and were perhaps unable to resort to such unpremeditated
+measures in the face of the larger following of Caius; they could enlist
+on their side some members of the upper middle class who would share in
+the guilt, if guilt there was: and lastly they had at their mercy two
+men, of whom one had twice shaken the commonwealth and the other had
+gloried in the prospect of its self-mutilation in the future.
+
+The wisdom and justice of resistance appealed immediately to the mind of
+Flaccus, whose combative instincts found their natural satisfaction in
+the prospect of an interchange of blows. The finer and more complex
+spirit of Gracchus issued in a more uncertain mood. The bane of the
+thinker and the patriot was upon him. Was a man who had led the State to
+fight against it, and the rule of reason to be exchanged for the base
+arbitrament of the sword? None knew the emotions with which he turned
+from the Forum to gaze long and steadfastly at the statue of his father
+and to move away with a groan;[721] but the sight of his sorrow roused a
+sympathy which the call to arms might not have stirred. Many of the
+bystanders were stung from their attitude of indifference to curse
+themselves for their base abandonment of the man who had sacrificed so
+much, to follow him to his house, and to keep a vigil before his doors.
+The night was passed in gloomy wakefulness, the spirits of the watchers
+were filled with apprehension of the common sacrifice which the coming
+day might demand, and the silence was only broken when the voluntary
+guard was at intervals relieved by those who had already slumbered.
+Meanwhile the neighbours of Flaccus were being startled by the sounds of
+boisterous revelry that issued from his halls. The host was displaying
+an almost boyish exuberance of spirits, while his congenial comrades
+yelled and clapped as the wine and the jest went round. At daybreak
+Fulvius was dragged from his heavy slumbers, and he and his companions
+armed themselves with the spoils of his consulship, the Gallic weapons
+that hung as trophies upon his walls.[722] They then set out with
+clamorous threats to take possession of the Aventine. The home that
+Icilius had won for the Plebs was to be the scene of another struggle
+for freedom. It was in later times pretended that Fulvius had taken the
+step, from which even Catilina shrank, of calling the slaves to arms on
+a promise of freedom.[723] We have no means of disproving the
+allegation, which seems to have occurred with suspicious frequency in
+the records left by aristocratic writers of the popular movements which
+they had assisted to crush. But it is easy to see that the devotion of
+slaves to their own masters during such struggles, and the finding of
+their bodies amidst the slain, would be proof enough to a government,
+anxious to emphasise its merits as a saviour of society, that general
+appeals had been made to the servile class. Such a deduction might
+certainly have been drawn from a view of the forces mustered under
+Opimius; for in these the slaves may have exceeded the citizens in
+number.[724]
+
+Gracchus's mind was still divided between resistance and resignation. He
+consented to accompany his reckless friend to the Aventine, as the only
+place of refuge; but he declined to don his armour, merely fastening
+under his toga a tiny dagger,[725] as a means of defence in the last
+resort, or perhaps of salvation, did all other measures fail. The
+presage of his coming doom was shared by his wife Licinia who clung to
+him at the door, and when he gently disengaged himself from her arms,
+made one more effort to grasp his robe and sank senseless on the
+threshold. When Gracchus reached the Aventine with his friends, he found
+that Flaccus and his party had seized the temple of Diana and had made
+hasty preparations for fortifying it against attack. But Gracchus,
+impressed with the helplessness or the horror of the situation,
+persuaded him to make an effort at accommodation, and the younger son of
+Flaccus, a boy of singular beauty, was despatched to the Curia on the
+mission of peace.[726] With modest mien and tears streaming from his
+eyes he gave his message to the consul. Many--perhaps most--of those who
+listened were not averse to accept a compromise which would relieve the
+intolerable strain and avert a civil strife. But Opimius was inflexible;
+the senate, he said, could not be approached by deputy; the principals
+must descend from the Aventine, lay down their arms, deliver themselves
+up to justice as citizens subject to the laws, and then they might
+appeal to the senate's grace; he ended by forbidding the youth to
+return, if he could not bring with him an acceptance of these final
+terms. The more pacific members of the senate could offer no effective
+objection, for it was clear that the consul was acting within his legal
+rights. The coercion of a disobedient citizen was a matter for the
+executive power and, though Opimius had spoken in the name of the
+senate, the authority and the responsibility were his. Retirement would
+have been their only mode of protest; but this would have been a
+violation of the discipline which bound the Council to its head, and
+would have betrayed a suspicious indifference to the cause which was
+regarded as that of the constitution. It is said that, on the return of
+the messenger, Gracchus expressed willingness to accept the consul's
+terms and was prepared to enter the senate and there plead his own cause
+and that of his followers.[727] But none of his comrades would agree,
+and Flaccus again despatched his son with proposals similar to those
+which had been rejected. Opimius carried out his injunction by detaining
+the boy and, thirsting for battle to effect the end which delay would
+have assured, advanced his armed forces against the position held by
+Flaccus. He was not wholly dependent on the improvised levies of the
+previous day. There were in Rome at that moment some bands of Cretan
+archers,[728] which had either just returned from service with the
+legions or were destined to take part in some immediate campaign. It was
+to their efforts that the success of the attack was mainly due. The
+barricade at the temple might have resisted the onslaught of the
+heavily-armed soldier; but its defenders were pierced by the arrows, the
+precinct was strewn with wounded men, and the ranks were in utter
+disorder when the final assault was made. There were names of
+distinction which lent a dignity to the massacre that followed. Men like
+Publius Lentulus, the venerable chief of the senate, gave a perpetual
+colour of respectability to the action of Opimius by appearing in their
+panoplies amongst the forces that he led.[729]
+
+When the rout was complete and the whole crowd in full flight, Flaccus
+sought escape in a workshop owned by a man of his acquaintance; but the
+course of his flight had been observed, the narrow court which led to
+the house was soon crowded by pursuers, who, maddened by their ignorance
+of the actual tenement that concealed the person of Flaccus, vowed that
+they would burn the whole alley to the ground if his hiding-place were
+not revealed.[730] The trembling artisan who had befriended him did not
+dare to betray his suppliant, but relieved his scruples by whispering
+the secret to another. The hiding place was immediately revealed, and
+the great ex-consul who had laid the foundations of Rome's dominion in
+farther Gaul, a man strenuous and enlightened, ardent and faithful but
+perhaps not overwise, was hacked to pieces by his own citizens in an
+obscure corner of the slums of Rome. His elder son fell fighting by his
+side. To the younger, the fair ambassador of that day, now a prisoner of
+the consul, the favour was granted of choosing his own mode of death.
+Early Rome had repudiated the principle of visiting the sins of the
+fathers upon the children;[731] but the cold-blooded horrors of the
+Oriental and Hellenic world were now becoming accepted maxims of state
+to a government trembling for its safety and implacable in its revenge.
+
+Meanwhile Gracchus had been saved from both the stain of civil war and
+the humiliation of capture by his foes. No man had seen him strike a
+blow throughout the contest. In sheer disgust at the appalling scene he
+had withdrawn to the shrine of Diana, and was there prepared to compass
+his own death.[732] His hand was stayed by two faithful friends,
+Pomponius and Laetorius,[733] who urged him to escape. Gracchus obeyed,
+but it was believed by some that, before he left the temple, he
+stretched forth his hand to the goddess and prayed that the Roman people
+might never be quit of slavery as a reward for their ingratitude and
+treachery.[734] This outburst of anger, a very natural consequence of
+his own humiliating plight, is said to have been kindled by the
+knowledge that the larger portion of the mob had already listened to a
+promise of amnesty and had joined the forces of Opimius. Unlike most
+imprecations, that of Gracchus was destined to be fulfilled.
+
+The flight of Gracchus led him down the slope of the Aventine to the
+gate called Trigemina which stood near the Tiber's bank. In hastening
+down the hill he had sprained his ankle, and time for his escape was
+only gained by the devotion of Pomponius,[735] who turned, and
+single-handed kept the pursuing enemy at bay until trampling on his
+prostrate body they rushed in the direction of the wooden bridge which
+spanned the river. Here Laetorius imitated the heroism of his comrade.
+Standing with drawn sword at the head of the bridge, he thrust back all
+who tried to pass until Gracchus had gained the other bank. Then he too
+fell, pierced with wounds. The fugitive had now but a single slave to
+bear him company in his flight; it led them through frequented streets,
+where the passers-by stopped on their way, cheered them on as though
+they were witnessing a contest of speed, but gave no sign of help and
+turned deaf ears to Gracchus's pleading for a horse; for the pursuers
+were close behind, and the dulled and panic-stricken mob had no thought
+but for themselves. The grove of Furrina[736] received them just before
+they were overtaken by the pursuing band; and in the sacred precinct the
+last act was accomplished. It was known only that master and slave had
+been found lying side by side. Some believed that the faithful servant
+had slain Gracchus and then pierced his own breast; others held that
+they were both living when the enemy came upon them, but that the slave
+clung with such frantic devotion to his master that Gracchus's body
+could not be reached until the living shield had been pierced and torn
+away.[737] The activity of the pursuers had been stimulated by greed,
+for Opimius had put a price upon the heads of both the leaders of the
+faction on the Aventine. The bearers of these trophies of victory were
+to receive their weight in gold. The humble citizens who produced the
+head of Flaccus are said to have been defrauded of their reward; but the
+action of the man who wrested the head of Gracchus from the first
+possessor of the prize and bore it on a javelin's point to Opimius, long
+furnished a text to the moralist who discoursed on the madness of greed
+and the thirst of gold. Its unnatural weight is said to have revealed
+the fact that the brain had been extracted and the cavity filled with
+molten lead.[738] The bodies of the slain were for the most part thrown
+into the Tiber, but one account records that that of Gracchus was handed
+over to his mother for burial.[739] The number of the victims of the
+siege, the pursuit and the subsequent judicial investigation is said to
+have been three thousand.[740] The resistance to authority, which was
+all that could be alleged against the followers of Gracchus, was
+treated, not as a riot, but as a rebellion. The Tullianum saw its daily
+dole of victims, who were strangled by the executioner; the goods of the
+condemned were confiscated by the State and sold at public auction. All
+public signs of mourning were forbidden to their wives;[741] and the
+opinion of Scaevola, the greatest legal expert of the day, was that some
+property of his niece Licinia, which had been wrecked in the general
+tumult, could be recovered only from the goods of her husband, to whom
+the sedition was due.[742] The attitude of the government was, in fact,
+based on the view that the members of the defeated party, whether slain
+or executed, had been declared enemies of the State. Their action had
+put them outside the pale of law, and the decree of the senate, which
+had assisted Opimius in the extreme course that he had taken, was an
+index that the danger, which it vaguely specified, aimed at the actual
+existence of the commonwealth and undermined the very foundations of
+society. Such was the theory of martial law which Opimius's bold action
+gave to his successors. Its weakness lay in the circumstance that it was
+unknown to the statutes and to the courts; its plausibility was due
+partly to the fact that, since the desuetude of the dictatorship, no
+power actually existed in Rome which could legally employ force to crush
+even the most dangerous popular rising, and partly to the peculiarities
+of the movement which witnessed the first exercise of this authority.
+The killing of Caius Gracchus and his followers, however useless and
+mischievous the act may have been, had about it an air of spurious
+legality, with which no ingenuity could invest the murder of Tiberius
+and his adherents. The fallen chiefs were in enjoyment of no magisterial
+authority that could justify either their initial action or their
+subsequent disobedience; they had fortified a position in the town, and
+had certainly taken up arms, presumably for the purpose of inflicting
+grievous harm on loyal fellow-citizens. As their opponents were
+certainly the government, what could they be but declared foes who had
+been caught red-handed in an act of treason so open and so violent that
+the old identity of "traitors" and "enemies" was alone applicable to
+their case? Thus legal theory itself proclaimed the existence of civil
+war, and handed on to future generations of party leaders an instrument
+of massacre and extirpation which reached its culminating point in the
+proscription list of Sulla.
+
+Opimius, after he had ceased to preside at his death-dealing commission,
+expressed the view that he had removed the rabies of discord from the
+State by the foundation of a temple to Harmony. The bitter line which
+some unseen hand scribbled on the door,[743] expressed the doubt, which
+must soon have crept over many minds, whether the doctor had not been
+madder than the patient, and the view, which was soon destined to be
+widely held, that the authors of the discord which had been professedly
+healed, the teachers who were educating Rome up to a higher ideal of
+civil strife, were the very men who were now in power.[744] We shall see
+in the sequel with what speed Time wrought his political revenge. In the
+hearts of men the Gracchi were even more speedily avenged. The Roman
+people often alternated between bursts of passionate sentiment and
+abject states of cowardly contentment; but through all these phases of
+feeling the memory of the two reformers grew and flourished. To accept
+the Gracchi was an article of faith impressed on the proudest noble and
+the most bigoted optimate by the clamorous crowd which he addressed. The
+man who aped them might be pronounced an impostor or a traitor; the men
+he aped belonged almost to the distant world of the half-divine. Their
+statues were raised in public places, the sites on which they had met
+their death were accounted holy ground and were strewn with humble
+offerings of the season's fruits. Many even offered to their images a
+daily sacrifice and sank on their knees before them as before those of
+the gods.[745] The quiet respect or ecstatic reverence with which the
+names and memories of the Gracchi were treated, was partly due to a
+vague sense in the mind of the common man that they were the authors of
+the happier aspects of the system under which he lived, of the brighter
+gleams which occasionally pierced the clouds of oppression and
+discomfort; it was also due to the conviction in the mind of the
+statesman, often resisted but always recurring, that their work was
+unalterable. To undo it was to plunge into the dark ages, to attempt to
+modify it was immediately to see the necessity of its renewal. At every
+turn in the paths of political life the statesman was confronted by two
+figures, whom fear or admiration raised to gigantic proportions. The
+orthodox historian would angrily declare that they were but the figures
+of two young men, whose intemperate action had thrown Rome into
+convulsion and who had met their fate, not undeserved however
+lamentable, the one in a street riot, the other while heading an armed
+sedition. But the criticism contained the elements of its own
+refutation. The youth, the brotherhood, the martyrdom of the men were
+the very elements that gave a softening radiance to the hard contour of
+their lives. The Gracchi were a stern and ever-present reality; they
+were also a bright and gracious memory. In either character they must
+have lived; but the combination of both presentments has secured them an
+immortality which age, wisdom, experience and success have often
+struggled vainly to secure. That strange feeling which a great and
+beautiful life has often inspired, that it belongs to eternity rather
+than to the immediate past, and that it has few points of contact with
+the prosaic round of present existence, had almost banished from
+Cornelia's mind the selfish instincts of her loss, and had perhaps even
+dulled the tender memories which cluster round the frailer rather than
+the stronger elements in the characters of those we love. Those who
+visited her in her villa at Misenum, where she kept her intellectual
+court, surrounded by all that was best in letters, and exchanging
+greetings or gifts with the potentates of the earth, were amazed at the
+composure with which she spoke of the lives and actions of her
+sons.[746] The memory drew no tear, her voice conveyed no intonation of
+sorrow or regret. She spoke of them as though they were historical
+figures of the past, men too distant and too great to arouse the weak
+emotion which darkens contemplation. Some thought that her mind had been
+shaken by age, or that her sensibility had been dulled by misfortune.
+"In this they proved their own utter lack of sensibility" says the
+loving biographer of the Gracchi: They did not know, he adds, the signs
+of that nobility of soul, which is sometimes given by birth and is
+always perfected by culture, or the reasonable spirit of endurance which
+mental and moral excellence supply. The calmness of Cornelia proved, as
+well, that she was at one with her children after their death, and their
+identity with a mind so pure is as great a tribute to their motives as
+the admiration or fear of the Romans is to their intellect and their
+deeds, Cornelia deserved a memorial in Rome for her own intrinsic worth;
+but the demeanour of her latter days justifies the legend engraved on
+the statue which was to be seen in the portico of Metellus: "To
+Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi".[747]
+
+We are now in a position to form some estimate of the political changes
+which had swept over Rome during the past twelve years. The
+revolutionary legislation of this period was, strictly speaking, not
+itself the change, but merely the formula which marked an established
+growth; nor can any profit be derived from drawing a marked contrast
+between the aims and methods of the two men who were responsible for the
+most decisive of these reforms. A superficial view of the facts might
+lead us to suppose that Tiberius Gracchus had bent his energies solely
+to social amelioration, and that it was reserved for his brother Caius
+to effect vast changes in the working, though not in the structure, of
+the constitution. But even a chronological survey of the actions of
+these two statesmen reveals the vast union of interests that suddenly
+thrust themselves forward, with a vehemence which demanded either such a
+resistance as no political society is homogeneous enough to maintain, or
+such concessions as may be graciously made by a government which after
+the grant may still retain most of the forms and much of the substance
+of its former power. So closely interwoven were social and political
+questions, so necessary was it for the attempted satisfaction of one
+class immediately to create the demand for the recognition or
+compensation of another, that Tiberius Gracchus had no sooner formulated
+his agrarian proposals than he was beset with thoughts of legislating
+for the army, transferring some of the judicial power to the equestrian
+order, and granting the franchise to the allies. Even the belief that
+these projects were merely a device for securing his own ascendency,
+does not prove that their announcement was due to a brilliant discovery
+of their originator, or that he created wants which he thereupon
+proposed to satisfy. The desperate statesman seizes on the grievance
+which is nearest to hand; it is true that he may increase a want by
+giving the first loud and clear expression to the low and confused
+murmurings of discontent; but a grievance that lives and gives violent
+tokens of its presence, as did that of the Italian allies in the
+Fregellan revolt, must be real, not fictitious: and when it finds a
+remedy, as the needs of the poor and the political claims of the knights
+did under the regime of Caius Gracchus, the presumption is that the
+disease has been of long standing, and that what it has for a long time
+lacked was not recognition, but the opportunity and the intelligence
+necessary to secure redress. Caius Gracchus was as little of a political
+explorer as his brother; it did not require the intuition of genius to
+see facts which formed the normal environment of every prominent
+politician of the age. His claim to greatness rests, partly on the
+mental and moral strength which he shared with Tiberius and which gave
+him the power to counteract the force of inertia and transmute vague
+thought, first into glowing words and then into vigorous action; partly
+on the extraordinary ingenuity with which he balanced the interests and
+claims of classes so as to form a coalition which was for the time
+resistless: and partly on the finality with which he removed the
+jealousies of the hour from the idle arena of daily political strife,
+and gave them their place in the permanent machinery of the
+constitution, there to remain as the necessary condition of the
+precarious peace or the internecine war which the jarring elements of a
+balance of power bring in turn to its possessors.
+
+Since the reality of the problems with which the Gracchi dealt is
+undeniable, and since few would be inclined to admit that the most
+effective treatment of a problem, whether social or political, is to
+refuse it a solution, any reasonable criticism of their reforms must be
+based solely on a consideration of their aims and methods. The land
+question, which was taken up by both these legislators, attracts our
+first attention. The aim of the resumption and redistribution of the
+public domain had been the revival of the class of peasant holders, whom
+legend declared, perhaps with a certain element of truth, to have formed
+the flower of the civic population during the years when Rome was
+struggling for a place amongst the surrounding peoples and in the
+subsequent period of her expansion over Italy. Such an aim may be looked
+at from two points of view. It may be regarded as an end in itself,
+without any reference to its political results, or it may be looked on
+as an effort to increase the power and security of the State without any
+peculiar consideration of the comfort and well-being of its individual
+members. The Gracchan scheme, regarded from the first point of view,
+can, with respect to its end as distinguished from its methods, be
+criticised unfavourably only by those who hold that an urban life does
+under all circumstances convey moral, mental and physical benefits which
+are denied by the conditions of residence in country districts. It is
+true that the objector may in turn point out that the question of the
+standard of comfort to be attained in either sphere is here of supreme
+importance; but such an issue brings us at once within the region of
+means and not of ends, and an ideal of human life cannot be judged
+solely with reference to the practicability of its realisation. It is
+the second point of view from which the aim of this land legislation may
+be contemplated, which first gives the critic the opportunity of denying
+the validity of the end as well as the efficiency of the means. If the
+new agriculturist was meant to be an element of strength to the Roman
+State, to save it from the selfishness of a narrow oligarchy, the
+instability of a city mob and the corruption of both, to defend the
+conquests which the city had won or to push her empire further, it was
+necessary to prove that he could be of utility both as a voting unit and
+as a soldier in the legions. His capacity for performing the first
+function efficiently was, at the very least, extremely questionable. The
+reality of the farmer's vote obviously depended on the closeness of his
+residence to the capital, since there is not the least trace, at this or
+at any future time during the history of the Republic, of the formation
+of any design for modifying the rigidly primary character of the popular
+assemblies of Rome. The rights of the voter at a distance had always
+been considered so purely potential, that the inland and northern
+settlements which Rome established in Italy had generally been endowed
+with Latin rights, while the colonies of Roman citizens clustered more
+closely round their mother; and men had always been found ready to
+sacrifice the active rights of Roman citizenship, on account of the
+worthlessness of their possession in a remote colony. It was even
+difficult to reconcile the passive rights of Roman citizenship with
+residence at a distance from the capital; for all the higher
+jurisdiction was centred in Rome and could not easily be sought by the
+inhabitants of distant settlements.[748] But, even if we exclude the
+question of relative distance from the centre of affairs, it was still
+not probable that the dweller in the country would be a good citizen
+according to the Hellenic comprehension of that phrase. When Aristotle
+approves of a country democracy, simply because it is not strictly a
+democracy at all,[749] he is thinking, not merely of the farmer's lack
+of interest in city politics, but of the incompatibility of the
+perpetual demands which rural pursuits make on time and energy with
+attendance on public business at the centre of affairs. The son of the
+soil soon learns that he owes undivided allegiance to his mother: and he
+will seldom be stirred by a political emotion strong enough to overcome
+the practical appeals which are made by seed-time and harvest. But the
+opportunities for discarding civic obligations were far greater in Rome
+than in the Greek communities. The Roman assemblies had no stated days
+of meeting, laws might be promulgated and passed at any period of the
+year, their tenor was explained at public gatherings which were often
+announced on the very morning of the day for which they were summoned,
+and could be attended only by those whom chance or leisure or the
+habitual pursuit of political excitement had brought to the Capitol or
+the Forum. There was not at this period a fixed date even for the
+elections of the higher magistrates. An attempt was perhaps made to
+arrange them for the summer, when the roads were passable, the labours
+of spring were over, and the toils of harvest time had not yet
+commenced.[750] But the creation of the magistrates with Imperium
+depended to a large extent on the convenience of the consuls, one of
+whom had sometimes to be summoned back from a campaign to preside at the
+Comitia which were to elect his successors; while even the date of the
+tribunician elections might have been conditioned by political
+considerations. The closing events of the life of Tiberius Gracchus
+prove how difficult it was to secure the attendance of the country voter
+even when an election of known political import was in prospect; while
+Caius realised that the best security for the popular leader, whether as
+a legislator or a candidate, was to attach the urban resident to himself
+by the ties of gratitude and interest. We can scarcely admit, in the
+face of facts like these, that the agriculturist created by the Gracchan
+reforms was likely to render any signal political assistance to his
+city. It is true that the existence of a practically disfranchised
+proletariate may have a modifying influence on politics. It could not in
+Rome serve the purpose, which it sometimes fulfils in the modern world,
+of moulding the opinion of the voter; but even in Rome it suggested a
+reserve that might be brought up on emergencies. A state, however, does
+not live on emergencies but on the constant and watchful activity of its
+members. Such activity could be displayed at Rome only by the leisured
+senator or the leaders of the city mob. The forces that had worked for
+oligarchy in the past might under changed conditions produce a narrow
+type of urban democracy; but they presented no hope of the realisation
+of a true popular government.
+
+It might be hoped, however, that the newly created farmer might add to
+the military, if not the political, strength of the State. The hope, so
+far as it rested on the agriculturist himself, was rendered something of
+an anachronism by the present conditions of service. Even in the old
+days a campaign prolonged beyond the ordinary duration of six months had
+often effected the ruin of the peasant proprietor; and now that the
+cautious policy of the protectorate had been so largely abandoned and
+Rome's military efforts, no longer limited to wars of defence or
+aggression, were directed to securing her ascendency in distant
+dependencies by means of permanent garrisons, service in the legions was
+a still more fatal impediment to industrial development. Rome had not
+yet learnt the lesson that an empire cannot be garrisoned by an army of
+conscripts; but she was becoming conscious of the inadequacy of her own
+military system, and this consciousness led her to take the easy but
+fatal step of throwing far the larger burden of foreign service on the
+Latins and Italian allies. Any increase in the number and efficiency of
+her own military forces would thus remove a dangerous grievance, while
+it added to the strength which, in the last resort, could alone secure
+the permanence of her supremacy even in Italy. Such an increase was
+finally effected in the only possible manner--by the adoption of a
+system of voluntary enlistment and by carrying still further the
+increasing disregard for those antiquated conditions of wealth and
+status, which were a part of the theory that service was a burden and
+wholly inconsistent with the new requirement that it should become a
+profession. Although it must be confessed that little assistance in this
+direction was directly tendered by the Gracchan legislation, yet it
+should be remembered that, even if we exclude from consideration the
+small efforts made by Caius to render military service a more attractive
+calling, the increase of the farmer class might of itself have done much
+to solve the problem. Although the single occupant of a farm was clearly
+incapable of taking his part in expeditions beyond the seas without
+serious injury to his own interests, yet the sons of such a man might
+have performed a considerable term of military service without
+disastrous consequences to the estate, and where the inheritance had
+remained undivided and several brothers held the land in common, the
+duties of the soldier and the farmer might have been alternated without
+leaving the homestead divested of its head. The recognition of the
+military life as a profession must have profited still more by the
+policy which encouraged the growth of the country population; for the
+energy of the surplus members of the household, whose services were not
+needed or could not be adequately rewarded on the farm, would find a
+more salutary outlet in the stirring life of the camp than in the
+enervating influences of the city. The country-side might still continue
+to supply a better physique and a finer morale than were likely to be
+discovered in the poorer quarters of Rome.
+
+The objects aimed at in the Gracchan scheme of land-reform, although in
+some respects difficult of realisation, have aroused less hostile
+criticism than the methods which were adopted for their fulfilment. It
+may be held that the scheme of practical confiscation, which, advocated
+by Tiberius Gracchus, plunged him at once into a fierce political
+struggle and encountered resistance which could only be overcome by
+unconstitutional means, might have been avoided had the reformer seen
+that an economic remedy must be ultimate to be successful, and that an
+economic tendency can only be resisted by destroying the conditions
+which give it the false appearance of a law. The two conditions which
+were at the time fatal to the efforts of the moderate holder of land,
+are generally held to have been the cheapness and, under the inhumane
+circumstances of its employment, even efficiency of slave labour, and
+the competition of cheap corn from the provinces. The remedial measures
+which might immediately present themselves to the mind of a modern
+economist, who was unfettered by a belief in free trade or in the
+legitimacy of securing the cheapest labour available, are the
+prohibition of, or restrictions on, the importation of slaves, and the
+imposition of a duty on foreign corn. The first device might in its
+extreme form have been impracticable, for it would have been difficult
+to ensure such a supervision of the slave market as to discriminate
+between the sale of slaves for agricultural or pastoral work and their
+acquirement for domestic purposes. A tax on servile labour employed on
+land, or the moderate regulation which Caesar subsequently enforced that
+a certain proportion of the herdsmen employed on the pasture lands
+should be of free birth,[751] would have been more practicable measures,
+and perhaps, if presented as an alternative to confiscation, might not
+have encountered an unconquerable resistance from the capitalists,
+although their very moderation might have won them but a lukewarm
+support from the people, and ensured the failure that attends on
+half-measures which do not carry their meaning on their face and lack
+the boldness which excites enthusiasm. But the real objection which the
+Gracchi and their circle would have had to legislation of this type,
+whether it had been suggested to them in its extreme shape or in some
+modified form, would have been that it could not have secured the object
+at which they aimed. Such measures would merely have revived the free
+labourer, while their dream was to re-establish the peasant proprietor,
+or at least the occupant who held his land on a perfectly secure tenure
+from the State. And even the revival of the free labourer would only
+have been exhibited on the most modest scale; for such legislation would
+have done nothing to reclaim arable land which had degenerated into
+pasturage, and to reawaken life in the great deserted tracts, whose
+solitude was only broken by the rare presence of the herdsman's cabin.
+To raise a cry for the restoration of free labour on this exiguous scale
+might have exposed a legislator to the disappointment, if not derision,
+of his friends and invited the criticism, effective because popular, of
+all his secret foes. The masters of the world were not likely to give
+enthusiastic support to a leader who exhibited as their goal the lonely,
+barren and often dangerous life of sheep-driver to some greedy
+capitalist, and who offered them the companionship, and not the service,
+of the slaves that their victorious arms had won.
+
+The alternative of protective legislation for the defence of Italian
+grain may be even more summarily dismissed. It was, in the first place,
+impossible from the point of view of political expediency. The Gracchi,
+or any other reforming legislators, had to depend for their main support
+on the voting population of the city of Rome: and such a constituency
+would never have dreamed for a moment of sanctioning a measure which
+would have made the price of corn dearer in the Roman market, even if
+the objections of the capitalists who placed the foreign grain on that
+market could have been successfully overcome. So far from dreaming of
+the practicability of such a scheme, Caius Gracchus had been forced to
+allow the sale of corn at Rome at a cost below the current market-price.
+But, even had protection been possible, it must have come as the last,
+not as the first, of the constructive measures necessary for the
+settlement of the agrarian question. It might have done something to
+keep the small farms standing, but these farms had to be created before
+their maintenance was secured; and if adopted, apart from some scheme
+aiming at a redivision of the land, such a protective measure would
+merely have benefited such existing owners of the large estates as still
+continued to devote a portion of their domains to agriculture. The fact,
+however, which may be regarded as certain, that foreign corn could
+undersell that of Italy in the Roman market, and probably in that of all
+the great towns within easy access of the sea, may seem a fatal flaw in
+the agrarian projects of the Gracchi. What reason was there for
+supposing that the tendencies which in the past had favoured the growth
+of large holdings and replaced agriculture by pasturage, should remain
+inoperative in the future? Tiberius Gracchus's own regulation about the
+inalienability of the lands which he assigned, seemed to reveal the
+suspicion that the tendencies towards accumulation had not yet been
+exhausted, and that the occupants of the newly created farms might not
+find the pursuit of agriculture so profitable as to cling to them in
+scorn of the enticements of the encroaching capitalist. Doubtless the
+prohibition to sell revealed a weakness in the agricultural system of
+the times; but the regulation was probably framed, not in despair of the
+small holder securing a maintenance, but as a protection against the
+money-lender, that curse of the peasant-proprietor, who might now be
+less willing to approach the peasant, when the security which he
+obtained could under no circumstances lead to his acquiring eventual
+ownership. With respect to the future, there was reasonable hope that
+the farmer, if kept in tolerable security from the strategic advances of
+his wealthier neighbours, would be able to hold his own. In a modern
+state, possessing a teeming population and a complex industrial
+organisation, where the profits of a widely spread commercial life have
+raised the standard of comfort and created a host of varied needs, the
+view may reasonably be taken that, before agriculture can declare itself
+successful, it must be able to point to some central market where it
+will receive an adequate reward for the labour it entails. But this view
+was by no means so prevalent in the simpler societies of antiquity. The
+difficulties of communication, which, with reference to transport, must
+have made Rome seem nearer to Africa than to Umbria, and must have
+produced a similar tendency to reliance on foreign imports in many of
+the great coast towns, would alone have been sufficient to weaken the
+reliance of the farmer on the consumption of his products by the larger
+cities. The belief that the homestead might be almost self-sufficient
+probably lingered on in remote country districts even in the days of the
+Gracchi; or, if absolute self-existence was unattainable, the
+necessities of life, which the home could not produce, might be procured
+without effort by periodical visits to the market or fair, which formed
+the industrial centre of a group of hamlets. The seemingly ample size of
+the Gracchan allotments, some of which were three times as great as the
+larger of the colonial assignments of earlier days,[752] pointed to the
+possibility of the support of a large family, if the simpler needs of
+life were alone considered. The farmer's soul need not be vexed by
+competition if he was content to live and not to trade, and it might
+have been hoped that the devotion to the soil, which ownership inspires,
+might have worked its magic even on the lands left barren through
+neglect. There might even be a hope for the cultivator who aimed at the
+markets of the larger towns; for, if corn returned no profit, yet oil
+and wine were not yet undersold, and were both of them commodities which
+would bring better returns than grain to the minute and scrupulous care
+in which the smaller cultivator excels the owner of a great domain. The
+failure of corn-growing as a productive industry, perhaps the
+legislation of the Gracchi itself, must have given a great impetus to
+the cultivation of the vine and the olive, the value attached to which
+during the closing years of the Republic is, as we have seen, attested
+by the fact that the extension of these products was prohibited in the
+Transalpine regions in order to protect the interests of the
+Roman producer.
+
+An agricultural revival was, therefore, possible; but its success
+demanded a spirit that would enter readily into the work, and submit
+without a murmur to the conditions of life which the stern task
+enjoined. It was here that the agrarian legislation of the Gracchi found
+its obstacle. So far as it did fail--so far, that is, as it was not
+sufficient to prevent the renewed accumulation of the people in the
+towns and the continued depopulation of the country districts--it failed
+because it offended against social ideals rather than against economic
+tendencies. Many of the settlers whom it planted on the allotments, must
+already have been demoralised by the feverish atmosphere of Rome; while
+others of a saner and more vigorous type may have soon looked back on
+the capital, not as the lounging-place of the idler, but as the exchange
+of the world, or have turned their thoughts to the provinces as the
+sphere where energy was best rewarded and capital gave its speediest
+returns. Of the other social measures of this period, colonisation, in
+so far as it had a purely agricultural object, is subject to the
+criteria that have been applied to the agrarian movements of the time;
+although it is possible that the formation of new or the remodelling of
+old political societies, which must have followed the scheme of Drusus,
+had this been ever realised, would have infused a more vigorous life in
+agricultural settlements of this type than was likely to be awakened in
+those which formed a mere outlying part of Rome or some existing
+municipality. We have seen how the colonial plan of Drusus differed in
+its intention from that of Caius Gracchus; but the latter statesman had,
+in the settlement which he projected at Junonia, planned a foundation
+which would proximately have lived on the wealth of its territory rather
+than on its trade, and must always have been, like Carthage of old, as
+much an agricultural as a commercial state. To an agrarian project such
+as this no economic objection could have been offered and, had the
+scheme of transmarine colonisation been fully carried out, the provinces
+themselves might have been made to benefit the farming class of Italy,
+whose economic foes they had become. The distance also of such
+settlements from Rome would have blunted the craving for the life of the
+capital, which beset the minds and paralysed the energies of the
+occupants of Italian land.
+
+But, on the whole, the Gracchan scheme of colonisation was, as we have
+seen, commercial rather than agricultural, and was probably intended to
+benefit a class that was not adapted to rural occupations, either by
+association or training. By this enterprise Caius Gracchus showed that
+he saw with perfect clearness the true reason, and the final evidence,
+of the stagnation of the middle class. A nation which has abandoned
+agriculture and allows itself to be fed by foreign hands, even by those
+of its own subjects, is exposed to military dangers which are obvious,
+and to political perils somewhat more obscure but bearing their evil
+fruit from time to time; but such treason to the soil is no sign of
+national decay, if the legions of workers have merely transferred their
+allegiance from the country to the town, from agriculture to manufacture
+and commerce. In Italy this comforting explanation was impossible.
+Except perhaps in Latium and Campania, there were few industrial
+centres; many of those that existed were in the hands of Greeks, many
+more had sunk under the stress of war and had never been revived. The
+great syndicates in which Roman capital was invested, employed slaves
+and freedmen as their agents; the operations of these great houses were
+directed mainly to the provinces, and the Italian seaports were employed
+merely as channels for a business which was speculative and financial
+and, so far as Italy was concerned, only to a very slight, if to any,
+degree productive. To re-establish the producer or the trader of
+moderate means, was to revive a stable element in the population, whose
+existence might soften the rugged asperity with which capital confronted
+power on the one hand and poverty on the other. But to revive it at Rome
+would have demanded artificial measures, which, attacking as they must
+have done the monopolies possessed by the Equites, would have defeated
+the legislator's immediate object and probably proved impracticable,
+while such a revival would also have accentuated the centralisation,
+which might be useful to the politician but was deplored by the social
+reformer. The debilitated class might, however, recover its elasticity
+if placed in congenial surroundings and invited to the sites which had
+once attracted the enterprise of the Greek trader; and Caius Gracchus's
+settlements in the south of Italy were means to this end. We have no
+warrant for pronouncing the experiment an utter failure. Some of these
+colonies lived on, although in what guise is unknown. But even a
+moderate amount of success would have demanded a continuity in the
+scheme, which was rudely interrupted by the fall of its promoter, and it
+is not to be imagined that the larger capitalists, whose power the
+reformer had himself increased, looked with a friendly eye upon these
+smaller rivals. The scheme of social reform projected by Gracchus found
+its completion in his law for the sale of corn. When he had made
+provision for the born agriculturist and the born tradesman, there still
+remained a residuum of poorer citizens whose inclination and habits
+prompted them to neither calling. It was for these men that the monthly
+grant of cheapened grain was intended. Their bread was won by labour,
+but by a labour so fitful and precarious that it was known to be often
+insufficient to secure the minimum means of subsistence, unless some
+help was furnished by the State. The healthier form of state-aid--the
+employment of labour--was certainly practised by Caius Gracchus, and
+perhaps the extensive public works which he initiated and supervised,
+were intended to benefit the artisan who laboured in their construction
+as well as the trader who would profit by their completion.
+
+Whatever may be our judgment on the merits and results of this social
+programme, the importance of the political character which it was to
+assume, from the close of the career of Caius Gracchus to the downfall
+of the Republic, can hardly be exaggerated. The items of reform as
+embodied in his legislation became the constant factors in every
+democratic programme which was to be issued in the future. In these we
+see the demand for land, for colonial assignations, for transmarine
+settlements, for a renewal or extension of the corn law, perpetually
+recurring. It is true that this recurrence may be in part due to the
+very potency of the personality of the first reformer and to the magic
+of the memory which he left behind him. Party-cries tend to become
+shibboleths and it is difficult to unravel the web that has been spun by
+the hand of a master. Even the hated cry for the Italian franchise,
+which had proved the undoing of Caius Gracchus, became acceptable to
+party leaders and to an ever-growing section of their followers, largely
+because it had become entwined with his programme of reform. But the
+vigorous life of his great manifesto cannot be explained wholly on this
+ground. It is a greater exaltation of its author to believe that its
+life was due to its intrinsic utility, and that Gracchus indicated real
+needs which, because they remained unsatisfied until the birth of the
+Principate, were ever the occasion for the renewal of proposals so
+closely modelled on his own.
+
+When we turn from the social to the political changes of this period, we
+are on far less debatable ground. Although there may be some doubt as to
+the intention with which each reform was brought into existence by Caius
+Gracchus, its character as illustrated by its place in the economy of
+the commonwealth is so clearly stamped upon it and so potently
+manifested in the immediately following years, that a comprehensive
+discussion of the nature of his single measures would be merely an
+unprofitable effort to recall the past or anticipate the future. But the
+collective effect of his separate efforts has been subjected to very
+different interpretations, and the question has been further complicated
+by hazardous, and sometimes overconfident, attempts to determine how far
+the legislator's intentions were fulfilled in the actual result of his
+reforms. Because it can be shown that the changes introduced by
+Gracchus, or, to be more strictly accurate, the symptoms which elicited
+these changes, ultimately led to monarchical rule, Gracchus has been at
+times regarded as the conscious author and possessor of a personal
+supremacy which he deliberately intended should replace the intricate
+and somewhat cumbrous mechanism which controlled the constitutional
+government of Rome; because he sowed the seeds of a discord so terrible
+as to be unendurable even in a state which had never known the absence
+of faction and conflict, and had preserved its liberties through
+carefully regulated strife, his work has been held to be that of some
+avenging angel who came, not to renew, but to destroy. There is truth in
+both these pictures; but the Gracchus whom they portray as the force
+that annihilated centuries of crafty workmanship, as the first precursor
+of the coming monarchy, is the Gracchus who rightly lives in the
+historic imagination which, unfettered by conditions of space or time,
+prefers the contemplation of the eternity of the work to that of the
+environment of the worker; it is a presentment which would be applicable
+to any man as able and as resolute as Gracchus, who attempted to meet
+the evils created by a weak and irresponsible administration, partly by
+the restoration of old forms, partly by the recognition of new and
+pressing claims. There is a point at which reform, except it go so far
+as to blot out a constitution and substitute another in its place, must
+act as a weakening and dissolving force. That point is reached when an
+existing government is effectually hampered from exercising the
+prerogatives of sovereignty and no other power is sufficiently
+strengthened to act as its unquestioned substitute. The dissolution will
+be easier if reform bears the not uncommon aspect of conservatism, and a
+nominal sovereign, whose strength, never very great, has been sapped by
+disuse and the habit of mechanical obedience, is placed in competition
+with a somewhat effete usurper. It is not, however, fair to regard
+Gracchus as a radical reactionary who was the first to drag a prisoned
+and incapable sovereign into the light of day. Had he done this, he
+would have been the author of a revolution and the creator of a new
+constitution. But this he never attempted to be, and such a view of his
+work rests on the mistaken impression that, at the time of his reforms,
+the senate was recognised as the true government of Rome. Such a
+pretension had never been published nor accepted. We are not concerned
+with its reality as a fact; but no sound analysis, whether undertaken by
+lawyer or historian, would have admitted its theoretical truth. The
+literary atmosphere teemed with theories of popular sovereignty of a
+limited kind, and Gracchus, while recognising this sovereignty, did
+little to remove its limitations. It is true that, like his brother, he
+legislated without seeking the customary sanction of the senate; but
+initial reforms could never have been carried through, had the
+legislator waited for this sanction; and the future freedom of the
+Comitia from senatorial control was at best guaranteed by the force of
+the example of the Gracchi, not by any new legal ordinances which they
+ordained. Earlier precedents of the same type had not been lacking, and
+it was only the comprehensiveness of the Gracchan legislation which
+seemed to give a new impetus to the view that in all fundamental
+matters, which called for regulation by Act of Parliament, the people
+was the single and uncontrolled sovereign. Thus was developed the idea
+of the possibility of a new period of growth, which should refashion the
+details of the structure of the State into greater correspondence with
+the changed conditions of the times. As the earlier process of change
+had raised the senate to power, the latter might be interpreted as
+containing a promise that a new master was to be given to the Roman
+world. But it is highly improbable that to Gracchus or to any of his
+contemporaries was the true nature of the prophecy revealed. For the
+moment a balance of power was established, and the moneyed class stood
+midway between the opposing factions of senate and people. Its new
+powers were intended to constrain the senate into efficiency rather than
+to reduce it to impotence, and to create these powers Gracchus had
+endowed the equestrian order with that right of audit which, in the
+earlier theory of the constitution, had been held to be one of the
+securest guarantees of the power of the people. Gracchus predicted the
+strife that was likely to follow this friction between the government
+and the courts; but this prediction, while it perhaps reveals the hope
+that in the issues of the future the mercantile class would generally be
+found on the side of the people, betrays still more clearly the belief
+that the people, and their patron of the moment, were utterly incapable
+of standing alone, and that no true democratic government was possible
+for Rome. In spite of his Hellenism Gracchus betrayed two
+characteristics of the true Roman. He believed in the advisability of
+creating a political impasse, from which some mode of escape would
+ultimately be devised by the wearied and lacerated combatants; and he
+held firmly to the view that the people, considered strictly in itself,
+had no organic existence; that it never was, and never could be, a power
+in its own right. He made no effort to give the Roman Comitia an
+organisation which would have placed it on something like the
+independent level of a Greek Ecclesia. Such an omission was perhaps the
+result of neglect rather than of deliberation; but this very neglect
+proves that Gracchus had in no way emancipated himself from the typical
+Roman idea that the people could find expression only through the voice
+of a magistrate. This idea unquestionably made the leader of the moment
+the practical head of the State during any crisis that called for
+constant intervention on the part of the Comitia; but there is no reason
+to suppose a belief on the part of Gracchus that such intervention would
+be unremittingly demanded, would become as integral a part of the
+every-day mechanism of government as the senate's direction of the
+provinces or the knight's control of the courts. But even had he held
+this view, the situation which it conjured up need not have borne a
+close resemblance to monarchy. The natural vehicle for the expression of
+the popular will would have been the tribunate--an office which by its
+very nature presented such obvious hindrances to personal rule as the
+existence of colleagues armed with the power of veto, the short tenure
+of office, and the enjoyment of powers that were mainly negative. It is
+true that the Gracchi themselves had shown how some of these
+difficulties might be overcome. The attempt at re-election, the
+accumulation of offices, the disregard of the veto, were innovations
+forced on them by the knowledge, gained from bitter experience, that
+reform could proceed only from a power that was to some extent outside
+the constitution, and that the efficient execution of the contemplated
+measures demanded the concentration of varied types of authority in a
+single hand. Perhaps Caius faced the situation more frankly than his
+brother; but his consciousness of the necessity of such an occasional
+power in the State was accompanied by the belief that it would prove the
+ruin of the man who grasped it, that the work might be done but that the
+worker would be doomed. These gloomy anticipations were not the result
+of disordered nerves, but the natural fruit of the coldly calculating
+intellect which saw that supremacy either of or through the people was
+an illusion, that the power of the nobility must be resisted by keener
+and more durable weapons than the Comitia and its temporary leaders,
+that the authority of the senate might yield to a slow process of
+attrition, but would never be engulfed by any cataclysmic outburst of
+popular hostility. It was no part of the statesman's task to pry into
+the future and vex himself with the query whether a new and permanent
+headship of the State might not be created, to play the all-pervading
+part which destiny had assigned to the senate. The senate's power had
+not vanished, it was not even vanishing. It was a solid fact, fully
+accepted by the very masses who were howling against it. Its decadence
+would be the work of time, and all the great Roman reformers of the past
+had left much to time and to fortune. The materials with which the
+Gracchi worked were far too composite to enable them to forecast the
+shape of the structure of which they were laying the foundations. The
+essential fact of the future monarchy, the growth of the military power,
+must have been almost completely hidden from their eyes. It is true
+that, in relation to the fall of the Republic and the growth of the
+monarchical idea, the Gracchi were more than mere preparatory or
+destructive forces. They furnished faint types, which were gladly
+welcomed by subsequent pretenders, of what a constitutional monarch
+should be. But it is ever hazardous to identify the destroyer with the
+creator or the type with the prophet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The common destiny which had attended the Gracchi was manifested even in
+the consequences of their fall. At both crises a brilliant but
+disturbing element had vanished, the work of the reformer remained,
+because it was the utterance of the people before whose sacred name the
+nobility continued to bow, the political atmosphere was cleared, the
+legitimate organs of government resumed their acknowledged sway. To
+speak of a restoration of power to the nobility after the fall of Caius
+Gracchus is to belie both the facts of history and the impressions of
+the times. There is little probability that either the nobles or the
+commons felt that the two years of successful agitation amounted to a
+change of government, or that the senate ever abandoned the conviction
+that the reformer, embarrassing as his proceedings might be on account
+of the obvious necessity for their acceptance, must succumb to the
+devices which had long formed the stock-in-trade of a successful
+senatorial campaign; while the transition from the guidance of Gracchus
+to that of the accredited representatives of the nobility was rendered
+all the easier by the facts that the authority of the tribune had long
+been waning, and that, for some months before his death, a large section
+of the people had been greedily fixing its eyes on an attractive
+programme which had been presented in the name of the senate. The
+suppression of the final movement had, it is true, been marked by an
+unexampled severity; but these stern measures had followed on an actual
+appeal to arms, which had elicited a response from the passive or
+quaking multitude and had made them in some sense participants in the
+slaughter. If it was terrible to think that three thousand citizens had
+been butchered in the streets or in the Tullianum, it was comforting to
+remember that they had been officially denounced as public enemies by
+the senate. There was no haunting sense of an inviolable wrong inflicted
+on the tribunate, for Caius Gracchus had not been tribune when he fell;
+there was no memory, half bitter, half grotesque, of indiscriminate
+slaughter dealt by a mob of infuriated senators, for this latter and
+greater _emeute_ had been suppressed by the regular forces of the State,
+led by its highest magistrate. The position of the government was more
+secure, the conscience of the people more easy than it had been after
+the massacre of Tiberius Gracchus and his followers. This feeling of
+security on the part of the government, and of acquiescence on that of
+the people, was soon put to the test by the prosecution of the ex-consul
+Lucius Opimius. His impeachment before the people by the tribune
+Decius[753] raised the vital question whether the novel powers which he
+had exercised in crushing Gracchus and his adherents, could be justified
+on the ground that they were the necessary, and in fact the only, means
+of maintaining public security. It was practically a question whether a
+new form of martial law should be admitted to recognition by the highest
+organ of the State, the voice of the sovereign people itself; and the
+discussion was rendered all the more piquant by the fact that that very
+sovereign was reminded that it had lately sanctioned an ordinance which
+forbade a capital penalty to be pronounced against a Roman citizen
+except by consent of the people, The arguments used on either side were
+of the most abstract and far-reaching character.[754] In answer to
+Decius's objection that the proceedings of Opimius were an obvious
+contravention of statute law, and that the most wanton criminality did
+not justify death without trial, the view, never unwelcome to the Roman
+mind, that there was a higher justice than law, was advanced by the
+champions of the accused. It was maintained that an ultimate right of
+self-defence was as necessary to a state as to an individual. The man
+who attempted to overturn the foundations of society was a public enemy
+beyond the pale of law; the man who resisted his efforts by every means
+that lay to hand was merely fulfilling the duty to his country which was
+incumbent on a citizen and a magistrate. If this view were accepted, the
+complex issue at law resolved itself into a simple question of fact. Had
+the leader and the party that had been crushed shown by their actions
+that they were overt enemies of the State? The majority which acquitted
+Opimius practically decided that Gracchus and his adherents had been
+rendered outlaws by their deeds. The sentiment of the moment had been
+cleverly stirred by the nature of the issue which was put before them.
+Had the voters been Gracchans at heart, they would probably have paid
+but little attention to these unusual appeals to the fundamental
+principles of political life, and would have shown themselves supporters
+of the spirit, as well as of the letter, of the enactment whose author
+they had just pronounced an outlaw. For there could be no question that
+the Gracchan law, which no one dared assail, was meant to cover just the
+very acts of which Opimius had been guilty after the slaughter of the
+Gracchans in the streets had ended. The right to kill in an _emeute_
+might be a questionable point; but the power of establishing a military
+court for the trial of captured offenders was notoriously illegal, and
+could under very few circumstances have been justified even on the
+ground of necessity. The decision of the people also seemed to give a
+kind of recognition to the utterance of the senate which had preceded
+Opimius's display of force. It is quite true that no successful defence
+of violence could ever be rested on the formula itself. This "ultimate
+decree of the senate" was valued as a weighty and emphatic declaration
+of the existence of a situation which demanded extreme measures, rather
+than as a legal permit which justified the disregard of the ordinary
+rights of the citizen. But formulae often have a power far in excess of
+their true significance; they impose on the ignorant, and furnish both a
+shield and a weapon to their cunning framers. The armoury of the senate,
+or of any revolutionary who had the good fortune to overawe the senate,
+was materially strengthened by the people's judgment in Opimius's
+favour.[755] The favourable situation was immediately used to effect the
+recall of Publius Popillius Laenas. His restoration was proposed to the
+people by Lucius Bestia a tribune;[756] and the people which had just
+sanctioned Opimius's judicial severities, did not betray the
+inconsistency of continuing to resent the far more restricted
+persecution of Popillius. Yet the step was an advance on their previous
+action; for they were now actually rescinding a legal judgment of their
+own, and approving of the actions of a court which had been established
+by the senate on its own authority without any previous declaration of
+the outlawry of its victims--a court whose proceedings were known to
+have directed the tenor of that law of Caius Gracchus, the validity of
+which was still unquestioned.
+
+But even on the swell of this anti-Gracchan tide the nobility had still
+to steer its course with caution and circumspection. Personal prejudices
+were stronger than principles with the masses. They might sanction
+outrages which already had the blessing of men who represented,
+externally at least, the more respectable portion of Roman society; but
+they continued to detest individuals whose characters seemed to have
+grown blacker rather than cleaner by participation in, or even
+justification of, the recent acts of violence. One of our authorities
+would have us believe that even the aged Publius Lentulus, once chief of
+the senate, was sacrificed by his peers to the fate which had attended
+Scipio Nasica. He had climbed the Aventine with Opimius's troops and had
+been severely wounded in the ensuing struggle.[757] But neither his age
+nor his wounds sufficed to overcome the strange prejudice of the mob.
+Obloquy and abuse dogged his footsteps, until at length he was forced,
+in the interest of his own peace or security, to beg of the senate one
+of those honorary embassies which covered the retirement of a senator
+either for private business or for leisure, and to seek a home in
+Sicily.[758] His last public utterance was an impassioned prayer that he
+might never return to his ungrateful country: and the gods granted him
+his request. If this story is true, it proves that public opinion was
+stronger even than the voice of the Comitia. Lentulus, if put on his
+trial, would probably have been acquitted; but the resentful minority,
+which was powerless in the assembly, may have been sufficiently strong
+to make life unbearable to its chosen victim by its demeanour at public
+gatherings and in the streets. But even the Comitia had limits to its
+endurance. During the year which followed Opimius's acquittal there
+appeared before them a suppliant for their favour who had about equal
+claims to the gratitude and the hatred of both sections of the people.
+They were the self-destructive or corroborative claims of the statesman
+who is called a convert by his friends and a renegade by his foes. No
+living man of the age had stood in a stronger political light than
+Carbo. An active assistant of Tiberius Gracchus, and so embittered an
+opponent of Scipio Aemilianus as to be deemed the author of his death,
+he had severed his connection with the party of reform, probably in
+consequence of the view that the extension of the franchise which had
+become embedded in their programme was either impracticable or
+undesirable. He must have proved a welcome ally to the nobility in their
+struggle with Caius Gracchus, and their appreciation of his value seems
+proved by the fact that he was elected to the consulship in the very
+year of the tribune's fall, when the influence of the senate, and
+therefore in all probability their power of controlling the elections,
+had been fully re-established. The debt was paid by a vigorous
+championship of the cause of Opimius, which was heard during the
+consulship of Carbo.[759] The chief magistrate spoke warmly in defence
+of his accused predecessor in office, and declared that the action of
+Opimius in succouring his country was an act incumbent on the consul as
+the recognised guardian of the State.[760] No man had greater reason to
+feel secure than Carbo, who had so lately tested the suffrages of the
+people as electors and as judges; yet no man was in greater peril. It
+seems that, while exposed on the side of his former associates to the
+impotent rage which is excited by the success of the convert, who is
+believed to have been rewarded for his treachery, he had not won the
+confidence, or at least could not arouse the whole-hearted support, of
+his new associates and their following in the assembly. Perhaps the
+landlords had not forgiven the agrarian commissioner, nor the moderates
+the vehement opponent of Scipio; to the senate he had served his
+purpose, and they may not have thought him serviceable enough to deserve
+the effort which had rescued Opimius. Carbo was, in fact, an inviting
+object of attack for any young political adventurer who wished to
+inaugurate his career by the overthrow of a distinguished political
+victim, and to sound a note of liberalism which should not grate too
+harshly in the ears of men of moderate views. The assailant was Lucius
+Crassus,[761] destined to be the greatest orator of his day, and a youth
+now burning to test his eloquence in the greatest field afforded by the
+public life of Rome, but scrupulous enough to take no unfair advantage
+of the object of his attack.[762] We do not know the nature of the
+charge on which Carbo was arraigned. It probably came under the
+expansive conception of treason, and was possibly connected with those
+very proceedings in consequence of which Opimius had been accused and
+acquitted.[763] That the charge was of a character that had reference to
+recent political events, or at least that the prosecutor felt himself
+bound to maintain some distinct political principle of a liberal kind,
+is proved by the regret which Crassus expressed in his maturer years
+that the impetus of youth had led him to take a step which limited his
+freedom of action for the future.[764] Some compunction may also have
+been stirred by the unexpected consequence of his attack; for Carbo,
+perhaps realising the animosity of his judges and the weakness or
+coldness of his friends, is said to have put an end to his life by
+poison.[765] Voluntary exile always lay open to the Roman who dared not
+face the final verdict; and the suicide of Carbo cannot be held to have
+been the sole refuge of despair; it is rather a sign of the bitterness
+greater than that of death, which may fall on the soul of a man who can
+appeal for sympathy to none, who knows that he has been abandoned and
+believes that he has been betrayed. The hostility of his countrymen
+pursued him beyond the grave; the aristocratic historian could not
+forget the seditious tribune, and the contemporary chronicles which
+moulded and handed on the conception of Carbo's life, showed the usual
+incapacity of such writings to appreciate the possibility of that honest
+mental detachment from a suspected cause which often leads, through
+growing dissension with past colleagues and increasing co-operation with
+new, to a more violent advocacy of a new faith than is often shown by
+its habitual possessors.
+
+The records of the political contests which occupied the two years
+succeeding the downfall of Caius Gracchus, are sufficient to prove that
+political thought was not stifled, that practically any political
+views--saving perhaps such as expressed active sympathy with the final
+efforts of Caius Gracchus and his friends--might be pronounced, and that
+the nobility could only maintain its influence by bending its ear to the
+chatter of the streets and employing its best instruments to mould the
+opinion of the Forum by a judicious mixture of deference and
+exhortation. The senate knew itself to be as weak as ever in material
+resources; government could not be maintained for ever by a series of
+_coups d'etat_, and the only method of securing the interests of the
+rulers was to maintain the confidence of the majority and to presume
+occasionally on its apathy or blindness. This was the attitude adopted
+with reference to the proposals which had lately been before the people.
+Drusus's scheme of colonisation was not withdrawn, but its execution was
+indefinitely postponed,[766] and the same treatment was meted out to the
+similar proposals of Caius Gracchus. Two of his Italian colonies,
+Neptunia near Tarentum and Scylacium, seem actually to have survived;
+but this may have been due to the fact that the work of settlement had
+already commenced on these sites, and that the government did not
+venture to rescind any measure which had been already put into
+execution. It was indeed possible to stifle the settlement on the site
+of Carthage, for here the superstition of the people supported the
+objections of the senate, and the question of the abrogation of this
+colony had been raised to such magnitude by the circumstances of
+Gracchus's fall that to withdraw would have been a sign of weakness. But
+even this objectionable settlement in Africa gave proof of the scruples
+of the senate in dealing with an accomplished fact. When the Rubrian law
+was repealed, it was decided not to take from the _coloni_ the lands
+which had already been assigned; no religious pretext could be given for
+their disturbance, for the land of Carthage was not under the ban that
+doomed the city to desolation; and the colonists remained in possession
+of allotments, which were free from tribute, were held as private
+property, and furnished one of the earliest examples of a Roman tenure
+of land on provincial soil.[767] The assignment was by the nature of the
+case changed from that of the colonial to that of the purely agrarian
+type; the settlers were members of Rome alone and had no local
+citizenship, although it is probable that some modest type of urban
+settlement did grow up outside the ruined walls of Carthage to satisfy
+the most necessary requirements of the surrounding residents.
+
+The benefits conferred by the Gracchi on the poorer members of the
+proletariate were also respected. The corn law may have been left
+untouched for the time being[768]--a natural concession, for the senate
+could only hope to rule by its influence with the urban mob, and, in the
+case of so simple an institution, any modification would have been so
+patent an infringement of the rights of the recipients as to have
+immediately excited suspicion and anger. With the agrarian law it was
+different. Its repeal was indeed impossible; but the land-hunger of the
+dispossessed capitalists might to some extent be appeased by a measure
+that was not only tolerable, but welcome; and modifications, so gradual
+and subtle that their meaning would be unintelligible to the masses,
+might subsequently be introduced to remedy observed defects, to calm the
+apprehensions of the allies, and perhaps to secure the continuance of
+large holdings, if economic causes should lead to their revival. The
+agrarian legislation of the ten years that followed the fall of Caius
+Gracchus, seems to have been guided by the wishes of the senate; but
+much of it does not bear on its surface the signs which we might expect
+of capitalistic influence or oligarchic neglect of the poor. Large
+portions of it seem rather to reveal the desire of banishing for ever a
+harrowing question which was the opportunity of the demagogue; and the
+peculiar mixture of prudence, liberality, and selfishness which this
+legislation reveals, can only be appreciated by an examination of its
+separate stages.
+
+Shortly after the death of Caius Gracchus--perhaps in the very year of
+his fall--a law was passed permitting the alienation of the
+allotments.[769] This measure must have been as welcome to the lately
+established possessors as it was to the large proprietors; it removed
+from the former a galling restraint which, like all such legal
+prohibitions, formed a sentimental rather than an actual grievance, but
+one that was none the less keenly felt on that account; while to the
+latter it offered the opportunity of satisfying those expectations,
+which the initial struggles of the newly created farmers must in many
+cases have aroused. The natural consequence of the enactment was that
+the spurious element amongst the peasant-holders, represented by those
+whose tastes and capacities utterly unfitted them for agriculture,
+parted with their allotments, which went once more to swell the large
+domains of their wealthier neighbours.[770] We do not know the extent or
+rapidity of this change, or the stage which it had reached when the
+government thought fit to introduce a new agrarian law, which may have
+been two or three years later than the enactment which permitted
+alienation.[771] The new measure contained three important
+provisions.[772] Firstly, it forbade the further distribution of public
+land, and thus put an end to the agrarian commission which had never
+ceased to exist, and had continued to enjoy, if not to exercise, its
+full powers since the restoration of its judicial functions by Caius
+Gracchus. We cannot say to what extent the commission was still
+Encountering claims on its jurisdiction and powers of distribution at
+the time of its disappearance; but fourteen years is a long term of
+power for such an extraordinary office, whose work was necessarily one
+of perpetual unsettlement; and the disappearance of the triumvirs must
+have been welcome, not only to the existing Roman occupants of land
+which still remained public, but to those of the Italians to whom the
+commission had ever been a source of apprehension. The extinction of the
+office must have been regarded with indifference by those for whom the
+commission had already provided, and by the large mass of the urban
+proletariate which did not desire this type of provision. The residuum
+of citizens which still craved land may be conceived to have been small,
+for eagerness to become an agriculturist would have suggested an earlier
+claim; and the passing of the commission was probably viewed with no
+regret by any large section of the community. The law then proceeded to
+establish the rights of all the occupants of land in Italy that had once
+been public and had been dealt with by the commission. To all existing
+occupants of the land which had been assigned, perfect security of
+tenure was given, and this security may have been extended now, as it
+certainly was later, to many of the occupants who still remained on
+public land which had not been subjected to distribution. So far as the
+land which had been assigned was concerned, this law could have made no
+specification as to the size of the allotments, for the law permitting
+alienation had made it practically private property and given its
+purchaser a perfectly secure title. Hence the accumulations which
+followed the permit to alienate were secured to their existing
+possessors, and a legal recognition was given to the formation of such
+large estates as had come into existence during the last three years.
+But the security of tenure was conditioned by the reimposition of the
+dues payable to the State, which had been abolished by Drusus. We are
+not informed whether these dues were to be henceforth paid only by those
+who had received allotments from the land commission, or by all in whose
+hands such allotments were at the moment to be found; perhaps the
+intention was to impose them on all lands that had been public before
+the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus; although many of the larger
+proprietors, who had recently added to their holdings, might have urged
+in their defence that they had acquired the land as private property and
+that it was burdened by no dues at the time of its acquisition. But,
+even if this burden fell mainly on the class of smaller possessors, it
+could scarcely be regarded as a grievance, for it had formed part of the
+Gracchan scheme, and there was no legitimate reason why the newly
+established class of cultivators should be placed in a better position
+than the older occupants of the public domain, who still paid dues both
+on arable land and for the privilege of pasturing their flocks. The
+temporary motive which had led to their abolition had now ceased to
+exist, for the agricultural colonies of Drusus, who had promised land
+free from all taxes, had not been established, and the chief, almost the
+sole, example of a recent assignment on such liberal principles was to
+be discovered in distant Africa. But, even if the cultivators grumbled,
+their complaints were not dangerous to the government. They would have
+found no echo at Rome, where the urban proletariate was content with the
+easier provision which had been made for its support; and the new
+revenues from the public land were made still more acceptable to the
+eyes of the masses by the provision contained in this agrarian law that
+they should be employed solely for the benefit of needier citizens. The
+precise nature of the promised employment is unhappily unknown, our
+authority merely informing us that "they were to be used for purposes of
+distribution". We cannot understand by these words free gifts either in
+money or corn; for such extreme measures never entered even into the
+social ideals of Caius Gracchus, and the senate to its credit never
+deigned to purchase popularity through the pauperising institutions by
+which the Caesars maintained the security of their rule in Rome. The
+words might imply an extension of the system of the sale of cheap corn,
+or a cheapening of the rates at which it was supplied; but the Gracchan
+system seems hardly to have admitted of extension, so far as the number
+of recipients was concerned, and cheaper sales would hardly have been
+encouraged by a government, which, anxious as it was to secure
+popularity, was responsible for the financial administration of the
+State and looked with an anxious eye upon the existing drain on the
+resources of the treasury.[773] Perhaps the new revenues were held up to
+the people as a guarantee that the sale of cheap corn would be
+continued, and public confidence was increased when it was pointed out
+that there was a special fund available for the purpose. If we abandon
+the view that the promised employment of the revenues in the interest of
+the people referred to the distribution of corn, there remains the
+possibility that it had reference to the acquisition of fresh land for
+assignation. This promise would indeed have rendered practicable the
+partial realisation of the shadowy schemes of Drusus, which had never
+been officially withdrawn; but it is doubtful whether it would have done
+much to strengthen the hold of the government upon the urban voter; for
+the whole scheme of this new land law seems to prove that the agrarian
+question was viewed with indifference, and no pressure seems to have
+been put on the government to carry their earlier promises into effect.
+
+Apart from the welcome prospect implied in the abolition of the agrarian
+commission, no positive guarantee against disturbance had yet been given
+to the Latins and Italians. This was formally granted, in terms unknown
+to us, at the appropriate hands of Marcus Livius Drusus during his
+tenure of the consulship.[774] The senate, now that it had satisfied the
+larger proprietors and the urban proletariate, and could boast that it
+had at least not injured the smaller cultivators, completed its work of
+pacification by holding out the hand of fellowship to the allies. It was
+tacitly understood that the new friend was not to ask for more, but he
+might be induced to look to the senate as his refuge against the
+rapacity of the mob and the recklessness of its leaders.
+
+Shortly afterwards the tribune Spurius Thorius[775] carried a law which
+again abolished the _vectigal_ on the allotments. If we regard this
+measure as an independent effort on the part of the tribune, it may have
+been an answer to the protests of the smaller agriculturists still
+struggling for existence; if it was dictated by the senate, it may have
+been due to the absorption of the allotments by the larger proprietors
+and their unwillingness to pay dues for land which they had added to
+their private property. But, to whatever party we may assign it, we may
+see in it also the desire to reach a final settlement of the agrarian
+question by abolishing all the invidious distinctions between the
+different tenures of land which had once formed part of the public
+domain. It removed the injustice of burdening the small holding with a
+rent which was not exacted from estates that had been partly formed by
+accretions of such allotments; and by the abolition of all dues[776] it
+tended to remove all land which had been assigned, from the doubtful
+category to which it had hitherto belonged of possessions which, though
+in a sense private, still recognised the overlordship of the State, and
+to revive in all its old sharpness the simple distinction between public
+and private land. This tendency makes it probable that the law of
+Thorius is identical with one of which we possess considerable
+fragments; for this partially preserved enactment is certainly as
+sweeping a measure as could have been devised by any one eager to see
+the agrarian question, so far as it affected Italian soil, finally
+removed from the region of political strife.
+
+Internal evidence makes it probable that this law was passed in the year
+111 B.C.,[777] and consequently at the close of that period of
+comparative quiescence which was immediately followed by the political
+storm raised by the conduct of the war in Numidia. It may, therefore, be
+regarded as a product of senatorial enlightenment, although its
+provisions would be quite as consistent with the views of a tolerably
+sober democrat. The main scope of the enactment is to give the character
+of absolute private ownership, unburdened by any restrictions such as
+the payment of dues to the State, to nearly all the land which had been
+public at the time of the passing of the agrarian law of Tiberius
+Gracchus. The first provisions refer to lands which had not been dealt
+with by the agrarian commissioners. Any occupant of the public domain,
+who has been allowed to preserve his allotment intact, because it does
+not exceed the limit fixed by the earlier laws, and any one who has
+received public land from the State in exchange for a freehold which he
+has surrendered for the foundation of a colony, is henceforth to hold
+such portions of the public domain as his private property. The same
+provision holds for all land that has been assigned, whether by colonial
+or agrarian commissioners. The first class of assignments are those
+incidental to the one or two colonies of Caius Gracchus, and perhaps of
+Drusus, that were actually established in Italy. Even at the time of
+settlement such land must have been made the private property of its
+holders; and this law, therefore, but confirms the tenure, and implies
+the validity of the act of colonisation. Such land is mentioned as
+having been "given and assigned in accordance with a resolution of the
+people and the plebs," and all eases in which recent colonial laws had
+been repealed or dropped--cases which would include Caius Gracchus's
+threatened partition of the Campanian territory--are tacitly excluded.
+The second class of assignments refer to those made by the
+land-commissioners during the whole period of their chequered existence,
+and the land whose private character is thus confirmed, must have
+covered much the larger part of what had once been the State's domain
+in Italy.
+
+A certain portion of this domain still remains, however, the property of
+the State and is not converted into private land. The whole of the soil
+which had been given in usufruct to colonies and municipal towns, is
+retained in its existing condition; the holders, whether Latin colonists
+or Roman citizens, are confirmed in their possessions; but, as the land
+still remains public, they are doubtless expected to continue to pay
+their quit-rent to the State. Similar provision is made for a peculiar
+class of land, which had been given by Rome as security for a national
+debt. The debt had never been liquidated, probably because the creditors
+preferred the land. This they were now to retain on condition of
+continued payment of the quit-rent, which marked the fact that the State
+was still its nominal owner. A public character is also maintained for
+land which had been assigned for the maintenance of roads. Here we find
+the only instance of an actual assignation of the Gracchan commissioners
+which was not converted, into private property; the obvious reason for
+this exception being that these occupants performed a specific and
+necessary duty, which would disappear if their tenure was converted into
+absolute ownership. Exception against ownership was also made for those
+commons on which the occupants of surrounding farms had an exclusive
+right of sending their flocks to pasture;[778] for the conversion of
+such grazing land into private lots would have injured the collective
+interests, and conferred little benefit on the individuals of the
+group.[779] The remaining classes of land which still remain the
+property of the State, are the roads of Italy, such public land as had
+been specially exempted from distribution by the legislation of the
+Gracchi, and such as had remained public on other grounds. The only
+known instance of the first class is the Campanian territory, which
+continued to be let on leases by the State and to bring to the treasury
+a sure and considerable revenue; the second class was probably
+represented by land which was not arable and had for this reason escaped
+distribution. The law provides that it is not to be occupied but to
+serve the purposes of grazing-land, and a limit is fixed to the number
+of cattle and sheep belonging to a single owner to which it is to afford
+free pasturage. For the enjoyment of grazing-rights beyond this limit
+dues are to be paid to the contractors who have purchased the right of
+collection from the State.
+
+The law then quits the public domains of Italy for those of Africa and
+Corinth, partly for the purpose of specifying with exactitude the rights
+of the various occupiers and tenants who were settled on the
+territories, but chiefly with the object of effecting the sale of some
+of the public domain in the province of Africa and the dependency of
+Achaea. This intention of alienation is perhaps the chief reason why the
+great varieties of tenure of the African soil are marshalled before us
+with such detail and precision; for it was necessary, in view of the
+contemplated sale, to re-assert the stability of rights that should be
+secure by their very nature or had been guaranteed by solemn compact.
+But the occasion of a comprehensive settlement of the agrarian question
+in Italy was no doubt gladly seized as affording the right opportunity
+for surveying, revising, and establishing the claims of those who were
+in enjoyment of what was, or had been, the provincial domain of Rome
+across the seas. The rights of Roman citizens and subjects are
+indifferently considered, and amongst the former those of the settlers
+who had journeyed to Africa in accordance with the promises of the
+Rubrian law are fully recognised. The degree of permanence accorded to
+the manifold kinds of tenure passed in review can not be determined from
+our text; but, even when all claims that deserved a permanent
+recognition had been subtracted, there still remained a residuum of
+land, leased at quinquennial intervals by the censors, which might be
+alienated without the infliction of injury on established rights. We do
+not know to what extent this sale, the mechanism for which was minutely
+provided for in the law, was carried in Africa; its application to the
+domain land of Corinth was either withdrawn or, if carried out, was but
+slight or temporary; for Corinthian land remained to be threatened by
+later agrarian legislation. It is not easy to suggest a motive for this
+sale; for it would seem a short-sighted policy to part, on an extensive
+scale and therefore presumably at a cheapened rate, with some of the
+most productive land in the world, such as was the African domain of the
+period, in order to recoup the treasury for the immediate pecuniary
+injury which it was suffering in the loss of the revenues from the
+public land of Italy. Perhaps the government had grown suspicious of the
+operations of the middle-men, and, since they had restricted their
+activity by limiting the amount of public land in Italy, deemed a
+similar policy advisable in relation to some of their foreign
+dependencies.
+
+The length at which we have dwelt on this law is proportionate to its
+importance in the political history of the times, and if we possessed
+fuller knowledge of its effects, we should doubtless be able to add, in
+their social history as well. Its economic results, however, are
+exceedingly obscure, and possibly it produced none worthy of serious
+consideration; for the artificial stability which it may have seemed to
+give to the existing tenure of land could in no way check the play of
+economic forces. If these tendencies were still in favour of large
+holdings,[780] the process of accumulation must have continued, and, as
+we have before remarked, the accumulator was in a securer position when
+purchasing land which was admittedly the private property of its owner,
+than when buying allotments which might be held to be still liable to
+the public dues. On the other hand, the remission of the impost must
+have relieved, and the sense of private ownership inspired, the labours
+of the smaller proprietors; and the perpetuation of a considerable
+proportion of the Gracchan settlers is probable on general grounds. The
+reason why it is difficult to give specific reasons for this belief is
+that, at the time when we next begin to get glimpses of the condition of
+the Italian peasant class, the great reform had been effected which
+incorporated the nations of Italy into Rome. The existence of numerous
+small proprietors in the Ciceronian period is attested, but many of
+these may have been citizens recently given to Rome by the Italian
+stocks, amongst whom agriculture on a small scale had never
+become extinct.
+
+But the political import of this measure is considerable. By restricting
+to narrow limits all the land of Italy to which the State could make a
+claim, it altered the character of agrarian agitation for the future. It
+did not indeed fulfil its possible object of obviating such measures;
+but it rendered the vested interests of all Italian cultivators secure,
+with the exception of the lessees of the leased domain, who perhaps had
+no claim to permanence of tenure. This domain was represented chiefly by
+the Campanian land: and the reformer who would make this territory his
+prey, injured the finances of the State more than the interests of the
+individual. If he desired more, he must seek it either in the foreign
+domains of Rome or by the adoption of some scheme of land purchase.
+Assignment of lands in particular districts of Italy or in the provinces
+naturally took the form of colonisation, and this is the favourite shape
+assumed by the agrarian schemes of the future. Rome was still to witness
+many fierce controversies as to the merits of the policy of colonial
+expansion, and as to the wisdom of employing public property and public
+revenues to this end; the rights of the conqueror to the lands of his
+vanquished fellow-citizens were also to be cruelly asserted, and the
+civil wars also invited a species of brigandage for the attainment of
+possession which too often replaced the judgments of the courts; but
+never again do we find a regular political warfare waged between the
+rich and the poor for the possession of territories to which each of the
+disputants laid claim. The storm which had burst on the Roman world with
+the land law of Tiberius Gracchus had now spent its force. It had
+undoubtedly produced a great change on the face of Italy; but this was
+perhaps more striking in appearance than in reality; neither the work of
+demolition, nor the opportunities offered for renewal, attained the
+completeness which they had presented in the reformer's dreams.
+
+But the peace of the citizen body was not the only blessing believed to
+be secured by this removal of a temptation to tamper with Italian lands.
+The anxieties of the Latins and Italians were also quieted, although it
+may be questioned whether the memory of past wrongs, now rendered
+irrevocable by the progress of recent agrarian experiments, did not
+enter into the agitation for the conferment of the franchise, which they
+still continued to sustain. The last great law, following the spirit of
+the enactment of Drusus which had preceded it by about a year, does
+indeed show traces of an anxiety to respect Italian claims. Apart from
+the fact, which we have already mentioned, that all lands which had been
+granted in usufruct to colonists, were still to be public and were,
+therefore, in the case of Latin colonies, to be at the disposal of the
+communities to which they had been granted by treaty, the law contains a
+special provision for the maintenance of the rights of Latins and
+Italians, so far as they are in harmony with the rights allowed to Roman
+citizens by the enactment.[781] The guarantees which had been sanctioned
+by Drusus, were therefore respected; but their observance was
+conditioned by the rule that all prohibitions now created for Romans
+should be extended to the allies. As we do not know the purport of
+Drusus's measure, or the practices current on the Roman domains occupied
+by Latins, we cannot say whether this clause produced any derogation of
+their rights; but it must have limited the right of free pasturage on
+the public commons, if they had possessed this in a higher degree than
+was now permitted, and the right to occupy public land was also
+forbidden them in the future. But it was from the negative point of view
+that the law might be interpreted as creating or perpetuating a
+grievance; for some of the positive benefits which it conferred seem to
+have been limited to Romans. The land which it makes private property,
+is land which has been assigned by colonial or agrarian commissioners,
+or land which has been occupied up to a certain limit. If colonial land
+had really been assigned to Latins by Caius Gracchus, their rights are
+retained by this law, if they had been made Roman citizens at the time
+of the settlement; but if they had been admitted as participants in the
+agrarian distribution throughout Italy, their rights as owners are not
+confirmed with those of Roman citizens; and the Latin who merely
+occupied land was not given the privilege of the Roman possessor of
+becoming the owner of the soil, if his occupation were restricted within
+a certain limit.[782] He still retained merely a precarious possession,
+for which dues to the State were probably exacted. It was something to
+have rights confirmed, but they probably appeared less valuable when
+those of others were extended. A more generous treatment could hardly
+have been expected from a law of Rome dealing with her own domain,
+primarily in the interests of her own citizens; but the Italians were
+tending to forget their civic independence, and chose rather to compare
+their personal rights with those of the Roman burgesses. Such a
+comparison applied to the final agrarian settlement must have done
+something to emphasise their belief in the inferiority of
+their position.
+
+This review of the legislation on social questions which was initiated
+or endured by the senate, shows the tentative attitude adopted by the
+nobility in their dealings with the people, and proves either a
+statesmanlike view of the needs of the situation or the entire lack of a
+proud consciousness of their own immunity from attack. Even had they
+possessed the power to dictate to the Comitia, they were hemmed in on
+another side; for they had not dared to raise a protest against the law
+of Gracchus which transferred criminal jurisdiction over the members of
+their own order to the knights. The equestrian courts sat in judgment on
+the noblest members of the aristocracy; for the political or personal
+motives which urged to prosecution were stronger even than the
+camaraderie of the order, and governors of provinces were still in
+danger of indictment by their peers. Within two years of the
+transference of the courts, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, known in later life
+as "the Augur" and famed for his knowledge of the civil law, returned
+from his province of Asia to meet the accusation of Titus Albucius.[783]
+The knights did not begin by a vindictive exercise of their authority.
+Although Asia was the most favoured sphere of their activity, Scaevola
+was acquitted. Seven years later they gave a stern and perhaps righteous
+example of their severity in the condemnation of Caius Porcius
+Cato.[784] The accused when consul had obtained Macedonia as his
+province, and had waged a frontier war with the Scordisci, which ended
+in the annihilation of his forces and his own narrow escape from the
+field of battle. His ill-success perhaps deepened the impression made by
+his extortions in Macedonia, and he was sentenced to the payment of a
+fine. Neither in the case of the acquittal nor in that of the
+condemnation does political bias seem to have influenced the judgment of
+the courts, and the equestrian jurors may have seemed for a time to
+realise the best hopes which had inspired their creation.
+
+The attention of the leading members of the nobility was probably too
+absorbed by the problem of adapting senatorial rule to altered
+circumstances to allow them the leisure or the inclination to embark on
+fresh legislative projects of their own. Our record of these years is so
+imperfect that it would be rash to conclude that the scanty proposals on
+new subjects which it reveals exhausted the legislative activity of the
+senate; but had they done so, the circumstance would be intelligible;
+for the work that invited the attention of the senate in its own
+interest, was one of consolidation rather than of reform; the political
+feeling of the time put measures of a distinctly reactionary character,
+such as might have been welcomed by the more conservative members of the
+order, wholly out of the question; and the government was not likely,
+except under compulsion, to undertake legislation of a progressive type.
+The only important law of the period certainly proceeding from
+governmental circles, and dealing with a question that was novel, in the
+sense that it had not been heard of for a considerable number of years
+and had played no part in the Gracchan movements, was one passed by the
+consul Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. It dealt with the voting power of the
+freedmen,[785] and probably confirmed its restriction to the four city
+tribes. It is difficult to assign a political meaning to this law, as we
+do not know the practice which prevailed at the time of Scaurus's
+intervention; but it is probable that the restriction imposed by the
+censors of 169, who had confined the freedmen to a single tribe,[786]
+had not been observed, that great irregularity prevailed in the manner
+of their registration, and that Scaurus's measure, which was a return to
+the arrangement reached at the end of the fourth century, was intended
+to restrict the voting privileges of the class. This interpretation of
+his intention would seem to show that the increasing liberality of the
+Roman master had created a class the larger portion of which was not
+dependent on the wealthier and more conservative section of the citizen
+body, or was at least enabled to assert its freedom from control through
+the secrecy of the ballot. The interests of the class were almost
+identical with those of the free proletariate, in which the descendants
+of the freedmen were merged: and the law of Scaurus, which strengthened
+the country vote by preventing this urban influence spreading through
+all the tribes, may be an evidence that the senate distrusted the
+present passivity of the urban folk, and looked forward with
+apprehension to a time when they might have to rely on the more stable
+element which the country districts supplied. We shall see in the sequel
+that this anticipation of the freedmen's attitude was not unjustified,
+and that the increase of their voting power still continued to be an
+effective battle-cry for the demagogue who was eager to increase his
+following in the city.
+
+Scaurus was also the author of a sumptuary law.[787] It came
+appropriately from a man who had been trained in a school of poverty,
+and shows the willingness of the nobility to submit, at least in
+appearance, to the discipline which would present it to the world as a
+self-sacrificing administration, reaping no selfish reward for its
+intense labour, and submitting to that equality of life with the average
+citizen which is the best democratic concession that a powerful
+oligarchy can make. The activity of the censorship was exhibited in the
+same direction. Foreign and expensive dishes were prohibited by the
+guardians of public morals, as they were by Scaurus's sumptuary
+law:[788] and the censors of 115, Metellus and Domitius, undertook a
+scrutiny of the stage which resulted in the complete exclusion from Rome
+of all complex forms of the histrionic art and its reduction to the
+simple Latin type of music and song.[789] Their energy was also
+displayed in a destructive examination of the morals of their own order,
+and as a result of the scrutiny thirty-two senators were banished from
+the Curia.[790] To guard the senate-house from scandal was indeed the
+necessary policy of a nobility which knew that its precarious power
+rested on the opinion of the streets; and the efforts of the censors,
+directed like those of their predecessors, to a regeneration which had a
+national type as its goal, show that that opinion could not yet have
+been considered wholly cosmopolitan or corrupt. The frequent splendour
+of triumphal processions, such as those which celebrated the victories
+of Domitius and Fabius over the Allobroges, of Metellus over the
+Dalmatians, and of Scaurus over the Ligurians,[791] produced a
+comfortable impression of the efficiency of the government in extending
+or preserving the frontiers of the empire; the triumph itself was the
+symbol of success, and few could have cared to question the extent and
+utility of the achievement. Satisfied with the belief that they were
+witnessing the average type of successful administration, the electors
+pursued the course, from which they so seldom deflected, of giving their
+unreserved confidence to the ancient houses; and this epoch witnessed a
+striking instance of hereditary influence, if not of hereditary talent,
+when Metellus Macedonicus was borne to his grave by sons, of whom four
+had held curule office, three had possessed the consulship, and one had
+fulfilled in addition the lofty functions of the censor and enjoyed the
+honour of a triumph.[792]
+
+Yet distinction without a certain degree of fitness was now, as at every
+other time, an impossibility in Rome. The nobility, although it did not
+love originality, extended a helping hand to the capacity that was
+willing to support its cause and showed the likelihood of dignifying its
+administration; a career was still open to talent and address, if they
+were held to be wisely directed; and the man of the period who best
+deserves the title of leader of the State, was one who had not even
+sprung from the second strata of Roman society, but had struggled with a
+poverty which would have condemned an ordinary man to devote such
+leisure as he could spare for politics to swelling the babel of the
+Forum and the streets. It is true that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus bore a
+patrician name, and was one of those potential kings who, once in the
+senate, might assume the royal foot-gear and continue the holy task,
+which they had performed from the time of Romulus, of guarding and
+transmitting the auspices of the Roman people. But the splendour of the
+name had long been dimmed. Even in the history of the great wars of the
+beginning of the century but one Aemilius Scaurus appears, and he holds
+but a subordinate command as an officer of the Roman fleet. The father
+of the future chief of the senate had been forced to seek a livelihood
+in the humble calling of a purveyor of charcoal.[793] The son, resolute,
+ambitious and conscious of great powers, long debated with himself the
+question of his future walk in life.[794] He might remain in the ranks
+of the business world, supply money to customers in place of coal, and
+seize the golden opportunities which were being presented by the
+extension of the banking industry in the provincial world. Had he chosen
+this path, Scaurus might have been the chief of the knights and the most
+resolute champion of equestrian claims against the government. But his
+course was decided by the afterthought that the power of words was
+greater than that of gold, and that eloquence might secure, not only
+wealth, but the influence which wealth alone cannot attain. The fame
+which he gained in the Forum led inevitably to service in the field. He
+reaped distinction in the Spanish campaigns and served under Orestes in
+Sardinia. His narrow means rather than his principles may have been the
+reason why his aedileship was not marked by the generous shows to which
+the people were accustomed and by which their favour was usually
+purchased; in Scaurus's tenure of that office splendour was replaced by
+a rigorous performance of judicial duties;[795] but that such an
+equivalent could serve his purpose, that it should be even no hindrance
+to his career, proves the respect that his strenuous character had won
+from the people, and the anticipation formed by the government of the
+value of his future services. Now, when he was nearing his fiftieth
+year, he had secured the consulship, the bourne of most successful
+careers, but not to be the last or greatest prize of a man whose stately
+presence, unbending dignity, and apparent simplicity of purpose, could
+generally awe the people into respect, and whose keenness of vision and
+talent for intrigue impressed the senatorial mind with a sense of his
+power to save, when claims were pressing and difficulties acute.[796]
+His consulship, though without brilliancy, added to the respectable
+laurels that he had already attained. A successful raid on some Illyrian
+tribes[797] showed at least that he had retained the physical endurance
+of his youth; while his legislation on sumptuary matters and the
+freedman's vote showed the spirit of a milder Cato, and the moderate
+conservatism, not distasteful to the Roman of pure blood, which would
+preserve the preponderance in political power to the citizen untainted
+by the stain of servitude. A stormy event of his period of office gave
+the crowd an opportunity of seeing the severity with which a magistrate
+of the older school could avenge an affront to the dignity of his
+office. Publius Decius, who was believed to be a conscious imitator of
+Fulvius Flaccus in the exaggerated vehemence of his oratory, and who had
+already proved by his prosecution of Opimius that he was ready to defend
+certain features of the Gracchan cause even when such championship was
+fraught with danger, was in possession of the urban praetorship at the
+time when Scaurus held the consulship. One day the consul passed the
+open court of justice when the praetor was giving judgment from the
+curule chair. Decius remained seated, either in feigned oblivion or in
+ostentatious disregard of the presence of his superior. The politic
+wrath of Scaurus was aroused; an enemy had been delivered into his
+hands, and the people might be given an object-lesson of the way in
+which the most vehement champion of popular rights was, even when
+covered with the dignity of a magistracy, but a straw in the iron grasp
+of the higher Imperium. The consul ordered Decius to rise, his official
+robe to be rent, the chair of justice to be shattered in pieces, and
+published a warning that no future litigant should resort to the court
+of the contumacious praetor.[798] The vulgar mind is impressed, when it
+is not angered, by such scenes of violence. A repute for sternness is
+the best cloak for the flexibility which, if revealed, would excite
+suspicion. Scaurus to the popular mind was an embodiment of stiff
+patrician dignity, perhaps happily devoid of that touch of insolence
+which is often the mark of a career assured without a struggle; of a
+self-complacent dignity, quietly conscious of its own deserts and
+demanding their due reward, of the calmness of a soul that is above
+suspicion and refuses to admit even in its inmost sanctuary the thought
+that its motives can be impugned. Meanwhile certain disrespectful
+onlookers were expressing wonder at his mysteriously growing wealth and
+marvelling as to its source. But, marvel as they might, they never drove
+Scaurus to the necessity of an explanation. We shall find him as an old
+man repelling all attacks by the irresistible appeal to his services and
+his career. The condemnation of Scaurus appealed to the conservative as
+a blow struck at the dignity of the State itself; to the man of a more
+open mind it was at least the shattering of a delightful illusion.
+
+The period which witnessed the crowning of the efforts of the poor and
+struggling patrician was also sufficiently liberal, or sufficiently poor
+in aristocratic talent, to admit the initial steps in the official
+career of a genuine son of the people. It was now that Caius Marius was
+laboriously climbing the grades of curule rank, and showing in the
+pursuit of political influence at home the rugged determination which
+had already distinguished him in the field. A Volscian by descent, he
+belonged to Rome through the accident of birth in the old municipality
+of Arpinum, which since the early part of the second century had enjoyed
+full Roman citizenship and therefore gave its citizens the right of
+suffrage and of honours in the capital. Born of good yeoman stock in the
+village of Cereatae in the Arpinate territory,[799] he had passed a
+boyhood which derived no polish from the refinements, and no taint from
+the corruptions, of city life. In his case there was no puzzling
+discrepancy between the outer and the inner man. His frame and visage
+were the true index of a mind, somewhat unhewn and uncouth, but with a
+massive reserve of strength, a persistence not blindly obstinate, a
+patience that could wear out the most brilliant efforts of his rivals
+and opponents. He did not court hostility, but simply shouldered his way
+sturdily to the front, encouraged by Rome's better spirits, who saw in
+him the excellent officer with qualities that might make the future
+general, and appealing to the people, when they gradually became
+familiar with his presence, as a type of that venerable myth, the rustic
+statesman of the past. The poverty of his early lot was perhaps
+exaggerated by historians[800] who wished to point the contrast between
+his humble origin and his later glory, and to find a suitable cradle for
+his rugged nature; even the initial stages of his career afford no
+evidence of a struggle against pressing want, nor is there any proof
+that he was supported by the bounty of his powerful friends. Even if he
+entered the army as a common foot-soldier, he would merely have shared
+the lot of many a well-to-do yeoman who obeyed the call of the
+conscription. With Marius, however, military service was not to be an
+incident, but a profession. The needs of a widening empire were calling
+for special capacities such as had never been demanded in the past. The
+career of Scaurus had shown the successful pleader surmounting the
+obstacle of poverty; even the higher barrier of birth might be leaped
+amidst the democratising influences of the camp. The nobility was not
+sufficiently self-centred to be wholly blind to its own interests; and
+it was easier to patronise a soldier than a pleader. In the latter case
+the aspirant's political creed must be examined; in the former the last
+question that would be asked was whether the officer possessed any
+political creed at all. It might be a question of importance for the
+future with respect to the candidature for those offices which alone
+conferred high military command, even though there was as yet no dream
+of the sword becoming the arbiter of political life; but the genuine
+commander, engaged in the difficult task of remodelling an army, had no
+eye but for the bearing and qualities of the soldier, and would not
+scruple to cast aside his patrician prejudices in a despairing effort to
+find the fittest instruments for the perfecting of his great design. It
+was Marius's fortunate lot to enter the field at a time of trial, and to
+serve his first campaign under a general, who was combating the adverse
+forces of influence, licence and incompetence in the official staff
+supplied by the government and represented by the young scions of the
+nobility. To the camp before Numantia, where Scipio was scourging his
+men into obedience, rooting out the amenities of life, and astonishing
+his officers with new ideas of the meaning of a campaign, Marius brought
+the very qualities on which the general had set his heart. An
+unflinching courage, shown on one occasion in single combat when he
+overthrew a champion of the foe, a power of physical endurance which
+could submit to all changes of temperature and food, a minute precision
+in the performance of the detailed duties of the camp, soon led to his
+rapid advancement and to his selection as a member of the intimate
+circle which surrounded the commander-in-chief. Every great specialist
+has a small claim to the gift of prophecy; for he possesses an instinct
+which reveals more than his reason will permit him to prove; and we need
+not wonder at the story that, when once the debate grew warm round
+Scipio's table as to who would succeed him as the chosen commander of
+the Roman host, he lightly touched the shoulder of Marius and answered
+"Perhaps we shall find him here".[801]
+
+The higher commands in the army could be sought only through a political
+career; and Marius, inspired with the highest hopes by Scipio's
+commendation, was forced to breathe the uncongenial atmosphere of the
+city and to fight his way upwards to the curule offices. There is no
+proof that he took advantage of the current of democratic feeling which
+accompanied the movements of the Gracchi. It was, perhaps, as well that
+he did not; for such an association might have long delayed his higher
+political career. The nobles who posed as democrats probably attached
+more importance to forensic skill than to military merit; and the
+support which Marius enjoyed was sought and found amongst the
+representatives of the opposite party. Scipio's death removed a man who
+might have been a powerful advocate on his behalf; the vague
+relationship of clientship in which the family of Marius had stood to
+the clan of the Herennii[802]--a relation common between Roman families
+and the members of Italian townships, and in this case probably dating
+from a time before Arpinum had received full Roman rights--seems never
+to have led to active interference on his behalf on the part of the
+representatives of that ancient Samnite house. Perhaps the Herennii were
+too weak to assist the fortunes of their client; they certainly give no
+names to the Fasti of this period. It is also possible that the proud
+soldier was galled by the memory of the hereditary yoke, and sought
+assistance where it would be given simply as a mark of merit, not as a
+duty conditioned by the claim to irksome reciprocal obligations. The
+all-powerful family of the Caecilii Metelli, who were at this time
+vigorously fulfilling the destiny of office which heaven had prescribed
+for their clan, stretched out a helping hand to the distinguished
+soldier;[803] a family born to military command might consult its
+interests, while it gratified its sympathies, by attaching to its
+_clientele_ a warrior who had received the best training of the school
+of Africanus. After he had held the military tribunate and the
+quaestorship,[804] Marius attained the tribunate of the Plebs with the
+assistance of Lucius Caecilius Metellus.[805] He was in his thirty-ninth
+year when he entered on the first office which gave him the opportunity
+of claiming the attention of the people by the initiation of legislative
+measures. The slowness of his rise may have led him to believe that he
+might accelerate his career by taking his fortune into his own hands;
+certainly if the law which bore his name was not unwelcome to the better
+portion of the nobility, the methods by which he forced it through did
+not commend themselves even to his patron. His proposal was meant to
+limit the exercise of undue influence at the Comitia, and although the
+law doubtless referred to legislative meetings summoned for every
+purpose, it was chiefly directed to securing the independence of the
+voter in such public trials as still took place before the people,[806]
+and was perhaps inspired by scenes that might have been witnessed at the
+acquittal of Opimius one year previously. One of the clauses of the bill
+provided that the exits to the galleries, through which the voters filed
+to give their suffrages to the tellers, should be narrowed,[807] the
+object being to exclude the political agents who were accustomed to
+occupy the sides of the passages, and influence or intimidate, by their
+presence if not by their words, the voting citizen at the critical
+moment when he was about to record his verdict. Such methods were
+probably found effective even where the ballot was used, but their
+success must have been even greater in trials for treason, at which
+voting by word of mouth was still employed. It was difficult for a
+government, which had accepted the ballot, to offer a decent resistance
+to a measure of this kind. The proposal attacked indifferently political
+methods which might be, and probably were, employed by both parties;
+and, although its success would no doubt inflict more injury on the
+government than on the opposition, it could not be repudiated by the
+senate on the ground that it was tainted by an aggressively "popular"
+character. The opposition which it actually encountered was apparently
+based on the formal ground that the heads of the administration had not
+been sufficiently consulted. The law was not the outcome of any
+senatorial decree, nor had the senate's opinion been deliberately taken
+on the utility of the measure. The consul Cotta persuaded the house to
+frame a resolution expressing dissatisfaction with the proposal as it
+stood, and to summon Marius for an explanation. The summons was promptly
+obeyed, but the expected scene of humiliation of the untried parvenu was
+rudely interrupted at an early period of the debate. Marius knew that he
+had the people and the tribunician college with him, and that even the
+most perverse ingenuity could never construe the measure as a factious
+opposition to the interests of the State. Obedience to the senate would
+in this instance mean the sacrifice of a reputation for political
+honesty and courage; it might be better to burn his boats and to trust
+for the future to the generosity of the people for the gifts which the
+nobility so grudgingly bestowed. He chose to regard the controversy as
+one of those cases of hopeless conflict between the members of the
+magistracy, for the solution of which the law had provided regular
+though exceptional means. He fell back on the majesty of the tribunician
+power, and threatened Cotta with imprisonment if he did not withdraw his
+resolution.[808] It is probable that up to this point no decree
+expressing wholesale condemnation of the bill had been passed, and the
+senate might therefore be coerced through the magistrate, without its
+authority being utterly disregarded. Cotta turned to his colleague
+Metellus, known to be the friend of the obstinate tribune, and Metellus
+rising gave the consul his support. Marius, undaunted by the attitude of
+his patron, hurried matters to a close. He summoned his attendant to the
+Curia, and bade him take Metellus himself into custody and conduct him
+to a place of confinement. Metellus appealed to the other tribunes, but
+none would offer his help; and the senate was forced to save the
+situation by sacrificing its vote of censure. So rapid and complete a
+victory, even on an issue of no great importance, delighted the popular
+mind. The senate was then in good favour at Rome; but a chance for
+realising their superiority over the greatest of their servants was
+always welcome to the people. They also loved those exhibitions of
+physical force by which the genius of Rome had solved the difficulties
+of her constitution: and the violence of a tribune was as impressive now
+as was that of a consul four years later. Marius had gained a character
+for sturdy independence and unshaken constancy, which was to produce
+unexpected results in the political world of the future, and was to be
+immediately tested in a manner that must have proved profoundly
+disappointing to many who acclaimed him. It seems as though this victory
+over the resolution of the senate may have urged certain would-be
+reformers to believe that measures of a Gracchan type might win the
+favour of the people, and secure the support of a tribunician college
+which seemed to be out of sympathy with the government. Some proposal
+dealing with the distribution of corn,[809] perhaps an extension of the
+existing scheme, was made. It found no more resolute opponent than
+Marius, and his opposition helped to secure its utter defeat. In this
+resistance we may perhaps see the genuinely neutral character of the
+man; for the attribution of interested motives, although the historian's
+favourite revenge for the difficulties of his task, endows his
+characters with a foresight which is as abnormal as their lack of
+principle; although it is questionable whether Marius would have gained
+by identifying himself with a cause which had not yet emerged from the
+ruin of its failure.
+
+The lack of official support and the alienation of a section of the
+people may perhaps be traced in the successive defeats of his
+candidature for the curule and plebeian aedileships,[810] although in
+the elections to these offices the attention of the people was so keenly
+directed to the candidate's pecuniary means as a guarantee of their
+gratification by brilliant shows, that the aedileship must have been of
+all magistracies the most difficult of attainment by merit unsupported
+by wealth. Even when the rejected candidate had won favour on other
+grounds, the electors could salve their consciences with the reflection
+that the aedileship was no obligatory step in an official career, and
+that, where merit and not money was in question, they could show their
+appreciation of personal qualities in the elections to the praetorship.
+A year after his repulse Marius turned to the candidature for this
+office, which conveyed the first opportunity of the tenure of an
+independent military command. He was returned at the bottom of the poll,
+and even then had to fight hard to retain his place in the praetorian
+college.[811] A charge of undue influence was brought against the man
+who had struggled successfully to preserve the purity of the Comitia,
+and it was pretended that a slave of one of his closest political
+associates had been seen within the barriers mixing with the voters.
+That the charge was supported by powerful influences, or was generally
+believed to be correct, is perhaps shown by the conduct of the censors
+of the succeeding year who expelled this associate from the senate.[812]
+The jurors[813] before whom the case was tried--representatives, as we
+must suppose, of the equestrian order and therefore presumably
+uninfluenced by senatorial hostility--were long perplexed by the
+conflict of evidence. During the first days of the trial it seemed as
+though the doom of Marius was sealed, and his unexpected acquittal was
+only secured by the scrutiny of the tablets revealing an equality of
+votes, a condition which, according to the rules of Roman process,
+necessitated a favourable verdict.
+
+His praetorship, in accordance with the rules which now governed this
+magistracy in consequence of the multiplication of the courts of
+justice, confined his energies to Rome. We do not know what department
+of this office he administered; but, as the charge of no department
+could make an epoch in the career of any one but a lawyer gifted with
+original ideas, we are not surprised to find that Marius's tenure of
+this magistracy, although creditable, did not excite any marked
+attention.[814] After his praetorship he obtained his first independent
+military command in Farther Spain. Such a province had always its little
+problems of pacification to present to an energetic commander, and
+Marius's military talents were moderately exercised by the repression of
+the habitual brigandage of its inhabitants.[815] His tenure of a foreign
+command may have added to his wealth, for provincial government could be
+made to increase the means of the most honest administrator. It was
+still more important that his tenure of the praetorship had added him to
+the ranks of the official nobility. His birth was now no bar to any
+social distinction to which his simple and resolute soul might think it
+profitable to aspire: and a family of the patrician Julii was not
+ashamed to give one of its daughters to the adventurer from
+Arpinum.[816] Thus Marius remained for a while; to Roman society an
+interesting specimen of the self-made man, marked by a bluntness and
+directness appropriate to the type and provocative of an amused regard;
+to the professed politician a man with a fairly successful but puzzling
+political career, and one that perhaps needed not to be too seriously
+considered. For to all who understood the existent conditions of Roman
+public life, his attainment of the consulship and of a dominant position
+in the councils of the State must have seemed impossible. There was but
+one contingency that could make Marius a necessary man. This was war on
+a grand scale. But the contingency was distant, and, even if it arose,
+the government might employ his skill while keeping him in a
+subordinate position.
+
+The career of Marius is not the only proof that the tradition of
+successful opposition to the senate could be easily revived. In the year
+following his tribunate a new and successful effort was made in the
+direction of transmarine colonisation.[817] The pretext for the measure
+was the necessity for preserving command of the territory which had been
+won by the great victories of Domitius and Fabius on the farther side of
+the Alps; the strategic value of the foundation was undeniable, and the
+opposition of the government was probably directed by the form which it
+was proposed that the new settlement should take. It was not to be a
+mere fort in the enemy's country, like the already-established Aquae
+Sextiae,[818] but a true _colonia_ of Roman citizens,[819] the creation
+of which was certain to lead to excessive complications in the foreign
+policy which dealt with the frontiers of the north. Such a colony would
+become the centre of an active trade with the surrounding tribes; though
+professedly founded in the people's interest, it would rapidly become a
+mere feeler for extending the operations of the great mercantile class;
+the growth of Roman trade-interests would necessarily involve a policy
+of defence and probably of expansion, which would tell heavily on the
+resources of the State. The success of the government was dependent on
+the restriction of its efforts, and there is nothing surprising in the
+hearty opposition which it offered to the projected colony of Narbo
+Martius. Even after the original measure sanctioning the settlement had
+passed the Comitia, senatorial influence led to the promulgation of a
+new proposal in which the people was asked to reconsider its
+decision.[820] But the project had found an ardent champion in the young
+Lucius Crassus, who strengthened the position which he had won in the
+previous year, by a speech weighty beyond the promise of his age.[821]
+In his successful advocacy of a national undertaking he was not afraid
+to impugn the authority of the senate, and reaped an immediate reward in
+being selected, despite his youth, as one of the commissioners for
+establishing the settlement.[822]
+
+It is probable that without the support of the equestrian order the
+project for the foundation of Narbo Martius might have fallen through.
+The man of popular sympathies whose measures attracted their support was
+tolerably certain of success, and the man who posed as the champion of
+the order was still more firmly placed. The latter position was occupied
+for a considerable time by Caius Servilius Glaucia, whose tribunate
+probably belongs to the close of the period which we are
+describing.[823] Glaucia himself, probably one of those scions of the
+nobility whom an original bent of mind had alienated from the narrow
+interests of his order, was a man who, lacking in the gift of passionate
+but steadfast seriousness which makes the great reformer, possessed
+powers admirably adapted for holding the popular ear and inspiring his
+auditors with a kind of robust confidence in himself. Ready, acute and
+witty,[824] he possessed the happy faculty of taking the Comitia, under
+the guise of the plain and honest man, into his confidence. The very
+ignorance of his auditors became a respectable attribute, when it was
+figured as ingenuous simplicity which needed protection against the
+tortuous wiles of the legislator and the official draughtsman. On one
+occasion he told his audience that the essence of a law was its
+preamble. If, when read to them, it was found to contain the words
+"dictator, consul, praetor or magister equitum," the bill was no concern
+of theirs. But, if they caught the utterance "and whosoever after this
+enactment," then they must wake up, for some new fetter of law was being
+forged to bind their limbs.[825] A man of this unconventional type was
+not likely to be popular in the senate, and the opprobrious name, which
+he subsequently bore in the Curia,[826] is a proof of the liveliness
+which he imparted to debate.
+
+At the time of Glaucia's tribunate some subtle movement seems to have
+been on foot for undoing the judiciary law of Caius Gracchus and ousting
+the knights from their possession of the court before which senators
+most frequently appeared. The law which dealt with the crime of
+extortion by Roman officials had been frequently renewed, and, whenever
+a proposal was made for recasting the enactment with a view to effecting
+improvements in procedure, the equestrian tenure of the court was
+threatened; for a new law might state qualifications for the jurors
+differing from those which had given this department of jurisdiction to
+the knights. The relief of the order was therefore great when the
+necessary work of revision was undertaken by one who showed himself an
+ardent champion of equestrian claims.[827] Glaucia's alteration in
+procedure was thorough and permanent. He introduced the system of the
+"second hearing "--an obligatory renewal of the trial, which rendered it
+possible for counsel to discuss evidence which had been already given,
+and for jurors to get a grasp of the mass of scattered data which had
+been presented to their notice--[828] and he also made it possible to
+recover damages, not only from the chief malefactor, but from all who
+had dishonestly shared his spoils.[829] These principles continued to be
+observed in trials for extortion to the close of the Republic, and may
+have been the only permanent relic of Glaucia's feverish political
+career. But for the moment the clauses of his law which dealt with the
+qualifications of the jurors, were those most anxiously awaited and most
+heartily acclaimed. He had stemmed a reaction and consolidated, beyond
+hope of alteration for a long term of years, the system of dual control
+established by Caius Gracchus.
+
+The careers and successes of Marius, Crassus and Glaucia exhibit the
+spirit of unrest which broke at intervals through the apathetic
+tolerance displayed by the people towards the rule of the nobility.
+These alternations of confidence and distrust find their counterpart in
+the religious history of the times; but a panic springing from a belief
+in the anger of the gods was even more difficult to control than the
+alarm excited by the attitude of the government. Such a panic knew no
+distinctions of station, sex or age; it seized on citizens who cared
+nothing for the problems of administration, it was strong in proportion
+to the weakness of its victims, and gathered from the dark thoughts and
+wild words of the imbecile the poison which infected the sober mind and
+assumed, from the very universality of the sickness, the guise of a
+healthy effort at rooting out some deep-seated pollution from the State.
+The gloomy record of the religious persecutions of the past made it
+still more difficult for a government, which prided itself on the
+retention of the ancient control of morals, which gloried in its
+monopoly of an historic priesthood that had often set its hand to the
+work of extirpation, to stifle such a cry. The demand for atonement was
+the voice of the conserver of Rome's moral life, of the patriotic
+devotee who was striving earnestly to reclaim the waning favour of her
+tutelary gods. If it was further believed that the seat of the
+corruption was to be found amidst the families of the nobility itself,
+the last barrier to resistance had been broken down, for even to seem to
+shield the unholy thing was to make its lurking place an object of
+horror and execration.
+
+The nerves of the people were first excited by various prodigies that
+had appeared; a confirmation of their fears might have been found in the
+utter destruction of the army of Porcius Cato in Thrace;[830] and a
+strange calamity soon gave an index to the nature of the offence which
+excited the anger of the gods. When Helvius, a Roman knight, was
+journeying with his wife and daughter from Rome to Apulia, they were
+enveloped in a sudden storm. The alarm of the girl urged the father to
+seek shelter with all speed. The horses were loosed from the vehicle,
+the maiden was placed on one, and the party was hastening along the
+road, when suddenly there was a blinding flash and, when it had passed,
+the young Helvia and her horse were seen prone upon the ground. The
+force of the lightning had stripped every garment and ornament from her
+body, and the dead steed lay a few paces off with its trappings riven
+and scattered around it.[831] Death by a thunderbolt had always a
+meaning, which was sometimes hard to find; but here the gods had not
+left the inquiring votary utterly in doubt. The nakedness of the
+stricken maiden was a riddle that the priests could read. It was a
+manifest sign that a virginal vow had been broken, and that some of the
+keepers of the eternal fire were tainted with the sin of unchastity. The
+destruction of the horse seemed to portend that a knight would be found
+to be a partner in the crime.[832] Evidence was invited and was soon
+forthcoming. The slave of a certain Barrus came forward and deposed to
+the corruption of three of the vestal virgins, Aemilia, Licinia and
+Marcia.[833] He pretended that the incestuous intercourse had been of
+long standing, and he named his own master amongst many other men whom
+he declared to be the authors of the sacrilege. The maidens were
+believed to have added to their lovers to screen their first offence;
+the sacrifice of their honour became the price of silence; and their
+first corrupters were forced to be dumb when jealousy was mastered by
+fear. The knowledge of the crime is believed to have been widely spread
+amongst the circles of the better class, until the conspiracy of silence
+was broken down by the action of a slave,[834] and all who would not be
+deemed accomplices were forced to add their share to the weight of the
+accusing testimony.
+
+A scandal of this magnitude called for a formal trial by the supreme
+religious tribunal, and towards the close of the year[835] Lucius
+Metellus, the chief pontiff, summoned the incriminated vestals before
+the college. Aemilia was condemned, but Licinia and Marcia were
+acquitted. There was an immediate outcry; the pontiff's leniency was
+severely censured; and the anger and fear of the people emboldened a
+tribune, Sextus Peducaeus, to propose for the first time that the
+secular arm should wrest from the pontifical college the spiritual
+jurisdiction that it had abused. He carried a resolution that a special
+commission should be established by the people to continue the
+investigation.[836] The judges were probably Roman knights after the
+model of the Gracchan jurors; the president was the terrible Lucius
+Cassius Longinus, already known for his severity as a censor and famed
+for his penetration as a criminal judge. This fatal penetration, which
+had endowed his tribunal with the nickname "the reef of the
+accused," [837] was now welcomed as a surety that the inquiry would be
+searching, and that the innocence which survived it would be so well
+established that all doubt and fear would be dissolved. This commission
+condemned, not only the two vestals whom the pontiffs had acquitted, but
+many of their female intermediaries as well.[838] Some of their supposed
+paramours must also have been convicted; amongst the accused was Marcus
+Antonius, who was in future days to share the realm of oratory with
+Lucius Crassus. He was on the eve of his departure to Asia, where he was
+to exercise the duties of a quaestor, when he was summoned to appear
+before the court over which Cassius presided. He might have pleaded the
+benefit of his obligation to continue his official duties;[839] but he
+preferred to waive his claim and face his judges. His escape was
+believed to have been mainly due to the heroic conduct of a young slave,
+who, presented of his own free will to the torture, bore the anguish of
+the rack, the scourge and the fire without uttering a word that might
+incriminate his master.[840] The free employment of such methods in
+trials for incest throws a grave doubt on the value of the judgment
+which they elicited; and, when a court is established for the purpose of
+appeasing the popular conscience, a part at least of its conduct may be
+easily suspected of being preordained. Cassius's rigour in this matter
+was thought excessive;[841] but, even had he and the jurors meted out
+nothing but the strictest justice, the memory of their sentence would
+long have rankled in the minds of the influential families whose members
+they had condemned, and thus perpetuated the tradition of their
+unnecessary severity. It may be doubted, however, whether a secular
+court was competent to inflict the horrible penalties of pontifical
+jurisdiction, to condemn the vestal to a living grave and her paramour
+to death by the scourge;[842] interdiction, and perhaps in the more
+serious cases the death by strangling usually reserved for traitors, may
+have been meted out to the men, while the women may have been handed
+over to their relatives for execution. But even this exemplary
+visitation of the vices which lurked in the heart of the State was not
+deemed sufficient to appease the gods or to quiet the popular
+conscience. To punish the guilty was to offer the barest satisfaction to
+heaven and to conscience; a fuller atonement was demanded, and the
+Sibylline oracles, when consulted on the point, were understood to
+ordain the cultivation of certain strange divinities by the living
+sacrifice of four strangers, two of Hellenic and two of Gallic
+race.[843] The accomplishment of this act must have been a severe strain
+on the reason and conscience of a government which sixteen years later
+absolutely prohibited the performance of human sacrifice[844] and soon
+made efforts to stamp out the barbarous ritual even in its foreign
+dependencies.[845] Even this concession to the panic of the times could
+not be regarded as fraught with much worldly success. The gods seemed
+still to retain an unkind feeling both to the city and the government.
+Two years later there was a return of dreadful prodigies, and a great
+part of Rome was laid waste by a terrible fire. A few months more and
+news was brought from Africa which shook to its very foundations the
+fabric of senatorial rule.[846]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The land, on which the eyes of the world were soon to be fastened, was
+the neglected protectorate which had been built up to secure the
+temporary purpose of the overthrow of Carthage, and had since remained
+in the undisturbed possession of the peaceful descendants of Masinissa.
+The fortunes of the kingdom of Numidia, so far as they affected that
+kingdom itself, deserved to be neglected by its suzerain; for the power
+which Masinissa had won by arms and diplomacy was more than sufficient
+to protect its own interests. The Numidia of the day formed in
+territorial extent one of the mightiest kingdoms of the world, and
+ranked only second to Egypt amongst the client powers of Rome.[847] It
+extended from Mauretania to Cyrenaica,[848] from the river Muluccha to
+the greater Syrtis, thus touching on the west the Empire of the Moors,
+at that time confined to Tingitana, on the east almost penetrating to
+Egypt, and enjoying the best part of the fertile region which borders
+the coast of the Mediterranean.[849] For the Moroccan boundary of the
+kingdom--the river Muluccha or Molocath--see Goebel _Die Westkueste
+Afrikas im Altertum_ pp. 79,80. From this vast tract of country Rome had
+cut out for herself a small section on the north-east. In the creation
+of the province of Africa her moderation and forbearance must have
+astonished her Numidian client; and, if Masinissa showed signs of
+hesitancy in rousing himself for the destruction of Carthage, the fears
+of his sons must have been immediately dispelled when they saw the
+slender profits which Rome meant to reap from the suppression of their
+joint rival. The Numidian kings were even allowed to keep the territory
+which had been wrested from Carthage between the Second and Third Punic
+Wars. This comprised the region about the Tusca, which boasted not less
+than fifty towns, the district known as the Great Plains,[850] which has
+been identified with the great basin of the Dakhla of the
+Oulad-bon-Salem, and probably the plateau of Vaga (Bedja) which
+dominates this basin.[851] The Roman lines merely extended from the
+Tusca (the Waed El-Kebir) in the North, where that river flows into the
+Mediterranean opposite the island of Thabraca (Tabarka) to Thenae
+(Henschir Tina) on the south-east.[852] But even the upper waters of the
+Tusca belonged to Numidia, as did the towns of Vaga, Sicca Veneria and
+Zama Regia. Consequently the Roman frontier must have curved eastward
+until it reached the point where a rocky region separates the basin of
+the Bagradas (Medjerda) from the plains of the Sahel; thence it ran to
+the neighbourhood of Aquae Regiae and thence, probably following the
+line of a ditch drawn between the two great depressions of Kairouan and
+El-Gharra, to its ultimate bourne at Thenae.[853] It is clear that the
+Romans did not look on their province as an end desirable in itself.
+They had left in the hands of their Numidian friends some of the most
+fertile lands, some of the richest commercial towns, situated in a
+district which they might easily have claimed. Against such annexation
+Masinissa could have uttered no word of legitimate protest. His kingdom
+had already been almost doubled by the acquisition of the lands of his
+rival Syphax, and his sons saw themselves through the aid of Rome in
+possession of an artificially created kingdom, which was so entirely out
+of harmony with the traditions of Numidian life that it could scarcely
+have entered into the dreams of any prince of that race. But the
+conquering city reposed some faith in gratitude, and reposed still more
+in its habitual policy of caution. The province which it created was
+simply a political and strategic necessity. It was intended to secure
+the negative object of preventing the reconstitution of the great
+political and commercial centre which had fallen.[854] If Carthage was
+never to rise again, a fragment of the coast-line must be kept in the
+hands of the possessors of its devastated site. It might have been
+better for the peace of Africa had the Romans been a little more
+grasping and had the Roman position been stronger than it was. The
+Phoenicians scattered along the coast had become familiar objects to the
+Berber inhabitants and their kings; to the enlightened monarch they were
+a valuable addition to the population of any of his cities--all the more
+valuable now that they were politically powerless. But with the Roman
+official and the Roman trader it was different. Here was an alien and
+(in spite of the restraint of the government) an encroaching
+civilisation, utterly unfamiliar to the eyes of the natives, but known
+to justify its lordly security by that dim background of power which
+clung to the name of the paramount city of the West. The Roman
+possessions were an ugly eyesore to a man who held that Africa should be
+for the Africans. The wise Masinissa might tolerate the spectacle,
+content (as, indeed, he should have been) with the power and security
+which Rome's friendship had brought to her ally. But it remained to be
+seen whether his views would always be held by his own subjects or by
+some less cautious or less happily placed successor of his own line.
+
+It was indeed possible that a hostile feeling of nationality might be
+awakened beyond the limits even of the great kingdom of Numidia. The
+designations which the Romans employ for the natives of North Africa
+obscure the fact, which was recognised in later times by the Arab
+conquerors, of the unity of the great Berber folk.[855] Roman historians
+and geographers speak of the Numidians and Mauretanians as though they
+were distinct peoples; but there can be little doubt that, then as
+to-day, they were but two fractions of the same great race, and that
+even the wild Gaetulians of the South are but representatives of the
+parent stock of this indigenous people. As in the case of nearly all
+races which in default of historical data we are forced to call
+indigenous, two separate elements may be distinguished in this stock, an
+earlier and a later, and survivals of the original distinctions between
+these elements were clearly discernible in many parts of Northern
+Africa; but, as the fusion between these stocks had been effected in
+prehistoric times, a common Berber nationality may be held to have
+extended from the Atlantic almost to Egypt, at the time when the Romans
+were added to the immigrant Semites and Greeks who had already sought to
+dwell amidst its borders. The basis of this nationality is thought to be
+found in the aborigines of the Sahara who had gradually moved up from
+the desert to the present littoral. There they were joined by a race of
+another type who were wending their way from what is now the continent
+of Europe. The Saharic man was of a dark-brown colour but with no traces
+of the negroid type. His European comrade was a man of fair complexion
+and light hair; and these curiously blended races continued to live side
+by side and to form a single nation, preserving perhaps each some of its
+own psychical characteristics, but speaking in common the language of
+the older Saharic stock.[856] But the two races were not uniformly
+distributed over the various territories of Northern Africa. The white
+race was perhaps more in evidence in Mauretania, as it is in the Morocco
+of to-day;[857] the dark race was probably most strongly represented
+amongst the Gaetulians of the South. There were, in short, in Northern
+Africa two zones, marked by differences of civilisation as well as of
+ethnic descent, which were clearly distinguished in antiquity. The first
+is represented by the Afri, Numidians, and Moors, who inhabited the
+coast region from East to West. These were early subjected to alien
+influences, the greatest of which, before the coming of the Roman, was
+the advent of the Semite. The second is shown by the vast aggregate of
+tribes which form a curve along the south from the ocean to the
+Cyrenaica. These tribes, which were called by the common name of
+Gaetuli, were almost exempt from European influences in historic, and
+probably in prehistoric, times. A few intermingled with the Aethiopians
+of the Sahara,[858] but, taken as a whole, they are believed to
+represent the primitive race of brown Saharic dwellers in all
+its purity.
+
+Had the term Nomad or Numidian been applied to the southern races, the
+designation might have been justified by the migratory character of
+their life. But it is more than questionable whether the designation is
+defensible as applied to the people to whom it is usually attached. The
+Numidians do not seem to have possessed either the character or habits
+of a genuinely nomadic people such as the Arabs.[859] They lived in huts
+and not in tents. These huts (_mapalia_), which had the form of an
+upturned boat, may have seemed a poor habitation to Phoenicians, Greeks
+and Romans; but, as habitations, they were meant to be permanent; they
+were an index of the possession of property, of a lasting attachment to
+the soil. The village formed by a group of these little homes clustering
+round a steep height, was a still further index of a political and
+military society that intended to maintain and defend the area on which
+it had settled. The pages of Sallust give ample evidence of an active
+village life engrossed with the toils of agriculture, and the mass of
+the population of the region of the Tell must have been for a long time
+fixed to the soil which yielded it a livelihood. Elsewhere there was
+indeed need of something like periodic migration. On the high plateaux
+pastoral life made the usual change from summer to winter stations
+necessary. But this regulated movement does not correspond strictly to
+the desultory life of a truly nomadic people. Yet it is easy to see how,
+in contrast to the regular and often sedentary mercantile life of the
+Phoenician and the Greek, that of the Numidian might be considered wild
+and migratory. He was in truth a "trekker" rather than a nomad, and he
+possessed the invaluable military attributes of the man unchained by
+cities and accustomed to wander far in a hard and bracing country. A
+skill in horsemanship that was the wonder of the world, the eye for a
+country hastily traversed, the memory for the spot once seen, the power
+of rapid mobilisation and of equally rapid disappearance, the gift of
+being a knight one day, a shepherd or a peasant the next--these were the
+attributes that made a Roman conquest of Numidia so long impossible and
+rendered diplomacy imperative as a supplement to war.
+
+It is less easy to reconstruct the moral and political attributes of
+this people from the data which we at present possess, or to reconcile
+the experience of to-day with the impressions of ancient historians. But
+so permanent has been the great bulk of the population of Northern
+Africa that it is tempting to interpret the ancient Numidian in the
+light of the modern Kabyle. One who has had experience of the latter
+endows him with an intelligent head, a frank and open physiognomy and a
+lively eye, describes him as active and enterprising, lively and
+excitable, possessed of moral pride, eminently truthful, a stern holder
+of his plighted word and a respecter of women--a respect shown by the
+general practice of monogamy.[860] Even when stirred to war he is said
+not to lend himself to unnecessary cruelty.[861] The activity,
+liveliness and excitability of this people may be traced in the accounts
+of antiquity; but Roman records would add the impression of duplicity,
+treachery and cruelty as characteristics of the race. Yet as these
+characteristics are exhibited in the record of a great national war
+against a hated invader, and are chiefly illustrated in the persons of a
+king or his ministers--individuals spoilt by power or maddened by
+fear--we need not perhaps attach too much importance to the discrepancy
+between the evidence of the ancient and modern world.
+
+Much of the history of Numidia, especially during the epoch of the war
+of the Romans against Jugurtha, would be illuminated if we could
+interpret the political tendencies of its ancient inhabitants by those
+of the Kabyle of modern times. The latter is said to be a sturdy
+democrat, founding his society on the ideas of equality and
+individuality. Each member of this society enjoys the same rights and is
+bound down to the same duties. There is no military or religious
+nobility, there are no hereditary chiefs. The affairs of the society,
+about which all can speak or vote, are administered by simple
+delegates.[862] There is nothing in the history of the war with Jugurtha
+to belie these characteristics, there is much which confirms them. In
+the narrative of that war there is no mention of a nobility. The
+influential men described are simply those who have been elevated by
+wealth or familiarity with the king. The monarchy itself is a great
+power where the king is present, but the life of the community is not
+broken when the king is a fugitive; and loyalty to the crown centres
+round a great personality, who is expected to drive the hated invaders
+into the sea, not merely round the name of a legitimate dynasty.
+
+Monarchy, in fact, seems a kind of artificial product in Numidia; but,
+artificial as it may have been, it had done good work. An active reign
+of more than fifty years by a man who united the absolutism of the
+savage potentate with the wisdom and experience of the civilised ruler,
+had produced effects in Numidia that could never die, Masinissa had
+proved what Numidian agriculture might become under the guidance of
+scientific rules by the creation of model farms, whose fertile acres
+showed that cultivated plants of every kind could be grown on native
+soil;[863] while under his rule and that of his son Micipsa the life of
+the city showed the same progress as that of the country. Numidia could
+not become one of the granaries of the world without its capital rising
+to the rank of a great commercial city. Cirta, though situated some
+forty-eight Roman miles from the sea,[864] was soon sought by the
+Greeks, those ubiquitous bankers of the Mediterranean world,[865] while
+Roman and Italian capitalists eagerly plied their business in this new
+and attractive sphere which had been presented to their efforts by the
+conquests of Rome and the civilising energy of its native rulers.
+
+The kingdom of Numidia suffered from a weakness common to monarchies
+where the strong spirits of subjects and local chiefs can be controlled
+only by the still stronger hand of the central potentate, and where the
+practice of polygamy and concubinage in the royal house sometimes gave
+rise to many pretenders but to no heir with an indefeasible claim to
+rule. There was no settled principle of succession to the throne, and
+the death of the sovereign for the time being threatened the peace or
+unity of the kingdom, while it entailed grave responsibilities upon its
+nominal protector. Masinissa himself had been excluded from the throne
+by an uncle,[866] and but for his vigour and energy might have remained
+the subject of succeeding pretenders.
+
+A crisis was threatened at his own decease but was happily averted by
+the prudence of the dying monarch. Loath as he probably was to
+acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, he thrust on her the invidious task
+of deciding the succession to the throne. He felt that Roman authority
+would be more effective than paternal wishes; perhaps he saw that
+amongst his sons there was not one who could be trusted alone and
+unaided to continue to build up the fortunes of the state and to claim
+recognition from his brothers as their undisputed lord, while the show
+of submission to Rome might weaken the vigilance and disarm the jealousy
+of the protecting power. Scipio was summoned to his deathbed to
+apportion the kingdom between the legitimate sons who survived him,
+Micipsa, Gulussa and Mastanabal.[867] To Micipsa was given the capital
+Cirta, the royal palace and the general administration of the kingdom,
+the warlike Gulussa was made commander-in-chief, while to Mastanabal the
+youngest was assigned the task of directing the judicial affairs of the
+dominion.[868] This division of authority was soon disturbed by the
+death of the two younger brothers, and Micipsa was left alone to indulge
+his peaceful inclinations during a long and uneventful reign of nearly
+thirty years. The fall of Carthage had left him free from all irritating
+external relations; for the King of Numidia was no longer required to
+act the part of a constant spy on the actions, and an occasional
+trespasser on the territory, of the greatest of African powers. The
+nearest scene of disturbance was the opposite continent of Spain, and
+here he did Rome good service by sending her assistance against
+Viriathus and the Numantines.[869] Unvexed by troubles within his
+borders, Micipsa devoted his life to the arts of peace. He beautified
+Cirta and attracted Greek settlers to the town, amongst them men of arts
+and learning, who delighted the king with their literary and philosophic
+discourse.[870] The period of rest fostered the resources of the
+kingdom, and in spite of a devastating pestilence which is said to have
+swept off eight hundred thousand of the king's subjects,[871] the state
+could boast at his death of a regular army of ten thousand cavalry and
+twenty thousand foot.[872] This was but the nucleus of the host that
+might be raised in the interior, and swelled by the border tribes of
+Numidia; and the man who could win the confidence of the soldiers and
+the attachment of the peasantry held the fortune of Numidia in his
+hands. This reflection may have cast a shadow over the latter years of
+Micipsa. Certainly the prospect of the succession was as dark to him as
+it had been to his father, Masinissa. Like his predecessor he believed
+that a dynasty was stronger than an individual, and he deliberately
+imitated the work of Scipio by leaving a collegiate rule to his
+successors. One of these successors, however, was not his own offspring.
+His brother Mastanabal had left behind him an illegitimate son named
+Jugurtha. The boy had been neglected during the lifetime of his
+grandfather, Masinissa; perhaps the hope that Mastanabal might yet beget
+a representative worthy of the succession caused little importance to be
+attached to the concubine's son, in spite of the fact that it was the
+policy of the Numidian monarchs to keep as many heirs in reserve as it
+was possible for them to procure. But when Gauda, the only legitimate
+son of Mastanabal, proved to be weak in body and deficient in mind,[873]
+greater regard was paid to the vigorous boy who was now the sole
+efficient representative of one branch of the late dynasty. Even without
+this motive the kindly nature of Micipsa would probably have led him to
+look with favour on the orphan child of his brother; the young Jugurtha
+was reared in the palace and educated with the heirs presumptive,
+Adherbal and Hiempsal, the two sons of the reigning king. It soon became
+manifest that a very lion had been begotten and was growing to strength
+in the precincts of the royal court. All the graces of the love-born
+offspring seem to have been present at Jugurtha's birth. A mighty frame,
+a handsome face, were amongst his lesser gifts. More remarkable were the
+vigour and acuteness of his mind, the moral strength which yielded to no
+temptation of ease or indolence, the keen zest for life which led him to
+throw himself into the hardy sports of his youthful compeers, to run, to
+ride, to hurl the javelin with a skill known only to the nomad, the
+_bonhomie_ and bright good temper which endeared him to the comrades
+whom his skill had vanquished. Much of his leisure was passed in
+tracking the wild beasts of the desert; his skill as a hunter was
+matchless, or was equalled only by his easy indifference to his
+success.[874]
+
+The sight of these qualities gladdened Micipsa's heart; for the military
+leader, so essential to the safety of the Numidian monarchy, seemed to
+be now assured. We are told that a shade of anxiety crossed his mind
+when he compared the youth of his own sons with the glorious manhood of
+Jugurtha, and thought of the temptations which the prospect of an
+undivided monarchy might present to a mind gradually weaned from loyalty
+by the very sense of its own greatness;[875] but there is no reason to
+believe that the good old king allowed his imagination to embrace
+visions of the dagger or the poisoned bowl, and that the mysterious
+death of his nephew was only hindered by the thought of the resentment
+which it would arouse amongst the Numidian chiefs and their dependents.
+Certainly the mission with which Jugurtha was soon credited--the mission
+which was perhaps to alter the whole tone of his mind and to concentrate
+its energies on an unlawful end--was one which any Numidian king might
+have destined for the most favoured of his sons. Jugurtha was to be sent
+to Numantia to lead the Numidian auxiliaries of horse and foot, to be a
+member of the charmed circle that surrounded Scipio, to see, as he moved
+amongst the young nobility, the promise of greatness that was in store
+for Rome in the field whether of politics or of war, to form perhaps
+binding friendships and to lay up stores of gratitude for future use. In
+dismissing his nephew, Micipsa was putting the issue into the hands of
+fate. Jugurtha might never return; but, if he did, it would be with an
+experience and a prestige which would render him more than ever the
+certain arbiter of the destinies of the kingdom.
+
+The advantage which Jugurtha took of this marvellous opportunity was a
+product of his nature and proves no ulterior design. Had he been the
+simplest and most loyal of souls, he would have been forced to act as he
+did. As a man of insight he soon learnt Scipio by heart, as a born
+strategist and trained hunter he soon saw through the tricks of the
+enemy, as a man devoid of the physical sense of fear he was foremost in
+every action. He had grasped at once the secret of Roman discipline, and
+his habit of implicit obedience to the word of command was as remarkable
+as his readiness in offering the right suggestion, when his opinion was
+asked. Intelligence was not a striking feature in the mental equipment
+of the staff which surrounded Scipio; it was grasped by the general
+wherever found without respect to rank or nationality; and while Marius
+was rising step by step in virtue of his proved efficiency, the Numidian
+prince, who might have been merely an ornamental adjunct to the army,
+was made the leader or participant in almost every enterprise which
+demanded a shrewd head and a stout heart. The favour of Scipio increased
+from day to day.[876] This was to be won by merit and success alone.
+With Romans of a weaker mould Jugurtha's wealth and social qualities
+produced a similar result. He entertained lavishly, he was clever,
+good-natured and amusing. He charmed the Romans whom he excelled as in
+his childish days he had charmed the Numidian boys whom he outraced.
+
+In these rare intervals of rest from warfare there was opportunity for
+converse with men of influence and rank. Jugurtha's position and the
+future of Numidia were sometimes discussed, and the youthful wiseacres
+who claimed his friendship would sometimes suggest, with the cheerful
+cynicism which springs from a shallow dealing with imperial interests,
+that merit such as his could find its fitting sphere only if he were the
+sole occupant of the Numidian throne.[877] The words may often have been
+spoken in jest or idle compliment; although some who used them may have
+meant them to be an expression of the maxim that a protectorate is best
+served by a strong servant, and that a divided principality contains in
+itself the seeds of disturbance. Others went so far as to suggest the
+means as well as the end. Should difficulties arise with Rome, might not
+the assent of the great powers be purchased with a price? Scipio had not
+been blind to the colloquies of his favourite. When Numantia had been
+destroyed and the army was folding its tents, he gave Jugurtha the
+benefit of a public ovation and a private admonition. Before the
+tribunal he decorated him with the prizes of war, and spoke fervidly in
+his praise; then he invited him secretly to his tent and gave him his
+word of warning. "The friendship of the Roman people should be sought
+from the Roman people itself; no good could come of securing the support
+of individuals by equivocal means; there was a danger in purchasing
+public interest from a handful of vendors who professed to have power to
+sell; Jugurtha's own qualities were his best asset; they would secure
+him glory and a crown; if he tried to hasten on the course of events,
+the material means on which he relied might themselves provoke his utter
+ruin." [878]
+
+On one point only Scipio seems to have been in agreement with the evil
+counsellors of Jugurtha. He seems to have believed that the true
+guardian of Numidia had been found, and the prince took with him a
+splendid testimonial to be presented to his uncle Micipsa. Scipio wrote
+in glowing terms of the great qualities which Jugurtha had displayed
+throughout the war; he expressed his own delight at these services, his
+own intention of making them known to the senate and Roman people, his
+sense of the joy that they must have brought to the monarch himself. His
+old friendship with Micipsa justified a word of congratulation; the
+prince was worthy of his uncle and of his grandfather Masinissa.[879]
+
+Whatever Micipsa's later intentions may have been, whether under
+ordinary circumstances his natural benevolence and even his patriotism
+would have continued to war with an undefined feeling of distrust, this
+letter relieved his doubts, if only because it showed that Jugurtha
+could never fill a private station. The act of adoption was immediately
+accomplished, and a testament was drawn up by which Jugurtha was named
+joint heir with Micipsa's own sons to the throne of Numidia.[880] A few
+years later the aged king lay on his deathbed. As he felt his end
+approaching, he is said to have summoned his friends and relatives
+together with his two sons, and in their presence to have made a parting
+appeal to Jugurtha. He reminded him of past kindnesses but acknowledged
+the ample return; he had made Jugurtha, but Jugurtha had made the
+Numidian name again glorious amongst the Romans and in Spain. He
+exhorted him to protect the youthful princes who would be his colleagues
+on the throne, and reminded him that in the maintenance of concord lay
+the future strength of the kingdom. He appealed to Jugurtha as a
+guardian rather than as a mere co-regent; for the power and name of the
+mature and distinguished ruler would render him chiefly responsible for
+harmony or discord; and he besought his sons to respect their cousin, to
+emulate his virtues, to prove to the world that their father was as
+fortunate in the children whom nature had given him as in the one who
+had been the object of his adoption.[881] The appeal was answered by
+Jugurtha with a goodly show of feeling and respect, and a few days later
+the old king passed away. The hour which closed his splendid obsequies
+was the last in which even a show of concord was preserved between the
+ill-assorted trio who were now the rulers of Numidia. The position of
+Jugurtha was difficult enough; for to rule would mean either the
+reduction of his cousins to impotence or the perpetual thwarting of his
+plans by crude and suspicious counsels. For that these would be
+suspicious as well as crude, was soon revealed: and the situation was
+immediately rendered intolerable by the conduct of Hiempsal. This
+prince, the younger of the two brothers, was a headstrong boy filled
+with a sense of resentment at Jugurtha's elevation to the throne and
+smarting at the neglect of what he held to be the legitimate claim to
+the succession. When the first meeting of the joint rulers was held in
+the throne room, Hiempsal hurried to a seat at the right of Adherbal,
+that Jugurtha might not occupy the place of honour in the centre; it was
+with difficulty that he was induced by the entreaties of his brother to
+yield to the claims of age and to move to the seat on the other side.
+This struggle for precedence heralded the coming storm. In the course of
+a long discussion on the affairs of the kingdom Jugurtha threw out the
+suggestion that it might be advisable to rescind the resolutions and
+decrees of the last five years, since during that period age had
+impaired the faculties of Micipsa. Hiempsal said that he agreed, since
+it was within the last three years that Jugurtha had been adopted to a
+share in the throne. The object of this remark betrayed little emotion;
+but it was believed that the peevish insult was the stimulus to an
+anxious train of thought which, as was to be expected from the resolute
+character of the thinker, soon issued into action. To be a usurper was
+better than to be thought one; the first situation entailed power, the
+second only danger. Anger played its part no doubt; but in a temperament
+like Jugurtha's such an emotion was more likely to be the justification
+than the cause of a crime. His thoughts from that moment were said to
+have been bent on ensnaring the impetuous Hiempsal. But guile moves
+slowly, and Jugurtha would not wait.[882]
+
+The first meeting of the kings had given so thorough a proof of the
+impossibility of united rule that a resolution was soon framed to divide
+the treasures and territories of the monarchy. A time was fixed for the
+partition of the domains, and a still earlier date for the division of
+the accumulated wealth. The kings meanwhile quitted the capital to
+reside in close propinquity to their cherished treasures. Hiempsal's
+temporary home was in the fortified town of Thirmida,[883] and, as
+chance would have it, he occupied a house which belonged to a man who
+had once been a confidential attendant on Jugurtha.[884] The inner
+history of the events which followed could never have been known with
+certainty; but it was believed that Jugurtha induced this man to visit
+the house under some pretext and bring back impressions of the keys. The
+security of Hiempsal's person and treasures was supposed to be
+guaranteed by his regularly receiving into his own hands the keys of the
+gates after they had been locked; but a night came in which the portals
+were noiselessly opened and a band of soldiers burst into the house.
+They divided into parties, ranging each room in turn, prying into every
+recess, bursting doors that barred their entrance, stabbing the
+attendants, some in their sleep, others as they ran to meet the
+invaders. At last Hiempsal was found crouching in a servant's room; he
+was slain and beheaded, and those who held Jugurtha to be the author of
+the crime reported that the head of the murdered prince was brought to
+him as a pledge of the accomplished act.[885]
+
+The news of the crime was soon spread through the whole of Northern
+Africa. It divided Numidia into two camps. Adherbal was forced by panic
+to arm in his own defence, and most of those who remained loyal to the
+memory of Micipsa gathered to the standard of the legitimate heir. But
+Jugurtha's fame amongst the fighting men of the kingdom stood him in
+good stead. His adherents were the fewer in number, but they were the
+more effective warriors.[886] He rapidly gathered such forces as were
+available, and dashed from city to city, capturing some by storm and
+receiving the voluntary submission of others. He had plunged boldly into
+a civil war, and by his action declared the coveted prize to be nothing
+less than the possession of the whole Numidian kingdom. But boldness was
+his best policy; Rome might more readily condone a conquest than a
+rebellion, and be more willing to recognise a king than a claimant.
+
+Adherbal meanwhile had sent an embassy to the protecting State, to
+inform the senate of his brother's murder and his own evil plight. But,
+diffident as he was, he must have felt that a passive endurance of the
+outrages inflicted by Jugurtha dimmed his prestige and imperilled his
+position; he found himself at the head of the larger army, and trusting
+to his superiority in numbers ventured to risk a battle with his veteran
+enemy. The first conflict was decisive; his forces were so utterly
+routed that he despaired of maintaining his position in any part of the
+kingdom. He fled from the battlefield to the province of Africa and
+thence took ship to Rome.[887]
+
+Jugurtha was now undisputed master of the whole of Numidia and had
+leisure to think out the situation. It could not have needed much
+reflection to show that the safer course lay in making an appeal to
+Rome. It was no part of his plan to detach Numidia entirely from the
+imperial city; even if such an end were desirable, a national war could
+not be successfully waged by a people divided in allegiance, against a
+state whose tenacious policy and inexhaustible resources were only too
+well known to Jugurtha. But he also knew that Rome, though tenacious,
+had the tolerance which springs from the unwillingness to waste blood
+and treasure on a matter of such little importance as a change in the
+occupancy of a subject throne, that a dynastic quarrel would seem to
+many _blase_ senators a part of the order of nature in a barbarian
+monarchy, that it is usually to the interest of a protecting state to
+recognise a king in fact as one in law, and that he himself possessed
+many powerful friends in the capital and had been told on good authority
+that royal presents judiciously distributed might confirm or even mould
+opinion. Within a few days of his victory he had despatched to Rome an
+embassy well equipped with gold and silver. His ambassadors were to
+confirm the affection of his old friends, to win new ones to his cause,
+and to spare no pains to gain any fraction of support that a bountiful
+generosity could buy.[888] Possibly few, who received courteous visits
+or missives from these envoys, would have admitted that they had been
+bribed. It was the custom of kings to send presents, and they did but
+answer to the call of an old acquaintance and a man who had done signal
+service to Rome. The news of Hiempsal's tragic end, the flight and
+arrival of his exiled brother, had at the moment caused a painful
+sensation in Roman circles. Now many members of the nobility plucked up
+courage to remark that there might be another side to the question. The
+newly gilded youth thronged their seniors in the senate and begged that
+no inconsiderate resolution should be taken against Jugurtha. The
+envoys, as men conscious of their virtue, calmly expressed their
+readiness to await the senate's pleasure. The appointed day arrived, and
+Adherbal, who appeared in person, unfolded the tale of his wrongs.[889]
+
+Apart from the emotions of pity and consequent sympathy which may have
+been awakened in some breasts by the story of the ruined and exiled
+king, his appeal--passionate, vigorous and telling as it was--could not
+have been listened to with any great degree of pleasure by the assembled
+fathers; for it brought home to the government of a protecting state
+that most unpleasant of lessons, its duty to the protected. With the
+ingenuity of despair Adherbal exaggerated the degree of Roman
+government, in order to emphasise the moral and political obligations of
+the rulers to their dependents. If the King of Numidia was a mere agent
+of the imperial[890] city, subordinating his wishes to her ends, seeing
+the security of his own possessions in the extension of her influence
+alone, clinging to her friendship with a trust as firm as that inspired
+by ties of blood, it was the duty of the mistress to protect such a
+servant, and to avenge an outrage which reflected alike on her gratitude
+and her authority. It had been a maxim of Micipsa's that the clients of
+Rome supported a heavy burden, but were amply compensated by the
+immunity from danger that they enjoyed. And, if Rome did not protect, to
+whom could a client-king look for aid? His very service to Rome had made
+him the enemy of all neighbouring powers. It was true that Adherbal
+could claim little in his own right; he was a suppliant before he could
+be a benefactor, stripped of all power of benefiting his great protector
+before his devotion could be put to the test. Yet he could claim a debt;
+for he was the sole relic of a dynasty that had given their all to Rome.
+Jugurtha was destroying a family whose loyalty had stood every test, he
+was committing horrid atrocities on the friends of Rome, his insolence
+and impunity were inflicting as grave an injury on the Roman name as on
+the wretched victims of his cruelty.
+
+Such was the current of subtle and cogent reasoning that ran through the
+passionate address of the exiled king, crying for vengeance, but above
+all for justice. The answer of Jugurtha's envoys was brief and to the
+point. They had only to state their fictitious case. A plausible case
+was all that was needed; their advocates would do the rest. Hiempsal,
+they urged, had been put to death by the Numidians in consequence of the
+cruelty of his rule. Adherbal had been the aggressor in the late war. He
+had suffered defeat, and was now petitioning for help because he had
+found himself unable to perpetrate the wrong which he had intended.
+Jugurtha entreated the senate to let the knowledge which had been gained
+of him at Numantia guide their opinion of him now, and to set his own
+past deeds before the words of a personal enemy.[891] Both parties then
+withdrew and the senate fell to debate.
+
+It is sufficiently likely that, even had there been no corruption or
+suspicion of corruption, the opinions of the House would have been
+divided on the question that was put before them. Some minds naturally
+suspicious might have been doubtful of the facts. Were Hiempsal's death
+and Adherbal's flight due to national discontent or the unprovoked
+ambition of Jugurtha? If the former was the case, was the restoration of
+the king to an unwilling people by an armed force a measure conducive to
+the interest of the protecting state? But even some who accepted
+Adherbal's statement of the case, may have doubted the wisdom of a
+policy of armed intervention; for it was manifest that a considerable
+degree of force would have to be employed to lead Jugurtha to relinquish
+his claims and to stamp out the loyalty of his adherents. The senate
+could have been in no humour for another African war; they regarded
+their policy as closed in that quarter of the world; they had shifted
+the burden of frontier defence on to the Kings of Numidia, and must have
+viewed with alarm the prospect of something far worse than a frontier
+war arising from the quarrels of those kings. It is probable, therefore,
+that proposals for a peaceful settlement would in any case have
+commanded the respectful attention of the senate; had these been made
+with a show of decency, with a general recognition of Adherbal's claims,
+and some censure of Jugurtha's overbearing conduct (for this must have
+been better attested than his share in Hiempsal's death), but little
+adverse comment might have been excited by the tone of the debate. As it
+was, when member after member rose, lauded Jugurtha's merits to the
+skies and poured contempt on the statements of Adherbal,[892] an
+unpleasant feeling was excited that this fervour was not wholly due to a
+patriotic interest in the security of the empire. The very
+boisterousness of the championship induced a more rigorous attitude on
+the part of those who had not been approached by Jugurtha's envoys or
+had resisted their overtures. They maintained that Adherbal must be
+helped at all costs, and that strict punishment should be exacted for
+Hiempsal's murder. This minority found an ardent advocate in Scaurus,
+the keeper of the conscience of the senate, the man who knew better than
+any that an individual or a government lives by its reputation, who saw
+with horror that no specious pretexts were being employed to clothe a
+policy which the malevolent might interpret as a political crime, and
+that the sinister rumours which had been current in Rome were finding
+their open verification in the senate. A vigorous championship of the
+cause of right from the foremost politician of the day, might not
+influence the decision of the House, and would certainly not lead to a
+quixotic policy of armed intervention; but it might prove to critics of
+the government that the inevitable decision had not been reached wholly
+in defiance of the claims of the suppliant and wholly in obedience to
+the machinations of a usurper. The decision, which closed the unreal
+debate, recognised Jugurtha and Adherbal as joint rulers of Numidia. It
+wilfully ignored Hiempsal's death, it wantonly exposed the lamb to the
+wolf, it was worthless as a settlement of the dynastic question, unless
+Jugurtha's supporters entertained the pious hope that their favourite's
+ambition might be satisfied with the increase now granted to his wealth
+and territory, and that his prudence might withhold him from again
+testing the forbearance of the protecting power. But those who possessed
+keener insight or who knew Jugurtha better, must have foreseen the
+probable result of the impunity which had been granted; they must have
+presaged, with anxious foreboding or with patient cynicism, the final
+disappearance of Adherbal from the scene and a fresh request for the
+settlement of the Numidian question, which would have become less
+complex when there was but one candidate for the throne. The decree of
+the senate enjoined the creation of a commission of ten, which should
+visit Numidia and divide the whole of the kingdom which had been
+possessed by Micipsa, between the rival chiefs.[893]
+
+The head of the commission was Lucius Opimius, whose influence amongst
+the members of his order had never waned since he had exercised and
+proved his right of saving the State from the threatened dangers of
+sedition. His selection on this occasion gave an air of impartiality to
+the commission, for he was known to be no friend to Jugurtha.[894]
+
+That prince, however, did not allow his past relations to be an obstacle
+to his present enterprise. The conquest of Opimius was the immediate
+object to which he devoted all his energies. As soon as the
+commissioners had appeared on African soil, they and their chief were
+received with the utmost deference by the king. The frequent and secret
+colloquies which took place between the arbitrators and one of the
+parties interested in their decision were not a happy omen for an
+impartial judgment, and, if the award could by the exercise of
+malevolent ingenuity be interpreted as unfair, would certainly breed the
+suspicion, and, in case the matter was ever submitted to a hostile court
+of law, the proof that the honour of the commissioners had succumbed to
+the usual vulgar and universally accredited methods of corruption. On
+the face of it the award seemed eminently just. Numidia was becoming a
+commercial and agricultural state; but since commerce and agriculture
+did not flourish in the same domains, it was impossible to endow each of
+the claimants equally with both these sources of wealth. To Adherbal was
+given that part of the kingdom which in its external attributes seemed
+the more desirable; he was to rule over the eastern half of Numidia
+which bordered on the Roman province, the portion of the country which
+enjoyed a readier access to the sea and could boast of a fuller
+development of urban life. Cirta the capital lay within this sphere, and
+Adherbal could continue to give justice from the throne of his fathers.
+But those who held that the strength of a country depended mainly on its
+people and its soil, believed that Jugurtha had received the better
+part. The territories with which he was entrusted were those bordering
+on Mauretania, rich in the products of the soil and teeming with healthy
+human life.[895] From the point of view of military resources there
+could be no question as to which of the two kings was the stronger. The
+peaceful character of Adherbal may have seemed a justification for his
+peaceful sphere of rule; but the original aggressor was kept at his
+normal strength. Jugurtha ruled over the lands in which the national
+spirit, of which he was himself the embodiment, found its fullest and
+fiercest expression. He did not mean to acquiesce for a moment in the
+settlement effected by the commission. No sooner had it completed its
+task and returned home, than he began to devise a scheme which would
+lead to war between the two principalities and the consequent
+annihilation of Adherbal. He shrank at first from provoking the senate
+by a wanton attack on the neighbouring kingdom which they had just
+created; his design was rather to draw Adherbal into hostilities which
+would lead to a pitched battle, a certain victory, the disappearance of
+the last of Micipsa's race and the union of the two crowns. With this
+object he massed a considerable force on the boundary between the two
+kingdoms and suddenly crossed the frontier. His mounted raiders captured
+shepherds with their flocks, ravaged the fields of the peasantry, looted
+and burned their homes; then swept back within their own borders.[896]
+But Adherbal was not moved to reprisals. His circumstances no less than
+his temperament dictated methods of peace: and, if he could not keep his
+crown by diplomacy, he must have regarded it as lost. The Roman people
+was a better safeguard than his Numidian subjects, and it was necessary
+to temporise with Jugurtha until the senate could be moved by a strong
+appeal. Envoys were despatched to the court of the aggressor to complain
+of the recent outrage; they brought back an impudent reply; but
+Adherbal, steadfast in his pacific resolutions, still remained
+quiescent, Jugurtha's plan had failed and he was in no mood for further
+delay; he held now, as he had done once before, that his end could best
+be effected by vigorous and decisive action. The lapse of time could not
+improve his own position but might strengthen that of Adherbal, and it
+was advisable that a new Roman commission should witness an accomplished
+fact and make the best of it rather than engage again in the settlement
+of a disputed claim. It was no longer a predatory band but a large and
+regular army that he now collected; his present purpose was not a foray
+but a war.[897] He advanced into his rival's territory ravaging its
+fields, harrying its cities and gathering booty as he went. At every
+step the confidence of his own forces, the dismay of the enemy
+increased.
+
+Adherbal was at last convinced that he must appeal to the sword for the
+security of his crown. A second flight to Rome would have utterly
+discredited him in the eyes of his subjects, perhaps in those of the
+Roman government itself; yet, as his chief hope still lay in Rome, he
+hurriedly despatched an embassy to the suzerain city[898] while he
+himself prepared to take the field. With unwilling energy he gathered
+his available forces and marched to oppose Jugurtha's triumphant
+progress. The invading host had now skirted Cirta to the west and was
+apparently attempting to cut off its communications with the sea. The
+disastrous results that would have followed the success of this attempt,
+may have been the final motive that spurred Adherbal to his appeal to
+arms; and it was somewhere within the fifty miles that intervened
+between the capital and its port of Rusicade and at a spot nearer to the
+sea than to Cirta,[899] that the opposing armies met. The day was
+already far spent when Adherbal came into touch with his enemy: there
+was no thought of a pitched battle in the gathering gloom, and either
+party took up his quarters for the night. Towards the late watches of
+the night, in the doubtful light of the early dawn, the soldiers of
+Jugurtha crept up to the outposts of the enemy; at a given signal they
+rushed on the camp and carried it by storm. Adherbal's soldiers, heavy
+with sleep and groping for their arms, were routed or slain; the prince
+himself sprang on his horse and with a handful of his knights sped for
+safety to the walls of Cirta, Jugurtha's troops in hot pursuit. They had
+almost closed on the fugitive before the walls were reached; but the
+race had been watched from the battlements, and, as the flying Adherbal
+passed the gates, the walls were manned by a volunteer body of Italian
+merchants who kept the pursuing Numidians at bay.[900] It was the
+merchant class that had most to fear from the cruelty and cupidity of
+the nomad hordes that now beat against the fortress, and during the
+siege that followed they controlled the course of events far more
+effectually than the unhappy king whom they had for the moment saved
+from destruction.
+
+Jugurtha's plans were foiled; Adherbal had escaped, and there lay before
+him the irksome prospect of a siege, of probable interference from Rome
+and, it might be, of the necessity of openly defying the senate's
+commands. But it was now too late to draw back, and he set himself
+vigorously to the work of reducing Cirta by assault or famine. The task
+must have been an arduous one. The town formed one of the strongest
+positions for defence that could be found in the ancient world. It was
+built on an isolated cube of rock that towered above the vast cultivated
+tracts of the surrounding plain. At its eastern extremity the precipice
+made a sheer drop of six hundred feet, and was perhaps quite
+inaccessible on this side, although it threw out spurs, whether natural
+or of artificial construction, which formed a difficult and easily
+defensible communication with the lower land around. Its natural
+bastions were completed by a natural moat, for the river Ampsaga (the
+Waed Remel) almost encircled the town, and on the eastern side its deep
+and rushing waters could only be crossed by a ledge of rock, through
+which it bored a subterranean channel and over which some kind of bridge
+or causeway had probably been formed.[901] The natural and easy mode of
+approach to the city was to be found in the south-west, where a neck of
+land of half a furlong's breadth led up to the principal gate.
+
+In spite of the formidable difficulties of the task Jugurtha attempted
+an assault, for it was of the utmost importance that he should possess
+the person of Adherbal before interference was felt from Rome. Mantlets,
+turrets and all the engines of siege warfare were vigorously employed to
+carry the town by storm;[902] but the stout walls baffled every effort,
+and Jugurtha was forced to face as best he might another Roman embassy
+which Adherbal's protests had brought to African soil. The senate, when
+it had learnt the news of the renewed outbreak of the war, was as
+unwilling as ever to intervene as a third partner in a three-sided
+conflict. To play the part of the policeman as well as of the judge was
+no element in Roman policy; the very essence of a protectorate was that
+it should take care of itself; were intervention necessary, it should be
+decisive, and it would be a lengthy task and an arduous strain to gather
+and transport to Africa a force sufficient to overawe Jugurtha. The easy
+device of a new commission was therefore adopted. If its Suggestions
+were obeyed, all would be well; if they were neglected, matters could
+not be much worse than they were at present. As the new commissioners
+had merely to take a message and were credited with no discretionary
+power, it was thought unnecessary to burden the higher magnates of the
+State with the unenviable task, or to expose them to the undignified
+predicament of finding their representations flouted by a rebel who
+might have eventually to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to
+younger members of the senatorial order, and the three who landed in
+Africa were branded by the hostile criticism that was soon to find
+utterance and in the poverty of its indictment to catch at every straw,
+as lacking the age and dignity demanded by the mission--qualities which,
+had they been present, would probably have failed to make the least
+impression on Jugurtha's fixed resolve. The commissioners were to
+approach both the kings and to bring to their notice the will and
+resolution of the Roman senate and people, which were to the effect that
+hostilities should be suspended and that the questions at issue between
+the rivals should be submitted to peaceful arbitration. This conduct the
+senate recommended as the only one worthy of its royal clients and of
+itself.[903]
+
+The speed of the envoys was accelerated by the impression that they
+might find but one king to be the recipient of their message. On the eve
+of their departure the news of the decisive battle and the siege of
+Cirta had reached their ears. Haste was imperative, if they were to
+retain their position as envoys, for the next despatch might bring news
+of Adherbal's death. The actual news received fell short of the
+truth,[904] and was perhaps still further softened for the public ear;
+the fact that the envoys had sailed was itself an official indication
+that all hope had not been abandoned. If they cherished a similar
+illusion themselves, it must almost have vanished before the sight that
+met their eyes in Numidia. They saw a closely beleaguered town in which
+one of the kings, who were to be the recipients of their message, was so
+closely hemmed that access to him was impossible.[905] The other,
+without abating one jot of his military preparations, met them with an
+answer as uncompromising as it was courteous. Jugurtha held nothing more
+precious than the authority of the senate; from his youth up he had
+striven to meet the approbation of the good; it was by merit not by
+artifice, that he had gained the favour of Scipio; it was desert that
+had won him a place amongst Micipsa's children and a share in the
+Numidian crown. But qualities carry their responsibilities; the very
+distinction of his services made it the more incumbent on him to avenge
+a wrong. Adherbal had treacherously plotted against his life; the crime
+had been revealed and he had but taken steps to forestall it; the Roman
+people would not be acting justly or honourably, if they hindered him
+from taking such steps in his own defence as were the common right of
+all men.[906]
+
+He would soon send envoys to Rome to deal with the whole question in
+dispute.
+
+This answer showed the Roman commissioners the utter helplessness of
+their position. Their presence in Jugurtha's camp within sight of a city
+in which a client king and a number of their own citizens were
+imprisoned, was itself a stigma on the name of Rome. If they had prayed
+to see Adherbal, the request, must have been refused; to prolong the
+negotiations was to court further insult, and they set their faces once
+more for Rome after faithfully performing the important mission of
+repeating a message of the senate with verbal correctness. Jugurtha
+granted them the courtesy of not renewing his active operations until he
+thought that they had quitted Africa. Then, despairing of carrying the
+town by assault, he settled to the work of a regular siege. The nature
+of the ground must have made a complete investment impossible; but it
+also rendered it unnecessary. The cliffs and the river bed made escape
+as difficult as attack. On some sides it was but necessary to maintain a
+strenuous watch on every possible egress; on others lines of
+circumvallation, with ramparts and ditches, kept the beleaguered within
+their walls. Siege-towers were raised to mate the height of the
+fortifications which they threatened, and manned with garrisons to harry
+the town and repel all efforts of its citizens to escape. The blockade
+was varied by a series of surprises, of sudden assaults by day or night;
+no method of force or fraud was left untried; the loyalty of the
+defenders who appeared on the walls was assailed by threats or promises;
+the assailants were strenuously exhorted to effect a speedy entry.
+
+It would seem that Cirta was ill-provided with supplies.[907] Adherbal,
+who had made it the basis of his attack and must have foreseen the
+probability of his defeat, should have seen that it was well
+provisioned; and the vast cisterns and granaries cut in the solid rock,
+that were in later times to be found within the city, should have
+supplied water and food sufficient to prolong the siege to a degree that
+might have tried the senate's patience as sorely as Jugurtha's. But
+neither the king nor his advisers were adepts in the art of war; it must
+have been difficult to regulate the distribution of provisions amidst
+the trading classes, of unsettled habits and mixed nationalities, that
+were crowded within the walls; discontent could not be restrained by
+discipline and might at any moment be a motive to surrender. The
+imprisoned king saw no prospect of a prolongation of the war that could
+secure even his personal safety; no help could be looked for from
+without and a ruthless enemy was battering at his gates. His only hope,
+a faint one, lay in a last appeal to Rome; but the invader's lines were
+drawn so close that even a chance of communicating with the protecting
+city seemed denied. At length, by urgent appeals to pity and to avarice,
+he induced two of the comrades who had joined his flight from the field
+of battle, to risk the venture of penetrating the enemy's lines and
+reaching the sea.[908] The venture, which was made by night, succeeded;
+the two bold messengers stole through the enclosing fortifications,
+rapidly made for the nearest port, and thence took ship to Rome. Within
+a few days they were in the presence of the senate,[909] and the
+despairing cry of Adherbal was being read to an assembly, to whom it
+could convey no new knowledge and on whom it could lay no added burden
+of perplexity. But emotion, although it cannot teach, may focus thought
+and clarify the promptings of interest. To many a loose thinker
+Adherbal's missive may have been the first revelation, not only of the
+shame, but of the possible danger of the situation. The facts were too
+well known to require detailed treatment. It was sufficient to remind
+the senate that for five months a friend and ally of the Roman people
+had been blockaded in his own capital; his choice was merely one between
+death by the sword and death by famine. Adherbal no longer asked for his
+kingdom; nay, he barely ventured to ask for his life; but he deprecated
+a death by torture--a fate that would most certainly be his if he fell
+into the hands of his implacable foe. The appeal to interest was
+interwoven with that made to pity and to honour. What were Jugurtha's
+ultimate motives? When he had consummated his crimes and absorbed the
+whole of Numidia, did he mean to remain a peaceful client-king, a
+faithful vassal of Rome? His fidelity and obedience might be measured by
+the treatment which he had already accorded to the mandate and the
+envoys of the senate. The power of Rome in her African possessions was
+at stake; and the majesty of the empire was appealed to no less than the
+sense of friendship, loyalty, and gratitude, as a ground for instant
+assistance which might yet save the suppliant from a terrible and
+degrading end.
+
+The impression produced by this appeal was seen in the bolder attitude
+adopted by that section of the senate which had from the first regarded
+Jugurtha as a criminal at large, and had never approved the policy of
+leaving Numidia to settle its own affairs. Voices were heard advocating
+the immediate despatch of an army to Africa, the speedy succour of
+Adherbal, the consideration of an adequate punishment for the contumacy
+of Jugurtha in not obeying the express commands of Rome.[910] But the
+usual protests were heard from the other side, protests which were
+interpreted as a proof of the utter corruption of those who uttered
+them,[911] but which were doubtless veiled in the decent language, and
+may in some cases have been animated by the genuine spirit, of the
+cautious imperialist who prefers a crime to a blunder. The conflict of
+opinion resulted in the usual compromise. A new commission was to be
+despatched with a more strongly worded message from the senate; but, as
+rumour had apparently been busy with the adventures of the "three young
+men" whom Jugurtha had turned back, it was deemed advisable to select
+the present envoys from men whose age, birth and ample honours might
+give weight to a mission that was meant to avert a war.[912] The
+solemnity of the occasion was attested, and some feeling of assurance
+may have been created, by the fact that there figured amongst the
+commissioners no less a person than the chief of the senate Marcus
+Aemilius Scaurus, beyond all question the foremost man of Rome,[913] the
+highest embodiment of patrician dignity and astute diplomacy. The
+pressing appeal of Adherbal's envoys, the ugly rumours which were
+circulating in Rome, urged the commissioners to unwonted activity.
+Within three days they were on board, and after a short interval had
+landed at Utica in the African province. The experience of the former
+mission had taught them that their dignity might be utterly lost if they
+quitted the territory of the Roman domain. They did not deign to set
+foot in Numidia, but sent a message to Jugurtha informing him that they
+had a mandate from the senate and ordering him to come with all speed to
+the Roman province.
+
+Jugurtha was for the moment torn by conflicting resolutions. The very
+audacity of his acts had been tempered and in part directed by a secret
+fear of Rome. Whether in any moments of ambitious imagination he had
+dreamed of throwing off the protectorate and asserting the unlimited
+independence of the Numidian kingdom, must remain uncertain; but in any
+case that consummation must belong to the end, not to the intermediate
+stage, of his present enterprise. His immediate plan had been to win or
+purchase recognition of an accomplished fact from the somnolence,
+caution or corruption of the government; and here was intervention
+assuming a more formidable shape while the fact was but half
+accomplished and he himself was but playing the part of the rebel, not
+of the king. The dignity of the commissioners, and the peremptory nature
+of their demand, seemed to show that negotiations with Rome were losing
+their character of a conventional game and assuming a more serious
+aspect. It is possible that Jugurtha did not know the full extent of the
+danger which he was running; it is possible that, like so many other
+potentates who had relations with the imperial city, he made the mistake
+of imagining that the senate was in the fullest sense the government of
+Rome, and had no cognisance of the subtle forces whose equilibrium was
+expressed in a formal control by the nobility; but even what he saw was
+sufficient to alarm him and to lead him, in a moment of panic or
+prudence, to think of the possibility of obeying the commission. At the
+next moment the new man, which the deliberate but almost frenzied
+pursuit of a single object had made of Jugurtha, was fully
+reasserted.[914] But his passion was not blind; his recklessness still
+veiled a plan; his one absorbing desire was to see Adherbal in his hands
+before he should himself be forced to meet the envoys. He gave orders
+for his whole force to encircle the walls of Cirta; a simultaneous
+assault was directed against every vulnerable point; the attention of
+the defenders was to be distracted by the ubiquitous nature of the
+attack; a failure of vigilance at any point might give him the desired
+entry by force or fraud. But nothing came of the enterprise; the
+assailants were beaten back, and Jugurtha had another moment for cool
+reflection. He soon decided that further delay would not strengthen his
+position. The name of Scaurus weighed heavily on his mind.[915] He was
+an untried element with respect to the details of the Numidian affair;
+but all that Jugurtha knew of him--his influence with the senate, his
+uncompromising respectability, his earlier attitude on the
+question--inspired a feeling of fear. Obedience to the demand which the
+commissioners had made for his presence might be the wiser course;
+whatever the result of the interview, such obedience might prolong the
+period of negotiation and delay armed intervention until his own great
+object was fulfilled. With a few of his knights Jugurtha crossed into
+the Roman province and presented himself before the commissioners. We
+have no record of the discussion which ensued. The senate's message was
+almost an ultimatum; it threatened extreme measures if Jugurtha did not
+desist from the siege of Cirta; but the peremptory nature of the missive
+did not prevent close and lengthy discussions between the envoys and the
+king. The plausible personality of Jugurtha may have told in his favour
+and may have led to the hopes of a compromise; for it is not probable
+that he ventured on a summary rejection of their orders or advice. But
+the commissioners could merely threaten or advise; they had no power to
+wring promises from the king or to keep him to them when they were made.
+Thus when, at the close of the debates, Jugurtha returned to Numidia and
+the envoys embarked at Utica, it was felt on all sides that nothing had
+been accomplished.[916] The commissioners may have believed that they
+had made Jugurtha sensible of his true relations to Rome; they had
+perhaps threatened open war as the result of disobedience; but they had
+neither checked his progress nor stayed his hand; and the taint with
+which all dealings with the wealthy potentate infected his environment,
+clung even to this select body of distinguished men.
+
+The immediate effect of the fruitless negotiations was the disaster
+which every one must have foreseen. Cirta and her king had been utterly
+betrayed by their protectress; and when the news of the departure of the
+envoys and the return of Jugurtha penetrated within the walls, despair
+of further resistance gave substance to the hope of the possibility of
+surrender on tolerable terms. The hope was never present to the mind of
+Adherbal; he knew his enemy too well. Nor could it have been entertained
+in a very lively form by the king's Numidian councillors and subjects.
+But the Numidian was not the strongest element in Cirta. There the
+merchant class held sway. In the defence of their property and commerce,
+the organised business and the homes which they had established in the
+civilised state, they had taken the lead in repelling the hordes of
+Western Numidians which Jugurtha led; and amongst the merchant class
+those of Italian race had been the most active and efficient in
+repelling the assaults of the besiegers. To these men the choice was not
+between famine and the sword; but merely between famine and the loss of
+property or comfort. For what Roman or Italian could doubt that the most
+perfect security for his life and person was still implicit in the magic
+name of Rome? Confident in their safety they advised Adherbal to hand
+over the town to Jugurtha; the only condition which he needed to make
+was the preservation of his own life and that of the besieged; all else
+was of less importance, for their future fortunes rested not with
+Jugurtha but with the senate.[917] It is questionable whether the
+Italians were really inspired with this blind confidence in the senate's
+power to restore as well as to save; even their ability to save was more
+than doubtful to Adherbal; still more worthless was a promise made by
+his enemy. The unhappy king would have preferred the most desperate
+resistance to a trust in Jugurtha's honour; but the advice of the
+Italians was equivalent to a command; and a gleam of hope, sufficient at
+least to prevent him from taking his own life, may have buoyed him up
+when he yielded to their wishes and made the formal surrender. The hope,
+if it existed, was immediately dispelled. Adherbal was put to death with
+cruel tortures.[918] The Italians then had their proof of the present
+value of the majesty of the name of Rome. Their calculations had been
+vitiated by one fatal blunder. They forgot that they were letting into
+their stronghold an exasperated people drawn from the rudest parts of
+Numidia--a people to whom the name of Rome was as nothing, to whom the
+name of merchant or foreigner was contemptible and hateful. As the
+surging crowd of Jugurtha's soldiery swept over the doomed city,
+massacring every Numidian of adult age, the claim of nationality made by
+the protesting merchants was not unnaturally met by a thrust from the
+sword. If even the assailants could distinguish them in the frenzy of
+victory, they knew them for men who had occupied the fighting line; and
+this fact was alone sufficient to doom them to destruction. Jugurtha may
+also have made his blunder. Unless we suppose that his penetrating mind
+had been, suddenly clouded by the senseless rage which prompts the
+half-savage man to a momentary act of demoniacal folly, he could never
+have willed the slaughter of the Roman and Italian merchants.[919] If he
+willed it in cold blood, he was consciously making war on Rome and
+declaring the independence of Numidia. For, even with his limited
+knowledge of the balance of interests in the capital, he must have seen
+that the act was inexpiable. His true policy, now as before, was not to
+cross swords with Rome, but merely to wring from her indifference a
+recognition of a purely national crime. His wits had failed him if he
+had ordered a deed which put indifference and recognition out of the
+question. It is probable that he did not calculate on the fury of his
+troops; it is possible that he had ceased to lead and was a mere unit
+swept along in the avalanche which sated its wrath at the prolonged
+resistance, and avenged the real or fancied crimes committed by the
+merchant class.
+
+The massacre of the merchants caused a complete change in the attitude
+with which Numidian events were viewed at Rome. It cut the commercial
+classes to the quick, and this third party which moulded the policy of
+Rome began closing up its ranks. The balance of power on which the
+nobility had rested its presidency since the fall of Caius Gracchus,
+began to be disturbed. It was possible again for a leader of the people
+to make his voice heard; not, however, because he was the leader of the
+people, but because he was the head of a coalition. The man of the hour
+was Caius Memmius, who was tribune elect for the following year. He was
+an orator, vehement rather than eloquent, of a mordant utterance, and
+famed in the courts for his power of attack.[920] His critical
+temperament and keen eye for abuses had already led him to join the
+sparse ranks of politicians who tried still to keep alive the healthy
+flame of discontent, and to utter an occasional protest against the
+manner in which the nobility exercised their trust.[921] His influence
+must have been increased by the growing suspicion of the last few years
+and the scandal that fed on tales of bribery in high places; it was
+assured by the latest news which, through the illogical process of
+reasoning out of which great causes grow, seemed to make rumour a
+certainty and to justify suspicion by the increased numbers and
+respectability of the suspecting. A pretext for action was found in the
+shifty and dilatory proceedings of the senate. Even the latest phase of
+the Numidian affair was not powerful or horrible enough to crush all
+attempts at a temporising policy.[922] Men were still found to interrupt
+the course of a debate which promised to issue in some strong and speedy
+resolution, by raising counter-motions which the great names of the
+movers forced on the attention of the house; every artifice which
+influence could command was employed to dull the pain of a wounded
+self-respect; and when this method failed, idle recrimination took the
+place of argument as a means of consuming the time for action and
+passing the point at which anger would have cooled into indifference, or
+at least into an emotion not stronger than regret. It was plain that the
+stimulus must be supplied from without; and Memmius provided it by going
+straight to the people and embodying their floating suspicions in a bald
+and uncompromising form. He told them[923] that the prolonged
+proceedings in the senate meant simply that the crime of Jugurtha was
+likely to be condoned through the influence of a few ardent partisans of
+the king; and it is probable that he dealt frankly and in the true Roman
+manner with the motives for this partisanship. The pressure was
+effectual in bringing to a head the deliberations of the senate. The
+council as a whole did not need conversion on the main question at
+issue, for most of its members must have felt that it had exhausted the
+resources of peaceful diplomacy, and it showed its characteristic
+aversion to the provocation of a constitutional crisis, which might
+easily arise if the people chose to declare war on the motion of a
+magistrate without waiting for the advice of the fathers; while the
+obstructive minority may have been alarmed by the distant vision of a
+trial before the Assembly or before a commission of inquiry composed of
+judges taken from the angry Equites. The senate took the lead in a
+formal declaration of war; Numidia was named as one of the provinces
+which were to be assigned to the future consuls in accordance with the
+provisions of the Sempronian law. The choice of the people fell on
+Publius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia as consuls for the
+following year.[924] The lot assigned the home government and the
+guardianship of Italy to Nasica, while Bestia gained the command in the
+impending war. Military preparations were pushed on with all haste; an
+army was levied for service in Africa; pay and supplies were voted on an
+adequate scale.
+
+The news is said to have surprised Jugurtha.[925] Perhaps earlier
+messages of a more cheerful import had reached him from Rome during the
+days when successful obstruction seemed to be achieving its end, and had
+dulled the fears which the massacre of Cirta most have aroused even in a
+mind so familiar with the acquiescent policy of the senate. Yet even now
+he did not lose heart, nor did his courage take the form, prevalent
+amongst the lower types of mind, of a mere reliance on brute force, on
+the resources of that Numidia of which he was now the undisputed lord.
+With a persistence born of successful experience he still attempted the
+methods of diplomacy-methods which prove a lack of insight only in the
+sense that Rome was an impossible sphere for their present exercise. The
+king had not gauged the situation in the capital; but subsequent events
+proved that he still possessed a correct estimate of the real
+inclinations of the men who were chiefly responsible for Roman policy.
+The Numidian envoy was no less a person than the king's own son, and he
+was supported by two trusty counsellors of Jugurtha.[926] As was usual
+in the case of a diplomatic mission arriving from a country which had no
+treaty relations, or was actually in a state of war, with Rome, the
+envoys were not permitted to pass the gates until the will of the senate
+was known. An excellent opportunity was given for proving the conversion
+of the senate. When the consul Bestia put the question "Is it the
+pleasure of the house that the envoys of Jugurtha be received within the
+walls?" the firm answer was returned that "Unless these envoys had come
+to surrender Numidia and its king to the absolute discretion of the
+Roman people, they must cross the borders of Italy within ten
+days".[927] The consul had this message conveyed to the prince, and he
+and his colleagues returned from their fruitless mission.
+
+Bestia meanwhile was consumed with military zeal. His army was ready,
+his staff was chosen, and he was evidently bent on an earnest
+prosecution of the war. He was in many respects as fit a man as could
+have been selected for the task. His powers of physical endurance and
+the vigour of his intellect had already been tested in war; he possessed
+the resolution and the foresight of a true general. But the canker of
+the age was supposed to have infected Bestia and neutralised his
+splendid qualities.[928] The proof that he allowed greed to dominate his
+public conduct is indeed lacking; but he would have departed widely from
+the spirit of his time if he had allowed no thought of private gain to
+add its quota to the joy of the soldier who finds himself for the first
+time in the untrammelled conduct of a war. To the commanders of the age
+foreign service was as a matter of course a source of profit as well as
+a sphere of duty or of glory. To Bestia it was also to be a sphere for
+diplomacy; and diplomacy and profit present an awkward combination,
+which gives room for much misinterpretation. Although the war was in
+some sense a concession to outside influences, the consul did not
+represent the spirit to which the senate had yielded. Nine years earlier
+he had served the cause of the nobility by effecting the recall of
+Popillius from exile, and was now a member of that inner circle of the
+government whose cautious manipulation of foreign affairs was veiled in
+a secrecy which might easily rouse the suspicion, because it did not
+appeal to the intelligence, of the masses. How vital a part diplomacy
+was to play in the coming war, was shown by Bestia's selection of his
+staff. It was practically a committee of the inner ring of governing
+nobles,[929] and the importance attached to the purely political aspect
+of the African war was proved by the fact that Scaurus himself deigned
+to occupy a position amongst the legates of the commander. It was a
+difficult task which Bestia and his assistants had to perform. They were
+to carry out the mandate of the people and pursue Jugurtha as a
+criminal; they were to follow out their own conviction as to the best
+means of saving Rome from a prolonged and burdensome war with a whole
+nation-a conviction which might, force them to recognise Jugurtha as a
+king. To avenge honour and at the same time to secure peace was, in the
+present condition of the public mind, an almost impossible task. Its
+gravity was increased by the fact that, through the method of selection
+employed for composing the general's council, a certain section of the
+nobility, already marked out for suspicion, would be held wholly
+responsible for its failure. It was a gravity that was probably
+undervalued by the leaders of the expedition, who could scarcely have
+looked forward to the day when it might be said that Bestia had selected
+his legates with a view of hiding the misdeeds which, he meant to commit
+under the authority of their names.[930]
+
+When the time for departure had arrived, the legions were marched
+through Italy to Rhegium, were shipped thence to Sicily and from Sicily
+were transferred to the African province. This was to be Bestia's basis
+of operations; and when he had gathered adequate supplies and organised
+his lines of communication, he entered Numidia. His march was from a
+superficial point of view a complete success; large numbers of prisoners
+were taken and several cities were carried by assault.[931] But the
+nature of the war in hand was soon made painfully manifest. It was a war
+with a nation, not a mere hunting expedition for the purpose of tracking
+down Jugurtha. The latter object could be successfully accomplished only
+if some assistance were secured from friendly portions of Numidia or
+from neighbouring powers. But there was no friendly portion of Numidia.
+The mercantile class had been wiped out, and though the Romans seem to
+have regained possession of Cirta at an early period of the war,[932] it
+is not likely that it ever resumed the industrial life, which might have
+supplied money and provisions, if not men; while the position of the
+town rendered it useless as a basis of operations for expeditions into
+that western portion of Numidia, from which the chief military strength
+of Jugurtha was drawn. In these regions a possible ally was to be found
+in Bocchus King of Mauretania; but his recent overtures to Rome had been
+deliberately rejected by the senate. Nothing but the name of this great
+King of the Moors, who ruled over the territory stretching from the
+Muluccha to Tingis, had hitherto been known to the Roman people; even
+the proximity of a portion of his kingdom to the coast of Spain had
+brought him into no relations, either friendly or hostile, to the
+imperial government.[933]
+
+Bocchus had secured peace with his eastern neighbour by giving his
+daughter in marriage to Jugurtha; but he never allowed this family
+connection to disturb his ideas of political convenience and, as soon as
+he heard that war had been declared against Jugurtha, he sent an embassy
+to Rome praying for a treaty with the Roman people and a recognition as
+one of the friends of the Republic.[934] This conduct may have been due
+to the belief that a victory of the Romans over Jugurtha would entail
+the destruction of the Numidian monarchy and the reduction of at least a
+portion of the territory to the condition of a province. In this case
+Mauretania would itself be the frontier kingdom, playing the part now
+taken by Numidia; and Bocchus may have wished to have some claim on Rome
+before his eastern frontier was bordered, as his northern was commanded,
+by a Roman province. He may even have hoped to benefit by the spoils of
+war, as Masinissa had once benefited by those which fell from Syphax and
+from Carthage, and to increase his territories at the expense of his
+son-in-law. There can be no better proof of the real intentions of the
+government as regards Numidia, even after war had been declared, than
+the senate's rejection of the offer made by Bocchus. His aid would be
+invaluable from a strategic point of view, if the aim of the expedition
+were to make Numidia a province or even to crush Jugurtha. But the most
+constant maxim of senatorial policy was to avoid an extension of the
+frontiers, and this principle was accompanied by a strong objection to
+enter into close relations with any power that was not a frontier state.
+Such relations might involve awkward obligations, and were inconsistent
+with the policy which devolved the whole obligation for frontier defence
+and frontier relations on a friendly client prince. Whether the
+maintenance of the traditional scheme of administration in Africa
+demanded the renewed recognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia, was a
+subordinate question; its answer depended entirely on the possibility of
+the Numidians being induced to accept any other monarch.
+
+It must have required but a brief experience of the war to convince
+Bestia and his council that a Numidian kingdom without the recognition
+of Jugurtha as king was almost unthinkable, unless Rome was prepared to
+enter on an arduous and harassing war for the piecemeal conquest of the
+land or (a task equally difficult) for the purpose of securing the
+person of an elusive monarch, who could take every advantage of the
+natural difficulties of his country and could find a refuge and ready
+assistance in every part of his dominions. The tentative approaches of
+Jugurtha, who negotiated while he fought, were therefore admitted both
+by the consul and by Scaurus, who inevitably dominated the diplomatic
+relations of the war. That Jugurtha sent money as well as proposals at
+the hands of his envoys, was a fact subsequently approved by a Roman
+court of law, and deserves such credence as can be attached to a verdict
+which was the final phase of a political agitation. That Bestia was
+blinded by avarice and lost all sense of his own and his country's
+honour, that Scaurus's sense of respectability and distrust of Jugurtha
+went down before the golden promises of the king,[935] were beliefs
+widely held, and perhaps universally, professed, by the democrats who
+were soon thundering at the doors of the Curia--by men, that is, who did
+not understand, or whose policy led them to profess misunderstanding of,
+the problem in statecraft, as dishonouring in some of its aspects as
+such problems usually are, which was being faced by a general and a
+statesman who were pursuing a narrow and traditional but very
+intelligible line of policy. The policy was indeed sufficiently ugly
+even had there been no suspicion of personal corruption; its ugliness
+could be tested by the fact that even the sanguine and cynical Jugurtha
+could hardly credit the extent of the good fortune revealed to him by
+the progress of the negotiations. At first his diplomatic manoeuvres had
+been adopted simply as a means of staying the progress of hostilities,
+of gaining a breathing space while he renewed his efforts at influencing
+opinion in the imperial city. But when he saw that the very agents of
+war were willing to be missionaries of peace, that the avengers sent out
+by an injured people were ready for conciliation before they had
+inflicted punishment, he concentrated his efforts on an immediate
+settlement of the question.[936] It was necessary for the enemy of the
+Roman people to pass through a preliminary stage of humiliation before
+he could be recognised as a friend; it was all the more imperative in
+this case since a number of angry people in Rome were clamouring for
+Jugurtha's punishment. It was also necessary to arrange a plan by which
+the humiliation might be effected with the least inconvenience to both
+parties. An armistice had already been declared as a necessary
+preliminary to effective negotiations for a surrender. This condition of
+peace rendered it possible for Jugurtha to be interviewed in person by a
+responsible representative of the consul.[937] Both the king and the
+consul were in close touch with one another near the north-western part
+of the Roman province, and Jugurtha was actually in possession of Vaga,
+a town only sixty miles south-west of Utica. The town, in spite of its
+geographical position, was an appanage[938] of the Numidian kingdom, and
+the pretext under which Bestia sent his quaestor to the spot, was the
+acceptance of a supply of corn which had been demanded of the king as a
+condition of the truce granted by the consul. The presence of the
+quaestor at Vaga was really meant as a guarantee of good faith, and
+perhaps he was regarded as a hostage for the personal security of
+Jugurtha.[939] Shortly afterwards the king rode into the Roman camp and
+was introduced to the consul and his council. He said a few words in
+extenuation of the hostile feeling with which his recent course of
+action had been received at Rome, and after this brief apology asked
+that his surrender should be accepted. The conditions, it appeared, were
+not for the full council; they were for the private ear of Bestia and
+Scauras alone.[940] With these Jugurtha was soon closeted, and the final
+programme was definitely arranged, On the following day the king
+appeared again before the council of war; the consul pretended to take
+the opinion of his advisers, but no clear issue for debate could
+possibly be put before the board; for the gist of the whole proceedings,
+the recognition of the right of Jugurtha to retain Numidia, was the
+result of a secret understanding, not of a definite admission that could
+be blazoned to the world. There was some formal and desultory
+discussion, opinions on the question of surrender were elicited without
+any differentiation of the many issues that it might involve, and the
+consul was able to announce in the end that his council sanctioned the
+acceptance of Jugurtha's submission.[941] The council, however, had
+deemed it necessary that some visible proof, however slight, should be
+given that a surrender had been effected; for it was necessary to convey
+to the minds of critics at home the impression that some material
+advantage had been won and that Jugurtha had been humiliated. With this
+object in view the king was required to hand over something to the Roman
+authorities. He kept his army, but solemnly transferred thirty
+elephants, some large droves of cattle and horses, and a small sum of
+money--the possessions, presumably, which he had ready at hand in his
+city of Vaga--to the custody of the quaestor of the Roman army.[942] The
+year meanwhile was drawing to a close, and the consul, now that peace
+had been restored, quitted his province for Rome to preside at the
+magisterial elections.[943] The army still remained in the Roman
+province or in Numidia, but the cessation of hostilities reduced it to a
+state of inaction which augured ill for its future discipline should it
+again be called upon to serve.
+
+The agreement itself must have seemed to its authors a triumph of
+diplomacy. They had secured peace with but an inconsiderable loss of
+honour; they had saved Rome from a long, difficult and costly war,
+whilst a modicum of punishment might with some ingenuity be held to have
+been inflicted on Jugurtha. They must have been astounded by the chorus
+of execration with which the news of the compact was received at
+Rome.[944] Nor indeed can any single reason, adequate in itself and
+without reference to others, be assigned for this feeling of hostility.
+First, there was the idle gossip of the public places and the
+clubs--gossip which, in the unhealthy atmosphere of the time, loved to
+unveil the interested motives which were supposed to underlie the public
+actions of all men of mark, and which exhibited moderation to an enemy
+as the crowning proof of its suspicions. Secondly there was the feeling
+that had been stirred in the proletariate at Rome. The question of
+Jugurtha, little as they understood its merits, was still to them the
+great question of the hour, a matter of absorbing interest and
+expectation. Their feelings had been harrowed by the story of his
+cruelties, their fears excited by rumours of his power and intentions.
+They had roused the senate from its lethargy and forced that illustrious
+body to pursue the great criminal; they had seen a great army quitting
+the gates of Rome to execute the work of justice; their relatives and
+friends had been subjected to the irksome duties of the conscription.
+Everywhere there had been a fervid blaze of patriotism, and this blaze
+had now ended in the thinnest curl of smoke. But to the masses the
+imagined shame of the Jugurthine War had now become but a single count
+in an indictment. The origin of the movement was now but its stimulus;
+as is the case with most of such popular awakenings, the agitation was
+now of a wholly illimitable character. The one vivid element in its
+composition was the memory of the recent past. It was easy to arouse the
+train of thought that centred round the two Gracchan movements and the
+terrible moments of their catastrophe. The new movement against the
+senate was in fact but the old movement in another form. The senate had
+betrayed the interests of the people; now it was betraying the interests
+of the empire; but to imagine that the form of the indictment as it
+appealed to the popular mind was even so definite as this, is to credit
+the average mind with a power of analysis which it does not, and
+probably would not wish to, possess. It is less easy to gauge the
+attitude of the commercial classes in this crisis. Their indignation at
+the impunity given to Jugurtha after the massacre of the merchants at
+Cirta is easily understood; but with this class sentiment was wont to be
+outweighed by considerations of interest, and the preservation of peace
+in Numidia, and consequently of facilities for trade, must have been the
+end which they most desired. But perhaps they felt that the only peace
+which would serve their purposes was one based on a full reassertion of
+Roman prestige, and perhaps they knew that Jugurtha, the reawakener of
+the national spirit of the Numidians, would show no friendship to the
+foreign trader. They must also have seen that, whatever the prospects of
+the mercantile class under Jugurtha's rule might be, the convention just
+concluded could not be lasting. Their own previous action had determined
+its transitory character. By their support of the agitation awakened by
+Memmius they had created a condition of feeling which could not rest
+satisfied with the present suspected compromise. But if satisfaction was
+impossible, a continuance of the war was inevitable. They had before
+them the prospect of continued unsettlement and insecurity in a fruitful
+sphere of profit; and they intended to support the present agitation by
+their influence in the Comitia and, if necessary, by their verdicts in
+the courts, until a strong policy had been asserted and a decisive
+settlement attained.
+
+Even before the storm of criticism had again gathered strength, there
+was great anxiety in the senate over the recent action in Numidia. That
+body could doubtless read between the lines and see the real motives of
+policy which had led up to the present compact; they could see that the
+agreement was a compromise between the views of two opposing sections of
+their own house; and they must have approved of it in their hearts in so
+far as it expressed the characteristic objection of the senate as a
+whole to imperil the security of their imperial system, perhaps even to
+expose the frontiers of their northern possessions now threatened by
+barbarian hordes, through undertaking an unnecessary war in a southern
+protectorate. But none the less they saw clearly the invidious elements
+in the recent stroke of diplomacy, the combination of inconsistency and
+dishonesty exhibited in the comparison between the magnificent
+preparations and the futile result--a result which, as interpreted by
+the ordinary mind, made its authors seem corrupt and the senate look
+ridiculous. Their anxiety was increased by the fact that an immediate
+decision on their part was imperative. Were they to sanction what had
+been done, or to refuse to ratify the decision of the consul?[945]
+
+The latter was of itself an extreme step, but it was rendered still more
+difficult by the fact that every one knew that Bestia would never have
+ventured on such a course had he not possessed the support of
+Scaurus.[946] To frame a decision which must be interpreted to mean a
+vote of lack of confidence in Scaurus, was to unseat the head of the
+administration, to abandon their ablest champion, perhaps to invite the
+successful attacks of the leaders of the other camp who were lying in
+wait for the first false step of the powerful and crafty organiser.
+Again, as in the discussion which had followed the fall of Cirta, the
+debates in the senate dragged on and there was a prospect of the
+question being indefinitely shelved--a result which, when the popular
+agitation had cooled, would have meant the acceptance of the existing
+state of things. Again the stimulus to greater rapidity of decision was
+supplied by Memmius. The leader of the agitation was now invested with
+the tribunate, and his position gave him the opportunity of unfettered
+intercourse with the people. His _Contiones_ were the feature of the
+day,[947] and these popular addresses culminated in the exhortation
+which he addressed to the crowd after the return of the unhappy Bestia.
+His speech[948] shows Memmius to be both the product and the author of
+the general character which had now been assumed by this long continued
+agitation on a special point. The golden opportunity had been gained of
+emphasising anew the fundamental differences of interest between the
+nobility and the people, of reviewing the conduct of the governing class
+in its continuous development during the last twenty years,[949] of
+pointing out the miserable consequences of uncontrolled power,
+irresponsibility and impunity. For the purpose of investing an address
+with the dignity and authority which spring from distant historical
+allusion, of brightening the prosaic present with something of the
+glamour of the half-mythical past, even of flattering his auditors with
+the suggestion that they were the descendants and heirs of the men who
+had seceded to the Aventine, it was necessary for a popular orator to
+touch on the great epoch of the struggle between the orders. But
+Memmius, while satisfying the conditions of his art by the introduction
+of the subject, uses it only to point the contrast between the epoch
+when liberty had been won and that wherein it had been lost, or to
+illustrate the uselessness of such heroic methods as the old secessions
+as weapons against a nobility such as the present which was rushing
+headlong to its own destruction. More important was the memory of those
+recent years which had seen the life of the people and of their
+champions become the plaything of a narrow oligarchy. The judicial
+murders that had followed the overthrow of the Gracchi, the spirit of
+abject patience with which they had been accepted and endured, were the
+symbol of the absolute impunity of the oligarchy, the source of their
+knowledge that they might use their power as they pleased. And how had
+they used it? A general category of their crimes would be misleading; it
+was possible to exhibit an ascending scale of guilt. They had always
+preyed on the commonwealth; but their earlier depredations might be
+borne in silence. Their earlier victims had been the allies and
+dependants of Rome; they had drawn revenues from kings and free peoples,
+they had pillaged the public treasury. But they had not yet begun to put
+up for sale the security of the empire and of Rome itself. Now this last
+and monstrous stage had been reached. The authority of the senate, the
+power which the people had delegated to its magistrate, had been
+betrayed to the most dangerous of foes; not satisfied with treating the
+allies of Rome as her enemies, the nobility were now treating her
+enemies as allies.[950] And what was the secret of the uncontrolled
+power, the shameless indifference to opinion that made such misdeeds
+possible? It was to be found partly in the tolerance of the people--a
+tolerance which was the result of the imposture which made ill-gained
+objects of plunder--consulships, priesthoods, triumphs--seem the proof
+of merit. But it was to be found chiefly in the fact that co-operation
+in crime had been raised to the dignity of a system which made for the
+security of the criminal. The solidarity of the nobility, its very
+detachment from the popular interest, was its main source of strength.
+It had ceased even to be a party; it had become a clique--a mere faction
+whose community of hope, interest and fear had given it its present
+position of overweening strength.[951] This strength, which sprang from
+perfect unity of design and action, could only be met and broken
+successfully by a people fired with a common enthusiasm. But what form
+should this enthusiasm assume? Should an adviser of the people advocate
+a violent resumption of its rights, the employment of force to punish
+the men who have betrayed their country? No! Acts of violence might
+indeed be the fitting reward for their conduct, but they are unworthy
+instruments for the just vengeance of an outraged people. All that we
+demand is full inquiry and publicity. The secrets of the recent
+negotiations shall be probed. Jugurtha himself shall be the witness. If
+he has surrendered to the Roman people, as we are told, he will
+immediately obey your orders; if he despises your commands, you will
+have an opportunity of knowing the true nature of that peace and that
+submission which have brought to Jugurtha impunity for his crimes, to a
+narrow ring of oligarchs a large increase in their wealth, to the state
+a legacy of loss and shame.
+
+It was on this happily constructed dilemma that Memmius acted when he
+brought his positive proposal before the people. It was to the effect
+that the praetor Lucius Cassius Longinus should be sent to Jugurtha and
+bring him to Rome on the faith of a safe conduct granted by the State;
+Jugurtha's revelations were to be the key by which the secret chamber of
+the recent negotiations was to be unlocked, with the desired hope of
+convicting Scaurus and all others whose contact with the Numidian king,
+whether in the late or in past transactions,[952] had suggested their
+corruption. The object of this mission had been rapidly regaining the
+complete control of Numidia, which had been momentarily shaken by the
+Roman invasion. The presence of the Roman army, some portion of which
+was still quartered in a part of his dominions, was no check on his
+activity; for the absence of the commander, the incapacity and
+dishonesty of the delegates whom he had left in his place, and the
+demoralising indolence of the rank and file, had reduced the forces to a
+condition lower than that of mere ineffectiveness or lack of discipline.
+The desire of making a profit out of the situation pervaded every grade.
+The elephants which had been handed over by Jugurtha, were mysteriously
+restored; Numidians who had espoused the cause of Rome and deserted from
+the army of the king--loyalists whom, whatever their motives and
+character, Rome was bound to protect--were handed back to the king in
+exchange for a price;[953] districts already pacified were plundered by
+desultory bands of soldiers. The Roman power in Numidia was completely
+broken when Cassius arrived and revealed his mission to the king. The
+strange request would have alarmed a timid or ignorant ruler; Jugurtha
+himself wavered for a moment as to whether he should put himself
+unreservedly into the power of a hostile people; but he had sufficient
+imagination and familiarity with Roman life to realise that the
+principles of international honour that prevailed amongst despotic
+monarchies were not those of the great Republic even at its present
+stage, and he professed himself encouraged by the words of the amiable
+praetor that "since he had thrown himself on the mercy of the Roman
+people, he would do better to appeal to their pity than to challenge
+their might".[954] His guide added his own word of honour to that of the
+Republic, and such was the repute of Cassius that this assurance helped
+to remove the momentary scruples of the king. Once he was assured of
+personal safety, Jugurtha's visit to Rome became merely a matter of
+policy, and his rapid mind must have surveyed every issue depending on
+his acceptance or refusal before he committed himself to so doubtful a
+step. His real plan of action is unfortunately unknown; for we possess
+but the barest outline of these incidents, and we have no information on
+the really vital point whether communications had reached him from his
+supporters in the capital, which enabled him to predict the course
+events would take if he obeyed the summons of Cassius. Had such
+communications reached him, he might have known that the projected
+investigation would be nugatory. But a failure in the purpose for which
+he was summoned could convey no benefit to Jugurtha or his supporters;
+it would simply incense the people and place both the king, and his
+friends amongst the nobility, in a worse position than before. The
+course of action, by turns sullen, shifty and impudent, which he pursued
+at Rome, must have been due to the exigencies of the moment and the
+frantic promptings of his frightened friends; for it could scarcely have
+appealed to a calculating mind as a procedure likely to lead to fruitful
+results. Its certain issue was war; but war could be had without the
+trouble of a journey to Rome. He had but to stay where he was and
+decline the people's request, and this policy of passive resistance
+would have the further merit of saving his dignity as a king. It may
+seem strange that he never adopted the bold but simple plan of standing
+up in Rome and telling the whole truth, or at least such portions of the
+truth as might have satisfied the people. It was a course of action that
+might have secured him his crown. Doubtless if his transactions with
+Roman officials had been innocent, the truth, if he adhered to it, might
+not have been believed; but, if his evidence was damning, the people
+might well have been turned from the insignificant question "Who was to
+be King of Numidia?" to the supreme task of punishing the traitors whom
+he denounced. But we have no right to read Jugurtha's character by the
+light of the single motive of a self-interest which knew no scruples. He
+may have had his own ideas of honour and of the protection due to a
+benefactor or a trusty agent. Self-interest too might in this matter
+come to the aid of sentiment; for it was at least possible that the
+popular storm might spend its fury and leave the nobility still holding
+their ground. So far as we with our imperfect knowledge can discern,
+Jugurtha could have had no definite plan of action when he consented to
+take the journey to Rome. But he had abundant prospects, if even he
+possessed no plan. His presence in the capital was a decided advantage,
+in so far as it enabled him to confer with his leading supporters, and
+to attend to a matter affecting his dynastic interests which we shall
+soon find arousing the destructive energy which was becoming habitual to
+his jealous and impatient mind.
+
+When Jugurtha appeared in Rome under the guidance of Cassius, he had
+laid aside all the emblems of sovereignty and assumed the sordid garb
+that befitted a suppliant for the mercy of the sovereign people.[955] He
+seemed to have come, not as a witness for the prosecution, but as a
+suspected criminal who appeared in his own defence. He was still keeping
+up the part of one whom the fortune of war had thrown absolutely into
+the power of the conquering state--a part perhaps suggested by the
+friendly Cassius, but one that was perfectly in harmony with the
+pretensions of Bestia and Scaurus. But the heart beneath that miserable
+dress beat high with hope, and he was soon cheered by messages from the
+circle of his friends at Rome and apprised of the means which had been
+taken to baffle the threatened investigation,[956] The senate had, as
+usual, a tribune at its service. Caius Baebius was the name of the man
+who was willing to play the part, so familiar to the practice of the
+constitution, of supporter of the government against undue encroachments
+on its power and dignity, or against over-hasty action by the leaders of
+the people. The government undoubtedly had a case. It was contrary to
+all accepted notions of order and decency that a protected king should
+be used as a political instrument by a turbulent tribune. Memmius had
+impeached no one and had given no notice of a public trial; yet he
+intended to bring Jugurtha before a gathering of the rabble and ask him
+to blacken the names of the foremost men in Rome. It was exceedingly
+probable that the grotesque proceeding would lead to a breach of the
+peace; the sooner it was stopped, the better; and, although it was
+unfortunately impossible to prevent Memmius from initiating the drama by
+bringing forward his protagonist, the law had luckily provided means for
+ending the performance before the climax had been reached. It was
+believed that the sound constitutional views of Baebius were
+strengthened by a great price paid by Jugurtha,[957] and, if we care to
+believe one more of those charges of corruption, the multitude of which
+had not palled even on the easily wearied mind of the lively Roman, it
+is possible to imagine that the implicated members of the senate, in
+whose interest far more than in that of Jugurtha Baebius was acting, had
+persuaded the king that it was to his advantage to make the gift.
+
+The eagerly awaited day arrived, on which the scandal-loving ears of the
+people were to be filled to the full with the iniquities of their
+rulers, on which their long-cherished suspicions should be changed to a
+pleasantly anticipated certainty. Memmius summoned his Contio and
+produced the king. Even the suppliant garb of Jugurtha did not save him
+from a howl of execration. From the tribunal, to which he had been led
+by the tribune, he looked over a sea of angry faces and threatening
+hands, while his ears were deafened by the roar of fierce voices, some
+crying that he should be put in bonds, others that he should suffer the
+death of the traitor if he failed to reveal the partners of his
+crimes.[958] Memmius, anxious for the dignity of his unusual proceedings
+which were being marred by this frantic outburst, used all his efforts
+to secure order and a patient hearing, and succeeded at length in
+imposing silence on the crowd--a silence which perhaps marked that
+psychological moment when pent up feeling had found its full expression
+and passion had given way to curiosity. The tribune also vehemently
+asserted his intention of preserving inviolate the safe conduct which
+had been granted by the State. He then led the king forward[959] and
+began a recital of the catalogue of his deeds. He spared him nothing;
+his criminal activity at Rome and in Numidia, his outrages on his
+family--the whole history of that career, as it continued to live in the
+minds of democrats, was fully rehearsed. He concluded the story, which
+he assumed to be true, by a request for the important details of which
+full confirmation was lacking. "Although the Roman people understood by
+whose assistance and ministry all this had been done, yet they wished to
+have their suspicions finally attested by the king. If he revealed the
+truth, he could repose abundant hope on the honour and clemency of the
+Roman people; if he refused to speak, he would not help the partners of
+his guilt, but his silence would ruin both himself and his future."
+Memmius ceased and asked the king for a reply; Baebius stepped forward
+and ordered the king to be silent.[960] The voice of Jugurtha could
+legally find utterance only through the will of the magistrate who
+commanded; it was stifled by the prohibition of the colleague who
+forbade. The people were in the presence of one of those galling
+restraints on their own liberty to which the jealousy of the magistracy,
+expressed in the constitutional creations of their ancestors, so often
+led. Baebius was immediately subjected to the terrorism which Octavius,
+his forerunner in tribunician constancy, had once withstood. The frantic
+mob scowled, shouted, made rushes for the tribunal, and used every
+effort short of personal assault which anger could suggest, to break the
+spirit of the man who balked their will. But the resolution--or, as his
+enemies said, the shamelessness[961]--of Baebius prevailed. The
+multitude, tricked of its hopes, melted from the Forum in gloomy
+discontent. It is said that the hopes of Bestia and his friends rose
+high.[962] Perhaps they had lived too long in security to realise the
+danger threatened by a disappointed crowd that might meet to better
+purpose some future day; that had gained from the insulting scene itself
+an embittered confirmation of its views, with none of the softening
+influence which springs from a curiosity completely satiated; that, as
+an assembly of the sovereign people, might at any moment avenge the
+latest outrage which had been inflicted on its dignity.
+
+Jugurtha had, perhaps through no fault of his own, sorely tried the
+patience of the people on the one occasion on which, as a professed
+suppliant, he had come into contact with his sovereign. He was now, on
+his own initiative, to try it yet further, and to test it in a manner
+which aroused the horror and resentment of many who did not share the
+views of Memmius. The king was not the only representative of
+Masinissa's house at present to be found in Rome. There resided in the
+city, as a fugitive from his power, his cousin Massiva, son of Gulussa
+and grandson of Masinissa. It is not known why this scion of the royal
+house had been passed over in the regulation of the succession, although
+it is easily intelligible that Micipsa, with two sons of his own, might
+not have wished to increase the number of co-regents of Numidia by
+recognising his brother's heirs, and would not have done so had he not
+been forced by circumstances to adopt Jugurtha. During the early
+struggles between the three kings, Massiva had attached himself to the
+party of Hiempsal and Adherbal, and had thus incurred Jugurtha's enmity;
+but he had continued to live in Numidia as long as there was any hope of
+the continuance of the dual kingship. The fall of Cirta and the death of
+Adherbal had forced him to find a refuge at Rome, where he continued to
+reside in peace until fate suddenly made him a pawn in the political
+game. At last there had arisen a definite section amongst the nobility
+which found it to its interest to offer an active opposition to
+Jugurtha's claims. The consuls who succeeded Bestia and Nasica, were
+Spurius Albinus and Quintus Minucius Rufus. The latter had won the
+province of Macedonia and the protection of the north-eastern frontier;
+to the former had fallen Numidia and the conduct of affairs in Africa.
+The fact that the senate had declared Numidia a consular province before
+the close of the previous year, was the ostensible proof that they had
+yielded to the pressure applied by Memmius and nominally at least
+repudiated the pacification effected by Bestia and Scaurus. But the
+rejection of this arrangement seems never to have been officially
+declared; there was still a chance of the recognition of Jugurtha's
+claims, and of the governor of Numidia being assigned the inglorious
+function of seeing to the restoration of the king and then evacuating
+his territory. Such a modest _role_ did not at all harmonise with the
+views of Albinus. He wished a real command and a genuine war; but it was
+not easy to wage such a war as long as Jugurtha was the only candidate
+in the field. Even if his surrender were regarded as fictitious and the
+war were resumed on that ground, it was difficult to assign it an
+ultimate object, since the senate had no intention of making Numidia a
+province. But the object which would make the war a living reality could
+be secured, if a pretender were put forward for the Numidian crown; and
+such a pretender Albinus sought in the scion of Masinissa's race now
+resident in Rome, whose birth gave him a better hereditary claim than
+Jugurtha himself. The consul approached Massiva and urged him to make a
+case out of the odium excited and the fears inspired by Jugurtha's
+crimes, and to approach the senate with a request for the kingdom of
+Numidia.[963] The prince caught at the suggestion, the petition was
+prepared, and this new and unexpected movement began to make itself
+felt. Jugurtha's fear and anger were increased by the sudden discovery
+that his friends at Rome were almost powerless to help him. They could
+not parade a question of principle when it came to persons; a kingdom in
+Numidia was more easily defended than its king; every act of assistance
+which they rendered plunged them deeper in the mire of suspicion; it was
+a time to walk warily, for those who had no judge in their own
+conscience found one in the keen scrutiny of a hostile world. But the
+danger was too great to permit Jugurtha to relax his efforts through the
+failure of his friends. He appealed to his own resources, which
+consisted of the passive obedience of his immediate attendants and the
+power of his purse. To Bomilcar his most trusted servant he gave the
+mission of making one final effort with the gold which had already done
+so much. Men might be hired who would lie in wait for Massiva. If
+possible, the matter was to be effected secretly. If secrecy was
+impossible, the Numidian must yet be slain. His death was deserving of
+any risk. Bomilcar was prompt in carrying out his mission. A band of
+hired spies watched every movement of Massiva. They learnt the hours at
+which he left and returned to his home; the places he visited, the times
+at which his visits were paid. When the seasonable hour arrived, the
+ambush was set by Bomilcar. The elaborate precautions which had been
+taken proved to have been thrown away; the assassin who struck the fatal
+blow was no adept in the art of secret killing. Hardly had Massiva
+fallen when the alarm was given and the murderer seized.[964] The men
+who had an interest in Massiva's life were too numerous and too great to
+make it possible for the act to sink to the level of ordinary street
+outrages, or for the assassin caught red-handed to be regarded as the
+sole author of the crime. The consul Albinus amongst others pressed the
+murderer to reveal the instigator of the deed, and the senate must have
+promised the immunity that was sometimes given to the criminal who named
+his accomplices. The man named Bomilcar, who was thereupon formally
+arraigned of the murder and bound over to stand his trial before a
+criminal court. Even this step was taken with considerable hesitation,
+for it was admitted that the safe-conduct which protected Jugurtha
+extended to his retinue.[965] The king and his court were strictly
+speaking extra-territorial, and the strict letter of international law
+would have handed Bomilcar over for trial by his sovereign. But it was
+felt that a departure from custom was a less evil than to allow such an
+outrage to remain unpunished, and it was easier to satisfy the popular
+conscience by finding Bomilcar guilty than to fix the crime on the man
+whom every one named as its ultimate author. Jugurtha himself was
+inclined for a time to acquiesce in this view; he regarded the trial of
+his favourite as inevitable and furnished fifty of his own acquaintances
+who were willing to give bail for the appearance of the accused. But
+reflection convinced him that the sacrifice was unnecessary; his name
+could not be saved by Bomilcar's doom, and no influence or wealth could
+create even a pretence at belief in his own innocence. His standing in
+Rome was gone, and this made him the more eager to consider his standing
+as King of Numidia. If Bomilcar were sacrificed, his powerlessness to
+protect the chief member of his retinue might shake the allegiance of
+his own subjects.[966] He therefore smuggled his accused henchman from
+Rome and had him conveyed secretly to Numidia. This, of all Jugurtha's
+acts of perfidy perhaps the mildest and most excusable, in spite of the
+awkward predicament in which it left the fifty securities, was the last
+of the baffling incidents that had been crowded into his short sojourn
+at Rome. His presence must have been an annoyance to every one. He had
+exhausted his friends, had failed to serve the purposes of the
+opposition leader, and had inspired in the senate memories and
+anticipations which they were willing to forget. When that body ordered
+him to quit Italy--it must have expressed the wish of every class.
+Within a few days of Bomilcar's disappearance the king himself was
+leaving the gates. It is said that he often turned and took a long and
+silent look at the distant town, and that at last the words broke from
+him "A city for sale and ripe for ruin, if only a purchaser can be
+found!" [967]
+
+The departure of Jugurtha implied the renewal of the war. The compact
+made with Bestia and Scaurus had been tacitly, if not formally,
+repudiated by the senate, and the fiction that Jugurtha had surrendered,
+although it had played its part in the negotiations which brought him to
+Rome, disappeared with the compact. Since, however, the right of
+Jugurtha to retain Numidia, which was the objectionable element in the
+late agreement, seems to have been implied rather than expressed, it may
+have seemed possible to take the view that Jugurtha's surrender was
+unconditional, and that the war was now the pursuit of an escaped
+prisoner of Rome. Such a conception was absolutely worthless so far as
+most of the practical difficulties of the task were concerned; for,
+whether Jugurtha was an enemy or a rebel, he was equally difficult to
+secure; but it may have had a considerable influence on the principles
+on which the Numidian war was now to be conducted, and we shall find on
+the part of Rome a growing disinclination to give Jugurtha the benefits
+of those rules of civilised warfare of which she generally professed a
+scrupulous observance in the letter if not in the spirit. The object of
+the war was, through its very simplicity, extraordinarily difficult of
+attainment. It was neither more nor less than the seizure of the person
+of Jugurtha. Numidia had no common government and no unity but those
+personified in its king, and the conquest of fragments of the country
+would be almost useless until the king was secured. The hope of setting
+up a rival pretender, whose recognition by Rome might have enabled
+organisation to keep pace with conquest, had perished with the murder of
+Massiva,[968] although it is very questionable whether the name even of
+the son of the warlike Gulussa would have detached any of the military
+strength of Numidia from a monarch who had stirred the fighting spirit
+of the nation and was regarded as the embodiment of its manliest
+traditions. The outlook of the consul Albinus, the new organiser of the
+war on the Roman side, was indeed a poor one, and it was made still
+poorer by the fact that a considerable portion of his year of office had
+already lapsed, and the events of his campaign must of necessity be
+crowded into the few remaining months of the summer and the early
+autumn. Had there been any spirit of self-sacrifice in Roman commanders,
+or any true continuity in Roman military policies, Albinus might have
+set himself the useful task of organising victory for his successors;
+yet he cannot be wholly blamed for the hope, wild and foolish as it
+seems, of striking some decisive blow in the narrow time allowed
+him.[969] The military operations of the war at this stage become almost
+wholly subordinate to political considerations. Senate and consuls were
+being swept off their feet and forced into a disastrous celerity or
+superficiality of action by the growing tide of indignation which
+animated commons and capitalists alike; and the feeling that something
+decisive must be accomplished for the satisfaction of public opinion,
+was supplemented by the lower but very human consideration that a
+general must seem to have attained some success if he hoped to have his
+command prolonged for another year. The senate, it is true, might have
+insight enough to see that success in a war such as that in Numidia
+could not be gauged by the brilliance of the results obtained; but how
+were they to defend their verdict to the people unless they could point
+to exploits such as would dazzle the popular eye? But although a
+feverish policy seemed the readiest mode of escape from public suspicion
+or inglorious retirement, it had its own particular nemesis, of which
+Albinus seemed for the moment to be oblivious. To finish the war in a
+short time meant to finish it by any means that came to hand. But, if a
+striking victory did not surrender Jugurtha into the hands of his
+conqueror--and even the most glorious victory did not under the
+circumstances of the war imply the capture of the vanquished--what means
+remained except negotiation and the voluntary surrender of the
+king?[970] Such means had been employed by Bestia, and every one knew
+now with what result. The policy of haste might breed more suspicion and
+bitterness than the most desultory conduct of the campaign.
+
+Albinus made rapid but ample preparation of supplies, money and
+munitions of war, and hurried off to the scene of his intended
+successes. The army which he found must have been in a miserable
+condition, if we may judge by the state which the last glimpse of it
+revealed; but his fixed intention of accomplishing something, no matter
+what, must have rendered adequate re-organisation impossible, and he
+took the field against Jugurtha with forces whose utter demoralisation
+was soon to be put to a frightful test. The war immediately assumed that
+character of an unsuccessful hunt, varied by indecisive engagements and
+fruitless victories, which it was to retain even under the guidance of
+the ablest that Rome could furnish. Jugurtha adhered to his inevitable
+plan of a prolonged and desultory campaign over a vast area of country;
+the size and physical character of his kingdom, the extraordinary
+mobility of his troops, the credulity and anxious ambition of his
+opponent, were all elements of strength which he used with consummate
+skill. He retired before the threatening column; then, that his men
+might not lose heart, he threw himself with startling suddenness on the
+foe; at other times he mocked the consul with hopes of peace, entered
+into negotiations for a surrender and, when he had disarmed his
+adversary by hopes, suddenly drew back in a pretended access of
+distrust. The futility of Albinus's efforts was so pronounced--a
+futility all the more impressive from the intensity of his preparations
+and his excessive eagerness to reach the field of action--that people
+ignorant of the conditions of the campaign began again to whisper the
+perpetual suspicion of collusion with the king.[971] The suspicion might
+not have been avoided even by a commander who declined negotiation; but
+Albinus's case had been rendered worse by his unsuccessful efforts to
+play with a master of craft, and it was with a reputation greatly
+weakened from a military, and slightly damaged from a moral, point of
+view that he brought the campaign to a close, sent his army into winter
+quarters, and left for Rome to preside at the electoral meetings of the
+people.[972] The Comitia for the appointment of the consuls and the
+praetors were at this time held during the latter half of the year, but
+at no regular date, the time for their summons depending on the
+convenience of the presiding consul and on his freedom from other and
+more pressing engagements.[973] Albinus may have arrived in Rome during
+the late autumn. Had he been able to get the business over and return to
+Africa for the last month or two of the year, his conduct of the war
+might have been considered ineffective but not disastrous, and the
+senate might have been spared a problem more terrible than any that had
+yet arisen out of its relations with Jugurtha. For Albinus, though
+sanguine and unpractical, seems to have been reasonably prudent, and he
+might have handed over an army, unsuccessful but not disgraced, and
+recruited in strength by its long winter quarters, to the care of a more
+fortunate successor. But, as it happened, every public department in
+Rome was feeling the strain caused by a minor constitutional crisis
+which had arisen amongst the magistrates of the Plebs. The sudden
+revival of the people's aspirations had doubtless led to a certain
+amount of misguided ambition on the part of some of its leaders, and the
+tribunate was now the centre of an agitation which was a faint
+counterpart of the closing scenes in the Gracchan struggles. Two
+occupants of the office, Publius Lucullus and Lucius Annius, were
+attempting to secure re-election for another year. Their colleagues
+resisted their effort, probably on the ground that the conditions
+requisite for re-election were not in existence, and this conflict not
+merely prevented the appointment of plebeian magistrates from being
+completed, but stayed the progress of the other elective Comitia as
+well.[974] The tribunes, whether those who aimed at re-election or those
+who attempted to prevent it, had either declared a _justitium_ or
+threatened to veto every attempt made by a magistrate of the people to
+hold an electoral assembly; and the consequence of this impasse was
+that, when the year drew to a close,[975] no new magistrates were in
+existence and the consul Albinus was still absent from his
+African command.
+
+Unfortunately the absence of the proconsul, as Albinus had now become in
+default of the appointment of a successor, did not have the effect of
+checking the enterprise of the army. It was now under the authority of
+Aulus Albinus, to whom his brother had delegated the command of the
+province and the forces during his stay at Rome. The stimulus which
+moved Aulus to action is not known. The unexpected duration of his
+temporary command may have familiarised him with power, stimulated his
+undoubted confidence in himself, and suggested the hope that by one of
+those unexpected blows, with which the annals of strategic genius were
+filled, he might redeem his brother's reputation and win lasting glory
+for himself. Others believed that the perpetually suspected motive of
+cupidity was the basis of his enterprise, that he had no definitely
+conceived plan of conquest, but intended by the terror of a military
+demonstration to exact money from Jugurtha.[976] If the latter view was
+correct, it is possible that Aulus imagined himself to be acting in the
+interest of his army as well as of himself. The long winter quarters may
+have betrayed a deficiency in pay and provisions, and if Jugurtha
+purchased the security of a district, its immunity would be too public
+an event to make it possible for the commander of the attacking forces
+to pocket the whole of the ransom.
+
+It was in the month of January, in the very heart of a severe winter,
+that Aulus summoned his troops from the security of their quarters to a
+long and fatiguing march. His aim was Suthul, a strongly fortified post
+on the river Ubus, nearly forty miles south of Hippo Regius and the sea,
+and so short a distance from the larger and better-known town of Calama,
+the modern Gelma, that the latter name was sometimes used to describe
+the scene of the incidents that followed.[977] We are not told the site
+of the winter quarters from which the march began; but the
+ineffectiveness of the former campaign and the caution of Albinus, who
+did not mean his legions to fight during his absence, might lead us to
+suppose that the troops had been quartered in or near the Roman
+province; and in this case Aulus might have marched along the valley of
+the Bagradas to reach his destined goal, which would finally have been
+approached from the south through a narrow space between two ranges of
+hills, the westernmost of which was crowned at its northern end by the
+fortifications of Suthul. This was reported to be the chief
+treasure-city of Jugurtha; could Aulus capture it, or even bargain for
+its security with the king, he might cripple the resources of the
+Numidian monarch and win great wealth for himself and his army. By long
+and fatiguing marches he reached the object of his attack, only to
+discover at the first glance that it was impregnable--nay even, as a
+soldier's eye would have seen, that an investment of the place was
+utterly impossible.[978] The rigour of the season had aggravated the
+difficulties presented by the site. Above towered the city walls perched
+on their precipitous rock; below was the alluvial plain which the
+deluging rains of a Numidian winter had turned into a swamp of liquid
+mud. Yet Aulus, either dazzled by the vision of the gold concealed
+within the fortress which it had caused him such labour to reach, or
+with some vague idea that a pretence at an investment might alarm the
+king into coming to terms for the protection of his hoard, began to make
+formal preparations for a siege, to bring up mantlets, to mark out his
+lines of circumvallation,[979] to deceive his enemy, if he could not
+deceive himself, into a belief that the conditions rendered an attack on
+Suthul possible.
+
+It is needless to say that Jugurtha knew the possibilities of his
+treasure-city far better than its assailant. But the simple device of
+Aulus was admirably suited to his plans. Humble messages soon reached
+the camp of the legate; the missives of every successive envoy augmented
+his illusion and stirred his idle hopes to a higher pitch. Jugurtha's
+own movements began to give proof of a state of abject terror. So far
+from coming to the relief of his threatened city, he drew his forces
+farther away into the most difficult country he could find, everywhere
+quitting the open ground for sheltered spots and mountain paths. At last
+from a distance he began to hold out definite hopes of an agreement with
+Aulus. But it was one that must be transacted personally and in private.
+The plain round Suthul was much too public a spot; let the legate follow
+the king into the fastnesses of the desert and all would be arranged.
+The legate advanced as the king retired; but at every point of the
+difficult march Numidian spies were hovering around the Roman column.
+The disgust of the soldiers at the hardships to which they had been
+submitted in the pursuit of this phantom gold, the last evidence of
+which had vanished when their commander turned his back on the walls of
+Suthul, now resulted in a frightful state of demoralisation. The lower
+officers in authority, centurions and commanders of squadrons of horse,
+stole from the camp to hold converse with Jugurtha's spies; some sold
+themselves to desert to the Numidian army, others to quit their posts at
+a given signal. The mesh was at last prepared. On one dark night, at the
+hour of the first sleep when attack is least suspected, the camp of
+Aulus was suddenly surrounded by the Numidian host. The surprise was
+complete. The Roman soldiers, in the shock of the sudden din, were
+utterly unnerved. Some groped for their arms; others cowered in their
+tents; a few tried to create some order amongst their terror-stricken
+comrades. But nowhere could a real stand be made or real discipline
+observed. The blackness of the night and the heavy driving clouds
+prevented the numbers of the enemy from being seen, and the size of the
+Numidian host, large in itself, was perhaps increased by a terrified
+imagination. It was difficult to say on which side the greater danger
+lay. Was it safer to fly into darkness and some unknown ambush or to
+keep one's ground and meet the approaching enemy? The evils of
+preconcerted treachery were soon added to those of surprise. The
+defections were greatest amongst the auxiliary forces. A cohort of
+Ligurian infantry with two squadrons of Thracian cavalry deserted to the
+king. Their example was followed by but a handful of the legionaries;
+but the fatal act of treason was committed by a Roman centurion of the
+first rank. He let the Numidians through the post which he had been
+given to defend, and through this ingress they poured to every part of
+the camp. The panic was now complete; most of the Romans threw their
+arms away and fled from slaughter to the temporary safety of a
+neighbouring hill. The early hour at which the attack had been made,
+prevented an effective pursuit, for there was much of the night yet to
+run; and the Numidians were also busied with the plunder of the camp.
+The dawn of day revealed the hopelessness of the Roman position and
+forced Aulus into any terms that Jugurtha cared to grant. The latter
+adopted the language of humane condescension. He said that, although he
+held the Roman army at his mercy, certain victims of famine or the
+sword, yet he was not unmindful of the mutability of human fortune, and
+would spare the lives of all his prisoners, if the Roman commander would
+make a treaty with him.[980] The army was to pass under the yoke; the
+Romans were to evacuate Numidia within ten days. The degrading terms
+were accepted: an army that before its defeat had numbered forty
+thousand men,[981] passed under the spear that symbolised their
+submission and disgrace, and peace reigned in Numidia--a peace which
+lacked no element of shame, dictated by a client king to the sovereign
+that had decreed his chastisement.
+
+The Roman public had become so familiar with discredit as to be in the
+habit of imagining it even when it did not exist; but humiliation
+exhibited in an actual disaster on this colossal scale was sufficiently
+novel to stir the people to the profoundest depths of grief and
+fear.[982] To men who thought only of the empire, its glory seemed to be
+extinguished by the fearful blow; but many of the masses, who knew
+nothing of war or of Rome's relations with peoples beyond the seas, were
+filled with a fear too personal to permit their thoughts to dwell solely
+on the loss of honour. To yet another class, whose knowledge exempted
+them from such idle terror, the army seemed more than the empire. Rome
+had not yet learnt to fight with mercenary forces; and the men who had
+seen service formed a considerable element in the Roman proletariate.
+Such veterans, especially those whose repute in war could give their
+words an added point, were unmeasured in their condemnation of the
+conduct of Aulus. The general had had a sword in his hand; yet he had
+thought a disgraceful capitulation his only means of deliverance. On no
+side could a word be heard in defence of the action of the unhappy
+commander. The blessings of the wives and children of the men whom
+Aulus's treaty had saved were, if breathed, apparently smothered under a
+weight of patriotic execration.
+
+The feeling of insecurity must have been rendered greater by the fact
+that the State still lacked an official head, and the African
+dependencies possessed no governor in whom any confidence could be
+reposed. The year must have opened with a series of _interregna_, since
+no consuls had been elected to assume the government on the 1st of
+January; Numidia had again been made by senatorial decree a consular
+province; but since no consul existed to assume the administration,
+Albinus was still in command of the African army.[983] It was the
+painful duty of the ex-consul to raise in the senate the question of the
+ratification of his brother's treaty. Even he could never have attempted
+to defend it; his dominant feeling was an overwhelming sense of the
+weight of undeserved ignominy under which he lay, tempered by an
+undercurrent of fear as to the danger that might follow in the track of
+the universal disfavour with which he and his brother were regarded. The
+action that he took even before the senate's opinion was known, was a
+proof that he regarded the continuance of the war as inevitable. He
+relieved his mind and sought to restore his credit by pushing on
+military preparations with a fevered energy; supplementary drafts for
+the African army were raised from the citizens; auxiliary cohorts were
+demanded of the Latins and Italian allies. While these measures were in
+progress, the judgment of the senate was given to the world. It was a
+judgment based on the often-repeated maxim that no legitimate treaty
+could be concluded without the consent of the senate and people.[984] It
+was a decision that recalled the days of Numantia or the more distant
+history of the Caudine Forks; but the formal sacrifice that followed and
+was thought to justify those famous instances of breach of contract, was
+no longer deemed worthy of observance, and Aulus was not surrendered to
+the vengeance or mercy of the foe with whom he had involuntarily broken
+faith. This summary invalidation of the treaty may have been the result
+of a deduction drawn from the peculiar circumstances which had preceded
+the renewal of the war--circumstances which, as we have seen, might be
+twisted to support the view that Jugurtha was not an independent enemy
+of Rome and was, therefore, not entitled to the full rights of a
+belligerent.
+
+The senate's decision left Albinus free to act and to make use of the
+new military forces that he had so strenuously prepared. But a sudden
+hindrance came from another quarter. Some tribunes expressed the not
+unreasonable view that a commander of Albinus's record should not be
+allowed to expose Rome's last resources to destruction. Had they meant
+him to remain in command, their attitude would have been indefensible;
+but, when they forbade him to take the new recruits to Africa,[985] they
+were merely reserving them for a more worthy successor. Albinus,
+however, meant to make the most of his limited tenure. He had his own
+and his brother's honour to avenge, and within a few days of the
+senate's decree permitting a renewal of the war, he had taken ship for
+the African province, where the whole army, withdrawn from Numidia in
+accordance with the compact, was now stationed in winter quarters. For a
+time his burning desire to clear his name made him blind to the defects
+of his forces; he thought only of the pursuit of Jugurtha, of some
+vigorous stroke that might erase the stain from the honour of his
+family. But hard facts soon restored the equilibrium of his naturally
+prudent soul. The worst feature of the army was not that it had been
+beaten, but that it had not been commanded. The reins of discipline had
+been so slack that licence and indulgence had sapped its fighting
+strength. The tyranny of circumstances demanded a peaceful sojourn in
+the province, and Albinus resigned himself to the inevitable.
+
+At Rome meanwhile the movement for inquiry that had been stayed for the
+moment by the co-operation of Jugurtha and his senatorial friends, and
+by the obstructive attitude of Baebius, had been resumed with greater
+intensity and promise of success. It did not need the disaster of Aulus
+to re-awaken it to new life. That disaster no doubt accelerated its
+course and invested it with an unscrupulous thoroughness of character
+that it might otherwise have lacked; but the movement itself had perhaps
+taken a definite shape a month before the result of Aulus's experiment
+in Numidia was known, and was the natural result of the feeling of
+resentment which the conspiracy of silence had created. It now assumed
+the exact and legal form of the demand for a commission which should
+investigate, adjudicate and punish. The leaders of the people had
+conceived the bold and original design of wresting from the hands, and
+directing against the person, of the senate the powerful weapon with
+which that body had so often visited epidemics of crime or turbulence
+that were supposed to have fastened on the helpless proletariate. Down
+to this time special commissions had either been set up by the
+co-operation of senate and people, or had, with questionable legality,
+been established by the senate alone. The commissioners, who were
+sometimes consuls, sometimes praetors, had, perhaps always but certainly
+in recent history, judged without appeal; and in the judicial
+investigations which followed the fall of the Gracchi, the people had
+had no voice either in the appointment of the judge or in the
+ratification of the sentence which he pronounced. Now the senate as a
+whole was to be equally voiceless; it was not to be asked to take the
+initiative in the creation of the court, the penalties were to be
+determined without reference to its advice, and although the presidents
+would naturally be selected from members of the senatorial order, if
+they were to be chosen from men of eminence at all, these presidents
+were to be merely formal guides of the proceedings, like the praetor who
+sat in the court which tried cases of extortion, and the verdict was to
+be pronounced by judges inspired by the prevailing feeling of hostility
+to the crimes of the official class.
+
+Caius Mamilius Limetanus, who proposed and probably aided in drafting
+this bill, was a tribune who belonged to the college which perhaps came
+into office towards the close of the month of December which had
+preceded the recent disaster in Numidia. The bill, the promulgation of
+which was probably one of the first acts of his tribunate, proposed
+"that an inquiry should be directed into the conduct of all those
+individuals, whose counsel had led Jugurtha to neglect the decrees of
+the senate, who had taken money from the king whether as members of
+commissions or as holders of military commands, who had handed over to
+him elephants of war and deserters from his army; lastly, all who had
+made agreements with enemies of the State on matters of peace or
+war".[986] The comprehensive nature of the threatened inquiry spread
+terror amongst the ranks of the suspected. The panic was no sign of
+guilt; a party warfare was to be waged with the most undisguised party
+weapons: and mere membership of the suspected faction aroused fears
+almost as acute as those which were excited by the consciousness of
+guilt, There was a prospect of rough and ready justice, where proof
+might rest on prepossession and verdicts be considered preordained. The
+bitterness of the situation was increased by the impossibility of open
+resistance to the measure; for such a resistance would imply an
+unwillingness to submit to inquiry, and such a refusal, invidious in
+itself, would fix suspicion and be accepted as a confession of misdeeds
+which could not bear the light of investigation. With the city
+proletariate against them, the threatened members of the aristocracy
+could look merely to secret opposition by their own supporters, and to
+such moderate assistance as was secured by the friendly attitude which
+their recent agrarian measures had awakened in the Latins and Italian
+allies.[987] But the latter support was moral rather than material, or
+if it became effective, could only secure this character by fraud. The
+allies, whom the senate had driven from Rome by Pennus's law, were
+apparently to be invited to flood the _contiones_ and raise cries of
+protest against the threatened indictment. But this device could only be
+successful in the preliminary stages of the agitation. The Latins
+possessed but few votes, the Italians none, and personation, if resorted
+to, was not likely to elude the vigilance of the hostile presidents of
+the tribunician assembly, or, if undetected, to be powerful enough to
+turn the scale in favour of the aristocracy. For the unanimity of
+opposition which the nobility now encountered in the citizen body, was
+almost unexampled. The differences of interest which sometimes separated
+the country from the city voters, seem now to have been forgotten. The
+tribunes found no difficulty in keeping the agitation up to fever-heat,
+and its permanence was as marked as its intensity. The crowds that
+acclaimed the proposal, were sufficiently in earnest to remain at Rome
+and vote for it; the emphasis with which the masses assembled at the
+final meeting, "ordered, decreed and willed" the measure submitted for
+their approval, was interpreted (perhaps rightly) as a shout of
+triumphant defiance of the nobility, not as a vehement expression of
+disinterested affection for the State.[988] The two emotions were indeed
+blended; but the imperial sentiment is oftenest aroused by danger; and
+the individuals who have worked the mischief are the concrete element in
+a situation, the reaction against which has roused the exaltation which
+veils vengeance and hatred under the names of patriotism and justice.
+
+When the measure had been passed, it still remained to appoint the
+commissioners. This also was to be effected by the people's vote, and
+never perhaps was the effect of habit on the popular mind more
+strikingly exhibited than when Scaurus, who was thought to be trembling
+as a criminal, was chosen as a judge.[989] The large personal following,
+which he doubtless possessed amongst the people, must have remained
+unshaken by the scandals against his name; but the reflection amongst
+all classes that any business would be incomplete which did not secure
+the co-operation of the head of the State, was perhaps a still more
+potent factor in his election. Never was a more splendid testimonial
+given to a public man, and it accompanied, or prepared the way for, the
+greatest of all honours that it was in the power of the Comitia to
+bestow--the control of morals which Scaurus was in that very year to
+exercise as censor.[990] The presence of the venerable statesman amongst
+the three commissioners created under the Mamilian law, could not,
+however, exercise a controlling influence on the judgments of the
+special tribunal. Such an influence was provided against by the very
+structure of the new courts. The three commissioners were not to judge
+but merely to preside; for in the constitution of this commission the
+new departure was taken of modelling it on the pattern of the newly
+established standing courts, and the judges who gave an uncontrolled and
+final verdict were men selected on the same qualifications as those
+which produced the Gracchan jurors, and were perhaps taken from the list
+already in existence for the trial of cases of extortion. The knights
+were, therefore, chosen as the vehicle for the popular indignation, and
+the result justified the choice. The impatience of a hampered commerce,
+and perhaps of an outraged feeling of respectability, spent itself
+without mercy on the devoted heads of some of the proudest leaders of
+the faction that had so long controlled the destinies of the State.
+Expedition in judgment was probably secured by dividing the
+commissioners into three courts, each with his panel of _judices_ and
+all acting concurrently. It was still more effectually secured by the
+mode in which evidence was heard, tested and accepted, and by the
+scandalous rapidity with which judgment was pronounced. The courts were
+influenced by every chance rumour and swayed by the wild caprices of
+public opinion. No sane democrat could in the future pretend to regard
+the Mamilian commission as other than an outrage on the name of justice;
+to the philosophic mind it seemed that a sudden turn in fortune's wheel
+had brought to the masses the same intoxication in the sense of
+unbridled power that had but a moment before been the disgrace of the
+nobility.[991] An old score was wiped off when Lucius Opimius, the
+author of the downfall of Caius Gracchus, was condemned. Three other
+names completed the tale of victims who had been rendered illustrious by
+the possession of the consular _fasces_. Lucius Bestia was convicted for
+the conclusion of that dark treaty with Jugurtha, although his
+counsellor Scaurus had been elevated to the Bench. Spurius Albinus fell
+a victim to his own caution and the blunder of his too-enterprising
+brother; the caution was supposed to have been purchased by Jugurtha's
+gold, and the absent pro-consul was perhaps held responsible for the
+rashness or cupidity of his incompetent legate, who does not seem to
+have been himself assailed. Caius Porcius Cato was emerging from the
+cloud of a recent conviction for extortion only to feel the weight of a
+more crushing judgment which drove him to seek a refuge on Spanish soil.
+Caius Sulpicius Galba, although he had held no dominant position in the
+secular life of the State, was a distinguished member of the religious
+hierarchy; but even the memorable speech which he made in his defence
+did not save him from being the first occupant of a priestly office to
+be condemned in a criminal court at Rome.[992]
+
+We do not know the number of criminals discovered by the Mamilian
+courts, and perhaps only the names of their more prominent victims have
+been preserved. The worldly position of these victims may, however, have
+saved others of lesser note, and the dignity of the sacrifice may have
+been regarded in the fortunate light of a compensation for its limited
+extent. The object of the people and of their present agents, the
+knights, so far as a rational object can be discerned in such a carnival
+of rage and vengeance, was to teach a severe lesson to the governing
+class. Their full purpose had been attained when the lesson had been
+taught. It was not their intention, any more than it had been that of
+Caius Gracchus, to usurp the administrative functions of government or
+to attempt to wrest the direction of foreign administration out of the
+senate's hands. The time for that further step might not be long in
+coming; but for the present both the lower and middle classes halted
+just at the point where destructive might have given place to
+constructive energy. The leaders of the people may have felt the entire
+lack of the organisation requisite for detailed administration, and the
+right man who might replace the machine had not yet been found; while
+the knights may, in addition to these convictions, have been influenced
+by their characteristic dislike of pushing a popular movement to an
+extreme which would remove it from the guidance of the middle class.
+
+The senate had indeed learnt a lesson, and from this time onward the
+history of the Numidian war is simplified by the fact that its progress
+was determined by strategic, not by political, considerations. There is
+no thought of temporising with the enemy; the one idea is to reduce him
+to a condition of absolute submission--a submission which it was known
+could be secured only by the possession of his person. It is true that
+the conduct of the campaign became more than ever a party question; but
+the party struggle turned almost wholly on the military merit of the
+commander sent to the scene of action, and although there was a
+suspicion that the war was being needlessly prolonged for the purpose of
+gratifying personal ambition, there was no hint of the secret operation
+of influences that were wholly corrupt. Such a suspicion was rendered
+impossible by the personality of the man who now took over the conduct
+of the campaign. The tardily elected consuls for the year were Quintus
+Caecilius Metellus and Marcus Junius Silanus. Of these Metellus was to
+hold Numidia and Silanus Gaul.[993] It is possible that, in the counsels
+of the previous year, considerations of the Numidian campaign may to
+some extent have determined the election of Metellus; the senate may
+have welcomed the candidature of a man of approved probity, although not
+of approved military skill, for the purpose of obviating the chance of
+another scandal; and the people may in the same spirit have now ratified
+his election. But, when we remember the almost mechanical system of
+advancement to the higher offices which prevailed at this time, it is
+equally possible that Metellus's day had come, that the senate was
+fortunate rather than prescient in its choice of a servant, and that,
+although the people in their present temper would probably have rejected
+a suspicious character, they accepted rather than chose Metellus. The
+existing system did not even make it possible to elect a man who would
+certainly have the conduct of the African war; and if we suppose that in
+this particular case the division of the consular provinces did not
+depend on the unadulterated use of the lot, but was settled by agreement
+or by a mock sortition,[994] the probity rather than the genius of
+Metellus must have determined the choice, for Silanus was assigned a
+task of far more vital importance to the welfare of Rome and Italy.
+
+The repute of Metellus was based on the fact that, although an
+aristocrat and a staunch upholder of the privileges of his order, he was
+honest in his motives and, so far at least as civic politics were
+concerned, straightforward in his methods. Rome was reaching a stage at
+which the dramatic probity of Hellenic annals, as exemplified by the
+names of an Aristeides or a Xenocrates, could be employed as a measure
+to exalt one member of a government among his fellows; the
+incorruptibility which had so lately been the common property of
+all,[995] had become the monopoly of a few, and Metellus was a witness
+to the folly of a caste which had not recognised the policy of honesty.
+The completeness with which the prize for character might be won, was
+shown by the attitude of a jury before which he had been impeached on a
+charge of extortion. Even the jealous _Equites_ did not deign to glance
+at the account-books which were handed in, but pronounced an immediate
+verdict of acquittal.[996] But the merely negative virtue of
+unassailability by grossly corrupting influences could not have been the
+only source of the equable repute which Metellus enjoyed amongst the
+masses. It was but one of the signs of the self-sufficient directness,
+repose and courtesy, which marked the better type of the new nobility,
+of a life that held so much that it needed not to grasp at more, of the
+protecting impulse and the generosity which, in the purer type of minds
+constricted by conservative prejudices, is an outcome of the conviction
+of the unbridgeable gulf that separates the classes. The nobility of
+Metellus was wholly in his favour; it justified the senate while it
+hypnotised the people. The man who was now consul and would probably
+within a short space of time attach the name of a conquered nationality
+to his own, was but fulfilling the accepted destiny of his family.
+Metellus could show a father, a brother, an uncle and four cousins, all
+of whom had held the consulship. Since the middle of the second century
+titles drawn from three conquered peoples had become appellatives of
+branches of his race. His uncle had derived a name from Macedon, a
+cousin from the Baliares, his own elder brother from the Dalmatians. It
+remained to see whether the best-loved member of this favoured race
+would be in a position to add to the family names the imposing
+designation of Numidicus.
+
+Metellus was a man of intellect and energy as well as of character,[997]
+and he showed himself sufficiently exempt from the prejudices of his
+caste, and sufficiently conscious of the seriousness of the work in
+hand, to choose real soldiers, not diplomatists or ornamental warriors,
+as his lieutenants. If the restiveness of Marius had left a disturbing
+memory behind, it was judiciously forgotten by the consul, who drew the
+_protege_ of his family from the uncongenial atmosphere of the city to
+render services in the field, and to teach an ambitious and somewhat
+embittered man that each act of skill and gallantry was performed for
+the glory of his superior. Another of his legates was Publius Rutilius
+Rufus, who like Marius had held the praetorship, and was not only a man
+of known probity and firmness of character, but a scientific student of
+tactics with original ideas which were soon to be put to the test in the
+reorganisation of the army which followed the Numidian war. For the
+present it was necessary to create rather than reorganise an army, and
+Metellus in his haste had no time for the indulgence of original views.
+The reports of the forces at present quartered in the African province
+were not encouraging; and every means had to be taken to find new
+soldiers and fresh supplies. A vigorous levy was cheerfully tolerated by
+the enthusiasm of the community; the senate showed its earnestness by
+voting ample sums for the purchase of arms, horses, siege implements and
+stores. Renewed assistance was sought from, and voluntarily rendered by,
+the Latins and Italian allies, while subject kings proved their loyalty
+by sending auxiliary forces of their own free will.[998] When Metellus
+deemed his preparations complete, he sailed for his province amidst the
+highest hopes. They were hopes based on the probity of a single man; for
+the impression still prevailed that Roman arms were invincible and had
+been vanquished only by the new vices of the Roman character. Such hopes
+are not always the best omen for a commander to take with him; a joy in
+the present, they are likely to prove an embarrassment in the
+immediate future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The delay in his own appointment to the consulship, and the length of
+time required for collecting his supplementary forces and their
+supplies, had robbed Metellus of some of the best months of the year
+when he set foot on African soil; but his patience was to be put to a
+further test, for the most casual survey of what had been the army of
+the proconsul Albinus showed the impossibility of taking the field for
+some considerable time.[999] What he had heard was nothing to what he
+saw. The military spirit had vanished with discipline, and its sole
+survivals were a tendency to plunder the peaceful subjects of the
+province and a habit of bandying words with superior officers. The camp
+established by Aulus for his beaten army had hardly ever been moved,
+except when sanitary reasons or a lack of forage rendered a short
+migration unavoidable. It had developed the character of a highly
+disorderly town, the citizens of which had nothing to do except to
+traffic for the small luxuries of life, to enjoy them when they were
+secured, and, in times when money and good things were scarce, to spread
+in bands over the surrounding country, make predatory raids on the
+fields and villas of the neighbourhood, and return with the spoils of
+war, whether beasts or slaves, driven in flocks before them. The trader
+who haunts the footsteps of the bandit was a familiar figure in the
+camp; he could be found everywhere exchanging his foreign wine and the
+other amenities in which he dealt for the booty wrung from the
+provincials. Since discipline was dead and there was no enemy to fear,
+even the most ordinary military precautions had ceased to be observed.
+The ramparts were falling to pieces, the regular appointment and relief
+of sentries had been abandoned, and the common soldier absented himself
+from his company as often and for as long a period as he pleased.
+
+Metellus had to face the task which had confronted Scipio at Numantia.
+He performed it as effectually and perhaps with greater gentleness; for
+the most singular feature in the methods by which he restored discipline
+was his avoidance of all attempts at terrorism.[1000] The moderation and
+restraint, which had won the hearts of the citizens, worked their magic
+even in the disorganised rabble which he was remodelling into an army.
+The habits of obedience were readily resumed when the tones of a true
+commander were heard, and the way for their resumption was prepared by
+the regulations which abolished all the incentives to the luxurious
+indolence which he had found prevalent in the camp. The sale of cooked
+food was forbidden, the camp followers were swept away, and no private
+soldier was allowed the use of a slave or beast of burden, whether in
+quarters or on the march. Other edicts of the same kind followed, and
+then the work of active training began. Every day the camp was broken up
+and pitched again after a cross-country march; rampart and ditch were
+formed and pickets set as though the enemy was hovering near, and the
+general and staff went their rounds to see that every precaution of real
+warfare was observed. On the line of march Metellus was everywhere, now
+in the van, now with The rearguard, now with the central column. His eye
+criticised every disposition and detected every departure from the
+rules; he saw that each soldier kept his line, that he filled his due
+place in the serried ranks that gathered round a standard, that he bore
+the appropriate burden of his food and weapons. Metellus preferred the
+removal of the opportunities for vice to the vindictive chastisement of
+the vicious; his wise and temperate measures produced a healthy state of
+mind and body with no loss of self-respect, and in a short time he
+possessed an army, strong in physique as in morale, which he might now
+venture to move against the foe.
+
+Jugurtha had shown no inclination to follow up his success by active
+measures against the defeated Roman army, even after he had learnt the
+repudiation of his treaty with Aulus and knew that the state of war had
+been resumed. The miserable condition of the forces in the African
+province, of which he must have been fully aware, must have offered an
+inviting object of attack, and a sudden raid across the borders might
+have enabled him to dissipate the last relics of Roman military power in
+Africa. But he was now, as ever, averse to pushing matters to extremes,
+he declined to figure as an aggressive enemy of the Roman power; and to
+give a pretext for a war which could have no issue but his own
+extinction, would be to surrender the chances of compromise which his
+own position as a client king and the possibilities, however lessened,
+of working on the fears or cupidity of members of the Roman
+administration still afforded him. His strength lay in defensive
+operations of an elusive kind, not in attack; the less cultivated and
+accessible portions of his own country furnished the best field for a
+desultory and protracted war, and he seems still to have looked forward
+to a compromise to which weariness of the wasteful struggle might in the
+course of time invite his enemies. He may even have had some knowledge
+of the embarrassments of the Republic in other quarters of the world,
+and believed that both the unwillingness of Rome to enter into the
+struggle, and her eagerness, when she had entered, to see it brought to
+a rapid close, were to some extent due to a feeling that an African war
+would divert resources that were sorely needed for the defence of her
+European possessions.
+
+The king's confidence in the weakness and half-heartedness of the Roman
+administration is said to have been considerably shaken by the news that
+Metellus was in command.[1001] During his own residence in Rome he may
+have heard of him as the prospective consul; he had at any rate learnt
+the very unusual foundations on which Metellus's influence with his
+peers and with the people was based, and knew to his chagrin that these
+were unshakable. The later news from the province was equally
+depressing. The new commander was not only honest but efficient, and the
+shattered forces of Rome were regaining the stability that had so often
+replaced or worn out the efforts of genius. Delicate measures were
+necessary to resist this combination of innocence and strength, and
+Jugurtha began to throw out the tentacles of diplomacy. The impression
+which he meant to produce, and actually did produce on the mind of the
+historian who has left us the fullest record of the war, was that of a
+genuine desire to effect a surrender of himself which should no longer
+be fictitious, and to throw himself almost unreservedly on the mercy of
+the Roman people.[1002] But Jugurtha was in the habit of exhibiting the
+most expansive trust, based on a feeling of his own utter helplessness,
+at the beginning of his negotiations, and of then seeming to permit his
+fears to get the better of his confidence. He was an experimental
+psychologist who held out vivid hopes in the belief that the craving
+once excited would be ultimately satisfied with less than the original
+offer, while the physical and mental retreat would meanwhile divert his
+victim from military preparations or lead him to incautious advances. It
+must have been in some such spirit that he assailed Metellus with offers
+so extreme in their humility that their good faith must have aroused
+suspicion in any mind where innocence did not imply simplicity of
+character, as Jugurtha perhaps hoped that it did in the case of this
+novel type of Roman official. The Numidian envoys promised absolute
+submission; even the crown was to be surrendered, and they stipulated
+only for the bare life of the king and his children.[1003] Metellus,
+convinced of the unreality of the promise, matched his own treachery
+against that of the king. He had not the least scruple in following the
+lead which the senate had given, and regarding Jugurtha as unworthy of
+the most rudimentary rights of a belligerent. Believing that he had seen
+enough of the Numidian type to be sure that its conduct was guided by no
+principles of honour or constancy, and that its shifty imagination could
+be influenced by the newest project that held out a hope of excitement
+or of gain,[1004] he began in secret interviews with each individual
+envoy, to tamper with his fidelity to the king. The subjects of his
+interviews did not repudiate the suggestion, and adopted an attitude of
+ready attention which invited further confidences. It might have been an
+attitude which in these subtle minds denoted unswerving loyalty to their
+master; but Metellus interpreted it in the light of his own desires, and
+proceeded to hold out hopes of great reward to each of the envoys if
+Jugurtha was handed over into his power; he would prefer to have the
+king alive; but, if that was impossible, the surrender of his dead body
+would be rewarded. He then gave in public a message which he thought
+might be acceptable to their master. It is sufficiently probable that
+the private dialogues no less than the public message were imparted to
+Jugurtha's ear by messengers who now had unexampled means of proving
+their fidelity and each of whom may have attempted to show that his
+loyalty was superior to that of his fellows; incentives to frankness had
+certainly been supplied by Metellus; but this frankness may have been
+itself of value to the Roman commander. It would prove to Jugurtha the
+presence of a resolute and unscrupulous man who aimed at nothing less
+than his capture and with whom further parleyings would be waste
+of time.
+
+A few days later Metellus entered Numidia with an army marching with all
+the vigilance which a hostile territory demands, and prepared in the
+perfected carefulness of its organisation to meet the surprises which
+the enemy had in store. The surprise that did await it was of a novel
+character.[1005] The grimly arrayed column found itself forging through
+a land which presented the undisturbed appearance of peace, security and
+comfort. The confident peasant was found in his homestead or tilling his
+lands, the cattle grazed on the meadows; when an open village or a
+fortified town was reached, the army was met by the headman or governor
+representing the king. This obliging official was wholly at the disposal
+of the Roman general; he was ready to supply corn to the army or to
+accumulate supplies at any base that might be chosen by the commander;
+any order that he gave would be faithfully carried out. But Metellus's
+vigilance was not for a moment shaken by this bloodless triumph. He
+interpreted the ostentatious submission as the first stage of an
+intended ambush, and he continued his cautious progress as though the
+enemy were hovering on his flank. His line of march was as jealously
+guarded as before, his scouts still rode abroad to examine and report on
+the safety of the route. The general himself led the van, which was
+formed of cohorts in light marching order and a select force of slingers
+and archers; Marius with the main body of cavalry brought up the rear,
+and either flank was protected by squadrons of auxiliary horse that had
+been placed at the disposal of the tribunes in charge of the legions and
+the prefects who commanded the divisions of the contingents from the
+allies. With these squadrons were mingled light-armed troops, their
+joint function being to repel any sudden assault from the mobile
+Numidian cavalry. Every forward step inspired new fears of Jugurtha's
+strategic craft and knowledge of the ground; wherever the king might be,
+his subtle influence oppressed the trespasser on any part of his
+domains, and the most peaceful scene appeared to the anxious eyes of the
+Roman commander to be fraught with the most terrible perils of war.
+
+The route taken by Metellus may have been the familiar line of advance
+from the Roman province, down the valley of the Bagradas. But before
+following the upper course of that river into the heart of Numidia, he
+deemed it necessary to make a deflection to the north, and secure his
+communications by seizing and garrisoning the town of Vaga, the most
+important of the Eastern cities of Jugurtha. Its position near the
+borders of the Roman province had made it the greatest of Numidian
+market towns, and it had once been the home, and the seat of the
+industry, of a great number of Italian traders.[1006] We may suppose
+that by this time the merchants had fled from the insecure locality and
+that the foreign trade of the town had passed away; but both the site of
+the city and the character of its inhabitants attracted the attention of
+Metellus. The latter, like the Eastern Numidians generally, were a
+receptive and industrious folk, who knew the benefits that peace and
+contact with Rome conferred on commerce, and might therefore be induced
+to throw off their allegiance to Jugurtha. The site suggested a suitable
+basis for supplies and, if adequately protected, might again invite the
+merchant. Metellus, therefore, placed a garrison in the town, ordered
+corn and other necessaries to be stored within its walls, and saw in the
+concourse of the merchant class a promise of constant supplies for his
+forces and a tower of strength for the maintenance of Roman influence in
+Numidia when the work of pacification had been done. The slight delay
+was utilised by Jugurtha in his characteristic manner. The seizure of
+one of his most important cities offered an occasion or pretext for
+fresh terrors. Metellus was beset by grovelling envoys with renewed
+entreaties; peace was sought at any price short of the life of the king
+and his children; all else was to be surrendered. The consul still
+pursued his cherished plan of tampering with the fidelity of the
+messengers and sending them home with vague promises. He would not cut
+off Jugurtha from all hope of a compromise. He may have believed that he
+was paralysing the king's efforts while he continued his steady advance,
+and turning his enemy's favourite weapon against that enemy himself.
+Perhaps he even let his thoughts dally with the hope that the envoys who
+had proved such facile traitors might find some means of redeeming their
+promises.[1007] But, unless he committed the cardinal mistake of
+misreading or undervaluing his opponent, these could have been but
+secondary hopes. He must have known that to penetrate into Western
+Numidia without a serious battle, or at least without an effort of
+Jugurtha to harass his march or to cut his communications, was an event
+beyond the reach of purely human aspiration.
+
+Jugurtha had on his part framed a plan of resistance complete in every
+detail. The site in which the attempt was to be made was visited and its
+military features were appraised in all their bearings; the events which
+would succeed each other in a few short hours could be predicted as
+surely as one could foretell the regular movements of a machine; the
+Roman general was walking into a trap from which there should be no
+escape but death. The framing of Jugurtha's scheme necessarily depended
+on his knowledge of Metellus's line of march. We do not know how soon
+the requisite data came to hand; but there is little reason for
+believing that his plan was a resolution of despair or forced on him as
+a last resort, except in the sense that he would always rather treat
+than fight, and that to inflict disaster on a Roman army was no part of
+the policy which he deemed most desirable. But, since his ideal plan had
+stumbled on the temperament of Metellus, a check to the invading army
+became imperative.[1008] The sacrifice of Vaga could scarcely have
+weighed heavily on his mind, for it was an integral element in any
+rational scheme of defence; but, even apart from the obvious
+consideration that a king must fight if he cannot treat for his crown,
+the thought of his own prestige may now have urged him to combat.
+Unbounded as the faith of his Numidian subjects was, it might not
+everywhere survive the impression made by the unimpeded and triumphant
+march of the Roman legions.
+
+Metellus when he quitted Vaga had continued to operate in the eastern
+part of Numidia. The theatre of his campaign was probably to be the
+territory about the plateau of Vaga and the Great Plains, its ultimate
+prizes perhaps were to be the important Numidian towns of Sicca Veneria
+and Zama Regia to the south. The nature of the country rendered it
+impossible for him to enter the defiles of the Bagradas from the
+north-west, while it was equally impossible for him to march direct from
+Vaga to Sicca, for the road was blocked by the mountains which
+intervened on his south-eastern side. To reach the neighbourhood of
+Sicca it was necessary to turn to the south-west and follow for a time
+the upward course of the river Muthul (the Waed Mellag). By this route he
+would reach the high plateaux, which command on the south-east the
+plains of Sicca and Zama, on the north-west those of Naraggara and
+Thagaste, on the south those of Thala and Theveste.[1009] Metellus's
+march led him over a mountain height which was some miles from the
+river.[1010] The western side of this height, down which the Roman army
+must descend, although of some steepness at the beginning of its
+declivity, did not terminate in a plain, but was continued by a swelling
+rise, of vast and even slope, which found its eastern termination on the
+river's bank. The greater portion of this great hill, and especially
+that part of it which lay nearest to the mountain, was covered by a
+sparse and low vegetation, such as the wild olive and the myrtle, which
+was all that the parched and sandy soil would yield. There was no water
+nearer than the river, and this had made the hill a desert so far as
+human habitation was concerned. It was only on its eastern slope which
+touched the stream that the presence of man was again revealed by
+thick-set orchards and cattle grazing in the fields. [1011]
+
+Jugurtha's plan was based on the necessity which would confront the
+Romans of crossing this arid slope to reach the river. Could he spring
+on them as they left the mountain chain and detain them in this torrid
+wilderness, nature might do even more than the Numidian arms to secure a
+victory; meanwhile measures might be taken to close the passage to the
+river, and to bring up fresh forces from the east to block the desired
+route while the ambushed army was harassed by attacks from the flank
+and rear.
+
+Jugurtha himself occupied the portion of the slope which lay just
+beneath the mountain. He kept under his own command the whole of the
+cavalry and a select body of foot-soldiers, probably of a light and
+mobile character such as would assist the operations of the horse. These
+he placed in an extended line on the flank of the route that must be
+followed by an army descending from the mountain. The line was continued
+by the forces which he had placed under the command of Bomilcar. These
+consisted of the heavier elements of the Numidian army, the elephants of
+war and the major part of the foot soldiers. It is, however, probable
+that there was a considerable interval between the end of Jugurtha's and
+the beginning of Bomilcar's line.[1012] The latter on its eastern side
+extended to a point at no great distance from the river; and according
+to the original scheme of the ambush the function assigned to Bomilcar
+must have been that of executing a turning movement which would prevent
+the Roman forces from gaining the stream. As it was expected that the
+impact of the heavy Roman troops would be chiefly felt in this
+direction, the sturdier and less mobile portions of the Numidian army
+had been placed under Bomilcar's command.
+
+Metellus was soon seen descending the mountain slope,[1013] and there
+seemed at first a chance that the Roman column might be surprised along
+its length by the sudden onset of Jugurtha's horse. But the vigilant
+precautions which Metellus observed during his whole line of march,
+although they could not in this case avert a serious danger, possibly
+lessened the peril of the moment. His scouts seem to have done their
+work and spied the half-concealed Numidians amongst the low trees and
+brushwood. The superior position of the Roman army must in any case soon
+have made this knowledge the common property of all, unless we consider
+that some ridge of the chain concealed Jugurtha's ambush from the view
+of the Roman army until they should have almost left the mountain for
+the lower hill beneath it. Jugurtha must in any case have calculated on
+the probability of the forces under his own command soon becoming
+visible to the enemy, for perfect concealment was impossible amidst the
+stunted trees which formed the only cover for his men.[1014] The
+efficacy of his plan did not depend on the completeness or suddenness of
+the surprise; it depended still more on Jugurtha's knowledge of the
+needs of a Roman army, and on the state of perplexity into which all
+that was visible of the ambush would throw the commander. For the little
+that was seen made it difficult to interpret the size, equipment and
+intentions of the expectant force. Glimpses of horses and men could just
+be caught over the crests of the low trees or between the interlacing
+boughs. Both men and horses were motionless, and the eye that strove to
+see more was baffled by the scrub which concealed more than it revealed,
+and by the absence of the standards of war which might have afforded
+some estimate of the nature and size of the force and had for this
+reason been carefully hidden by Jugurtha.
+
+But enough was visible to prove the intended ambush. Metellus called a
+short halt and rapidly changed his marching column to a battle formation
+capable of resistance or attack. His right flank was the one immediately
+threatened. It was here accordingly that he formed the front of his
+order of battle, when he changed his marching column into a fighting
+line.[1015] The three ranks were formed in the traditional manner; the
+spaces between the maniples were filled by slingers and archers; the
+whole of the cavalry was placed on the flanks. It is possible that at
+this point the line of descent from the mountain would cause the Roman
+army to present an oblique front to the slope and the distant
+river,[1016] and the cavalry on the left wing would be at the head of
+the marching column, if it descended into the lower ground.[1017] Such a
+descent was immediately resolved on by Metellus. To halt on the heights
+was impossible, for the land was waterless; an orderly retreat was
+perhaps discountenanced by the difficulties of the country over which he
+had just passed and the distance of the last watering-place which he had
+left, while to retire at the first sight of the longed-for foe would not
+have inspired his newly remodelled army with much confidence in
+themselves or their general.
+
+When the army had quitted the foot of the mountain, a new problem faced
+its general. The Numidians remained motionless,[1018] and it became
+clear that no rapid attack that could be as suddenly repulsed was
+contemplated by their leader. Metellus saw instead the prospect of a
+series of harassing assaults that would delay his progress, and he
+dreaded the fierceness of the season more than the weapons of the enemy.
+The day was still young, for Jugurtha had meant to call in the alliance
+of a torrid sun, and Metellus saw in his mind's eye his army, worn by
+thirst, heat and seven miles of harassing combat, still struggling with
+the Numidian cavalry while they strove to form a camp at the river which
+was the bourne of their desires. It was all important that the extreme
+end of the slope which touched the river should be seized at once, and a
+camp be formed, or be in process of formation, by the time that his
+tired army arrived. With this object in view he sent on his legate
+Rutilius with some cohorts of foot soldiers in light marching order and
+a portion of the cavalry. The movement was well planned, for by the
+nature of the case it could not be disturbed by Jugurtha. His object was
+to harry the main body of the army and especially the heavy infantry,
+and his refusal to detach any part of his force in pursuit of the
+swiftly moving Rutilius is easily understood, especially when it is
+remembered that Bomilcar was stationed near to the ground which the
+Roman legate was to seize. An attack on the flying column would also
+have led to the general engagement which Metellus wished to provoke. The
+presence of Bomilcar and his force was probably unknown to the Romans.
+He in his turn must have been surprised, and may have been somewhat
+embarrassed, by Rutilius's advance; but the movement did not induce him
+to abandon his position. To oppose Rutilius would have been to surrender
+the part assigned him in the intended operations against the main Roman
+force; and, if this part was now rendered difficult or impossible by the
+presence of the Romans in his rear, he might yet divide the forces of
+the enemy, and assist Jugurtha by keeping Rutilius and his valuable
+contingents of cavalry in check. He therefore permitted the legate to
+pass him[1019] and waited for the events which were to issue from the
+combat farther up the field.
+
+Metellus meanwhile continued his slow advance, keeping the marching
+order which had been observed in the descent from the mountain. He
+himself headed the column, riding with the cavalry that covered the left
+wing, while Marius, in command of the horsemen on the right, brought up
+the rear.[1020] Jugurtha waited until the last man of the Roman column
+had crossed the beginning of his line, and then suddenly threw about two
+thousand of his infantry up the slope of the mountain at the point where
+Metellus had made his descent. His idea was to cut off the retreat of
+the Romans and prevent their regaining the most commanding position in
+the field. He then gave the signal for a general attack. The battle
+which followed had all the characteristic features of all such contests
+between a light and active cavalry force and an army composed mainly of
+heavy infantry, inferior in mobility but unshakable in its compact
+strength. There was no possibility of the Numidians piercing the Roman
+ranks, but there was more than a possibility of their wearing down the
+strength of every Roman soldier before that weary march to the river had
+even neared its completion. The Roman defence must have been hampered by
+the absence of that portion of the cavalry which had accompanied
+Rutilius; it was more sorely tried by the dazzling sun, the floating
+dust and the intolerable heat. The Numidians hung on the rear and either
+flank, cutting down the stragglers and essaying to break the order of
+the Roman ranks on every side. It was of the utmost difficulty to
+preserve this order, and the braver spirits who preferred the security
+of their ranks to reckless and indiscriminate assault, were maddened by
+blows, inflicted by the missiles of their adversaries, which they were
+powerless to return. Nor could the repulse of the enemy be followed by
+an effective pursuit. Jugurtha had taught his cavalry to scatter in
+their retreat when pursued by a hostile band; and thus, when unable to
+hold their ground in the first quarter which they had selected for
+attack, they melted away only to gather like clouds on the flank and
+rear of pursuers who had now severed themselves from the protecting
+structure of their ranks. Even the difficulties of the ground favoured
+the mobile tactics of the assailants; for the horses of the Numidians,
+accustomed to the hill forests, could thread their way through the
+undergrowth at points which offered an effective check to the
+pursuing Romans.
+
+It seemed as though Jugurtha's plan was nearing its fulfilment. The
+symmetry of the Roman column was giving place to a straggling line
+showing perceptible gaps through which the enemy had pierced. The
+resistance was becoming individual; small companies pursued or retreated
+in obedience to the dictates of their immediate danger; no single head
+could grasp the varied situation nor, if it had had power to do so,
+could it have issued commands capable of giving uniformity to the
+sporadic combats in which attack and resistance seemed to be directed by
+the blind chances of the moment. But every minute of effectual
+resistance had been a gain to the Romans. The ceaseless toil in the
+cruel heat was wearing down the powers even of the natives; the
+exertions of the latter, as the attacking force, must have been far
+greater than those of the mass of the Roman infantry; and the Numidian
+foot soldiers in particular, who were probably always of an inferior
+quality to the cavalry and had been obliged to strain their physical
+endurance to the utmost by emulating the horsemen in their lightning
+methods of attack and retreat, had become so utterly exhausted that a
+considerable portion of them had practically retired from the field.
+They had climbed to the higher ground, perhaps to join the forces which
+Jugurtha had already placed near the foot of the mountain, and were
+resting their weary limbs, probably not with any view of shirking their
+arduous service but with a resolution of renewing the attack when their
+vigour had been restored. This withdrawal of a large portion of the
+infantry was a cause, or a part, of a general slackening of the Numidian
+attack; and it was the breathing space thus afforded which gave Metellus
+his great chance. Gradually he drew his straggling line together and
+restored some order in the ranks; and then with the instinct of a true
+general he took active measures to assail his enemy's weakest point.
+This point was represented by the Numidian infantry perched on the
+height. Some of these were exhausted and perhaps dispirited, others it
+is true were as yet untouched by the toil of battle; but as a body
+Metellus believed them wholly incapable of standing the shock of a Roman
+charge. The confidence was almost forced on him by his despair of any
+other solution of the intolerable situation. The evening was closing in,
+his army had no camp or shelter; even if it were possible to guard
+against the dangers of the night, morning would bring but a renewal of
+the same miserable toil to an army worn by thirst, sleeplessness and
+anxiety. He, therefore, massed four legionary cohorts against the
+Numidian infantry,[1021] and tried to revive their shattered confidence
+by appealing at once to their courage and to their despair, by pointing
+to the enemy in retreat and by showing that their own safety rested
+wholly on the weapons in their hands. For some time the Roman soldiers
+surveyed their dangerous task and looked expectantly at the height that
+they were asked to storm. The vague hope that the enemy would come down
+finally disappeared; the growing darkness filled them with resolute
+despair; and, closing their ranks, they rushed for the higher ground. In
+a moment the Numidians were scattered and the height was gained. So
+rapidly did the enemy vanish that but few of them were slain; their
+lightness of armour and knowledge of the ground saved them from the
+swords of the pursuing legionaries.
+
+The conquest of the height was the decisive incident of the battle, and
+it was clearly a success that, considered in itself, was due far more to
+radical and permanent military qualities than to tactical skill. It may
+seem wholly a victory of the soldiers, in which the general played no
+part, until we remember that strategic and tactical considerations are
+dependent on a knowledge of such permanent conditions, and that Metellus
+was as right in forcing his Romans up the height as Jugurtha was wrong
+in believing that his Numidians could hold it. With respect to the
+events occurring in this quarter of the field, Metellus had saved
+himself from a strategic disadvantage by a tactical success; but even
+the strategic situation could not be estimated wholly by reference to
+the events which had just occurred or to the position in which the two
+armies were now left. Had Bomilcar still been free to bar the passage to
+the river and to join Jugurtha's forces during the night, the position
+of the Romans would still have been exceedingly dangerous. But the
+mission of Rutilius had successfully diverted that general's attention
+from what had been the main purpose of the original plan. His leading
+idea was now merely to separate the two divisions of the Roman army, and
+the thought of blocking the passage of Metellus, although not
+necessarily abandoned, must have become secondary to that of checking
+the advance of Rutilius when the legate should have become alarmed at
+the delay in the progress of his commander. Bomilcar, after he had
+permitted the Roman force to pass him, slowly left the hill where he had
+been posted and brought his men into more level ground,[1022] while
+Rutilius was making all speed for the river. Quietly he changed his
+column into a line of battle stretching across the slope which at this
+point melted into the plain, while he learnt by constant scouting every
+movement of the enemy beyond. He heard at length that Rutilius had
+reached his bourne and halted, and at the same time the din of the
+battle between Jugurtha and Metellus came in louder volumes to his ear.
+The thought that Rutilius's attention was disengaged now that his main
+object had been accomplished, the fear that he might seek to bring help
+to his labouring commander, led Bomilcar to take more active measures.
+His mind was now absorbed with the problem of preventing a junction of
+the Roman forces. His mistrust of the quality of the infantry under his
+command had originally led him to form a line of considerable depth;
+this he now thought fit to extend with the idea of outflanking and
+cutting off all chance of egress from the enemy. When all was ready he
+advanced on Rutilius's camp.[1023]
+
+The Romans were suddenly aware of a great cloud of dust which hung over
+the plantations on their landward side; but the intervening trees hid
+all prospect of the slope beyond: and for a time they looked on the
+pillar of dust as one of the strange sights of the desert, a mere
+sand-cloud driven by the wind. Then they thought that it betrayed a
+peculiar steadiness in its advance; instead of sweeping down in a wild
+storm it moved with the pace and regularity of an army on the march;
+and, in spite of its slow progress, it could be seen to be drawing
+nearer and nearer. The truth burst upon their minds; they seized their
+weapons and, in obedience to the order of their commander, drew up in
+battle formation before the camp. As Bomilcar's force approached, the
+Romans shouted and charged; the Numidians raised a counter cheer and met
+the assault half-way. There was scarcely a moment when the issue seemed
+in doubt. The Romans, strong in cavalry, swept the untrained Numidian
+infantry before them, and Bomilcar had by his incautious advance thrown
+away the utility of that division of his army on which he and his men
+placed their chief reliance. His elephants, which were capable of
+manoeuvring only on open ground, had now been advanced to the midst of
+wooded plantations, and the huge animals were soon mixed up with the
+trees, struggling through the branches and separated from their
+fellows.[1024] The Numidians made a show of resistance until they saw
+the line of elephants broken and the Roman soldiers in the rear of the
+protecting beasts; then they threw away their heavy armour and vanished
+from the spot, most of them seeking the cover of the hills and nearly
+all secure in the shelter of the coming night. The elephants were the
+chief victims of the Roman pursuit; four were captured and the forty
+that remained were killed.
+
+It had been a hard day's work for the victorious division. A forced
+march had been followed by the labour of forming a camp and this in turn
+by the toil of battle. But it was impossible to think of rest. The delay
+of Metellus filled them with misgivings, and they advanced through the
+darkness to seek news of the main division with a caution that bespoke
+the prudent view that their recent victory had not banished the evil
+possibilities of Numidian guile.[1025] Metellus was advancing from the
+opposite direction and the two armies met. Each division was suddenly
+aware of a force moving against it under cover of the night; with nerves
+so highly strung as to catch at any fear each fancied an enemy in the
+other. There was a shout and a clash of arms, as swords were drawn and
+shields unstrung. It was fortunate that mounted scouts were riding in
+advance of either army. These soon saw the welcome truth and bore it to
+their companions. Panic gave place to joy; as the combined forces moved
+into camp, the soldiers' tongues were loosed, and pent up feelings found
+expression in wonderful stories of individual valour.
+
+Metellus, as in duty bound, gave the name of victory to his salvation
+from destruction. He was right in so far as an army that has vanished
+may be held to have been beaten; and his compliments to his soldiers
+were certainly well deserved; for the triumph, such as it was, had been
+mainly that of the rank and file, and the Roman legionary had not merely
+given evidence of the old qualities of stubborn endurance which
+Metellus's training had restored, but had proved himself vastly superior
+to anything in the shape of a soldier of the line that Jugurtha could
+put into the field. The commendation and thanks which the general
+expressed in his public address to the whole army, the individual
+distinctions which he conferred on those whose peculiar merit in the
+recent combats was attested, were at once an apology for hardship, a
+recognition of desert and a means of inspiring self-respect and future
+efficiency. If it is true that Metellus added that glory was now
+satisfied, and plunder should be their reward in future,[1026] he was at
+once indulging in a pardonable hyperbole and veiling the unpleasant
+truth that combats with Jugurtha were somewhat too expensive to attract
+his future attention. His own private opinion of the recent events was
+perhaps as carefully concealed in his despatches to the senate. It was
+inevitable that a populace which had learnt to look on news from Numidia
+as a record of compromise or disaster, should welcome and exaggerate the
+cheering intelligence; should not only glory in the indisputable fact of
+the renewed excellence of their army, but should regard Jugurtha as a
+fugitive and Metellus as master of his land.[1027] It was equally
+natural that the senate should embrace the chance of shaking off the
+last relics of suspicion which clung to its honour and competency by
+exalting the success of its general. It decreed supplications to the
+immortal gods, and thus produced the impression that a decisive victory
+had been won. Everywhere the State displayed a pardonable joy mingled
+with a less justifiable expectation that this was the beginning of
+the end.
+
+The man who raises extravagant hopes is only less happy than the man who
+dashes them to the ground. The days that followed the battle of the
+Muthul must have been an anxious time for Metellus; for he had been
+taught that it was necessary to change his plan of campaign into a shape
+which was not likely to secure a speedy termination of the war. For four
+days he did not leave his camp--a delay which may have had the
+ostensible justification of the necessity of caring for his wounded
+soldiers,[1028] and may even have been based on the hope that
+negotiations for surrender might reach him from the king, but which also
+proved his view that the pursuit of Jugurtha was wholly impracticable,
+and that in the case of a Numidian army capture or destruction was not a
+necessary consequence of defeat. He contented himself with making
+inquiries of fugitives and others as to the present position and
+proceedings of the king, and received replies which may have contained
+some elements of truth. He learnt that the Numidian army which had
+fought at the Muthul had wholly broken up in accordance with the custom
+of the race, that Jugurtha had left the field with his body-guard alone,
+that he had fled to wild and difficult country and was there raising a
+second army--an army that promised to be larger than the first, but was
+likely to be less efficient, composed as it was of shepherds and
+peasants with little training in war.[1029] We cannot say whether
+Metellus accepted the strange view that the vanished army, which had now
+probably returned to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture and pasturage,
+would not be reproduced in the new one; but certainly the news of the
+future weakness of Jugurtha's forces did not seem to him to justify an
+advance into Western Numidia, then as ever the stronghold of the king
+and the seat of that treasure of human life which was of more value than
+gold and silver. The Roman general, while recognising that the
+belligerent aspect of the king made a renewal of the war inevitable, was
+fully convinced that pitched battles were not the means of wearing down
+Numidian constancy. The pursuit of Jugurtha was impossible without
+conflicts, from which the vanquished emerged less scathed than the
+victors,[1030] and even this primary object of the expedition was for
+the time abandoned. He was forced to adopt the circuitous device of
+attracting the presence of the king, and weakening the loyalty of his
+subjects, by a series of mere plundering raids on the wealthiest
+portions of the country. It was a plan that in default of a really
+effective occupation of the whole country, especially of some occupation
+of Western Numidia, implied a certain amount of self-contradiction and
+inconsistency. The plunder of the land was intended to secure the end
+which Metellus wished to avoid--a conflict with the king; and the
+mobility which he so much dreaded could find no fairer field for its
+exercise than the rapid marches across country which might secure a town
+from attack, undo the work of conquest which had just been effected in
+some other stronghold, or harass the route of the Roman forces as they
+moved from point to point. Metellus was making himself into an admirable
+target for the most effective type of guerilla warfare; but the whole
+history of the struggle down to its close proves that this helplessness
+was due to the situation rather than to the man. The Roman forces were
+wholly inadequate to an effective occupation of Numidia; and a general
+who despaired of pushing on in an aimless and dangerous pursuit, had to
+be content with the chances that might result from the capture of towns,
+the plunder of territories, and secret negotiations which might bring
+about the death or surrender of the king.
+
+Neither the movements which followed the battle of the Muthul nor the
+site of the winter quarters into which Metellus led his men, have been
+recorded. The campaign of the next year seems still to have been
+confined to the eastern portion of Numidia, its object being the
+security of the country between Vaga and Zama. This rich country was
+cruelly ravaged, every fortified post that was taken was burnt, all
+Numidians of fighting age who offered resistance were put to the sword.
+This policy of terrorism produced some immediate results. The army was
+well provisioned, the frightened natives bringing in corn and other
+necessaries in abundance; towns and districts yielded hostages for their
+good behaviour; strong places were surrendered in which garrisons were
+left.[1031] But the presence of Jugurtha soon made itself felt. The
+king, if he had collected an army, had left the major part of it behind.
+He was now at the head of a select body of light horse, and with this
+mobile force he followed in Metellus's tracks. The Romans felt
+themselves haunted by a phantom enemy who passed with incredible
+rapidity from point to point, whose stealthy advances were made under
+cover of the darkness and over trackless wastes, and whose proximity was
+only known by some sudden and terrible blow dealt at the stragglers from
+the camp. The death or capture of those who left the lines could neither
+be hindered nor avenged; for before reinforcements could be hurried up,
+the Numidians had vanished into the nearest range of hills. The most
+ordinary operations of the army were now being seriously hindered.
+Supply and foraging parties had to be protected by cohorts of infantry
+and the whole force of cavalry; plundering was impossible; and fire was
+found the readiest means of wasting country which could no longer be
+ravaged for the benefit of the men. It was thought unsafe for the whole
+army to operate in two independent columns. Such columns were indeed
+formed, Metellus heading one and Marius the other; but it was necessary
+for them to keep the closest touch. Although they sometimes divided to
+extend the sphere of their work of terror and devastation, they often
+united through the pressure of fear, and the two camps were never at a
+great distance from each other.[1032] The king meanwhile followed them
+along the hills, destroying the fodder and ruining the water supply on
+the line of march; now he would swoop on Metellus, now on Marius, harass
+the rear of the column and vanish again into his hiding places.
+
+The painful experiences of the later portion of this march convinced
+Metellus that some decisive effort should be made, which would crown his
+earlier successes, give him some sort of command of the line of country
+through which he had so perilously passed, and might, by the importance
+of the attempt, force Jugurtha to a battle. The hilly country through
+which he had just conducted his legions, was that which lay between the
+great towns of Sicca and Zama.[1033] The possession of both these places
+was absolutely essential if the southern district which he had terrified
+and garrisoned was to be kept permanently from the king. Sicca was
+already his, for it had been the first of the towns to throw off its
+allegiance to Jugurtha after the battle on the Muthul had dissipated the
+Numidian army.[1034] He now turned his attention to the still more
+important town of Zama, the true capital and stronghold of this southern
+district, and prepared to master the position by assault or siege.
+Jugurtha was soon cognisant of his plan, and by long forced marches
+crossed Metellus's line and entered Zama.[1035] He urged the citizens to
+a vigorous defence and promised that at the right moment he would come
+to their aid with all his forces; he strengthened their garrison by
+drafting into it a body of Roman deserters, whose circumstances
+guaranteed their loyalty, and disappeared again from the vision of
+friends and foes. Shortly afterwards he learnt that Marius had left the
+line of march for Sicca, and that he had with him but a few cohorts
+intended to convoy to the army the corn which he hoped to acquire in the
+town. In a moment Jugurtha was at the head of his chosen cavalry and
+moving under cover of the night. He had hoped perhaps to find the
+division in the town, to turn the tide of feeling in Sicca by his
+presence, and to see the ablest of his opponents trapped within the
+walls. But, as he reached the gate, the Romans were leaving it. He
+immediately hurled his men upon them and shouted to the curious folk who
+were watching the departure of the cohorts, to take the division in the
+rear. Chance, he cried, had lent them the occasion of a glorious deed of
+arms. Now was the time for them to recover freedom, for him to regain
+his kingdom. The magic of the presence of the national hero had nearly
+worked conversion to the Siccans and destruction to the Romans. The
+friendly city would have proved a hornets' nest, had not Marius bent all
+his efforts to thrusting a passage through Jugurtha's men and getting
+clear of the dangerous walls. In the more open ground the fighting was
+sharp but short. A few Numidians fell, the rest vanished from the field,
+and Marius came in safety to Zama, where he found Metellus contemplating
+his attack.
+
+The city lay in a plain and nature had contributed but little to its
+defence,[1036] but it was strong in all the means that art could supply
+and well prepared to stand a siege. Metellus planned a general assault
+and arranged his forces around the whole line of wall. The attack began
+at every point at once; in the rear were the light-armed troops,
+shooting stones and metal balls at the defenders and covering the
+efforts of the active assailants, who pressed up to the walls and strove
+to effect an entry by scaling ladders and by mines. The defending force
+betrayed no sign of terror or disordered haste. They calmly distributed
+their duties, and each party kept a watchful eye on the enemy whom it
+was its function to repel; while some transfixed those farther from the
+wall with javelins thrown by the hand or shot from an engine, others
+dealt destruction on those immediately beneath them, rolling heavy
+stones upon their heads and showering down pointed stakes, heavy
+missiles and vessels full of blazing pine fed with pitch and
+sulphur.[1037]
+
+The battle raging round the walls may have absorbed the thoughts even of
+that section of the Roman army which had been left to guard the camp.
+Certainly they and their sentries were completely off their guard when
+Jugurtha with a large force dashed at the entrenchments and, so complete
+was the surprise, swept unhindered through the gate.[1038] The usual
+scene of panic followed with its flight, its hasty arming, the groans of
+the wounded, the silent falling of the slain. But the unusual degree of
+the recklessness of the garrison was witnessed by the fact that not more
+than forty men were making a collective stand against the Numidian
+onset. The little band had seized a bit of high ground and no effort of
+the enemy could dislodge them. The missiles which had been aimed against
+them they hurled back with terrible effect into the dense masses around;
+and when the assailants essayed a closer combat, they struck them down
+or drove them back with the fury of their blows. Their resistance may
+have detained Jugurtha in the camp longer than he had intended; but the
+immediate escape from the emergency was due to the cowards rather than
+to the brave. Metellus was wrapt in contemplation of the efforts of his
+men before the walls of Zama when he suddenly heard the roar of battle
+repeated from another quarter. As he wheeled his horse, he saw a crowd
+of fugitives hurrying over the plain; since they made for him, he judged
+that they were his own men. It seems that the cavalry had been drawn up
+near the walls, probably as a result of the impression that Jugurtha, if
+he attacked at all, would attempt to take the besiegers in the rear.
+Metellus now hastily sent the whole of this force to the camp, and bade
+Marius follow with all speed at the head of some cohorts of the allies.
+His anguish at the sullied honour of his troops was greater than his
+fear. With tears streaming down his face he besought his legate to wipe
+out the stain which blurred the recent victory and not to permit the
+enemy to escape unpunished.
+
+Jugurtha had no intention of being caught in the Roman camp; but it was
+not so easy to get out as it had been to come in. Some of his men were
+jammed in the exits, while others threw themselves over the ramparts;
+Marius took full advantage of the rout, and it was with many losses that
+Jugurtha shook himself free of his pursuers and retreated to his own
+fastnesses. Soon the approach of night brought the siege operations to
+an end. Metellus drew off his men and led them back to camp after a
+day's experience that did not leave a pleasant retrospect behind it.
+Warned by its incidents that the cavalry should be posted nearer to the
+camp, he began the work of the following day by disposing the whole of
+this force over that quarter of the ground on which the king had made
+his appearance;[1039] more definite arrangements were also made for the
+detailed defence of the Roman lines, and the assault of the previous day
+was renewed on the walls of Zama. Yet in spite of these elaborate
+precautions Jugurtha's coming was in the nature of a surprise. The
+silence and swiftness of his onset threw the first contingents of Romans
+whom he met into momentary panic and confusion; but reserves were soon
+moved up and restored the fortune of the day. They might have turned it
+rapidly and wholly, but for a tactical device which Jugurtha had adopted
+as a means of neutralising the superior stability of the Romans--a means
+which permitted him to show a persistence of frontal attack unusual with
+the Numidians. He had mingled light infantry with his cavalry; the
+latter charged instead of merely skirmishing, and before the breaches
+which they had made in the enemy's ranks could be refilled, the foot
+soldiers made their attack on the disordered lines.[1040]
+
+Jugurtha's object was being fulfilled as long as he could remain in the
+field to effect this type of diversion and draw off considerable forces
+from the walls of Zama. But his ingenious efforts attracted the
+attention of the besieged as well as of the besiegers. It is true that,
+when the assault was hottest, the citizens of Zama did not permit their
+minds or eyes to stray; but there were moments following the repulse of
+some great effort when the energy of the assailants flagged and there
+was a lull in the storm of sound made by human voices and the clatter of
+arms. Then the men on the walls would look with strained attention on
+the cavalry battle in the plain, would follow the fortunes of the king
+with every alternation of joy or fear, and shout advice or exhortation
+as though their voices could reach their distant friends.[1041] Marius,
+who conducted the assault at that portion of the wall which commanded
+this absorbing view, formed the idea of encouraging this distraction of
+attention by a feint and seizing the momentary advantage which it
+afforded. A remissness and lack of confidence was soon visible in the
+efforts of his men, and the undisturbed interest of the Numidians was
+speedily directed to the manoeuvres of their monarch in the plain.
+Suddenly the assault burst on them in its fullest force; before they
+could brace themselves to the surprise, the foremost Romans were more
+than half-way up the scaling ladders. But the height was too great and
+the time too short. Stones and fire were again poured on the heads of
+the assailants. It was some time before their confidence was shaken; but
+when one or two ladders had been shattered into fragments and their
+occupants dashed down, the rest--most of them already covered with
+wounds--glided to the ground and hastened from the walls. This was the
+last effort. The night soon fell and brought with it, not merely the
+close of the day's work, but the end of the siege of Zama.
+
+Metellus saw that neither of his objects could be fulfilled. The town
+could not be taken nor would Jugurtha permit himself to be brought to
+the test of a regular battle.[1042] The fighting season was now drawing
+to its close and he must think of winter quarters for his army. He
+determined, not only to abandon the siege, but to quit Numidia and to
+winter in the Roman province. The sole relic of the fact that he had
+marched an army through the territory between Vaga and Zama were a few
+garrisons left in such of the surrendered cities as seemed capable of
+defence. The despatches of this winter would not cheer the people or
+encourage the senate. The policy of invasion had failed; and, if success
+was to be won, it could be accomplished by intrigue alone. Metellus,
+when the leisure of winter quarters gave him time to think over the
+situation, decided that scattered negotiations with lesser Numidian
+magnates would prove as delusive in the future as they had in the past.
+The king's mind must be mastered if his body was to be enslaved; but it
+was a mind that could be conquered only by confidence, and to secure
+this influence it was necessary to approach the monarch's right-hand
+man. This man was Bomilcar, the most trusted general and adviser of
+Jugurtha--trusted all the more perhaps in consequence of the delusion,
+into which even a Numidian king might fall, that the man who owes his
+life to another will owe him his life-long service as well. A more
+reasonable ground for Bomilcar's attachment might have been found in the
+consideration that, in the eyes of Rome, he was as deeply compromised as
+Jugurtha himself--from an official point of view, indeed, even more
+deeply compromised; for to the Roman law he was an escaped criminal over
+whose head still hung a capital charge of murder.[1043] But might not
+that very fact urge the minister to make his own compact with Rome? His
+life depended on the king's success, or on the king's refusal to
+surrender him if peace were made with Rome; it depended therefore on a
+double element of doubt. Make that life a certainty, and would any
+Numidian longer balance the doubt against the certainty? Such was the
+thought of Metellus when he opened correspondence with Bomilcar. The
+minister wished to hear more, and Metellus arranged a secret interview.
+In this he gave his word of honour that, if Bomilcar handed over
+Jugurtha to him living or dead, the senate would grant him impunity and
+the continued possession of all that belonged to him. The Numidian
+accepted the promise and the condition it involved; his mind was chiefly
+swayed by the fear that a continuance of the even struggle might result
+in a compromise with Rome, and that his own death at the hands of the
+executioner would be one of the conditions of that compromise.
+
+What passed between Bomilcar and Jugurtha can never have been known. The
+king had no reason to regret the exploits of the year, and an appeal to
+the desperate nature of his position would have been somewhat out of
+place. But some of the reflections of Bomilcar, preserved or invented by
+tradition,[1044] which pointed to weakness and danger in the future, may
+conceivably have been expressed. It was true that the war was wasting
+the material strength of the kingdom; it might be true that it would
+wear out the constancy of the Numidians themselves and induce them to
+put their own interests before those of their king. Such arguments could
+never have weighed with Jugurtha had not his recent success suggested
+the hope of a compromise; as a beaten fugitive he would have had nothing
+to hope for; as a man who still held his own he might win much by a
+ready compact with a Roman general in worse plight than himself. It
+seems certain that Jugurtha was for the first time thoroughly deceived.
+His judgment, sound enough in its estimate of the general situation,
+must have been led astray by Bomilcar's representation of Metellus's
+attitude, although the minister could not have hinted at a personal
+knowledge of the Roman's views; and his confidence in his adviser led to
+this rare and signal instance of a total misconception of the character
+and powers of his adversary.
+
+Some preliminary correspondence probably passed between Jugurtha and
+Metellus before the king sent his final message.[1045] It was to the
+effect that all the demands would be complied with, and that the kingdom
+and its monarch would be surrendered unconditionally to the
+representative of Rome. Metellus immediately summoned a council, to
+which he gave as representative a character as was possible under the
+circumstances. The transaction of delicate business by a clique of
+friends had cast grave suspicions on the compact concluded by Bestia;
+and it was important that the witnesses to the fact that the transaction
+with Jugurtha contained no secret clause or understanding, should be as
+numerous and weighty as possible. This result could be easily secured by
+the general's power to summon all the men of mark available; and thus
+Metellus called to the board not only every member of the senatorial
+order whom he could find, but a certain number of distinguished
+individuals who did not belong to the governing class.[1046] The policy
+of the board was to make tentative and gradually increasing demands such
+as had once tried the patience of the Carthaginians.[1047] Jugurtha
+should give a pledge of his good faith; and, if it was unredeemed, Rome
+would have the gain and he the loss. The king was now ordered to
+surrender two hundred thousand pounds of silver, all his elephants and a
+certain quantity of horses and weapons.[1048] He was also required to
+furnish three hundred hostages.[1049] The request, at least as regards
+the money and the materials for war, was immediately complied with. Then
+the demands increased. The deserters from the Roman army must be handed
+over. A few of these had fled from Jugurtha at the very first sign that
+a genuine submission was being made, and had sought refuge with Bocchus
+King of Mauretania;[1050] but the greater part, to the number of three
+thousand,[1051] were surrendered to Metellus. Most of these were
+auxiliaries, Thracians and Ligurians such as had abandoned Aulus at
+Suthul; and the sense of the danger threatened by the treachery of
+allies, who must form a vital element in all Roman armies, may have been
+the motive for the awful example now given to the empire of Rome's
+punishment for breach of faith. Some of these prisoners had their hands
+cut off; others were buried in the earth up to their waists, were then
+made a target for arrows and darts, and were finally burnt with fire
+before the breath had left their bodies.[1052] The final order concerned
+Jugurtha himself, He was required to repair to a place named
+Tisidium,[1053] there to wait for orders. The confidence of the king now
+began to waver. He may have hoped to the last moment for some sign that
+his cause was being viewed with a friendly eye; but none had come.
+Surrender to Rome was a thinkable position, while he was in a position
+to bargain. It would be the counsel of a madman, if he put himself
+wholly in the power of his enemy. He had sacrificed much; but the loss,
+except in money, was not irremediable. Elephants were of no avail in
+guerilla warfare, and Numidia, which was still his own, had horses and
+men in abundance. He waited some days longer, probably more in
+expectancy of a move by Metellus and in preparation of the step he
+himself meant to take, than in doubt as to what that step should be;
+when no modification of the demand came from the Roman side, he broke
+off negotiations and continued the war. Metellus was still to be his
+opponent; for earlier in the year the proconsulate of the commander had
+been renewed.[1054]
+
+The events of the summer and the peace of winter-quarters had given food
+for reflection to others besides Metellus. We shall soon see what the
+merchant classes in Africa thought of the progress of the war; more
+formidable still were the emotions that had lately been excited in the
+rugged breast of the great legate Marius. There are probably few
+lieutenants who do not think that they could do better than their
+commanders. Whether Marius held this view is immaterial; he soon came to
+believe that he did, and expressed this belief with vigour. The really
+important fact was that a man who had been praetor seven years before
+and probably regarded himself as the greatest soldier of the age, was
+carrying out the behests and correcting the blunders of a general who
+owed his command to his aristocratic connections and blameless record in
+civil life. The subordination in this particular form seemed likely to
+be perpetuated in Numidia, for Metellus was entering on his second
+proconsulate and his third year of power; in other forms and in every
+sphere it was likely to be eternal, for it was an accepted axiom of the
+existing regime that no "new man" could attain the consulship.[1055] The
+craving for this office was the new blight that had fallen on Marius's
+life; for it is the ambition which is legitimate that spreads the most
+morbid influence on heart and brain. But the healthier part of his soul,
+which was to be found in that old-fashioned piety so often maligned by
+the question-begging name of superstition, soon came to the help of the
+worldly impulse which the strong man might have doubted and crushed. On
+one eventful day in Utica Marius was engaged in seeking the favour of
+the gods by means of sacrificial victims. The seer who was interpreting
+the signs looked and exclaimed that great and wonderful things were
+portended. Let the worshipper do whatsoever was in his mind; he had the
+support of the gods. Let him test fortune never so often, his heart's
+desire would be fulfilled.[1056]
+
+The gods had given a marvellous response in the only way in which the
+gods could answer. They did not suggest, but they could confirm, and
+never was confirmation more emphatic. Marius's last doubts were removed,
+and he went straightway to his commander and asked for leave of absence
+that he might canvass for the consulship in that very year. Metellus was
+a good patron; that is, he was a bad friend. The aristocratic bristles
+rose on the skin that had seemed so smooth. At first he expressed mild
+wonder at Marius's resolution--the wonder that is more contemptuous than
+a gibe--and exhorted him in words, the professedly friendly tone of
+which must have been peculiarly irritating, not to let a distorted
+ambition get the better of him; every one should see that his desires
+were appropriate and limit them when they passed this stage; Marius had
+reason to be satisfied with his position; he should be on his guard
+against asking the Roman people for a gift which they would have a right
+to refuse. There was no suspicion of personal jealousy in these
+utterances; they reflected the standard of a caste, not of a man. But
+Marius had measured the situation, and was not to be deterred by its
+being presented again in a galling but not novel form. A further request
+was met by the easy assumption that the matter was not so pressing as to
+brook no delay; as soon as public business admitted of Marius's
+departure, Metellus would grant his request. Still further entreaties
+are said to have wrung from the impatient proconsul, whose good advice
+had been wasted on a boor who did not know his place and could take no
+hints, the retort that Marius need not hurry; it would be time enough
+for him to canvass for the consulship when Metellus's own son should be
+his colleague.[1057] The boy was about twenty, Marius forty-nine. The
+prospective consulship would come to the latter when he had reached the
+mature age of seventy-two. The jest was a blessing, for anything that
+justified the whole-hearted renunciation of patronage, the dissolution
+of the sense of obligation, was an avenue to freedom. Marius was now at
+liberty to go his own way, and he soon showed that there was enough
+inflammable material in the African province to burn up the credit of a
+greater general than Metellus.
+
+It is said that the division of the army, commanded by Marius, soon
+found itself enjoying a much easier time than before;[1058] the stern
+legate had become placable, if not forgetful--a circumstance which may
+be explained either by the view that a care greater than that of
+military discipline sat upon his mind, or by a belief that the new-born
+graciousness was meant to offer a pleasing contrast to the rigour of
+Metellus. But in this case the civilian element in the province was of
+more importance than the army. The merchant-princes of Utica, groaning
+over the vanished capital which they had invested in Numidian concerns,
+heard a criticism and a boast which appealed strongly to their impatient
+minds. Marius had said, or was believed to have said, that if but one
+half of the army were entrusted to him, he would have Jugurtha in chains
+in a few days;[1059] that the war was being purposely prolonged to
+satisfy the empty-headed pride which the commander felt in his position.
+The merchants had long been reflecting on the causes of the prolongation
+of the war with all the ignorance and impatience that greed supplies;
+now these causes seemed to be revealed in a simple and convincing light.
+
+The unfortunate house of Masinissa was also made to play its part in the
+movement. It was represented in the Roman camp by Gauda son of
+Mastanabal, a prince weak both in body and mind, but the legitimate heir
+to the Numidian crown, if it was taken from Jugurtha and Micipsa's last
+wishes were fulfilled. For the old king in framing his testament had
+named Gauda as heir in remainder to the kingdom, if his two sons and
+Jugurtha should die without issue.[1060] The nearness of the succession,
+now that the reigning king of Numidia was an enemy of the Roman people,
+had prompted the prince to ask Metellus for the distinctions that he
+deemed suited to his rank, a seat next that of the commander-in-chief, a
+guard of Roman knights[1061] for his person. Both requests had been
+refused--the place of honour because it belonged only to those whom the
+Roman people had addressed as kings, the guard, because it was
+derogatory to the knights of Rome to act as escort to a Numidian. The
+prince may have taken the refusal, not merely as an insult in itself,
+but as a hint that Metellus did not recognise him as a probable
+successor to Jugurtha. He was in an anxious and moody frame of mind when
+he was approached by Marius and urged to lean on him, if he would gain
+satisfaction for the commander's contumely. The glowing words of his new
+friend made hope appeal to his weak mind almost with the strength of
+certainty. He was the grandson of Masinissa, the immediate occupant of
+the Numidian throne, should Jugurtha be captured or slain; the crown
+might be his at no distant date, should Marius be made consul and sent
+to the war. He should make appeal to his friends in Rome to secure the
+means which would lead to the desired end. The ship that bore the
+prince's letter to Rome took many other missives from far more important
+men--all of them with a strange unanimity breathing the same purport,
+"Metellus was mismanaging the war, Marius should be made commander".
+They were written by knights in the province--some of them officers in
+the army, others heads of commercial houses[1062]--to their friends and
+agents in Rome. All of these correspondents had not been directly
+solicited by Marius, but in some mysterious way the hope of peace in
+Africa had become indissolubly associated with his name. The central
+bureau of the great mercantile system would soon be working in his
+favour. Who would withstand it? Certainly not the senate still shaken by
+the Mamilian law; still less the people who wanted but a new suggestion
+to change the character of their attack. All things seemed working
+for Marius.
+
+It was soon shown that, whoever the future commander of Numidia was to
+be, he would have a real war on his hands; for the struggle had suddenly
+sprung into new and vigorous life, and one of the few permanent
+successes of Rome was annihilated in a moment by the craft of the
+reawakened Jugurtha. The preparations of the king must have been
+conjectured from their results; their first issue was a complete
+surprise; for few could have dreamed that the personal influence of the
+monarch, who had given away so much for an elusive hope of safety and
+had almost been a prisoner in the Roman lines, should assert itself in
+the very heart of the country believed to be pacified and now held by
+Roman garrisons. The town of Vaga, the intended basis of supplies for an
+army advancing to the south or west, the seat of an active commerce and
+the home of merchants from many lands who traded under the aegis of the
+Roman peace and a Roman garrison perched on the citadel, was suddenly
+thrilled by a message from the king, and answered to the appeal with a
+burst of heartfelt loyalty--a loyalty perhaps quickened by the native
+hatred of the ways of the foreign trader. The self-restraint of the
+patriotic plotters was as admirable as their devotion to a cause so
+nearly lost. Many hundreds must have been cognisant of the scheme, yet
+not a word reached the ears of those responsible for the security of the
+town. Even the poorest conspirator did not dream of the fortune that
+might be reaped from the sale of so vast a secret, and the Roman was as
+ignorant of the hidden significance of native demeanour as he was of the
+subtleties of the native tongue. In eye and gesture he could read
+nothing but feelings of friendliness to himself, and he readily accepted
+the invitation to the social gathering which was to place him at the
+mercy of his host.[1063] The third day from the date at which the plot
+was first conceived offered a golden opportunity for an attack which
+should be unsuspected and resistless. It was the day of a great national
+festival, on which leisured enjoyment took the place of work and every
+one strove to banish for the time the promptings of anxiety and fear.
+The officers of the garrison had been invited by their acquaintances
+within the town to share in their domestic celebrations. They and their
+commandant, Titus Turpilius Silanus, were reclining at the feast in the
+houses of their several hosts when the signal was given. The tribunes
+and centurions were massacred to a man; Turpilius alone was spared; then
+the conspirators turned on the rank and file of the Roman troops. The
+position of these was pitiable. Scattered in the streets, without
+weapons and without a leader, they saw the holiday throng around them
+suddenly transformed into a ferocious mob. Even such of the meaner
+classes as had up to this time been innocent of the murderous plot, were
+soon baying at their heels; some of these were hounded on by the
+conspirators; others saw only that disturbance was on foot, and the
+welcome knowledge of this fact alone served to spur them to a senseless
+frenzy of assault. The Roman soldiers were merely victims; there was
+never a chance of a struggle which would make the sacrifice costly, or
+even difficult.[1064] The citadel, in which their shields and standards
+hung, was in the occupation of the foe; when they sought the city gates,
+they found the portals closed; when they turned back upon the streets,
+the line of fury was deeper than before, for the women and the very
+children on the level housetops were hurling stones or any missiles that
+came to hand on the hated foreigners below. Strength and skill were of
+no avail; such qualities could not even prolong the agony; the veteran
+and the tyro, the brave and the shrinking, were struck or cut down with
+equal ease and swiftness. Only one man succeeded in slipping through the
+gates. This was the commandant Turpilius himself. Even the lenient view
+that a lucky chance or the pity of his host had given him his freedom,
+did not clear him of the stain which the tyrannical tradition of Roman
+arms stamped on every commander who elected to survive the massacre of
+the division entrusted to his charge.[1065]
+
+When the news was brought to Metellus, the heart-sick general buried
+himself in his tent.[1066] But his first grief was soon spent, and his
+thoughts turned to a scheme of vengeance on the treacherous town.
+Rapidly and carefully the scheme was unfolded in his mind, and by the
+setting of the sun the first steps towards the recovery of Vaga had been
+taken. In the dusk he left his camp with the legion which had been
+stationed in his own quarters and as large a force of Numidian cavalry
+as he could collect. Both horse and foot were slenderly equipped, for he
+was bent on a surprise and a long and hard night's march lay before him.
+He was still speeding on three hours after the sun had risen on the
+following day. The tired soldiers cried a halt, but Metellus spurred
+them on by pointing to the nearness of their goal (Vaga, he showed, was
+but a mile distant, just beyond the line of hills which shut out their
+view), the sanctity of the work of vengeance, the certainty of a rich
+reward in plunder. He paused but to reform his men. The cavalry were
+deployed in open order in the van; the infantry followed in a column so
+dense that nothing distinctive in their equipment or organisation could
+be discerned from afar, and the standards were carefully
+concealed.[1067] When the men of Vaga saw the force bearing down upon
+their town, their first and right impression led them to close the
+gates; but two facts soon served to convince them of their error. The
+supposed enemy was not attempting to ravage their land, and the horsemen
+who rode near the walls were clearly men of Numidian blood. It was the
+king himself, they cried, and with enthusiastic joy they poured from the
+gates to meet him. The Romans watched them come; then at a given signal
+the closed ranks opened, as each division rushed to its appointed task.
+Some charged and cut in pieces the helpless multitude that had poured
+upon the plain; others seized the gates, others again the now undefended
+towers on the walls. All sense of weariness had suddenly vanished from
+limbs now stimulated by the lust of vengeance and of plunder. The
+slaughter was pitiless, the search for plunder as thorough as the
+slaughter. The war had not yet given such a prize as this great trading
+town. Its ruin was the general's loss as it was the soldiers' gain; but
+the need for rapid vengeance vanquished every other sentiment in
+Metellus's mind. Roman punishment was as swift as it was sure, if but
+two days could elapse between the sin and the suffering of the men of
+Vaga. A gloomy task still remained. Inquiry must be made as to the mode
+in which Turpilius the commandant had escaped unharmed from the
+massacre. The investigation was a bitter trial to Metellus; for the
+accused was bound to him by close ties of hereditary friendship, and had
+been accredited by him with the command of the corps of engineers.[1068]
+The command at Vaga had been a further mark of favour, and it was
+believed by some that Turpilius had justified his commander's hopes only
+too well, and that it was his very humanity and consideration for the
+townsfolk under his command which had offered him means of escape such
+as only the most resolute would have refused.[1069] But the scandal was
+too grave to admit of a private inquiry, in which the honour of the army
+might seem to be sacrificed to the caprice of the friendly judgment of
+Metellus. His very familiarity with the accused entailed the duty of a
+cold impartiality, and Turpilius found little credence or excuse for the
+tale that he unfolded before the members of the court which adjudicated
+on his case. The harsh view of Marius was particularly recalled in the
+light of subsequent events. The fact or fancy that it was Marius who had
+himself condemned and had urged his brother judges to deliver an adverse
+vote, was seized by the gatherers of gossip, ever ready to discover a
+sinister motive in the actions of the man who never forgot, was embedded
+in that prose epic of the "Wrath of Marius" which subsequently adorned
+the memoirs of the great, and became a story of how the relentless
+lieutenant had, in malignant disregard of his own convictions, caused
+Metellus to commit the inexpiable wrong of dooming a guest-friend to an
+unworthy death.[1070] The death was inflicted with all the barbarity of
+Roman military law; Turpilius was scourged and beheaded,[1071] and
+through this final expiation the episode of Vaga remained to many minds
+a still darker horror than before.
+
+But much had been gained by the recovery of the revolted town. It is
+true that in its present condition it was almost useless to its
+possessors; but its fate must have stayed the progress of revolt in
+other cities, and the rapidity of Metellus's movements had hampered
+Jugurtha's immediate plans. The king had probably intended that Vaga
+should be a second Zama, and that the Romans should be kept at bay by
+its strong walls while he himself harassed their rear or attacked their
+camp. Now the scene of a successful guerilla warfare must be sought
+elsewhere. Its choice depended on the movements of the Roman army; but
+the time for the commencement of the new struggle was postponed longer
+than it might have been by a domestic danger which, while it confirmed
+the king in his resolution to struggle to the bitter end, absorbed his
+attention for the moment and hampered his operations in the field.
+Bomilcar's negotiations with Rome were bearing their deadly fruit.[1072]
+The minister was a victim of that expectant anguish, which springs from
+the failure of a treacherous scheme, when the cause of that failure is
+unknown. Why had the king broken off the negotiations? Was he himself
+suspected? Would the danger be lessened, if he remained quiescent? It
+might be increased, for the peril from Rome still existed, and there was
+the new terror from the vengeance of a master, whose suspicion seemed to
+his affrighted soul to be revealing itself in a cold neglect. Bomilcar
+determined that he would face but a single peril, and plunged into a
+course of intrigue far more dangerous than any which he had yet essayed.
+He no longer worked through underlings or appealed to the emissaries of
+Rome. He aimed at internal revolution, at the fall of the king by the
+hands of his servants--a stroke which he might exhibit to the suzerain
+power as his own meritorious work--and he adopted as a confidant a man
+of his own rank and at the moment of greater influence than himself.
+Nabdalsa was the new favourite of Jugurtha. He was a man of high birth,
+of vast wealth, of great and good repute in the district of Numidia
+which he ruled. His fame and power had been increased by his appointment
+to the command of such forces as the king could not lead in person, and
+he was now operating with an army in the territory between the
+head-quarters of Jugurtha and the Roman winter camp, his mission being
+to prevent the country being overrun with complete impunity by the
+invaders. His reason for listening to the overtures of Bomilcar is
+unknown; perhaps he knew too much of the military situation to believe
+in his master's ultimate success, and aimed at securing his own
+territorial power by an appeal to the gratitude of Rome. But he had not
+his associate's motive for hasty execution; and when Bomilcar warned him
+that the time had come, his mind was appalled by the magnitude of a deed
+that had only been prefigured in an ambiguous and uncertain shape. The
+time for meeting came and passed. Bomilcar was in an agony of impatient
+fear. The doubtful attitude of his associate opened new possibilities of
+danger; a new terror had been added to the old, and the motive for
+despatch was doubled. His alarm found vent in a brief but frantic letter
+which mingled gloomy predictions of the consequences of delay with
+fierce protestations and appeals. Jugurtha, he urged, was doomed, the
+promises of Metellus might at any moment work the ruin of them both, and
+Nabdalsa's choice lay between reward and torture.[1073]
+
+When this missive was delivered by a faithful hand, the general, tired
+in mind and body, had stretched himself upon a couch. The fiery words
+did not stimulate his ardour; they plunged him still deeper in a train
+of anxious thought, until utter weariness gave way to sleep. The letter
+rested on his pillow. Suddenly the covering of the tent door was
+noiselessly raised. His faithful secretary, who believed that he knew
+all his master's secrets, had heard of the arrival of a courier. His
+help and skill would be needed, and he had anticipated Nabdalsa's demand
+for his presence. The letter caught his eye; he lightly picked it up and
+read it, as in duty bound--for did he not deal with all letters, and
+could there be aught of secrecy in a paper so carelessly laid down? The
+plot now flashed across his eyes for the first time, and he slipped from
+the tent to hasten with the precious missive to the king. When Nabdalsa
+awoke, his thoughts turned to the letter which had harassed his last
+waking moments. It was gone, and he soon found that his secretary had
+disappeared as well. A fruitless attempt to pursue the fugitive
+convinced him that his only hope lay in the clemency, prudence or
+credulity of Jugurtha. Hastening to his master, he assured him that the
+service which he had been on the eve of rendering had been anticipated
+by the treachery of his dependent; let not the king forget their close
+friendship, his proved fidelity; these should exempt him from suspicion
+of participation in such a horrid crime.
+
+Jugurtha replied in a conciliatory tone.[1074] Neither then nor
+afterwards did he betray any trace of violent emotion. Bomilcar and many
+of his accomplices were put to death swiftly and secretly; but it was
+not well that rumours of a widely spread treason should be noised
+abroad. The pretence of security was a means of ensuring safety, and he
+had to ask too much of his Numidians to indulge even the severity that
+he held to be his due. Yet it was believed that the tenor of Jugurtha's
+life was altered from that moment. It was whispered that the bold
+soldier and intrepid ruler searched dark corners with his eyes and
+started at sudden sounds, that he would exchange his sleeping chamber
+for some strange and often humble resting place at night, and that
+sometimes in the darkness he would start from sleep, seize his sword and
+cry aloud, as though maddened by the terror of his dreams.
+
+The news of the fall of Bomilcar swept from Metellus's mind the last
+faint hope that the war might be brought to a speedy close by the
+immediate surrender of Jugurtha,[1075] and he began to make earnest
+preparations for a fresh campaign. In the new struggle he was to be
+deprived of the services of his ablest officer, for Marius had at length
+gained his end and had won from his commander a tardy permit to speed to
+Rome and seek the prize, which was doubtless still believed in the
+uninformed circles of the camp to be utterly beyond his grasp. The
+consent, though tardy, was finally given with a good will, for Metellus
+had begun to doubt the wisdom of keeping by his side a lieutenant whose
+restless discontent and growing resentment to his superior were beyond
+all concealment. Marius must have wished that his general's choler had
+been stirred at an earlier date, for the leave had been deferred to a
+season which would have deterred a less strenuous mind, from all
+thoughts of a political campaign during the current year. Delay,
+however, might be fatal; the war might be brought to a dazzling close
+before the consular elections again came round; the political balance at
+Rome might alter; it was necessary to reap at once the harvest of
+mercantile greed and popular distrust that had been so carefully
+prepared. It is possible that the usual date for the elections had
+already been passed and that It was only the postponement of the Comitia
+that gave Marius a chance of success.[1076] Even then it was a slender
+one, for it was believed in later times that his leave had been won only
+twelve days before the day fixed for the declaration of the
+consuls.[1077] In two days and a night he had covered the ground that
+lay between the camp and Utica. Here he paused to sacrifice before
+taking ship to Italy. The cheering words of the priest who read the
+omens[1078] seemed to be approved by the good fortune of his voyage. A
+favourable wind bore him in four days across the sea, and he reached
+Rome to find men craving for his presence as the crowning factor in a
+popular movement, delightful in its novelty and entered into with a
+genuine enthusiasm by the masses, who were fully conscious that there
+was a wrong of some undefined kind to be set right, and were as a whole
+perhaps blissfully ignorant of the intrigues by which they were being
+moved. Yet the thinking portion of the community had some grounds for
+resentment and alarm. The Numidian was not merely injuring those
+interested in African finance, but was engaging an army that was sadly
+needed elsewhere. The struggle in the North was going badly for Rome,
+and despatches had lately brought the news of the defeat of the consul
+Silanus by a vast and wandering horde known as the Cimbri,[1079] who
+hovered like a threatening cloud on the farther side of the Alps and
+might at no distant date sweep past the barrier of Italy. The senatorial
+government, although its position had not been formally assailed, had
+been sufficiently shaken by the Mamilian commission to distrust its
+power of stemming an adverse tide; and Scaurus, its chief bulwark, had
+lately been so ill-advised as to force a conflict with constitutional
+procedure in a way which could not be approved by a class of men to
+which the smallest precedent of political life that had once been
+stereotyped, appealed as a vital element in administration. He had
+spoilt a magnificent display of energy during his tenure of the
+censorship--an energy that issued in the rebuilding of the Mulvian
+bridge[1080] and in the continuance of the great coast road[1081] from
+Etruria past Genua to Dertona in the basin of the Po--by an
+unconstitutional attempt to continue in his office after the death of
+his colleague. His resignation had been enforced by some of the
+tribunes;[1082] and the great man seems still to have been under the
+passing cloud engendered by his own obstinate ambition, when the
+intrigues of the ever-dreaded coalition of the mercantile classes and
+the popular leaders were completed by the arrival of Marius.
+
+This new figurehead of the democracy had a comparatively easy part
+assigned him. Had it been necessary for him to persuade, he would
+probably have failed, for he lacked the gifts of the orator and the
+suppleness of the intriguer; but he was expected only to confirm, and
+better confirmation was to be gained from his martial bearing and his
+rugged manner than from his halting words. The speaking might be done by
+others more practised in the art; a few words of harsh verification from
+this living exemplar of the virtues of the people were all that was
+demanded. His censure of Metellus was followed by a promise that he
+would take Jugurtha alive or dead.[1083] The censure and the promise
+gave the text for a fiery stream of opposition oratory. Threats of
+prosecuting Metellus on a capital charge were mingled with passionate
+assertions of confidence in the true soldier who could vindicate the
+honour of Rome. The excitement spread even beyond the lazier rabble of
+the city. Honest artisans, who were usually untouched by the delirious
+forms of politics, and even thrifty country farmers,[1084] to whom time
+meant money at this busy season of the year, were drawn into the throng
+that gazed at Marius and listened to the burning words of his
+supporters. Against such a concourse the nobility and its dependents
+could make no head. The people who had come to listen stayed to vote,
+and the suffrage of the centuries gave the "new man" as a colleague to
+Lucius Cassius Longinus. But this triumph was but the prelude to
+another. The people, now assembled in the plebeian gathering of the
+tribes, were asked by the tribune Titus Manlius Mancinus whom they
+willed to conduct the war against Jugurtha. The answer "Marius" was
+given by overwhelming numbers, and the decision already reached by the
+senate was brushed aside. That body had, in the exercise of its legal
+authority, determined the provinces which should be administered by the
+consuls of the coming year.[1085] Numidia had not been one of these, for
+it had unquestionably been destined for Metellus. Gaul, on the other
+hand, called for the presence of a consul and a soldier; and the senate,
+although it had no power to make a definite appointment to this
+province, had perhaps intended that Marius, if elected, should be
+entrusted with its defence. Had this resolution been adopted, the paths
+of Marius and Metellus would have ceased to cross; the Numidian war,
+which demanded patience and diplomacy but not genius, might have
+dwindled gradually away; and the barbarians of the North might have
+yielded to their future victor before they had established their gloomy
+record of triumphs over the arms of Rome. But this was not to be. The
+party triumph would be incomplete if the senate's nominee was not ousted
+from his command. We cannot say whether Marius shared in the blindness
+which saw a more glorious field for military energy in Numidia than in
+Gaul; personal rivalry and political passion may have already blunted
+the instincts of the soldier. But, whatever his thoughts may have been,
+his actions were determined by a superior force. He was but a pawn in
+the hands of tribunes and capitalists; he had made promises which had
+raised hopes, definitely commercial and vaguely political. These hopes
+it must be his mission to fulfil. Before quitting Rome he found
+words[1086] which vented all the spleen of the classes screened out of
+office by the close-drawn ring of the nobility. The platitudes of merit,
+tested by honest service and approved by distinctions won in war, were
+advanced against the claims of birth; the luxurious life of the nobility
+was gibbeted on the ground that sensuality was a bar to energy and
+efficiency; even the elegant and conscientious taste of the cultured
+commander, who supplied the defects of experience by the perusal of
+Greek works on military tactics during his journey to the scene of war,
+was held up to criticism as a sign that the vain and ignorant amateur
+was usurping the tasks that belonged to the tried and hardy
+expert.[1087] Fortunately the energy of Marius was better expended on
+deeds than words. Whether the African war really required a more
+vigorous army than that serving under Metellus, might be an open
+question. Marius pretended that the need was patent, and exhibited the
+greatest energy in beating up veteran legionaries and attracting to his
+standard such of the Latin allies as had already approved their skill in
+service.[1088] The senate lent a ready hand. Nothing was more unpopular
+than a drastic levy, and the favourite might fail when he called for a
+fulfilment of the brave language that had been heard on every side. But
+the confidence in the new commander baffled its hopes; the conscripts
+were marching to glory not to danger, and the supplementary army, that
+was to avert a phantom peril and save an imaginary situation, was soon
+enrolled. Such a demonstration had often been seen before in Rome; the
+energy of an ambitious commander had with lamentable frequency rebuked
+the indolence or confidence of his predecessor, and Marius was but
+following in the footsteps of Bestia and Albinus. The real merits of his
+labours were due to his freedom from a strange superstition which had
+hitherto clung to the minds even of the best commanders that the later
+Republic had produced. They had continued to hold the theory that the
+effective soldier must be a man of means--a belief inherited from the
+simple days of border warfare, when each conscript supplied his panoply
+and the landless man could serve only as a half-armed skirmisher. For
+ages past the principle had been breaking down. The vast forces required
+for foreign wars demanded a wider area for the conscription; but this
+area, as defined by the old conditions of service, so far from
+increasing, was ever becoming less. In the age of Polybius the minimum
+qualification requisite for service in the legions had sunk from eleven
+thousand to four thousand asses;[1089] later it had been reduced to a
+yet lower level;[1090] but, in spite of these concessions to necessity,
+the senate had refused to accept the lesson, taught by the military
+needs of the State and the social condition of Italy, that an empire
+cannot be garrisoned by an army of conscripts. The legal power to effect
+a radical alteration had long been in their hands; for the poorer
+proletariate of Rome whom the law described as the men assessed "on
+their heads," not on their holdings, had probably been liable to
+military service of any kind in time of need.[1091] Perhaps it was mere
+conservatism, perhaps it was a faint perception of the truth that an
+armed rabble is fonder of men than institutions, and an appreciation of
+the fact that the hold of the nobility over the capital would be
+weakened if their clients were allowed to don the armour which made them
+men, that had kept the senate within the strait limits of the antiquated
+rules. Fortunately, however, the methods of raising an army depended
+almost entirely on the discretion of the general engaged on the task.
+Did he employ the conscription in a manner not justified by convention,
+he might be met by resistance and appeals; but, if he chose to invite to
+service, there was no power which could prescribe the particular modes
+in which he should employ the units that flocked to his standard. It was
+this latter method that was adopted by Marius. He did not strain his
+popularity, and invite a conflict with senatorial tribunes, by forcing
+foreign service on the ragged freemen who had hailed him as the saviour
+of the State; but he invited their assistance in the glorious work and
+asked them to be his comrades in the triumphal progress that lay before
+him.[1092] The spirit of adventure, if not of patriotism, was touched:
+the call was readily answered, and the stalwart limbs that had lounged
+idly on the streets or striven vainly to secure the subsistence of the
+favoured slave, became the instruments by which the State was to be
+first protected and finally controlled. The conscription still remained
+as the resort of necessity; but the creation of the first mercenary army
+of Rome pointed to the mode in which any future commander could avoid
+the friction and unpopularity which often attended the enforcement of
+liability to service. The innovation of Marius was sufficiently
+startling to attract comment and invite conjecture. Some held that the
+army had been democratised to suit the consulship, and that the masses
+who had seen in Marius's elevation the realisation of the vague and
+detached ambitions of the poor, would continue to furnish a sure support
+to the power which they had created.[1093] It is not unlikely that
+Marius, with his knowledge of the tone of the army of Metellus, may have
+wished to create for himself an environment that would mould the temper
+of his future officers; but those more friendly critics who held that
+efficiency was his immediate aim, and that "the bad" were chosen only
+because "the good" were scarce,[1094] suggested the reason that was
+probably dominant as a motive and was certainly adequate as a defence.
+No thought of the ultimate triumph of the individual over the State by
+the help of a devoted soldiery could have crossed the mind either of the
+consul or of his critics. The Republic was as yet sacred, however
+unhealthy its chief organs might be deemed; and although Marius was to
+live to see the sinister fruit of his own reform, the harvest was to be
+reaped by a rival, and the first fruits enjoyed by the senate whom that
+rival served.
+
+While the election of Marius, his appointment to Numidia, and his
+preparations for the campaign were in progress, the war had been passing
+through its usual phases of skirmishes and sieges. For a time no certain
+news could be had of the king; he was reported at one moment to be near
+the Roman lines, at another to be buried in the solitude of the
+desert;[1095] the annoyance caused by his baffling changes of plan was
+avenged by the interpretation that they were symptoms of a disordered
+mind; his old counsellors were said to have been dispersed, his new ones
+to be distrusted; it was believed that he changed his route and his
+officers from day to day, and that he retreated or retraced his steps as
+the terrors of suspicion and despair alternated with the faintly
+surviving hope that a stand might yet be made. Only once did he come
+into conflict with Metellus.[1096] The site of the skirmish is unknown,
+and its result was indecisive. The Numidian army is said to have been
+surprised and to have formed hastily for battle. The division led by the
+king offered a brief resistance; the rest of the line yielded at once to
+the Roman onset. A few standards and arms, a handful of prisoners, were
+all that the victors had to show for their triumph. The nimble enemy had
+disappeared beyond all hope of capture or pursuit.
+
+After a time news was brought that the king had made for the southern
+desert with a fraction of his mounted troops and the Roman deserters,
+whose despair ensured their loyalty. He had shut himself up in
+Thala,[1097] a large and wealthy town to which his treasures and his
+children had already been transferred. This city lay some thirteen miles
+east of the oasis of Capsa, and a dismal and waterless desert stretched
+between the Romans and the refuge of the king. No Roman army had at any
+part of the campaign attempted to penetrate such trackless regions, and
+the court at Thala may have believed even this foretaste of the desert
+to be an adequate protection against an enemy which clung to towns and
+cultivated lands and relied, in the cumbrous manner of civilised
+warfare, on organised lines of communication. But the news that Jugurtha
+had at last occupied a position, the strength of which, together with
+the presence of his family and treasures within its walls, might supply
+a motive for a lengthy residence within the town and even suggest the
+resolution of holding it against every hazard, fired Metellus with a
+hope which the awkward political situation at Rome must have made more
+real than it deserved to be. The end of the war might be in sight, if he
+could only cross that belt of burning land. His plan was rapidly formed.
+The burden of the baggage animals was reduced to ten days' supply of
+corn; skins of water were laid upon their backs; the domestic cattle
+from the fields were driven in, and they were laden with every kind of
+vessel that could be gathered from the Numidian homesteads. The
+villagers in the neighbourhood of the recent victory, whom the flight of
+the king had made for the moment the humble servants of Rome, were
+bidden to bring water to a certain spot, and the day was named on which
+this mission was to be fulfilled. Metellus's own vessels were filled
+from the river, and the rapid march to Thala was begun. The resting
+place was reached and the camp was entrenched; water was there in
+greater abundance than had been asked or hoped, for a sharp downpour of
+rain made the plethoric skins presented by the punctual Numidians almost
+a superfluous luxury and, as a happy omen, cheered the souls of the
+soldiers as much as it refreshed their bodies.[1098] The devoted
+villagers had also brought an unexpectedly large supply of corn, so
+eager were they to give emphatic proof of their newly acquired loyalty.
+But one day more and the walls of Thala came in sight. Its citizens were
+surprised but not dismayed; they made preparations for the siege, while
+their king vanished into the desert with his children and a large
+portion of his hoarded wealth. It was too much to hope that Jugurtha
+would be caught in such a trap. The alternative prospects at Thala were
+immediate capture or a siege as protracted as the nature of the
+territory would permit. In the latter case a cordon would be drawn round
+the town and a price would probably be put upon the rebel's head. It is
+strange that the desperate band of deserters did not accompany the king
+in his flight. There may have been no time for the retreat of so large a
+force, or the strength and desolation of the site may have filled them
+with confidence of success. But, if things came to the worst, they had a
+surprise in store for their former comrades who were now battering
+against the walls.
+
+Metellus, in spite of the fact that he had lightened his baggage animals
+of all the superfluities of the camp, must have brought his siege train
+with him; it would, indeed, have been madness to attempt an assault on a
+fortified town without the necessary instruments of attack. He seems in
+his lines round Thala to have had all that he needed for a blockade;
+even the planks for the great moving turrets were ready to his
+hand.[1099] The engines were soon in place on an artificial mound raised
+by the labour of the troops, the soldiers advanced under cover of the
+mantlets, and the rams began to batter against the walls. For forty days
+the courage of the besieged tried the patience of assailants already
+wearied with the toils of a long forced march. Had human endurance been
+the deciding factor, Metellus might have been forced to retire. But the
+wall of Thala was weaker than the spirit of its defenders; a portion of
+the rampart crumbled beneath the blows of the ram, and the victorious
+Romans rushed in to seize the plunder of the treasure-city. They found
+instead a holocaust of wealth and human victims. The royal palace had
+been invaded by the deserters from the Roman army whom Jugurtha had left
+behind. Thither they had borne the gold, the silver and the precious
+stuffs which formed the glory of the town. A feast was spread and
+continued until the banqueters were heavy with meat and wine. The palace
+was then fired, and when the plundering mob of Romans had made their way
+to the centre of the city's wealth, they found but the smouldering
+traces of a baffled vengeance and a disappointed greed.
+
+The capture of Thala was one of those successes which might have been
+important, had it been possible to limit the area of the war or to check
+the disaffection which was now spreading throughout almost the whole of
+Northern Africa. The fringe of the desert had but been reached; the king
+had fled beyond it; the south and west were soon to be in a blaze; we
+shall soon see Metellus forced to take up his position in the north; and
+a slight incident which occurred while Metellus was at Thala showed that
+even cities of the distant east, which had never been under the
+immediate sway of the Numidian power, were wavering in their attachment
+to Rome. The Greater Leptis, situate in the territory of the Three
+Cities between the gulfs which separated Roman Africa from the territory
+of Cyrene, had sought the friendship and alliance of Rome from the very
+commencement of the war. A Sidonian settlement,[1100] it had, like most
+commercial towns which sought a life of peace, preferred the
+protectorate of Rome to that of the neighbouring dynasties, and had
+readily responded to the calls made on it by Bestia, Albinus and
+Metellus.[1101] Such assistance as it furnished must have been supplied
+by sea, for it was more than four hundred miles by land from the usual
+sphere of Roman operations; but the commissariat of the Roman army was
+so serious a problem that the ships of the men of Leptis must always
+have been a welcome sight at the port of Utica. Now the stability of
+their constitution, and their service to Rome, were threatened by the
+ambition of a powerful noble. This Hamilcar was defying the authority
+both of laws and magistrates, and Leptis, they wrote, would be lost, if
+Metellus did not send timely help. Four cohorts of Ligurians with a
+praefect at their head were sent to the faithful state, and the Roman
+general turned to meet the graver dangers which were threatening in
+the west.
+
+Jugurtha had crossed the desert with a handful of his men and was now
+amongst the Gaetulian tribes,[1102] who stretched from the limits of his
+own dominions far across the southern frontier of his brother king of
+Mauretania. His eyes were now turned to the west; the men of the desert,
+the King of the Moors, would be infallible means of prolonging the war
+with Rome, if their help could be secured. No Roman army had yet dared
+to penetrate even into Western Numidia, and such a venture would be more
+hopeless than ever, if the nomad tribes of the desert frontier and
+Bocchus of Mauretania enclosed that district with myriads of mounted men
+that might sweep it at any time from point to point, and destroy in a
+moment the laborious efforts at occupation that might be made by Rome.
+The Gaetulians, although perhaps a nomad, were not a barbarian people.
+They plied with Mediterranean cities a trade in purple dye, the material
+for which was gathered on the Atlantic coast; and their merchants were
+sometimes seen in the marketplace at Cirta;[1103] but as fighting men
+they lacked even the organisation to which the Numidians had attained,
+and Jugurtha, while he sought or purchased their help, was obliged to
+teach them the rudiments of disciplined warfare. Gradually they learnt
+to keep the line, to follow the standards, to wait for the word of
+command before they threw themselves upon the foe;[1104] these untrained
+warriors must have been fired mainly by the love of adventure, of pay or
+of plunder, or have been impressed by the greatness of the fugitive who
+had suddenly appeared amongst their tribes; they had no hatred or
+previous fear of the power of Rome, for most of the Gaetulian chiefs
+were ignorant even of the name of the imperial city.[1105]
+
+This name, however, had long been in the mind of the king who governed
+the northern neighbours of the Gaetulians, and it was to the fears or
+hopes of Bocchus of Mauretania that Jugurtha now appealed with the
+design of gaining an auxiliary force greater than any which he himself
+could put into the field. He had a claim on the Mauretanian king which
+might have been valid in a land in which polygamy did not prevail, for
+he was the husband of that monarch's daughter; but the dissipation of
+affection amongst a multitude of wives and their respective progeny did
+not permit the connection with a son-in-law to be a particularly binding
+tie.[1106] There were, however, other motives which might spur the king
+to action. His early overtures to Rome had been rejected, and this
+neglect must have aroused in his mind a feeling of anxiety as well as of
+wounded pride. If Rome conquered Numidia, she might become his
+neighbour. What in that case would be the position of Mauretania,
+connected as it would be by no previous ties of friendship or alliance
+with the conquering state? If Bacchus joined Jugurtha, he would
+immediately become a power with whom Rome would be forced to deal. An
+ally detached from her enemies had often become her most trusted friend;
+it was thus that the power of Masinissa had been secured and his kingdom
+had been increased. If Jugurtha were victorious, the Romans would be
+kept at bay; if he showed signs of failure, the defection of Bocchus
+might be bought at a great price. The game on which he had entered was
+absolutely safe; he could only be the loser if at the critical moment
+chivalry or national sentiment interfered with the designs of a
+calculating prudence. The great necessity of his position was to force
+the hand of the Roman general and the Roman senate; but meanwhile he
+would keep an open mind and see whether the power which he dreaded might
+not be permanently kept at bay.
+
+It may have been with thoughts like these that Bocchus bowed to the
+teaching of his counsellors when they urged a meeting with
+Jugurtha.[1107] The meeting was that of equals, not of a suppliant and
+his protector. The Numidian king again headed an army of his own, and,
+after the oath of alliance had been given and received, exhorted his
+father-in-law in his own interest to join in a war that was as necessary
+as it was just. The Romans, he pointed out, had been made by their lust
+for conquest the common enemies of the human race. One had only to look
+at their treatment of Perseus of Macedon, of Carthage, of himself. Who
+was Bocchus that he alone should be immune from such a danger? The mood
+of the king responded to Jugurtha's words, and without an instant's
+delay they took the field together. Jugurtha was insistent on despatch,
+for he knew the varying temper of his relative and feared that even a
+slight delay would cool his resolve for decisive action.
+
+The scene of the war now shifts with amazing suddenness to the north and
+centres for the first time round the walls of Cirta.[1108] Metellus had
+evidently been drawn from the south by the news of the threatened
+coalition; for, if the territories near the coast were undefended, the
+Mauretanians might sweep like a devastating storm over the land that
+might have been held with some show of justice to be in the possession
+of Rome. Cirta now appears as within the pacified territory and,
+although we have no record as to the time when it was lost by
+Jugurtha,[1109] its possession by the Romans need excite no surprise. It
+may have been lost at an early period of the war, for there is no sign
+that it was employed by Jugurtha either as a military or political
+capital, and if, in spite of the massacre that had followed its capture
+from Adherbal, its cosmopolitan mercantile life had been revived, the
+attachment of the town to Rome would be assured on the news of the
+waning fortunes of its king. Its surrender was certainly peaceful, and
+the strength which might have defied the arms of Rome had rendered it
+incapable of recovery by its former owner. To Cirta Metellus had
+transferred his prisoners, his booty and his baggage,[1110] and it was
+against Cirta that the two kings moved with their formidable force.
+Jugurtha was the moving spirit in the enterprise, his idea being that,
+even if the town could not be taken, the Romans would be forced to come
+to its support and a battle would be fought beneath its walls. A battle
+was now an issue to be courted, for never had he faced the enemy with
+greater numbers on his side.
+
+Metellus was as fully conscious of the change in the situation. Lately
+he had been forcing himself on Jugurtha at every point; now he held back
+and waited for the favourable chance. He wished above all to learn
+something of the fighting spirit and methods of the Moors;[1111] they
+were an untried foe, and Roman success was usually the fruit of
+knowledge and not of experiment. He waited in his fortified camp near
+Cirta to watch events, when news was brought from Rome which proved to
+his mind that cautious inaction was now not merely the wiser but the
+only policy. The news that came by letter was of stunning force.
+Metellus had already learnt of Marius's election to the consulship. This
+knowledge should have prepared him for the worst; but a proud man,
+conscious of his deserts, will not meet in anticipation an event that,
+however probable, seems incredible. Yet here it was before him in black
+and white. He had been superseded in his command and the province of
+Numidia belonged to Marius.[1112] There was no pretence of
+self-restraint; tears rose to his eyes, as bitter language flowed from
+his lips. It was disputed whether natural pride or the sense of
+unmerited wrong was the secret of his wrath, or whether he held (as many
+thought) that a victory already won was being wrested from his grasp.
+But it was safely conjectured that his grief would not have been so
+violent had any man but Marius been his successor.
+
+To risk a defeat at the moment when the command was slipping from his
+grasp seemed to Metellus the height of folly; but, even had he not
+possessed this additional motive for inaction, the situation would
+probably have forced him to temporise and to attempt to dissolve the
+hostile coalition by diplomacy. He therefore sent a message to Bocchus
+urging him to think seriously of the course of action which he had
+adopted.[1113] An opportunity was still open to him of becoming the
+friend and ally of Rome; why should he adopt this motiveless attitude of
+hostility? The cause of Jugurtha was desperate; did the King of
+Mauretania wish to bring his own country into the same miserable plight?
+These were the first words that Bocchus had heard of a possible
+convention with Rome; he had scored the first point, but was much too
+wise to give away the game. Definite offers must be made and securely
+guaranteed before he would withdraw the terror of his presence. Firmness
+and conciliation must be blended in his answer, which, when delivered,
+was both gracious and chivalrous. He longed, he said, for peace, but was
+stirred to pity for the fortunes of Jugurtha. If the latter were also
+given the chance of making terms with Rome, all might be arranged.
+Metellus replied with another message framed to meet the position taken
+up by the king; the answer of Bocchus was a cautious mixture of assent
+and protest. As he showed no unwillingness to continue the discussion,
+Metellus occupied the remainder of his own tenure of the command in
+further parleyings. Envoys came and went, and the war was practically
+suspended. A delicate and promising negotiation was on foot; it remained
+to be seen whether it would be patiently continued or rudely interrupted
+by the new governor of Numidia.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The summer must have been well advanced when Marius landed at Utica with
+his untried forces. The veterans were handed over to his care by the
+legate Rutilius[1114] for Metellus had fled the sight of the man, whose
+success had been based on a slanderous attack on his own reputation. It
+must have been with a heavy heart that he accomplished the voyage to
+Rome; for the greatest expert in the moods of the people could scarcely
+have foretold the surprise that awaited him there. The popular passion
+was spent; it was a feverish force that had burnt itself out; the
+country voters had at last bethought themselves of their work and
+returned to their farms; many of the most active and disorderly spirits,
+the restless loud-voiced men who are the potent minority in an
+agitation, had been removed by the levy of Marius; with the city mob
+docility generally alternated with revolution, and it was now inclined
+to look to the verdict of the recognised heads of the State. In this
+moment of reaction, too, many must have been inclined to wonder what
+after all could be said against this general who had never lost a
+battle, who had conquered cities and pitilessly revenged the one
+disaster which was not his fault, who had constantly swept the terrible
+King of Numidia as a helpless fugitive before him. The presence of
+Metellus completed the work by giving stability to these half-formed
+views. The common folk are the true idealists. They love a hero rather
+better than a victim, although it often depends on the turn of a hair
+which part the object of their attentions is to play. Now they followed
+the lead of the senate; the returned commander was the man of the
+day[1115] he had exalted the glory of the Roman name; and if there was
+no fault, there could only have been misfortune; but misfortune might be
+compensated by honour. There was the prospect of a triumph in store,
+that mixed source of sensuous satisfaction and national
+self-congratulation. Thus Metellus won his prizes from the Numidian war,
+a parade through the streets to the Capitol and the addition of the
+surname "Numidicus" to the already lengthy nomenclature of his
+house[1116]
+
+The war itself, under the guidance of Marius, soon assumed the character
+which it had possessed under that of all his predecessors. The
+originality of the new commander seemed to have spent itself in the
+selection of his troops; no new idea seems to have been introduced into
+the conduct of operations, which resumed their old shapes of precautions
+against surprise, weary marches from end to end of Numidia, and the
+siege of strongholds which were no sooner taken than they proved to be
+beyond the area of actual hostilities. Perhaps no new idea was possible
+except one that exchanged the weapons of war for those of diplomacy; but
+even the final attempt that had been made in this direction by Metellus
+was not continued by Marius. Bocchus, unwilling to lose the chance which
+had been presented of a definite convention with Home, sent repeated
+messages to her new representative to the effect that he desired the
+friendship of the Roman people, and that no acts of hostility on his
+part need be feared[1117] but his protestations were received with
+distrust, and Marius, accustomed to the duplicity of the African mind
+and rejecting the view that the king might really be wavering between
+war and peace, chose to regard them as the treacherous cover for a
+sudden attack. The desultory campaign which followed seems to have been
+directed by two motives. The first was the training of the raw levies
+which had just been brought from Rome; the second the supposed necessity
+of cutting Jugurtha off from the strongholds which he still held at the
+extremities of his kingdom. As these extremities were now threatened or
+commanded, on the south by the Gaetulians and on the west by the
+Mauretanians, the area of the war was no less than that of Numidia
+itself; and, as the occupation of such an area was impossible, the
+destruction of these strongholds, which was little loss to a mobile
+self-supporting force such as that which Jugurtha had at his command,
+was the utmost end which could be secured.
+
+The practice of the untrained Roman levies was rendered easy by the fact
+that Jugurtha had resumed the offensive. He no longer had the help of
+his Mauretanian auxiliaries, for Bocchus had retired to his own kingdom,
+and he had therefore lost his desire for a pitched battle; but his
+swarms of Gaetulian horse had enabled him to resume his old style of
+guerilla fighting, and he had taken advantage of the practical
+suspension of hostilities which had accompanied the change in the Roman
+command, to set on foot a series of raids against the friends of Rome
+and even to penetrate the borders of the Roman province itself.[1118]
+For some time the attention of Marius was absorbed in following his
+difficult tracks, in striving to anticipate his rapidly shifting plans,
+in creating in his own men the habits of endurance, the mobility and the
+strained attention, which even a brief period of such a chase will
+rapidly engender in the rawest of recruits. The pursuit gradually
+shifted to the west, and a series of sharp conflicts on the road ended
+finally in the rout of the king in the neighbourhood of Cirta. With
+troops now seasoned to the toils of long marches and deliberate attack,
+Marius turned to the more definite, if not more effective, enterprise of
+beleaguering such fortified positions as were still strongly held, and
+by their position seemed to give a strategic advantage to the enemy. His
+object was either to strip Jugurtha of these last garrisons or to force
+him to a battle if he came to their defence. At first he confined his
+operations within a narrow area; the best part of the summer months
+seems to have been spent in the territory lying east and south of Cirta,
+and within this region several fortresses and castles still adhering to
+the king were reduced by persuasion or by force.[1119] Yet Jugurtha made
+no move, and Marius gained a full experience of the helpless irritation
+of the commander who hears that his enemy is far away, neglectful of his
+efforts and wholly absorbed in some deep-laid scheme the very rudiments
+of which are beyond the reach of conjecture. His operations seem to have
+brought him to a point somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sicca, and this
+proximity to the southern regions of Numidia suggested the thought of an
+enterprise that might rival and even surpass Metellus's storm of Thala.
+About thirteen miles west of that town[1120] lay the strong city of
+Capsa.[1121] It marked almost the extremest limit of Jugurtha's empire
+in this direction, placed as it was just north of the great lakes and
+west of the deepest curve of the Lesser Syrtis. The town was the gift of
+an oasis, which here broke the monotony of the desert with pleasant
+groves of dates and olives and a perennial stream of water. The sources
+of this stream, which was formed by the union of two fountains, had been
+enclosed within the walls, and supplied drinking water for the city
+before it passed beyond it to irrigate the land. Even this supply hardly
+sufficed for the moderate needs of the Numidians, who supplemented it by
+rain water[1122] which they caught and stored in cisterns. A siege of
+Capsa in the dry season might therefore prove irksome to the
+inhabitants; but the invading army might be even less well supplied, for
+although four other springs outside the walls fed the canals which
+served the work of irrigation, they tended to run low when the season of
+rain was past. The security of the city, although its defences and its
+garrison were strong, was thought to reside mainly in its desert
+barrier. The waste through which an invading army would have to pass was
+waterless and barren, while the multitude of snakes and scorpions that
+found a congenial home on the arid soil increased the horror, if not the
+danger, of the route.[1123] Jugurtha had dealt kindly by the lonely
+citizens of Capsa; they were free from taxes and had seldom to answer to
+any demand of the king: and this favour, which was perhaps as much the
+product of necessity as of policy, had strengthened their loyalty to the
+Numidian throne. It is probable that some strategic, or at least
+military, motive was mingled in the mind of Marius with the mere desire
+of excelling his predecessor and creating a deep impression in the minds
+of the proletariate in his army and at home. Although Capsa, with its
+limited resources, could hardly ever have served as the point of
+departure for a large Numidian or Gaetulian host, it might have been of
+value as a refuge for the king when he wished to vanish from the eyes of
+his enemies, and perhaps as a means of communication with friendly
+cities or peoples situated between the two Syrtes. To vanquish the
+difficulties of such an enterprise might also strike terror into the
+Numidian garrisons of other towns, and the subjects of Jugurtha might
+feel that no stronghold was safe when the unapproachable Capsa had been
+taken or destroyed. But the difficulties of the task were great. The
+Numidians of these regions were more attached to a pastoral life than to
+agriculture; the stores of corn to be found along the route were
+therefore scanty, and their scarcity was increased by the fact that the
+king, who seems but lately to have passed through these regions, had
+ordered that large supplies of grain should be conveyed from the
+district and stored in the fortresses which his garrisons still
+held.[1124] Nothing could be got from the fields, which at this late
+period of the autumn showed nothing but arid stubble. It was fortunate
+that some stores still lay at Lares (Lorbeus), a town at a short
+distance to the south-east of his present base;[1125] these were to be
+supplemented by the cattle that the foraging parties had driven in, and
+the Roman soldier would at least have his unwelcome supply of meat
+tempered by a moderate allowance of meal. Yet the terrors of the journey
+were so great that Marius thought it wise to conceal the object of his
+enterprise even from his own men, and even when, after a six days' march
+to the south, he had reached a stream called the Tana,[1126] the motive
+of the expedition was still in all probability unknown. Here, as in
+Metellus's march on Thala, a large supply of water was drawn from the
+river and stored in skins, all heavy baggage was discarded, and the
+lightened column prepared for its march across the desert. By day the
+soldiers kept their camp and every stage of the journey was accomplished
+between night-fall and dawn. On the morning of the third day they had
+reached some rising ground not more than two miles from Capsa.[1127] The
+sun had not yet risen when Marius halted his men in a hollow of the
+dunes, and watched the town to see whether his cautious plans had really
+effected a surprise. Evidently they had; for, when day broke, the gates
+were seen to open and large numbers of Numidians could be observed
+leaving the city for the business of the fields. The word was given, and
+in a moment the whole of the cavalry and the lightest of the infantry
+were dashing on the town. They were meant to block the gates; while
+Marius and the heavier troops followed as speedily as they could,
+driving the straggling Numidians before them. It was the possession of
+these hostages that decided the fate of the town. The commandant
+parleyed and agreed to admit the Romans within the walls, the condition,
+whether tacit or expressed, of this surrender being that the lives of
+the citizens should be spared. The condition was immediately broken. The
+town was given over to the flames, all the Numidians of full age were
+put to the sword, the rest were sold into slavery, and the movable
+property which had been seized was divided amongst the soldiers. The
+breach of international custom was not denied; the only attempt at
+palliation was drawn from the reflection that it was due neither to
+motiveless treachery nor to greed; a position like Capsa, it was
+urged,--difficult of approach, open to the enemy, the home of a race
+notorious for its mobile cunning-could be held neither by leniency nor
+by fear.[1128] The expedition had miscarried, if the town was not
+destroyed; and, as frequently happens in the pursuit of wars with
+peoples to whom the convenient epithet of "barbarian" can be applied,
+the successful fruit of cruelty and treachery was perhaps defended on
+the ground that the obligations of international law must be either
+reciprocal or non-existent.
+
+The destruction of Capsa was followed by other successes of a similar
+though less arduous kind. The event had served the purpose of Marius
+well in so far as it spread before him a name of terror which caused
+some of the Numidian garrisons to flee their strong places without a
+struggle. In the few cases where resistance was met, it was beaten down,
+and the fortified places which Jugurtha's soldiers were not rash enough
+to defend, were utterly destroyed by fire.[1129] Marius left a
+wilderness behind him on his return march to winter quarters,[1130] and
+perhaps renewed his devastating course in the south-eastern parts of
+Numidia during the spring of the following year, before his attention
+was suddenly called to another point in the vast area of the war. This
+easy triumph which cost little Roman blood and enriched the soldiers
+with the spoils of war, created in his men a belief in his foresight and
+prowess which seemed sufficient to stand the severest strain.[1131] A
+great effort had now to be made in a quarter of Numidia which lay not
+less than seven hundred miles from the recent scene of operations. As
+neither the site of Marius's recent winter quarters nor the base which
+he chose for his spring campaign are known to us, we cannot say whether
+the expedition which he now directed to the extreme west of Numidia was
+an unpleasant diversion from a scheme already in operation, or whether
+it was the result of a plan matured in the winter camp; but in either
+case this conviction of the necessity for sweeping the country in such
+utterly diverse directions proves the full success of the plan which
+Jugurtha was pursuing. It is more difficult to determine whether Marius
+increased the success of this plan by a political blunder of his own.
+The point at which he is now found operating was near the river Muluccha
+or Molocath,[1132] the dividing line between the kingdoms of Numidia and
+Mauretania. If the incursion which he made into this region was
+unprovoked, it was a challenge to King Bocchus and an impolitic
+disturbance of the recent attitude of quiescence that had been assumed
+by that hesitating monarch; but it is possible that news had reached
+Marius that a Mauretanian attack was impending, and that the same motive
+which had impelled Metellus to hasten from the south to the defence of
+Cirta, now urged his successor to push his army more than five hundred
+miles farther to the west up to the very borders of Mauretania. The
+movement seems to have been defensive, for at the moment when we catch
+sight of his efforts he had not attempted to cross the admitted
+frontier,[1133] but was endeavouring to secure a strong position that
+lay within what he conceived to be the Numidian territory. A giant rock
+rose sheer out of the plain, tapering into the narrow fortress which
+continued by its walls an ascent so smoothly precipitous that it seemed
+as though the work of nature had been improved by the hand of man.[1134]
+But one narrow path led to the summit and was believed to be the only
+way, not merely to a position of supreme value for defensive purposes,
+but also to one of those rich deposits which the many-treasured king was
+held to have laid up in the strongest parts of his dominions. The
+difficulties of a siege were almost insurmountable. The garrison was
+strong and well supplied with food and water; the only avenue for a
+direct assault upon the walls was narrow and dangerous; the site was as
+ill-suited as it could be for the movement of the heavier engines of
+war. When the attack was made, the mantlets of the besiegers were easily
+destroyed by fire and stones hurled from above; yet the soldiers could
+not leave cover, nor get a firm hold on the steeply sloping ground; the
+foremost amongst the storming party fell stricken with wounds, and a
+panic seemed likely to prevail amidst the ever-victorious army if it
+were again urged to the attack. While Marius was brooding over this
+unexpected check, and his mind was divided between the wisdom of a
+retreat and the chances that might be offered by delay, an accident
+supplied the defects of strength and counsel.[1135] A Ligurian in quest
+of snails was tempted to pursue his search from ridge to ridge on that
+side of the hill which lay away from the avenue of attack and had
+hitherto been deemed inaccessible. He suddenly found that he had nearly
+reached the summit; a spirit of emulation urged him to complete the work
+which he had unconsciously begun, and the branches of a giant holmoak,
+which twisted amongst the rocks, gave him a hold and footing when the
+perpendicular walls of the last ascent seemed to deny all chance of
+further progress. When at length he craned over the edge of the highest
+ridge, the interior of the fort lay spread before him. No member of the
+garrison was to be seen, for every man was engaged in repelling the
+assault which had been renewed on the opposite side. A prolonged survey
+was therefore possible, and all the important details of the fortress
+were imprinted on the mind of the Ligurian before he began his leisurely
+descent. The features of the slope he traversed were also more
+cautiously observed; the next ascent would be attempted by more than
+one, and every irregularity that might give a foothold must be noted by
+the man who would have to prove and illustrate his tale. When the story
+was told to Marius he sent some of his retinue to view the spot; their
+reports differed according to the character of their minds; some of the
+investigators were sanguine, others more than doubtful; but the consul
+eventually determined to make the experiment. The escalade was to be
+attempted by a band of ten; five of the trumpeters and buglemen were
+selected and four centurions, the Ligurian was to be their guide. With
+head and feet bare, their only armour a sword and light leathern shield
+slung across their backs, the soldiers painfully imitated the daring
+movements of their active leader. But he was considerate as well as
+daring. Sometimes he would weave a scaling ladder of the trailing
+creepers; at others he would lend a helping hand; at others again he
+would gather up their armour and send them on before him, then step
+rapidly aside and pass with his burden up and down their struggling
+line. His cheery boldness kept them to their painful task until every
+man had reached the level of the fort. It was as desolate as when first
+seen by the Ligurian, for Marius had taken care that a frontal attack
+should engage the attention of the garrison. The climb had been a long
+one, and the battle had now been raging many hours when news was brought
+to the anxious commander that his men had gained the summit.[1136] The
+assault was now renewed with a force that astonished the besieged, and
+soon with a recklessness that led them to think the besiegers mad. They
+could see the Roman commander himself leaving the cover of the mantlets
+and advancing in the midst of his men up the perilous ascent under a
+tortoise fence of uplifted shields. Over the heads of the advancing
+party came a storm of missiles from the Roman lines below. Confident as
+the Numidians were in the strength of their position, scornful as were
+the gibes which a moment earlier they had been hurling against the foe,
+they could not think lightly of the serried mass that was moving up the
+hill and the rain of bullets that heralded its advance. Every hand was
+busy and every mind alert when suddenly the Roman trumpet call was heard
+upon their rear. The women and boys, who had crept out to watch the
+fight, were the first to take the alarm and to rush back to the shelter
+of the fort; most of the men were fighting in advance of their outer
+walls; those nearest to the ramparts were the first to be seized with
+the panic; but soon the whole garrison was surging backwards, while
+through and over it pressed the long and narrow wedge of Romans, cutting
+their way through the now defenceless mass until they had seized the
+outworks of the fort.
+
+It is difficult to gauge the positive advantages secured by this feat of
+arms; but it is probable that the capture of this particular
+hill-fortress, although its difficulty gave it undue prominence in the
+annals of the war, was not an isolated fact, but one of a series of
+successful attempts to establish a chain of posts upon the Mauretanian
+border, which might bring King Bocchus to better counsels and interrupt
+his communications with Jugurtha. The enterprise may have been followed
+by a tolerably long campaign in these regions. This campaign has not
+been recorded, but that it was contemplated is proved by the fact that
+Marius had ordered an enormous force of cavalry to meet him near the
+Muluccha.[1137] The force thus summoned actually served the purpose of
+covering a retirement that was practically a retreat; but this could not
+have been the object which it was intended to fulfil when its presence
+was commanded. A large force of horse was essential, if Bocchus was to
+be paralysed and the border country swept clear of the enemy. The cloud
+that was to burst from Mauretania was not the only chance that could be
+foretold; it was the issue to be dreaded, if all plans at prevention
+failed; but it was one that might possibly be averted by the presence of
+a commanding force in the border regions.
+
+It had taken nearly a year to collect and transport from Italy the
+cavalry force that now entered the camp of Marius. The reason why Italy
+and not Africa was chosen as the recruiting ground is probably to be
+found in the lack of confidence which the Romans felt even in those
+Numidians who professed a friendly attitude; otherwise cheapness and
+even efficiency might seem to have dictated the choice of native
+contingents, although it is possible that, as a defensive force, the
+tactical solidarity of the Italians gave them an advantage even over the
+Numidian horse. The Latins and Italian allies had furnished the troopers
+that had lately landed on African soil,[1138] perhaps not at the port of
+Utica, but at some harbour on the west, for the time consumed by Marius
+in the march to his present position, even had not his campaign been
+planned in winter quarters, would have given him an opportunity to send
+notice of his whereabouts to the leader of the auxiliary force. This
+leader was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who had spent nearly the whole of the
+first year of his quaestorship in beating up on Italian soil the troops
+of horsemen which he now led into the camp. In comparison with the
+arrival of the force that of the quaestor was as nothing; yet the advent
+of such a subordinate was always a matter of interest to a general.
+Tradition had determined that the ties between a commander and his
+quaestor should be peculiarly close; the superior was responsible for
+every act of the minor official whom the chance of the lot might thrust
+upon him; if his subordinate were capable, he was the chosen delegate
+for every delicate operation in finance, diplomacy, jurisdiction, or
+even war: if he were incapable, he might be dismissed,[1139] but could
+not be neglected, for he was besides the general the only man in the
+province holding the position of a magistrate, and was in titular rank
+superior even to the oldest and most distinguished of the legates.[1140]
+It was a matter of chance whether a government or a campaign was to be
+helped or hindered by the arrival of a new quaestor; and Marius, when he
+first heard of the man whom destiny had brought to his side, was
+inclined to be sceptical as to the amount of assistance which was
+promised by the new appointment.[1141] Apart from a remarkable personal
+appearance--an impression due to the keen blueness of the eyes, the
+clear pallor of the face, the sudden flush that spread at moments over
+the cheeks as though the vigour of the mind could be seen pulsing
+beneath the delicate skin[1142]--there was little to recommend Sulla to
+the mind of a hard and stern man engaged in an arduous and disappointing
+task. The new lieutenant had no military experience, he was the scion of
+a ruined patrician family, and, if the gossip of Rome were true, his
+previous life suggested the light-hearted adventurer rather than the
+student of politics or war. In his early youth he seemed destined to
+continue the later traditions of his family--those of an unaspiring
+temper or a careless indolence, which had allowed the consulship to
+become extinct in the annals of the race and had been long content with
+the minor prize of the praetorship. Even this honour had been beyond the
+reach of the father of Sulla; the hereditary claim to office had been
+completely broken, and the family fortune had sunk so low that there
+seemed little chance of the renewal of this claim. The present bearer of
+the name, the elder son of the house, had lived in hired rooms, and such
+slender means as he could command seemed to be employed in gratifying a
+passion for the stage.[1143] Yet this taste was but one expression of a
+genuine thirst for culture;[1144] and, whatever the opinion of men might
+be, this youth whose most strenuous endeavours were strangely mingled
+with a careless geniality and an appetite that never dulled for the
+pleasures of the senses and the flesh, had a wonderful faculty for
+winning the love of women. His father had made a second marriage with a
+lady of considerable means; and the affection of the step-mother, who
+seems to have been herself childless, was soon centred on her husband's
+elder son.[1145] At her death he was found to be her heir, and the
+fortune thus acquired was added to or increased by another that had also
+come by way of legacy from a woman. This benefactress was Nicopolis, a
+woman of Greek birth, whose transitory loves, which had Brought her
+wealth, were closed by a lasting passion for the man to Whom this wealth
+was given.[1146] The possession of this competence, which might have
+completed the wreck of the nerveless pleasure-seeker that Sulla seemed
+to be, proved the true steel of which the man was made. The first steps
+in his political career gave the immediate lie to any theory of wasted
+opportunities. He had but exceeded by a year or two the minimum age for
+office when he was elected to the quaestorship; he was but thirty-one
+when he was scouring Italy for recruits;[1147] a year later he had
+entered Marius's camp near the Muluccha with his host of cavalry. A very
+brief experience was sufficient to convert the general's prejudice into
+the heartiest approval of his new officer. Any spirit of emulation which
+Sulla possessed was but shown in action and counsel; none could outstrip
+him in prowess and forethought, yet all that he did seemed to be the
+easy outcome either of opportunity or of a ready wit which charmed
+without startling: and he was never heard to breathe a word which
+reflected on the conduct of the pro-consul or his staff. Over the petty
+officers and the soldiers he attained the immediate triumph which
+attends supreme capacity combined with a facile temper and a sense of
+humour. His old companions of the stage had been perhaps his best
+instructors in the art of moulding the will of the common man. He had
+the right address for every one; a grumble was met by a few kind words;
+a roar of laughter was awakened by a ready jest, and its recipient was
+the happier for the day. When help was wanted, his resources seemed
+boundless; yet he never gave as though he expected a return, and the
+idea of obligation was dismissed with a shrug and a smile.[1148] Sulla
+was not one of the clumsy intriguers who laboriously lay up a store of
+favour and are easily detected in the attempt. He was a terrible man
+because his insight and his charm were a part of his very nature, as
+were also the dark current of ambition, scarcely acknowledged even by
+its possessor, and the surging tides of passion, carefully dammed by an
+exquisitely balanced intellect into a level stream, on which crowds
+might float and believe themselves to be victims or agents of an
+overmastering principle, not of a single man's caprice.
+
+The capacity of every officer in Marius's army was soon to be put to an
+effective test; for the coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus, which the
+campaign might have been meant to prevent, turned out to be its
+immediate result. The Moor was still hesitating between peace and
+war--looking still, it may be, for another bid from the representative
+of Rome, and waiting for the moment when he might compel the attention
+of Metellus's rude successor, who preferred the precautions of war to
+those of diplomacy--when the Numidian king, in despair at this ruinous
+passivity and at the loss of the magnificent strategic chance that was
+being offered by the enemy, approached his father-in-law with the
+proposal that the cession of one-third of Numidia should be the price of
+his assistance. The cession was to take effect, either if the Romans
+were driven out of Africa, or if a settlement was reached with Rome
+which left the boundaries of Numidia intact.[1149] Bocchus may not have
+credited the likelihood of the realisation of the first alternative; but
+combined action might render the second possible, and even if that
+failed, his chances of a bargain with Rome were not decreased by
+entering on a policy of hostility which might be closed at the opportune
+moment. For the time, however, he played vigorously for Jugurtha's
+success. His troops of horsemen poured over the border to join the
+Numidian force, and the combined armies moved rapidly to the east to
+encompass the columns of Marius, that had just begun their long march to
+the site which had been chosen for winter quarters.
+
+The object of the Roman general was to keep in touch with the sea for
+the purpose of facilitating the supply of his army. But we cannot say
+whether his original choice was a station so distant as the
+neighbourhood of Cirta,[1150] or whether his movement in this direction,
+which severed him by some hundreds of miles from the region which he had
+lately commanded, was a measure forced on him by the danger to which his
+army was exposed in the distant west from the overwhelming forces of the
+enemy. He had at any rate covered a great stretch of territory before he
+actually came into touch with the combined forces of Bocchus and
+Jugurtha; for the almost continuous fighting that ensued, when once the
+armies had come into contact, seems all to have been confined to the
+last few days before Cirta was reached and to a period of time which
+could have formed but a small fraction of the whole duration of the
+march. The first attack was planned for the closing hours of the
+day.[1151] The advent of night would be of advantage to the native force
+whether they were victorious or defeated. In the first case their
+knowledge of the ground would enable them to follow up their success, in
+the second their retreat would be secured. Under all circumstances a
+struggle in the darkness must increase the difficulties of the Romans. A
+complete surprise was impossible, for Marius's scouting was good, and
+from all directions horsemen dashed up to tell him the enemy was at
+hand. But the quarter from which such an attack would be aimed could not
+be determined, and so incredibly rapid were the movements of the Moorish
+and Gaetulian horse that scarcely had the last messenger ridden up when
+the Roman column was assailed on every side. The Roman army had no time
+to form in line, and anything approaching battle array was scorned by
+the enemy. They charged in separate squadrons, the formation of which
+seemed to be due to chance as much as to design; this desultory mode of
+attack enabled them to assail the Roman forces at every point and to
+prevent any portion of the men from acquiring the stability that might
+save the helplessness of the others; they harried the legionaries as
+they shifted their heavy baggage, drew their swords and hurried into
+line, and the cavalry soldiers as they strove to mount their frightened
+horses. Horse and foot were inextricably mixed, and no one could tell
+which was the van and which the rear of the surrounded army. The general
+fought like a common soldier, but he did not forget the duties of a
+commander. With his chosen troop of horse he rode up and down the field,
+detecting the weak points of his own men, the strong points of the
+enemy, lending a timely succour to the first and throwing his weight
+against the second.[1152] But it was the experience of the well-trained
+legionaries that saved the day. Schooled in such surprises, they began
+to form small solid squares, and against these barriers the impact of
+the light horsemen beat in vain.[1153] But night was drawing on--the
+hour which the allied kings had chosen as the crowning moment of their
+attack--and Marius was as fully conscious as his enemies how helpless
+the Roman force would be if such a struggle were protracted into the
+darkness. Fortunately the place of the attack had been badly chosen; the
+neighbouring ground did not present a wholly level expanse on which
+cavalry could operate at will. But a short distance from the scene of
+the fight two neighbouring hills could be seen to rise above the plain;
+the smaller possessed an abundant spring of water, the larger by its
+rugged aspect seemed to promise an admirable rampart for defence.[1154]
+It was impossible to withdraw the whole army to the elevation which
+contained the welcome stream, for its space did not permit of an
+encampment; but Marius instructed Sulla to seize it with the cavalry. He
+then began to draw his scattered infantry together, taking advantage of
+the disorder in the enemy which the last sturdy stand of the veterans
+had produced, and when the divisions were at last in touch with one
+another, he led the whole force at a quick march to the place which he
+had chosen for its retreat. The kings soon recognised that this retreat
+was unassailable; their plan of a night attack had failed; but they did
+not lose the hope that they held the Romans at their mercy. The fight
+had become a blockade; they would coop the Romans within their narrow
+limits, or force them to straggle on their way under a renewal of the
+same merciless assault. To have withstood the legions and occupied their
+ground, was itself a triumph for Gaetulians and Moors. They spread their
+long lines round either hill and lighted a great ring of watchfires; but
+their minds were set on passing the night in a manner conducive neither
+to sleep nor vigilance. They threw away their victory in a manner common
+to barbarism, which often lacks neither courage nor skill, but finds its
+nemesis in an utter lack of self-restraint. From the silent darkness of
+the ridge above the Romans could see, in the circles of red light thrown
+by the blazing watch-fires, the forms of their enemies in every attitude
+of careless and reckless joy; while the delirious howls of triumph which
+reached their ears, were a source, not of terror, but of hope. In the
+Roman camp no sound was heard; even the call of the patrol was hushed by
+the general's command.[1155] As the night wore on, the silence spread to
+the Plain below, but here it was the silence of the deep and profound
+sleep that comes on men wearied by the excesses of the night. Suddenly
+there was a terrific uproar. Every horn and trumpet in the Roman lines
+seemed to be alive, every throat to be swelling the clamour with
+ear-piercing yells. The Moors and Gaetulians, springing from the ground,
+found the enemy in their very midst. Where the slaughter ended, the
+pursuit began. No battle in the war had shown a larger amount of slain;
+for flight, which was the Numidian's salvation and the mockery of his
+foe, had been less possible in this conflict than in any which had
+gone before.
+
+Marius continued his march, but with precautions even greater than those
+which he had previously observed. He formed his whole army into a
+"hollow square" [1156]--in fact, a great oblong, arranged equally for
+defence on front, flanks, and rear, while the baggage occupied the
+centre. Sulla with the cavalry rode on the extreme right; on the left
+was Aulus Manlius with the slingers and archers and some cohorts of
+Ligurians; the front and rear were covered by light infantry selected
+from the legions under the command of military tribunes. Numidian
+refugees scoured the country around, their knowledge of the land giving
+them a peculiar value as a scouting force. The camp was formed with the
+same scrupulous care; whole cohorts formed from legionaries kept watch
+against the gates, fortified posts were manned at short distances along
+the enclosing mound, and squadrons of auxiliary cavalry moved all night
+before the ramparts. Marius was to be seen at all points and at all
+hours, a living example of vigilance not of distrust, a master in the
+art of controlling men, not by terror but by sharing in their toils.
+Four days had the march progressed and Cirta was reported to be not far
+distant, when suddenly an ominous but now familiar sight was seen.
+Scouts were riding in on every hand; all reported an enemy, but none
+could say with certainty the quarter from which he might appear.[1157]
+The present disposition of the Roman troops had made the direction of
+the attack a matter of comparatively little moment, and Marius called a
+halt without making any change in the order of his march. Soon the enemy
+came down, and Jugurtha, when he saw the hollow square, knew that his
+plan had been partly foiled. He had divided his own forces into four
+divisions; some of these were to engage the Roman van; but some at least
+might be able to throw themselves at the critical moment on the
+undefended rear of the Roman column, when its attention was fully
+engaged by a frontal attack.[1158]
+
+As things were, the Roman army presented no one point that seemed more
+assailable than another, and Jugurtha determined to engage with the
+Roman cavalry on the right, probably with the idea that by diverting
+that portion of the Roman force which was under the circumstances its
+strongest protecting arm, he might give an opportunity to his ally to
+lead that attack upon the rear which was to be the crowning movement of
+the day. His assault, which was directed near to the angle which the
+right flank made with the van, was anticipated rather than received by
+Sulla, who rapidly formed his force into two divisions, one for attack,
+the other for defence. The first he massed in dense squadrons, and at
+the head of these he charged the Moorish horse; the second stood their
+ground, covering themselves as best they could from the clouds of
+missiles that rose from the enemy's ranks, and slaughtering the daring
+horsemen that rode too near their lines. For a time it seemed as if the
+right flank and the van were to bear the brunt of the battle; the king
+was known to be there in person: and Marius, knowing what Jugurtha's
+presence meant, himself hastened to the front.
+
+But suddenly the chief point of the attack was changed. Bocchus had been
+joined by a force of native infantry, which his son Volux had just
+brought upon the field. It was a force that had not yet known defeat,
+for some delay upon the route had prevented it from taking part in the
+former battle. With this infantry, and probably with a considerable body
+of Moorish horse,[1159] Bocchus threw himself upon the Roman rear.
+Neither the general nor his chief officers were present with the
+division that was thus attacked; Marius and Sulla were both engrossed
+with the struggle at the other end of the right wing, and Manlius seems
+still to have kept his position on the left flank; the absence of an
+inspiring mind amongst the troops assailed, their ignorance of the fate
+of their distant comrades, moved Jugurtha to lend the weight of his
+presence and his words to the efforts of his fellow king. With a handful
+of horsemen he quitted the main force under his command and galloped
+down the whole length of the right wing, until he wheeled his horse
+amidst the front ranks of the struggling infantry. He raised a sword
+streaming with blood and shouted in the Latin tongue that Marius had
+already fallen by his hand, that the Romans might now give up the
+struggle. The suggestion conveyed by his words shook the nerves even of
+those who did not credit the horrifying news,[1160] while the presence
+of the king, here as everywhere, stirred the Africans to their highest
+pitch of daring. They pressed the wavering Romans harder than before,
+the battle at this point had almost become a rout, when suddenly a large
+body of Roman horse was seen to be bearing down on the right flank of
+the Moorish infantry. They were led by Sulla, whose vigorous attacks had
+scattered the enemy on the right wing; he could now employ his cavalry
+for other purposes, and the Moorish infantry shook beneath the flank
+attack, Jugurtha refused to see that the tide of victory had turned;
+with a reckless courage he still strove to weld together the shattered
+forces of the Moors and to urge them against the Roman lines; his own
+escape was a miracle; men fell to left and right of him, he was pressed
+on both sides by the Roman horse; at times he seemed almost alone amidst
+his foes; yet at the last moment he vanished, and the capture which
+would have ended the war was still beyond the reach of Roman skill and
+prowess.[1161] Sulla had saved the day, the advent of Marius was but
+needed to put the final touches to the victory. He had seen the cavalry
+on the right scatter beneath the charges of the Roman horse, and almost
+at the same moment news was brought him that his men were being driven
+back upon the rear. His succour was scarcely needed, but his presence
+gave an impulse to pursuit. The sight of the field when that pursuit was
+at its height, lived ever in the minds of those who shared in its glory
+and its horror. The sickening spectacle which a hard fought battle
+yields, was protracted in this instance by the vast vista of the plains.
+Wherever the eye could reach there were prostrate bodies of men and
+horses, whose only claim to life was the writhing agony of their wounds;
+on a stage dyed red with blood and strewn with the furniture of
+shattered weapons little moving groups could be seen. The figures of
+these puppets showed all the phases of helpless flight, violent pursuit,
+and pitiless slaughter.
+
+In spite of the carnage of this battlefield, victory here, as elsewhere
+throughout the war, meant little more than driving off the foe. We
+possess but a fragmentary record of this terrible retreat to Cirta, but
+it is certain that its dangers and losses were by no means exhausted in
+two pitched battles. A chance notice torn from its context[1162] tells
+of a third great contest which closed a long period of harassing
+attacks. Close to the walls of Cirta the Roman army was met by the two
+kings at the head of sixty thousand horse. The combatants were swathed
+in a cloud raised by the dust of battle, the Roman soldiers massed in a
+narrow space were such helpless victims of the missiles of the enemy
+that the Numidian and Moorish horsemen ceased to single out their
+targets, and threw their javelins at random into the crowded ranks with
+the certainty that each would find its mark. For three days was the
+running fight continued. A charge was impossible against the volleys of
+the foe, and retreat was cut off by the multitude of light horsemen that
+hemmed the army in on every side. In the last desperate effort which
+Marius made to free himself from the meshes of the kings, even the
+centre of his column shook under the hail of missiles that assailed it,
+and to the weapons of the enemy were soon added the terrors of blinding
+heat and intolerable thirst. Suddenly a storm broke over the warring
+hosts. It cooled the throats of the Romans and refreshed their limbs,
+while it lessened the power of their foes. The strapless javelins[1163]
+of the Numidians could not be hurled when wet, for they slipped from the
+hands of the thrower; their shields of elephants' hide absorbed water
+like a sponge and weighed down the arms on which they hung. The Moors
+and Numidians, seeing that even their means of defence had failed them,
+took to flight: but only to appear on another day with their army raised
+to ninety thousand and to repeat the attempt to surround the Roman host.
+This last effort ended in a signal victory for Marius. The forces of the
+two kings were not only defeated but almost destroyed.
+
+The events thus recorded can scarcely be regarded as mere variants of
+the two battles which we have previously described. Vague and rhetorical
+as is the account which sets them forth, it shows that there were
+traditions of suffering and loss endured by the army of Marius such as
+found no parallel in the campaign of his predecessor. Marius had
+attempted what Metellus had never dared--a campaign in the far west of
+Numidia. Its results were fruitless successes of the paladin type
+followed by a burdensome and disastrous retreat. The west was lost, the
+east was threatened, yet the lesson was not without its fruit. The
+general when he reached the walls of Cirta had lost something of his
+hardy faith in the use of blood and iron; he was more ready to appeal to
+the motives which make for peace, to pretend a trust he did not feel, to
+make promises which might induce the fluid treachery of Bocchus to
+harden into a definite act of treason to his brother king, above all, to
+lean on some other man who could play the delicate game of diplomatic
+fence with a cunning which his own straightforward methods could not
+attain. Everything depended on the attitude of the King of Mauretania;
+and here again the campaign had not been without some healthful
+consequences. If the Romans had gained no material advantage, Bocchus
+had suffered some very material losses. His forces had been cut up, the
+stigma of failure attached (perhaps for the first time) to their leader,
+the first contact with the Romans had not been encouraging to his
+subjects. And the campaign may also have revealed the difficulty, if not
+the hopelessness, of Jugurtha's cause. The plan of driving the Romans
+from Africa could not be perfected even with the combined forces of the
+two kingdoms at their fullest strength; however much they might harass,
+they had proved themselves utterly unable to attain such a success as
+even the most complacent patriotism could name a victory; while the
+sturdiness of the resistance of Rome seemed to banish the hypothesis
+that Jugurtha would be included in any terms that might be made. Yet the
+campaign had left Bocchus in an excellent position for negotiation. He
+had shown that Mauretania was a great make-weight in the scale against
+Rome; he had advertised his power as an enemy, his value as an ally; now
+was the time to see whether the power and the value, so long ignored,
+would be appreciated by Rome.
+
+But five days are said to have elapsed since the last great conflict
+with the Moors when envoys from Bocchus waited on Marius in his winter
+quarters at Cirta.[1164] The request which they brought was that "two of
+the Roman general's most trusty friends should wait on the king, who
+desired to speak with them on a matter of interest to himself and the
+Roman people".[1165] Marius forthwith singled out Sulla and Manlius, who
+followed the envoys to the place of meeting that had been arranged. On
+the way it was agreed by the representatives of Rome that they should
+not wait for the king to open the discussion. Hitherto every proposal
+had come from Bocchus; he had been played with, but never given a
+straightforward answer, still less a sign of real encouragement. Yet no
+good could be gained by expecting the king to assume a grovelling
+attitude, by forcing him to begin proposals for peace with a confession
+of his own humiliation. It would be far wiser if the commissioners
+opened with a few spontaneous remarks which might restore rest and
+dignity to the royal mind. Manlius the elder readily yielded the place
+of first speaker to the more facile Sulla. If the words which history
+has attributed to the quaestor[1166] were really used by him, they are a
+record of one of those rare instances in which a diplomatist is able to
+tell the naked truth. Sulla began by dwelling on the joy which he and
+his friends derived from the change in Bocchus's mind--from the
+heaven-sent inspiration which had taught the king that peace was
+preferable to war. He then dwelt on the fact, which he might have
+adduced the whole of his country's history to prove, that Rome had been
+ever keener in the search for friends than subjects, that the Republic
+had ever deemed voluntary allegiance safer than that compelled by force.
+He showed that Roman friendship might be a boon, not a burden, to
+Bocchus; the distance of his kingdom from the capital would obviate a
+conflict of interests, but no distance was too great to be traversed by
+the gratitude of Rome. Bocchus had already seen what Rome could do in
+war; all that he needed to learn was the still greater lesson that her
+generosity was as unconquerable as her arms. Sulla's words were a
+genuine statement of the whole theory of the Protectorate, as it was
+held and even acted on at this period of history. As a proof of the
+ruinous lengths to which Roman generosity might proceed, he could have
+pointed to the Numidian war now in the sixth year of its disastrous
+course. The darker side of the Protectorate--the rapacity of the
+individual adventurer--was no creation of the government, and needed not
+to be reproduced on the canvas of the bright picture which he drew. The
+hopes held out to Bocchus were genuine enough; the burden of his
+alliance was but slight, its security immense.
+
+The king seemed impressed by the gracious overtures of the
+commissioners. His answer was not only friendly, but apologetic.[1167]
+He urged that he had not taken up arms in any spirit of hostility to
+Rome, but simply for the purpose of defending his own frontiers. He
+claimed that the territory near the Muluccha, which had been harried by
+Marius, did not belong to Jugurtha at all. He had expelled the Numidian
+king from this region and it was his by the right of war. He appealed
+finally to the fact of his own former embassy to Rome: he had made a
+genuine effort to secure her friendship, but this had been
+repulsed.[1168] He was, however, willing to forget the past; and, if
+Marius permitted, he would like to send a fresh embassy to the senate.
+This last request was provisionally granted by the commissioners;
+Bocchus, in making it, showed a wise and, in consideration of some of
+the events of this very war, a natural sense of the insecurity of the
+promises made by Roman commanders, at the same time as he exhibited a
+justifiable faith in a word once given by the great organ of the
+Republic. Yet, when the commissioners had taken their departure, his old
+hesitancy seemed to revive. He consented at least to listen to those of
+his advisers who still urged the claims of Jugurtha.[1169] They had
+raised their voices again, either at the time when the Roman
+commissioners were waiting on Bocchus, or immediately after their
+departure; for Jugurtha had no sooner learnt of his father-in-law's
+renewed negotiations with Rome than he had used every means (amongst
+others, we are told, that of costly gifts) to induce his Mauretanian
+supporters to advocate his cause.
+
+A further stage in the negotiations was reached before the winter season
+was over, although it is probable that, at the time when this next step
+was taken by the Mauretanian king, the new year had been passed and the
+advent of spring was not far off. Marius, who was not fettered in his
+operations by respect for the traditional seasons which were deemed
+suitable to a campaign, had started with some flying columns of infantry
+and a portion of the cavalry to some desert spot, with a view to besiege
+a fortress still held by Jugurtha, and garrisoned by all the deserters
+from the Roman army who were now in the king's service. Sulla had been
+left with the usual title of pro-praetor to represent his absent
+commander. To the headquarters of the winter camp[1170] Bocchus now sent
+five of his closest friends, men chosen for their approved loyalty and
+ability.[1171] His last access of hesitancy, if it were more than a
+semblance, had certainly been shortlived, and the envoys were given full
+powers to arrange the terms of peace. They had set out with all speed to
+reach the Roman winter camp, but their journey had been long and
+painful. They had been seized and plundered on the route by Gaetulian
+brigands, and now appeared panic-stricken and in miserable plight before
+the representative of Rome. Stripped of their credentials and the
+symbols of their high office, they expected to be treated as vagrant
+impostors from a hostile state; Sulla received them with the lavish
+dignity that might be the due of princes. The simple nomads felt the
+charm and the surprise of this first glimpse of the public manners of
+Rome. Was it possible that these kindly and courteous men were the
+spoilers of the world? The rumour must be the false invention of the
+enemies of the bounteous Republic. The untrained mind rapidly argues
+from the part to the whole, and Sulla's tact had done a great service to
+his country. He had also established a claim on the Mauretanian
+king,[1172] and this personal tie was not to be without its
+consequences.
+
+The envoys revealed to the quaestor the instructions of their master,
+and asked his help and advice in the mission that lay before them. They
+dwelt with pardonable pride on the wealth, the magnificence, and the
+honour of their king, and dilated on every point in which the alliance
+with such a potentate was likely to serve the cause of Rome.[1173] Sulla
+promised them the plenitude of his help; he instructed them in the mode
+in which they should address Marius, in which they should approach the
+senate, and continued to be their host for forty days, until his
+commander was ready to listen to their proposals and forward them on
+their way. When Marius returned to Cirta after the successful completion
+of his brief campaign, and heard of the arrival of the envoys, he asked
+Sulla to bring them[1174] to his quarters, and made preparations for
+assembling as formal a council as the resources of the province
+permitted. A praetor happened to be within its limits and several men of
+senatorial rank. All these sat to listen to the proposals made by
+Bocchus. The verdict of the council was in favour of the genuineness of
+the king's appeal, and the proconsul granted the envoys permission to
+make their way to Rome. They asked an armistice for their king[1175]
+until the mission should be completed. Loud and angry voices were heard
+in protest--the voices of the narrow and suspicious men who are haunted
+by the fixed conviction that a request for a cessation of hostilities is
+always a treacherous attempt at renewed preparations for war. But Sulla
+and the majority of the board supported the request of the envoys, and
+the wiser counsel at length prevailed. The embassy now divided; two of
+its members returned to their king, while three were escorted to Rome by
+Cnaeus Octavius Ruso, a quaestor who had brought the last instalment of
+pay for the army and was ready for his return homewards. The language of
+the envoys before the Roman senate assumed the apologetic tone which had
+been suggested by Sulla. Their king, they said, had erred; Jugurtha had
+been the cause of this error. Their master asked that Rome should admit
+him to treaty relations with herself, that she should call him her
+friend. It is not impossible that these negotiations had a secret
+history; that Bocchus was told of some very material reward that he
+might expect, if Jugurtha were surrendered. But the assumption is not
+necessary. The magic of the name of Rome had fired the imagination of
+the African king at the commencement of the struggle; now that his fears
+were quieted, the end, in whatever form it was attained, may have seemed
+supremely desirable in itself. His envoys had been schooled by Sulla to
+expect much more than was promised and to read the senate's words
+aright. Certainly, if a prize had been offered for Bocchus's fidelity,
+the offer was carefully concealed. The official form in which the
+government accepted the petitioner's request, granted a free pardon and
+expressed a cold probation. "The senate and Roman people (so ran the
+resolution) are used to be mindful of good service and of wrongs. Since
+Bocchus is penitent for the past, they excuse his fault. He will be
+granted a treaty and the name of friend, when he has proved that he
+deserves the grant." [1176]
+
+When Bocchus received this answer, he despatched a letter to Marius
+asking that Sulla should be sent to advise with him on the matters that
+touched the common interests of himself and Rome.[1177] It was tolerably
+clear what the subject of interest was. If it could be made "common,"
+the end of the war had been reached. Sulla was despatched, and the final
+triumph, if attained, would be that of the diplomatist, not of the
+soldier. The quaestor was accompanied by an escort of cavalry, slingers,
+and archers, and a cohort of Italians bearing the weapons of a
+skirmishing force; for the adventures of Bocchus's envoys had shown the
+insecurity of the route. On the fifth day of the march, a large body of
+horse was seen approaching from a distance--a force that looked larger
+and more threatening than it afterwards proved to be; for it rode in
+open order, and the wild evolutions of the horsemen seemed to be the
+preliminary to an attack. Sulla's escort sprang to their arms; but the
+returning scouts soon removed all sense of fear. The approaching band of
+cavalry proved to be but a thousand strong and their leader to be Volux
+the son of Bocchus. The prince saluted Sulla and told him that he had
+been sent to meet and escort him to the presence of the king. For two
+days the combined forces advanced together, and there were no adventures
+by the road; but on the evening of the second day, when their resting
+place had been already chosen, the Moorish prince came hastily to Sulla
+with a look of perplexity on his face. He said that his scouts had just
+informed him that Jugurtha was close at hand, he entreated Sulla to join
+him in flight from the camp while it was yet night.[1178] The request
+was met by an indignant refusal; Sulla pointed to his men, whose lives
+might be sacrificed by the disgraceful disappearance of their leader.
+But, when Volux shifted his ground and merely insisted on the utility of
+a march by night from the dangerous neighbourhood, the quaestor yielded
+assent. He ordered that the soldiers should take their evening meal, and
+that a large number of fires should be lit which were to be left burning
+in the deserted camp. At the first watch the Moors and Romans stole
+silently from the lines. The dawn found them jaded, heavy with sleep,
+and longing for rest. Sulla was supervising the measurement of a camp,
+when some Moorish horsemen galloped up with the news that Jugurtha was
+but two miles in advance of their position. It was clear that the
+anxious Numidian was watching their every movement; the question to be
+answered was "Was Prince Volux in the plot?" The facts seemed dark
+enough to justify any suspicion. The nerves of the Romans had been
+shaken by the unknown danger which had forced them to leave their camp,
+by the night of sleepless watchfulness which had followed its
+abandonment. A panic was the inevitable result, and panic leads to fury.
+Voices were raised that the Moorish traitor should be slain, and that,
+if the fruit of his treason was reaped, he at least should not be
+allowed to see it. Sulla himself was weighed down with the same
+suspicion that animated his men, but he would not allow them to lay
+violent hands on the Moor.[1179] He encouraged them as best he might,
+then he turned with a passionate protest on his dubious companion. He
+called the protecting god of his own race, the guardian of its
+international honour, Jupiter Maximus, to witness the crime and perfidy
+of Bocchus, and he ordered Volux to leave his camp. The unhappy prince
+was probably in a state of genuine terror of Jugurtha, of complete
+uncertainty as to the intentions of that jealous kinsman and ally. Even
+had Volux known that his father Bocchus wished to play a double game, to
+balance the helplessness of Sulla against that of Jugurtha, to hold two
+valuable hostages in his hands at once, how could he be certain that
+Jugurtha would be content to play the part of a mere pawn in the king's
+game, to be dependent for his safety on the passing whim of a man whom
+he distrusted? Jugurtha might have everything to gain by massacring the
+Romans and seizing Sulla. The act would compromise Bocchus hopelessly in
+the eyes of the Roman government. There was hardly a man that would not
+believe in his treason, and from that time forth Bocchus would have no
+choice but to be the firm ally of Numidia against the vengeance of Rome.
+Yet, if Volux acted or spoke as though he believed in the possibility of
+this issue, he might seem to be incriminating his father and himself, he
+might seem to deserve the stern rebuke of Sulla and the order of
+expulsion from the Roman camp. His fears must therefore be concealed and
+he must profess a confidence which he did not feel. With tears which may
+have expressed a genuine emotion, he entreated Sulla not to harbour the
+unworthy suspicion. There had been no preconcerted treachery; the danger
+was at the most the product of the cunning of Jugurtha, who had
+discovered their route. Volux implied that the object of the Numidian's
+movement was to compromise the Moorish government in the eyes of Sulla;
+but he stated his emphatic belief that Jugurtha would, or could, do no
+positive hurt to the Roman envoy or his retinue. He pointed out that the
+king had no great force at his command, and (what was more important
+still) that he was now wholly dependent on the favour of his
+father-in-law. It was incredible, he maintained, that Jugurtha would
+attempt any overt act of hostility, when the son of Bocchus was present
+to be a witness to the crime. Their best plan would be to show their
+indifference to his schemes, to ride in broad daylight through the
+middle of his camp. If Sulla wished, he would send on the Moorish
+escort, or leave it where it was and ride with him alone.
+
+It was one of those situations which are the supreme tests of the
+qualities of a man. Sulla knew that his life depended on the caprice, or
+the momentary sense of self-interest, of a barbarian who was believed to
+have shrunk from no crime and on whose head Rome had put a price. Yet he
+did not hesitate. He passed with Volux through the lines of Jugurtha's
+camp, and the desperate Numidian never stirred. What motive held his
+hand was never known; it may have been that Jugurtha never intended
+violence; yet the failure of his plan of compromising Bocchus might well
+have stirred such a ready man to action; it may have been that he still
+relied on his influence with the Mauretanian king, which was perpetuated
+by his agents at the court. But some believed that his inaction was due
+to surprise, and that the transit of Sulla through the hostile camp was
+one of those actions which are rendered safe by their very
+boldness.[1180]
+
+In a few days the travellers had reached the spot where Bocchus held his
+court. The secret advocates of Numidia and Rome were already in
+possession of the king.[1181] Jugurtha's representative was Aspar, a
+Numidian subject who had been sent by his master as soon as the news had
+been brought of Bocchus's demand for the presence of Sulla. He had been
+sent to watch the negotiations and, if possible, to plead his monarch's
+cause. The advocate of Rome was Dabar, also a Numidian but of the royal
+line and therefore hostile to Jugurtha. He was a grandson of Masinissa,
+but not by legitimate descent, for his father had been born of a
+concubine of the king.[1182] His great parts had long recommended him to
+Bocchus, and his known loyalty to Rome made him a useful intermediary
+with the representative of that power. He was now sent to Sulla with the
+intimation that Bocchus was ready to meet the wishes of the Roman
+people; that he asked Sulla himself to choose a day, an hour and a place
+for a conference; that the understanding, which already existed between
+them, remained wholly unimpaired. The presence of a representative of
+Jugurtha at the court should cause no uneasiness. This representative
+was only tolerated because there was no other means of lulling the
+suspicion of the Numidian king. We do not know what Sulla made of this
+presentment of the case; but somewhere in the annals of the time there
+was to be found an emphatic conviction that Bocchus was still playing a
+double game, that he was still revolving in his mind the respective
+merits of a surrender of Jugurtha to the Romans and of Sulla to
+Jugurtha;[1183] that his fears prompted the first step, his inclinations
+the second, and that this internal struggle was waged throughout the
+whole of the tortuous negotiations which ensued.
+
+Sulla, in accepting the promised interview, replied that he did not
+object to the presence of Jugurtha's legate at the preliminaries; but
+that most of what he wished to say was for the king's ear alone, or at
+least for those of a very few of his most trusted counsellors. He
+suggested the reply that he expected from the king, and after a short
+interval was led into Bocchus's presence. At this meeting he gave the
+barest intimation of his mission; he had been sent, he said, by the
+proconsul[1184] to ask the king whether he intended peace or war. It had
+been arranged that Bocchus should make no immediate answer to this
+question, but should reserve his reply for another date. The king now
+adjourned the audience to the tenth day, intimating that on that day his
+intention would be decided and his reply prepared. Sulla and Bocchus
+both retired to their respective camps; but the king was restless, and
+at a late hour of that very night a message reached Sulla entreating an
+immediate and secret interview. No one was present but Dabar, the trusty
+go-between, and interpreters whose secrecy was assured. The narrative of
+this momentous meeting[1185] is therefore due to Sulla, whose fortunate
+possession of literary tastes has revealed a bit of secret history to
+the world. The king began with some complimentary references to his
+visitor, an acknowledgment of the great debt that he owed him, a hope
+that his benefactor would never be weary of attempting to exhaust his
+boundless gratitude. He then passed to the question of his own future
+relations with Rome. He repeated the assertion, which he had made on the
+occasion of Sulla's earlier visit, that he had never made, or even
+wished for, war with the people of Rome, that he had merely protected
+his frontiers against armed aggression. But he was willing to waive the
+point. He would impose no hindrance to the Romans waging war with
+Jugurtha in any way they pleased. He would not press his claim to the
+disputed territory east of the Muluccha. He would be content to regard
+that river, which had been the boundary between his own kingdom and that
+of Micipsa, as his future frontier. He would not cross it himself nor
+permit Jugurtha to pass within it. If Sulla had any further request to
+urge, which could be fairly made by the petitioner and honourably
+granted by himself, he would not refuse it.
+
+A strict and safe neutrality was the tentacle put out by Bocchus. The
+only shadow of a positive service by which he proposed to deserve the
+alliance of Rome, was the abandonment of a highly disputable claim to a
+part of Jugurtha's possessions. It was certainly time to bring the
+monarch to the real point at issue, and Sulla pressed it home. He began
+by a brief acknowledgment of the complimentary references which the king
+had made to himself, and then indulged in some plain speaking as to the
+expectations which the Roman government had formed of their would-be
+ally.[1186] He pointed out that the offers made by Bocchus were scarcely
+needed by Rome. A power that possessed her military strength would not
+be likely to regard them in the light of favours. Something was expected
+which could be seen to subserve the interests of Rome far more than
+those of the king himself. The service was patent. He had Jugurtha in
+his power; if he handed him over to Rome, her debt would certainly be
+great, and it would be paid. The recognition of friendship, the treaty
+which he sought, and the portion of Numidia which he claimed--all these
+would be his for the asking. The king drew back; he urged the sacred
+bonds of relationship, the scarce less sacred tie of the treaty which
+bound him to his son-in-law; he emphasised the danger to himself of such
+a flagrant breach of faith. It might alienate the hearts of his
+subjects, who loved Jugurtha and hated the name of Rome.[1187] But Sulla
+continued to press the point; the king's resistance seemed to give way,
+and at last he promised to do everything that his persistent visitor
+demanded. It was agreed, however, between the two conspirators that it
+was necessary to preserve a semblance of peaceful relations with
+Jugurtha. A pretence must be made of admitting him to the terms of the
+convention; this would be a ready bait, for he was thoroughly tired of
+the war. Sulla agreed to this arrangement as the only means of
+entrapping his victim; to Bocchus it may have had another significance
+as well; it still left his hands free.
+
+The next day witnessed the beginning of the machinations that were to
+end in the sacrifice of a Numidian king or a Roman magistrate. Bocchus
+summoned Aspar, the agent of Jugurtha, and told him that a communication
+had been received from Sulla to the effect that terms might be
+considered for bringing the war to a close; he therefore asked the
+legate to ascertain the views of his sovereign.[1188] Aspar departed
+joyfully to the headquarters of Jugurtha, who was now at a considerable
+distance from the scene of the negotiations. Eight days later he
+returned with all speed, bearing a message for the ear of Bocchus.
+Jugurtha, it appeared, was willing to submit to any conditions. But he
+had little confidence in Marius. It had often happened that terms of
+peace sanctioned by Roman generals had been declared invalid. But there
+was a way of obtaining a guarantee. If Bocchus wished to secure their
+common interests and to enjoy an undisputed peace, he should arrange a
+meeting of all the principals to the agreement, on the pretext of
+discussing its terms. At that meeting Sulla should be handed over to
+Jugurtha. There could be no doubt that the possession of such a hostage
+would wring the consent of the senate and people to the terms of the
+treaty; for it was incredible that the Roman government would leave a
+member of the nobility, who had been captured while performing a public
+duty, in the power of his foes.
+
+Bocchus after some reflection consented to this course. Then, as later,
+it was a disputed question whether the king had even at this stage made
+up his mind as to his final course of action.[1189] When the time and
+place for the meeting had been arranged, the nature of the treachery was
+still uncertain. At one moment the king was holding smiling converse
+with Sulla, at another with the envoy of Jugurtha. Precisely the same
+promises were made to both; both were satisfied and eager for the
+appointed day. On the evening before the meeting Bocchus summoned a
+council of his friends; then the whim took him that they should be
+dismissed, and he passed some time in silent thought. Before the night
+was out he had sent for Sulla, and it was the cunning of the Roman that
+set the final toils for the Numidian. At break of day the news was
+brought that Jugurtha was at hand. Bocchus, attended by a few friends
+and the Roman quaestor, advanced as though to do him honour, and halted
+on some rising ground which put the chief actors in the drama in full
+view of the men who lay in ambush. Jugurtha proceeded to the same spot
+amidst a large retinue of his friends; it had been agreed that all the
+partners to the conference should come unarmed.[1190] A sign was given,
+and the men of the ambuscade had sprung from every side upon the mound.
+Jugurtha's retinue was cut down to a man; the king himself was seized,
+bound and handed over to Sulla. In a short while he was the prisoner
+of Marius.
+
+Every one had long known that the war would be closed with the capture
+of the king. Marius could leave for other fields and dream other dreams
+of glory. But even the utter collapse of resistance in Numidia did not
+obviate the necessity for a considerable amount of detailed labour,
+which absorbed the energy of the commander during the closing months of
+the year. Even when news had been brought from Rome that a grateful
+people had raised him to the consulship for the second time, and that a
+task greater than that of the Numidian war had been entrusted to his
+hand,[1191] he did not immediately quit the African province, and it is
+probable that at least the initial steps of the new settlement of
+Numidia determined by the senate, were taken by him. The settlement was
+characteristic of the imperialism of the time. The government declined
+to extend the evils of empire westward and southward, to make of
+Mauretania another Numidia, and to enter on a course of border warfare
+with the tribes that fringed the desert. It therefore refused to
+recognise Numidia as a province. In default of an abler ruler, Gauda was
+set upon the throne of his ancestors;[1192] he had long had the support
+of Marius, and seems indeed to have been the only legitimate claimant.
+But he was not given the whole of the realm which had been swayed by
+Masinissa and Micipsa. The aspirations of Bocchus for an extension of
+the limits of Mauretania had to be satisfied, partly because it would
+have been ungenerous and impolitic to deprive of a reward that had been
+more than hinted at, a man who had violated his own personal
+inclinations and the national traditions of the subjects over whom he
+ruled, for the purpose of performing a signal service to Rome; partly
+because it would have been dangerous to the future peace of Numidia, and
+therefore of Rome, to leave the question of Bocchus's claims to
+territory east of the Muluccha unsettled, especially with such a ruler
+as Gauda on the throne. The western part of Numidia was therefore
+attached to the kingdom of Mauretania; nearly five hundred miles of
+coast line may have been transferred, and the future boundary between
+the two dominions may have been the port of Saldae on the west of the
+Numidian gulf.[1193] The wisdom of this settlement is proved by its
+success. Until Rome herself becomes a victim to civil strife, and her
+exiles or conquerors play for the help of her own subjects, Numidia
+ceases to be a factor in Roman politics. The mischief of interfering in
+dynastic questions had been made too patent to permit of the rash
+repetition of the dangerous experiment.
+
+In comparison with the settlement of Numidia, the ultimate fate of its
+late king was a matter of little concern. But Jugurtha had played too
+large a part in history to permit either the historian, or the lounger
+of the streets who jostled his neighbour for the privilege of gazing
+with hungry eyes at the visage and bearing of the terrible warrior, to
+be wholly indifferent to his end. The prisoner was foredoomed. Had he
+not for years been treated as an escaped criminal, not as a hostile
+king? If one ignored his outrages on his own race, had he not massacred
+Roman merchants, prompted the treacherous slaughter of a Roman garrison,
+and devised the murder of a client of the Roman people in the very
+streets of Rome? In truth, a formidable indictment might be brought
+against Jugurtha, nor was it the care of any one to discriminate which
+of the counts referred to acts of war, and which must be classed in the
+category of merely private crimes. It was sufficient that he was an
+enemy (which to the Roman mind meant traitor) who had brought death to
+citizens and humiliation to the State, and it is probable that, had the
+Numidian been the purest knight whose chivalrous warfare had shaken the
+power of Rome, he would have taken that last journey to the Capitol. It
+was the custom of Rome, and any derogation of the iron rule was an act
+of singular grace. The stupidity of the mob, which is closely akin to
+its brutality, was utterly unable to distinguish between the differences
+in conduct which are the result of the varying ethical standards of the
+races of the world, or even to balance the enormities committed by their
+own commanders against those which could be fastened on the enemy whom
+they had seized. And this lack of imagination was reflected in a
+cultured government, partly because their culture was superficial and
+they were still the products of the grim old school which had produced
+their ferocious ancestors, partly for reasons that were purely politic.
+The light hold which Rome held over her dependants, could only be
+rendered light by acts of occasional severity; the world must be made to
+see the consequences of rebellion against a sovereign. But the true
+justification for Roman rigour was not dependent on such considerations,
+which are often of a highly disputable kind, nearly so much as on the
+normal attitude of the Roman mind itself. Cruelty was but an expression
+of Roman patriotism; with characteristic consistency they applied much
+the same views to their citizens and their subjects, and their treatment
+of captured enemies was but one expression of the spirit which found
+utterance in their own terrible law of treason.
+
+When Marius celebrated his triumph on the 1st of January in the year
+which followed the close of the Numidian war,[1194] Jugurtha and his two
+sons walked before his chariot. While the pageant lasted, the king still
+wore his royal robes in mockery of his former state; when it had reached
+its bourne on the Capitol, the degradation and the punishment were
+begun. But it was believed by some that neither could now be felt, and
+that it was a madman that was pushed down the narrow stair which leads
+to the rock-hewn dungeon below the hill.[1195] His tunic was stripped
+from him, the golden rings wrested from his ears, and, as the son of the
+south[1196] stepped shivering into the well-like cavern, the cry "Oh!
+what a cold bath!" burst from his lips. Of the stories as to how the end
+was reached, the more detailed speaks of a protracted agony of six days
+until the prisoner had starved to death, his weakened mind clinging ever
+to the hope that his life might yet be spared.[1197]
+
+The minor prize of the Numidian war was a quantity of treasure including
+more than three thousand pounds' weight of gold and over five thousand
+of silver[1198]--which was shown in the triumph of Marius before it was
+deposited in the treasury. It was indeed the only permanent prize of the
+war which could be exhibited to the people; if one excepted two triumphs
+and the recognition of the merit of three officials, there was nothing
+else to show. It was difficult to justify the war even on defensive
+grounds, for it would have required a courageous advocate to maintain
+that the mere recognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia would have
+imperilled the Roman possessions in Africa; and, if the struggle had
+assumed an anti-Roman character, this result had been assisted, if not
+secured, by the tactics of the opposition which had systematically
+foiled every attempt at compromise. But a war, which it is difficult to
+justify and still more difficult to remember with satisfaction, may be
+the necessary result of a radically unsound system of administration:
+and the disasters which it entails may be equally the consequence of a
+military system, excellent in itself but ill-adapted to the
+circumstances of the country in which the struggle is waged. These are
+the only two points of view from which the Numidian war is remarkable on
+strategic or administrative grounds. The strategic difficulties of the
+task do nothing more than exhibit the wisdom of the majority of the
+senate, and of the earlier generals engaged in the campaign, in seeking
+to avoid a struggle at almost any cost. A military system is conditioned
+by the necessities of its growth; even that of an empire is seldom
+sufficiently elastic to be equally adapted to every country and equally
+capable of beating down every form of armed resistance. The Roman system
+had been evolved for the type of warfare which was common to the
+civilised nations around the Mediterranean basin--nations which employed
+heavily armed and fully equipped soldiers as the main source of their
+fighting strength, and which were forced to operate within a narrow
+area, on account of the possession of great centres of civilisation
+which it was imperative to defend. Its mobility was simply the mobility
+of a heavy force of infantry with a circumscribed range of action; in
+the days of its highest development it was still strikingly weak in
+cavalry. It had already shown itself an imperfect instrument for putting
+down the guerilla warfare of Spain; it had never been intended for the
+purposes of desert warfare, or to effect the pacification of nomad
+tribes extending over a vast and desolate territory. Even as the
+Parthian war of Trajan required the formation of what was practically a
+new army developed on unfamiliar lines, so the complete reorganisation
+of the Republican system would have been essential to the effective
+conquest of Numidia. The slight successes of this war, such as the
+taking of Thala and of Capsa and the victories near Cirta, were attained
+by judicious adaptations to the new conditions, by the employment of
+light infantry and the increased use of cavalry; but even these
+improvements were of little avail, for effective pursuit was still
+impossible, and without pursuit the conflict could not be brought to a
+close. The unkindness of the conditions almost exonerates the generals
+who blundered during the struggle, and to an unprejudiced observer the
+record of incompetence is slight. The fact that the inconclusive
+proceedings of Metellus and Marius were deemed successes, almost
+justifies the exploits of a Bestia, and even the crowning disaster of
+the war--the surprise of the army of Aulus Albinus--might have been the
+lot of a better commander opposed to an enemy so far superior in
+mobility and knowledge of the land. Most wars of this type are
+destructive of military reputations; the general is fortunate who can
+emerge as the least incapable of the host of blunderers. If we adopt
+this relative standard, one fortunate issue of the campaign may be held
+to be the discovery that Marius was not unworthy of his military
+reputation. The verdict, it is true, was not justified by positive
+results; but it was the verdict of the army that he led and as incapable
+of being ignored as all such judgments are. His leadership had been
+characterised at least by efficiency in detail, and this efficiency had
+been secured by gentle measures, by unceasing vigilance, by the
+cultivation of a true soldierly spirit, and by the untiring example of
+the commander. The courage of the innovator--a courage at once political
+and military--had also given Rome, in the mass of the unpropertied
+classes, a fathomless source from which she could draw an army of
+professional soldiers, if she possessed the capacity to use her
+opportunities.
+
+The political issues of the war were bound up with those which were
+strategic, both in so far as the hesitancy of the senate to enter on
+hostilities was based on a just estimate of the difficulties of the
+campaign, and in so far as the policy of smoothing over difficulties in
+a client state by diplomatic means, in preference to stirring up a
+hornet's nest by the thrust of the sword, was one of the traditional
+maxims of the Roman protectorate. But this second issue raised the whole
+of the great administrative question of the limits of the duties which
+Rome owed to her client kings. Such a question not infrequently suggests
+a conflict of duty with interest. The claims of Adherbal for protection
+against his aggressive cousin might be just, but even to many moderate
+men, not wholly vitiated by the maxims of a Machiavellian policy, they
+may have appeared intolerable. Was Rome to waste her own strength and
+stake the peace of the empire on a mere question of dynastic succession?
+Might it not be better to allow the rivals to fight out the question
+amongst themselves, and then to see whether the man who emerged
+victorious from the contest was likely to prove a client acceptable and
+obedient to Rome? There was danger in the course, no doubt: the danger
+inherent in a vicious example which might spread to other protected
+states; but might it not be a slighter peril than that involved in
+dethroning a ruler, who had proved his energy and ability, his
+familiarity with Roman ways, and his knowledge of Roman methods, above
+all, his possession of the confidence of the great mass of the Numidian
+people? Nay, it might be argued that Adherbal had by his weakness proved
+his unfitness to be an efficient agent of Rome. It might be asked
+whether such a man was likely to be an adequate representative of Roman
+interests in Africa, an adequate protector of the frontiers of the
+province. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the advocates of
+interference had something more than the claim of justice and the claim
+of prestige on their side. It was an undisputed fact that the division
+of power in Numidia, at the time when the question was presented to
+Rome, showed that Adherbal stood for civilisation and Jugurtha for
+barbarism. This was an issue that might not have been manifest at first,
+although any one who knew Numidia must have been aware that the military
+spirit of the country which was embodied in Jugurtha, was not
+represented in the coast cities with their trading populations drawn
+from many towns, but in the remote agricultural districts and the
+deserts of the west and south; but it was an issue recognised by the
+commissioners when they assigned the more civilised portion of the
+kingdom to Adherbal, and the territories, whose strength was the natural
+wealth and the manhood which they yielded, to his energetic rival; and
+it was one that became painfully apparent when Jugurtha led his
+barbarous hordes against Cirta, and when these hordes in the hour of
+victory slew every merchant and money-lender whom they could find in the
+town. It was this aspect of the question that ultimately proved the
+decisive factor in bringing on the war; for the claims of justice could
+now be reinforced by those of interest, and the interest which was at
+stake was that of the powerful moneyed class at Rome. It was this class
+that not only forced the government to war, but insisted on seeing the
+war through to its bitter end. It was this class that systematically
+hindered all attempts at compromise, that brandished its control of the
+courts in the face of every one who strove to temper war with hopes of
+peace, that tolerated Metellus until he proved too dilatory, and sent
+out Marius in the vain hope that he might show greater expedition. The
+close of the war was a singular satire on their policy, a remarkable
+proof of the justice of the official view. The end came through
+diplomacy, not through battle, through an unknown quaestor who belonged
+to the old nobility and possessed its best gifts of facile speech and
+suppleness in intrigue, not through the great "new man" who was to be a
+living example of what might be done, if the middle class had the making
+of the ministers of the State.
+
+But the moneyed class could hardly have developed the power to force the
+hand of the council of state, had it not been in union with the third
+great factor in the commonwealth, that disorganised mass of fluctuating
+opinion and dissipated voting power which was known as "the people." How
+came the Populus Romanus to be stirred to action in this cause, with the
+result that the balance of power projected by Caius Gracchus was again
+restored? Much of their excitement may have been the result of
+misrepresentation, of the persistent efforts made by the opposition to
+prove that all parleying with the enemy was tantamount to treason; more
+must have been due to the dishonouring news of positive disaster which
+marked a later stage of the war; but the mingled attitude of resentment
+and suspicion with which the people was taught to regard its council and
+its ministers, seems to have been due to the genuine belief that many of
+the former and nearly all of the latter were hopelessly corrupt. This
+darkest aspect of the Numidian war is none the less a reality if we
+believe that the individual charges of corruption were not well founded,
+and that they were mere party devices meant to mask a policy which would
+have been impossible without them. The proceedings of the Mamilian
+commission certainly commanded little respect even from the democrat of
+a later day; but it is with the suspicion of corruption, rather than
+with the justice of that suspicion in individual cases, that we are most
+intimately concerned. A political society must be tainted to the core,
+if bribery can be given and accepted as a serious and adequate
+explanation of the proceedings of its leading members. The suspicion was
+a condemnation of the State rather than of a class. It might be tempting
+to suppose that the disease was confined to a narrow circle (by a
+curious accident to the circle actually in power); but of what proof did
+such a supposition admit? The leaders of the people were themselves
+members of the senatorial order and scions of the nobility of office.
+Marius the "new man" might thunder his appeal for a purer atmosphere and
+a wider field; but it would be long, if ever, before the councils of the
+State would be administered by men who might be deemed virtuous because
+their ancestors were unknown.
+
+But for a time the view prevailed that the interests of the State could
+best be served by a combination of powerful directors of financial
+corporations with patriotic reformers, invested with the tribunate,
+struggling for higher office, and expressing their views of statecraft
+chiefly in the form of denunciations of the government. Such a coalition
+might form a powerful and healthy organ of criticism; but it could only
+become more by serving as a mere basis for a new executive power. As
+regards the nature of this power and even the necessity for its
+existence, the views of the discontented elements of the time were
+probably as indefinite as those of the adherents of Caius Gracchus. The
+Republican constitution was an accepted fact, and the senate must at
+least be tolerated as a necessary element in that constitution; for no
+one could dream of finding a coherent administration either in the
+Comitia or in the aggregate of the magistrates of the people. Now, as at
+all times since the Roman constitution had attained its full
+development, the only mode of breaking with tradition in order to secure
+a given end which the senate was supposed to have neglected, was to
+employ the services of an individual. There was no danger in this
+employment if the individual could be overthrown when his work had been
+completed, or when the senate had regained its old prestige. The leader
+elevated to a purely civil magistracy by the suffrages of the people was
+ever subject to this risk; if his personal influence outgrew the
+necessities of his task, if he ceased to be an agent and threatened to
+be a master, the mere suspicion of an aspiration after monarchy would
+send a shudder of reaction through the mass of men which had given him
+his greatness. As long as the cry for reform was based on the existence
+of purely internal evils, which the temporary power of a domestic
+magistracy such as the tribunate might heal, the breast even of the most
+timid constitutionalist did not deserve to be agitated by alarm for the
+security of the Republican government. But what if external dangers
+called for settlement, if the eyes of the mercantile classes and the
+proletariate were turned on the spectacle of a foreign commerce in decay
+and an empire in disorder, if the grand justification for the senate's
+authority--its government of the foreign dependencies of Rome--were
+first questioned, then tossed aside? Would not the Individual makeshift
+have in such a case as this to be invested with military authority?
+Might not his power be defended and perpetuated by a weapon mightier
+than the voting tablet? Might not his supporters be a class of men, to
+whom the charms of civil life are few, whose habits have trained them to
+look for inspiration to an individual, not to a corporation, still less
+to that abstraction called a constitution--of men not subjected to the
+dividing influences, or swayed by the momentary passions, of their
+fellows of the streets? In such a case might not the power of the
+individual be made secure, and what was this but monarchy?
+
+Such were the reflections suggested to posterity by the power which
+popularly-elected generals began to hold from the time of the Numidian
+war. But such were not the reflections of Marius and his contemporaries.
+There was no precedent and no contemporary circumstance which could
+suggest a belief in any danger arising from the military power. The
+experiment of bearding the senate by entrusting the conduct of a
+campaign to a popular favourite had been tried before, and, whether its
+immediate results were beneficial or the reverse, it had produced no
+ulterior effects. Whether the people had pinned its faith on men of the
+nobility such as the two Scipios, or on a man of the people like Varro,
+such agents had either retired from public life, confessed their
+incapacity, or returned to serve the State. The armies which such
+generals had led were composed of well-to-do men who, apart from the
+annoyance of the levy, had no ground of complaint against the
+commonwealth: and the change in the recruiting system which had been
+introduced by Marius, was much too novel and too partial for its
+consequences to be forecast. Nor could any one be expected to see the
+fundamental difference between the Rome of but two generations past and
+the Rome of the day--the difference which sprang from the increasing
+divergence of the interests of classes, and the consequent weakening of
+confidence in the one class which had "weathered the storm and been
+wrecked in a calm". Aristocracy is the true leveller of merit, but, if
+it lose that magic power by ceasing to be an aristocracy, then the turn
+of the individual has come.
+
+The fact that it was already coming may justify us in descending from
+the general to the particular and remarking that the question "Who
+deserved the credit of bringing the war with Jugurtha to an end?" soon
+excited an interest which appealed equally to the two parties in the
+State and the two personalities whom the close of the episode had
+revealed. It was natural that the success of Sulla should be exploited
+by resentful members of the nobility as the triumph of the aristocrat
+over the parvenu, of the old diplomacy and the old bureaucracy over the
+coarse and childish methods of the opposition; it was tempting to
+circulate the view that the humiliation of Metellus had been avenged,
+that the man who had slandered and superseded him had found an immediate
+nemesis in a youthful member of the aristocracy.[1199] Such a version,
+if it ever reached the ears of the masses, was heard only to be
+rejected; the man who had brought Jugurtha in chains to Rome must be his
+conqueror, and, even had this evidence been lacking, they did not intend
+to surrender the glory which was reflected from the champion whom they
+had created. Nor even in the circles of the governing class could this
+controversy be for the moment more than a matter for idle or malicious
+speculation. Hard fighting had to be done against the barbarians of the
+north, a reorganisation of the army was essential, and for both these
+purposes even they admitted that Marius was the necessary man. Even the
+two men who were most interested in the verdict were content to stifle
+for the time, the one the ambitious claim which was strengthened by a
+belief in its justice, the other the resentful repudiation, which would
+have been rendered all the more emphatic from the galling sense that it
+could not be absolute. In the coming campaigns against the Germans Sulla
+served first as legate and afterwards as military tribune in the army of
+his old commander.[1200] But his own conviction of the part which he had
+played in the Numidian war was expressed in a manner not the less
+irritating because it gave no reasonable ground for offence. He began
+wearing a signet ring, the seal of which showed Bocchus delivering
+Jugurtha into his hand.[1201] This emblem was destined to grate on the
+nerves of Marius in a still more offensive form, for thirteen years
+later, when his work had been done and his glory had begun to wane, Rome
+was given an unexpected confirmation of the truthfulness of the scene
+which it depicted. The King of Mauretania, eager to conciliate the
+people of Rome while he showed his gratitude to Sulla, sent as a
+dedicatory offering to the Capitol a group of trophy-bearing Victories
+who guarded a device wrought in gold, which showed Bocchus surrendering
+to Sulla the person of the Numidian king. Marius would have had it
+removed, but Sulla's supporters could now loudly assert the claim, which
+had been only whispered when the dark cloud of barbaric invasion hung
+over the State and the loyal belief of the people in Marius was
+quickened by their fears.[1202]
+
+Yet, although at the close of the Numidian war an appalling danger to
+the empire tended to perpetuate the coalition that had been formed
+between the mercantile classes and the proletariate, and to wring from
+the senate an acceptance of the new military genius with his plans for
+reform, there are clear indications which prove that an ebb of political
+feeling had been witnessed, even during the last three years--a turn of
+the tide which shows how utterly unstable the coalition against the
+senate would have been, had it not been reinforced by the continuance of
+disasters abroad. The first sign of the reaction was the flattering
+reception and the triumph of Metellus; and it may have been this current
+of feeling which decided the consular elections for the following year.
+The successful candidates were Caius Atilius Serranus and Quintus
+Servilius Caepio. Of these Serranus could trace his name back to the
+great Reguli of Carthaginian fame;[1203] the family to which he
+belonged, although plebeian, had figured amongst the ranks of the
+official nobility since the close of the fourth century, although it is
+known to have furnished the State with but five consuls since the time
+of Caius Regulus. The merit which Serranus possessed in the eyes of the
+voters who elevated him to his high office, was a puzzle to posterity;
+for such nobility as he could boast seemed the only compensation for the
+lack of intelligence which was supposed to characterise his utterances
+and his conduct.[1204] But, if we may judge from the resolution which he
+subsequently displayed in combating revolution at Rome,[1205] he was
+known to be a supporter of the authority of the senate, and his
+aristocratic proclivities may have led to his association with his more
+distinguished colleague Caepio. The latter belonged to a patrician clan,
+and to a branch of that clan which had lately clung to the highest
+political prizes with a tenacity second only to that of the Metelli.
+Caepio's great-grandfather, his grandfather, his father and his two
+uncles had all filled the consulship; and his own hereditary claim to
+that office had been rendered more secure by some good service in
+Lusitania, which had secured him a military reputation and the triumph
+which he enjoyed in the very year that preceded his candidature.[1206]
+His political sentiments may have been known before his election; but
+the very fact of his elevation to the consulship, and his appreciation
+of the direction in which the tide of public feeling seemed to be
+running, gave a definiteness to his views and a courage to his reforming
+conservatism, which must have surprised his supporters as well as his
+opponents, and may not have been altogether pleasing to the extreme
+members of the former party. It must have been believed that a rift was
+opening between the moneyed classes and the people, and that the latter,
+satisfied with their recent political triumph and reconciled by the
+honest passivity of the senate, were content to resume their old
+allegiance to the governing class. It must even have been held that a
+spirit of repentance and indignation could be awakened at the reckless
+and selfish use which the knights had made of the judicial power
+entrusted to their keeping, that the Mamilian commission could be
+represented as an outrage on the public conscience, and the ordinary
+cognisance of public crimes as a reign of terror intended merely to
+ensure the security of investments.[1207] The knights were to be
+attacked in their stronghold, and Caepio came forward with a new
+judiciary law. Two accounts of the scope of this measure have come down
+to us. According to the one, the bill proposed that jurisdiction in the
+standing criminal courts should be shared between the senators and the
+equites;[1208] according to the other, this jurisdiction was to be given
+to the senate.[1209] That the latter result was meant to be attained in
+some way by the law, is perhaps shown by the intense dislike which the
+equestrian order entertained in later times to any laudatory reference
+to the hated Servilian proposal:[1210] and, although a class which has
+possessed and perhaps abused a monopoly of jurisdiction, may object to
+seeing even a share of it given to their enemies and their victims, yet
+this resentment would be still more natural if the threatened
+transference of jurisdiction from their order was to be complete. But,
+in any case, we cannot afford to neglect the express testimony to the
+fact that the senate was to have possession of the courts; and the only
+method of reconciling this view with the other tradition of a partition
+of jurisdiction between the orders, is to suppose that Caepio attempted
+the effort suggested by Tiberius Gracchus, once advocated by his brother
+Caius,[1211] and subsequently taken up by the younger Livius Drusus, of
+increasing the senate by admitting a certain number of knights into that
+body, and giving the control of the courts to the members of this
+enlarged council. It may seem a strange and revolutionary step to
+attempt such a reform of the governing body of the State, whose
+membership and whose privileges were so jealously guarded, for the
+purpose of securing a single political end; it may seem at first sight
+as though the admission of a considerable number of the upper middle
+class to the power and prizes possessed by the privileged few, would be
+a shock even to a mildly conservative mind that had fed upon the
+traditions of the past. Yet a closer examination will reveal the truth
+that such a change would have meant a very slight modification in the
+temper and tendencies of the senate, and would have insured a very great
+increase in its security, whether it meant to govern well or ill, to
+secure its own advantages or those of its suffering subjects. In reality
+a very thin line parted the interests of the senators from those of the
+more distinguished members of the equestrian order. It was only when
+official probity or official selfishness came into conflict with
+capitalistic greed, that recrimination was aroused between the two heads
+of the body politic. But what if official power, under either of its
+aspects, could make a compromise with greed? The rough features of both
+might be softened; but, at the worst, a stronger, more permanent and, in
+the long run, more profitable monopoly of the good things of the empire
+would be the result of the union. The admission of wealthy capitalists
+could not be considered a very marked social detraction to the dignity
+of the order. The question of pedigree might be sunk in an amiable
+community of taste. In point of lavish expenditure and exotic
+refinement, in the taste that displayed itself in the patronage of
+literature, the collection of objects of art, the adornment of country
+villas, there was little to choose between the capitalist and the noble.
+And community of taste is an easy passage to community of political
+sentiment. Any one acquainted with the history of the past must have
+known that all efforts to temper the exclusiveness of the senatorial
+order had but resulted in an increase of the spirit of exclusiveness.
+The patrician council had in old days been stormed by a horde of
+plebeian chiefs; but these chiefs, when they had once stepped within the
+magic circle, had shown not the least inclination to permit their poorer
+followers to do the same. The successful Roman, practical, grasping,
+commercial and magnificently beneficent, ranking the glory of patronage
+as second only in point of worth to the possession and selfish use of
+power, scarcely attached a value even to the highest birth when deprived
+of its brilliant accessories, and had always found his bond of
+fellowship in a close community of interest with others, who helped him
+to hold a position which he might keep against the world. How much more
+secure would this position be, if the front rank of the assailants were
+enticed within the fortress and given strong positions upon the walls!
+They would soon drink into their lungs the strong air of possession,
+they would soon be stiffened by that electric rigidity which falls on a
+man when he becomes possessed of a vested interest. There was little
+probability that the knights admitted to the senate would continue to be
+in any real sense members of the equestrian order.
+
+But even to a senator who reckoned the increase of profit-sharers,
+whatever their present or future sentiments might be, as a loss to
+himself, the sacrifice involved in the proposed increase of the members
+of his order may have seemed well worthy of the cost. For how could
+power be exercised or enjoyed in the face of a hostile judicature? The
+knights had recently made foreign administration on the accepted lines
+not only impossible in itself, but positively dangerous to the
+administrator, and in all the details of provincial policy they could,
+if they chose, enforce their views by means of the terrible instrument
+which Caius Gracchus had committed to their hands. Even if the business
+men, shorn of their most distinguished members, might still have the
+power to offer transitory opposition to the senate by coalition with the
+mob, the more dangerous, because more permanent, possibilities of harm
+which the control of the courts afforded them, would be wholly
+swept away.
+
+The attraction of Caepio's proposal to the senatorial mind is,
+therefore, perfectly intelligible; but it is very probable that there
+were many members of the nobility who were wholly insensible to this
+attraction. The men who would descend a few steps in order to secure a
+profitable concord between the orders, may have been in the majority;
+but there must have been a considerable number of stiff-backed nobles
+who, even if they believed that concord could be secured by a measure
+which gave away privileges and did not conciliate hostility, were
+exceedingly unwilling to descend at all. Caepio is the first exponent of
+a fresh phase of the new conservatism which had animated the elder
+Drusus. That statesman had sought to win the people over to the side of
+the senate by a series of beneficent laws, which should be as attractive
+as those of the demagogue and perhaps of more permanent utility than the
+blessings showered on them by the irresponsible favourite of the moment;
+but he had done nothing for the mercantile class; and his greater son
+was left to combine the scheme of conciliation transmitted to him by his
+father with that enunciated by Caepio.
+
+The moderation and the tactical utility of the new proposal fired the
+imagination of a man, whose support was of the utmost importance for the
+success of a measure which was to be submitted to a popular body that
+was divided in its allegiance, uncertain in its views, and therefore
+open to conviction by rhetoric if not by argument. It was characteristic
+of the past career of the young orator Lucius Crassus that he should now
+have thrown himself wholly on the side of Caepio and the progressive
+members of the senate.[1212] His past career had committed him to no
+extremes. He had impeached Carbo, known to have been a radical and
+believed to be a renegade, and he had championed the policy of
+provincial colonisation as illustrated by the settlement of Narbo
+Martius. His action in the former case might have been equally pleasing
+to either side; his action in the latter might have been construed as
+the work, less of an advanced liberal, than of an imperialist more
+enlightened than his peers. He had evidently not compromised his chances
+of political success; he was still but thirty-four and had just
+concluded his tenure of the tribunate. In the opposite camp stood
+Memmius, striving with all his might to keep alive the coalition, which
+he had done so much to form, between the popular party and the merchant
+class. The knights mustered readily under his banner, for they had no
+illusions as to the meaning of the bill; it was impossible to conciliate
+an order by the bribery of a few hundreds of its members, whose very
+names were as yet unknown. To keep the people faithful to the coalition
+was a much more difficult task. It was soon patent to all that the
+agitators had not been wrong in supposing that a serious cleft had
+opened between the late allies, and in the war of words with which the
+Forum was soon filled, Memmius seems to have been no match for his
+opponent. Crassus surpassed himself, and the keen but humorous invective
+with which he held Memmius up to the ridicule of his former
+followers,[1213] was balanced by the grand periods in which he
+formulated his detailed indictment of the methods pursued by the
+existing courts of justice, and of the terrible dangers to the public
+security produced by their methods of administration. He did not merely
+impugn the verdicts which were the issue of a jury system so degraded as
+to have become the sport of a political "faction," but he dwelt on the
+public danger which sprang from the parasites of the courts, the gloomy
+brood of public accusers which is hatched by a rotten system, feeds on
+the impurities of a diseased judicature, and terrifies the commonwealth
+by the peril that lurks in its poisonous sting. This speech was to be
+studied by eager students for years to come as a master work in the art
+of declamatory argument.[1214] But its momentary efficacy seems to have
+been as great as its permanent value. Caepio's bill was acclaimed and
+carried.[1215] Then began the turn of the tide. It is practically
+certain that the authors of the measure never had the courage, or
+perhaps the time, to carry a single one of its proposals Into effect.
+The senate was not enlarged, nor was the right of judicature wrested
+from the hands of its existing holders.[1216] The bill may have been
+repealed within a few months of its acceptance by the people. Caepio
+went to Gaul to stake his military reputation on a conflict with the
+German hordes; he was to return as the best hated man in Rome, to
+receive no mercy from an indignant people. There was probably more than
+one cause for this sudden change in political sentiment. The knights may
+have been thrown off their guard by the suddenness of Caepio's attack
+upon their privileges, and a few months of organisation and canvassing
+may have been all that they needed to restore the majority required for
+effacing the blot upon their name. But the chief reason is doubtless to
+be sought in the external circumstances of the moment, and can only be
+fully illustrated by the description which we shall soon be giving of
+the great events that were taking place on the northern frontiers of the
+empire. It is sufficient for the present to remember that, in the very
+year in which Caepio's measure had received the ratification of the
+people, Caius Popillius Laenas, a legate of one of the consuls of the
+previous year, had been put on his trial before that very people for
+making a treaty which was considered still more disgraceful than the
+defeat which had preceded it.[1217] The Comitia now heard the whole
+story of the conduct of the Roman arms against the barbarians of the
+North. The story immediately revived the coalition of the early days of
+the Numidian war, and there was no longer any hope for the success of
+even moderate counsels proceeding from the senate. Popillius was a
+second Aulus Albinus, and a new Marius was required to restore the
+fortunes of the day. It was, however, certain that the only Marius could
+not be withdrawn from Africa, and men looked eagerly to see what the
+consular elections for the next year would produce. We hear of no
+candidate belonging to the highest ranks of the nobility who was deemed
+to have been defrauded of his birthright on this occasion; but the
+disappointment of Quintus Lutatius Catulus was deemed wholly legitimate,
+when Cnaeus Mallius Maximus defeated him at the poll. Catulus belonged
+to a plebeian family that had been ennobled by the possession of the
+consulship at least as early as the First Punic War; but the distinction
+had not been perpetuated in the later annals of the house, and if
+Catulus received the support of the official nobility, it was because
+his tastes and temperament harmonised with theirs, and because it may
+have seemed impolitic to advance a man of better birth and more
+pronounced opinions in view of the prevailing temper of the people.
+Catulus was a man of elegant taste and polished learning, one of the
+most perfect Hellenists of the day, and distinguished for the grace and
+purity of the Latin style that was exhibited in his writings and
+orations.[1218] He was one day to write the history of his own momentous
+consulship and of the final struggle with the Cimbri, in which he played
+a not ignoble part. Much of our knowledge of those days is due to his
+pen, and the modern historian is perhaps likely to congratulate himself
+on the blindness of the people, which thrice refused Catulus the
+consulship and reserved him to be an actor and a witness in the crowning
+victory of the great year of deliverance. He had already been defeated
+by Serranus; he was now subordinated to the claims of Maximus. But what
+were those claims? Posterity found it difficult to give an answer,[1219]
+and the reason for that difficulty was that this second experiment in
+the virtues of a "new man" was anything but successful. The family to
+which Maximus belonged seems to have been wholly undistinguished, and he
+himself is the only member of his clan who is known to have attained the
+consulship. An explanation of his present prominence could only be
+gathered from a knowledge of his past career, and of this knowledge we
+are wholly deprived; but it is manifest that he must have done much,
+either in the way of positive service to the State in subordinate
+capacities, or in the way of invective against its late administrators,
+which caused him to be regarded as a discovery by the leaders of the
+multitude. The colleague given to Maximus was a man such as the people
+in the present emergency could not well refuse. Publius Rutilius Rufus
+was a kind of Cato with a deeper philosophy, a higher culture, and a far
+less bewildering activity. As a soldier he had been trained by Scipio in
+Spain, and he possessed a theoretical interest in military matters which
+issued in practical results of the most important kind.[1220] His tenure
+of the urban praetorship seems to have been marked by reforms which
+materially improved the condition of the freedmen in matters of private
+law, and limited the right of patrons to impose burdensome conditions of
+personal service as the price of manumission.[1221] It was he too who
+may have introduced the humane system of granting the possession of a
+debtor's goods to a creditor, if that creditor was willing to waive his
+claim to the debtor's person.[1222] Rutilius, therefore, may have had
+strong claims on the gratitude of the lower orders; and his personality
+was one that could more readily command a grateful respect than a warm
+affection. He was a learned adherent of the Stoic system, the cold and
+stern philosophy of which imbued his speeches, already rendered somewhat
+unattractive by their author's devotion to the forms of the civil
+law.[1223] He was much in request as an advocate, his learning commanded
+deep respect, but he lacked or would not condescend to the charm which
+would have made him a great personal force with the people at a time
+when there was a sore need of men who were at the same time great
+and honest.
+
+By a singular irony of fortune it chanced that the province of Gaul fell
+to Maximus and not to Rutilius. The strong-headed soldier was left at
+home to indulge his schemes of army reform while the new man went to his
+post in the north, to quarrel with the aristocratic Caepio, who was now
+serving as proconsul in those regions, and to share in the crushing
+disaster which this dissension drew upon their heads. The search for
+genius had to be renewed at the close of this melancholy year.[1224]
+Another "new man" was found in Caius Flavius Fimbria, a product of the
+forensic activity of the age, a clever lawyer, a bitter and vehement
+speaker, but with a power that secured his efforts a transitory
+circulation as types of literary oratory.[1225] He is not known to have
+shown any previous ability as a soldier, and his election, so far as it
+was not due to his own unquestioned merit, may have been but a symbol of
+the continued prevalence of the distrust of the people in aristocratic
+influence and qualifications. His competitor was Catulus who was for the
+third time defeated. For the other place in the consulship there could
+be no competition. The close of the Numidian war had freed the hands of
+the man who was still believed to be the greatest soldier of the day.
+There was, it is true, a legal difficulty in the way of the appointment
+of Marius to the command in the north. Such a command should belong to a
+consul, but nearly fifty years before this date a law had been passed
+absolutely prohibiting re-election to the consulship.[1226] Yet the
+dispensation granted to the younger Africanus could be quoted as a
+precedent, and indeed the danger that now threatened the very frontiers
+of Italy was an infinitely better argument for the suspension of the law
+than the reverses of the Numantine war.[1227] The people were in no mood
+to listen to legal quibbles. They drove the protestant minority from the
+assembly, and raised Marius to the position which they deemed necessary
+for the salvation of the State.[1228] The formal act of dispensation may
+have been passed by the Comitia either before or after the election, but
+the senate must have been easily coerced into giving its assent, if its
+adherence were thought requisite to the validity of the act. The
+province of Gaul was assigned him as a matter of course,[1229] whether
+by the senate or the people is a matter of indifference. For the Roman
+constitution was again throwing off the mask of custom and uncovering
+the bold lineaments which spoke of the undisputed sovereignty of the
+people. Certainly, if a sovereign has a right to assert himself, it is
+one who is _in extremis_, who stands between death and revolution.
+Personality had again triumphed in spite of the meshes of Roman law and
+custom. It remained to be seen whether the net could be woven again with
+as much cunning as before, or whether the rent made by Marius was
+greater than that which had been torn by the Gracchi.
+
+
+
+
+TITLES OF MODERN WORKS REFERRED TO IN THE NOTES
+
+
+L'ANNEE EPIGRAPHIQUE; revue des publications epigraphiques relatives a
+    l'antiquite Romaine (1896, pp. 30, 31, _Fragmentum Tarentinum_).
+
+BARDEY, E.--_Das sechste Consulat des Marius oder das Jahr 100 in der
+    roemischen Verfassungsgeschichte_. Brandenburg-a.-d.-H., 1884.
+
+BEESLY, A.H.--_The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla_. 3rd ed. London, 1882.
+
+BELOCH, J.--_Der Italische Bund unter Roms Hegemonie; staatsrechtliche
+    und statistische Forschungen_. Leipzig, 1880.
+
+BERGMANN, R.--_De Asiae Romanorum provinciae praesidibus_ (Philologus,
+    ii., 1847, p. 641).
+
+BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, M.A. VON.--_Der roemische Civilprozess_ (Der
+    Civilprozess des gemeinen Rechts, Bde. i., ii.). Bonn, 1864-5.
+
+BIEREYE, J.--_Res Numidarum et Maurorum annis inde ab a. DCXLVIII.
+    usque ad a. DCCVIII. ab u.c. perscribuntur_. Halis Saxonum, 1885.
+
+BOISSIER, GASTON.--_L'Afrique Romaine; promenades archeologiques en
+    Algerie et en Tunisie_. Paris, 1895.
+
+BOISSIERE, GUSTAVE.--_Esquisse d'une histoire de la conquete et de
+    l'administration Romaines dans le Nord de l'Afrique et
+    particulierement dans la province de Numidie_. Paris, 1878.
+
+BOOR, C. DE.--_Fasti censorii, quos composuit et commentariis instruxit
+    C. de Boor_. Berolini, 1873.
+
+BRUNS, C.G.--_Fontes juris Romani antiqui_. Ed. 6ta. Friburgi, 1893.
+
+BUECHER, K.--_Die Aufstaende der unfreien Arbeiter 143-129 v. Chr_.
+    Frankfurt-a.-M., 1874.
+
+CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM GRAECARUM. Ed. A. Boeckh. Vol. ii. Berlin, 1843.
+
+CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM LATINARUM. Berolini. Vol. i. (ed. Th. Mommsen,
+    1863; ed. ii., pars i., ed. Th. Mommsen, G. Henzen, C. Huelsen,
+    1893). Vol. ii. (ed. A. Huebner, 1869). Vol. viii. (coll. G.
+    Wilmanns, 1881).
+
+CUNNINGHAM, W.--_An Essay on Western Civilisation in its _Economic
+    Aspects_. Cambridge, 1898-1900.
+
+DELOUME, A.--_Les manieurs d'argent a Rome jusqu'a l'Empire_. Paris,
+    1892.
+
+DREYFUS, R.--_Essai sur les lois agraires sous la Republique Romaine_.
+    Paris, 1898.
+
+DRUMANN, W.--_Geschichte Roms in seinem Uebergange von der
+    republikanischen zur monarchisen Verfassung_. 2te Aufl., herausg.
+    von P. Groebe. Berlin. Bd. i., 1899. Bd. ii., 1902.
+
+DUREAU DE LA MALLE, A.--_Economie politique des Romains_. Paris, 1840.
+
+FORBIGER, A.--_Handbuch der alten Geographie_. Leipzig, 1842-8.
+
+FOWLER, W. WARDE.--_The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic_.
+    London and New York, 1899.
+
+FRAENKEL, M.--_Die Inschriften von Pergamon_ (Altertuemer von Pergamon.
+    Berlin, 1890. Bd. viii.).
+
+GOEBEL, E.--_Die Westkueste Afrikas im Altertum und die Geschichte
+    Mauretaniens_. Leipzig, 1887.
+
+GREENIDGE, A.-H. J.--_The Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time_. Oxford,
+    1901.
+----_Roman Public Life_. London, 1901.
+
+GUADET, J.--_Basilica_ (Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquites
+    Grecques et Romaines).
+
+HERZOG, E.--_Geschichte und System der roemischen Staatsverfassung_.
+    Leipzig, 1884-91.
+
+HUEBNER, E.--_Baliares_ (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie der
+    classischen Altertumswissenschaft, p. 2823).
+----_Roemische Heerschaft in Westeuropa_, Berlin, 1890.
+
+IHNE, W.--_Roemische Geschichte_. Leipzig, 1868-79. 2te Aufl. 1893.
+
+KIENE, A.--_Der roemische Bundesgenossenkrieg nach den Quellen
+    bearbeitet_. Leipzig, 1845.
+
+KLEES, E.--_Atilius Saranus oder Serranus_ (Pauly-Wissowa,
+    Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, p. 2094).
+
+KOEPP, F.--_De Attali III. patre_ (Rheinisches Museum fuer Philologie.
+    N. F. Bd. xlviii., 1893, p. 154).
+
+KRAUSE, J. H.--_Deinokrates oder Huette, Haus und Palast, Dorf, Stadt
+    und Residenz der alten Welt_. Jena, 1863.
+
+LAU, T.--_Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Eine Biografie_, Hamburg, 1855.
+
+LONG, G.--_The Decline of the Roman Republic_. London, 1864-74.
+
+MAHAFFY, J. P.--_The Slave Wars against Rome_ (Hermathena, 1890).
+----_The Work of Mago on Agriculture (ibid.)_.
+
+MARQUARDT, J.--_Das Privatleben der Roemer_. Leipzig, 1879. 2te Aufl.,
+    besorgt von A. Mau. Leipzig, 1886.
+----_Roemische Staatsverwaltung_. Bd. i., 2te Aufl., 1881. Bd. ii.,
+    2te Aufl., besorgt von H. Dessau und A. von Domaszewski, 1884.
+    Leipzig.
+
+MEINEL, G.--_Zur Chronologie des Jugurthinischen Krieges_. Augsburg,
+    1883.
+
+MERCIER, E.--_La population indigene de l'Afrique sous la domination
+    Romaine, Vandale et Byzantine_ (Recueil des notices et memoires de
+    la societe archeologique du departement de Constantine, vol. xxx.;
+    3e serie, vol. ix., p, 127. 1895-6. Constantine, 1897).
+
+MEYER, P.--_Der roemische Konkubinat, nach den Rechtsquellen und den
+    Inschriften_. Leipzig, 1895.
+
+MIDDLETON, J. H., and SMITH, W.--_Domus_ (Smith, Dictionary of Greek
+    and Roman Antiquities, 3rd ed., i., p. 604. London, 1890).
+
+MITTEIS, L.--_Zur Geschichte der Erbpacht im Alterthum_ (Abhandlungen
+    der philologisch-historischen Classe der Koenigl. Saechsischen
+    Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. Bd. xx., No. iv. Leipzig, 1901).
+
+MOMMSEN, TH.--_Festi codicis quaternionem decimum sextum denuo edidit
+    Th. Mommsen_ (Abhandlungen der Koenigl. Akademie der Wissenschaften
+    zu Berlin. Philologische und historische Abhandlungen, 1864, p,
+    57).
+----_Geschichte des roemischen Muenzwesens_. Berlin, 1860.
+----_The History of Rome_, translated by W. P. Dickson, London
+    (Edinburgh.), 1894.
+----_Roemische Forschungen_, Bde. i, ii. (Bd. i., 2te Aufl.). Berlin,
+    1864, 1879.
+----_Roemisches Staatsrecht_. Leipzig, 1887-8.
+----_Die roemischen Tribus in administrativer Beziehung_. Altona, 1844.
+----_Zama_ (Hermes, xx., 1885, p, 144).
+
+MOVERS, F. C.--_Die Phoenizier_. Bonn und Berlin, 1841-56.
+
+MUELLER, L. _Numismatique de l'ancienne Afrique_. Copenhague, 1860-2.
+    Supplement, 1874.
+
+NEUMANN, C.--_Geschichte Roms waehrend des Verfalles der Republik_,
+    Breslau, 1881-4.
+
+NIESE, B.--_Das sogenannte Licinisch-sextische Ackergesetz_ (Hermes,
+    xxiii., 1888).
+
+NITZSCH, K. W.--_Die Gracchen und ihre naechsten Vorgaenger, vier Buecher
+    roemischer Geschichte_. Berlin, 1847.
+
+OVERBECK, J.--_Pompeii in seinen Gebaeuden, Alterthuemern und
+    Kunstwerken ... dargestellt_. Leipzig, 1856. 2te Aufl. 2 Bde.,
+    1866. 4te im Vereine mit A. Man durchgearbeitete und vermehrte
+    Aufl., 1884.
+
+PETER, C. _Geschichte Roms_. 4te verbesserte Aufl. Halle-a.-S., 1881.
+
+POEHLMANN, R.--_Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und Sozialismus_.
+    Muenchen, 1893-1900.
+
+RAMSAY, W. M.--_The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_. Oxford, 1895-7.
+
+REIN, W.--_Das Criminalrecht der Roemer von Romulus bis auf
+    Justinianus_, Leipzig, 1844.
+
+REINACH, TH.--_Mithridate Eupator, roi du Pont_. Paris, 1890.
+
+RICHTER, O.--_Topographie der Stadt Rom_. 2te Aufl. Muenchen, 1901.
+
+RUDORFF, A.A.F.--_Das Ackergesetz des Sp. Thorius wiederhergestellt und
+    erlaeutert_ (Zeitschr. fuer geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft. Bd. x.
+    Berlin, 1839).
+
+SCHAEFER, A.--On Orosius, v., 9, 6 (_Mamertium oppidum_) (Jahrbuecher fuer
+    classische Philologie, 1873, p. 71).
+----On Plutarch, _Ti. Gracch_. II ([Greek: _Mallios kai phoulbios_])
+    (ibid.).
+
+SCHMIDT, J.--_Zama_ (Rheinisches Museum fuer Philologie. N. F. Bd.
+    xliv., 1889, p. 397).
+
+SMITH, W. and WILKINS, A.S.--_Frumentariae Leges_ (Smith, Dictionary of
+    Greek and Roman Antiquities, 3rd. ed., i. p. 877. London, 1890).
+
+SOLTAU, W.--_Das Aechtheit des licinischen Ackergesetzes von 367 v.
+    Chr_. (Hermes, xxx., 1895),
+---- _Roms Kultur_ (Kulturgeschichte des klassischen Altertums, p.
+    190. Leipzig, 1897).
+
+STEINWENDER, TH.--_Die Roemische Buergerschaft in ihrem Verhaeltniss zum
+    Heere_. Danzig, 1888.
+
+STRACHAN-DAVIDSON, J.L.--_Appian, Civil Wars_. Book i., edited with
+    notes and map. Oxford, 1902.
+
+SUMMERS, W.C.--_C. Sallusti Crispi Jugurtha_, edited with introduction,
+    notes and index. Cambridge, 1902.
+
+THEDENAT, H.--_Ergastulum_ (Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des
+    Antiquites Grecques et Romaines).
+
+TISSOT, C.--_Geographie comparee de la province Romaine d'Afrique_.
+    Tome i., Paris, 1884. Tome ii. (ouvrage publie d'apres le manuscrit
+    de l'auteur avec des notes, des additions et un atlas par Salomon
+    Reinach), 1888.
+
+UNDERHILL, G.E.--_Plutarch's Lives of the Gracchi_, edited, with
+    introduction, notes and indices. Oxford, 1892.
+
+USSING, J.L.--_Pergamos, seine Geschichte und Monumente_, nach der
+    daenischen Ausgabe neu bearbeitet. Berlin, 1899.
+
+VOIGT, M.--_Ueber die Bankiers, die Buchfuehrung und die
+    Litteralobligation der Roemer_ (Abhandlungen der
+    philologisch-historischen Classe der Koenigl. Saechsischen
+    Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. Bd. x. Leipzig, 1887).
+---- _Ueber die staatsrechtliche Possessio und den Ager Compascuus der
+    roemischen Republik_ (ibid.).
+---- _Privataltertuemer und Kulturgeschichte_ (Handbuch der klassischen
+    Altertumswissenschaft, herausg. von Iwan von Mueller. Bd. iv., abt.
+    ii., 2te Aufl. Muenchen, 1893).
+
+WADDINGTON, W.H.--_Fastes des provinces Asiatiques de l'Empire Romain
+    depuis leur origine jusqu'au regne de Diocletien. Ch. ii., Province
+    d'Asie_ (Voyage Archeologique en Grece et en Asie Mineure, par P.
+    Le Bas et W.H. Waddington. Vol. iii., p. 661. Paris, 1870).
+
+WALLON, H.--_Histoire de l'esclavage dans l'antiquite_. 2nd edit.
+    Paris, 1879.
+
+WALTZING, J.P.--_Etude historique sur les corporations professionnelles
+    chez les Romains depuis les origines jusqu'a la chute de l'Empire
+    d'Occident_. Louvain, 1899-1900.
+
+WILCKEN, U.--_Attalos III_. (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie der
+    classischen Altertumswissenschaft, p. 2168).
+
+ZUMPT, A.W.--_Das Criminalrecht der roemischen Republik_. Berlin, 1865-9.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[1] The average, or at least the most powerful, type of a race is
+stamped on its history. It is perhaps needless to say that no
+generalisations on character apply to all its individual members.
+
+[2] Even the Hellenes of the West are only a partial exception. It is
+true that their cities clung to the coast; but the vast inland
+possessions of states like Sybaris are scarcely paralleled elsewhere in
+the history of Greek colonisation.
+
+[3] The Latin colony of Aquileia was settled in the former year (Liv.
+xl. 34 Vellei. 1. 15), the Roman colony of Auximum in the latter
+(Vellei. l.c.).
+
+[4] Cic. _de Leg. Agr_. ii. 27. 73 Est operae pretium diligentiam
+majorum recordari, qui colonias sic idoneis in locis contra suspicionem
+periculi collocarunt, ut esse non oppida Italiae, sed propugnacula
+imperii viderentur.
+
+[5] Liv. xxvii. 38; xxxvi. 3; cf. Marquardt _Staatsverwaltung_ 1. p. 51.
+
+[6] The Roman citizen, who entered his name for a Latin colony, suffered
+the derogation of _caput_ which was known to the later jurists as
+_capitis deminutio minor_ and expressed the loss of _civitas_ (Gaius i.
+161; iii. 56). That a fine was the alternative of enrolment, hence
+conceived as voluntary, we are told by Cicero (_pro Caec_. 33. 98 Aut
+sua voluntate aut legis multa profecti sunt: quam multam si sufferre
+voluissent, manere in civitate potuissent. Cf. _pro Domo_ 30. 78 Qui
+cives Romani in colonias Latinas proficiscebantur, fieri non poterant
+Latini, nisi erant auctores acti nomenque dederant).
+
+[7] Liv. xxxix. 23.
+
+[8] Liv. xxxvii. 4.
+
+[9] Liv. xlii. 32 Multi voluntate nomina dabant, quia locupletes
+videbant, qui priore Macedonico bello, aut adversus Antiochum in Asia,
+stipendia fecerant.
+
+[10] For the assignations _viritim_ in the times of the Kings see Varro
+_R.R_. i. 10 (Romulus); Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 14. 26 (Numa); Liv. 1. 46
+(Servius Tullius). That the Cassian distribution was to be [Greek: _kat
+andra_] is stated by Dionysius (viii. 72, 73). On the whole subject see
+Mommsen in C.I.L. i. p. 75. He has made out a good case for the land
+thus assigned being known by the technical name of _viritanus ager_. See
+Festus p. 373; Siculus Flaccus p. 154 Lachm. We shall find that this was
+the form of distribution effected by the Gracchi.
+
+[11] For the settlement in the land of the Volsci see Liv. v. 24; for
+that made by M. Curius in the Sabine territory, Colum. i. praef. 14;
+[Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 33.
+
+[12] Cato ap. Varr. _R.R_. i. 2. 7 Ager Gallicus Romanus vocatur, qui
+viritim cis Ariminum datus est ultra agrum Picentium; cf. Cic. _Brut_.
+14. 57; _de Senect_. 4. 11; Val. Max. v. 4. 5.
+
+[13] Liv. xlii. 4 (173 B.C.); cf. xli. 16.
+
+[14] The other sources were the _portoria_ and the _vicesima libertatis_.
+Even at a period when the revenues from the provinces were infinitely
+larger than they were at the present time Cicero could write, with
+reference to Caesar's proposal for distributing the Campanian land,
+Portoriis Italiae sublatis, agro Campano divisor, quid vectigal superest
+domesticum praeter vicensimam? (Cic. _ad Att_. ii. 16. i).
+
+[15] See the map attempted by Beloch in his work _Der Italische Bund
+unter Roms Hegemonie_.
+
+[16] Vellei. ii. 7. See ch. iv., where the attitude of the senate
+towards the proposals for transmarine settlement made by Caius Gracchus
+is described.
+
+[17] Polyb. xxxii. 11.
+
+[18] Besides the continued war in Spain from 145 to 133 there were
+troubles in Macedonia (in 142) and in Sicily during this period of
+comparative peace. _Circa_ 140-135 commences the great slave rising in
+that island, and in the latter year the long series of campaigns against
+the free Illyrian and Thracian peoples begins.
+
+[19] The _officia_ of the _villicus_ have become very extensive even in
+Cato's time (Cato _R.R_. 5). Their extent implies the assumption of
+very prolonged absences on the part of the master.
+
+[20] Lucullus paid 500,200 drachmae for the house at Misenum which had
+once belonged to Cornelia. She had purchased it for 75,000 (Plut. _Mar_.
+34). Marius had been its intermediate owner. Even during his occupancy
+it is described as [Greek: _polytelaes oikia tryphas echousa kai diaitas
+thaelyteras hae kat andra polemon tosouton kai strateion autourgon_.]
+
+[21] Diod. xxxvii. 3.
+
+[22] Sulla rented one of the lower floors for 3000 sesterces (Plut.
+_Sulla_ 1).
+
+[23] The _coenaculum_ is mentioned by Livy (xxxix. 14) in connection
+with the year 186 B.C. It is known both to Ennius (ap. Tertull. _adv_.
+Valent. 7) and to Plautus (_Amph_. iii. 1. 3).
+
+[24] Festus p. 171. The _insula_ resembled a large hotel, with one or
+more courts, and bounded on all sides by streets. See Smith _Dict. of
+Antiq_. (3rd ed.) i. p. 665.
+
+[25] Val. Max. viii. 1. damn. 7 Admodum severae notae et illud populi
+judicium, cum M. Aemilium Porcinam (consul 137 B.C.) a L. Cassio (censor
+125 B.C.) accusatum crimine nimis sublime extructae villae in Alsiensi
+agro gravi multa affecit. The author does not sufficiently distinguish
+between the censorian initiative and the operation of the law. The
+passage is important as showing the existence of an enactment on the
+height of buildings. See Voigt in Iwan-Mueller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2, p.
+394, and cf. Vellei. ii. 10. Augustus limited the height of houses to
+70 feet (Strabo v. p. 235).
+
+[26] Diodor. v. 40 (The Etruscans) [Greek: _en ... tais oikiais ta
+peristoa pros tas ton therapeuonton ochlon tarachas exeuron
+euchraestian_.] See Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 528.
+
+[27] In spite of the plural form _fauces_ (Vitruv. vi. 3. 6) may denote
+only a single passage. See Marquardt _Privatl_. p. 240; Smith and
+Middleton in Smith _Dict. of Antiq_. i. p. 671.
+
+[28] For this _atriensis_, the English butler, the continental porter,
+see the frequent references in Plautus (e.g., _Asin_. ii. 2. 80 and 101;
+_Pseud_. ii. 2. 15), Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 534 and Marquardt
+_Privatl_. p. 140.
+
+[29] Plin. _H.N_. xxxv. 6 Stemmata vero lineis discurrebant ad imagines
+pictas. It is not known at what period the _imagines_ were transferred
+from the Atrium to the Alae.
+
+[30] Overbeck _Pompeii_ p. 192; Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 539.
+
+[31] For the practice started, or developed, by Caius Gracchus of
+receiving visitors, some singly, others in smaller or larger groups, see
+Seneca _de Ben_. vi. 34. 2 and the description of Gracchus' tribunate in
+chapter iv.
+
+[32] Festus p. 357 (according to Mommsen, Abh. der Berl. Akad.
+Phil.-hist. Classe, 1864 p. 68). Tablinum proxime atrium locus dicitur,
+quod antiqui magistratus in suo imperio tabulis rationum ibi habebant
+publicarum rationum causa factum locum; Plin. _H.N_. xxxv. 7 Tabulina
+codicibus implebantur et monimentis rerum in magistratu gestarum.
+Marquardt, however (_Privatl_. p. 215) thinks that the name _tablinum_
+is derived from the fact that this chamber was originally made of planks
+(_tablinum_ from _tabula_, as _figlinum_ from _figulus_).
+
+[33] The earliest instances of extreme extravagance in the use of
+building material--of the use, for instance, of Hymettian and Numidian
+marble--are furnished by the houses of the orator Lucius Licinius
+Crassus (built about 92 B.C.) and of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, consul in
+78 B.C. This growth of luxury will be treated when we come to deal with
+the civilisation of the Ciceronian period.
+
+[34] As Krause expresses it (_Deinokrates_ p. 542), at the final stage
+we find a Greek "Hinterhaus" standing behind an old Italian
+"Vorderhaus".
+
+[35] The case mentioned by Juvenal (xi. 151)
+
+    Pastoris duri hic est filius, ille bubulci.
+    Suspirat longo non visam tempore matrem,
+    Et casulam, et notos tristis desiderat haedos,
+
+must have been of frequent occurrence as soon as the urban and rustic
+_familiae_ had been kept distinct.
+
+[36] Suetonius says (_de Rhet_. 3) of L. Voltacilius Pilutus, one of the
+teachers of Pompeius, Servisse dicitur atque etiam ostiarius vetere more
+in catena fuisse.
+
+[37] For these _atrienses, atriarii, admissionales, velarii_ see Wallon
+_Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 108.
+
+[38] Diod. xxxvii. 3; Sallust (_Jug_. 85) makes Marius say (107 B.C.)
+Neque pluris pretii coquum quam villicum habeo. Livy (xxxix. 6) remarks
+with reference to the consequences of the return of Manlius' army from
+Asia in 187 B.C. Tum coquus, vilissimum antiquis mancipium et
+aestimatione et usu, in pretio esse; et, quod ministerium fuerat, ars
+haberi coepta.
+
+[39] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 108 Nec coquos vero habebant in servitiis
+eosque ex macello conducebant. The practice is mentioned by Plautus
+(_Aul_. ii. 4. 1; iii. 2. 15).
+
+[40] _Condus promus_ (Plaut. _Pseud_. ii. 2. 14).
+
+[41] Wallon op. cit. ii. p. 111.
+
+[42] C. Gracchus ap. Gell. x. 3. 5.
+
+[43] Polyb. xxxii. 11; Diodor. xxxvii. 3.
+
+[44] Diod. l.c.
+
+[45] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 143 Invenimus legatos Carthaginiensium
+dixisse nullos hominum inter se benignius vivere quam Romanos. Eodem
+enim argento apud omnes cenitavisse ipsos.
+
+[46] Val. Max. ii. 9, 3.
+
+[47] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 141.
+
+[48] Vellei. i. 13.
+
+[49] Polyb. xl. 7.
+
+[50] Liv. xxxix. 6 Lectos aeratos ... plagulas ... monopodia et abacos
+Romam advexerunt. Tunc psaltriae sambucistriaeque et convivalia ludionum
+oblectamenta addita epulis. Cf. Plin, _H.N_. xxxiv. 14.
+
+[51] Polyb. ix. 10 [Greek: _Rhomaioi de metakomisantes ta proeiraemena
+tais men idiotikais kataskenais tous auton ekosmaesan bious, tais de
+daemosiais ta koina taes poleos_.] Another great raid was that made by
+Fulvius Nobilior in 189 B.C. on the art treasures of the Ambraciots
+(Signa aenea marmoreaque et tabulae pictae, Liv. xxxviii. 9).
+
+[52] Plin. _H.N_. xv. 19 Graeci vitiorum omnium genitores.
+
+[53] Cic. _pro Arch_. 3. 5 Erat Italia tum plena Graecarum artium ac
+disciplinarum ... Itaque hunc (Archiam) et Tarentini et Regini et
+Neapolitani civitate ceterisque praemiis donarunt: et omnes, qui aliquid
+de ingeniis poterant judicare, cognitione atque hospitio dignum
+existimarunt.
+
+[54] Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 19. 34 Videtur insitiva quadam disciplina
+doctior facta esse civitas. Influxit enim non tenuis quidam e Graecia
+rivulus in hanc urbem, sed abundantissimus amnis illarum disciplinarum
+et artium. Cicero is speaking of the very earliest Hellenic influences
+on Rome, but his description is just as appropriate to the period which
+we are considering.
+
+[55] Plut. _Paul_. 28.
+
+[56] Sulla brought back the library of Apellicon of Teos, Lucullus the
+very large one of the kings of Pontus (Plut. _Sulla_ 26; _Luc_. 42;
+Isid. _Orig_. vi. 5). Lucullus allowed free access to his books. Here we
+get the germ of the public library. The first that was genuinely public
+belongs to the close of the Republican era. It was founded by Asinius
+Pollio in the Atrium Libertatis on the Aventine (Plin. _H.N_. vii. 45;
+Isid. _Orig_. vi. 5).
+
+[57] Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 14. 7.
+
+[58] Dionys. vii. 71.
+
+[59] They had made contributions in 186 B.C. towards the games of Scipio
+Asiaticus (Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 138).
+
+[60] Livy (xl. 44) after describing the _senatus consultum_, in which
+occur the words Neve quid ad eos ludos arcesseret, cogeret, acciperet,
+faceret adversus id senatus consultum, quod L. Aemilio Cn. Baebio
+consulibus de ludis factum esset, adds Decreverat id senatus propter
+effusos sumptus, factos in ludos Ti. Sempronii aedilis, qui graves non
+modo Italiae ac sociis Latini nominis sed etiam provinciis
+externis fuerant.
+
+[61] The effect was still worse when a rich man avoided it. Cic. _de
+Off_. ii. 17. 58. Vitanda tamen suspicio est avaritiae. Mamerco, homini
+divitissimo, praetermissio aedilitatis consulatus repulsam attulit.
+Sulla said that the people would not give him the praetorship because
+they wished him to be aedile first. They knew that he could obtain
+African animals for exhibition (Plut. _Sulla_ 5).
+
+[62] Cic. _in Verr_. v. 14. 36.
+
+[63] Liv. x. 47; xxvii. 6.
+
+[64] Liv. xxiii. 30.
+
+[65] Liv. xxx. 39.
+
+[66] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 286.
+
+[67] Mommsen _Roem. Muenzw_. p. 645.
+
+[68] Liv. xxxvi. 36. On these festivals see Warde Fowler _The Roman
+Festivals_ pp. 72. 91. 70. The _Megalesia_ seem to have fallen to the
+lot of the curule aediles (Dio. Cass. xliii. 48), the others to have
+been given indifferently by either pair.
+
+[69] Val. Max. ii. 4-7; Liv. _Ep_. xvi. It was exhibited in the Forum
+Boarium by Marcus and Decimus Brutus at the funeral of their father.
+
+[70] Compare Livy's description (xli. 20) of the adoption of Roman
+gladiatorial shows by Antiochus Epiphanes--Armorum studium plerisque
+juvenum accendit.
+
+[71] Polyb. xxx. 13.
+
+[72] Liv. xxxix. 22.
+
+[73] Liv. xliv. 18.
+
+[74] Dig. 21. 1. 40-42 (from the edict of the curule aediles) Ne quis
+canem, verrem vel minorem aprum, lupum, ursum, pantheram, leonem ... qua
+vulgo iter fiet, ita habuisse velit, ut cuiquam nocere damnumve
+dare possit.
+
+[75] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 17. 60 Tota igitur ratio talium largitionum
+genere vitiosa est, temporibus necessaria. He adds the pious but
+unattainable wish Tamen ipsa et ad facultates accomodanda et
+mediocritate moderanda est. Compare the remarks of Poehlmann on the
+subject in his _Geschichte des antiken Communismus und Sozialismus_ ii.
+2. p. 471.
+
+[76] Mommsen _Staatsr_. ii., p. 382.
+
+[77] Plut, _Ti. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[78] Liv. xxxix. 44; Plut, _Cat. Maj_. 18.
+
+[79] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_, p. 128.
+
+[80] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 22. 76 (Paullus) tantum in aerarium pecuniae
+invexit, ut unius imperatoris praeda finem attulerit tributorum. A
+deterrent to luxury could still have been created by imposing heavy
+harbour-dues on articles of value; but this would have required
+legislation. Nothing is known about the Republican tariff at Italian
+ports. The percentage may have been uniform for all articles.
+
+[81] Liv. xxxiv. cc. 1-8; Val. Max. ix. 1. 3; Tac. _Ann_. iii. 33.
+
+[82] Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 17; Festus pp. 201, 242; Schol. Bob. p. 310;
+Meyer _Orat. Rom. Fragm_. p. 91.
+
+[83] This date (161) is given by Pliny (_H.N_. x. 139); Macrobius
+(_Sat_. iii. 17. 3) places the law in 159.
+
+[84] Gell. ii. 24; Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 17; Plin. _H.N_. x. 139;
+Tertull. _Apol_. vi. The ten asses of this law are the Fanni centussis
+misellus of Lucilius.
+
+[85] It seems that we must assume formal acceptance on the part of the
+allies in accordance with the principle that Rome could not legislate
+for her confederacy, a principle analogous to that which forbade her to
+force her franchise on its members (Cic. _pro Balbo_ 8, 20 and 21).
+
+[86] We may compare the enactment of 193 B.C., which was produced by the
+discovery that Roman creditors escaped the usury laws by using Italians
+as their agents (Liv. xxxv. 7 M. Sempronius tribunus plebis ... plebem
+rogavit plebesque scivit ut cum sociis ac nomine Latino creditae
+pecuniae jus idem quod cum civibus Romanis esset).
+
+[87] The _Lex Licinia_, which is attributed by Macrobius (l.c.) to P.
+Licinius Crassus Dives, perhaps belongs either to his praetorship (104
+B.C.) or to his consulship (97 B.C.).
+
+[88] Gellius (ii. 24), in speaking of Sulla's experiments, says of the
+older laws Legibus istis situ atque senio obliteratis.
+
+[89] _Exaequatio_ (Liv. xxxiv. 4).
+
+[90] Cic. _de Rep_. iii. g. 16; see p. 80.
+
+[91] Compare Tac. _Ann_. iii. 53. The Emperor Tiberius here speaks of
+Illa feminarum propria, quis lapidum causa pecuniae nostrae ad externas
+aut hostilis gentes transferuntur.
+
+[92] The prohibition belongs to the year 229 B.C. (Zonar. viii. 19). For
+other prohibitions of the same kind dating from, a period later than
+that which we are considering see Voigt in Iwan-Mueller's _Handbuch_ iv.
+2, p. 376 n. 95.
+
+[93] Earlier enactments had been directed against canvassing, but not
+against bribery. The simplicity of the fifth century B.C. was
+illustrated by the law that a candidate should not whiten his toga with
+chalk (Liv. iv. 25; 433 B.C.). The _Lex Poetelia_ of 358 B.C. (Liv. vii.
+16) was directed against personal solicitation by _novi homines_. Some
+law of _ambitus_ is known to Plautus (_Amph. prol. 73; cf. Trinumm_. iv.
+3. 26), See Rein _Criminalrecht_ p. 706
+
+[94] Liv. xl. 19 Leges de ambitu consules ex auctoritate senatus ad
+populum tulerunt. This was the _lex Cornelia Baebia_ and that it
+referred to pecuniary corruption is known from a fragment of Cato (ap.
+_Non_. vii. 19, s.v. largi, Cato lege Baebia: pecuniam inlargibo tibi).
+
+[95] Obsequens lxxi.
+
+[96] Liv. _Ep_. xlvii.
+
+[97] Polyb. vi. 56 [Greek: _para men Karchaedoniois dora phaneros
+didontes lambanousi tas archas, para de Rhomaiois thanatos esti peri
+touto prostimon_.]
+
+[98] The position of the ruined patrician will be fully illustrated in
+the following pages when we deal with the careers of Scaurus and
+of Sulla.
+
+[99] Liv. xxxiv. 52.
+
+[100] Liv. xxxix. 7.
+
+[101] Liv. xxxviii. 9.
+
+[102] For the later history of the _aurum coronarium_ see Marquardt
+_Staatsverw_. ii. p. 295. It was developed from the _triumphales
+coronae_ (Festus p. 367) and is described as gold Quod triumphantibus
+... a victis gentibus datur and as imposed by commanders Propter
+concessam vitam (_al_. immunitatem) (Serv. _Ad. Aen_. viii. 721).
+
+[103] Liv. xxi. 63 (218 B.C.) Id satis habitum ad fructus ex agris
+vectandos; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus.
+
+[104] It was antiqua et mortua (Cic. _in Verr_. v. 18. 45).
+
+[105] Cicero (_Parad_. 6. 46) speaks of those Qui honeste rem quaerunt
+mercaturis faciendis, operis dandis, publicis sumendis. Compare the
+category of banausic trades in _de Off_, 1. 42. 150, although in the
+_Paradoxa_ the contrast is rather that between honest and vicious
+methods of money-making. Deloume (_Les manieurs d'argent a Rome_
+pp. 58 ff.) believes that the fortune of Cicero swelled through
+participation in _publica_.
+
+[106] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21.
+
+[107] Plut. _Crass_. 2.
+
+[108] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21. Cato employed this method of training as a
+means of increasing the _peculium_ of his own slaves. But even the
+_peculium_ technically belonged to the master, and it is obvious that
+the slave-trainer might have been used by others as a mere instrument
+for the master's gain.
+
+[109] Plat. l.c. [Greek: _haptomenos de syntonoteron porismou taen men
+georgian mallon haegeito diagogaen hae prosodon_.]
+
+[110] Plaut. _Trinumm. Prol_. 8:
+
+    Primum mihi Plautus nomen Luxuriae indidit:
+    Tum hanc mihi gnatam esse voluit Inopiam.
+
+[111] Liv. xxxiv. 4 (Cato's speech in defence of the Oppian law) Saepe
+me querentem de feminarum, saepe de virorum, nec de privatorum modo, sed
+etiam magistratuum sumptibus audistis; diversisque duobus vitiis,
+avaritia et luxuria, civitatem laborare. Compare Sallust's impressions
+of a later age (_Cat_. 3) Pro pudore, pro abstinentia, pro virtute,
+audacia, largitio, avaritia vigebant.
+
+[112] Polyb. vi. 56.
+
+[113] Polyb. xxiv. 9.
+
+[114] Cato ap. Gell. xi. 18. 18. The speech was one De praeda
+militibus dividenda.
+
+[115] We first hear of a standing court for _peculatus_ in 66 B.C. (Cic.
+_pro Cluent_. 53. 147). It was probably established by Sulla.
+
+[116] Rein _Criminalr_. pp. 680 ff.; Mommsen _Roem. Forsch_. ii.
+pp. 437 ff.
+
+[117] Liv. xxxvii. 57 and 58 (190 B.C.).
+
+[118] See especially the case of Pleminius, Scipio's lieutenant at Locri
+(204 B.C.), who, after a committee had reported on the charge, was
+conveyed to Rome but died in bonds before the popular court had
+pronounced judgment (Liv. xxix. 16-22).
+
+[119] Liv. xlii. 1 (173 B.C.) Silentium, nimis aut modestum aut timidum
+Praenestinorum, jus, velut probato exemplo, magistratibus fecit
+graviorum in dies talis generis imperiorum.
+
+[120] For such requisitions see Plut. _Cato Maj_ 6 (of Cato's government
+of Sardinia) [Greek: _ton pro autou strataegon eiothoton chraesthai kai
+skaenomasi daemosiois kai klinais kai himatiois, pollae de therapeia kai
+philon plaethei kai peri deipna dapanais kai paraskeuais barhynonton_.]
+
+[121] Liv. xxxii. 27 Sumptus, quos in cultum praetorum socii facere
+soliti erant, circumcisi aut sublati (198 B.C.).
+
+[122] The _Lex de Termessibus_ (a charter of freedom given to Termessus
+in Pisidia in 71 B.C.) enjoins (ii. l. 15) Nei ... quis magistratus ...
+inperato, quo quid magis iei dent praebeant ab ieisve auferatur nisei
+quod eos ex lege Porcia dare praebere oportet oportebit. This Porcian
+law was probably the work of Cato (Rein _Criminalr_. p. 607).
+
+[123] Liv. xxxviii. 43; xxxix. 3; Rein, l.c.
+
+[124] Liv. xliii. 2.
+
+[125] Cic. _Brut_. 27. 106; _de Off_. ii. 21. 75; cf. _in Verr_.
+iii. 84. 195; iv. 25. 56.
+
+[126] Liv. xli. 15. (176 B.C.) Duo (praetores) deprecati sunt ne in
+provincias irent, M. Popillius in Sardiniam: Gracchum eam provinciam
+pacare &c.... Probata Popillii excusatio est. P. Licinius Crassus
+sacrificiis se impediri sollemnibus excusabat, ne in provinciam iret.
+Citerior Hispania obvenerat. Ceterum aut ire jussus aut jurare pro
+contione sollemni sacrificio se prohiberi.... Praetores ambo in eadem
+verba jurarunt. I have seen the passage cited as a proof that governors
+would not go to unproductive provinces; but Sardinia was a fruitful
+sphere for plunder, and the excuses may have been genuine. That of
+Popillius seems to have been positively patriotic.
+
+[127] Liv. xlii. 45 Decimius unus sine ullo effectu, captarum etiam
+pecuniarum ab regibus Illyriorum suspicione infamis, Romam rediit.
+
+[128] Cic. _in Verr_. v. 48. 126 (70 B.C.) Patimur ... multos jam annos
+et silemus cum videamus ad paucos homines omnes omnium nationum pecunias
+pervenisse.
+
+[129] For the principle see Gaius iii. 151-153.
+
+[130] Polybius (vi. 17), after speaking of various kinds of property
+belonging to the state, adds [Greek: _panta cheirizesthai symbainei ta
+proeiraemena dia tou plaethous, kai schedon hos epos eipein pantas
+endedesthai tais onais kai tais ergasiais tais ek touton_].
+
+[131] Polyb. vi. 17. The senate can [Greek: _symptomatos genomenou
+kouphisai kai to parapan adynatou tinos symbantos apolysai taes
+ergonias_]. Thus the senate invalidated the _locationes_ of the censors
+of 184 B.C. (Liv. xxxix. 44 Locationes cum senatus precibus et lacrimis
+publicanorum victus induci et de integro locari jussisset.)
+
+[132] In 169 B.C. it was the people that released from an oppressive
+regulation (Liv. xliii. 16). In this case a tribune answered the
+censor's intimation, that none of the former state-contractors should
+appear at the auction, by promulgating the resolution Quae publica
+vectigalia, ultro tributa C. Claudius et Ti. Sempronius locassent, ea
+rata locatio ne esset. Ab integro locarentur, et ut omnibus redimendi et
+conducendi promiscue jus esset.
+
+[133] Deloume op. cit. pp. 119 ff. Polybius (vi. 17) has been quoted
+as an authority for the distinction between these two classes. He says
+[Greek: _oi men gar agorazousi para ton timaeton autoi tas ekdoseis, oi
+de koinonousi toutois, oi d' enguontai tous aegorakotas, oi de tas
+ousias didoasi peri touton eis to daemosion_.] The first three classes
+are the _mancipes, socii and praedes_. In the fourth the shareholders
+(_participes_ or perhaps _adfines_, cf. Liv. xliii. 16) are found by
+Deloume (p. 120); but the identification is very uncertain. The words
+may denote either real as opposed to formal security or the final
+payment of the _vectigal_ into the treasury. A better evidence for the
+distinction between _socii_ and shareholders is found in the
+Pseudo-Asconius (in Cic. _in Verr_. p. 197 Or.) Aliud enim socius, Aliud
+particeps qui certam habet partem et non _in_divise agit ut socius. The
+_magnas partes_ (Cic. _pro Rab_. Post. 2. 4) and the _particulam_ (Val.
+Max. vi. 9. 7) of a _publicum_, need only denote large or small shares
+held by the _socii_. _Dare partes_ (Cic. l.c.) is to "allot shares," but
+not necessarily to outside members. Apart from the testimony of the
+Pseudo-Asconius and the mention of _adfines_ in Livy the evidence for
+the ordinary shareholder is slight but by no means fatal to his
+existence.
+
+[134] E.g. by loan to a _socius_ at a rate of interest dependent on his
+returns, perhaps with a _pactum de non petendo_ in certain
+contingencies.
+
+[135] These are, in strict legal language, the true _publicani_; the
+lessees of state property are _publicanorum loco_ (Dig. 39. 4, 12
+and 13).
+
+[136] Later legal theory assimilated the third with the first class.
+Gaius says (ii. 7) In eo (provinciali) solo dominium populi Romani est
+vel Caesaris, nos autem possessionem tantum vel usumfructum habere
+videmur. But the theory is not ancient-perhaps not older than the
+Gracchan period. See Greenidge _Roman Public Life_ p. 320. From a broad
+standpoint the first and second classes may be assimilated, since the
+payment of harbour dues (_portoria_) is based on the idea of the use of
+public ground by a private occupant.
+
+[137] _Cic. de Leg. Agr_. ii. 31. 84.
+
+[138] Thedenat in Daremberg-Saglio _Dict. des Antiq. s.v_. Ergastulum.
+
+[139] Compare Cunningham _Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects_
+vol. i. p. 162.
+
+[140] Cic. _in Verr_. ii. 55. 137; iii. 33. 77; ii. 13. 32; 26. 63.
+
+[141] Ibid. ii. 13. 32.
+
+[142] Liv. xxv. 3.
+
+[143] Liv. xxiii. 49.
+
+[144] Liv. xxiv. 18; Val. Max. v. 6. 8.
+
+[145] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 19.
+
+[146] Liv. xliii. 16.
+
+[147] Cic. _Brut_. 22. 85 Cum in silva Sila facta caedes esset notique
+homines interfecti insimulareturque familia, partim etiam liberi,
+societatis ejus, quae picarias de P. Cornelio, L. Mummio censoribus
+redemisset, decrevisse senatum ut de ea re cognoscerent et statuerent
+consules. For the value of the pine-woods of Sila see Strabo vi. 1. 9.
+
+[148] Liv. xlv. 18 Metalli quoque Macedonici, quod ingens vectigal erat,
+locationesque praediorum rusticorum tolli placebat. Nam neque sine
+publicano exerceri posse, et, ubi publicanus esset, ibi aut jus publicum
+vanum aut libertatem sociis nullam esse. The _praedia rustica_ were
+probably public domains, that might have formed part of the crown lands
+of the Macedonian Kings and would now, in the natural course of events,
+have been leased to _publicani_.
+
+[149] It might happen that the interest of the _negotiator_ was opposed
+to that of the _publicanus_. The former, for instance, might wish
+_portoria_ to be lessened, the latter to be increased (Cic. _ad Att_.
+ii. 16. 4). But such a conflict was unusual.
+
+[150] Cato _R.R_. pr. 1. Est interdum praestare mercaturis rem
+quaerere, nisi tam periculosum sit, et item fenerari, si tam honestum
+sit. Majores nostri sic habuerunt et ita in legibus posiverunt, furem
+dupli condemnari, feneratorem quadrupli. Quanto pejorem civem
+existimarint feneratorem quam furem, hinc licet existimare. Cf. Cic.
+_de Off_. i. 42. 150. Improbantur ii quaestus, qui in odia hominum
+incurrunt, ut portitorum, ut feneratorum.
+
+[151] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 25. 89. Cum ille ... dixisset "Quid fenerari?"
+tum Cato "Quid hominem," inquit, "occidere?"
+
+[152] For such professional money-lenders see Plaut. _Most_. iii. 1. 2
+ff.; _Curc_. iv. 1. 19.
+
+[153] Liv. xxxii. 27.
+
+[154] On the history and functions of the bankers see Voigt _Ueber die
+Bankiers, die Buchfuehrung und die Litteralobligation der Roemer_ (Abh. d.
+Koenigl. Saechs. Gesell. d. Wissench.; Phil. hist. Classe, Bd. x);
+Marquardt Staatsverw, ii. pp. 64 ff.; Deloume _Les manieurs d'argent a
+Rome_, pp. 146 ff.
+
+[155] Plin. _H.N_. xxi. 3. 8.
+
+[156] Cf. Cic. _de Off_, iii. 14. 58. Pythius, qui esset ut
+argentarius apud omnes ordines gratiosus....
+
+[157] Yet the two never became thoroughly assimilated. The
+_argentarius_, for instance, was not an official tester of money, and
+the _nummularii_ appear not to have performed certain functions usual to
+the banker, e.g. sales by auction. See Voigt op. cit. pp. 521. 522.
+
+[158] Plaut. _Cure_. iv. 1. 6 ff.
+
+    Commonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco.
+       *       *       *       *       *
+    Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito.
+    Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta, quique stipulari solent.
+       *       *       *       *       *
+    In foro infumo boni homines, atque dites ambulant.
+    Sub veteribus, ibi sunt qui dant quique accipiunt faenore.
+
+[159] To be bankrupt is _foro mergi_ (Plaut. _Ep_. i. 2. 16), _a foro
+fugere, abire_ (Plaut. _Pers_. iii. 3. 31 and 38).
+
+[160] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 24. 87. Toto hoc de genere, de quaerenda, de
+collocanda pecunia, vellem etiam de utenda, commodius a quibusdam
+optumis viris ad Janum medium sedentibus ... disputatur. For _Janus
+medius_ and the question whether it means an arch or a street see
+Richter _Topogr. der Stadt Rom_. pp. 106. 107.
+
+[161] Liv. xxxix. 44; xliv. 16. The Porcian was followed by the Fulvian
+Basilica (Liv. xl. 51). The dates of the three were 184, 179, 169 B.C.
+respectively.
+
+[162] Deloume op. cit. pp. 320 ff.; Guadet in Daremberg-Saglio _Dict.
+des Antiq. s.v_. Basilicae.
+
+[163] Large transport ships could themselves come to Rome if their build
+was suited to river navigation. In 167 B.C. Aemilius Paulus astonished
+the city with the size of a ship (once belonging to the Macedonian King)
+on which he arrived (Liv. xlv. 35). On the whole question of this
+foreign trade see Voigt in Iwan-Mueller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2, pp. 373-378.
+
+[164] Voigt op. cit. p. 377 n. 99.
+
+[165] Compare Cunningham _Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects_
+vol. i. p. 165, "It is only under very special conditions, including the
+existence of a strong government to exercise a constant control, that
+free play for the formation of associations of capitalists bent on
+securing profit, is anything but a public danger. The landed interest in
+England has hitherto been strong enough to bring legislative control to
+bear on the moneyed men from time to time.... The problem of leaving
+sufficient liberty for the formation of capital and for enterprise in
+the use of it, without allowing it licence to exhaust the national
+resources, has not been solved."
+
+[166] Plut. Numa 17. On the history of these gilds see Waltzing
+_Corporations professionelles chez les Remains_ pp. 61-78.
+
+[167] The praetor was Rutilius (Ulpian in Dig. 38. 2. 1. 1), perhaps P.
+Rutilius Rufus, the consul of 105 B.C. (Mommsen Staatsr. in. p. 433).
+See the last chapter of this volume. For the principle on which such
+_operae_ were exacted from freedmen see Mommsen l.c.
+
+[168] Inliberales ac sordidi quaestus (Cic. _de Off_. i. 42. 150).
+
+[169] Gell. vii. (vi.) 9; Liv. ix. 46; Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 497.
+
+[170] Cf. Cic. _de Off_. i. 42. 151 Omnium autem rerum, ex quibus
+aliquid adquiritur, nihil est agricultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil
+dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius.
+
+[171] See de Boor _Fasti Censorii_. A disturbing element in this
+enumeration is the uncertainty of numerals in ancient manuscripts. But
+the fact of the progressive decline is beyond all question. No
+accidental errors of transcription could have produced this result in
+the text of Livy's epitome.
+
+[172] Liv. _Ep_. xvi.
+
+[173] Ibid. lvi.
+
+[174] Ibid. xlvi. xlviii.
+
+[175] Euseb. Arm. a. Abr. 1870 Ol. 158.3 (Hieron. Ol. 158.2 = 608
+A.U.C.).
+
+[176] Liv. _Ep_. lvi.
+
+[177] Eorum qui arma ferre possent (Liv. i. 44); [Greek: _ton echonton
+taen strateusimon haelikian] (Dionys. xi. 63); [Greek: ton en tais
+haelikiais_] (Polyb. ii. 23).
+
+[178] Besides the _proletarii_ all under military age would be excluded
+from these lists. Mommsen (_Staatsr_. ii. p. 411) goes further and
+thinks that the _seniores_ are not included in our lists.
+
+[179] The limit to the incidence of taxation was a property of 1500
+asses (Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 22. 40), the limit of census for military
+service was by the time of Polybius reduced to 4000 asses (Polyb. vi.
+19). Gellius (xvi. 10. 10) gives a reduction to 375 asses at a date
+unknown but preceding the Marian reform. Perhaps the numerals are
+incorrect and should be 3,750.
+
+[180] Liv. xl. 38.
+
+[181] Gell. i. 6. Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix.
+
+[182] See Wallon _Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 276.
+
+[183] _Concubinatus_ could not, by the nature of the case, become a
+legal conception until the Emperor Augustus had devised penalties for
+_stuprum_. It was then necessary to determine what kind of _stuprum_ was
+not punishable. But the social institution and its ethical
+characteristics, although they may have been made more definite by legal
+regulations, could not have originated in the time of the Principate.
+For the meaning of _paelex_ in Republican times see Meyer _Der roemische
+Konkubinat_ and a notice of that work in the _English Historical Review_
+for July 1896.
+
+[184] Cunningham _Western Civilisation_ p. 156. Cf. Soltau in
+_Kulturgesch. des klass. Altertums_ p. 318.
+
+[185] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 3. 22; Varro _R.R_. i. 1. 10.
+
+[186] Colum. 1. 1. 18. The Latin translation was probably made shortly
+after the destruction of Carthage, _circa_ 140 B.C. (Mahaffy _The Work
+of Mago on Agriculture_ in _Hermathena_ vol. vii. 1890). Mahaffy
+believes that the Greek translation by Cassius Dionysius (Varro _R.R_.
+i. 1. 10) was later, and he associates it with the colonies planted by
+C. Gracchus in Southern Italy.
+
+[187] Saturnia in 183 (Liv. xxxix. 55), Graviscae in 181 (Liv. xl. 29),
+Luna in 180 and again in 177 (Liv. xli. 13; Mommsen in C.I.L. i. n.
+539). See Marquardt _Staatsverw_, i. p. 39.
+
+[188] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8; Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 198.
+
+[189] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 198.
+
+[190] Liv. xxxix. 29.
+
+[191] Varro _R.R_. ii. 5. II Pascuntur armenta commodissime in
+nemoribus, ubi virgulta et frons multa. Hieme secundum mare, aestu
+abiguntur in montes frondosos.
+
+[192] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 16.
+
+[193] Nitzsch op. cit. p. 17.
+
+[194] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 25. 89. So in Cato's more reasoned estimate
+(_R.R_. i. 7) of the relative degrees of productivity, although _vinea_
+comes first (cf. p. 80) yet _pratum_ precedes _campus frumentarius_.
+
+[195] App. _Hannib_. 61.
+
+[196] App. l.c.; Gell. x. 3. 19.
+
+[197] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 193 So zerfiel denn Mittelitalien in
+zwei scharf-getheilte Haelften, den ackerbauenden Westen und den
+viehzuchttreibenden Osten; jener reich an Haefen, von Landstrassen
+durchschnitten, in einer Menge von Colonien oder einzelnen Gehoeften von
+Roemischen Ackerbuergern bewohnt; dieser fast ohne Haefen, nur von einer
+Kuestenstrasse durchschnitten, fuer den grossen Roemer der rechte Sitz
+seiner Sclaven und Heerden. Cf. p. 21. For the pasturage in Calabria
+and Apulia see op. cit. pp. 13 and 193.
+
+[198] Liv. xxviii. II; cf. Luc. _Phars_. i. 30.
+
+[199] Dureau de la Malle (Economie Politique ii. p. 38) compares the
+precept of the Roman "Quid est agrum bene colere? bene arare. Quid
+secundum? arare. Tertio stercorare" with the adage of the French farmer
+"Fumez bien, labourez mal, vous recueillerez plus qu'en fumant mal et en
+labourant bien".
+
+[200] See Dreyfus _Les lois agraires_ p. 97. Varro (_R.R_. i. 12. 2) is
+singularly correct in his account of the nature of the disease that
+arose from the _loca palustria_:--Crescunt animalia quaedam minuta, quae
+non possunt oculi consequi, et per aera intus in corpus per os ac nares
+perveniunt atque efficiunt difficilis morbos. The passage is cited by
+Voigt (Iwan-Mueller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2. p. 358) who gives a good sketch
+of the evils consequent on neglect of drainage.
+
+[201] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 228.
+
+[202] Polyb. xxxvii. 4.
+
+[203] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 237.
+
+[204] Polyb. xxxvii. 3.
+
+[205] Polyb. ii. 15.
+
+[206] For such purchases from Sardinia see Liv. xxxvi. 2, from Sicily
+(at a period later than that which we are considering) Cic. _in Verr_.
+iii. 70, 163.
+
+[207] Cf. Cato _R.R_. i. 3 (In choosing the situation of one's
+estate) oppidum validum prope siet aut mare aut amnis, qua naves
+ambulant, aut via bona celebrisque.
+
+[208] For the traditions which assign a very early date for laws dealing
+with the _ager publicus_ see the following chapter, which treats of the
+legislation of Tiberius Gracchus.
+
+[209] App, _Bell. Civ_. i. 7 [Greek: _taes de gaes taes doriktaetou
+sphisin ekastote gignomenaes taen men exeirgasmenaen autika tois
+oikizomenois epidiaeroun hae epipraskon hae exemisthoun, taen d' argon
+ek tou polemou tote ousan, hae dae kai malista eplaethyen, ouk agontes po
+scholaen dialachein, epekaerytton en tosode tois ethelousin ekponein epi
+telei ton etaesion karpon_].
+
+[210] For the evidence for this and other statements connected with the
+_ager publicus_ see the citations in the next chapter.
+
+[211] In consequence of the doubtfulness of the traditions concerning
+early agrarian laws this time cannot even be approximately specified.
+See the next chapter.
+
+[212] Tradition represents the first laws dealing with the _ager
+publicus (e. g_. the supposed _lex Licinia_) as earlier than the _lex
+Poetelia_ of 326 B.C., which abolished the contract of _nexum_.
+
+[213] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8 [Greek: _hysteron de ton geitnionton plousion
+hypoblaetois prosopois metapheronton tas misthoseis eis eautous_.]
+
+[214] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 7 [Greek: _oi gar plousioi ... ta ... anchou
+sphisin, osa te haen alla brachea penaeton, ta men onoumenoi peithoi ta
+de bia lambanontes, pedia makra anti chorion egeorgoun_.] Cf. Seneca
+_Ep_. xiv. 2 (90). 39 Licet agros agris adjiciat vicinum vel pretio
+pellens vel injuria.
+
+[215] [Greek: _pedia makra_] (App. l.c.), Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 6. 35
+Verumque confitentibus latifundia perdidere Italiam. (For the expression
+_lati fundi_ see Siculus Flaccus pp. 157, 161). Frontinus p. 53 Per
+longum enim tempus attigui possessores vacantia loca quasi invitante
+otiosi soli opportunitate invaserunt, et per longum tempus inpune
+commalleaverunt. For the invasion of pasturage see Frontinus p. 48 Haec
+fere pascua certis personis data sunt depascenda tunc cum agri adsignati
+sunt. Haec pascua multi per inpotentiam invaserunt et colunt.
+
+[216] In spite of the fertility of the land, the native Gallic
+population had vanished from most of the districts of this region as
+early as Polybius' time (Polyb. ii. 35). Cf. Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_
+p. 60.
+
+[217] Val. Max. iv. 4. 6.
+
+[218] Steinwender _Die roemische Buergerschaft in ihrem Verhaeltnis zum
+Heere_ p. 28.
+
+[219] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 7.
+
+[220] Polyb. vi. 39.
+
+[221] Liv. xxvii. 9 (209 B.C.) Fremitus enim inter Latinos sociosque in
+conciliis ortus:--Decimum annum dilectibus, stipendiis se exhaustos esse
+... Duodecim (coloniae) ... negaverunt consulibus esse unde milites
+pecuniamque darent.
+
+[222] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 194.
+
+[223] Cato _R.R_. 144 etc.
+
+[224] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 187.
+
+[225] Cato _R.R_. 5. 136.
+
+[226] Cato _R.R_. 136 Politionem quo pacto _partiario_ dari oporteat.
+In agro Casinate et Venafro in loco bono parti octava corbi dividat,
+satis bono septima, tertio loco sexta; si granum modio dividet, parti
+quinta. In Venafro ager optimus nona parti corbi dividat ... Hordeum
+quinta modio, fabam quinta modio dividat.
+
+[227] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 188.
+
+[228] Dureau de la Malle _Economie Politique_ ii. pp. 225, 226.
+
+[229] Cato _R.R_. i. 7 Vinea est prima,... secundo loco hortus
+inriguus, tertio salictum, quarto oletum, quinto pratum, sexto campus
+frumentarius, septimo silva caedua, octavo arbustum, nono glandaria
+silva.
+
+[230] Cic. _de Rep_. iii. 9. 16 Nos vero justissimi homines, qui
+Transalpinas gentis oleam et vitem serere non sinimus, quo pluris sint
+nostra oliveta nostraeque vineae. Cf. Colum. iii. 3. 11.
+
+[231] See Cato _R.R_. 7, 8 for the produce of the _fundus suburbanus_.
+Cf. c. 1 (note 2) for the value of the _hortus inriguus_.
+
+[232] See the citations in Voigt (Iwan-Mueller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2 p.
+370). Communities and corporations employed _coloni_ on their _agri
+vectigales_ (Cic. _ad Fam_. xiii. 11, 1; Hygin. _de Cond. Agr_.
+p. 117. 11; Voigt l.c.).
+
+[233] Liv. xlv. 34.
+
+[234] Mahaffy ("The Slave Wars against Rome" in _Hermathena_ no. xvi.
+1890) believes that the majority of these were shipped to Sicily.
+
+[235] Strabo xiv. 5. 2.
+
+[236] Cf. Arist. _Pol_. i. 8. 12 [Greek: _hae polemikae physei ktaetikae
+pos estai; hae gar thaereutikae meros autaes, hae dei chraesthai pros te
+ta thaeria kai ton anthropon hosoi pephykotes archesthai mae thelousin,
+hos physei dikaion touton onta ton polemon_.]
+
+[237] Mahaffy (l.c.) thinks that the Syrians and Cilicians of the
+first slave war in Sicily, whom he believes to have been transferred
+from Carthage, had been secured by that state in a trade with the
+East--the trade which perhaps took the Southern Mediterranean route from
+Malta past Crete and Cyprus.
+
+[238] Wallon _Histoire de l'Esclavage_ ii. p, 45.
+
+[239] Strabo xiv, 3. 2 [Greek: _en Sidae goun polei taes Pamphylias ta
+naupaegia synistato tois Kilixin, hypo kaeruka te epoloun ekei tous
+halontas eleutherous homologountes_.]
+
+[240] Strabo (xiv. 5. 2), after describing the slave market at Delos,
+continues [Greek: _hoste kai paroimian genesthai dia touto; hempore,
+katapleuson, exelou, panta pepratai_.]
+
+[241] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 4.
+
+[242] If we make the denarius a rough equivalent of the drachma, some of
+the prices given in Plautus are as follows:--A child, 600 denarii, a
+nurse and two female children, 1800, a young girl, 2000, another 3000.
+Here we seem to get the average prices for valuable and refined
+domestics. Elsewhere special circumstances might increase the value; a
+female lyrist fetches 5000 denarii, a girl of remarkable attractions
+6000. See Wallon _Hist. de l'Esclavage ii. pp. 160 ff.
+
+[243] Ter. _Andria_ ii. 6. 26.
+
+[244] It is probable, however, that in the case of superintendents
+(_villici, villicae, procuratores_) experience may have been an element
+in the prices which they fetched.
+
+[245] Festus p. 332 Sardi venales, alius alio nequior.
+
+[246] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21.
+
+[247] Cato _R.R_. 56, 57.
+
+[248] Ibid. 2.
+
+[249] At the close of this period a division took place between the
+functions of _villicus_ and those of _procurator_. The former still
+controlled the economy of the estate and administered its goods; the
+latter was the business agent and entered into legal relations with
+other parties. See Voigt in Iwan-Mueller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2 p. 368.
+
+[250] Colum. i. 6.
+
+[251] An inspection of all the _ergastula_ of Italy was ordered by
+Augustus (Suet. _Aug_. 32) and Tiberius (Suet. _Tib_. 8). Columella (i.
+8) recommends inspection by the master.
+
+[252] Kidnapping became very frequent after the civil wars. It was to
+prevent this evil that inspection was ordered by the Emperors (note 3).
+See Thedenat in Daremberg-Saglio _Dict. des Antiq. s.v_. Ergastulum.
+
+[253] Plaut. _Most_. i. 1. 18; Florus iii. 19.
+
+[254] For the distinction between the _vincti_ and _soluti_ see Colum.
+i. 7.
+
+[255] Varro _R.R_. ii. 2 10 The proportion is larger than would be
+demanded in modern times, but Mahaffy (l.c.) remarks that we do not
+hear of the work of guardianship being shared by trained dogs, and that
+the danger from wild beasts and lawless classes was considerable. As
+regards the first point, however, we do hear of packs of hounds which
+followed the Sicilian shepherds (Diod. xxxiv. 2), and it is difficult to
+believe that these had not developed some kind of training.
+
+[256] Varro _R.R_. ii. 10. 7.
+
+[257] Diod, xxxiv. 2. 38.
+
+[258] Val. Max. ii. 10. 2.
+
+[259] Livy (xxxii. 26) speaks of them as _nationis eius_. He has just
+mentioned the slaves of the Carthaginian hostages. But it does not
+follow that either class was composed of native Africans. They may have
+been imported Asiatics, as in Sicily.
+
+[260] Liv. xxxii. 26.
+
+[261] Liv. xxxiii. 36 Etruriam infestam prope conjuratio servorum fecit.
+
+[262] Liv. xxxix. 29.
+
+[263] Buecher _Die Aufstaende der unfreien Arbeiter_ p. 34. Cf. Soltau
+in _Kulturgesch. des klass. Altertums_ p. 326.
+
+[264] Oros. v. 9 Diodor. xxxiv. 2. 19.
+
+[265] Mahaffy l.c.
+
+[266] Cf. Buecher op. cit. p. 79.
+
+[267] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 27. For the large number of Roman proprietors in
+Sicily see Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19) 3--(Sicilia) terra frugum ferax et
+quodam modo suburbana provincia latifundis civium Romanorum tenebatur.
+
+[268] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 32. 36.
+
+[269] Diod. l.c.
+
+[270] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 31. This may have been true of the time of which
+we are speaking; for the influence of the Roman residents in Sicily on
+the administration of the island must always have been great. But
+Diodorus assigns an incorrect reason when he states that the Roman
+knights of Sicily were judges of the governors of the provinces. This is
+true only of the period preceding the second servile war.
+
+[271] Historians profess to tell the mechanism by which this device was
+secured. A spark of fire was placed with inflammable material in a
+hollow nut or some similar small object, which was perforated. The
+receptacle was placed in the mouth, and judicious breathing did the
+rest. See Diodorus xxxiv, 2. 7; Floras ii. 7 (iii. 19).
+
+[272] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 228.
+
+[273] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 24 [Greek: _hypo gar taes pepromenaes autois
+kekyrosthai taen patrida taen Ennan, ousan akropolin holaes
+taes naesou_.]
+
+[274] Ibid. 2. 12 [Greek: _oud estin eipein ... hosa enybrizon te kai
+enaeselgainon_.]
+
+[275] [Greek: _planon te apekaloun_] (Diod. xxxiv. 2. 14).
+
+[276] Diodor. xxxiv. 3. 41.
+
+[277] Ibid. 2. 39.
+
+[278] Ibid., 2, 24.
+
+[279] Liv. _Ep_. lv.; App. _Syr_. 68. Cf. Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 288.
+
+[280] Diodorus describes him as an Achaean. Mahaffy (l.c.) suspects
+that he came from Eastern Asia Minor or Syria, where Achaeus occurs as a
+royal name. But the name also occurs in old Greece. One may instance the
+tragic poet of Eretria.
+
+[281] [Greek: _kai boulae kai cheiri diapheron_] (Diod. xxxiv. 2. 16).
+
+[282] Ibid. 2. 42.
+
+[283] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 6.
+
+[284] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 43.
+
+[285] Ibid. 2. 18; Florus l.c.
+
+[286] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 7 Quin illud quoque ultimum dedecus belli,
+capta sunt castra praetorum--nec nominare ipsos pudebit--castra Manli
+Lentuli, Pisonis Hypsaei. Itaque qui per fugitivarios abstrahi
+debuissent praetorios duces profugos praelio ipsi sequebantur. P.
+Popillius Laenas, the consul of 132 B.C., was praetor in Sicily either
+immediately before, or during the revolt (C.I.L. i. n. 351. l. g).
+
+[287] Strabo vi. 2. 6. For the question whether they held Messana
+see p. 98.
+
+[288] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 2 Quis crederet Siciliam multo cruentius
+servili quam Punico bello esse vastatam?
+
+[289] [Greek: _epi tae prophasei ton drapeton_] (Diodor. xxxiv. 2. 48).
+Wallon (_Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 307) takes these words to mean
+that the peasantry professed to be marching against the slaves.
+
+[290] Mahaffy (l.c.) has raised and discussed this question. His
+conclusions are (i) that the pirates may have been influenced by a sense
+of business honour to the effect that the man-stealer should abide by
+his bargain, (ii) that these pirates may have received some large bribe,
+direct or indirect, from Rome, (iii) that the natural enmity between the
+slaves and the pirates may have hindered an agreement for transport,
+(iv) that the Cilician slaves, accustomed to permanent robber-bands, may
+have not held it impossible that Rome would acquiesce in such a creation
+in Sicily, (v) that the Syrian towns would not have troubled about the
+restoration of such of their members as had become slaves, even had they
+not feared to offend Rome. He remarks that the return of even free
+exiles to a Hellenistic city was a cause of great disturbance.
+
+[291] Liv. _Ep_. lvi.; Oros. v. 9.
+
+[292] C.I.L. i. nn. 642, 643.
+
+[293] Oros. v. 9. This _Mamertium oppidum_ of Orosius has often been
+interpreted as Messana (_Mamertinorum oppidum_, Buecher, p. 68); for,
+although the slaves of this town had not revolted (Oros. v. 6. 4), it
+might have been captured by the rebels. Schaefer, however (_Jahrb. f.
+Class. Philol_. 1873 p. 71) explains Mamertium as Morgantia
+(_Murgentinum oppidum_).
+
+[294] Val. Max. ix. 12 _ext_. 1. Diodorus (xxxiv. 2. 20) calls him
+Comanus and speaks of his being captured during the siege of
+Tauromenium.
+
+[295] Oros. v. 9.
+
+[296] Wallon _Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 308.
+
+[297] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 8.
+
+[298] For the _lex Rupilia_ see Cic. _in Verr_. ii. 13. 32; 15. 37; 16.
+39; 24. 59.
+
+[299] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8. Plutarch speaks of an "attempt" ([Greek:
+_epecheiraese men oun tae diorthosei_]); but the effort perhaps went no
+further than the testing of opinion to discover the probability of
+support. The enterprise may have belonged to the praetorship of Laelius
+(145 B.C.).
+
+[300] Polyb. vi. 11.
+
+[301] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 203.
+
+[302] Cic. _Brut_. 27. 104 Fuit Gracchus diligentia Corneliae matris a
+puero doctus et Graecis litteris eruditus. Id. Ib. 58. 211 Legimus
+epistulas Corneliae matris Gracchorum: apparet filios non tam in gremio
+educatos quam in sermone matris. Cf. Quinctil. _Inst. Or_. i. 1. 6;
+Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 1.
+
+[303] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 1. The King referred to in this story is
+perhaps Ptolemy Euergetes, who reigned from 146 to 117 B.C.
+
+[304] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[305] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ pp. 208 foll., 258.
+
+[306] Polyb. vi. 14 [Greek: _krinei men oun ho daemos kai diaphorou_]
+(money penalties) [Greek: _pollakis ... thanatou de krinei monos_].
+
+[307] Polyb. vi. 16 [Greek: _opheilousi d' aei poiein oi daemarchoi to
+dokoun to daemo kai malista stochazesthai taes toutou boulaeseos_].
+
+[308] Polyb. vi. 57.
+
+[309] Polyb. xxxvii. 4.
+
+[310] Ibid.
+
+[311] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[312] Ibid., 4 [Greek: _outos haen periboaetos hoste taes ton Augouron
+legomenaes hierosonaes axiothaenai di' aretaen mallon hae dia taen
+eugeneian_.] Tiberius may have filled the place vacated by the death of
+his father (_circa_ 148 B.C.). He would have been barely sixteen; and
+Plutarch says (l.c.) that he had but just emerged from boyhood.
+Election to the augural college at this time was effected by
+co-optation. See Underhill in loc.
+
+[313] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 4.
+
+[314] Cic. _pro Cael_. 14. 34; Suet. _Tib_. 2.
+
+[315] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 4. The story is also told of the betrothal of
+Cornelia herself to the elder Gracchus (Liv. xxxviii. 57; Val. Max. iv.
+2. 3; Gell. xii. 8); but Plutarch records a statement of Polybius that
+Cornelia was not betrothed until after her father's death, and Livy
+(l.c.) is conscious of this version.
+
+[316] Fannius ap. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 4 [Greek: _tou ge teichous
+epebae ton polemion protos_]. As the context seems to show that Tiberius
+did not remain until the end of the siege, the _teichos_ was probably
+that of Megara, the suburb of Carthage (Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 244);
+cf. App. _Lib_. 117.
+
+[317] Plut. l.c.
+
+[318] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 7; cf. App. _Iber_. 83; Nitzsch _Die
+Gracchen_ p. 280; Long _Decline of Rom. Rep_. i. p. 83.
+
+[319] Plut. l.c.
+
+[320] Vellei. ii. 1 Mancinum verecundia, poenam non recusando, perduxit
+huc, ut per fetialis nudus ac post tergam religatis manibus dederetur
+hostibus. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 7 [Greek: _ton men gar hypaton
+epsaephisanto gymnon kai dedemenon paradounai tois Nomantinois, ton d'
+allon epheisanto panton dia Tiberion_.] Cf. Cic. _de Off_. iii.
+30. 109.
+
+[321] Cic. _Brut_. 27. 103 (Ti. Gracchus) propter turbulentissimum
+tribunatum, ad quem ex invidia foederis Numantini bonis iratus
+accesserat, ab ipsa re publica est interfectus. Id. _de Har. Resp_. 20.
+43 Ti. Graccho invidia Numantini foederis, cui feriendo, quaestor C.
+Mancini consulis cum esset, interfuerat, et in eo foedere improbando
+senatus severitas dolori et timori fuit, eaque res illum fortem et
+clarum virum a gravitate patrum desciscere coegit. The same motive is
+suggested by Vellei. ii. 2; Quinctil. _Inst. Or_. vii. 4. 13; Dio Cass.
+_frg_. 82; Oros. v. 8. 3; Florus ii. 2 (iii. 14).
+
+[322] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[323] Plut. l.c.
+
+[324] Plut. l.c.
+
+[325] Gell. i. 13. 10 Is Crassas a Sempronio Asellione et plerisque
+aliis historiae Romanae scriptoribus traditur habuisse quinque rerum
+bonarum maxima et praecipua: quod esset ditissimus, quod nobilissimus,
+quod eloquentissimus, quod jurisconsultissimus, quod pontifex maximus.
+
+[326] Cic. _Acad. Prior_. ii. 5. 13 Duo ... sapientissimos et
+clarissimos fratres, P. Crassum et P. Scaevolam, aiunt Ti. Graccho
+auctores legum fuisse, alterum quidem, ut videmus, palam; alterum, ut
+suspicantur, obscurius.
+
+[327] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[328] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 9 [Greek: _esemnologaese peri tou Italikou
+genous_]. The expression suggests the further question whether Gracchus
+intended Italians, as well as Romans, to benefit by his law. On this
+question see p. 115. But, whatever our opinion on this point, the
+widening of the issue by an appeal to Italian interests was natural, if
+not inevitable.
+
+[329] App. l.c.
+
+[330] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[331] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 9; cf. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[332] The most respectable of the authorities for the Licinian law
+having dealt with the land question is Varro (_R.R_. 1. 2. 9 Stolonis
+illa lex, quae vetat plus D jugera habere civem R). A similar account is
+found in many other authors (Liv. vi. 35; Vellei. ii. 6; Plut. _Cam_.
+39; Gell. vi. 3. 40; Val. Max. viii. 6. 3). A variant in the maximum
+amount permitted to a single holder is given by [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_.
+20 [(Licinius Stolo) legem scivit, ne cui plebeio plus centum jugera
+agri habere liceret]; or the word "plebeio," if not a mistake, may
+suggest another clause in the supposed law.
+
+[333] Cato ap. Gell. vi. (vii.) 3. 37. Cato asks whether any enactment
+punishes _intent_ (for the Rhodians were charged with having _intended_
+hostility to Rome), and points his argument by the following _reductio
+ad absurdum_ of legislation conceived in this spirit, Si quis plus
+quingenta jugera habere voluerit, tanta poena esto: si quis majorem
+pecuum numerum habere voluerit, tantum damnas esto.
+
+[334] On this subject see Niese _Das sogenannte Licinisch-sextische
+Ackergesetz_ (Hermes xxiii. 1888), Soltau _Das Aechtheit des licinischen
+Ackergesetzes von_ 367 v. Chr. (Hermes xxx. 1895).
+
+[335] Mommsen in C.I.L. i. pp. 75 ff.
+
+[336] Cic. _de Leg. Agr_. ii. 29. 81 Nec duo Gracchi, qui de plebis
+Romanae commodis plurimum cogitaverunt, nec L. Sulla ... agrum Campanum
+attingere ausus est. Cf. i. 7. 21.
+
+[337] Exemptions were specified in the agrarian law of C. Gracchus,
+which must have appeared in that of his elder brother. They are noticed
+in the extant _Lex agraria_ (C.I.L. 1. n. 200; Bruns _Fontes_ 1. 3.
+11) l. 6 Extra eum agrum, quei ager ex lege plebive scito, quod C.
+Sempronius Ti. f. tr. pl. rog(avit), exceptum cavitumve est nei
+divideretur.... The law of C. Gracchus is here mentioned as being the
+later enactment. Cicero, when he writes (_ad Att_. 1. 19. 4) of his own
+attitude to the Flavian agrarian law of 60 B.C. Liberabam agrum eum, qui
+P. Mucio L. Calpurnio consulibus publicus fuisset, is probably referring
+to land that, public in 133 B.C., still remained public in his own day.
+
+[338] See Voigt _Ueber die staatsrechtliche Possessio und den Ager
+Compascuus_ p. 229.
+
+[339] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 9 [Greek: _anekainize ton nomon maedena ton
+pentakosion plethron pleon hechein, paisi d' auton hyper ton palaion
+nomon prosetithei ta haemisea touton_]. Liv. _Ep_. lviii. Ne quis ex
+publico agro plus quam mille jugera possideret, cf. [Victor] _de Vir.
+Ill_. 64. The conclusion stated in the text, which is gained by a
+combination of these passages, is, however, somewhat hazardous.
+
+[340] App, _Bell, Civ_. 1. 11 [Greek: _ekeleue tous plousious ... mae,
+en ho peri mikron diapherontai, ton pleonon hyperidein, misthon hama
+taes peponaemenaes exergasias autarkae pheromenous taen exaireton aneu
+timaes ktaesin es aei bebaion hekasto pentakosion plethron, kai paisin,
+ois eisi paides, ekasto kai touton ta haemisea_]. If [Greek: _aneu
+timaes_] means "without paying for it," the phrase has no relation to
+the _timae_ mentioned by Plutarch (see the next note) which was a
+valuation to be _received_ by the dispossessed. It can scarcely mean
+"without further compensation"; but, if interpreted in this way, the two
+accounts can be brought into some relation with each other.
+
+[341] Plut, _Ti. Gracch_. 9 [Greek: _ekeleuse timaen proslambanontas
+ekbainein hon adikos ekektaento_].
+
+[342] Siculus Flaccus (p. 136 Lachm.); cf. Mommsen l.c.
+
+[343] There is a reference to this limit in the extant _Lex Agraria_ (C.
+I. L. i. n. 200; Bruns _Fontes_ 1. 3. 11) l. 14 Sei quis ... agri jugra
+Non amplius xxx possidebit habebitve, but there is no direct evidence to
+connect it with the Gracchan legislation.
+
+[344] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 10.
+
+[345] Cf. p. 110.
+
+[346] Mommsen l.c.
+
+[347] App, _Bell. Civ_. i. 10
+
+[348] Cic. _de Leg. Agr_. ii. 12. 31 Audes etiam, Rulle, mentionem
+facere legis Semproniae, nec te ea lex ipsa commonet III viros illos
+XXXV tribuum suffragio creatos esse? App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 9 [Greek:
+_prosetithei ... taen loipaen treis airetous andras, henallassomenous
+kat' hetos, dianemein tois penaesin_]. Strachan-Davidson (in loc.)
+doubts this latter characteristic of the magistracy. The history of the
+land-commission proves at least that the occupants of the post were
+perpetually re-eligible and could be chosen in their absence. Thus
+Gracchus, in spite of his two years' quaestorship in Sardinia, was still
+a commissioner in 124 B.C. (App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 21). See Mommsen
+_Staatsr_. ii. i. p. 632. The electing body was doubtless the _plebeian_
+assembly of the tribes under the guidance of a tribune. This was the
+mode prescribed by Rullus's law of 63 B.C. (Cic. _de Leg. Agr_, ii.
+7. 16).
+
+[349] App. _Bell, Civ_. i. 11.
+
+[350] Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 10.
+
+[351] App. l.c. [Greek: _daneistai te chrea kai tautaes epedeiknuon_.]
+
+[352] App. l.c. [Greek: _plaethos hallo hoson en tais apoikois polesin
+hae tais isopolitisin hae hallos ekoinonei taesde taes gaes, dediotes
+homoios epaeesan kai es hekaterous auton diemerizonto. isopolitides_]
+would naturally be the _municipia (c.f. Lex Agraria_ l. 31); but
+Strachan-Davidson (in loc.) thinks that the _civitates foederatae_ are
+here intended. There is a possibility that Appian has used the term
+vaguely: but there is no real difficulty in conceiving the _municipia_
+to be meant. Even the majority, that had received Roman citizenship,
+still continued to bear the name, and they may have continued to enjoy
+municipal rights in public land. The wealthier classes in these towns
+were therefore alarmed; the poorer classes (possessed of Roman
+citizenship) hoped for a share in the assignment.
+
+[353] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[354] Plut. l.c.
+
+[355] Plut. l.c.
+
+[356] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _ouden eipein legontai peri allaelon phlauron,
+oude rhaema prospesein thaterou pros ton heteron di' horgaen
+anepitaedeion_.]
+
+[357] Diod. xxxiv 6 [Greek: _synerreon eis taen Rhomaen oi hochloi apo
+taes choras hosperei potamoi tines eis taen panta dynamenaen dechesthai
+thalattan_.]
+
+[358] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 12.
+
+[359] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 10 [Greek: _paroxyntheis ho Tiberios ton men
+philanthropon epaneileto nomon, ton d' haedio te tois pollois kai
+sphodroteron epi tous adikountas eisepheren haedae, keleuon existasthai
+taes choras haen ekektaento para tous proterous nomous_]. Plutarch is
+apparently thinking of the abolition of what he calls the _timae_
+(c. 9.); but his words do not necessarily imply that the original
+concessions mentioned by Appian (p. 114) were removed.
+
+[360] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[361] Plut. l.c.
+
+[362] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 12. Plutarch (_Ti. Gracch_. 11) preserves a
+tradition that the meeting was practically broken up by the adherents of
+the _possessores_ who, to prevent the passing of an illegal decree,
+carried off the voting urns.
+
+[363] [Greek: _Mallios kai phoulbios_] (Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 11). Schaefer
+(_Jahrb. f. Class. Philol_. 1873 p. 71) thinks that the first name is a
+mistake for that of Manilius the jurist, consul in 149 B.C., and that
+the second refers to Ser. Fulvius Flaccus, consul in 135 B.C.
+
+[364] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 12 _oi dunatoi tous daemarchous aexioun
+hepitrepsai tae boulae peri hon diapherontai_.
+
+[365] App. _l. c_.
+
+[366] App. _l. c_.
+
+[367] Or in _contio_ held before the meeting. The scene is described in
+Plut. _Ti. Gracch_, 11.
+
+[368] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _hypeipon ho Tiberios hos ouk estin archontas
+amphoterous kai peri pragmaton megalon ap' isaes exousias diapheromenous
+aneu polemou diexelthein ton chronon_.]
+
+[369] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[370] Cf. Mommsen _Staatsr_. iii. p. 409, note 1.
+
+[371] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[372] This is the name given by Appian (_Bell. Civ_. 1. 13); Plutarch
+(_Ti. Gracch_. 13) calls him Mucius; Orosius (v. 8. 3) Minucius.
+
+[373] App. _Iber_. 83. Cf. Liv. xxvii. 20, xxix. 19. See Mommsen
+_Staatsr_. i. p. 629.
+
+[374] Mommsen l.c.
+
+[375] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 13; Plut. _Ti. Gracch. 13.
+
+[376] Liv. _Ep_. lviii Promulgavit et aliam legem agrariam, qua sibi
+latius agrum patefaceret, ut iidem triumviri judicarent qua publicus
+ager, qua privatus esset. The titles borne by the commissioners appear
+as III vir a. d. a. (_Lex Latina Tabulae Bantinae_, C.I.L. 1. 197;
+Bruns _Fontes_ i. 3. 9; cf. _Lex Acilia Repetundarum_ 1. 13, C.I.L.
+i. 198; Bruns _Fontes_ i. 3. 10): III vir a. i. a. (C.I.L. i. nn.
+552-555); III vir a.d.a. i. (C.I.L. i. n. 583).
+
+[377] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 13.
+
+[378] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 13.
+
+[379] Plut. l.c.
+
+[380] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[381] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 315.
+
+[382] Liv. _Ep_. lviii Deinde, cum minus agri esset quam quod dividi
+posset sine offensa etiam plebis, quoniam eos ad cupiditatem amplum
+modum sperandi incitaverat, legem se promulgaturum ostendit, ut iis, qui
+Sempronia lege agrum accipere deberent, pecunia quae regia Attali
+fuisset divideretur. [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 64 Tulit ut ea familia quae
+ex Attali hereditate erat ageretur et populo divideretur, Cf. Plut.
+_Ti. Gracch_. 14; Oros. v. 8. 4.
+
+[383] Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14.
+
+[384] Ibid.; Oros. v. 8. 4.
+
+[385] Plut. l.c.. Cicero (_Brut_. 21. 81) speaks of a speech of
+Metellus "contra Ti. Gracchum". Plutarch's citation may be from
+this speech.
+
+[386] Cicero regarded Octavius's deposition as the ruin of Gracchus.
+_Brut_. 25. 95 Injuria accepta fregit Ti. Gracchum patientia civis in
+rebus optimis constantissimus M. Octavius. _De Leg_. iii. 10. 24 Ipsum
+Ti. Gracchum non solum neglectus sed etiam sublatus intercessor evertit;
+quid enim illum aliud perculit, nisi quod potestatem intercedenti
+collegae abrogavit? The deposition was an act of "seditio" (_pro
+Mil_. 27. 72).
+
+[387] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. Section 81.
+
+[388] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[389] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 15.
+
+[390] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 14.
+
+[391] Plut. Ti. Gracch. 16 [Greek: _authis allois nomois anelambane to
+plaethos, tou te chronou ton strateion aphairon, kai didous
+epikaleisthai ton daepon apo ton dikaston kai tois krinousi tote
+synklaetikois ousi [triakosiois] katamignus ek ton hippeon ton ison
+arithmon_.] Dio Cass. _Frg_. 88 [Greek: _ta dikastaeria apo taes boulaes
+epi tous hippeas metaege_] (Cf. Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 34).
+
+[392] Polyb. vi. 19.
+
+[393] There was already such a maximum according to Polybius (vi. 19).
+What it precisely was, is uncertain, as the passage is corrupt.
+According to Lipsius's reading, it was twenty years, according to
+Casaubon's, sixteen under ordinary conditions, twenty in emergencies.
+The knights were required to serve ten campaigns. See Marquardt
+_Staatsverw_. ii. p. 381. The nature of the reduction proposed by
+Gracchus is unknown.
+
+[394] _Lex Acilia_ ll. 23 and 74.
+
+[395] Cic. _de Fin_. ii. 16. 54.
+
+[396] No mention is made of the appeal in five cases in which criminal
+commissions had been established by the senate. The dates of these
+commissions are B.C. 331 (Liv. viii. 18; Val. Max. ii. 5. 3), 314 (Liv.
+ix. 26), 186 (Liv. xxxix. 8-19), 184 (Liv. xxxix. 41) and 180 (Liv.
+xl. 37).
+
+[397] Vellei. ii. 2 (Tiberius Gracchus) pollicitus toti Italiae
+civitatem.
+
+[398] Cicero is perhaps stating the result, rather than the intention,
+of the Gracchan legislation when he says (_de Rep_. iii. 29. 41) Ti.
+Gracchus perseveravit in civibus, sociorum nominisque Latini jura
+neglexit ac foedera. No point in the Gracchan agrarian law is more
+remarkable than its strict, perhaps inequitable, legality. That its
+author consciously violated treaty relations is improbable.
+
+[399] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 14.
+
+[400] For the qualifications at this period see Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p.
+505.
+
+[401] Dio Cass. _frg_. 88 [Greek: _epecheiraese kai es to epion etos meta
+tou adelphou daemarchaesai kai ton pentheron hypaton apodeixai_].
+
+[402] App. l.c.
+
+[403] Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 523. Dio Cassius indeed says (_fr_. 22)
+[Greek: _koluphen to tina dis taen archaen lambanein_]; but tradition held
+that the proviso had been violated in the early plebeian agitations.
+
+[404] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 14.
+
+[405] App. l.c.; Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 13. The scene is thus described
+by Asellio (a contemporary):--Orare coepit, id quidem ut se defenderent
+liberosque suos, eumque, quem virile secus tum in eo tempore habebat,
+produci jussit populoque commendavit prope flens (Gell. ii. 13. 5).
+Appian also speaks of a son, Plutarch of children.
+
+[406] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_., 16.
+
+[407] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 15.
+
+[408] [Greek: _prostataes de tou Rhomaion daemou_] (Plut. _Ti. Gracch_.
+17).
+
+[409] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16.
+
+[410] Richter _Topographie_ p. 128.
+
+[411] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 18.
+
+[412] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19.
+
+[413] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 15.
+
+[414] Ibid. 16.
+
+[415] The dictator was usually nominated by the consul between midnight
+and morning (Liv. viii. 23), for the purpose of the avoidance of
+unfavourable omens.
+
+[416] Tradition ultimately carried it back to the fourth century B.C. In
+the revolution threatened by Manlius Capitolinus (384 B.C., Liv. vi. 19)
+the phrase Ut videant magistrates ne quid ... res publica detrimenti
+capiat was believed to have been employed.
+
+[417] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19 [Greek: _epei ... prodidosin ho archon
+taen polin, oi boulomenoi tois nomois boaethein akoloutheite_.] The
+most specific and juristically exact account of these proceedings (one
+probably drawn from Livy) is preserved by Valerius Maximus (iii. 2. l7):
+--In aedem Fidei publicae convocati patres conscripti a consule Mucio
+Scaevola quidnam in tali tempestate faciendum esset deliberabant,
+cunctisque censentibus ut consul armis rem publicam tueretur, Scaevola
+negavit se quicquam vi esse acturum. Tum Scipio Nasica Quoniam, inquit,
+consul dum juris ordinem sequitur id agit ut cum omnibus legibus Romanum
+imperium corruat, egomet me privatus voluntati vestrae ducem offero....
+Qui rem publicam salvam esse volunt me sequantur.
+
+[418] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16; Plut. l.c. Appian speculates as to the
+meaning of the act. It may have been meant to attract the attention of
+his supporters, it may have been a signal of war, it may have been
+intended to veil the impending deed of horror from the eyes of the gods.
+Cf. Vellei. ii. 3.
+
+[419] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19.
+
+[420] [Cic.] _ad Herenn_, iv. 55. 68.
+
+[421] In the highly rhetorical exercise contained in [Cic.] _ad Herenn_.
+iv. 55. 68 is to be found the following picture:--Iste spumans ex ore
+scelus, anhelans ex infirmo pectore crudelitatem, contorquet brachium et
+dubitanti Graccho quid esset, neque tamen locum, in quo constiterat,
+relinquenti, percutit tempus.
+
+[422] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16.
+
+[423] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19.
+
+[424] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16 [Greek: _kai pantas autous nyktos
+exerripsan es to rheuma ton potamou_]. [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 64
+(Gracchi) corpus Lucretii aedilis manu in Tiberim missum; unde ille
+Vespillo dictus.
+
+[425] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 1.
+
+[426] Vellei. ii. 3. 3 Hoc initium in urbe Roma civilis sanguinis
+gladiorumque impunitatis fuit. Inde jus vi obrutum potentiorque habitus
+prior, discordiaeque civium antea condicionibus sanari solitae ferro
+dijudicatae (cf. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 17).
+Cic. _de Rep_. i. 19. 31 Mors Tiberii Gracchi et jam ante tota illius
+ratio tribunatus divisit populum unum in duas partes.
+
+[427] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20 [Greek: _tautaen protaen historousin en
+Rhomae stasin, aph' ou to basileuesthai katelysan, aimati kai phono
+politon diakrithaenai_.]
+
+[428] Sall. _Jug_. 31. 7 Occiso Ti. Graccho, quem regnum parare aiebant,
+in plebem Romanam quaestiones habitae sunt. Val. Max. iv. 7, 1 Cum
+senatus Rupilio et Laenati consulibus mandasset ut in eos, qui cum
+Graccho consenserant, more majorum animadverterent ... Cf. Vellei.
+ii. 7. 4.
+
+[429] Cic. _de Amic_. 11. 37.
+
+[430] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20.
+
+[431] Cic. _de Amic_. ii. 37; Val. Max. iv. 7. 1.
+
+[432] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20.
+
+[433] Ibid. 21.
+
+[434] Val Max. v. 3. 2 e Is quoque (Scipio Nasica) propter iniquissimam
+virtutum suarum apud cives aestimationem sub titulo legationis Pergamum
+secessit et quod vitae superfuit ibi sine ullo ingratae patriae
+desiderio peregit. Cf. Plut. l.c.; Strabo xiv. 1. 38. See Waddington
+_Fastes_ p. 662.
+
+[435] Vellei. ii. 3. 1 P. Scipio Nasica ... ob eas virtutes primus
+omnium absens pontifex maximus factus est. The other view, that Nasica
+was already pontifex maximus before his exile, was widely prevalent and
+is stated by nearly all our authorities (Cic. _in Cat_. i. 1. 3; Val.
+Max. 1. 4. 1; Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 21; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16).
+
+[436] Plut. l.c.
+
+[437] Val. Max. vii. 2, 6 Par illa sapientia senatus. Ti. Gracchum
+tribunum pl. agrariam legem promulgare ausum morte multavit. Idem ut
+secundum legem ejus per triumviros ager populo viritim divideretur
+egregie censuit.
+
+[438] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 21, C.I.L. i. n. 552 C. Sempronius _Ti. F.
+Grac_., Ap. Claudius C. F. Pulc., P. Licinius P. F. Crass. III vir. A.
+I. A. (Cf. nn. 553. 1504), n. 583 (82-81 B.C.) M. Terentius M. F.
+Varro Lucullus Pro Pr. terminos restituendos ex s. c. coeravit qua P.
+Licinius Ap. Claudius C. Graccus III vir A. D. A. I. statuerunt. These
+_termini_ suggest the _limites Graccani_ of the _Liber Coloniarum
+(Gromatici_ ed. Lachmann, pp. 209. 210) which may refer to the agrarian
+assignments under the _leges Semproniae_ (of Ti. and C. Gracchus) rather
+than to the colonial foundations of the younger brother.
+
+[439] Liv. _Ep_. lix. Seditiones a triumviris Fulvio Flacco et
+C. Graccho et C. Papirio Carbone agro dividendo creatis excitatae.
+App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 18. C.I.L. i. n. 554 M. Folvios M.F. Flac.,
+C. Sempronius Ti. F. Grac., C. Paperius C.F. Carb. III vire. A.I.A.
+(cf. n. 555).
+
+[440] C.I.L. i. 551 (Wilmanns 797) Primus fecei ut de agro poplico
+aratoribus cederent pastores.
+
+[441] Liv. _Ep_. lix. (131 B.C.) Censa sunt civium capita CCCXVIII milia
+DCCCXXIII praeter pupillos et viduas. Ib. lx. (125 B.C.) Censa sunt
+civium capita CCCLXXXXIIII milia DCCXXVI. See de Boor _Fasti Censorii_.
+
+[442] Mommsen _Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 3.
+
+[443] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 18 [Greek: _amelounton de ton kektaemenon
+autaen (sc. taen gaen) apographesthai, kataegorous ekaerytton
+endeiknynai; kai tachy plaethos haen dikon chalepon_].
+
+[444] App. l.c.
+
+[445] Unless we take such to be the meaning of Hyginus (_de Condic.
+Agr_. p. 116) Vectigales autem agri sunt obligati, quidam r. p. P. R.,
+quidam coloniarum aut municipiorum aut civitatium aliquarum. Qui et ipsi
+plerique ad populum Romanum pertinentes.... The passage seems to state
+that some _agri_ which owed _vectigal_ to communities belonged to the
+Roman people. There might therefore be a fear of their resumption,
+although it should have been remote, since these lands, as the context
+shows, were dealt with by a system of lease (for its nature see Mitteis
+_Zur Gesch. der Erbpacht im Alterthum_ pp. 13 foll.), and leaseholds do
+not seem to have been threatened by Gracchus.
+
+[446] App. _Bell. Civ_. i 19.
+
+[447] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 21. Hom. _Od_. i. 47.
+
+[448] Cic. _Phil_. xi. 8. 18; Liv. _Ep_. lix.; Eutrop. iv. 19.
+
+[449] Liv. _Ep_. lix. Cum Carbo tribunus plebis rogationem tulisset, ut
+eundem tribunum plebi, quoties vellet, creare liceret, rogationem ejus
+P. Africanus gravissima oratione dissuasit. Cic. _de Amic_. 25. 95
+Dissuasimus nos (Laelius), sed nihil de me: de Scipione dicam libentius.
+Quanta illi, dii immortales! fuit gravitas! quanta in oratione majestas!
+... Itaque lex popularis suffragiis populi repudiata est. Cf. Cic. _de
+Or_. ii. 40. 170.
+
+[450] Vellei. ii. 4. 4 Hic, eum interrogante tribuno Carbone quid de Ti.
+Gracchi caede sentiret, respondit, si is occupandae rei publicae animum
+habuisset, jure caesum. Et cum omnis contio adclamasset, "Hostium,"
+inquit, "armatorum totiens clamore non territus, qui possum vestro
+moveri, quorum noverca est Italia?" Val. Max. vi. 2. 3 Orto deinde
+murmure "Non efficietis," ait, "ut solutos verear quos alligatos
+adduxi." Cf. Cic, _pro Mil_. 3. 8; Liv. _Ep_. lix; Plut. _Ti.
+Gracch_. 21.
+
+[451] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 19 [Greek: _ho d' es tous polemous autois
+kechraemenos prothymotatois hyperidein ... oknaese_.]
+
+[452] Liv. _Ep_. lvii.
+
+[453] App. _Bell. Civ_. i 19.
+
+[454] Liv. _Ep_. lviii (p. 127).
+
+[455] App. l.c.
+
+[456] App. l.c.
+
+[457] App. l.c.
+
+[458] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[459] Oros. v. 10. 9; Cic. _de Amic_. 3. 12.
+
+[460] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20.
+
+[461] Plut. _Rom_. 27 [Greek: _oi men automatos onta physei nosodae
+kamein legousin_.]
+
+[462] Villei. ii. 4 Mane in lectulo repertus est mortuus, ita ut quaedam
+elisarum faucium in cervice reperirentur notae.
+
+[463] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10 [Greek: _kai deinon outos ergon ep' andri
+to proto kai megisto Rhomaion tolmaethen ouk etyche dikaes oud' eis
+elenchon proaelthen; enestaesan gar oi polloi kai katelysan taen krisin
+hyper tou Gaiou phobaethentes, mae peripetaes tae aitia tou phonou
+zaetoumenou genaetai_.] Vellei. ii. 4 De tanti viri morte nulla habita
+est quaestio. Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix.
+
+[464] Schol. Bob. _ad Cic. Milon_. 7. p. 383.
+
+[465] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20.
+
+[466] Schol. Bob. l.c.; cf. Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[467] Plut. l.c.
+
+[468] Cic. _ad Fam_. ix. 21. 3, _ad Q. fr_. ii 3. 3, _de Or_. ii. 40.
+170. Cf. _de Amic_. 12. 41.
+
+[469] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20.
+
+[470] App. l.c.
+
+[471] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20 [Greek: _hos enioi dokousin, ekon apethane
+synidon hoti ouk esoito dynatos kataschein hon hyposchoito_.] For the
+theory of suicide cf. Plut. _Rom_. 27 [Greek: _oi d' auton hyph' eautou
+pharmakois apothanein (legousin)_.]
+
+[472] Schol. Bob. _in Milon_, l.c.
+
+[473] Val. Max. iv. 1. 12.
+
+[474] Cic. _de Leg_. iii. 16. 35 Carbonis est tertia (lex tabellaria) de
+jubendis legibus ac vetandis.
+
+[475] Liv. _Ep_. lvi.
+
+[476] App. Bell. _Civ_. i. 21 [Greek: _kai gar tis haedae nomos
+ekekyroto, ei daemarchos endeoi tais parangeliais, ton daemon ek
+panton epilegesthai_.] It is possible that Appian has misconstrued
+the provision that, if enough candidates did not receive the absolute
+majority required for election (_explere tribus_), any one--even a
+tribune already in office--should be eligible. See Strachan-Davidson
+in loc.
+
+[477] Or possibly by securing that some of its candidates should not
+receive the number of votes requisite for election. See the last note.
+
+[478] App. _Bell. Civ_. i 21 [Greek: _kai tines esaegounto tous
+symmachous hapantas, oi dae teri taes gaes malista antelegon, es taen
+Rhomaion politeian anagrapsai, os meizoni chariti peri taes gaes ou
+dioisomenous; kai edechonto hasmenoi touth' oi Italiotai, protithentes
+ton chorion taen politeian_.]
+
+[479] Cic. _de Off_. iii. 11. 47 Male etiam qui peregrinos urbibus uti
+prohibent eosque exterminant, ut Pennus apud patres nostros.... Nam esse
+pro cive qui civis non sit rectum est non licere; quam legem tulerunt
+sapientissimi consules Crassus et Scaevola (95 B.C.); usu vero urbis
+prohibere peregrinos sane inhumanum est. For the date of Pennus's law
+see Cic. _Brut_. 28. 109:--Fuit ... M. Lepido et L. Oreste consulibus
+quaestor Gracchus, tribunus Pennus.
+
+[480] Festus p. 286 Resp. multarum civitatum pluraliter dixit C.
+Gracchus in ea, quam conscripsit de lege p. Enni (Penni _Mueller_) et
+peregrinis, cum ait: "eae nationes, cum aliis rebus, per avaritiam atque
+stultitiam res publicas suas amiserunt".
+
+[481] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 34 [Greek: _Phoulouios phlakkos hypateion
+malista dae protos ode es to phanerotaton haerethize tous Italiotas
+epithymein taes Rhomaion politeias hos koinonous taes haegemonias anti
+hypaekoon esomenous_]. (Cf. i. 21), Val. Max. ix. 5. 1 M. Fulvius
+Flaccus consul, ... cum perniciosissimas rei publicae leges introduceret
+de civitate Italiae danda et de provocatione ad populum eorum, qui
+civitatem mutare noluissent, aegre compulsus est ut in Curiam veniret.
+
+[482] Liv. xxxviii. 36. Four tribunes vetoed a _rogatio_ to grant voting
+rights to the _municipia_ of Formiae, Fundi and Arpinum in 188 B.C. on
+the ground that the senate's judgment had not been taken, but Edocti
+populi esse, non senatus jus, suffragium quibus velit impertire,
+destiterunt incepto.
+
+[483] Val. Max. ix. 5, 1 Deinde partim monenti, partim oranti senatui ut
+incepto desisteret, responsum non dedit ... Flaccus in totius amplissimi
+ordinis contemnenda majestate versatus est. Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_.
+i. 21.
+
+[484] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 34 [Greek: _esaegoumenos de taen gnomaen
+kai epimenon autae karteros, upa taes boulaes epi tina strateian
+exepemphthae dia tode_].
+
+[485] Liv. _Ep_. lx; Ammian, xv. 12. 5.
+
+[486] An isolated notice speaks of a rising at Asculum. [Victor] _de
+Vir. Ill_. 65 (C. Gracchus) Asculanae et Fregellanae defectionis
+invidiam sustinuit.
+
+[487] Liv. viii. 22.
+
+[488] Liv. xxvii. 10.
+
+[489] Liv. _Ep_. lx L. Opimius praetor Fregellanos, qui defecerant, in
+deditionem accepit; Fregellas diruit. Cf. Vellei. ii. 6; Obsequens 90;
+Plut. _C. Gracch_. 3; [Cic.] _ad Herenn_. iv. 15. 22.
+
+[490] Vellei. i. 15 Cassio autem Longino et Sextio Calvino ...
+consulibus Fabrateria deducta est.
+
+[491] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 3.
+
+[492] It has been supposed that this boy may really have been the son of
+Attalus brother of Eumenes, a fruit of the transitory connection between
+this prince and Stratonice, which followed the false news of Eumenes's
+death in 172 B.C. See F. Koepp _De Attali III patre_ in _Rhein. Mus_.
+xlviii. pp. 154 ff.; Wilcken in Pauly-Wissowa _Real, Enc_. p. 2170, and
+for the temporary marriage of Attalus with Stratonice Plut. _de Frat.
+Amor_. 18; Polyb. xxx. 2. 6. Livy (xlii. 16) and perhaps Diodorus (xxix.
+34) speak only of Attalus's wooing, not of his marriage. If Attalus the
+Third was not the son of Eumenes, he was at least adopted by the king
+and was clearly recognised as his heir. The official view made the
+relationship between the Attali that of uncle and nephew.
+
+[493] For the guardianship of the younger Attalus see Strabo xiii. 4. 2.
+The recognition of the regent as king is clearly attested by
+inscriptions (Fraenkel _Inschriften von Pergamon_ nn. 214 ff., 224, 225,
+248. In n. 248.) the future Attalus the Third is called by the king
+[Greek: _ho tadelphon nios_] (l. 18, cf. l. 32 [Greek: _ho theios
+mon_] used by Attalus the Third) and has some power of appointment to
+the priesthood. There is no sign that the nephew was in any other
+respect a co-regent of the uncle. See Fraenkel op. cit. p. 169.
+
+[494] Liv. xxxviii. cc. 12, 23, 25; Polyb. xxi. 39.
+
+[495] Liv. xliv. 36; xlv. 19.
+
+[496] Wilcken in Pauly-Wissowa _Real. Enc_. p. 2168 foll.
+
+[497] Polyb. xxxii. 22; Diod. xxxi. 32 b.
+
+[498] For the details of this struggle see Wilcken l.c. p. 2172;
+Ussing _Pergamos_ p. 50.
+
+[499] Ussing op. cit. p. 51.
+
+[500] Strabo xiii. 4. 2.
+
+[501] Strabo l.c.; Lucian. _Macrob_. 12. He was sixty-one years old at
+his accession and eighty-two years old at the time of his death.
+
+[502] Justin. xxxvi. 4; Diod. xxxiv. 3.
+
+[503] Once, indeed, he seems to have taken the field with some success,
+as is proved by a decree in honour of a victory (Fraenkel _Inschr. von
+Pergamon_ n. 246). A vote of the town of Elaea honours the king [Greek:
+_aretaes heneken kai andragathias taes kata polemon, krataesanta ton
+hupenantion_] (l. 22). The victory is also mentioned in n. 249.
+
+[504] Liv. _Ep_. lviii. Heredem autem populum Romanum reliquerat
+Attalus, rex Pergami, Eumenis filius. Cf. ib. lix; Strabo xiii. 4. 2;
+Vellei. ii. 4; Val. Max. v. 2, ext. 3; Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 14; Eutrop.
+iv. 18; Justin. xxxvi. 4. 5; Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15); Oros. v. 8; App.
+_Mithr_. 62.
+
+[505] Sall. _Hist_. iv. 69 Maur. (Epistula Mithridatis) Eumenen, cujus
+amicitiam gloriose ostentant, initio prodidere (Romani) Antiocho, pacis
+mercedem; post habitum custodiae agri captivi sumptibus et contumeliis
+ex rege miserrimum servorum effecere, simulatoque impio testamento
+filium ejus Aristonicum, quia patrium regnum petiverat, hostium more per
+triumphum duxere.
+
+[506] The reality of the will is attested by a Pergamene inscription
+(Fraenkel _Inschr. von Pergamon_ n. 249). The inscription records a
+resolution taken by the [Greek: _daemos_] on the proposal of the [Greek:
+_strataegoi_]. The resolution is elicited after the will has become
+known and in view of its ratification by Rome (l. 7 [_Greek: dei de
+epicurothaenai taen diathaekaen hupo Rhomaion_]). Pergamon has by the
+death of the king, and perhaps in accordance with the will (see p. 177),
+been left "free" (l. 5 Attalus by passing away [Greek: _apoleloipen taen
+patrida haemon eleutheran_)]. The first result of this freedom is that
+the people extends the privileges of its citizenship. Full civic rights
+are given to Paroeci (i.e. _incolae_) and (mercenary) soldiers; the
+rights of Paroeci are given to other classes:--freedmen, royal and
+public slaves. The motive assigned for the conferment is public
+security, and the extension of rights seems to be justified (l. 6) by
+the liberal spirit shown by the late king in the organisation of his
+conquests (see p. 175 note 2). The ruling idea seems to be that, if
+Pergamon was to be free, she must be strong. See Frankel in loc.,
+Ussing _Pergamos_ p. 55.
+
+[507] At the same time the self-governing character of the civic
+corporation might be recognised: and Attalus, if he made the will, may
+have been courteous enough to recognise the "freedom" of the city from
+this point of view. See p. 177.
+
+[508] Liv. _Ep_. lix. Cum testamento Attali regis legata populo Romano
+libera esse deberet (Asia). Cf. pp. 175, 176, notes 5 and 1.
+
+[509] Justin. xxxvi. 4. 6 Sed erat ex Eumene Aristonicus, non justo
+matrimonio, sed ex paelice Ephesia, citharistae cujusdam filia, genitus,
+qui post mortem Attali velut paternum regnum Asiam invasit. The
+epitomator of Livy (lix.) speaks of him as "Eumenis filius". Strabo
+(xiv. 1. 38) describes him as [Greek: _dokon tou genous einai tou ton
+basileon_].
+
+[510] Florus i. 35 (ii. 20).
+
+[511] Strabo xiv. 1. 38.
+
+[512] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 26 [Greek: _to paraplaesion de_] (to the slave
+revolt in Sicily) [Greek: _gegone kai kata taen Asian kata tous autous
+kairous, Aristonikou men antipoiaesamenou taes mae prosaekousaes
+basileias, ton de doulon dia tas ek ton despoton kakouchias
+synaponoaesamenon ekeino kai megalois atychaemasi pollas poleis
+peribalonton_].
+
+[513] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _eis de taen mesogaian anion haethroise
+dia tacheon plaethos aporon te anthropon kai doulon ep' eleutheria
+katakeklaemenon, ous Haeliopolitas ekalese_]. For the view that
+Heliopolis was a merely ideal city deriving its name from the sun-god
+of Syria, see Mommsen _Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 1; Buecher op. cit.
+pp. 105 foll. For the hopes of divine deliverance which pervade the
+slave revolts, see Mahaffy in _Hermathena_ xvi. 1890, and cf. p. 89.
+
+[514] Strabo l.c.
+
+[515] Florus i. 35 (ii. 20).
+
+[516] Val. Max. iii. 2. 12.
+
+[517] Strabo xiv. i. 38.
+
+[518] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _euthus ai te poleis hepempsan plaethos, kai
+Nikomaedaes ho Bithynos epekouraese kai oi ton Kappadokon basileis_].
+Eutrop. iv. 20 P. Licinius Crassus infinita regum habuit auxilia. Nam et
+Bithyniae rex Nicomedes Romanos juvit et Mithridates Ponticus, cum quo
+bellum postea gravissimum fuit, et Ariarathes Cappadox et Pylaemenes
+Paphlagon. The Pontic king was Mithradates Euergetes, not Eupator.
+
+[519] Cic. _Phil_. xi. 8. 18 Populus Romanus consuli potius Crasso quam
+privato Africano bellum gerendum dedit.
+
+[520] In B.C. 189 (Liv. xxxvii. 51) and 180 (Liv. xi. 42).
+
+[521] Cic. l.c. Rogatus est populus quem id bellum gerere placeret.
+Crassus consul, pontifex maximus, Flacco collegae, flamini Martiali,
+multam dixit si a sacris discessisset; quam multam populus remisit,
+pontifici tamen flaminem parere jussit.
+
+[522] Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix. Adversus eum (Aristonicum) P. Licinius
+Crassus consul, cum idem pontifex maximus esset, quod numquam antea
+factum erat, extra Italiam profectus....
+
+[523] Quinctil, _Inst. Or_. xi. 2. 50.
+
+[524] Gell. i. 13.
+
+[525] Intentior Attalicae praedae quam bello (Justin. xxxvi. 4. 8).
+
+[526] Cf. Eutrop. iv. 20 Perperna, consul Romanus (130 B.C.) qui
+successor Crasso veniebat.
+
+[527] Val. Max. iii. 2. 12; Strabo xiv. i. 38.
+
+[528] Val. Max. _l.c. Cf_. Oros. v. 10; Florus i. 34 (ii. 20). Eutropius
+(iv. 20) states that Crassus's head was taken to Aristonicus, his body
+buried at Smyrna.
+
+[529] Justin. xxxvi. 4 Prima congressione Aristonicum superatum in
+potestatem suam redegit.
+
+[530] Eutrop. iv. 20. Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix.
+
+[531] Justin. l.c.
+
+[532] Justin. xxxvi. 4 M. Aquilius consul ad eripiendum Aristonicum
+Perpernae, veluti sui potius triumphi munus esse deberet, festinata
+velocitate contendit.
+
+[533] Eutrop. iv. 20; Justin. xxxvi. 4.
+
+[534] Vellei. ii. 4.
+
+[535] Eutrop. l.c. Aristonicus jussu senatus Romae in carcere
+strangulatus est. According to Strabo (xiv. i. 38) he had been sent to
+Rome by Perperna.
+
+[536] Florus i. 35 (ii. 20) Aquillius Asiatici belli reliquias confecit,
+mixtis-nefas-veneno fontibus ad deditionem quarundam urbium. Quae res ut
+maturam ita infamem fecit victoriam, quippe cum contra fas deum moresque
+majorum medicaminibus impuris in id tempus sacrosancta Romana arma
+violasset.
+
+[537] Strabo xiv. 1. 38 [Greek: _Manion d' Akyllios, epelthon hypatos
+meta deka presbeuton, dietaxe taen eparchian eis to nyn eti symmenon
+taes politeias schaema_.]
+
+[538] An inscription with the words [Greek: _Man(i)os Aky(l)ios Man(i)ou
+hypato(s) Rhomaion_] has been found near Tralles. It probably belongs to
+a milestone (C.I.L. i. n. 557 = C.I.Gr. n. 2920).
+
+[539] Where the rights of _city-states_ were in question the lines of
+demarcation between "province" and "protectorate" were necessarily
+vague. Even a protectorate over small political units would demand
+organisation and justify the appointment of a commission.
+
+[540] The evidence is furnished by a Cistophorus of 77 B.C. struck at
+Ephesus. See Waddington _Fastes_ p. 674.
+
+[541] His triumph is dated to 126 B.C. (628 A. U. C., 627 according to
+the reckoning of the _Fasti_). See _Fasti triumph_, in C.I.L. i.
+
+[542] Waddington _Fastes_ pp. 662 foll. Caria belongs to the province of
+Asia in 76 B.C. (Le Bas-Waddington, no. 409).
+
+[543] It is dependent on this province in the time of Cicero (_in Pis_.
+35. 86).
+
+[544] Strabo xiv. 3. 4.
+
+[545] Justin. xxxvii. i. Cf. Bergmann in _Philologus_ 1847 p. 642.
+
+[546] Forbiger _Handb. der All. Geogr_. ii. p. 338.
+
+[547] Reinach _Mithridate Eupator_ p. 43.
+
+[548] Justin. xxxviii. 5.
+
+[549] C. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi. 10. Cf. Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. ii.
+148 Asia primum devicta luxuriam misit in Italiam.... At eadem Asia
+donata multo etiam gravius adflixit mores, inutiliorque victoria illa
+hereditas Attalo rege mortuo fuit. Tum enim haec emendi Romae in
+auctionibus regiis verecundia exempta est.
+
+[550] Ramsay, _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_ i. 2, pp. 423, 762;
+Reinach. _Mithridate Eupator_ p. 457.
+
+[551] For the evidence as to the islands, see Waddington _Fastes l. c_.
+
+[552] Regni attalici opes (Justin. xxxviii. 7. 7); Attalicae conditiones
+(Hor, _Od_. i. 1. 12); Attalicae vestes (Prop. iii. 18. 19) etc. (from
+Ihne _Rom. Gesch_. v., p. 76).
+
+[553] Liv. _Ep_. lix; App. _Illyr_. 10, _Bell. Civ_. i. 19; Plin. _H.N_.
+iii. 19. 129; _Fasti triumph_. C. Sempronius C.F.C.N. Tuditan. a. dcxxiv
+cos. de Iapudibus k. Oct.
+
+[554] Liv. _Ep_. lx; Florus i. 37 (iii. 2); Obsequens 90 (28); Ammian.
+xv. 12. 5.
+
+[555] Liv. _Ep_. lx; Plut. _C. Gracch_. 1. 2.
+
+[556] _Fasti Triumph_. L. Aurelius L.F.L.N. Orestes pro an. dcxxi cos.
+ex Sardinia vi Idus Dec. (123 B.C.)
+
+[557] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[558] Diod. v. 17, 2.
+
+[559] Besides Mago (Mahon), Bocchori and Guiuntum on Majorca, Iamo on
+Minorca are supposed to be Punic names. See Huebner in Pauly-Wissowa
+_Real. Enc_. p. 2823. On the islands generally (Baliares, later Baleares
+of the Romans, [Greek: _Gymnaesiai, Baliareis_] of the Greeks) see the
+same author's _Roemische Heerschaft in Westeuropa_ 208 ff.
+
+[560] Strabo iii. v. 1.
+
+[561] Diod. v. 17. 4.
+
+[562] Huebner in Pauly-Wissowa _Real. Enc. l. c_.
+
+[563] They also purchased wine. They were so [Greek: _philogynai_] that
+they would give pirates three or four men as a ransom for one woman
+(Diod. v. 17).
+
+[564] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _oi katoikountes eiraenaioi ... kakourgon de
+tinon oligon koinonias systaesamenon pros tous en tois pelagesi laestas,
+dieblaethaesan hapantes, kai diebae Metellos ep' autous ho Baliarikos
+prosagoreutheis_.]
+
+[565] Strabo l.c.
+
+[566] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _eisaegage de (Metellos) epoikous trischilious
+ton ek taes Ibaerias Rhomaion_.]
+
+[567] _Fasti Triumph_. (121 B.C.) Q. Caecilius Q.F.Q.N. Metellus
+a. dcxxxii Baliaric. procos. de Baliarib.
+
+[568] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[569] Quae sic ab illo acta esse constabat oculis, voce, gestu, inimici
+ut lacrimas tenere non possent (Cic. _de Or_, iii. 56. 214).
+
+[570] Plut. l.c.
+
+[571] Plut. l.c.
+
+[572] Cic. _Brut_, 33. 125 Sed ecce in manibus vir et praestantissimo
+ingenio et flagranti studio et doctus a puero, C. Gracchus.... Grandis
+est verbis, sapiens sententiis, genere toto gravis. His "impetus" is
+dwelt on in Tac. _de Orat_. 26.
+
+[573] Cic. _Brut_. 33. 126 Manus extrema non accessit operibus ejus:
+praeclare inchoata multa, perfecta non plane. Cf. Tac. _de Orat_. 18
+Sic Catoni seni comparatus C. Gracchus plenior et uberior; sic Graccho
+politior et ornatior Crassus.
+
+[574] Cic, _de Or_. iii. 56. 214.
+
+[575] P. 127
+
+[576] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 1.
+
+[577] C. Gracchus ap. Charis. ii. p. 177 Qui sapientem eum faciet? Qui
+et vobis et rei publicae et sibi communiter prospiciat, non qui pro
+suilla humanam trucidet.
+
+[578] Plut. l.c.
+
+[579] Ibid. Cf. [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65 Pestilentem Sardiniam
+quaestor sortitus.
+
+[580] Plut. l.c.
+
+[581] Cic. _de Div_. i. 26. 56 C. vero Gracchus multis dixit, ut
+scriptum apud eundem Coelium est, sibi in somniis quaesturam petere
+dubitanti Ti. fratrem visum esse dicere, quam vellet cunctaretur, tamen
+eodem sibi leto quo ipse interisset esse pereundum. Hoc, ante quam
+tribunus plebi C. Gracchus factus esset, et se audisse scribit Coelius
+et dixisse eum multis. Cf. Plut. l.c.
+
+[582] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[583] Plut. l.c.
+
+[584] Plut. l.c.
+
+[585] Ibid. [Greek: _alla kai pollois allokotom edokei to tamian onta
+proapostaenai tou archontos_].
+
+[586] Cic. _Div. in Caec_. 19. 61 Sic enim a majoribus nostris accepimus
+praetorem quaestori suo parentis loco esse oportere: nullam neque
+justiorem neque graviorem causam necessitudinis posse reperiri quam
+conjunctionem sortis, quam provinciae, quam officii, quam publici
+muneris societatem.
+
+[587] A passage from Caius's speech "apud censores" is quoted by Cicero
+_Orat_. 70.233.
+
+[588] Plutarch says (C. _Gracch_. 2) that Caius [Greek: _aitaesamenos
+logon outo metestaese tas gnomes ton akousanton, hos apelthein
+haedikaesthai ta megista doxas_]. The passage seems to imply acquittal
+by the censors, although [Greek: _ton akousanton_] suggests the larger
+audience. The arguments cited by Plutarch as developed by Caius
+appeared, or were repeated, in the speech that he subsequently made
+before the people.
+
+[589] Gell. xv. 12.
+
+[590] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 3; [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65.
+
+[591] Plut. l.c.
+
+[592] Plut. l.c.
+
+[593] Cic. _pro Rab_. 4. 12 C. Gracchus legem tulit ne de capite civium
+Romanorum injussu vestro (sc. populi) judicaretur. Plut. _C. Gracch. 4
+[Greek: _(nomon eisepheren) ei tis archon akriton ekpekaerychoi politaen,
+kat' auton didonta krisin to daemo_.] Schol. Ambros. p. 370 Quia
+sententiam tulerat Gracchus, ut ne quis in civem Romanum capitalem
+sententiam diceret. Cic. _in Cat_. iv. 5. 10; _in Verr_. v. 63. 163.
+Cf. Cic. _pro Sest_. 28. 61; Dio Cass. xxxviii. 14.
+
+[594] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 4.
+
+[595] Schol. Ambros. p. 370. Cf. Cic. _pro Sest_. 28, 61 Consule me,
+cum esset designatus (Cato) tribunus plebis (63 B.C.), obtulit in
+discrimen vitam suam: dixit eam sententiam cujus invidiam capitis
+periculo sibi praestandam videbat. Dio Cass. xxxviii. 14.
+
+[596] Cic. _pro Domo_ 31. 82 Ubi enim tuleras ut mihi aqua et igni
+interdiceretur? quod C. Gracchus de P. Popilio ... tulit. _de Leg_.
+iii. 11. 26 Si nos multitudinis furentis inflammata invidia pepulisset
+tribuniciaque vis in me populum, sicut Gracchus in Laenatem ...
+incitasset, ferremus. Cf. _pro Cluent_. 35. 95; _de Rep_. i. 3.6. For
+the speeches of Caius Gracchus on Popillius see Gell. 1.7.7; xi. 13.1.5.
+
+[597] Cic. _post Red. in Sen_. 15. 37 Pro me non ut pro P. Popilio,
+nobilissimo homine, adulescentes filii, non propinquorum multitudo
+populum Romanum est deprecata.
+
+[598] Diod. xxxv. 26 [Greek: _ho Popillios meta dakruon hypo ton ochlon
+proepemphthae ekballomenos ek taes poleos_.] Cf. Plut. _C. Gracch_. 4.
+
+[599] Vellei. ii. 7 Rupilium Popiliumque, qui consules asperrime in
+Tiberii Gracchi amicos saevierant, postea judiciorum publicorum merito
+oppressit invidia. It is a little difficult to harmonise Fannius's
+account of Rupilius's death (ap. Cic. _Tusc_. iv. 17.40) with this
+condemnation. Here Rupilius is said to have died of grief at his
+brother's failure to obtain the consulship, and this failure happened
+before Scipio's death (Cic. _de Am_ 20.73). But his brother may have
+continued his unsuccessful efforts up to the time of Rupilius's
+condemnation.
+
+[600] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 4 [Greek: _(nomon) eisephere ... ei tinos
+archontos aphaeraeto ton archaen ho daemos, ouk eonta touto deuteras
+archaes metousian einai_.] Cf. Diod. xxxv. 25. Magistrates who had been
+deposed, or compelled to abdicate, were known as _abacti_ (Festus p. 23
+Abacti magistratus dicebantur, qui coacti deposuerant imperium).
+
+[601] Plut. l.c.
+
+[602] Diod. xxxv. 25 [Greek: _ho Grakchos daemaegoraesas peri tou
+katalysai aristokratian, daemokratian de systaesai, kai ephikomenos taes
+hapanton euchraestias ton meron, ouketi synagonistas alla kathaper
+authentas eiche toutous hyper taes idias tolmaes; dedekasmenos gar
+hekastos tais idiais elpisin hos hyper idion agathon ton eispheromenon
+nomon hetoimos haen panta kindynon hypomenein_.]
+
+[603] Liv. _Ep_. xlviii (155 B.C.) Cum locatum a censoribus theatrum
+exstrueretur; P. Cornelio Nasica auctore, tanquam inutile et nociturum
+publicis moribus, ex senatus consulto destructum est, populusque
+aliquamdiu stans ludos spectavit.
+
+[604] Liv. _Ep_. lx.; Oros. v. II; Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 393.
+
+[605] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 5 [Greek: _ho de sitikos (nomos) epeuonizon
+tois penaesi taen agoran_.] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 21 [Greek:
+_sitaeresion hemmaenon horisas hekasto ton daemoton apo ton koinon
+chraematon, ou proteron eiothos diadidosthai_.] Vellei. ii. 6 Frumentum
+plebi dari instituerat. Liv. _Ep_. lx Leges tulit, inter quas
+frumentariam, ut senis et triente frumentum plebi daretur. Schol. Bob.
+p. 303 Ut senis aeris et trientibus modios singulos populus acciperet.
+Cf. Mommsen _Die roemischen Tribus_ pp. 179 and 182.
+
+[606] Mommsen (_Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 3) considers it rather less
+than half. The average market-price of the _modius_ is difficult to fix.
+A low price seems to have been about 12 asses the _modius_. See Smith
+and Wilkins in Smith _Dict. of _Antiq_. i. p. 877. For occasional sales
+below the market-price at an earlier period see Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 3.
+17 M. Varro auctor est, cum L. Metellus (cos. 251 B.C.) in triumpho
+plurimos duxit elephantos, assibus singulis farris modios fuisse.
+
+[607] Cic. _Tusc. Disp_. iii. 20. 48 C. Gracchus, cum largitiones
+maximas fecisset et effudisset aerarium, verbis ramen defendebat
+aerarium.
+
+[608] Cic. _Tusc. Disp_. iii. 20. 48.
+
+[609] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 21. 72 C. Gracchi frumentaria magna largitio;
+exhauriebat igitur aerarium: _pro Sest_. 48. 103 Frumentariam legem C.
+Gracchus ferebat. Jucunda res plebei; victus enim suppeditabatur large
+sine labore. Cf. _Brut_. 62. 222. Diod. xxxv. 25 [Greek: _to koinon
+tamieion eis aischras kai akairous dapanas kai charitas analiskon eis
+heauton pantas apoblepein epoiaese_.] Cf. Oros. v. 12.
+
+[610] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6 [Greek: _egrapse de kai ... kataskeuazesthai
+sitobolia_.] Festus p. 290 Sempronia horrea qui locus dicitur, in eo
+fuerunt lege Gracchi, ad custodiam frumenti publici.
+
+[611] This view is represented in a criticism preserved by Diodorus
+xxxv. 25 [Greek: _tois stratiotais dia ton nomon ta taes archaias agogaes
+austaera katacharisamenos apeithian kai anarchian eisaegagen eis taen
+politeian_].
+
+[612] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 5 [Greek: _ho de stratiotikos (nomos) esthaeta
+te keleuon daemosia choraegeisthai kai maeden eis touto taes
+misthophoras hyphaireisthai ton stratenomenon_].
+
+[613] [Greek: _kai neoteron eton heptakaideka mae katalegesthai
+stratiotaen_] (Plut. l.c.).
+
+[614] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _ton de nomon ... ho men haen klaerouchikos
+hama nemon tois penaesi taen daemosian_.] Liv. _Ep_. lx Tulit ... legem
+agrariam, quam et frater ejus tulerat. Vellei. ii. 6 (C. Gracchus)
+dividebat agros, vetabat quemquam civem plus quingentis jugeribus
+habere, quod aliquando lege Licinia cautum erat. Cf. Cic. _de Leg. Agr_.
+i. 7. 21; ii. 5. 10; Oros. v. 12; Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15).
+
+[615] _Lex Agraria_ (C.I.L. i. n. 200; Bruns _Fontes_ 1. 3. 11) 1. 6.
+See p. 113, note 2.
+
+[616] In 125 B.C. the census had been 394, 726 (Liv. _Ep_. lx), in 115
+it was 394, 336 (Liv. _Ep_. lxiii). See de Boor _Fasti Censorii_.
+
+[617] Herzog _Staatsverf_. i. p. 466.
+
+[618] In 142 B.C. (Cic. _de Fin_. ii. 16. 54).
+
+[619] Polyb. vi. 14.
+
+[620] Cic. _pro Mur_. 28. 58; _pro Font_. 13. 38; _Brut_. 21. 81; _Div.
+in Caec_. 21. 69; Tac_. Ann_ 111. 66. Valerius Maximus (viii. 1. 11) can
+scarcely be correct in saying that the trial took place _apud populum_.
+It seems to have been a trial for extortion.
+
+[621] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 22. Cf. Cic. _Div. in Caec_. 21. 69
+[Ascon.] in loc.; App. _Mithr_. 57.
+
+[622] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 22 [Greek: _oi te presbeis oi kat auton eti
+parontes syn phthono tauta permontes ekekragesan_.]
+
+[623] Plut, _C. Gracch_. 5 [Greek: _ho de dikastikos (nomos) ho to
+pleiston apekopse taes ton synklaetikon dynameos ... ho de priakosious
+ton hippeon proskatelexen antois ousi triakosiois kai tas kriseis koinas
+ton hexakosion epoiaese_]. Cf. _Compar_. 2. Liv. _Ep_. lx Tertiam (legem
+tulit) qua equestrem ordinem, tunc cum senatu consentientem,
+corrumperet: "ut sexcenti ex equitibus in curiam sublegerentur: et quia
+illis temporibus trecenti tantum senatores erant, sexcenti equites
+trecentis senatoribus admiscerentur": id est, ut equester ordo bis
+tantum virium in senatu haberet.
+
+[624] Vellei. ii. 6 C. Gracchus ... judicia a senatu transferebat ad
+equites. (Cf. ii. 13. 32). Tac. _Ann_. xii. 60 Cum Semproniis
+rogationibus equester ordo in possessione judiciorum locaretur. Plin.
+_H.N_. xxxiii. 34 Judicum autem appellatione separare eum (equestrem)
+ordinem primi omnium instituere Gracchi, discordi popularitate in
+contumeliam senatus. Cf. Diod. xxxv. 25; xxxvii. 9; App. _Bell.
+Civ_. 1. 22.
+
+[625] The qualifications of the Gracchan jurors were probably identical
+with those required for jurors under the extant _lex Repetundarum_ (C.I.
+L. i. n. 198; Bruns _Fontes_ i. 3. 10) which is probably the _lex
+Acilia_ (Cic. _in Verr_. Act. i. 17. 51; cf. Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.).
+The conditions fixed by this law are as follows (ll. 12, l3):--Praetor
+quei inter peregrinos jous deicet, is in diebus x proxumeis, quibus h. l.
+populus plebesve jouserit, facito utei CDL viros legat, quei in hac
+civit[ate ... dum nei quem eorum legat, quei tr. pl., q., iii vir cap.,
+tr. mil. l. iv primis aliqua earum, iii vi]rum a. d. a. siet fueri[tve,
+queive mercede conductus depugnavit depugnaverit, queive quaestione
+joudicioque puplico conde]mnatus siet quod circa eum in senatum legei
+non liceat, queive minor anneis xxx majorve annos lx gnatus siet, queive
+in u[rbem Romam propiusve urbem Romam passus M domicilium non habeat,
+queive ejus magistratus, quei supra scriptus est, pater frater filiusve
+siet, queive ejus, quei in senatu siet fueritve, pater frater filiusve
+siet, queive trans mar]e erit. (Cf. ll. 16, 17). Unfortunately the main
+qualification for the jurors, which was stated after the words "in hac
+civitate," has been lost.
+
+[626] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6 [Greek: _kakeino tous krinountas ek ton
+hippeon hedoken (ho daemos) katalexai_].
+
+[627] The _lex Acilia_ says "within ten days of its becoming law" (p.
+214, note 2). If Plutarch _(l.c.)_ is right about Gracchus selecting the
+original judices, the provision of this _lex_ shows that it cannot be,
+as some have thought, the law which first _created_ the Gracchan jurors.
+It must have been passed subsequently to Gracchus's own _lex
+judiciaria_.
+
+[628] In the Ciceronian period we find a knight as a _judex_ in a civil
+case (Cic. _pro Rosc. Com_. 14. 42), but it is not probable that
+senators were ever excluded from the civil bench. See Greenidge _Legal
+Procedure of Cicero's Time_ p. 265.
+
+[629] Cic. _in Verr_. Act. i. 13. 38.
+
+[630] Cic. _pro Cluent_. 56. 154 Lege ... quae tum erat Sempronia, nunc
+est Cornelia (i.e. the law mentioned in note 4) ... intellegebant ...
+ea lege equestrem ordinem non teneri. Livius Drusus in 91 B.C. attempted
+to fix a retrospective liability on the equestrian jurors (Cic. _pro
+Rab. Post_ 7. 16). Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 35. Yet Appian elsewhere
+(_Bell. Civ_. i. 22) says that the equites obviated trials for bribery
+[Greek: _synistamenoi sphisin autois kai biazomenoi_]. It is possible
+that prosecutions for corruption before the _judicia populi_ are meant.
+See Strachan-Davidson in loc.
+
+[631] Cic. _pro Cluent_. 55. 151 Hanc ipsam legem NE QUIS JUDICIO
+CIRCUMVENIRETUR C. Gracchus tulit; eam legem pro plebe, non in plebem
+tulit. Postea L. Sulla ... cum ejus rei quaestionem hac ipsa lege
+constitueret, ... populum Romanum ... alligare novo quaestionis genere
+ausus non est. 56. 154 Illi non hoc recusabant, ea ne lege accusarentur
+... quae tum erat Sempronia, nunc est Cornelia ... intellegebant enim ea
+lege equestrem ordinem non teneri.
+
+[632] Gell. 1. xx. 7; Justin. _Inst_. iv. 5. 2.
+
+[633] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 22.
+
+[634] App. l.c. [Greek: _kataegorous te enetous epi tois plousiois
+epaegonto_].
+
+[635] C. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi. 10 Ego ipse, qui aput vos verba facio,
+uti vectigalia vestra augeatis, quo facilius vestra commoda et rem
+publicam administrare possitis, non gratis prodeo.
+
+[636] Vellei. ii. 6. 3 Nova constituebat portoria.
+
+[637] Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. v. 4 (M. Antonius to the Asiatics) [Greek:
+_ous ... eteleite phorous Attalo, methaekamen hymin, mechri, daemokopon
+andron kai par' haemin genomenon, edeaese phoron, epei de edeaesen ...
+merae pherein ton ekastote karpon epetazamen_].
+
+[638] Fronto _ad Verum_ p. 125 (Naber) Gracchus locabat Asiam. Cic.
+_in Verr_. iii. 6. 12 Inter Siciliam ceterasque provincias, judices, in
+agrorum vectigalium ratione hoc interest, quod ceteris aut impositum
+vectigal est certum ... aut censoria locatio constituta est, ut Asiae
+lege Sempronia.
+
+[639] Decumani, hoc est, principes et quasi senatores publicanorum (Cic.
+_in Verr_. ii. 71. 175).
+
+[640] Polyb. vi. 17.
+
+[641] Schol. Bob. p. 259 Cum princeps esset publicanorum Cn. Plancii
+pater, et societas eadem in exercendis vectigalibus gravissimo damno
+videretur adfecta, desideratum est in senatu nomine publicanorum ut cum
+iis ratio putaretur lege Sempronia, et remissionis tantum fieret de
+summa pecunia, quantum aequitas postularet, pro quantitate damnorum
+quibus fuerant hostili incursione vexati (60 B.C.; cf. Cic. _ad Att_.
+i. 17. 9).
+
+[642] Varro ap. Non. p. 308 G. Equestri ordini judicia tradidit ac
+bicipitem civitatem fecit discordiarum civilium fontem. Cf. Florus ii. 5
+(iii. 17).
+
+[643] Diod. xxxvii. 9 [Greek: _apeilousaes taes synklaetou polemon to
+Grakcho dia taen metathesin ton kritaerion, tetharraekotos outos eipen
+hoti kan apothano, ou dialeipso to eiphos apo taes pleuras ton
+synklaetikon diaeraemenos_.] Diodorus has preserved the utterance in a
+more intelligible form than Cicero (_de Leg_. iii. 9. 20 C. vero
+Gracchus ... sicis iis, quas ipse se projecisse in forum dixit, quibus
+digladiarentur inter se cives, nonne omnem rei publicae statum
+permutavit?).
+
+[644] Cic. _pro Domo_ 9, 24 Tu provincias consulares, quas C. Gracchus,
+qui unus maxime popularis fuit, non modo non abstulit a senatu, sed
+etiam, ut necesse esset quotannis constitui per senatum decretas lege
+sanxit, eas lege Sempronia per senatum decretas rescidisti. Sall, _Fug_.
+27 Lege Sempronia provinciae futuris consulibus Numidia atque Italia
+decretae. Cic. _de Prov. Cons_. 2. 3 Decernendae nobis sunt lege
+Sempronia duae (provinciae). Cf. _ad Fam_. i. 7. 10; _pro Balbo_ 27. 61.
+
+[645] Cic. _de Prov. Cons_. 7. 17.
+
+[646] The colonists were to be [Greek: _oi chariestatoi ton politon_]
+(Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9).
+
+[647] Liv. _Ep_. lx Legibus agrariis latis effecit ut complures coloniae
+in Italia deducerentur. Cf. Plut. _C. Gracch_, 6. App. _Bell. Civ_. 1.
+23; Foundations at Abellinum, Cadatia, Suessa Aurunca etc. are
+attributed to a _lex Sempronia_ or _lex Graccana_ in _Liber Coloniarum_
+(_Gromatici_ Lachmann) pp. 229, 233, 237, 238; cf. pp. 216, 219, 228,
+255. It is difficult to say whether they were products of the Gracchan
+agrarian or colonial law. In either case, these foundations may have
+been subsequent to his death, as neither law was repealed.
+
+[648] Vellei. 1. 15 Et post annum (i.e. a year after the foundation
+of Fabrateria, see p. 171) Scolacium Minervium, Tarentum Neptunia
+(coloniae conditae sunt).
+
+[649] Forbiger _Handb. der Alt. Geogr_. ii. p. 503.
+
+[650] L'Annee _Epigraphique_, 1896, pp. 30, 31.
+
+[651] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[652] Vellei. ii. 6 Novis coloniis replebat provincias. This may be
+wrong as a fact but true as an intention.
+
+[653] Vellei. ii. 7.
+
+[654] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10 [Greek: _Rhoubrion ton synarchonton henos
+oikizesthai Karchaedona grapsantos anaeraemenaen hypo Skaepionos_]....
+_Lex Acilia_ 1. 22 Queive 1. Rubria in. vir col. ded. creatus siet
+fueritve. Cf. _Lex Agraria_ 1. 59. Oros. v. 12 L. Caecilio Metello et Q.
+Titio (_Scr_. T. Quinctio) Flaminino coss. Carthago in Africa restitui
+jussa vicensimo secundo demum anno quam fuerat eversa deductis civium
+Romanorum familiis, quae eam incolerent, restituta et repleta est. Cf.
+Eutrop. iv. 21.
+
+[655] Mommsen in C.I.L. i. pp. 75 ff.
+
+[656] Mommsen l.c. This was the tenure afterwards called that of the
+_jus Italicum_.
+
+[657] Liv. _Ep_. ix; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 24.
+
+[658] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6; App, _Bell. Civ_, i. 23.
+
+[659] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 7.
+
+[660] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 402.
+
+[661] These are apparently the _Viasii vicani_ of the _lex Agraria_.
+Sometimes the service was performed by personal labour (_operae_), at
+other times a _vectigal_ was demanded. See Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.
+
+[662] Cic. _ad Fam_. viii. 6. 5; cf. Mommsen l.c.
+
+[663] This was prohibited by a _lex Licinia_ and a _lex Aebutia_ which
+Cicero (_de Leg. Agr_. ii. 8. 21) calls _veteres tribuniciae_. But it is
+possible that they were post-Gracchan. See Mommsen _Staatsr_. ii.
+p. 630.
+
+[664] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23 [Greek: _ho de Grakchos kai hodous etemnen
+ana ten Italian makras, plaethos ergolabon kai cheirotechnon hyph' eauto
+poionmenos, hetoimon es ho ti keleuoi_]
+
+[665] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[666] Cic. _Brut_. 26, 100.
+
+[667] Mommsen in C.I.L. i. p. 158.
+
+[668] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6.
+
+[669] Seneca _de Ben_, vi. 34. 2 Apud nos primi omnium Gracchus et mox
+Livius Drusus instituerunt segregate turbam suam et alios in secretum
+recipere, alios cum pluribus, alios universos. Habuerunt itaque isti
+amicos primos, habuerunt secundos, numquam veros.
+
+[670] The name of the law was probably _lex de sociis et nomine Latino_.
+See Cic. _Brut_. 26. 99.
+
+[671] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23 [Greek: _kai tous Latinous epi panta
+ekalei ta Rhomaion, hos ouk euprepos sygnenesi taes boulaes antistaenai
+dynamenaes; ton de heteron symmachon hois ouk ezaen psaephon en tais
+Rhomaion cheirotoniais pherein, edidous pherein apo toude, epi to echein
+kai tousde en tais cherotioniais ton nomon auto syntelountas_]. The
+words [Greek: _psaephon k.t.l._] refer to the limited suffrage granted to
+Latin _incolae_ (Liv. xxv. 3. 16); but the voting power of his new
+Latins would be so small that the motive attributed to this measure by
+Appian is improbable. See Strachan-Davidson in loc. Other accounts of
+Gracchus's proposal ignore this distinction between Latins and Italians,
+e.g. Plutarch (_C. Gracch_. 5) describes his law as [Greek: _isopsaephous
+toion tois politais tous Italiotas_] and Velleius says (ii. 6) Dabat
+civitatem omnibus Italicis.
+
+[672] If we may trust Velleius (ii. 6) Dabat civitatem omnibus Italicis,
+extendebat eam paene usque Alpis. Cisalpine Gaul was not yet a separate
+province, but it was not regarded as a part of Italy. The Latin colonies
+between the Padus and the Rubicon would certainly have received Roman
+rights, and this may have been the case with a Latin township north of
+the Padus such as Aquileia. But it is doubtful whether Latin rights
+would have been given to the towns between the Padus and the Alps. These
+_Transpadani_ received _Latinitas_ in 89 B.C. (Ascon. _in Pisonian_.
+P. 3).
+
+[673] C. Gracch. ap, Gell. x. 3. 3.
+
+[674] Fann. ap. Jul. Victor 6. 6. A speech of Fannius as consul against
+Caius Gracchus is also mentioned by Charisius p. 143 Keil.
+
+[675] Cic. Brut. 26. 99.
+
+[676] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23.
+
+[677] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 12 [Greek: _antexethaeken ho Gaios diagramma
+kataegoron ton hypaton, kai tois symmachois, an menosi, boaethaesein
+epangellomenos_.] The invective may have been directed against Fannius,
+According to Appian (l.c.) both consuls had been instructed by the
+senate to issue the edict.
+
+[678] If it had been hampered in this way, the judicial protection of
+_peregrini_ against the judgments of the Praetor Peregrinus would have
+been impossible.
+
+[679] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[680] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23.
+
+[681] [Sall.] _de Rep. Ord_. ii. 8 Magistratibus creandis haud mihi
+quidem apsurde placet lex quam C. Gracchus in tribunatu promulgaverat,
+ut ex confusis quinque classibus sorte centuriae vocarentur. Ita
+coaequatus dignitate pecunia, virtute anteire alius alium properabit.
+
+[682] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[683] Vir et oratione gravis et auctoritate (Cic. _Brut_. 28. 109)
+[Greek: _haethei de kai logo kai plouto tois malista timomenois kai
+dynamenois apo touton enamillos_] (Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8).
+
+[684] Suet. _Tib_. 3 Ob eximiam adversus Gracchos operam "patronus
+senatus" dictus.
+
+[685] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[686] App. _Bell. Civ_ i. 35.
+
+[687] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[688] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9 [Greek: _Libios de kai taen apophoran
+tautaen_] (which had been imposed by the Gracchan laws) [Greek: _ton
+neimamenon aphairon haeresken autois_]. The tense of _neimamenon_ seems
+to show that the Gracchan as well as the Livian settlers are meant. See
+Underhill in loc. In any case, the reimposition of the _vectigal_ on
+the allotments by the law of 119 (App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 27) proves that
+it had been remitted before this date.
+
+[689] [Greek: _hopos maed' epi strateias exae tina Latinon rhabdois
+aikisasthai_] (Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9).
+
+[690] The _lex Acilia Repetundarum_ grants them the right of appeal as
+an alternative to citizenship as a reward for successful prosecution.
+Cf. the similar provision in the franchise law of Flaccus (p. 168).
+
+[691] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[692] Appian (_Bell. Civ_. i. 24) says that Gracchus was accompanied by
+Fulvius Flaccus. Plutarch (_C. Gracch_. 10) implies that the latter
+stayed at Rome.
+
+[693] App. l.c. Appian represents this measure as having been proposed
+after the return of the commissioners to Rome. The words of Plutarch
+(_C. Gracch_. 8) [Greek: _apaertaesato to plaethos ... kakon ... epi
+koinoniai politeias tous Latinous_] probably refer to an invitation of
+the Latins to share in these citizen colonies.
+
+[694] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[695] Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.
+
+[696] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 11.
+
+[697] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 24. According to Appian, the wolf event
+occurred after Gracchus had quitted Africa.
+
+[698] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 11.
+
+[699] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[700] Ibid. [Greek: _synetyche d' auto kai pros tous synarchontas en
+orgae genesthai. synarchontas_] here is not limited to his colleagues
+in the tribunate.
+
+[701] [Greek: _exemisthoun_] (Plut. l.c.), probably to contractors who
+would sublet the seats.
+
+[702] Beesly _The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla_ p. 53.
+
+[703] [Greek: _psaephon men auto pleiston genomenon, adikos de kai
+kakourgos ton synarchonton poiaesamenon taen anagoreusin kai anadeixin_].
+(Plut. l.c.)
+
+[704] Cic. _in Pis_. 15. 36; Varro _R.R_. iii. 5. 18.
+
+[705] [Greek: _hos Sardonion gelota gelosin, ou gignoskontes hoson
+autois skotos ek ton auton perikechytai politeumaton_.] (Plut. l.c.)
+
+[706] Cic. _pro Caec_. 33. 95; _pro Domo_ 40. 106.
+
+[707] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65.
+
+[708] Cornelia ap. Corn. Nep. fr. 16 Ne id quidem tam breve spatium
+(sc. vitae) potest opitulari quin et mihi adversere et rem publicam
+profliges? Denique quae pausa erit? Ecquando desinet familia nostra
+insanire? Ecquando modus ei rei haberi poterit? Ecquando desinemus et
+habentes et praebentes molestiis insistere? Ecquando perpudescet
+miscenda atque perturbanda re publica?
+
+[709] [Greek: _hos dae theristas_] (Plut. _C. Gracch_. 13).
+
+[710] Plutarch (l.c.) says that the consul had "sacrificed" [Greek:
+(_thysantos_)] and, if this is correct, Opimius must have summoned
+the meeting.
+
+[711] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25.
+
+[712] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 13; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25; [Victor] _de Vir.
+III_. 65. The last author calls the slain man Attilius and describes him
+as "praeco Opimii consulis". Cf. Ihne _Roem. Gesch_. v. p. 103.
+
+[713] [Victor] l.c. Imprudens contionem a tribuno plebis avocavit.
+Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25.
+
+[714] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[715] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25.
+
+[716] App. l.c.
+
+[717] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[718] Cic. _Phil_. viii. 4. 14 Quod L. Opimius consul verba fecit de re
+publica, de ea re ita censuerunt, uti L. Opimius consul rem publicam
+defenderet. Senatus haec verbis, Opimius armis. Cf. _in Cat_. i. 2. 4;
+iv. 5. 10. Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14 [Greek: _eis to bouleutaerion
+apelthontes epsaephisanto kai prosetaxan Opimio to hypato sozein taen
+polin hopos dynaito kai katalyein tous tyrannous_.]
+
+[719] Plut. l.c.
+
+[720] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 26.
+
+[721] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[722] Ibid. 15.
+
+[723] App. _Bell. Civ. i_. 26.
+
+[724] Cf. Bardey _Das sechste Consulat des Marius_ p. 61.
+
+[725] Plut. l.c.
+
+[726] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 16; App. l.c.
+
+[727] Plut. l.c.
+
+[728] Plut. l.c.
+
+[729] Cic. _in Cat_. iv. 6. 13.
+
+[730] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 26. Plut. (_C. Gracch_. 16) states that
+Flaccus fled to a bathroom ([Greek: _eis ti balaneion_]).
+
+[731] Dionys. viii. 80.
+
+[732] Plut. l.c.
+
+[733] Val. Max. iv. 7. 2; [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65; Oros, v. 12.
+Plutarch (l.c.) gives he second name as Licinius.
+
+[734] Plut. l.c.
+
+[735] [Victor] l.c.
+
+[736] Translated "Grove of the Furies" by Plutarch; cf. Cic. _de Nat.
+Deor_. iii. 18. 46. The true name of the grove was Lucus Furrinae, named
+after some goddess, whose significance was forgotten (Varro _L. L_. vi.
+19 Nunc vix nomen notum paucis). See Richter _Topographie_ p. 271.
+
+[737] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 17. Cf. Val. Max. vi. 8. 3.
+
+[738] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 3. 48. Cf. Plut. l.c.; [Victor] l.c.;
+Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15).
+
+[739] Oros. v. 12.
+
+[740] Oros. l.c. Opimius consul sicut in bello fortis fuit ita in
+quaestione crudelis. Nam amplius tria milia hominum suppliciis necavit,
+ex quibus plurimi ne dicta quidem causa innocentes interfecti sunt.
+Plutarch (l.c.) gives three thousand as the number actually slain in
+the tumult. Orosius (l.c.) gives the number slain on the Aventine as
+two hundred and fifty. For the severity with which Opimius conducted the
+_quaestio_ see Sall. _Jug_. 16. 2, 31. 7; Vellei. ii. 7.
+
+[741] Plut. l.c.
+
+[742] Dig. xxiv. 3. 66. The passage speaks of Licinia's dowry; yet
+Plutarch (l.c.) says that this was confiscated.
+
+[743] In Plutarch's Greek version (C. Gracch, 17) [Greek: _ergon
+aponoias_] (vecordiae) [Greek: _naon homonoias_] (concordiae)
+[Greek: _poiei_].
+
+[744] Cf. Neumann _Geschichte Roms_. p. 259.
+
+[745] Plut, _C. Gracch_, 18.
+
+[746] Plut. _C, Gracch_, 19.
+
+[747] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiv. 6. 31.
+
+[748] Hence the establishment of the _praefecti jure dicundo_, sent to
+the burgess colonies and _municipia_.
+
+[749] Arist. _Pol_. iv. 6, p. 1292 b.
+
+[750] The choice of the month of July as the date for elections seems to
+be post-Sullan. See Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 583. During the Jugurthine
+War consular elections took place, as we shall see, in the late autumn
+or even in the winter.
+
+[751] Suet. _Caes_. 42.
+
+[752] If some of the Gracchan assignments were thirty _jugera_ each (p.
+115). The larger assignments of earlier times had been from seven to ten
+_jugera_. See Mommsen in C.I. L. i. pp. 75 foll.
+
+[753] Liv. _Ep_. lxi L. Opimius accusatus apud populum a Q. Decio
+tribuno plebis quod indemnatos cives in carcerem conjecisset, absolutus
+est. "In carcerem conjicere" does not express the whole truth. A
+magistrate could imprison in preparation for a trial. The words must
+imply imprisonment preparatory to execution and probably refer to death
+in the Tullianum.
+
+[754] Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 30. 132; _Part. Orat_. 30, 104. In the latter
+passage Opimius is supposed to say "Jure feci, salutis omnium et
+conservandae rei publicae causa." Decius is supposed to answer "Ne
+sceleratissimum quidem civem sine judicio jure ullo necare potuisti."
+The cardinal question therefore is "Potueritne recte salutis rei
+publicae causa civem eversorem civitatis indemnatum necare?" Cf. Cic.
+_de Orat_. ii. 39. 165 Si ex vocabulo, ut Carbo: Sei consul est qui
+consuluit patriae, quid aliud fecit Opimius?
+
+[755] Cf. Cic. _pro Sest_. 67. 140 (Opimium) flagrantem invidia
+propter interitum C. Gracchi semper ipse populus Romanus periculo
+liberavit.
+
+[756] Cic. _Brut_. 34. 128 L. Bestia ... P. Popillium vi C. Gracchi
+expulsum sua rogatione restituit. Cf. _post Red. in Sen_. 15. 38; _post
+Red. ad Quir_. 4.10.
+
+[757] Cic. _in Cat_. iv. 6, 13; _Phil_. viii. 4. 14.
+
+[758] Val. Max. v. 3. 2. The colouring of the story is doubted by Ihne
+(_Rom. Gesch_. v. p. 111). He thinks that perhaps Lentulus went to
+Sicily to restore his shattered health.
+
+[759] Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 25. 106; 39. 165; 40. 170.
+
+[760] Ibid. ii. 39. 165.
+
+[761] Cic. _Brut_. 43. 159 Crassus ... accusavit C. Carbonem,
+eloquentissimum hominem, admodum adulescens. Cf. _de Orat_. i. 10. 39.
+
+[762] Valerius Maximus (vi. 5. 6) tells the story that a slave of
+Carbo's brought Crassus a letter-case (_scrinium_) full of compromising
+papers. Crassus sent back the case still sealed and the slave in
+chains to Carbo.
+
+[763] Mommsen, _Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 4.
+
+[764] Cic. _in Verr_. iii. i. 3 Itaque hoc, judices, ex ... L. Crasso
+saepe auditum est, cum se nullius rei tam paenitere diceret quam quod
+C. Carbonem unquam in judicium vocavisset.
+
+[765] Cic. _ad Fam_. ix. 21. 3 (C. Carbo) accusante L. Crasso
+cantharidas sumpsisse dicitur. Valerius Maximus (iii. 7. 6) implies that
+Carbo was sent into exile. But the two stories are not necessarily
+inconsistent.
+
+[766] Appian (_Bell. Civ_. i. 35) says that the younger Livius Drusus
+(91 B.C.) [Greek: _ton daemon ... hypaegeto apoikiais pollais es te taen
+Italian kai Sikelian epsaephismenais men ek pollou, gegonuiais de oupo_].
+These colonies could only have been those proposed by his father.
+
+[767] Mommsen in C.I.L. 1 pp. 75 ff. Cf. p. 227. We have no record
+of the tenure by which Romans held their lands in such settlements as
+Palma and Pollentia (p. 189). They too may have been illustrations of
+what was known later as the _jus Italicum_.
+
+[768] We know that the corn law of C. Gracchus was repealed or modified
+by a _lex Octavia_. Cic. _Brut_. 62. 222 (M. Octavius) tantum
+auctoritate dicendoque valuit, ut legem Semproniam frumentariam populi
+frequentis suffragiis abrogaverit. Cf. _de Off_. ii. 21. 72. But the
+date of this alteration is unknown and it may not have been immediate.
+If it was a consequence of Gracchus's fall, as is thought by Peter
+(_Gesch. Roms_. ii. p. 41), the distributions may have been restored
+_circa_ 119 B.C. (see p. 287). We shall see that in the tribunate of
+Marius during this year some proposal about corn was before the people
+(Plut. _Mar_. 4).
+
+[769] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 27 [Greek: _nomos te ou poly hysteron
+ekyrhothae, taen gaen, hyper haes dietheronto, exeinai pipraskein tois
+echousin_.]
+
+[770] App. l.c. [Greek: _kai euthus oi plousioi para ton penaeton
+eonounto, hae taisde tais prophasesin ebiazonto_.]
+
+[771] The law permitting alienation may have been in 121 B.C. The year
+119 or 118 B.C. ([Greek: _pentekaideka maliosta etesin apo taes Grakchou
+nomothesias_]) is given by Appian (l.c.) for one of the two subsequent
+laws which he speaks of. It is probably the date of the first of these,
+the one which we are now considering.
+
+[772] App. l.c. [Greek: _Sporios Thorios daemarchon esaegaesato nomon,
+taen men gaen maeketi sianemein, all' einai ton echonton, kai phorous
+hyper autaes to daemo katatithesthai, kai tade ta chrhaemata chorein es
+dianomas_.]
+
+[773] If Gracchus's corn law was abolished or modified immediately after
+his fall, the corn largesses may now have been restored or extended.
+Cf. p. 306.
+
+[774] Some such guarantee may be inferred from a passage in the _lex
+Agraria_ (l. 29) Item Latino peregrinoque, quibus M. Livio L. Calpurnio
+[cos. in eis agris id facere ... ex lege plebeive sc(ito) exve
+foedere licuit.]
+
+[775] Cic. _Brut_. 36. 136 Sp. Thorius satis valuit in populari genere
+dicendi, is qui agrum publicum vitiosa et inutili lege vectigali
+levavit. Cf. _de Orat_. ii. 70. 284. Appian, on the other hand; makes
+Sp. Thorius the author of the law preceding this (p. 285). It is
+possible that Cicero may be mistaken, but, if he is correct, the
+fragments of the agrarian law which we possess may be those of the _lex
+Thoria_, the name given to it by its earlier editors. For a different
+view see Mommsen in C.I.L. i. pp. 75 ff.
+
+[776] App. _Bell Civ_. i. 27 [Greek: _tous phorous ou poly hysteron
+dielyse daemarchos heteros_.]
+
+[777] The latest years to which it refers are those of the censors of
+115 and the consuls of 113, 112 and 111. The harvest and future vintage
+of 111 are referred to (1. 95), and it has, therefore, been assigned to
+some period between January 1 and the summer of this year. See Rudorff
+_Das Ackergesetz des Sp. Thorius_ and cf. Mommsen l.c. It is a
+curious fact, however, that a law dealing with African land amongst
+others should have been passed in the first year of active hostilities
+with Jugurtha. From this point of view the date which marks the close of
+the Jugurthine war, suggested by Kiene (_Bundesgenossenkrieg_ p. 125),
+i.e., 106 or 105 B.C., is more probable. But the objection to this
+view is that the law contains no reference to the censors of 109. See
+Mommsen l.c.
+
+[778] _Ager compascuus_. See Mommsen l.c. and Voigt _Ueber die
+staatsrechtliche possessio und den ager compascuus der roem. Republik_.
+
+[779] The _pastores_ also must often have been too indefinite a body to
+make it possible to treat them as joint owners.
+
+[780] The tribune L. Marcius Philippus, when introducing an agrarian law
+in 104 B.C., made the startling statement "Non esse in civitate duo
+milia hominum, qui rem haberent" (Cic. _de Off_. ii. 21, 73). If there
+was even a minimum of truth in his words, the expression "qui rem
+haberent" must mean "moneyed men," "people comfortably off."
+
+[781] Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.
+
+[782] Kiene also thinks (_Bundesgenossenkrieg_ p. 146) that the right
+given by the law of exchanging a bit of one's own land for an equivalent
+bit of the public domain, which became private property, was reserved
+solely for the citizen.
+
+[783] Cic. _Brut_. 26. 102; _de Orat_. ii. 70. 281; _de Fin_. i. 3. 8.
+
+[784] Vellei. ii. 8; Cic. _in Verr_. iii 80. 184; iv. 10. 22.
+
+[785] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72 Consul legem de sumptibus et
+libertinorum suffragiis tulit.
+
+[786] Liv. xlv, 15.
+
+[787] [Victor] l.c..
+
+[788] Plin. _H.N_. viii. 57. 223.
+
+[789] Cassiodor. _Chron_. L. Metellus et Cn. Domitius censores artem
+ludicram ex urbe removerunt praeter Latinum tibicinem cum cantore et
+ludum talarium. The _ludus talarius_ in its chief form was a game of
+skill, not of chance. The reference here may be to juggling with the
+_tali_ on the stage, not to the pursuit of the game in domestic life.
+
+[790] Liv. _Ep_. lxiii.
+
+[791] _Fast. triumph_.; [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72.
+
+[792] Val. Max. vii. 1. 1.
+
+[793] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72.
+
+[794] [Victor] l.c. Ipse primo dubitavit honores peteret an
+argentariam faceret.
+
+[795] [Victor] l.c. Aedilis juri reddendo magis quam muneri edendo
+studuit.
+
+[796] Sallust (_Jug_. 15) gives the following somewhat unkind sketch of
+the great senatorial champion, "Aemilius Scaurus, homo nobilis, inpiger,
+factiosus, avidus potentiae, honoris, divitiarum, ceterum vitia sua
+callide occultans". "Inpiger, factiosus" are testimonies of his value to
+his party. The last words of the sketch are a confession that his
+reputation may have been blemished by suspicion, but never by proof.
+
+[797] [Victor] l.c. Consul Ligures et Gantiscos domuit, atque de his
+triumphavit. Cf. _Fast. triumph_.
+
+[798] [Victor] l.c.
+
+[799] Plut. _Mar_. 3.
+
+[800] In Velleius ii. 11 the manuscript reading _natus equestri loco_
+(corrected into _agresti_) may be correct.
+
+[801] Plut. _Mar_. 3.
+
+[802] Plut. _Mar_. 5.
+
+[803] Ibid. 4.
+
+[804] His military reputation amongst old soldiers had led to his easy
+attainment of the military tribunate. Sall. _Jug_. 63 Ubi primum
+tribunatum militarem a populo petit, plerisque faciem ejus ignorantibus,
+facile notus per omnis tribus declaratur. Deinde ab eo magistratu alium
+post alium sibi peperit.
+
+[805] Plut. _Mar_. 4.
+
+[806] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _nomon tina peri psaephophorias graphontos
+autou dokounta ton dynaton aphaireisthai taen peri tas kriseis ischyn_].
+It is possible, however, that _kriseis_ may simply mean "decisions".
+
+[807] Cic. _de Leg_. iii. 17. 38 Pontes ... lex Maria fecit angustos.
+
+[808] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _ei me diagrapseie to dogma_.]
+
+[809] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _nomou ... eispheromenou peri sitou
+dianomaes_]. See p. 284.
+
+[810] Plut. _Mar_ 5. Cf. Cic. _pro Planc_. 21, 51; Val. Max.
+vi. 9. 14.
+
+[811] Val. Max. vi. 9. 14.
+
+[812] Plut. _Mar_. 5.
+
+[813] [Greek: _dikastai_] (Plut. l.c.). It seems, therefore, that a
+special _quaestio de ambitu_ existed at this time. Otherwise, the case
+would naturally have gone before the Comitia. We can hardly think of a
+Special Commission.
+
+[814] Plut. _Mar_. 6 [Greek: _en men oun tae strataegia metrios
+epainoumenon heauton paresche_].
+
+[815] Plut. l.c.
+
+[816] Plut. l.c.
+
+[817] Vellei. ii. 7 Porcio Marcioque consulibus deducta colonia Narbo
+Martius. Cf. i. 15.
+
+[818] This was but a [Greek: _phroura Rhomaion_] (Strabo iv. 1. 5). It
+had been established in 122 B.C.
+
+[819] Cic. _pro Font_. 5. 13 Narbo Martius, colonia nostrorum civium,
+specula populi Romani ac propugnaculum istis ipsis nationibus oppositum
+et objectum.
+
+[820] This fact appears from Cic. _pro Cluent_. 51. 140 (Crassus) in
+dissuasione rogationis ejus quae contra coloniam Narbonensem ferebatur,
+quantum potest, de auctoritate senatus detrahit. A _rogatio_ against a
+project implies something more than opposition to a bill.
+
+[821] Cic. _Brut_. 43. 160 Exstat in eam legem senior ut ita dicam quam
+illa aetas ferebat oratio.
+
+[822] Cic. _Brut. l.c. Cf. pro Cluent_. 51. 140; _de Orat_. ii. 55. 223;
+Quinctil. _Inst. Or_. vi. 3. 44.
+
+[823] The date is unknown, but the _lex Servilia repetundarum_ was
+probably a product of this tribunate. An approximate date can be
+assigned to this law, if we believe that it immediately superseded the
+_lex Acilia_ as the law of extortion, and that the _lex Acilia_ is the
+_lex repetundarum_ which has come down to us on a bronze tablet (see p.
+214); for the latter law must have been abrogated by 111 B.C., since the
+back of the tablet on which it is inscribed is used for the _lex
+agraria_ of this year. The side containing the _lex Acilia_ must have
+been turned to the wall, and this fact seems to prove the supersession
+of this law by a later one on the same subject. See Mommsen in C.I.L.
+i. p. 56.
+
+[824] Peracutus et callidus cum primisque ridiculus (Cic. _Brut_.
+62. 224).
+
+[825] Cic. _pro Rab. Post, 6, 14.
+
+[826] Stercus Curiae (Cic. _de Orat_. iii. 41. 164).
+
+[827] Cic. _Brut_. 62. 224 Is ... equestrem ordinem beneficio legis
+devinxerat. Cf. _pro Scauro_ 1. 2. But the law of Glaucia was a _lex
+repetundarum_ (Ascon. _in Scaurian_. p. 21; Val. Max. viii. 1. 8; cf.
+notes 4 and 5), not a _lex judiciaria_.
+
+[828] Cic. _in Verr_. i. 9. 26.
+
+[829] Cic. _pro Rab. Post_. 4. 8. The granting of the _civitas_ to
+Latins, as a reward for successful prosecution (Cic. _pro Balbo_ 24.
+54), was not an innovation due to Glaucia. It appears already in the
+_lex Acilia_.
+
+[830] Liv. _Ep_. lxiii; Florus i. 39 (iii. 4); Eutrop. iv. 24.
+
+[831] Oros. v. 15.
+
+[832] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 83.
+
+[833] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 83. The manuscript reading is [Greek:
+_barbarou tinos hippikou therapon_]. I have adopted Ihne's suggestion
+of _Barrou_, which he supports by a reference to Porphyrio _ad Hor.
+Sat_. 1. 6. 30--Hic Barrus vilisimmae libidinosaeque admodum vitae fuit,
+adeo ut Aemiliam virginem Vestae incestasse dictus sit.
+
+[834] Dio Cass. _fr_. 92.
+
+[835] Macrob. _Sat_. i. 10. 5.
+
+[836] Ascon. _in Milonian_. p. 46. Cf. Cic. _de Nat. Deor_. iii. 30.
+74.
+
+[837] Scopulus reorum (Val. Max. iii. 7. 9).
+
+[838] Ascon. l.c.
+
+[839] Val. Max. l.c. Cum id vitare beneficio legis Memmiae liceret,
+quae eorum, qui rei publicae causa abessent, recipi nomina vetabat.
+
+[840] Val. Max. vi. 8. 1.
+
+[841] Ascon. l.c. Nimia etiam, ut existimatio est, asperitate usus.
+
+[842] Zumpt _Criminalrecht_ i. p. 117.
+
+[843] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_., 83 [Greek: _duo en andras duo de gynaikas en
+tae boon agorai legomenae tous men Hellaenas, tous de Galatas, zontas
+katorhyxan_].
+
+[844] Plin. _H.N_. xxx. 1. 12 DCLVII demum anno urbis Cn. Cornelia
+Lentulo P. Licinio Crasso consulibus (97 B.C.) senatus consultum factum
+est ne homo immolaretur.
+
+[845] Plut. l.c.
+
+[846] Obsequens 99 (37) (111 B.C.) Maxima pars urbis exusta cum aede
+Matris Magnae; lacte per triduum pluit, hostiisque expiatum majoribus,
+Jugurthinum bellum exortum. The war had been determined on the
+year before.
+
+[847] Boissiere _Esquisse d'une histoire de la conquete et de
+l'administration Romaines dans le Nord de l'Afrique_ p. 41.
+
+[848] App. _Lib_. [Greek: _apo Maurousion ton okeanoi mechri taes
+Kyraenaion archaes es ta mesogeia_.]
+
+[849] Boissiere l.c.
+
+[850] [Greek: _ton legomenon Megalon Pedion_] (App. _Lib_. 68).
+
+[851] Tissot _Geographie comparee de la province Romaine d'Afrique_ ii.
+p. 5.
+
+[852] Plin. _H.N_. v. 3. 22; v. 4. 25; Ptol. iv. 3. 7.
+
+[853] Tissot op. cit. ii. pp. 1-20.
+
+[854] Ibid. ii. p. 20.
+
+[855] Mercier _La population indigene de L'Afrique_ pp. 129, 130;
+Boissiere op. cit. p. 39.
+
+[856] Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 400 foll. For the extension of the native
+Libyan language cf. Boissiere, _L'Afrique Romaine_ p. 6.
+
+[857] Tissot op. cit. pp. 403, 404.
+
+[858] Hence the [Greek: _Melanogatouloi_] and the [Greek: _Lenkaithiopes_]
+of Ptolemy (iv. 6. 5 and 6.) See Tissot op. cit. p. 447.
+
+[859] Mercier op. cit. p. 136.
+
+[860] Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 414-17.
+
+[861] Boissiere (op. cit. p. 101) cites an interesting description of
+the Kabyle from _Le capitaine Rinn_. In it occur the following
+words:--La guerre pour lui (le Kabyle) est une affaire de devoir, de
+necessite, de point d'honneur ou de vengeance; ce n'est jamais ni un
+plaisir, ni une distraction, ni meme un etat normal; il ne la fait
+qu'apres prevenu son ennemi, et, dans le combat ou apres la victoire, il
+n'a pas de cruaute inutile.
+
+[862] Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 417-18.
+
+[863] Polyb. xxxvii. 3; Diod. xxxii. 17.
+
+[864] Plin. _H.N_. v. 3 22.
+
+[865] Strabo xvii. 3. 13.
+
+[866] Livy says (xxix. 29) that this was the admitted order of
+succession (ita mos apud Numidas est). The brother of a late king was
+probably considered to be the most capable successor. An immature son
+would be passed over. Cf. Biereye _Res Numidarum et Maurorum_ p. 18.
+
+[867] Liv. _Ep_. 1.; Val. Max. v. 2, ext. 4; Oros. iv. 22.
+
+[868] App. _Lib_. 106.
+
+[869] App. _Hisp_. 67; Sall. _Jug_. 7.
+
+[870] Strabo. xvii. 3. 13; Diod. xxxiv. 35.
+
+[871] Oros. v, 11.
+
+[872] Strabo l.c.
+
+[873] Sall. _Jug_. 65. 1 Morbis confectus et ob eam causam mente paulum
+inminuta. We are not told that he was in this condition before Micipsa's
+death; but it is perhaps the reason why the king left him only "heir in
+remainder" (secundum heredem) to the crown. Another aspirant appears
+later on in the person of Massiva son of Gulussa (Sall. _Jug_. 35. i),
+but this prince may not have been born, or may have been an infant, at
+the time when Jugurtha was recognised as a possible successor. It is
+possible that Massiva may have been mentioned as one of the
+supplementary heirs in Micipsa's will, although Sallust does not inform
+us of the fact.
+
+[874] Sall. _Jug_. 6. 1.
+
+[875] Sall. _Jug_. 6. 2.
+
+[876] Ibid. 7. 6.
+
+[877] Sall. _Jug_. 8. 1.
+
+[878] Ibid. 8. 2.
+
+[879] Sall. _Jug_. 9. 1.
+
+[880] Statimque eum adoptavit et testamento pariter cum filiis heredem
+instituit (Ibid. 9. 3).
+
+[881] Ibid. 10.
+
+[882] Sall. _Jug_. 11.
+
+[883] Ibid. 12. 3. The site of Thirmida is unknown.
+
+[884] Sallust, using Roman phraseology, says that he had been "proxumus
+lictor Jugurthae" (_l c_.). Such a lictor would stand nearest the
+magistrate, receive his immediate orders and be, therefore, presumably a
+more trusted and intimate servant.
+
+[885] Sall. _Jug_. 12.
+
+[886] In duas partis discedunt Numidae; plures Adherbalem secuntur, sed
+illum alterum bello meliores (Ibid. 13. 1).
+
+[887] Sall. _Jug_. 13. 4.
+
+[888] Ibid. 13. 6.
+
+[889] Ibid. 14.
+
+[890] Sallust (l.c.) makes Adherbal say "Micipsa pater meus moriens
+mihi praecepit, ut regni Numidiae tantum modo procurationem existumarem
+meam, ceterum jus et imperium ejus penes vos esse". The "jus et
+imperium" have no true application to a protectorate.
+
+[891] Sall. _Jug_. 15. 1.
+
+[892] Ibid. 15. 2.
+
+[893] Sall. _Jug_. 16. 2.
+
+[894] Ibid. 16. 3.
+
+[895] Sall. _Jug_. 16. 5.
+
+[896] Sall. _Jug_. 20. 4.
+
+[897] Ibid. 20. 7 Itaque non uti antea cum praedatoria manu, sed magno
+exercitu conparato bellum gerere coepit et aperte totius Numidiae
+imperium petere.
+
+[898] Ibid. 21. 3.
+
+[899] Sallust says (_Jug_. 21. 2): Haud longe a mari prope Cirtam
+oppidum utriusque exercitus consedit. He apparently underestimates the
+distance of Cirta from the sea.
+
+[900] Ibid. 21. 2 Ni multitude togatorum fuisset, quae Numidas
+insequentis moenibus prohibuit, uno die inter duos reges coeptum atque
+patratum bellum foret.
+
+[901] The bridge described by Shaw, constructed on one of the natural
+arches which connect the two sides of the river bed and presenting two
+ranges of superposed arcades, is no longer in existence. This bridge
+attached the south-eastern angle of the town to the heights of Mansoura.
+See Tissot _Geographie comparee_ ii. p. 393.
+
+[902] Sall. _Jug_. 21. 3.
+
+[903] Sall. _Jug_. 21. 4 Postquam senatus de bello eorum accepit, tres
+adulescentes in Africam legantur, qui ambos reges adeant, senatus
+populique Romani verbis nuntient velle et censere eos ab armis
+discedere, de controvorsiis suis jure potius quam bello disceptare: ita
+seque illisque dignum esse.
+
+[904] Is rumor clemens erat (Ibid. 22. 1).
+
+[905] Adherbalis adpellandi copia non fuit (Ibid. 22. 5).
+
+[906] Si ab jure gentium sese prohibuerit (Sail. _Jug_. 22.4).
+
+[907] Ibid, 23. 2 Adherbal ... intellegit ... penuria rerum
+necessariarum bellum trahi non posse.
+
+[908] Sall. _Jug_. 23. 2.
+
+[909] Ibid. 24.
+
+[910] Sall. _Jug_. 25. 1.
+
+[911] Ibid. 25. 3 Ita bonum publicum, ut in plerisque negotiis solet,
+privata gratia devictum.
+
+[912] Ibid. 25. 4 Legantur tamen in Africam majores natu nobiles,
+amplis honoribus usi.
+
+[913] Cujus ... nutu prope terrarum orbis regebatur (Cic. _pro Font_. 7,
+24).
+
+[914] Sall. _Jug_. 25. 6 Primo commotus metu atque lubidine divorsus
+agitabatur. Timebat iram senatus, ni paruisset legatis: porro animus
+cupidine caecus ad inceptum scelus rapiebatur.
+
+[915] Sall, _Jug_. 25. 10.
+
+[916] Ibid. 25. 11.
+
+[917] Sall. _Jug_. 26. 1 Italici, quorum virtute moenia defensabantur,
+confisi deditione facta propter magnitudinem populi Romani inviolatos
+sese fore, Adherbali suadent uti seque et oppidum Jugurthae tradat,
+tantum ab eo vitam paciscatur: de ceteris senatui curae fore.
+
+[918] Ibid. 26. 3 Jugurtha in primis Adherbalem excruciatum necat.
+
+[919] Sallust (l.c.) represents him as the author of this massacre;
+(Jugurtha) omnis puberes Numidas atque negotiatores promiscue, uti
+quisque armatus obvius fuerat, interficit. But the attribution may be
+due to the brevity of the narrative. The leader of a murderous host may
+easily be credited with the outrages which it commits.
+
+[920] Cic. _Brut_. 36. 136 Tum etiam C. L. Memmii fuerunt oratores
+mediocres, accusatores acres atque acerbi. Itaque in judicium capitis
+multos vocaverunt, pro reis non saepe dixerunt. For his mordant style
+see Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 59, 240. The lofty opinion which he was supposed
+to hold of himself is illustrated in Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 66, 267 Velut
+tu, Crasse, in contione "ita sibi ipsum magnum videri Memmium ut in
+forum descendens caput ad fornicem Fabianum demitteret".
+
+[921] He was already "vir acer et infestus potentiae nobilitatis" (Sall.
+_Jug_. 27. 2).
+
+[922] Ibid. 27. 1.
+
+[923] Ibid. 27. 2.
+
+[924] Sall. _Jug_. 27. 3 Lege Sempronia provinciae futuris consulibus
+Numidia atque Italia decretae. Consules declarati P. Scipio Nasica, L.
+Bestia: Calpurnio Numidia, Scipioni Italia obvenit.
+
+[925] Jugurtha, contra spem nuntio accepto, quippe cui Romae omnia venum
+ire in animo haeserat (Ibid, 28. 1).
+
+[926] Ibid.
+
+[927] Sall. _Jug_. 28. 2.
+
+[928] In consule nostro multae bonaeque artes animi et corporis erant,
+quas omnis avaritia praepediebat: patiens laborum, acri ingenio, satis
+providens, belli haud ignarus, firmissumus contra pericula et insidias
+(Ibid. 28. 5).
+
+[929] Sall. _Jug_. 28. 4 Calpurnius parato exercitu legal sibi homines
+nobilis, factiosos, quorum auctoritate quae deliquisset munita
+fore sperabat.
+
+[930] Sall. _l. c_.
+
+[931] The only record of this campaign is contained in the few words of
+Sallust (Ibid, 28. 7) Acriter Numidiam ingressus est multosque
+mortalis et urbis aliquot pugnando cepit.
+
+[932] Possibly not at this time, but the date of its recovery is
+unknown. The town is in the hands of Metellus during the closing months
+of his campaign (Sall. _Jug_. 81. 2). Cf. p. 431.
+
+[933] Sall. _Jug_. 19. 7 Mauris omnibus rex Bocchus imperitabat, praeter
+nomen cetera ignarus populi Romani, itemque nobis neque bello neque pace
+antea cognitus. Practically nothing is known of the predecessors of this
+king. Livy (xxix. 30) mentions an earlier Baga of Mauretania, and
+perhaps this name is identical with that of Bocchus or [Greek: _Bogos_].
+See Biereye _Res Numidarum et Maurorum_. For the earlier history of
+Mauretania see also Goebel _Die Westkueste Afrikas im Altertum_. The
+boundaries of the kingdom were the Atlantic and the Muluccha on the west
+and east respectively (Liv. xxiv. 49, xxi. 22; Sall. _Jug_. 110). The
+southern boundary naturally shifted. At times the Mauretanian kings
+ruled over some of the Gaetulian tribes, and Strabo (ii. 3.4) makes the
+kingdom extend at one time to tribes akin to the Aethiopians--presumably
+to the Atlas range. Elsewhere (xvii. 3. 2) he speaks of it as extending
+over the Rif to the Gaetulians. See Goebel op. cit. pp. 79-82.
+
+[934] Ibid. 80. 4 Bocchus initio hujusce belli legatos Romam miserat
+foedus et amicitiam petitum.
+
+[935] Sall. _Jug_. 29. 2 Scaurus ... tametsi a principio, plerisque ex
+factione ejus conruptis, acerrume regem inpugnaverat, tamen magnitudine
+pecuniae a bono honestoque in pravom abstractus est.
+
+[936] Sall. _Jug_. 29. 3.
+
+[937] Ibid. 29. 4 Interea fidei causa mittitur a consule Sextius
+quaestor in oppidum Jugurthae Vagam.
+
+[938] Vaga (Bedja) marks the frontier between the Numidian kingdom and
+the Roman province--the frontier created in 172 B.C. by the invasions of
+Masinissa and finally fixed in 146 B.C. The town lay on the west of the
+Wad Bedja, which joins the Medjerda, and on the right of the road from
+Carthage to Bulla Regia. There was another Vaga in the heart of Numidia,
+between the Ampsaga and Thabraca. See Tissot _Geographie comparee_
+ii. pp. 6, 302; Wilmanns in C.I.L. viii. p. 154.
+
+[939] Long _Decline of the Rom. Republic_ i. p. 400.
+
+[940] Sall. _Jug_, 29, 5 Rex ... pauca praesenti consilio locutus de
+invidia fact! sui atque uti in deditionem acciperetur, reliqua cum
+Bestia et Scauro secreta transigit.
+
+[941] Ibid. (Rex) quasi per saturam sententiis exquisitis in
+deditionem accipitur.
+
+[942] Ibid. 29. 6.
+
+[943] Bestia's presence was necessary at Rome as his colleague Nasica
+had died during his tenure of the consulship (Cic. _Brut_. 34. 128).
+
+[944] Sall. _Jug_. 30. I Postquam res in Africa gestas, quoque modo
+actae forent fama divolgavit, Romae per omnis locos et conventus de
+facto consulis agitari. Apud plebem gravis invidia.
+
+[945] Sall. _Jug_. 30. 1 Patres solliciti erant: probarentne tantum
+flagitium an decretum consulis subvorterent parum constabat.
+
+[946] Ibid. 30. 2 Maxume eos potentia Scauri, quod is auctor et socius
+Bestiae ferebatur, a vero bonoque inpediebat.
+
+[947] Ibid. 30. 3.
+
+[948] Ibid. 31.
+
+[949] The best manuscripts read _his annis xv_ in Sall, _Jug_ 31. 2, but
+xv may be a mistake for xx, which is the reading of some good ones.
+Twenty years would carry us back to 131 B.C., approximately the date of
+the fall of Tiberius Gracchus. The year 126 B.C. which the reading xv
+gives, can hardly be said to mark an epoch in the decline of the
+liberties of the people.
+
+[950] Sociis nostris veluti hostibus, hostibus pro sociis utuntur (Sall.
+_Jug_. 31. 23).
+
+[951] Metum ab scelere suo ad ignaviam vostram transtulere, quos omnis
+eadem cupere, eadem odisse, eadem metuere in unum coegit. Sed haec inter
+bonos amicitia, inter malos factio est (Sall_. Jug_. 31. 14.)
+
+[952] Quo facilius indicio regis Scauri et reliquorum, quos pecuniae
+captae accersebat (Memmius), delicta patefierent (Ibid. 33. i).
+
+[953] Alii perfugas vendere (Sall, _Jug_, 32.3). Long (_Decline of the
+Rom. Rep. i. p_. 406) thinks that this means that they were sold as
+slaves. But the words are probably to be brought into connection with
+the terms of the Mamilian commission (Sall. _Jug_. 40.1) "qui elephantos
+quique perfugas tradidissent". Ihne (_Roem. Gesch. v. p_. 131) seems to
+regard these _perfugae_ as Roman subjects who had been handed over
+by Jugurtha.
+
+[954] Quoniam se populo Romano dedisset, ne vim quam misericordiam ejus
+experiri mallet (Sall. _Jug_. 32. 5).
+
+[955] Sall. _Jug_, 33.7.
+
+[956] Confirmatus ab omnibus, quorum potentia aut scelere cuncta ea
+gesserat quae supra diximus (Ibid. 33. 2).
+
+[957] Ibid. 33. 2 (Jugurtha) C. Baebium tribunum plebis magna mercede
+parat, cujus inpudentia contra jus et injurias omnis munitus foret.
+
+[958] Sall. _Jug_. 33. 3.
+
+[959] Producto Jugurtha (Ibid, 33. 4) i.e. led him to the front of
+the tribunal, or the Rostra if the scene took place in the Forum.
+
+[960] Regem tacere jubet (Sall. _Jug_. 34.1).
+
+[961] Vicit tamen inpudentia (Ibid.).
+
+[962] Ibid. 34. 2.
+
+[963] Sall. _Jug_. 35. 2. It is not impossible that he may have been
+mentioned as one of the supplementary heirs in Micipsa's will. See
+p. 323.
+
+[964] Sall. _Jug_. 35. 6.
+
+[965] Ibid. 35. 7 Fit reus magis ex aequo bonoque quam ex jure gentium
+Bomilcar, comes ejus qui Romam fide publica venerat.
+
+[966] Sall. _Jug_. 35. 9.
+
+[967] Urbem venalem et mature perituram, si emptorem invenerit! (Ibid.
+35. 10).
+
+[968] There was still an heir in Gauda--one too who had been recognised
+in the testament of Micipsa (p. 323); but he may not have been regarded
+as a suitable candidate.
+
+[969] Sall. _Jug_. 36. 1 Albinus renovato bello commeatum, stipendium,
+aliaque, quae militibus usui forent, maturat in Africam portare, ac
+statim ipse profectus, uti ante comitia, quod tempus haud longe aberat,
+armis aut deditione aut quovis modo bellum conficeret.
+
+[970] Cf. Sall. _Jug_. 36. 1 Armis aut deditione aut quovis modo.
+
+[971] Sall. _Jug_. 36. 3 Ac fuere qui tum Albinum haud ignarum consili
+regis existumarent, neque ex tanta properantia tam facile tractum bellum
+socordia magis quam dolo crederent.
+
+[972] His colleague Quintus Minucius Rufus was making war with the
+barbarians of Thrace (Liv. _Ep_. lxv; Vellei. ii. 8; Florus i. 39 (iii.
+4); Eutrop. iv. 27).
+
+[973] See cf. Meinel _Zur Chronologie des Jug. Krieges_ p. 11.
+
+[974] Quae dissensio totius anni comitia inpediebat (Sall. _Jug_. 37.
+2).
+
+[975] The tribunician year ended with 9th December, but it is not likely
+that the consuls of 109, Metellus and Silanus, were elected between this
+date and 1st January of 109. Had they been, Metellus would have held
+Numidia and Sp. Albinus would not have been allowed to return there.
+
+[976] Sall. _Jug_. 37. 3.
+
+[977] There is little probability that the Calama (Gelma) of Orosius (v.
+15) and the Suthul of Sallust are identical. Those who have visited the
+site of Gelma deny that Sallust's description suits this region and
+think that Suthul was a place near by. Grellois (_Ghelma_ pp. 263 foll.)
+thinks that Suthul may be placed on a site where now stands the village
+of Henschir Ain Neschma, one hour's distance from Gelma. See Wilmanns in
+C.I. L. viii. p. 521.
+
+[978] Sall. _Jug_. 37. 4.
+
+[979] Vineas agere, aggerem jacere, aliaque quae incepto usui forent
+properare (Sall. _Jug_. 37. 4).
+
+[980] Sall. _Jug. 38. 9. The treaty perhaps gave to Jugurtha a specific
+guarantee of the undisturbed possession of Numidia.
+
+[981] Oros. v. 15.
+
+[982] Sail. _Jug_. 39. 1.
+
+[983] Sallust (_Jug_. 39. 2) improperly calls him _consul_. The only
+position which he held now was that of proconsul of Numidia.
+
+[984] Senatus ita uti par fuerat decernit, suo atque populi injussu
+nullum potuisse foedus fieri (Sall. _Jug_. 39. 3).
+
+[985] Sall. _Jug_. 39. 4.
+
+[986] Sall. _Jug_. 40. 1.
+
+[987] Occulte per amicos ac maxume per homines nominis Latini et socios
+Italicos inpedimenta parabant (Ibid. 40. 2). For the later relations
+of the government with the Latins and allies see p. 288.
+
+[988] Sed plebes incredibile memoratu est quam intenta fuerit quantaque
+vi rogationem jusserit, magis odio nobilitatis cui mala illa parabantur,
+quam cura rei publicae: tanta lubido in partibus erat (Sall. _Jug_.
+40. 3).
+
+[989] Ibid. 40. 4.
+
+[990] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72; Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 50.
+
+[991] Sall. _Jug_. 40. 5 Sed quaestio exercita aspere violenterque ex
+rumore et lubidine plebis. Ut saepe nobilitatem, sic ea tempestate
+plebem ex secundis rebus insolentia ceperat.
+
+[992] Cic. _Brut_. 34. 128 Invidiosa lege Mamilia quaestio C. Galbam
+sacerdotem et quattuor consulates, L. Bestiam, C. Catonem, Sp. Albinum
+civemque praestantissimum L. Opimium, Gracchi interfectorem, a populo
+absolutum, cum is contra populi studium stetisset. Gracchani judices
+sustulerunt. For the condemnation of Opimius cf. _pro Sest_. 67, 140;
+for that of Galba, _Brut_. 33. 127. Here honour is paid to Galba's
+speech in his defence (Extat ejus peroratio, qui epilogus dicitur: qui
+tanto in honore pueris nobis erat, ut eum etiam edisceremus). Of Galba
+it is said (l.c.) Hic, qui in collegio sacerdotum esset, primus post
+Romam conditam judicio publico est condemnatus. He was perhaps a member
+of the college of pontiffs (Long _Decline of the Rom. Rep_. i. p. 415).
+(For the exile of Cato at Tarraco see _pro Balbo_ 11. 28).
+
+[993] Sall. _Jug_. 43. I; Liv. _Ep_. lxv.
+
+[994] Sallust's language (_Jug_. 43. 1) is indeterminate, but suggests
+the use of the lot--Metellus et Silanus consules designati provincias
+inter se partiverant, Metelloque Numidia evenerat. There are instances
+in later times of a manipulation of the _sortitio_. See Cic. _ad Fam_.
+v. 2. 3; _ad Att_. i. 16. 8. This assignment of the provinces followed
+the treaty of Aulus (l.c.), i.e. it took place early in 109, but not
+in the very first months of that year, as Spurius Albinus had gone back
+to Africa as proconsul (p. 373). As we have seen (p. 369) there is no
+probability that the consuls of 109 were elected in 110. Sallust's words
+(l.c.) "consules designati" simply mean "appointed consuls" and have
+no reference to the usual status of "consuls designate".
+
+[995] Polyb. vi. 56.
+
+[996] Cic. _pro Balbo_ 5. 11; _ad Att_. i. 16. 4; Val. Max. ii. 10. 1.
+It is supposed that Sicily may have been the province, which he had
+governed as propraetor, and from which he had returned when he was
+subjected to this trial. See Drumann _Gesch. Roms_. ii. p. 31.
+
+[997] Acri viro et, quamquam advorso populi partium, fama tamen
+aequabili et inviolata (Sall. _Jug_. 43. 1).
+
+[998] Ibid. 43. 4.
+
+[999] Sall. _Jug_. 44. Cf. Val. Max. ii. 7. 2; Frontin. _Strat_.
+iv. 1. 2.
+
+[1000] Sed in ea difficultate Metellum non minus quam in rebus
+hostilibus magnum et sapientem virum fuisse conperior: tanta temperantia
+inter ambitionem saevitiamque moderatum.... Ita prohibendo a delictis
+magis quam vindicando exercitum brevi confirmavit (Sall. _Jug_. 45).
+
+[1001] Sall. _Jug_. 46. 1.
+
+[1002] Jugurtha ... diffidere suis rebus ac tum demum veram deditionem
+facere conatus est (Ibid.).
+
+[1003] Sall. _Jug_. 46. 2.
+
+[1004] Sed Metello jam antea experimentis cognitum erat genus Numidarum
+infidum, ingenio mobili, novarum rerum avidum esse (Ibid. 46. 3).
+
+[1005] Sall. _Jug_. 46. 5.
+
+[1006] Sall. _Jug_. 47. 1 Oppidum Numidarum nomine Vaga, forum rerum
+venalium totius regni maxume celebratum, ubi et incolere et mercari
+consueverant Italici generis multi mortales. Sallust does not say that
+Italian merchants were still in the town. Their presence in Numidian
+cities since the massacre at Cirta may be doubted, although the fact
+that the town was so near the province may have mastered the fears of
+some of the traders.
+
+[1007] Sall. _Jug_. 47. 4.
+
+[1008] Ibid. 48. 1 Coactus rerum necessitudine statuit armis certare.
+
+[1009] Tissot _Geographie comparee_ 1. pp. 67-68. I have followed Tissot
+in his identification of the Muthul with the Waed Mellag. This view makes
+Metellus's efforts concentrate for the time on S.E. Numidia. He intended
+to secure his communications before proceeding farther, whether south or
+west. The older view, which identified the Muthul with the Ubus (Mannert
+and Forbiger) would represent Metellus as opening his campaign in the
+direction of Hippo Regius--Western Numidia would thus be his object and
+the subsequent campaign about Zama would indicate a change of plan. This
+is not an impossible view; but there are other indications which favour
+the hypothesis that the Muthul is the Waed Mellag. One is that Sicca in
+its neighbourhood veered round to the Romans after the battle (Sall.
+_Jug_. 56. 3). The other is the alleged suitability of this region to
+the topographical description given by Sallust. Tissot believed that
+every step in the great battle could be traced on the ground. The "mons
+tractu pari" is the Djebel Hemeur mta Ouargha, parallel to the course of
+the Waed Mellag and extending from the Djebel Sara to the Waed Zouatin.
+The hill projected by this chain perpendicularly to the river is the
+Koudiat Abd Allah, which detaches itself from the central block of the
+Djebel Hemeur and the direction of which is perpendicular both to the
+mountain and to the Waed Mellag. The plain, waterless and desert in the
+angle formed by the hill and the mountain but inhabited and cultivated
+in the neighbourhood of the Muthul, is the Feid-es-Smar, watered in its
+lower part by two streams which empty into the Waed Mellag. The distance,
+however, which separates Djebel Hemeur from the left bank of the Waed
+Mellag, is not twenty (the number given by the MSS. of Sallust) but
+about seven miles. S. Reinach in his edition of Tissot has not
+reproduced the author's own sketch of the battle of the Muthul, but a
+map of the district will be found in the Atlas appended to the work (Map
+xviii., Medjerda superieure). This map forms the basis of the one which
+I have given.
+
+[1010] See note 1. One must agree with Tissot that the "ferme milia
+passuum viginti" of Sallust (_Jug_. 48. 3) cannot be accepted. Such a
+distance is impossible from a strategic point of view, as Metellus could
+never have sent his vanguard such a distance in advance, when he himself
+was engaged with the enemy. It is also inconsistent with the account of
+the battle, the details of which obviously show that it took place in a
+much smaller area. The actual distance between the conjectured sites is
+about seven Roman miles (note 1. See Tissot op. cit. i. p. 71).
+
+[1011] Sall. _Jug_. 48.
+
+[1012] This appears from the narrative in Ibid. 52. 5. Even when
+Jugurtha had advanced some distance to the river, Bomilcar was not
+actually in touch with the king's forces.
+
+[1013] Sall. _Jug_. 49. 4.
+
+[1014] Sall. _Jug_. 49. 4.
+
+[1015] Ibid. 49. 6 Ibi conmutatis ordinibus in dextero latere, quod
+proxumum hostis erat, triplicibus subsidies aciem instruxit.
+
+[1016] Sall. _Jug_. 49. 6 Sicuti instruxerat, transvorsis principiis in
+planum deducit. The word "transvorsis" here probably refers to the
+direction in which the front rank faced the enemy, and the position may
+be described in another way by saying that Metellus marched with his
+front rank sideways to Jugurtha. See Summers in loc.
+
+[1017] Ibid. 50. 2.
+
+[1018] Ibid. 50. 1.
+
+[1019] Sall. _Jug_. 52. 5.
+
+[1020] Ibid. 50. 2.
+
+[1021] Sall. _Jug_. 51. 3.
+
+[1022] Sall. _Jug_. 52.5.
+
+[1023] Aciem quam diffidens virtuti militum arte statuerat, quo hostium
+itineri officeret, latius porrigit eoque modo ad Rutili castra procedit
+(Ibid. 52. 6).
+
+[1024] Sall. _Jug_. 53. 3.
+
+[1025] Ibid. 53. 5 Instructi intentique obviam procedunt. Nam dolus
+Numidarum nihil languidi neque remissi patiebatur.
+
+[1026] Pro victoria satis jam pugnatum, reliquos labores pro praeda fore
+(Sall. _Jug_. 54. 1).
+
+[1027] Interim Romae gaudium ingens ortum cognitis Metelli rebus, ut
+seque et exercitum more majorum gereret, in advorso loco victor tamen
+virtute fuisset, hostium agro potiretur, Jugurtham magnificum ex Albini
+socordia spem salutis in solitudine aut fuga coegisset habere
+(Ibid. 55. 1).
+
+[1028] Sall. _Jug_. 54. 1.
+
+[1029] Ibid. 54. 3.
+
+[1030] Metellus, ubi videt ... minore detrimento illos vinci quam suos
+vincere, statuit non proeliis neque in acie, sed alio more bellum
+gerundum (Ibid. 54. 5).
+
+[1031] Sall. _Jug_. 54. 6.
+
+[1032] Sall. _Jug_. 55. 5.
+
+[1033] Sicca is the modern El Kef, but is still called by its
+inhabitants by its old name of Sicca Veneria (Schak Benar), The name
+_Veneria_ was derived from a temple of the Punic Aphrodite (cf. Val.
+Max. ii. 6. 15). Of its strategic importance Tissot says "El Kef is
+still regarded as the strongest place in Tunis.... The town dominates
+the great plains of Es-sers, Zanfour, Lorbeus and of the Waed Mellag, at
+the same time that it commands one of the principal ways of
+communication leading from Tunis to Algiers." See Wilmanns in C.I.L.
+viii. p. 197; Tissot _Geogr. comp_. ii. p. 378. Zama Regia is now
+identified, not with the place called Lehs, El-Lehs or Elies (Wilmanns
+op. cit. p. 210), but with Djiama. See Tissot op. cit. ii. pp. 571,
+577-79; Mommsen in _Hermes_ xx. pp. 144-56; Schmidt in _Rhein. Mus_.
+1889 (N. F. 44) pp. 397 foll.
+
+[1034] Sall. _Jug_. 56. 3.
+
+[1035] Ibid. 56. 2.
+
+[1036] Id oppidum in campo situm magis opere quam natura munitum erat
+(Ibid. 57. 1).
+
+[1037] Contra ea oppidani in proxumos saxa volvere, sudes, pila,
+praeterea picem sulphure et taeda mixtam ardentia mittere (Sall. _Jug_.
+57. 5). If _ardentia_ is correct, the _sudes_ and _pila_ must also have
+been winged with fire. I have interpreted the passage as though
+_ardenti_ (suggested by Herzog) were the true reading. Summers suggests
+"picem sulphure mixtam et tela ardentia."
+
+[1038] Ibid. 58. 1.
+
+[1039] Sall. _Jug_. 59. 1.
+
+[1040] Ibid. 59. 3.
+
+[1041] Sall. _Jug_. 60. 4.
+
+[1042] Ibid. 61. 1.
+
+[1043] Sall. _Jug_. 61. 4.
+
+[1044] Sall. _Jug_. 62, 1.
+
+[1045] Mittuntur ad imperatorem legati, qui Jugurtham imperata facturum
+dice rent (Ibid. 62. 3). The word _imperata_ implies previous
+negotiations.
+
+[1046] Metellus proper cantos senatorial ordinis ex Hibernia accurse
+jubet; eorum et variorum, quos ironers defeat, console habet
+(Ibid. 62. 4).
+
+[1047] Ihne _Roem. Gesch_. v. p. 146.
+
+[1048] Sall. _Jug_. 62. 5. Orosius (v. 15. 7) adds that Jugurtha
+promised corn and other supplies.
+
+[1049] Oros. l.c.
+
+[1050] Sall. _Jug_. 62. 7.
+
+[1051] Oros. l.c.
+
+[1052] App. _Num_. 3.
+
+[1053] Its site is unknown.
+
+[1054] Romae senatus de provinciis consults Numidiam Metello decelerare
+(Sall. _Jug_. 62. 10). It is possible that the senate merely abstained
+from making Numidia a consular province. See Summers in loc. and cf.
+p. 222.
+
+[1055] Etiam tum alios magistratus plebs, consulate nobilities inter se
+per manus trade bat. Novas memo tam claries neque tam egregious facts
+erat, quin is indigenous illo honore et quasi pollutes aerator
+(Ibid. 63. 6).
+
+[1056] Ibid. 63. 1.
+
+[1057] Sall. _Jug_. 64. 4.
+
+[1058] Milites quibus in Hibernia preheat lax ore imperio quam antea
+habere (Ibid. 64. 5).
+
+[1059] Sall. _Jug_. 64. 5.
+
+[1060] Ibid. 65. 1 Erat praeterea in exercitu nostro Unmade quidam
+nomine Gauda, Mastanabalis filius, Masinissae nepos, quem Micipsa
+testamento secundum heredem scripserat, morbis confectus et ob eam
+causam mente paulum inminuta.
+
+[1061] Turmam equitum Romanorum (Ibid. 65. 2). It appears, therefore,
+that _equites equo publico_, although seldom (if ever) used as cavalry
+at this time, still formed the escort of generals or princes.
+
+[1062] Equites Romanos, milites et negotiatores (Sall. _Jug_. 65. 4).
+
+[1063] Sall. _Jug_. 66. 3.
+
+[1064] Ibid. 67.
+
+[1065] Sall. _Jug_. 67. 3 Turpilius praefectus unus ex omnibus Italicis
+intactus profugit. Id misericordiane hospitis an pactione an casu ita
+evenerit, parum comperimus: nisi, quia illi in tanto malo turpis vita
+integra fama potior fuit, inprobus intestabilisque videtur.
+
+[1066] Ibid. 68. 1.
+
+[1067] Ibid. 68. 4 Equites in primo late, pedites quam artissume ire
+et signa occultare jubet.
+
+[1068] Plut. _Mar_. 8 outos gar ho anaer aen men ek poteron xenos toi
+Metello kai tote taen epi ton tektonon echon archaen synestrateue.
+
+[1069] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1070] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1071] Sall. _Jug_. 69. 4 Turpilius ... condemnatus verberatusque capite
+poenas solvit: nam is civis e Latio erat. If the last words mean that
+Turpilius was a Latin, they may show that the law of Drusus (p. 242), if
+passed, was no longer respected. If they mean that he was a Roman
+citizen from a Latin town, they illustrate this law. Appian (_Num_. 3)
+says that Turpilius was a Roman ([Greek: _andra Rhomaion_]).
+
+[1072] Sall. _Jug_. 70.
+
+[1073] Proinde reputaret cum animo suo, praemia an cruciatum mallet
+(Sall. _Jug_. 70. 6).
+
+[1074] Sall. _Jug_. 72.
+
+[1075] Ibid. 73.
+
+[1076] Meinel (_Zur Chronologie des Jugurth. Krieges p. 13_) thinks that
+the consular elections of 108 did not take place before the winter, and
+that they may even have drifted over into the following year.
+
+[1077] Plut, _Mar_. 8.
+
+[1078] Plut. l.c. It is possible that this story and that of Sallust
+(_Jug_. 63 see p. 410) about the sacrifice at Utica belong to the same
+incident. But it is not probable. A man such as Marius would often
+approach a favourite shrine.
+
+[1079] Liv. _Ep_. lxv.
+
+[1080] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72; Ammian. xxvii. 3. 9.
+
+[1081] The _via Aemilia_ ([Victor] l.c.; Strabo v. 1. 11).
+
+[1082] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 50.
+
+[1083] Plut. _Mar_. 8.
+
+[1084] Sall. _Jug_. 73. 6 Denique plebes sic accensa, uti opifices
+agrestesque omnes, quorum res fidesque in manibus sitae erant, relictis
+operibus frequentarent Marium et sua necessaria post illius honorem
+ducerent. The labours, from which the _agrestes_ were drawn, may have
+been those of early spring, if the elections were delayed until the
+early part of 107 B.C. (See p. 420, Meinel l.c.)
+
+[1085] Ibid. 73. 7 Sed paulo _ante senatus Metello Numidiam_
+decreverat: ea res frustra fuit. The words in italics are not given by
+the good manuscripts; they are perhaps an interpolation drawn from ch.
+62. See Summers in loc. It is possible that some mention of the
+provinces which the senate had decreed to the new consuls stood here.
+Mommsen (_Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 4) thinks that the passage may have
+contained a statement that the senate had destined Gaul and Italy for
+the consuls.
+
+[1086] Sall. _Fug_. 85.
+
+[1087] Ibid. 85. 12 Atque ego scio, Quirites, qui, postquam consules
+facti sunt, et acta majorum et Graecorum militaria praecepta legere
+coeperint--praeposteri homines: nam gerere quam fieri tempore posterius,
+re atque usu prius est.
+
+[1088] Ibid. 84. 2.
+
+[1089] Polyb. vi. 19.2.
+
+[1090] According to Gellius (xvi. 10, 10) 375 asses:--Qui ... nullo aut
+perquam parvo aere censebantur, "capite censi" vocabantur, extremus
+autem census capite censorum aeris fuit trecentis septuaginta quinque.
+But this decline from the Polybian census seems incredibly rapid.
+Perhaps the figure should be 3,750--one closely resembling that given by
+Polybius. Cf. p. 61.
+
+[1091] Cf. Liv. x. 21 (cited by Ihne _Roem. Gesch_. v. p. 154)
+Senatus ... delectum omnis generis hominum haberi jussit. See also Gell.
+l.c. 13. Polybius vi. 19. 3, according to Casaubon's reading (p. 135),
+cannot be cited in illustration of this point.
+
+[1092] Sall. _Jug_. 86 2 Ipse interea milites scribere, non more majorum
+neque ex classibus, sed uti cujusque lubido erat, capite censos
+plerosque. Val. Max. ii. 3. 1 Fastidiosum dilectus genus in exercitibus
+Romanis oblitterandum duxit. Cf. Florus i. 36 (iii. 1). 13. The
+tradition preserved by Plutarch (_Mar. 9_) that Marius enrolled slaves
+as well ([Greek: _polyn ton aporon kai doulon katagraphon_]), is
+apparently an echo from the time of the civil wars. Plutarch may mean
+men of servile birth and, though it is noted that freedmen were not
+employed even on occasional service until 90 B.C. (App. _Bell. Civ_. i.
+49), yet it is possible that Marius's hasty levy may have swept in some
+men of this standing. But after, as before the time of Marius,
+free-birth (_ingenuitas_) continued to be a necessary qualification for
+service in the legions.
+
+[1093] Sall. _Jug_. 86. 3.
+
+[1094] Sall. _Jug_. 86. 3.
+
+[1095] Sall. _Jug_. 74. 1.
+
+[1096] Ibid. 74. 2.
+
+[1097] Ibid. 75. 1. There are two Thalas in Numidia. The one with
+which we are here concerned is believed to be that lying east of Capsa
+(Khafsa), not that near Ammaedara (the latter is probably the Thala of
+Tac. _Ann_. iii. 21). Its identification was due to Pelissier who
+visited the site. It has one of the characteristics mentioned by
+Sallust, for the existing ruins are situated in a region destitute of
+water except for one neighbouring fountain. The river from which the
+Romans drew water and filled their vessels might be the one now called
+the Waed Lebem or Leben--the only one in this part of Tunis which does
+not run dry even in summer. The ruins are of small extent and
+unimposing, but this feature agrees with the statement of Strabo (xvii.
+3. 12) that Thala was one of the towns blotted out by continuous wars in
+Africa. It was, therefore, not restored by the Romans. It has been
+doubted whether the name Thala is a proof of the identity of the site
+with that described by Sallust, since Pelissier says (_Rev. Arch_. 1847,
+p. 399) that the place is surrounded by a grove of trees, of the kind
+known as _mimosa gummifera_ and called _thala_ by the Arabs. The ruins
+may have drawn their name from these trees. See Wilmanns in C.I.L.
+viii. p. 28 and cf. Tissot _Geogr. comp_. ii. p. 635.
+
+[1098] Sall. _Jug_. 75. 9.
+
+[1099] Sall. _Jug_. 76. 3 Deinde locis ex copia maxume idoneis vineas
+agere, aggerem jacere et super aggerem inpositis turribus opus et
+administros tutari.
+
+[1102] The name appears on coins in Punic letters as L B Q I (Movers
+_Die Phoenizer_ II 2. p. 486; Mueller _Numismatique de l'Afrique_ II p.
+10). Greek writers also call it Neapolis, probably because it was not
+far from an older town at the mouth of the Cinyps (the Waed
+Mghar-el-Ghrin), although others hold that this name designated a
+particular quarter of the town. The three cities of the Syrtis--Sabrata,
+Oea and Leptis--were called Tripolis, but do not seem to have been
+politically connected with one another. Leptis had been stipendiary to
+Carthage (Liv. xxxiv. 62) and had subsequently been occupied by
+Masinissa (Liv. l.c.; cf. App. _Lib_. 106). But the occupation was
+not permanent or effective. Sallust notes (_Jug_. 78) that its situation
+had enabled it to escape Numidian influence.
+
+[1101] Sall. _Jug_. 77. 3.
+
+[1102] Ibid. 80. 1.
+
+[1103] Forbiger _Handb. der alt. Geogr_. ii. p. 885.
+
+[1104] Sall. _Jug_. 80. 2.
+
+[1105] Ibid. 80. 1.
+
+[1106] Ibid. 80. 6 Ea necessitudo apud Numidas Maurosque levis
+ducitur, quia singuli pro opibus quisque quam plurumas uxores, denas
+alii, alii pluris habent, sed reges eo amplius. Ita animus multitudine
+distrahitur: nulla pro socia optinet, pariter omnes viles sunt.
+
+[1107] Sall. _Jug_. 81. 1.
+
+[1108] Ibid. 82. 1.
+
+[1109] Cf. p. 349.
+
+[1110] Sall. _Jug_. 81. 2.
+
+[1111] Ibid. 82. 1.
+
+[1112] Ibid. 82. 2.
+
+[1113] Sall. _Jug_. 83. 1.
+
+[1114] Sall, _Jug_. 86. 5.
+
+[1115] Ibid. 88. 1.
+
+[1116] Vellei. ii. II Metelli ... et triumphus fuit clarissimus et
+meritum ex virtute ei cognomen Numidici inditum. Cf. Eutrop. iv. 27.
+
+[1117] Sall. _Jug_. 88. 5.
+
+[1118] Sall. _Jug_. 88. 3.
+
+[1119] Sallust uses the historic infinitive (Ibid, 89. 1 Consul, uti
+statuerat, oppida castellaque munita adire, partim vi, alia metu aut
+praemia ostentando avortere ab hostibus), but the reduction of some of
+these places may perhaps be assumed.
+
+[1120] Cf. p. 426.
+
+[1121] Capsa (Kafsa or Gafsa) may have been once subject to Carthage and
+have been added to the kingdom of Masinissa after the Hannibalic war.
+Strabo (xvii. 3. 12) mentions it amongst the ruined towns of Africa, but
+it revived later on, received a Latin form of constitution under
+Hadrian, and was ultimately the seat of a bishopric. See Wilmanns in C.
+I. L. viii. p. 22. Its commercial importance was very great. It was, as
+Tissot says (_Geogr. comp_. ii. p. 664), placed on the threshold of the
+desert at the head of the three great valleys which lead, the one to the
+bottom of the Gulf of Kabes, the other to Tebessa, the third to the
+centre of the regency of Tunis. He describes it as one of the gates of
+the Sahara and one of the keys of Tell, the necessary point of transit
+of the caravans of the Soudan and the advanced post of the high plateau
+against the incursions of the nomads. Strabo (l.c.) describes Capsa as
+a treasure-house of Jugurtha, but it has been questioned whether this
+description is not due to a confusion with Thala (Wilmanns l.c.).
+
+[1122] Sall. _Jug_. 89. 6.
+
+[1123] Ibid. 89. 5 Nam, praeter oppido propinqua, alia omnia vasta,
+inculta, egentia aquae, infesta serpentibus, quarum vis sicuti omnium
+ferarum inopia cibi acrior. Ad hoc natura serpentium, ipsa perniciosa,
+siti magis quam alia re accenditur. Tissot says (op. cit. ii. p. 669)
+that the solitudes which surround the oasis make a veritable "belt of
+sands and snakes" (cf. Florus iii. 1. 14 Anguibus harenisque
+vallatam).
+
+[1124] Sal. _Jug_. 90. 1.
+
+[1125] Aulus Manlius was sent with some light cohorts to protect the
+stores at Lares (Ibid. 90. 2). These stores were, therefore, not
+exhausted.
+
+[1126] The Tana has often been identified with the Waed Tina, but this
+identification would take Marius along the coast by Thenae--a course
+which he almost certainly did not follow. Tissot holds (_Geogr. comp_.
+i. p. 85) that Tana is only a generic Libyan name for a water-course. He
+thinks that the river in question is the Waed-ed-Derb. (Ibid. p. 86).
+
+[1127] This _locus tumulosus_ (Sall. _Jug_. 91. 3) is identified by
+Tissot (op. cit. ii. p 669) with a spur of the Djebel Beni-Younes
+which dominates Kafsa on the northeast at the distance indicated
+by Sallust.
+
+[1128] Ibid. 91. 7.
+
+[1129] Sall. _Jug_. 92. 3.
+
+[1130] Sallust omits all mention of these winter quarters. Such an
+omission does not prove that he is a bad military historian, but simply
+that he never meant his sketch to be a military history. But he has
+perhaps freed himself too completely from the annalistic methods of most
+Roman historians.
+
+[1131] Sall. _Jug_. 92. 2.
+
+[1132] The Waed Muluja. It is called Muluccha by Sallust, [Greek:
+_Molochath_] by Strabo (xvii. 3, 9). Other names given to it by
+ancient authorities are Malvane, [Greek: _Maloua_], Malva. See Goebel
+_Die Westkueste Afrikas im Altertum_ pp. 79, 80.
+
+[1133] Bocchus, however, claimed the territory within which Marius was
+operating (Sall. _Jug_. 102).
+
+[1134] Ibid. 92. 5.
+
+[1135] Ibid. 93.
+
+[1136] Sall. _Jug_. 94. 3.
+
+[1137] Sall. _Jug_. 95. 1.
+
+[1138] Sall, _Jug_. 95. 1 L. Sulla quaestor cum magno equitatu in castra
+venit, quos uti ex Latio et a sociis cogeret Romae relictus erat.
+
+[1139] Cic. _in Verr_. iii. 58. 134.
+
+[1140] Cf. Cic. _ad Att_. vi. 6. 3 and 4.
+
+[1141] Val. Max. vi. 9. 6 C. Marius consul moleste tulisse traditur quod
+sibi asperrimum in Africa bellum gerenti tam delicatus quaestor sorte
+obvenisset.
+
+[1142] Plut. _Sulla_ 2.
+
+[1143] Val. Max. l.c.; Plut. _Sulla_ 2.
+
+[1144] Litteris Graecis atque Latinis juxta, atque doctissume, eruditus
+(Sall. _Jug_. 95. 3).
+
+[1145] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1146] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1147] He was born in 138 B.C. He was entering on his sixtieth year at
+the time of his death in 78 B.C. (Val. Max. ix. 3. 8). Cf. Vellei. ii.
+17 and see Lau _Lucius Cornelius Sulla_ p. 25.
+
+[1148] Sall. _Jug_. 96.
+
+[1149] Sall. _Jug_. 97. 2.
+
+[1150] Sallust states later that Cirta was his original aim (Ibid. 102.
+1 Pervenit in oppidum Cirtam, quo initio profectus intenderat); but
+Marius's plans may have been modified by intervening events.
+
+[1151] Vix decuma parte die reliqua (Ibid. 97. 3).
+
+[1152] Sall, _Jug_. 98. 1.
+
+[1153] Ibid. 97. 5 Denique Romani ... orbis facere, atque ita ab
+omnibus partibus simul tecti et instructi hostium vim sustentabant.
+
+[1154] Ibid. 98. 3.
+
+[1155] Sall. _Jug_. 99. 1.
+
+[1156] Pariter atque in conspectu hostium quadrato agmine incedere
+(Ibid. 100. 1). For the nature and growth of this tactical formation
+amongst the Romans see Marquardt _Staatsverw. ii. p. 423.
+
+[1157] Sall. _Jug_. 101. 2.
+
+[1158] It is possible that Jugurtha intentionally let his approach be
+known, so that the Romans might form in their usual battle order.
+
+[1159] This force is not mentioned by Sallust (Sall. _Jug_. 101. 5), but
+it seems implied in the junction of Bocchus with Volux.
+
+[1160] Quod ubi milites accepere, magis atrocitate rei quam fide nuntii
+terrentur (Ibid. 101. 7).
+
+[1161] Sall. _Jug_. 101. 9.
+
+[1162] Oros. v. 15. 9 foll. This account in Orosius corresponds to
+nothing in Sallust and is clearly drawn from other sources. The attempt
+of the Romans to storm Cirta (Section 10) must be a mistake, unless it
+refers to some earlier and unrecorded operation of the war. Some details
+of Section 14 bear a shadowy resemblance to points in the first of the
+recent battles described by Sallust; but there are other details which
+make the identification impossible.
+
+[1163] Hastilia telorum, quae manu intorquere sine ammentis solent
+(Oros. v. 15. 16).
+
+[1164] According to Sallust (_Jug_. 102. 2.); but the fight which he
+describes may not have been the final battle. See p. 452.
+
+[1165] Ibid. 102. 2.
+
+[1166] Sall. _Jug_. 102. 5.
+
+[1167] Ibid. 102. 12.
+
+[1168] Cf. Sall. _Jug_. 80. 4. See p. 349.
+
+[1169] Sall. _Jug_. 102. 15.
+
+[1170] The headquarters were doubtless Cirta, to which we find Marius
+returning (Ibid. 104. 1); but shortly afterwards we find Sulla and the
+envoys coming to Cirta from a place which, according to one reading, is
+called Tucca (see p. 457). All the troops were probably not concentrated
+at Cirta, as Marius meant to quarter them in the coast-towns
+(Ibid. 100. 1).
+
+[1171] Ibid. 103. 2.
+
+[1172] Sall. _Jug_. 104. 3.
+
+[1173] Ibid. 103. 7.
+
+[1174] Sulla and the envoys were now at a place which variant readings
+make either Tucca or Utica (Ibid. 104. 1 Illosque et Sullam [ab Tucca
+_or_ Utica] venire jubet, item L. Bellienum praetorem Utica). Utica is
+rendered improbable by its mention a few words later, although it is
+possible that the name of this town has been duplicated in the sentence.
+If we keep Tucca, it cannot be Thugga (Dugga) in Numidia, which is some
+distance from the coast. It may be the town which Pliny (_Hist. Nat_. v.
+2. 21) calls "oppidum Tucca inpositum mari et flumini Ampsagae".
+
+[1175] It is possible that this armistice included Jugurtha as well,
+although this is not stated by Sallust (Sall. _Jug_. 104. 2).
+
+[1176] Ibid. 104. 5.
+
+[1177] Sall. _Jug_. 105. 1.
+
+[1178] Ibid. 106. 2.
+
+[1179] Sall. _Jug_. 107, 1.
+
+[1180] Sall. _Jug_. 107. 6. Cf. Plut. _Sulla_ 3.
+
+[1181] Ibid. 108.
+
+[1182] This is apparently the meaning of Sallust (Ibid. 108. 1) when
+he describes Dabar as Massugradae filius, ex gente Masinissae, ceterum
+materno genere inpar (nam pater ejus ex concubina ortus erat).
+
+[1183] Sall. _Jug_. 108. 3 Sed ego conperior Bocchum magis Punica fide
+quam ob ea, quae praedicabat, simul Romanos et Numidam spe pacis
+attinuisse, multumque cum animo suo volvere solitum, Jugurtham Romanis
+an illi Sullam traderet; lubidinem advorsum nos, metum pro
+nobis suasisse.
+
+[1184] Ibid. 109, 2 Dicit se missum a consule. Marius was really
+proconsul.
+
+[1185] Ibid. 110.
+
+[1186] Sall. _Jug_. 111.
+
+[1187] Sall. _Jug_. 111. 2
+
+[1188] Ibid. 112. 1.
+
+[1189] Haec Maurus secum ipse diu volvens tandem promisit, ceterum dolo
+an vere cunctatus parum comperimus (Ibid. 113. 1).
+
+[1190] This must have been the agreement, although Sallust says only
+Eodem Numida cum plerisque necessariis inermis, uti dictum erat, adcedit
+(Sall. _Jug_. 113. 6).
+
+[1191] Ibid. 114. 3.
+
+[1192] Gauda is called king in an inscription which gives the whole
+house of Juba II. The inscription (C.I.L. II. n. 3417) runs:--Regi
+Jubae reg(is) Jubae filio regi(s) Iempsalis n. regis Gau(dae) pronepoti
+regis Masiniss(ae) pronepotis nepoti IIvir quinq. patrono coloni (the
+_coloni_, who set up the inscription, having made Juba II IIvir
+quinquennalis _honoris causa_). The only doubt which affects the belief
+in Gauda's succession arises from a passage in Cic. _post Red. ad Quir_.
+8. 20. Cicero here says (Marius) cum parva navicula pervectus in
+Africam, quibus regna ipse dederat, ad eos inops supplexque venisset.
+There can be no doubt that Marius fled to Hiempsal, not to Gauda. But it
+has been pointed out that Cicero's expression is "ad eos," not "ad eum."
+The plural probably refers to the whole "domus" of the monarch and would
+include both Gauda and Hiempsal. See Biereye _Res Numidarum et
+Maurorum_ p. 7.
+
+[1193] Mauretania subsequently includes the region of Caesariensis, but
+it has been thought probable that the territory of Sitifis on the east
+was not added until the new settlement in 46 B.C. (Mommsen _Hist. of
+Rome_ bk. iv. c. 4). The territory between the Muluccha and Saldae
+might, therefore, have been added after the close of the war with
+Jugurtha. See Mueller _Numismatique de l'Afrique_. p. 4; Mommsen l.c.;
+Goebel _Die Westkueste Afrikas im Altertum_ p. 93; Biereye op. cit. p. 6.
+It is very questionable whether the limits of the Roman province were
+in any way extended at the expense of Numidia. Such additions as Vaga
+and Sicca probably belong to the settlement of 46 B.C. See Tissot
+_Geogr. comp_. ii. pp. 21 foll. It has sometimes been thought that the
+attachment of Leptis Magna to Rome (p. 429) was permanent (Wilmanns in
+C.I.L. viii. p. 2) and that Tripolis became a part of the Roman
+province (Marquardt _Staatsverw_. i. p. 465), but Tissot (op. cit. ii.
+p. 22) believes that Leptis remained a free city.
+
+[1194] Sall. _Jug_. 114. 3; Liv. _Ep_. lxvii; C.I.L. i. n. xxxiii p. 290
+Eum (Jugurtham) cepit et triumphans in secundo consulatu ante currum
+suum duci jussit ... veste triumphali calceis patriciis [? _in senatum
+venit_]. It is questionable, however, whether the last words of this
+Arretine inscription (words which do not immediately follow the account
+of the Numidian triumph) can be brought into connection with the story
+told by Plutarch (_Mar_. 12) that Marius, either through forgetfulness
+or clumsiness, entered the senate in his triumphal dress. They seem to
+refer to some special honours conferred after the defeat of the Germanic
+tribes. It is possible that the conferment of this honour gave rise to
+the malicious story, which became not only distorted but misplaced.
+
+[1195] Plut. _Mar_. 12.
+
+[1196] Ihne _Roem. Gesch_. v. p. 164 Wo dem Sohn des Suedens der
+Schmerzenschrei entfuhr.
+
+[1197] Plut. _Mar_. 12. The epitomator of Livy (lxvii.) says in carcere
+necatus est. The word _necatus_ is quite consistent with a death such as
+that described by Plutarch. See Festus, pp. 162, 178.
+
+[1198] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1199] Plut. _Mar_. 10.
+
+[1200] Plut. _Sulla_ 4.
+
+[1201] Plut. _Mar_. 10; _Sulla_ 3.
+
+[1202] Plut. _Sulla_ 6.
+
+[1203] Ancient writers derive the name from _serere_ and connect it with
+a story of the family of the Reguli (Plin. _Hist. Nat_. xviii. 3, 20;
+Verg. _Aen_. vi. 844; Val. Max. iv. 4. 5). But the name appears on coins
+as "Saranus" (Eckhel v. p. 146). It seems, however, to be true that the
+name was borne by, or applied to, C. Atilius Regulus, the consul of 257
+B.C. See Klebs in Pauly-Wissowa R. E. p. 2095.
+
+[1204] Cic. _pro Planc_. 5. 12.
+
+[1205] In the movement connected with the proceedings of Saturninus in
+100 B.C. (Cic. _pro Rab_. 7. 21).
+
+[1206] Eutrop. iv. 27; Val. Max. vi. 9. 13; _Fast. triumph_.
+
+[1207] Yet no very recent cases _repetundarum_ are known. The last seems
+to have been the accusation of M. Valerius Messala (Gell. xv. 14). About
+this time C. Flavius Fimbria was accused by M. Gratidius and acquitted
+in spite of the hostile evidence of M. Aemilius Scaurus (Cic. _pro
+Font_. 11. 24; _Brut_. 45. 168; Val. Max. viii. 5. 2; Rein
+_Criminalrecht_ p. 649); but even if, with Rein, we assign this case to
+106 and not to a time later than Fimbria's consulship, the judiciary law
+must have been prepared before the trial.
+
+[1208] Cassiodor. _Chron_. Per Servilium Caepionem consulem judicia
+equitibus et senatoribus communicata. Obsequens 101 (39) Per Caepionem
+cos. senatorum et equitum judicia communicata.
+
+[1209] Tac. _Ann_. xii. 60 Cum ... Serviliae leges senatui judicia
+redderent.
+
+[1210] Cic. _de Inv_. i. 49. 92 Offensum est quod corum qui audiunt
+voluntatem laedit: ut si quis apud equites Romanos cupidos judicandi
+Caepionis legem judiciariam laudet.
+
+[1211] Pp. 135, 213.
+
+[1212] Cic. _Brut_. 43, 161; _pro Cluent_. 51, 140.
+
+[1213] Cic. _de Or_. ii. 59. 240, 66. 264. It is very probable that this
+attack on Memmius belongs to the speech on the Servilian law.
+
+[1214] Cic. _Brut_. 44. 164 Mihi (Ciceroni) quidem a pueritia quasi
+magistra fuit, inquam, illa in legem Caepionis oratio.
+
+[1215] Cassiod. _Chron_.; Obsequens 101 (39) (quoted p, 478).
+
+[1216] Cicero, speaking in 70 B.C., says that the Equites had held the
+courts for nearly fifty years, i.e. up to the date of the _lex
+Cornelia_ of 81 B.C. (Cic. _in Verr_. Act. i. 13. 38).
+
+[1217] [Cic.] _ad Herenn_. i. 15, 25, iv. 24. 34; _de Rep_. i. 3. 6;
+_pro Balbo_ II. 28.
+
+[1218] Cic. _de Orat_. iii. 8. 29; _Brut_. 35. 132.
+
+[1219] Cicero, in speaking of the successive defeats of Catulus at the
+polls, says Praeposuisse (populum Romanum) Q. Catulo, summa in familia
+nato, sapientissimo et sanctissimo viro, non dico C. Serranum,
+stultissimum hominem, (fuit enim tamen nobilis,) non C. Fimbriam, novum
+hominem, (fuit enim et animi satis magni et consilii,) sed Cn. Mallium,
+non solum ignobilem, verum sine virtute, sine ingenio, vita etiam
+contempta ac sordida (_pro Planc_. 5. 12).
+
+[1220] Val. Max. ii. 3. 2. The changes introduced into the military
+system by Rutilius will be explained in the next chapter.
+
+[1221] Ulp. in _Dig_. xxxviii. 2, i. i. Mommsen (_Staatsr_. iii. p. 433)
+thinks that the consul of 105 is the "praetor Rutilius" of
+Ulpian's account.
+
+[1222] Gaius iv, 35 (Praetor Publius Rutilius), qui et bonorum
+venditionem introduxisse dicitur. See Bethmann-Hollweg _Civilprozess_
+ii. p. 671. Here again the consul of 105 is probably meant.
+
+[1223] Cic. _Brut_. 30. 113, 114.
+
+[1224] The disaster at Arausio took place on 6th October (Plut. _Luc_.
+27). The consuls for the next year may not yet have been elected, as
+there was at this time no fixed date for the consular Comitia. Cf.
+p. 364 and see Sall. _Jug_. 114.
+
+[1225] Cic. _Brut_. 34. 129; _de Orat_. ii. 22. 91.
+
+[1226] Liv. _Ep_. lvi. (see the next note). For the probable date of
+this enactment (151 B.C.) see Mommsen _Staatsrecht_ i. p. 521.
+
+[1227] Liv. _Ep_. lvi Cum bellum Numantinum vitio ducum non sine pudore
+publico duraret, delatus est ultro Scipioni Africano a senatu populoque
+Romano consulatus; quem cum illi capere ob legem, quae vetabat quemquam
+iterum consulem fieri, non liceret, sicut priori consulatu, legibus
+solutus est.
+
+[1228] Plut. _Mar_. 12 [Greek: _kai to deuteron hypatos apedeichthae,
+tou men nomou koluontos aponta kai mae dialiponta chronon horismenon
+authis aireisthai, tou de daemou tous antilegontas ekbalontos_.]
+Plutarch adds that the people recalled the dispensation granted to
+Scipio when the annihilation of the Carthaginian power was planned.
+This is perhaps a mistaken reference to the dispensation granted to
+Scipio in the Numantine war. See Liv. _Ep_. lvi. (quoted in the last
+note); Cic. _pro Leg. Man_. 20. 60 and Mommsen _Staatsr_. l.c. As to
+the irregularity involved in Marius's absence, it is questionable
+whether Plutarch is right in supposing that a personal _professio_ was
+required at this time. See Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 504. Possibly the
+irregularity consisted in the fact that there had been no formal
+candidature at all. Other references to this election of Marius are to
+be found in Sall. _Jug_. 114; Vellei. ii. 12; Liv. _Ep_. lxvii.
+
+[1229] Sall. _Jug_. 114, Marius consul absens factus est, et ei decreta
+provincia Gallia.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A History of Rome, Vol 1, by A H.J. Greenidge
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of Rome, Vol 1, by A H.J. Greenidge
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+Title: A History of Rome, Vol 1
+       During the late Republic and early Principate
+
+Author: A H.J. Greenidge
+
+Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9781]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 15, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF ROME, VOL 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon,
+Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           A HISTORY OF ROME
+
+                     DURING THE LATER REPUBLIC AND
+                            EARLY PRINCIPATE
+
+                                   BY
+
+                   A. H. J. GREENIDGE, M. A., D. LITT.
+   TUTOR AND LATE FELLOW OF HERTFORD COLLEGE AND LECTURER IN ANCIENT
+                 HISTORY AT BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD
+
+
+                                VOLUME I
+
+               FROM THE TRIBUNATE OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS TO
+                    THE SECOND CONSULSHIP OF MARIUS
+                              B.C. 133-104
+
+                             WITH TWO MAPS
+
+
+                                  TO
+
+                                 B. G.
+
+                                  AND
+
+                                 T. G.
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+This work will be comprised in six volumes. According to the plan which
+I have provisionally laid down, the second volume will cover the period
+from 104 to 70 B.C., ending with the first consulship of Pompeius and
+Crassus; the third, the period from 70 to 44 B.C., closing with the
+death of Caesar; the fourth volume will probably be occupied by the
+Third Civil War and the rule of Augustus, while the fifth and sixth will
+cover the reigns of the Emperors to the accession of Vespasian.
+
+The original sources, on which the greater part of the contents of the
+present volume is based, have been collected during the last few years
+by Miss Clay and myself, and have already been published in an
+abbreviated form. Some idea of the debt which I owe to modern authors
+may be gathered from the references in the footnotes. As I have often,
+for the sake of brevity, cited the works of these authors by shortened
+and incomplete titles, I have thought it advisable to add to the volume
+a list of the full titles of the works referred to. But the list makes
+no pretence to be a full bibliography of the period of history with
+which this volume deals. The map of the Wäd Mellag and its surrounding
+territory, which I have inserted to illustrate the probable site of the
+battle of the Muthul, is taken from the map of the "Medjerda supérieure"
+which appears in M. Salomon Reinach's _Atlas de la Province Romaine
+d'Afrique_.
+
+I am very much indebted to my friend and former pupil, Mr. E.J. Harding,
+of Hertford College, for the ungrudging labour which he has bestowed on
+the proofs of the whole of this volume. Many improvements in the form of
+the work are due to his perspicacity and judgment.
+
+A problem which confronts an author who plunges into the midst of the
+history of a nation (however complete may be the unity of the period
+with which he deals) is that of the amount of introductory information
+which he feels bound to supply to his readers. In this case, I have felt
+neither obligation nor inclination to supply a sketch of the development
+of Rome or her constitution up to the period of the Gracchi. The amount
+of information on the general and political history of Rome which the
+average student must have acquired from any of the excellent text-books
+now in use, is quite sufficient to enable him to understand the
+technicalities of the politics of the period with which I deal; and I
+was very unwilling to burden the volume with a _précis_ of a subject
+which I had already treated in another work. On the other hand, it is
+not so easy to acquire information on the social and economic history of
+Rome, and consequently I have devoted the first hundred pages of this
+book to a detailed exposition of the conditions preceding and
+determining the great conflict of interests with which our story opens.
+
+A. H. J. G.
+
+
+OXFORD,
+_August_, 1904
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I: Characteristics of the period. Recent changes in the
+conditions of Roman life. Close of the period of expansion by means of
+colonies or land assignments. Reasons for social discontent. The life of
+the wealthier classes. The expenses of political life. Attempts to check
+luxury. Motives for gain amongst the upper classes. Means of acquiring
+wealth open to members of the nobility; those open to members of the
+commercial class. The political influence of the Equites. The business
+life of Rome; finance and banking. Foreign trade. The condition of the
+small traders. Agriculture. Diminution in the numbers of peasant
+proprietors. The Latifundium and the new agricultural ideal. Growth of
+pasturage. Causes of the changes in the tenure of land. The system of
+possession. Future prospects of agriculture. Slave labour; dangers
+attending its employment; revolts of slaves in Italy. The servile war in
+Sicily (_circa_ 140-131 B.C.). The need for reform.
+
+CHAPTER II: The sources from which reform might have come, too. Attitude
+of Scipio Aemilianus. Tiberius Gracchus; his youth and early career. The
+affair of the Numantine Treaty. Motives that urged Tiberius Gracchus to
+reform. His tribunate (B.C. 133). Terms of the agrarian measure which he
+introduced. Creation of a special agrarian commission. Opposition to the
+bill. Veto pronounced by Marcus Octavius. Tiberius Gracchus declares a
+Justitium. Fruitless reference to the senate. Deposition of Octavius.
+Passing of the agrarian law; appointment of the commissioners; judicial
+power given to the commissioners. Employment of the bequest of Attalus.
+Attacks on Tiberius Gracchus. His defence of the deposition of Octavius.
+New programme of Tiberius Gracchus; suggestion of measures dealing with
+the army, the law-courts and the Italians. Tiberius Gracchus's attempt
+at re-election to the tribunate. Riot at the election and death of
+Tiberius Gracchus, Consequences of his fall.
+
+CHAPTER III: Attitude of the senate after the fall of Tiberius Gracchus.
+Special commission appointed for the trial of his adherents (B.C. 132).
+Fate of Scipio Nasica. Permanence of the land commission and
+thoroughness of its work. Difficulties connected with jurisdiction on
+disputed claims. The Italians appeal to Scipio Aemilianus. His
+intervention; judicial power taken from the commissioners (B.C. 129).
+Death of Scipio Aemilianus. Tribunate of Carbo (B.C. 131); ballot law
+and attempt to make the tribune immediately re-eligible. The Italian
+claims; negotiations for the extension of the franchise. Alien act of
+Pennus (B.C. 126). Proposal made by Flaccus to extend the franchise
+(B.C. 125). Revolt of Fregellae. Foundation of Fabrateria (B.C. 124).
+Foreign events during this period; the kingdom of Pergamon. Bequest of
+Attains the Third (B.C. 133). Revolt of Aristonicus (B.C. 132-130).
+Organisation of the province of Asia (B.C. 129-126). Sardinian War (B.C.
+126-125). Conquest and annexation of the Balearic Islands
+(B.C. 123-132).
+
+CHAPTER IV: The political situation at the time of the appearance of
+Caius Gracchus as a candidate for the tribunate (B.C. 124). Early career
+of Caius Gracchus. First tribunate of Caius Gracchus (B.C. 123). Laws
+passed or proposed during this tribunate; law protecting the Caput of a
+Roman citizen. Impeachment of Popillius. Law concerning magistrates who
+had been deposed by the people. Social reforms. Law providing for the
+cheapened sale of corn. Law mitigating the conditions of military
+service, 208. Agrarian law. Judiciary law. Law permitting a criminal
+prosecution for corrupt judgments. Law concerning the province of Asia.
+The new balance of power created by these laws in favour of the Equites.
+Law about the consular provinces. Colonial schemes of Caius Gracchus.
+The Rubrian law for the renewal of Carthage. Law for the making of
+roads. Election of Fannius to the consulship and of Caius Gracchus and
+Flaccus to the tribunate. Activity of Caius Gracchus during his second
+tribunate (B.C. 122). The franchise bill. Opposition to the bill.
+Exclusion of Italians from Rome; threat of the veto, and suspension of
+the measure. Proposal for a change in the order of voting in the Comitia
+Centuriata. New policy of the senate; counter-legislation of Drusus.
+Colonial proposals of Drusus. His measure for the protection of the
+Latins. The close of Caius Gracchus's second tribunate. His failure to
+be elected tribune for the third time. Proposal for the repeal of the
+Rubrian law. The meeting on the Capitol and its consequences (B.C. 121).
+Declaration of a state of siege. The seizure of the Aventine; defeat of
+the Gracchans; death of Caius Gracchus and Flaccus. Judicial prosecution
+of the adherents of Caius Gracchus. Future judgments on the Gracchi. The
+closing years of Cornelia. Estimate of the character and consequences of
+the Gracchan reforms.
+
+CHAPTER V: The political situation after the fall of Caius Gracchus.
+Prosecution and acquittal of Opimius (B.C. 120). Publius Lentulus dies
+in exile. Prosecution and condemnation of Carbo (B.C. 119). Lucius
+Crassus. Policy of the senate towards the late schemes of reform. Two
+new land laws (_circa_ 121-119 B.C.). The settlement of the land
+question with respect to Ager Publicus in Italy (B.C. III). Limitations
+on the power of the nobility; the Equestrian courts; trials of Scaevola
+(B.C. 120) and Cato (B.C. 113). Consulship of Scaurus (B.C. 115); law
+concerning the voting power of freedmen. Sumptuary law; activity of the
+censors Metellus and Domitius (B.C. 115). Triumphs of Domitius, Fabius
+(B.C. 120) and Scaurus (B.C. 115), for military successes. Confidence of
+the electors in the ancient houses. Recognition of talent by the
+nobility; career of Scaurus (B.C. 163-115). The rise of Marius; his
+early career (B.C. 157-119). Tribunate of Marius (B.C. 119). His law
+about the method of voting in the Comitia carried in spite of the
+opposition of the senate. He opposes a measure for the distribution of
+corn. Marius elected praetor; accused and acquitted of Ambitus (B.C.
+116). His praetorship (B.C. 115), and pro-praetorship in Spain (B.C.
+114). Further opposition to the senate; foundation of Narbo Martius
+(B.C. 118). Glaucia; his tribunate and his law of extortion (_circa_ 111
+B.C.). The spirit of unrest; religious fears at Rome (B.C. 114). First
+trial of the vestals (B.C. 114). Second trial of the vestals (B.C. 113).
+Human sacrifice. Great fire at Rome (B.C. III).
+
+CHAPTER VI: The kingdom of Numidia. The races of North Africa. The
+Numidians. The Numidian monarchy. Reign of Micipsa (B.C. 148-118). Early
+years of Jugurtha. Jugurtha at Numantia (B.C. 134-133). Joint rule of
+Jugurtha, Adherbal and Hiempsal (B.C. 118). Murder of Hiempsal (_circa_
+116 B.C.); war between Jugurtha and Adherbal. Both kings send envoys to
+Rome; the appeal of Adherbal. Decision of the senate. Numidia divided
+between the claimants. Renewal of the war between Jugurtha and Adherbal
+(_circa_ 114 B.C.). Siege of Cirta (B.C. 112). Embassy from Rome
+neglected by Jugurtha. Renewed appeal of Adherbal. Another commission
+sent by Rome. Surrender of Cirta and murder of Adherbal. Massacre of
+Italian traders. Its influence on the commercial classes at Rome;
+protest by Memmius. Declaration of war against Jugurtha. Command of
+Bestia in Numidia (B.C. III). Attitude of Bocchus of Mauretania.
+Negotiations of Bestia with Jugurtha; conclusion of peace. Excitement in
+Rome on the news of the agreement with Jugurtha. Activity of Memmius.
+Jugurtha induced to come to Rome (B.C. III). Jugurtha at Rome; the scene
+at the Contio. Murder of Massiva. Jugurtha leaves Rome and the war is
+renewed, 365. Spurius Albinus in Numidia. He returns to Rome leaving
+Aulus Albinus in command. Enterprise of Aulus Albinus; his defeat and
+compact with Jugurtha (B.C. 109). Reception of the news at Rome; the
+senate invalidates the treaty. Return of Spurius Albinus to Africa. The
+Mamilian Commission (B.C. 110). Metellus appointed to Numidia
+(B.C. 109).
+
+CHAPTER VII: Metellus restores discipline in the army. Jugurtha attempts
+negotiation; Metellus intrigues with the envoys. First campaign of
+Metellus (B.C. 109). Seizure of Vaga. Battle of the Muthul. Reception of
+the news at Rome. Second campaign of Metellus (B.C. 108). Siege of Zama.
+Correspondence of Metellus with Bomilcar. Negotiations with Jugurtha.
+Discontent in the province of Africa at the progress of the war;
+ambitions of Marius. Plans for securing the command for Marius. Massacre
+of the Roman garrison at Vaga. Recovery of Vaga by Metellus. Trial and
+execution of Turpilius, Intrigues of Bomilcar. Bomilcar put to death by
+Jugurtha. Marius returns to Rome. His election to the consulship (B.C.
+108 or 107); Numidia assigned as his province. Enrolment of the Capite
+Censi in the legions. Metellus's expedition to Thala (B.C. 107); capture
+of the town, Leptis Major appeals for, and receives, Roman help.
+Jugurtha finds help amongst the Gaetulians. Junction of Jugurtha and
+Bocchus. Metellus moves to Cirta. Close of Metellus's command.
+
+CHAPTER VIII: Marius arrives in Africa (B.C. 107). Return of Metellus to
+Rome: his triumph. First campaign of Marius. Expedition to Capsa and
+destruction of the town. Second campaign of Marius (B.C. 106);
+operations on the Muluccha. Arrival of Sulla with cavalry from Italy.
+Early career of Sulla. Renewed coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus.
+Retirement of Marius on Cirta; battles on the route. Marius approached
+by Bocchus; Sulla and Manlius sent to interview Bocchus. Envoys from
+Bocchus reach Sulla in the Roman winter-camp (B.C. 105). Armistice made
+with Bocchus; he is then granted conditional terms of alliance by the
+Roman senate. The mission of Sulla to Bocchus. The advocates of Numidia
+and Rome at the Mauretanian court. Sulla urges Bocchus to surrender
+Jugurtha. Betrayal of the Numidian king; conclusion of the war;
+settlement of Numidia. Fate of Jugurtha. Triumph of Marius. Lessons of
+the Numidian War. Growing rivalry between Marius and Sulla. Internal
+politics of Rome; reaction in favour of the nobility; election of
+Serranus and Caepio (B.C. 107). The judiciary law of Caepio (B.C. 106).
+The measure supported by Crassus. Reaction against the proposal; victory
+of the Equites; renewed coalition against the senate due to the conduct
+of the campaign in the North. The consular elections for the year 105
+B.C. Effect of the defeat at Arausio (6th Oct. 105 B.C.). Election of
+Marius to a second consulship.
+
+
+MAPS
+
+The Wäd Mellag and the surrounding territory.
+Numidia and the Roman Province of Africa.
+Titles of modern works referred to in the notes.
+
+
+     _Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
+        Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
+      Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
+        Or Love in a golden bowl?_
+                                        BLAKE
+
+
+
+
+A HISTORY OF ROME
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The period of Roman history on which we now enter is, like so many that
+had preceded it, a period of revolt, directly aimed against the existing
+conditions of society and, through the means taken to satisfy the fresh
+wants and to alleviate the suddenly realised, if not suddenly created,
+miseries of the time, indirectly affecting the structure of the body
+politic. The difference between the social movement of the present and
+that of the past may be justly described as one of degree, in so far as
+there was not a single element of discontent visible in the revolution
+commencing with the Gracchi and ending with Caesar that had not been
+present in the earlier epochs of social and political agitation. The
+burden of military service, the curse of debt, the poverty of an
+agrarian proletariate, the hunger for land, the striving of the artisan
+and the merchant after better conditions of labour and of trade--the
+separate cries of discontent that find their unison in a protest against
+the monopoly of office and the narrow or selfish rule of a dominant
+class, and thus gain a significance as much political as social--all
+these plaints had filled the air at the time when Caius Licinius near
+the middle of the fourth century, and Appius Claudius at its close,
+evolved their projects of reform. The cycle of a nation's history can
+indeed never be broken as long as the character of the nation remains
+the same. And the average Roman of the middle of the second century
+before our era[1] was in all essential particulars the Roman of the
+times of Appius and of Licinius, or even of the epoch when the ten
+commissioners had published the Tables which were to stamp its perpetual
+character on Roman law. He was in his business relations either
+oppressor or oppressed, either hammer or anvil. In his private life he
+was an individualist whose sympathies were limited to the narrow circle
+of his dependants; he was a trader and a financier whose humanitarian
+instincts were subordinated to a code of purely commercial morality, and
+who valued equity chiefly because it presented the line of least
+resistance and facilitated the conduct of his industrial operations.
+Like all individualists, he was something of an anarchist, filled with
+the idea, which appeared on every page of the record of his ancestors
+and the history of his State, that self-help was the divinely given
+means of securing right, that true social order was the issue of
+conflicting claims pushed to their breaking point until a temporary
+compromise was agreed on by the weary combatants; but he was hampered in
+his democratic leanings by the knowledge that democracy is the fruit of
+individual self-restraint and subordination to the common
+will--qualities of which he could not boast and symbols of a prize which
+he would not have cared to attain at the expense of his peculiar ideas
+of personal freedom--and he was forced, in consequence of this
+abnegation, to submit to an executive government as strong, one might
+almost say as tyrannous, as any which a Republic has ever displayed--a
+government which was a product of the restless spirit of self-assertion
+and self-aggrandisement which the Roman felt in himself, and therefore
+had sufficient reason to suspect in others.
+
+The Roman was the same; but his environment had changed more startlingly
+during the last fifty or sixty years than in all the centuries that had
+preceded them in the history of the Republic. The conquest of Italy had,
+it Is true, given to his city much that was new and fruitful in the
+domains of religion, of art, of commerce and of law. Bat these
+accretions merely entailed the fuller realisation of a tendency which
+had been marked from the earliest stage of Republican history--the
+tendency to fit isolated elements in the marvellous discoveries made by
+the heaven-gifted race of the Greeks into a framework that was
+thoroughly national and Roman. Ideas had been borrowed, and these ideas
+certainly resulted in increased efficiency and therefore in increased
+wealth. But the gross material of Hellenism, whether as realised in
+intellectual ideas or (the prize that appealed more immediately to the
+practical Roman with his concrete mind) in tangible things, had not been
+seized as a whole as the reward of victory: and no great attempt had
+been made in former ages to assimilate the one or to enjoy the other.
+The nature of the material rewards which had been secured by the epochs
+of Italian conquest had indeed made such assimilation or enjoyment
+impossible. They would have been practicable only in a state which
+possessed a fairly complete urban life; and the effect of the wars which
+Rome waged with her neighbours in the peninsula had been to make the
+life of the average citizen more purely agricultural than it had been in
+the early Republic, perhaps even in the epoch of the Kings. The course
+of a nation's political, social and intellectual history is determined
+very largely by the methods which it adopts for its own expansion at the
+inevitable moment when its original limits are found to be too narrow to
+satisfy even the most modest needs of a growing population. The method
+chosen will depend chiefly on geographical circumstances and on the
+military characteristics of the people which are indissolubly connected
+with these. When the city of Old Greece began to feel the strength of
+its growing manhood, and the developing hunger which was both the sign
+and the source of that strength, it looked askance at the mountain line
+which cut it off from the inland regions, it turned hopeful eyes on the
+sea that sparkled along its coasts; it manned its ships and sent its
+restless youth to a new and distant home which was but a replica of the
+old. The results of this maritime adventure were the glories of urban
+life and the all-embracing sweep of Hellenism. The progress of Roman
+enterprise had been very different. Following the example of all
+conquering Italian peoples,[2] and especially of the Sabellian invaders
+whose movements immediately preceded their own, the Romans adopted the
+course of inland expansion, and such urban unity as they had possessed
+was dissipated over the vast tract of territory on which the legions
+were settled, or to which the noble sent his armed retainers, nominally
+to keep the land as the public domain of Rome, in reality to hold it for
+himself and his descendants. At a given moment (which is as clearly
+marked in Roman as in Hellenic history) the possibility of such
+expansion ceased, and the necessity for its cessation was as fully
+exhibited in the policy of the government as in the tastes of the
+people. No Latin colony had been planted later than the year 181, no
+Roman colony later than 157,[3] and the senate showed no inclination to
+renew schemes for the further assignment of territory amongst the
+people. There were many reasons for this indifference to colonial
+enterprise. In the first place, although colonisation had always been a
+relief to the proletariate and one of the means regularly adopted by
+those in power for assuaging its dangerous discontent, yet the
+government had always regarded the social aspect of this method of
+expansion as subservient to the strategic.[4] This strategic motive no
+longer existed, and a short-sighted policy, which looked to the present,
+not to the future, to men of the existing generation and not to their
+sons, may easily have held that a colony, which was not needed for the
+protection of the district in which it was settled, injuriously affected
+the fighting-strength of Rome. The maritime colonies which had been
+established from the end of the great Latin war down to the close of the
+second struggle with Carthage claimed, at least in many cases, exemption
+from military service,[5] and a tradition of this kind tends to linger
+when its justification is a thing of the past. But, even if such a view
+could be repudiated by the government, it was certain that the levy
+became a more serious business the greater the number of communities on
+which the recruiting commander had to call, and it was equally manifest
+that the veteran who had just been given an allotment on which to
+establish his household gods might be inclined to give a tardy response
+to the call to arms. The Latin colony seemed a still greater anachronism
+than the military colony of citizens. The member of such a community,
+although the state which he entered enjoyed large privileges of
+autonomy, ceased to be a Roman citizen in respect to political rights,
+and even at a time when self-government had been valued almost more than
+citizenship, the government had only been able to carry out its project
+of pushing these half-independent settlements into the heart of Italy by
+threatening with a pecuniary penalty the soldier who preferred his
+rights as a citizen to the benefits which he might receive as an
+emigrant.[6] Now that the great wars had brought their dubious but at
+least potential profits to every member of the Roman community, and the
+gulf between the full citizens and the members of the allied communities
+was ever widening, it was more than doubtful whether a member of the
+former class, however desperate his plight, would readily condescend to
+enroll himself amongst the latter. But, even apart from these
+considerations, it must have seemed very questionable to any one, who
+held the traditional view that colonisation should subserve the purposes
+of the State, whether the landless citizen of the time could be trusted
+to fulfil his duties as an emigrant. As early as the year 186 the consul
+Spurius Postumius, while making a judicial tour in Italy, had found to
+his surprise that colonies on both the Italian coasts, Sipontum on the
+Upper, and Buxentum on the Lower Sea, had been abandoned by their
+inhabitants: and a new levy had to be set on foot to replace the
+faithless emigrants who had vanished into space.[7] As time went on the
+risk of such desertion became greater, partly from the growing
+difficulty of maintaining an adequate living on the land, partly from
+the fact that the more energetic spirits, on whom alone the hopes of
+permanent settlement could depend, found a readier avenue to wealth and
+a more tempting sphere for the exercise of manly qualities in the
+attractions of a campaign that seemed to promise plunder and glory,
+especially when these prizes were accompanied by no exorbitant amount of
+suffering or toil. Thus when it had become known that Scipio Africanus
+would accompany his brother in the expedition against Antiochus, five
+thousand veterans, both citizens and allies, who had served their full
+time under the command of the former, offered their voluntary services
+to the departing consul,[8] and nineteen' years later the experience
+which had been gained of the wealth that might be reaped from a campaign
+in Macedonia and Asia drew many willing recruits to the legions which
+were to be engaged in the struggle with Perseus.[9] The
+semi-professional soldier was in fact springing up, the man of a spirit
+adventurous and restless such as did not promise contentment with the
+small interests and small rewards of life in an Italian outpost. But, if
+the days of formal colonisation were over, why might not the concurrent
+system be adopted of dividing conquered lands amongst poorer citizens
+without the establishment of a new political settlement or any strict
+limitation of the number of the recipients? This 'viritane' assignation
+had always run parallel to that which assumed the form of colonisation;
+it merely required the existence of land capable of distribution, and
+the allotments granted might be considered merely a means of affording
+relief to the poorer members of existing municipalities. The system was
+supposed to have existed from the times of the Kings; it was believed to
+have formed the basis of the first agrarian law, that of Spurius Cassius
+in 486;[10] it had been employed after the conquest of the Volscians in
+the fourth century and that of the Sabines in the third;[11] it had
+animated the agrarian legislation of Flaminius when in 232 he romanised
+the _ager Gallicus_ south of Ariminum without planting a single colony
+in this region;[12] and a date preceding the Gracchan legislation by
+only forty years had seen the resumption of the method, when some Gallic
+and Ligurian land, held to be the spoil of war and declared to be
+unoccupied, had been parcelled out into allotments, of ten _jugera_ to
+Roman citizens and of three to members of the Latin name.[13] But to the
+government of the period with which we are concerned the continued
+pursuance of such a course, if it suggested itself at all, appealed in
+the light of a policy that was unfamiliar, difficult and objectionable.
+It is probable that this method of assignment, even in its later phases,
+had been tinctured with the belief that, like the colony, it secured a
+system of military control over the occupied district: and that the
+purely social object of land-distribution, if it had been advanced at
+all, was considered to be characteristic rather of the demagogue than
+the statesman. From a strategic point of view such a measure was
+unnecessary; from an economic, it assumed, not only a craving for
+allotments amongst the poorer class, of which there was perhaps little
+evidence, but a belief, which must have been held to be sanguine in the
+extreme, that these paupers, when provided for, would prove to be
+efficient farmers capable of maintaining a position which many of them
+had already lost. Again, if such an assignment was to be made, it should
+be made on land immediately after it had passed from the possession of
+the enemy to that of Rome; if time had elapsed since the date of
+annexation, it was almost certain that claims of some kind had been
+asserted over the territory, and shadowy as these claims might be, the
+Roman law had, in the interest of the State itself, always tended to
+recognise a _de facto_ as a _de jure_ right. The claims of the allies
+and the municipalities had also to be considered; for assignments to
+Roman citizens on an extensive scale would inevitably lead to difficult
+questions about the rights which many of these townships actually
+possessed to much of the territory whose revenue they enjoyed. If the
+allies and the municipal towns did not suffer, the loss must fall on the
+Roman State itself, which derived one of its chief sources of stable and
+permanent revenue--the source which was supposed to meet the claims for
+Italian administration[14]--from its domains in Italy, on the
+contractors who collected this revenue, and on the Enterprising
+capitalists who had put their wealth and energy into the waste places to
+which they had been invited by the government, and who had given these
+devastated territories much of the value which they now possessed.
+Lastly, these enterprising possessors were strongly represented in the
+senate; the leading members of the nobility had embarked on a new system
+of agriculture, the results of which were inimical to the interest of
+the small farmer, and the conditions of which would be undermined by a
+vast system of distribution such as could alone suffice to satisfy the
+pauper proletariate. The feeling that a future agrarian law was useless
+from an economic and dangerous from a political point of view, was
+strengthened by the conviction that its proposal would initiate a war
+amongst classes, that its failure would exasperate the commons and that
+its success would inflict heavy pecuniary damage on the guardians of
+the State.
+
+Thus the simple system of territorial expansion, which had continued in
+an uninterrupted course from the earliest days of conquest, might be now
+held to be closed for ever. From the point of view of the Italian
+neighbours of Rome it was indeed ample time that such a closing period
+should be reached. If we possessed a map of Italy which showed the
+relative proportions of land in Italy and Cisalpine Gaul which had been
+seized by Rome or left to the native cities or tribes, we should
+probably find that the possessions of the conquering State, whether
+occupied by colonies, absorbed by the gift of citizenship, or held as
+public domain, amounted to nearly one half of the territory of the whole
+peninsula.[15] The extension of such progress was clearly impossible
+unless war were to be provoked with the Confederacy which furnished so
+large a proportion of the fighting strength of Rome; but, if it was
+confessed that extension on the old lines was now beyond reach of
+attainment and yet it was agreed that the existing resources of Italy
+did not furnish an adequate livelihood to the majority of the citizens
+of Rome, but two methods of expansion could be thought of as practicable
+in the future. One was agrarian assignation at the expense either of the
+State or of the richer classes or of both; the other was enterprise
+beyond the sea. But neither of these seemed to deserve government
+intervention, or regulation by a scheme which would satisfy either
+immediate or future wants. The one was repudiated, as we have already
+shown, on account of its novelty, its danger and its inconvenience; the
+other seemed emphatically a matter for private enterprise and above all
+for private capital. It could never be available for the very poor
+unless it assumed the form of colonisation, and the senate looked on
+transmarine colonisation with the eye of prejudice.[16] It took a
+different view of the enterprise of the foreign speculator and merchant;
+this it regarded with an air of easy indifference. Their wealth was a
+pillar on which the State might lean in times of emergency, but, until
+the disastrous effects of commercial enterprise on foreign policy were
+more clearly seen, it was considered to be no business of the government
+either to help or to hinder the wealthy and enterprising Roman in his
+dealings with the peoples of the subject or protected lands.
+
+Rome, if by this name we mean the great majority of Roman citizens, was
+for the first time for centuries in a situation in which all movement
+and all progress seemed to be denied. The force of the community seemed
+to have spent itself for the time; as a force proceeding from the whole
+community it had perhaps spent itself for ever. A section of the
+nominally sovereign people might yet be welded into a mighty instrument
+that would carry victory to the ends of the earth, and open new channels
+of enterprise both for the men who guided their movements and for
+themselves. But for the moment the State was thrown back upon itself; it
+held that an end had been attained, and the attainment naturally
+suggested a pause, a long survey of the results which had been reached
+by these long years of struggle with the hydra-headed enemy abroad. The
+close of the third Macedonian war is said by a contemporary to have
+brought with it a restful sense of security such as Rome could not have
+felt for centuries.[17] Such a security gave scope to the rich to enjoy
+the material advantages which their power had acquired; but it also gave
+scope to the poor to reflect on the strange harvest which the conquest
+of the great powers of the world had brought to the men whose stubborn
+patience had secured the peace which they were given neither the means
+nor the leisure to enjoy. The men who evaded or had completed their
+service in the legions lacked the means, although they had the leisure;
+the men who still obeyed the summons to arms lacked both, unless the
+respite between prolonged campaigns could be called leisure, or the
+booty, hardly won and quickly squandered, could be described as means.
+Even after Carthage had been destroyed Rome, though doubly safe, was
+still busy enough with her legions; the government of Spain was one
+protracted war, and proconsuls were still striving to win triumphs for
+themselves by improving on their predecessors' work.[18] But such war
+could not absorb the energy or stimulate the interest of the people as a
+whole. The reaction which had so often followed a successful campaign,
+when the discipline of the camp had been shaken off and the duties of
+the soldier were replaced by the wants of the citizen, was renewed on a
+scale infinitely larger than before--a scale proportioned to the
+magnitude of the strain which had been removed and the greatness of the
+wants which had been revived. The cries for reform may have been of the
+old familiar type but their increased intensity and variety may almost
+be held to have given them a difference of quality. There is a stage at
+which a difference of degree seems to amount to one of kind: and this
+stage seems certainly to have been reached in the social problems
+presented by the times. In the old days of the struggle between the
+orders the question of privilege had sometimes overshadowed the purely
+economic issue, and although a close scrutiny of those days of turmoil
+shows that the dominant note in the conflict was often a mere pretext
+meant to serve the personal ambition of the champions of the Plebs, yet
+the appearance rather than the reality of an issue imposes on the
+imagination of the mob, and political emancipation had been thought a
+boon even when hard facts had shown that its greater prizes had fallen
+to a small and selfish minority. Now, however, there could be no
+illusion. There was nothing but material wants on one side, there was
+nothing but material power on the other. The intellectual claims which
+might be advanced to justify a monopoly of office and of wealth, could
+be met by an intellectual superiority on the part of a demagogue
+clamouring for confiscation. The ultimate basis of the life of the State
+was for the first time to be laid bare and subjected to a merciless
+scrutiny; it remained to be seen which of the two great forces of
+society would prevail; the force of habit which had so often blinded the
+Roman to his real needs; or the force of want which, because it so
+seldom won a victory over his innate conservatism, was wont, when that
+victory had been won, to sweep him farther on the path of reckless and
+inconsistent reform than it would have carried a race better endowed
+with the gift of testing at every stage of progress the ends and needs
+of the social organism considered as a whole.
+
+An analysis of social discontent at any period of history must take the
+form of an examination of the wants engendered by the age, and of the
+adequacy or inadequacy of their means of satisfaction. If we turn our
+attention first to the forces of society which were in possession of the
+fortress and were to be the object of attack, we shall find that the
+ruling desires which animated these men of wealth and influence were
+chiefly the product of the new cosmopolitan culture which the victorious
+city had begun to absorb in the days when conquest and diplomacy had
+first been carried across the seas. To this she fell a willing victim
+when the conquered peoples, bending before the rude force which had but
+substituted a new suzerainty for an old and had scarcely touched their
+inner life, began to display before the eyes of their astonished
+conquerors the material comfort and the spiritual charm which, in the
+case of the contact of a potent but narrow civilisation with one that is
+superbly elastic and strong in the very elegance of its physical
+debility, can always turn defeat into victory. But the student who
+begins his investigation of the new Roman life with the study of Roman
+society as it existed in the latter half of the second century before
+our era, cannot venture to gather up the threads of the purely
+intellectual and moral influences which were created by the new
+Hellenistic civilisation. He feels that he is only at the beginning of a
+process, that he lacks material for his picture, that the illustrative
+matter which he might employ is to be found mainly in the literary
+records of a later age, and that his use of this matter would but
+involve him in the historical sins of anticipation and anachronism. Of
+some phases of the war between the old spirit and the new we shall find
+occasion to speak; but the culminating point attained by the blend of
+Greek with Roman elements is the only one which is clearly visible to
+modern eyes. This point, however, was reached at the earliest only in
+the second half of the next century. It was only then that the fusion of
+the seemingly discordant elements gave birth to the new "Romanism,"
+which was to be the ruling civilisation of Italy and the Western
+provinces and, in virtue of the completeness of the amalgamation and the
+novelty of the product, was itself to be contrasted and to live for
+centuries in friendly rivalry with the more uncompromising Hellenism of
+Eastern lands. But some of the economic effects of the new influences
+claim our immediate attention, for we are engaged in the study of the
+beginnings of an economic revolution, and an analysis must therefore be
+attempted of some of the most pressing needs and some of the keenest
+desires which were awakened by Hellenism, either in the purer dress
+which old Greece had given it or in the more gorgeous raiment which it
+had assumed during its sojourn in the East.
+
+A tendency to treat the city as the home, the country only as a means of
+refreshment and a sphere of elegant retirement during that portion of
+the year when the excitement of the urban season, its business and its
+pleasure, were suspended, began to be a marked feature of the life of
+the upper classes. The man of affairs and the man of high finance were
+both compelled to have their domicile in the town, and, if agriculture
+was still the staple or the supplement of their wealth, the needs of the
+estate had to be left to the supervision of the resident bailiff.[19]
+This concentration of the upper classes in the city necessarily entailed
+a great advance in the price and rental of house property within the
+walls. It is true that the reckless prices paid for houses, especially
+for country villas, by the grandees and millionaires of the next
+generation,[20] had not yet been reached; but the indications with which
+we are furnished of the general rise of prices for everything in Rome
+that could be deemed desirable by a cultivated taste,[21] show that the
+better class of house property must already have yielded large returns,
+whether it were sold or let, and we know that poor scions of the
+nobility, if business or pleasure induced them to spend a portion of the
+year in Rome, had soon to climb the stairs of flats or lodgings.[22] The
+pressure for room led to the piling of storey on storey. On The roof of
+old houses new chambers were raised, which could be reached by an
+outside stair, and either served to accommodate the increased retinue of
+the town establishment or were let to strangers who possessed no
+dwelling of their own;[23] the still larger lodging-houses or "islands,"
+which derived their name from their lofty isolation from neighbouring
+buildings,[24] continued to spring up, and even private houses soon came
+to attain a height which had to be restrained by the intervention of the
+law. An ex-consul and augur was called on by the censors of 125 to
+explain the magnitude of a villa which he had raised, and the altitude
+of the structure exposed him not only to the strictures of the guardians
+of morals but to a fine imposed by a public court.[25] Great changes
+were effected in the interior structure of the houses of the
+wealthy--changes excused by a pardonable desire for greater comfort and
+rendered necessary both by the growing formality of life and the large
+increase in the numbers of the resident household, but tending, when
+once adopted, to draw the father of the family into that most useless
+type of extravagance which takes the form of a craze for building. The
+Hall or Atrium had once been practically the house. It opened on the
+street. It contained the family bed and the kitchen fire. The smoke
+passed through a hole in the roof and begrimed the family portraits that
+looked down on the members of the household gathered round the hearth
+for their common meal. The Hall was the chief bedroom, the kitchen, the
+dining-room and the reception room, and it was also the only avenue from
+the street to the small courtyard at the back. The houses of the great
+had hitherto differed from those of the poor chiefly in dimensions and
+but very slightly in structure. The home of the wealthy patrician had
+simply been on a larger scale of primitive discomfort; and if his large
+parlour built of timber could accommodate a vast host of clients, the
+bed and the cooking pots were still visible to every visitor. The chief
+of the early innovations had been merely a low portico, borrowed from
+the Greeks by the Etruscans and transmitted by them to Rome, which ran
+round the courtyard, was divided into little cells and chambers, and
+served to accommodate the servants of the house.[26] But now fashion
+dictated that the doorway should not front the street but should be
+parted from it by a vestibule, in which the early callers gathered
+before they were admitted to the hall of audience. The floor of the
+Atrium was no longer the common passage to the regions at the back, but
+a special corridor lying either on one or on both sides of the Hall[27]
+led past the Study or Tablinum, immediately behind it, to the inner
+court beyond. Even the sanctity of the nuptial couch could not continue
+to give it the publicity which was irksome to the taste of an age which
+had acquired notions of the dignity of seclusion, of the comfort that
+was to be found in retirement, and of the convenience of separating the
+chambers that were used for public from those which were employed for
+merely private purposes. The chief bedrooms were shifted to the back,
+and the sides of the courtyard were no longer the exclusive abode of the
+dependants of the household. The common hearth could no longer serve as
+the sphere of the culinary operations of an expensive cook with his
+retinue of menials; the cooking fire was removed to one of the rooms
+near the back-gate of the house, which finally became an ample kitchen
+replete with all the imported means of satisfying the growing luxury of
+the table; and the member of the family loitering in the hall, or the
+visitor admitted through its portals, was spared the annoyances of
+strong smells and pungent smoke. The Roman family also discovered the
+discomfort of dining in a large and scantily furnished room, not too
+well lit and accessible to the intrusions of the chance domestic and the
+caller. It was deemed preferable to take the common meal in a light and
+airy upper chamber, and the new type of Coenaculum satisfied at once the
+desire for personal comfort and for that specialisation in the use of
+apartments which is one of the chief signs of an advancing material
+civilisation. The great hall had become the show-room of the house, but
+even for this purpose its dimensions proved too small. Such was the
+quantity of curios and works of art collected by the conquering or
+travelled Roman that greater space was needed for the exhibition of
+their rarity or splendour. This space was gained by the removal from the
+Atrium of all the domestic obstacles with which it had once been
+cumbered. It might now be made slightly smaller in its proportion to the
+rest of the house and yet appear far more ample than before. The space
+by which its sides were diminished could now be utilised for the
+building of two wings or Alae, which served the threefold purpose of
+lighting the hall from the sides, of displaying to better advantage, as
+an oblong chamber always does, the works of art which the lord of the
+mansion or his butler[28] displayed to visitor or client, and lastly of
+serving as a gallery for the family portraits, which were finally
+removed from the Atrium, to be seen to greater advantage and in a better
+light on the walls of the wings. These now displayed the family tree
+through painted lines which connected the little shrines holding the
+inscribed _imagines_ of the great ancestors of the house.[29] It is also
+possible that the Alae served as rooms for more private audiences than
+were possible in the Atrium.[30] From the early morning crowd which
+thronged the hall individuals or groups might have been detached by the
+butler, and led to the presence of the great statesman or pleader who
+paced the floor in the retirement of one of these long side-galleries.
+[31] Business of a yet more private kind was transacted in the still
+greater security of the Tablinum, the archive room and study of the
+house. Here were kept, not only the family records and the family
+accounts, but such of the official registers and papers as a magistrate
+needed to have at hand during his year of office.[32] The domestic
+transaction of official business was very large at Rome, for the State
+had given its administrators not even the skeleton of a civil service,
+and it was in this room that the consul locked himself up with his
+quaestor and his scribes, as it was here that, as a good head of the
+family and a careful business man, he carefully perused the record of
+income and expenditure, of gains and losses, with his skilled Greek
+accountant.
+
+The whole tendency of the reforms in domestic architecture was to
+differentiate between the public and private life of the man of business
+or affairs. His public activity was confined to the forepart of the
+house; his repose, his domestic joys, and his private pleasures were
+indulged in the buildings which lay behind the Atrium and its wings. As
+each of the departments of life became more ambitious, the sphere for
+the exercise of the one became more magnificent, and that which fostered
+the other the scene of a more perfect, because more quiet, luxury. The
+Atrium was soon to become a palatial hall adorned with marble
+colonnades;[33] the small yard with its humble portico at the back was
+to be transformed into the Greek Peristyle, a court open to the sky and
+surrounded by columns, which enclosed a greenery of shrubs and trees and
+an atmosphere cooled and freshened by the constant play of fountains.
+The final form of the Roman house was an admirable type of the new
+civilisation. It was Roman and yet Greek[34]--Roman in the grand front
+that it, presented to the world, Greek in the quiet background of
+thought and sentiment.
+
+The growing splendour of the house demanded a number and variety in its
+human servitors that had not been dreamed of in a simpler age. The slave
+of the farm, with his hard hands and weather-beaten visage, could no
+longer be brought by his elegant master to the town and exhibited to a
+fastidious society as the type of servant that ministered to his daily
+needs. The urban and rustic family were now kept wholly distinct; it was
+only when some child of marked grace and beauty was born on the farm,
+that it was transferred to the mansion as containing a promise that
+would be wasted on rustic toil.[35] In every part of the establishment
+the taste and wealth of the owner might be tested by the courtliness and
+beauty of its living instruments. The chained dog at the gate had been
+replaced by a human janitor, often himself in chains.[36] The visitor,
+when he had passed the porter, was received by the butler in the hall,
+and admitted to the master's presence by a series of footmen and ushers,
+the show servants of the fore-part of the house, men of the impassive
+dignity and obsequious repose that servitude but strengthens in the
+Oriental mind.[37] In the penetralia of the household each need created
+by the growing ideal of comfort and refinement required its separate
+band of ministers. The body of the bather was rubbed and perfumed by
+experts in the art; the service of the table was in the hands of men who
+had made catering and the preparation of delicate viands the sole
+business of their lives. The possession of a cook, who could answer to
+the highest expectations of the age, was a prize beyond the reach of all
+but the most wealthy; for such an expert the sum of four talents had to
+be paid;[38] he was the prize of the millionaire, and families of more
+moderate means, if they wished a banquet to be elegantly served, were
+forced to hire the temporary services of an accomplished artist.[39] The
+housekeeper,[40] who supervised the resources of the pantry, guided the
+destinies of the dinner in concert with the _chef_; and each had under
+him a crowd of assistants of varied names and carefully differentiated
+functions.[41] The business of the outer world demanded another class of
+servitors. There were special valets charged with the functions of
+taking notes and invitations to their masters' friends; there was the
+valued attendant of quick eye and ready memory, an incredibly rich
+store-house of names and gossip, an impartial observer of the ways and
+weaknesses of every class, who could inform his master of the name and
+attributes of the approaching stranger. There were the lackeys who
+formed the nucleus of the attendant retinue of clients for the man when
+he walked abroad, the boys of exquisite form with slender limbs and
+innocent faces, who were the attendant spirits of the lady as she passed
+in her litter down the street. The muscles of the stouter slaves now
+offered facilities for easy journeying that had been before unknown. The
+Roman official need not sit his horse during the hot hours of the day as
+he passed through the hamlets of Italy, and the grinning rustic could
+ask, as he watched the solemn and noiseless transit of the bearers,
+whether the carefully drawn curtains did not conceal a corpse.[42]
+
+The internal luxury of the household was as fully exhibited in lifeless
+objects as in living things. Rooms were scented with fragrant perfumes
+and hung with tapestries of great price and varied bloom. Tables were
+set with works of silver, ivory and other precious material, wrought
+with the most delicate skill. Wine of moderate flavour was despised;
+Falernian and Chian were the only brands that the true connoisseur would
+deem worthy of his taste. A nice discrimination was made in the
+qualities of the rarer kinds of fish, and other delicacies of the table
+were sought in proportion to the difficulty of their attainment. The
+fashions of dress followed the tendency of the age; the rarity of the
+material, its fineness of texture, the ease which it gave to the body,
+were the objects chiefly sought. Young men were seen in the Forum in
+robes of a material as soft as that worn by women and almost transparent
+in its thinness. Since all these instruments of pleasure, and the luxury
+that appealed to ambition even more keenly than to taste, were pursued
+with a ruinous competition, prices were forced up to an incredible
+degree. An amphora of Falernian wine cost one hundred denarii, a jar of
+Pontic salt-fish four hundred; a young Roman would often give a talent
+for a favourite, and boys who ranked in the highest class for beauty of
+face and elegance of form fetched even a higher price than this.[43] Few
+could have been inclined to contradict Cato when he said in the
+senate-house that Rome was the only city in the world where a jar of
+preserved fish from the Black Sea cost more than a yoke of oxen, and a
+boy-favourite fetched a higher price than a yeoman's farm.[44] One of
+the great objects of social ambition was to have a heavier service of
+silver-plate than was possessed by any of one's neighbours. In the good
+old days,--days not so long past, but severed from the present by a gulf
+that circumstances had made deeper than the years--the Roman had had an
+official rather than a personal pride in the silver which he could
+display before the respectful eyes of the distinguished foreigner who
+was the guest of the State; and the Carthaginian envoys had been struck
+by the similarity between the silver services which appeared at the
+tables of their various hosts. The experience led them to a higher
+estimate of Roman brotherhood than of Roman wealth, and the silver-plate
+that had done such varied duty was at least responsible for a moral
+triumph.[45] Only a few years before the commencement of the first war
+with Carthage Rufinus a consular had been expelled from the senate for
+having ten pounds of the wrought metal in his keeping,[46] and Scipio
+Aemilianus, a man of the present age, but an adherent of the older
+school, left but thirty-two pounds' weight to his heir. Less than forty
+years later the younger Livius Drusus was known to be in possession of
+plate that weighed ten thousand pounds,[47] and the accretions to the
+primitive hoard which must have been made by but two or three members of
+this family may serve as an index of the extent to which this particular
+form of the passion for display had influenced the minds and practice of
+the better-class Romans of the day.
+
+There were other objects, valued for their intrinsic worth as much as
+for the distinction conveyed by their possession, which attracted the
+ambition and strained the revenues of the fashionable man. Works of art
+must once have been cheap on the Roman market; for, even if we refuse to
+credit the story of Mummius' estimate of the prize which fallen Corinth
+had delivered into his hands,[48] yet the transhipment of cargoes of the
+priceless treasures to Rome is at least an historic fact, and the
+Gracchi must themselves have seen the trains of wagons bearing their
+precious freight along the Via Sacra to the Capitol. The spoils of the
+generous conqueror were lent to adorn the triumphs, the public buildings
+and even the private houses, of others; but much that had been yielded
+by Corinth had become the property neither of the general nor of the
+State. Polybius had seen the Roman legionaries playing at draughts on
+the Dionysus of Aristeides and many another famous canvas which had been
+torn from its place and thrown as a carpet upon the ground;[49] but many
+a camp follower must have had a better estimate of the material value of
+the paintings of the Hellenic masters, and the cupidity of the Roman
+collector must often have been satisfied at no great cost to his
+resources. The extent to which a returning army could disseminate its
+acquired tastes and distribute its captured goods had been shown some
+forty years before the fall of Corinth when Manlius brought his legions
+back from the first exploration of the rich cities of Asia. Things and
+names, of which the Roman had never dreamed, soon gratified the eye and
+struck the ear with a familiar sound. He learnt to love the bronze
+couches meant for the dining hall, the slender side tables with the
+strange foreign name, the delicate tissues woven to form the hangings of
+the bed or litter, the notes struck from the psalter and the harp by the
+fingers of the dancing-women of the East.[50] This was the first
+irruption of the efflorescent luxury of Eastern Hellenism; but some
+five-and-twenty years before this date Rome had received her first
+experience of the purer taste of the Greek genius in the West. The whole
+series of the acts of artistic vandalism which marked the footsteps of
+the conquering state could be traced back to the measures taken by
+Claudius Marcellus after the fall of Syracuse. The systematic plunder of
+works of art was for the first time given an official sanction, and the
+public edifices of Rome were by no means the sole beneficiaries of this
+new interpretation of the rights of war. Much of the valuable plunder
+had found its way into private houses,[51] to stimulate the envious
+cupidity of many a future governor who, cursed with the taste of a
+collector and unblessed by the opportunity of a war, would make subtle
+raids on the artistic treasures of his province a secret article of his
+administration. When the ruling classes of a nation have been
+familiarised for the larger part of a century with the easy acquisition
+of the best material treasures of the world, things that have once
+seemed luxuries come to fill an easy place in the category of accepted
+wants. But the sudden supply has stopped; the market value, which
+plunder has destroyed or lessened, has risen to its normal level;
+another burden has been added to life, there is one further stimulus to
+wealth and, so pressing is the social need, that the means to its
+satisfaction are not likely to be too diligently scrutinised before they
+are adopted.
+
+More pardonable were the tastes that were associated with the more
+purely intellectual elements in Hellenic culture--with the influence
+which the Greek rhetor or philosopher exercised in his converse with the
+stern but receptive minds of Rome, the love of books, the new lessons
+which were to be taught as to the rhythmic flow of language and the
+rhythmic movement of the limbs. The Greek adventurer was one of the most
+striking features of the epoch which immediately followed the close of
+the great wars. Later thinkers, generally of the resentfully national,
+academic and pseudo-historical type, who repudiated the amenities of
+life which they continued to enjoy, and cherished the pleasing fiction
+of the exemplary _mores_ of the ancient times, could see little in him
+but a source of unmixed evil;[52] and indeed the Oriental Greek of the
+commoner type, let loose upon the society of the poorer quarters, or
+worming his way into the confidence of some rich but uneducated master,
+must often have been the vehicle of lessons that would better have been
+unlearnt. But Italy also saw the advent of the best professors of the
+age, golden-mouthed men who spoke in the language of poetry, rhetoric
+and philosophy, and who turned from the wearisome competition of their
+own circles and the barren fields of their former labours to find a
+flattering attention, a pleasing dignity, and the means of enjoying a
+full, peaceful and leisured life in the homes of Roman aristocrats,
+thirsting for knowledge and thirsting still more for the mastery of the
+unrivalled forms in which their own deeds might be preserved and through
+which their own political and forensic triumphs might be won. Soon towns
+of Italy--especially those of the Hellenic South--would be vying with
+each other to grant the freedom of their cities and other honours in
+their gift to a young emigrant poet who hailed from Antioch, and members
+of the noblest houses would be competing for the honour of his
+friendship and for the privilege of receiving him under their roof.[53]
+The stream of Greek learning was broad and strong;[54] it bore on its
+bosom every man and woman who aimed at a reputation for elegance, for
+wit or for the deadly thrust in verbal fence which played so large a
+part in the game of politics; every one that refused to float was either
+an outcast from the best society, or was striving to win an eccentric
+reputation for national obscurantism and its imaginary accompaniment of
+honest rustic strength.
+
+Acquaintance with professors and poets led to a knowledge of books; and
+it was as necessary to store the latter as the former under the
+fashionable roof. The first private library in Rome was established by
+Aemilius Paulus, when he brought home the books that had belonged to the
+vanquished Perseus;[55] and it became as much a feature of conquest
+amongst the highly cultured to bring home a goodly store of literature
+as to gather objects of art which might merely please the sensuous taste
+and touch only the outer surface of the mind.[56]
+
+But it was deemed by no means desirable to limit the influences of the
+new culture to the minds of the mature. There was, indeed, a school of
+cautious Hellenists that might have preferred this view, and would at
+any rate have exercised a careful discrimination between those elements
+of the Greek training which would strengthen the young mind by giving it
+a wider range of vision and a new gallery of noble lives and those which
+would lead to mere display, to effeminacy, nay (who could tell?) to
+positive depravity. But this could not be the point of view of society
+as a whole. If the elegant Roman was to be half a Greek, he must learn
+during the tender and impressionable age to move his limbs and modulate
+his voice in true Hellenic wise. Hence the picture which Scipio
+Aemilianus, sane Hellenist and stout Roman, gazed at with astonished
+eyes and described in the vigorous and uncompromising language suited to
+a former censor. "I was told," he said, "that free-born boys and girls
+went to a dancing school and moved amidst disreputable professors of the
+art. I could not bring my mind to believe it; but I was taken to such a
+school myself, and Good Heavens! What did I see there! More than fifty
+boys and girls, one of them, I am ashamed to say, the son of a candidate
+for office, a boy wearing the golden boss, a lad not less than twelve
+years of age. He was jingling a pair of castanets and dancing a step
+which an immodest slave could not dance with decency." [57] Such might
+have been the reflections of a puritan had he entered a modern
+dancing-academy. We may be permitted to question the immorality of the
+exhibition thus displayed, but there can be no doubt as to the social
+ambition which it reveals--an ambition which would be perpetuated
+throughout the whole of the life of the boy with the castanets, which
+would lead him to set a high value on the polish of everything he called
+his own--a polish determined by certain rigid external standards and to
+be attained at any hazard, whether by the ruinous concealment of honest
+poverty, or the struggle for affluence even by the most
+questionable means.
+
+But the burdens on the wealth of the great were by no means limited to
+those imposed by merely social canons. Political life at Rome had always
+been expensive in so far as office was unpaid and its tenure implied
+leisure and a considerable degree of neglect of his own domestic
+concerns in the patriot who was willing to accept it. But the State had
+lately taken on itself to increase the financial expenditure which was
+due to the people without professing to meet the bill from the public
+funds. The 'State' at Rome did not mean what it would have meant in such
+a context amongst the peoples of the Hellenic world. It did not mean
+that the masses were preying on the richer classes, but that the richer
+classes were preying on themselves; and this particular form of
+voluntary self-sacrifice amongst the influential families in the senate
+was equivalent to the confession that Rome was ceasing to be an
+Aristocracy and becoming an Oligarchy, was voluntarily placing the
+claims of wealth on a par with those of birth and merit, or rather was
+insisting that the latter should not be valid unless they were
+accompanied by the former. The chief sign of the confession that
+political advancement might be purchased from the people in a legitimate
+way, was the adoption of a rule, which was established about the time of
+the First Punic War, that the cost of the public games should not be
+defrayed exclusively by the treasury.[58] It was seldom that the people
+could be brought to contribute to the expenses of the exhibitor by
+subscriptions collected from amongst themselves;[59] they were the
+recipients, not the givers of the feast, and the actual donors knew that
+the exhibition was a contest for favour, that reputations were being won
+or lost on the merits of the show, and that the successful competitor
+was laying up a store-house of gratitude which would materially aid his
+ascent to the highest prizes in the State. The personal cost, if it
+could not be wholly realised on the existing patrimony of the
+magistrate, must be assisted by gifts from friends, by loans from
+money-lenders at exorbitant rates of interest and, worst but readiest of
+all methods, by contributions, nominally voluntary but really enforced,
+from the Italian allies and the provincials. As early as the year 180
+the senate had been forced to frame a strong resolution against the
+extravagance that implied oppression;[60] but the resolution was really
+a criticism of the new methods of government; the roots of the evil (the
+burden on the magistracy, the increase in the number of the regularly
+recurring festivals) they neither cared nor ventured to remove. The
+aedileship was the particular magistracy which was saddled with this
+expenditure on account of its traditional connection with the conduct of
+the public games; and although it was neither in its curule nor plebeian
+form an obligatory step in the scale of the magistracies, yet, as it was
+held before the praetorship and the consulship, it was manifest that the
+brilliant display given to the people by the occupant of this office
+might render fruitless the efforts of a less wealthy competitor who had
+shunned its burdens.[61] The games were given jointly by the respective
+pairs of colleagues,[62] the _Ludi Romani_ being under the guidance of
+the curule,[63] the _Ludi Plebeii_ under that of the plebeian
+aediles.[64] Had these remained the only annual shows, the cost to the
+exhibitor, although great, would have been limited, But other festivals,
+which had once been occasional, had lately been made permanent. The
+games to Ceres (_Cerialia_), the remote origins of which may have dated
+back to the time of the monarchy, first appear as fully established in
+the year 202;[65] the festival to Flora (_Floralia_) dates from but 238
+B.C.,[66] but probably did not become annual until 173;[67] while the
+games to the Great Mother (_Megalesia_) followed by thirteen years the
+invitation and hospitable reception of that Phrygian goddess by the
+Romans, and became a regular feature in their calendar in 191.[68] This
+increase in the amenities of the people, every item of which falls
+within a term of fifty years, is a remarkable feature of the age which
+followed Rome's assumption of imperial power. It proved that the Roman
+was willing to bend his austere religion to the purposes of
+gratification, when he could afford the luxury, that the enjoyment of
+this luxury was considered a happy means of keeping the people in good
+temper with itself and its rulers, and that the cost of providing it was
+considered, not merely as compatible with the traditions of the existing
+regime, but as a means of strengthening those traditions by closing the
+gates of office to the poor.
+
+The types of spectacle, in which the masses took most delight, were also
+new and expensive creations. These types were chiefly furnished by the
+gladiatorial shows and the hunting of wild beasts. Even the former and
+earlier amusement had had a history of little more than a hundred years.
+It was believed to be a relic of that realistic view of the after life
+which lingered in Italy long after it had passed from the more spiritual
+civilisation of the Greeks. The men who put each other to the sword
+before the eyes of the sorrowing crowd were held to be the retinue which
+passed with the dead chieftain beyond the grave, and it was from the
+sombre rites of the Etruscans that this custom of ceremonial slaying was
+believed to have been transferred to Rome. The first year of the First
+Punic War witnessed the earliest combat that accompanied a Roman
+funeral,[69] and, although secular enjoyment rapidly took the place of
+grim funereal appreciation, and the religious belief that underlay the
+spectacle may soon have passed away, neither the State nor the relatives
+were supposed to have done due honour to the illustrious dead if his own
+decease were not followed by the death-struggle of champions from the
+rival gladiatorial schools, and men who aspired to a decent funeral made
+due provision for such combats in their wills. The Roman magistrate
+bowed to the prevalent taste, and displays of gladiators became one of
+the most familiar features of the aediles' shows. Military sentiment was
+in its favour, for it was believed to harden the nerves of the race that
+had sprung from the loins of the god of war,[70] and humane sentiment
+has never in any age been shocked at the contemporary barbarities which
+it tolerates or enjoys. But a certain element of coarseness in the
+sport, and perhaps the very fact that it was of native Italian growth,
+might have given it a short shrift, had the cultured classes really
+possessed the power of regulating the amusements of the public. Leaders
+of society would have preferred the Greek _Agôn_ with its graceful
+wrestling and its contests in the finer arts. But the Roman public would
+not be hellenised in this particular, and showed their mood when a
+musical exhibition was attempted at the triumph of Lucius Anicius Gallus
+in 167. The audience insisted that the performers should drop their
+instruments and box with one another.[71] This, although not the best,
+was yet a more tolerable type of what a contest of skill should be. It
+was natural, therefore, that the professional fighting man should become
+a far more inevitable condition of social and political success than the
+hunter or the race-horse has ever been with us. Some enterprising
+members of the nobility soon came to prefer ownership to the hire system
+and started schools of their own in which the _lanista_ was merely the
+trainer. A stranger element was soon added to the possessions of a Roman
+noble by the growing craze for the combats of wild beasts. The first
+recorded "hunt" of the kind was that given in 186 by Marcus Fulvius at
+the close of the Aetolian war when lions and panthers were exhibited to
+the wondering gaze of the people.[72] Seventeen years later two curule
+aediles furnished sixty-three African lions and forty bears and
+elephants for the Circensian games.[73] These menageries eventually
+became a public danger and the curule aedile (himself one of the chief
+offenders) was forced to frame an edict specifying the compensation for
+damage that might be committed by wild beasts in their transit through
+Italy or their residence within the towns.[74] The obligation of wealth
+to supply luxuries for the poor--a splendid feature of ancient
+civilisation in which it has ever taken precedence of that of the modern
+world--was recognised with the utmost frankness in the Rome of the day;
+but it was an obligation that had passed the limits at which it could be
+cheerfully performed as the duty of the patriot or the patron; it had
+reached a stage when its demoralising effects, both to giver and to
+receiver, were patent to every seeing eye, but when criticism of its
+vices could be met by the conclusive rejoinder that it was a vital
+necessity of the existing political situation.[75]
+
+The review which we have given of the enormous expenditure created by
+the social and political appetites of the day leads up to the
+consideration of two questions which, though seldom formulated or faced
+in their naked form, were ever present in the minds of the classes who
+were forced to deem themselves either the most responsible authors, or
+the most illustrious victims, of the existing standards both of politics
+and society. These questions were "Could the exhausting drain be
+stopped?" and "If it could not, how was it to be supplied?" A city in a
+state of high fever will always produce the would-be doctor; but the
+curious fact about the Rome of this and other days is that the doctor
+was so often the patient in another form. Just as in the government of
+the provinces the scandals of individual rule were often met by the
+severest legislation proceeding from the very body which had produced
+the evil-doers, so when remedies were suggested for the social evils of
+the city, the senate, in spite of its tendency to individual
+transgression, generally displayed the possession of a collective
+conscience. The men who formulated the standard of purity and
+self-restraint might be few in number; but, except they displayed the
+irritating activity and the uncompromising methods of a Cato, they
+generally secured the support of their peers, and the sterner the
+censor, the more gladly was he hailed as an ornament to the order. This
+guardian of morals still issued his edicts against delicacies of the
+table, foreign perfumes and expensive houses;[76] as late as the year
+169 people would hastily put out their lights when it was reported that
+Tiberius Sempronius Graccus was coming up the street on his return from
+supper, lest they should fall under the suspicion of untimely
+revelry,[77] and the sporadic activity of the censorship will find ample
+illustration in the future chapters of our work. Degradation from the
+various orders of the State was still a consequence of its
+animadversions; but a milder, more universal and probably far more
+efficacious check on luxury--the system, pursued by Cato, of adopting an
+excessive rating for articles of value[78] and thus of shifting the
+incidence of taxation from the artisan and farmer to the shoulders of
+the richest class[79]--had been taken out of its hands by the complete
+cessation of direct imposts after the Third Macedonian War.[80]
+
+Meanwhile sumptuary laws continued to be promulgated from the Rostra and
+accepted by the people. All that are known to have been initiated or to
+have been considered valid after the close of the great wars have but
+one object--an attack on the expenses of the table, a form of sensuous
+enjoyment which, on account of the ease and barbaric abundance with
+which wealth may vaunt itself in this domain, was particularly in vogue
+amongst the upper classes in Rome. Other forms of extravagance seem for
+the time to have been left untouched by legislation, for the Oppian law
+which had been due to the strain of the Second Punic War had been
+repealed after a fierce struggle in 193, and the Roman ladies might now
+adorn themselves with more than half an ounce of gold, wear robes of
+divers colours and ride in their carriages through any street they
+pleased.[81] The first enactment which attempted to control the
+wastefulness of the table was an Orchian law of 181, limiting the number
+of guests that might be invited to entertainments. Cato was consistent
+in opposing the passing of the measure and in resisting its repeal. He
+recognised a futile law when he saw it, but he did not wish this
+futility to be admitted.[82] Twenty years later[83] a Fannian law grew
+out of a decree of the senate which had enjoined that the chief men
+(_principes_) of the State should take an oath before the consuls not to
+exceed a certain limit of expense in the banquets given at the
+Megalesian Games. Strengthened with a measure which prescribed more
+harassing details than the Orchian law. The new enactment actually
+determined the value and nature of the eatables whose consumption was
+allowed. It permitted one hundred asses to be spent on the days of the
+Roman Games, the Plebeian Games and the Saturnalia, thirty asses on
+certain other festival occasions, and but ten asses (less than twice the
+daily pay of a Roman soldier) on every other meal throughout the year;
+it forbade the serving of any fowl but a single hen, and that not
+fattened; it enjoined the exclusive consumption of native wine.[84] This
+enactment was strengthened eighteen years later by a Didian law, which
+included in the threatened penalties not only the giver of the feast
+which violated the prescribed limits, but also the guests who were
+present at such a banquet. It also compelled or induced the Italian
+allies to accept the provisions of the Fannian law[85]--an unusual step
+which may show the belief that a luxury similar to that of Rome was
+weakening the resources of the confederacy, on whose strength the
+leading state was so dependent, or which may have been induced by the
+knowledge that members of the Roman nobility were taking holiday trips
+to country towns, to enjoy the delights which were prohibited at home
+and to waste their money on Italian caterers.[86]
+
+The frequency of such legislation, which we shall find renewed once
+again before the epoch of the reforms of Sulla[87] seems to prove its
+ineffectiveness,[88] and indeed the standard of comfort which it desired
+to enjoin was wholly incompatible with the circumstances of the age. The
+desire to produce uniformity[89] of standard had always been an end of
+Roman as of Greek sumptuary regulation, but what type of uniformity
+could be looked for in a community where the extremes of wealth and
+poverty were beginning to be so strongly marked, where capital was
+accumulating in the hands of the great noble and the great trader and
+being wholly withdrawn from those of the free-born peasant and artisan?
+The restriction of useless consumption was indeed favourable to the more
+productive employment of capital; but we shall soon see that this
+productive use, which had as its object the deterioration of land by
+pasturage and the purchase of servile labour, was as detrimental to the
+free citizen as the most reckless extravagance could have been. There is
+no question, however, that both the sumptuary laws and the censorian
+ordinances of the period did attempt to attain an economic as well as a
+social end; and, however mistaken their methods may have been, they
+showed some appreciation of the industrial evils of the time. The
+provision of the Fannian law in favour of native wines suggests the
+desire to help the small cultivator who had substituted vine-growing for
+the cultivation of cereals, and foreshadows the protective legislation
+of the Ciceronian period.[90] Much of this legislation, too, was
+animated by the "mercantile" theory that a State is impoverished by the
+export of the precious metals to foreign lands[91]--a view which found
+expression in a definite enactment of an earlier period which had
+forbidden gold or silver to be paid to the Celtic tribes in the north of
+Italy in exchange for the wares or slaves which they sold to Roman
+merchants.[92]
+
+Another series of laws aimed at securing the purity of an electorate
+exposed to the danger of corruption by the overwhelming influence of
+wealth. Laws against bribery, unknown in an earlier period,[93] become
+painfully frequent from the date at which Rome came into contact with
+the riches of the East. Six years after the close of the great Asiatic
+campaign the people were asked, on the authority of the senate, to
+sanction more than one act which was directed against the undue
+influence exercised at elections;[94] in 166 fresh scandals called for
+the consideration of the Council of State;[95] and the year 159 saw the
+birth of another enactment.[96] Yet the capital penalty, which seems to
+have been the consequence of the transgression of at least one of these
+laws,[97] did not deter candidates from staking their citizenship on
+their success. The still-surviving custom of clientship made the object
+of largesses difficult to establish, and the secrecy of the ballot,
+which had been introduced for elections in 139, made it impossible to
+prove that the suspicious gift had been effective and thus to construct
+a convincing case against the donor.
+
+The moral control exercised by the magistrate and the sumptuary or
+criminal ordinances expressed in acts of Parliament might serve as
+temporary palliatives to certain pronounced evils of the moment; but
+they were powerless to check the extravagance of an expenditure which
+was sanctioned by custom and in some respects actually enforced by law.
+One of the greatest of the practical needs of the new Roman was to
+increase his income in every way that might be deemed legitimate by a
+society which, even in its best days, had never been overscrupulous in
+its exploitation of the poor and had been wont to illustrate the
+sanctity of contract by visible examples of grinding oppression. The
+nature and intensity of the race for wealth differed with the needs of
+the anxious spendthrift; and in respect both to needs and to means of
+satisfaction the upper middle class was in a far more favourable
+position than its noble governors. It could spend its unfettered
+energies in the pursuit of the profits which might be derived from
+public contracts, trade, banking and money-lending, while it was not
+forced to submit to the drain created by the canvass for office and the
+exorbitant demands made by the electorate on the pecuniary resources of
+the candidate. The brilliancy of the life of the mercantile class, with
+its careless luxury and easy indifference to expenditure, set a standard
+for the nobility which was at once galling and degrading. They were
+induced to apply the measure of wealth even to members of their own
+order, and regarded it as inevitable that any one of their peers, whose
+patrimony had dwindled, should fill but a subordinate place both in
+politics and society;[98] while the means which they were sometimes
+forced to adopt in order to vie with the wealth of the successful
+contractor and promoter were, if hardly less sound from a moral point of
+view, at least far more questionable from a purely legal standpoint.
+
+A fraction of the present wealth which was in the possession of some of
+the leading families of the nobility may have been purely adventitious,
+the result of the lucky accident of command and conquest amidst a
+wealthy and pliant people. The spoils of war were, it is true, not for
+the general but for the State; yet he exercised great discretionary
+power in dealing with the movable objects, which in the case of Hellenic
+or Asiatic conquest formed one of the richest elements in the prize, and
+the average commander is not likely to have displayed the self-restraint
+and public spirit of the destroyer of Corinth. Public and military
+opinion would permit the victor to retain an ample share of the fruits
+of his prowess, and this would be increased by a type of contribution to
+which he had a peculiar and unquestioned claim. This consisted in the
+honorary offerings made by states, who found themselves at the feet of
+the victor and were eager to attract his pity and to enlist on their
+behalf his influence with the Roman government. Instances of such
+offerings are the hundred and fourteen golden crowns which were borne in
+the triumph of Titus Quinctius Flamininus,[99] those of two hundred and
+twelve pounds' weight shown in the triumph of Manlius,[100] and the
+great golden wreath of one hundred and fifty pounds which had been
+presented by the Ambraciots to Nobilior.[101] But the time had not yet
+been reached when the general on a campaign, or even the governor of a
+district which was merely disturbed by border raids, could calmly demand
+hard cash as the equivalent of the precious metal wrought into this
+useless form, and when the "coronary gold" was to be one of the regular
+perquisites of any Roman governor who claimed to have achieved military
+success.[102] Nor is it likely that the triumphant general of this
+period melted down the offerings which he might dedicate in temples or
+reserve for the gallery of his house, and we must conclude that the few
+members of the nobility who had conducted the great campaigns were but
+slightly enriched by the offerings which helpless peoples had laid at
+their feet. It would be almost truer to say that the great influx of the
+precious metals had increased the difficulties of their position; for,
+if the gold or silver took the form of artistic work which remained in
+their possession, it but exaggerated the ideal to which their standard
+of life was expected to conform; and if it assumed the shape of the
+enormous amount of specie which was poured into the coffers of the State
+or distributed amongst the legionaries, its chief effects were the
+heightening of prices and a showy appearance of a vast increase of
+wealth which corresponded to no real increase in production.
+
+But, whatever the effects of the metallic prizes of the great campaigns,
+these prizes could neither have benefited the members of the nobility as
+a whole nor, in the days of comparative peace which had followed the
+long epoch of war with wealthy powers, could they be contemplated as a
+permanent source of future capital or income. When the representative of
+the official caste looked round for modes of fruitful investment which
+might increase his revenues, his chances at first sight appeared to be
+limited by legal restrictions which expressed the supposed principles of
+his class. A Clodian law enacted at the beginning of the Second Punic
+War had provided that no senator or senator's son should own a ship of a
+burden greater than three hundred amphorae. The intention of the measure
+was to prohibit members of the governing class from taking part in
+foreign trade, as carriers, as manufacturers, or as participants in the
+great business of the contract for corn which placed provincial grain on
+the Roman market; and the ships of small tonnage which they were allowed
+to retain were intended to furnish them merely with the power of
+transporting to a convenient market the produce of their own estates in
+Italy.[103] The restriction was not imposed in a self-regarding spirit;
+it was odious to the nobility, and, as it was supported by Flaminius,
+must have been popular with the masses, who were blind to the fact that
+the restriction of a senator's energies to agriculture would be
+infinitely more disastrous to the well-being of the average citizen than
+the expenditure of those energies in trade. The restriction may have
+received the support of the growing merchant class, who were perhaps
+pleased to be rid of the competition of powerful rivals, and it
+certainly served, externally at least, to mark the distinction between
+the man of large industrial enterprises and the man whose official rank
+was supported by landed wealth--a distinction which, in the shape of the
+contrast drawn between knights and senators, appears at every turn in
+the history of the later Republic. But, whatever the immediate motives
+for the passing of the measure, a great and healthy principle lay behind
+it. It was the principle that considerations of foreign policy should
+not be directly controlled or hampered by questions of trade, that the
+policy of the State should not become the sport of the selfish vagaries
+of capital. The spirit thus expressed was directly inimical to the
+interests of the merchant, the contractor and the tax-farmer. How
+inimical it was could not yet be clearly seen; for the transmarine
+interests of Rome had not at the time attained a development which
+invited the mastery of conquered lands by the Roman capitalist. But,
+whether this Clodian law created or merely formulated the antithesis
+between land and trade, between Italian and provincial profits, it is
+yet certain that this antithesis was one of the most powerful of the
+animating factors of Roman history for the better part of the two
+centuries which were to follow the enactment. It produced the conflict
+between a policy of restricted enterprise, pursued for the good of the
+State and the subject, and a policy of expansion which obeyed the
+interests of capital, between a policy of cautious protection and that
+madness of imperialism which is ever associated with barbarism,
+brigandage or trade.
+
+But, if we inquire whether this enactment attained its ostensible object
+of completely shutting out senators from the profits of any enterprise
+that could properly be described as commercial, we shall find an
+affirmative answer to be more than dubious. The law was a dead letter
+when Cicero indicted Verres,[104] but its demise may have been reached
+through a long and slow process of decline. But, even if the provisions
+of the law had been adhered to throughout the period which we are
+considering, the avenue to wealth derived from business intercourse with
+the provinces would not necessarily have been closed to the official
+class. We shall soon see that the companies which were formed for
+undertaking the state-contracts probably permitted shares to be held by
+individuals who never appeared in the registered list of partners at
+all, and we know that to hold a share in a great public concern was
+considered one of the methods of business which did not subject the
+participant to the taint of a vulgar commercialism.[105] And, if the
+senator chose to indulge more directly in the profits of transmarine
+commerce, to what extent was he really hindered by the provisions of the
+law? He might not own a ship of burden, but his freedmen might sail to
+any port on the largest vessels, and who could object if the returns
+which the dependant owed his lord were drawn from the profits of
+commerce? Again there was no prohibition against loans on bottomry, and
+Cato had increased his wealth by becoming through his freedman a member
+of a maritime company, each partner in which had but a limited liability
+and the prospect of enormous gains.[106] The example of this energetic
+money-getter also illustrates many ways in which the nobleman of
+business tastes could increase his profits without extending his
+enterprises far from the capital. It was possible to exploit the growing
+taste in country villas, in streams and lakes and natural woods; to buy
+a likely spot for a small price, let it at a good rental, or sell it at
+a larger price. The ownership of house property within the town, which
+grew eventually into the monopoly of whole blocks and streets by such a
+man as Crassus,[107] was in every way consistent with the possession of
+senatorial rank. It was even possible to be a slave-dealer without loss
+of dignity, at least if one transacted the sordid details of the
+business through a slave. The young and promising boy required but a
+year's training in the arts to enable the careful buyer to make a large
+profit by his sale.[108] Yet such methods must have been regarded by the
+nobility as a whole as merely subsidiary means of increasing their
+patrimony: and, in spite of the fact that Cato took the view that
+agriculture should be an amusement rather than a business,[109] there
+can be no doubt that the staple of the wealth of the official class was
+still to be found in the acres of Italy. It was not, however, the wealth
+of the moderate homestead which was to be won from a careful tillage of
+the fields; it was the wealth which, as we shall soon see, was
+associated with the slave-capitalist, the overseer, a foreign method of
+cultivation on the model of the grand plantation-systems of the East,
+and a belief in the superior value of pasturage to tillage which was to
+turn many a populous and fertile plain into a wilderness of danger and
+desolation.
+
+But, strive as he would, there was many a nobleman who found that his
+expenditure could not be met by dabbling in trade where others plunged,
+or by the revenues yielded by the large tracts of Italian soil over
+which he claimed exclusive powers. The playwright of the age has figured
+Indigence as the daughter of Luxury;[110] and a still more terrible
+child was to be born in the Avarice which sprang from the useless
+cravings and fierce competitions of the time.[111] The desire to get and
+to hold had ever been a Roman vice; but, it had also been the unvarying
+assumption of the Roman State, and the conviction of the Roman
+official--a conviction so deeply seated and spontaneous as to form no
+ground for self-congratulation that the lust for acquisition should
+limit itself to the domain of private right, and never cross the rigid
+barrier which divided that domain from the sphere of wealth and power
+which the city had committed to its servant as a solemn trust. The
+better sort of overseer was often found in the crabbed man of
+business--a Cato, for example--who would never waive a right of his own
+and protected those of his dependants with similar tenacity and passion.
+The honour which prevailed in the commercial code at home was considered
+so much a matter of course in all dealings with the foreign world, that
+the State scorned to scrutinise the expenditure of its ministers and was
+spared the disgrace of a system of public audit. Even in this age, which
+is regarded by the ancient historians as marking the beginning of the
+decline in public virtue, Polybius could contrast the attitude of
+suspicion towards the guardians of the State, which was the
+characteristic of the official life of his own unhappy country, with the
+well-founded confidence which Rome reposed in the honour of her
+ministers, and could tell the world that "if but a talent of money were
+entrusted to a magistrate of a Greek state, ten auditors, as many seals
+and twice as many witnesses are required for the security of the bond;
+yet even so faith is not observed; while the Roman in an official or
+diplomatic post, who handles vast sums of money, adheres to his duty
+through the mere moral obligation of the oath which he has sworn"; that
+"amongst the Romans the corrupt official is as rare a portent as is the
+financier with clean hands amongst other peoples".[112] When the elder
+Africanus tore up the account books of his brother--books which recorded
+the passage of eighteen thousand talents from an Asiatic king to a Roman
+general and from him to the Roman State[113]--he was imparting a lesson
+in confidence, which was immediately accepted by the senate and people.
+And it seems that, so far as the expenditure of public moneys was
+concerned, this confidence continued to be justified. It is true that
+Cato had furiously impugned the honour of commanders in the matter of
+the distribution of the prizes of war amongst the soldiers and had drawn
+a bitter contrast between private and official thieves. "The former," he
+said, "pass their lives in thongs and iron fetters, the latter in purple
+and gold." [114] But there were no fixed rules of practice which guided
+such a distribution, and a commander, otherwise honest, might feel no
+qualms of conscience in exercising a selective taste on his own behalf.
+On the other hand, deliberate misappropriation of the public funds seems
+to have been seldom suspected or at least seldom made the subject of
+judicial cognisance, and for many years after a standing court was
+established for the trial of extortion no similar tribunal was thought
+necessary for the crime of peculation.[115] Apart from the long,
+tortuous and ineffective trial of the Scipios,[116] no question of the
+kind is known to have been raised since Manius Acilius Glabrio, the
+conqueror of Antiochus and the Aetolians, competed for the censorship.
+Then a story, based on the existence of the indubitable wealth which he
+was employing with a lavish hand to win the favour of the people, was
+raked up against him by some jealous members of the nobility. It was
+professed that some money and booty, found in the camp of the king, had
+never been exhibited in the triumph nor deposited in the treasury. The
+evidence of legates and military tribunes was invited, and Cato, himself
+a competitor for the censorship, was ready to testify that gold and
+silver vases, which he had seen in the captured camp, had not been
+visible in the triumphal procession. Glabrio waived his candidature, but
+the people were unwilling to convict and the prosecution was
+abandoned.[117] Here again we are confronted by the old temptation of
+curio-hunting, which, the nobility deemed indecent in so "new" a man as
+Glabrio; the evidence of Cato--the only testimony which proved
+dangerous--did not establish the charge that money due to the State had
+been intercepted by a Roman consul.
+
+But the regard for the property of the State was unfortunately not
+extended to the property of its clients. Even before the provinces had
+yielded a prey rendered easy by distance and irresponsibility, Italian
+cities had been forced to complain of the violence and rapacity of Roman
+commanders quartered in their neighbourhood,[118] and the passive
+silence with which the Praenestines bore the immoderate requisitions of
+a consul, was a fatal guarantee of impunity which threatened to alter
+for ever the relations of these free allies to the protecting
+power.[119] But provincial commands offered greater temptations and a
+far more favourable field for capricious tyranny; for here the exactions
+of the governor were neither repudiated by an oath of office nor at
+first even forbidden by the sanctions of a law. Requisitions could be
+made to meet the needs of the moment, and these needs were naturally
+interpreted to suit the cravings and the tastes of the governor of the
+moment.[120] Cato not only cut down the expenses that had been
+arbitrarily imposed on the unhappy natives of Sardinia,[121] but seems
+to have been the author of a definite law which fixed a limit to such
+requisitions in the future.[122] But it was easier to frame an ordinance
+than to guarantee its observation, and, at a time when the surrounding
+world was seething with war, the regulations made for a peaceful
+province could not touch the actions of a victorious commander who was
+following up the results of conquest. Complaints began to pour in on
+every hand--from the Ambraciots of Greece, the Cenomani of Gaul[123]
+--and the senate did its best, either by its own cognisance or by the
+creation of a commission of investigation, to meet the claims of the
+dependent peoples. A kind of rude justice was the result, but it was
+much too rude to meet an evil which was soon seen to be developing into
+a trade of systematic oppression. A novel step was taken when in 171
+delegates from the two Spains appeared in the Curia to complain of the
+avarice and insolence of their Roman governors. A praetor was
+commissioned to choose from the senatorial order five of such judges as
+were wont to be selected for the settlement of international disputes
+(_recuperatores_), to sit in judgment on each of the indicted
+governors,[124] and the germ of a regular court for what had now become
+a regular offence was thus developed. The further and more shameful
+confession, that the court should be permanent and interpret a definite
+statute, was soon made, and the Calpurnian law of 149[125]was the first
+of that long series of enactments for extortion which mark the futility
+of corrective measures in the face of a weak system of legal, and a
+still weaker system of moral, control. Trials for extortion soon became
+the plaything of politics, the favourite arena for the exercise of the
+energies of a young and rising politician, the favourite weapon with
+which old family feuds might be at once revenged and perpetuated. They
+were soon destined to gain a still greater significance as furnishing
+the criteria of the methods of administration which the State was
+expected to employ, as determining the respective rights of the
+administrator and the capitalist to guide the destinies of the
+inhabitants of a dependent district. Their manifold political
+significance destroys our confidence in their judgments, and we can
+seldom tell whether the acquittal or the condemnation which these courts
+pronounced was justified on the evidence adduced. But there can be no
+question of the evil that lay behind this legislative and judicial
+activity. The motive which led men to assume administrative posts abroad
+was in many cases thoroughly selfish and mean,--the desire to acquire
+wealth as rapidly as was consistent with keeping on the safe side of a
+not very exacting law. No motive of this kind can ever be universal in a
+political society, and in Rome we cannot even pronounce it to be
+general. Power and distinction attracted the Roman as much as wealth,
+and some governors were saved from temptation by the colossal fortunes
+which they already possessed. But how early it had begun to operate in
+the minds of many is shown by the eagerness which, as we shall see, was
+soon to be displayed by rival consuls for the conduct of a war that
+might give the victor a prolonged control over the rich cities which had
+belonged to the kingdom of Pergamon, if it is not proved by the strange
+unwillingness which magistrates had long before exhibited to assume some
+commands which had been entrusted to their charge.[126]
+
+A suspicion of another type of abuse of power, more degrading though not
+necessarily more harmful than the plunder of subjects, had begun to be
+raised in the minds of the people and the government. It was held that a
+Roman might be found who would sell the supposed interests of his
+country to a foreign potentate, or at any rate accept a present which
+might or might not influence his judgment, A commissioner to Illyria had
+been suspected of pocketing money offered him by the potentates of that
+district in 171,[127] and the first hint was given of that shattering of
+public confidence in the integrity of diplomatists which wrought such
+havoc in the foreign politics of the period which forms the immediate
+subject of our work. The system of the Protectorate, which Rome had so
+widely adopted, with its secret diplomatic dealings and its hidden
+conferences with kings, offered greater facilities for secret
+enrichment, and greater security for the enjoyment of the acquired
+wealth, even than the plunder of a province. The proof of the committal
+of the act was difficult, in most cases impossible. We must be content
+to chronicle the suspicion of its growing frequency, and the suspicion
+is terrible enough. If the custom of wringing wealth from subjects and
+selling support to potentates continued to prevail, the stage might soon
+be reached at which it could be said, with that element of exaggeration
+which lends emphasis to a truth, that a small group of men were drawing
+revenues from every nation in the world.[128]
+
+Such were the sources of wealth that lay open to men, to whom commerce
+was officially barred and who were supposed to have no direct interest
+in financial operations. Far ampler spheres of pecuniary enrichment,
+more uniformly legal if sometimes as oppressive, were open to the class
+of men who by this time had been recognised as forming a kind of second
+order in the State. The citizens who had been proved by the returns at
+the census to have a certain amount of realisable capital at their
+disposal--a class of citizens that ranged from the possessors of a
+moderate patrimony, such as society might employ as a line of
+demarcation between an upper and a lower middle class, to the
+controllers of the most gigantic fortunes--had been welded into a body
+possessing considerable social and political solidarity. This solidarity
+had been attained chiefly through the community of interest derived from
+the similar methods of pecuniary investment which they employed, but
+also through the circumstance (slight in itself but significant in an
+ancient society which ever tended to fall into grades) that all the
+members of this class could describe themselves by the courtesy title of
+"Knights"--a description justified by the right which they possessed of
+serving on their own horses with the Roman cavalry instead of sharing
+the foot-service of the legionary. A common designation was not
+inappropriate to men who were in a certain sense public servants and
+formed in a very real sense a branch of the administration. The knight
+might have many avocations; he might be a money-lender, a banker, a
+large importer; but he was preeminently a farmer of the taxes. His
+position in the former cases was simply that of an individual, who might
+or might not be temporarily associated with others; his position in the
+latter case meant that he was a member of a powerful and permanent
+corporation, one which served a government from which it might wring
+great profits or at whose hands it might suffer heavy loss--a government
+to be helped in its distress, to be fought when its demands were
+overbearing, to be encouraged when its measures seemed progressive, to
+be hindered when they seemed reactionary from a commercial point of
+view. A group of individuals or private firms could never have attained
+the consistency of organisation, or maintained the uniformity of policy,
+which was displayed by these societies of revenue-collectors; even a
+company must have a long life before it can attain strength and
+confidence sufficient to act in a spirited manner in opposition to the
+State; and it seems certain that these societies were wholly exempted
+from the paralysing principle which the Roman law applied to
+partnership--a principle which dictated that every partnership should be
+dissolved by the death or retirement of one of the associates.[129] The
+State, which possessed no civil service of its own worthy of the name,
+had taken pains to secure permanent organisations of private
+share-holders which should satisfy its needs, to give them something of
+an official character, and to secure to each one of them as a result of
+its permanence an individual strength which, in spite of the theory that
+the taxes and the public works were put up to auction, may have secured
+to some of these companies a practical monopoly of a definite sphere of
+operations. But a company, at Rome as elsewhere, is powerful in
+proportion to the breadth of its basis. A small ring of capitalists may
+tyrannise over society as long as they confine themselves to securing a
+monopoly over private enterprises, and as long as the law permits them
+to exercise this autocratic power without control; but such a ring is
+far less capable of meeting the arbitrary dictation of an aristocratic
+body of landholders, such as the senate, or of encountering the
+resentful opposition of a nominally all-powerful body of consumers, such
+as the Comitia, than a corporation which has struck its roots deeply in
+society by the wide distribution of its shares. We know from the
+positive assurance of a skilled observer of Roman life that the number
+of citizens who had an interest in these companies was particularly
+large.[130] This observer emphasises the fact in order to illustrate the
+dependence of a large section of society on the will of the senate,
+which possessed the power of controlling the terms of the agreements
+both for the public works which it placed in the hands of contractors
+and for the sources of production which it put out to lease;[131] but it
+is equally obvious that the large size of the number of shareholders
+must have exercised a profoundly modifying influence on the arbitrary
+authority of a body such as the senate which governed chiefly through
+deference to public opinion; and we know that, in the last resort, an
+appeal could be made to the sovereign assembly, if a magistrate could be
+found bold enough to carry to that quarter a proposal that had been
+discountenanced by the senate.[132] In such crises the strength of the
+companies depended mainly on the number of individual interests that
+were at stake; the shareholder is more likely to appear at such
+gatherings than the man who is not profoundly affected by the issue, and
+it is very seldom that the average consumer has insight enough to see,
+or energy enough to resist, the sufferings and inconveniences which
+spring from the machinations of capital. It may have been possible at
+times to pack a legislative assembly with men who had some financial
+interest, however slight, in a dispute arising from a contract calling
+for decision; and the time was soon to come when such questions of
+detail would give place to far larger questions of policy, when the
+issues springing from a line of foreign activity which had been taken by
+the government might be debated in the cold and glittering light of the
+golden stakes the loss or gain of which depended upon the policy
+pursued. Nor could it have been easy even for the experienced eye to see
+from the survey of such a gathering that it represented the army of
+capital. Research has rendered it probable that the companies of the
+time were composed of an outer as well as of an inner circle; that the
+mass of shareholders differed from those who were the promoters,
+managers and active agents in the concern, that the liability of the
+former at least was limited and that their shares, whether small or
+great, were transmissible and subject to the fluctuations of the
+market.[133] But, even if we do not believe that this distinction
+between _socii_ and _participes_ was legally elaborated, yet there were
+probably means by which members of the outside public could enter into
+business relations with the recognised partners in one of these concerns
+to share its profits and its losses.[134] The freedman, who had invested
+his small savings in the business of an enterprising patron, would
+attach the same mercantile value to his own vote in the assembly as
+would be given to his suffrage in the senate by some noble peer, who had
+bartered the independence of his judgment for the acquisition of more
+rapid profits than could be drawn from land.
+
+The farmers of the revenue fell into three broad classes. First there
+were the contractors for the creation, maintenance and repair of the
+public works possessed or projected by the State, such as roads,
+aqueducts, bridges, temples and other public buildings. Gigantic profits
+were not possible in such an enterprise, if the censors and their
+advisers acted with knowledge, impartiality and discretion; for the
+lowest possible tender was obtained for such contracts and the results
+might be repudiated if inspection proved them to be unsatisfactory.
+Secondly there were the companies which leased sources of production
+that were owned by the State such as fisheries, salt-works, mines and
+forest land. In some particular cases even arable land had been dealt
+with in this way, and the confiscated territories of Capua and Corinth
+were let on long leases to _publicani_. Thirdly there were the
+societies, which did not themselves acquire leases but acted as true
+intermediaries between the State and individuals[135] who paid it
+revenue whether as occupants of its territory, or as making use of sites
+which it claimed to control, or as owing dues which had been prescribed
+by agreement or by law. These classes of debtors to the State with whom
+the middlemen came into contact may be illustrated respectively by the
+occupants of the domain land of Italy, the ship-masters who touched at
+ports, and the provincials such as those of Sicily or Sardinia who were
+burdened with the payment of a tithe of the produce of their lands.[136]
+If we consider separately the characteristics of the three classes of
+state-farmers, we find that the first and the second are both direct
+employers of labour, the third reaping only indirect profits from the
+production controlled by others. It was in this respect, as employers of
+labour, that the societies of the time were free from the anxieties and
+restrictions that beset the modern employment of capital. Except in the
+rare case where the contractors had leased arable land and sublet it to
+its original occupants,--the treatment which seems to have been adopted
+for the Campanian territory[137]--there can be no question that the
+work which they controlled was done mainly by the hands of slaves. They
+were therefore exempt from the annoyance and expense which might be
+caused by the competition and the organised resistance of free labour.
+The slaves employed in many of these industries must have been highly
+skilled; for many of these spheres of wealth which the State had
+delegated to contractors required peculiar industrial appliances and
+unusual knowledge in the foremen and leading artificers. The weakness of
+slave-labour,--its lack of intelligence and spirit--could not have been
+so keenly felt as it was on the great agricultural estates, which
+offered employment chiefly for the unskilled; and the difficulties that
+might arise from the lack of strength or interest, from the possession
+of hands that were either feeble or inert, were probably overcome in the
+same uncompromising manner in the workshop of the contractor and on the
+domains of the landed gentry. The maxim that an aged slave should be
+sold could not have been peculiar to the dabbler in agriculture, and the
+_ergastulum_ with its chained gangs must have been as familiar to the
+manufacturer as to the landed proprietor.[138] As to the promoters and
+the shareholders of these companies, it could not be expected that they
+should trace in imagination, or tremble as they traced, the heartless,
+perhaps inhuman, means by which the regular returns on their capital
+were secured.[139] Nor is it probable that the government of this period
+took any great care to supervise the conditions of the work or the lot
+of the workman. The partner desired quick and great returns, the State
+large rents and small tenders. The remorseless drain on human energy,
+the waste of human life, and the practical abeyance of free labour which
+was flooding the towns with idlers, were ideas which, if they ever
+arose, were probably kept in the background by a government which was
+generally in financial difficulties, and by individuals animated by all
+the fierce commercial competition of the age.
+
+The desire of contractors and lessees for larger profits naturally took
+the form of an eagerness to extend their sphere of operations. Every
+advance in the Roman sphere of military occupation implied the making of
+new roads, bridges and aqueducts; every extension of this sphere was
+likely to be followed by the confiscation of certain territories, which
+the State would declare to be public domains and hand over to the
+company that would guarantee the payment of the largest revenue. But the
+sordid imperialism which animated the contractor and lessee must have
+been as nothing to that which fed the dreams of the true
+state-middleman, the individual who intervened between the taxpayer and
+the State, the producer and the consumer. Conquest would mean fresh
+lines of coast and frontier, on which would be set the toil-houses of
+the collectors with their local directors and their active "families" of
+freedmen and slaves. It might even mean that a more prolific source of
+revenue would be handed over to the care of the publican. The spectacle
+of the method in which the land-tax was assessed and collected in Sicily
+and Sardinia may have already inspired the hope that the next instance
+of provincial organisation might see greater justice done to the
+capitalists of Rome. When Sicily had been brought under Roman sway, the
+aloofness of the government from financial interests, as well as its
+innate conservatism, justified by the success of Italian organisation,
+which dictated the view that local institutions should not be lightly
+changed, had led it to accept the methods for the taxation of land which
+it found prevalent in the island at the time of its annexation. The
+methods implied assessment by local officials and collection by local
+companies or states.[140] It is true that neither consequence entirely
+excluded the enterprise of the Roman capitalists; they had crossed the
+Straits of Messina on many a private enterprise and had settled in such
+large numbers in the business centres of the island that the charter
+given to the Sicilian cities after the first servile war made detailed
+provision for the settlement of suits between Romans and natives.[141]
+It was not to be expected that they should refrain from joining in, or
+competing with, the local companies who bid for the Sicilian tithes, nor
+was such association or competition forbidden by the law. But the
+scattered groups of capitalists who came into contact with the Sicilian
+yeomen did not possess the official character and the official influence
+of the great companies of Italy. No association, however powerful, could
+boast a monopoly of the main source of revenue in the island. But what
+they had done was an index of what they might do, if another opportunity
+and a more complaisant government could be found. Any individual or any
+party which could promise the knights the unquestioned control of the
+revenues of a new province would be sure of their heartiest sympathy
+and support.
+
+And it would be worth the while of any individual or party which
+ventured to frame a programme traversing the lines of political
+orthodoxy, to bid for the co-operation of this class. For recent history
+had shown that the thorough organisation of capital, encouraged by the
+State to rid itself of a tiresome burden in times of peace and to secure
+itself a support in times of need, might become, as it pleased, a
+bulwark or a menace to the government which had created it. The useful
+monster had begun to develop a self-consciousness of his own. He had his
+amiable, even his patriotic moments; but his activity might be
+accompanied by the grim demand for a price which his nominal master was
+not prepared to pay. The darkest and the brightest aspects of the
+commercial spirit had been in turn exhibited during the Second Punic
+War. On the one hand we find an organised band of publicans attempting
+to break up an assembly before which a fraudulent contractor and wrecker
+was to be tried;[142] on the other, we find them meeting the shock of
+Cannae with the offer of a large loan to the beggared treasury, lent
+without guarantee and on the bare word of a ruined government that it
+should be met when there was money to meet it.[143] Other companies came
+forward to put their hands to the public works, even the most necessary
+of which had been suspended by the misery of the war, and told the
+bankrupt State that they would ask for their payment when the struggle
+had completely closed.[144] A noble spectacle! and if the positions of
+employer and employed had been reversed only in such crises and in such
+a way, no harm could come of the memory either of the obligation or the
+service. But the strength shown by this beneficence sometimes exhibited
+itself in unpleasant forms and led to unpleasant consequences. The
+censorships of Cato and of Gracchus had been fierce struggles of
+conservative officialdom against the growing influence and (as these
+magistrates held) the swelling insolence of the public companies; and in
+both cases the associations had sought and found assistance, either from
+a sympathetic party within the senate, or from the people. Cato's
+regulations had been reversed and their vigorous author had been
+threatened with a tribunician prosecution before the Comitia;[145] while
+Gracchus and his colleague had actually been impeached before a popular
+court.[146] The reckless employment of servile labour by the companies
+that farmed the property of the State had already proved a danger to
+public security. The society which had purchased from the censors the
+right of gathering pitch from the Bruttian forest of Sila had filled the
+neighbourhood with bands of fierce and uncontrolled dependants, chiefly
+slaves, but partly men of free birth who may have been drawn from the
+desperate Bruttians whom Rome had driven from their homes. The
+consequences were deeds of violence and murder, which called for the
+intervention of the senate, and the consuls had been appointed as a
+special commission to inquire into the outrages.[147] Nor were
+complaints limited to Italy; provincial abuses had already called for
+drastic remedies. A proof that this was the case is to be found in the
+striking fact that on the renewed settlement of Macedonia in 167 it was
+actually decreed that the working of the mines in that country, at least
+on the extended scale which would have required a system of contract,
+should be given up. It was considered dangerous to entrust it to native
+companies, and as to the Roman-their mere presence in the country would
+mean the surrender of all guarantees of the rule of public law or of the
+enjoyment of liberty by the provincials.[148] The State still preferred
+the embarrassments of poverty to those of overbearing wealth; its choice
+proved its weakness; but even the element of strength displayed in the
+surrender might soon be missed, if capital obtained a wider influence
+and a more definite political recognition. As things were, these
+organisations of capital were but just becoming conscious of their
+strength and had by no means reached even the prime of their vigour. The
+opening up of the riches of the East were required to develop the
+gigantic manhood which should dwarf the petty figure of the agricultural
+wealth of Italy.
+
+Had the state-contractors stood alone, or had not they engaged in varied
+enterprises for which their official character offered a favourable
+point of vantage, the numbers and influence of the individuals who had
+embarked their capital in commercial enterprise would have been far
+smaller than they actually were. But, in addition to the publican, we
+must take account of the business man (_negotiator_) who lent money on
+interest or exercised the profession of a banker. Such men had pecuniary
+interests which knew no geographical limits, and in all broad questions
+of policy were likely to side with the state-contractor.[149] The
+money-lender (_fenerator_) represented one of the earliest, most
+familiar and most courted forms of Roman enterprise--one whose intrinsic
+attractions for the grasping Roman mind had resisted every effort of the
+legislature by engaging in its support the wealthiest landowner as well
+as the smallest usurer. It is true that a taint clung to the trade--a
+taint which was not merely a product of the mistaken economic conception
+of the nature of the profits made by the lender, but was the more
+immediate outcome of social misery and the fulminations of the
+legislature. Cato points to the fact that the Roman law had stamped the
+usurer as a greater curse to society than the common thief, and makes
+the dishonesty of loans on interest a sufficient ground for declining a
+form of investment that was at once safe and profitable.[150] Usury, he
+had also maintained, was a form of homicide.[151] But to the majority of
+minds this feeling of dishonour had always been purely external and
+superficial. The proceedings were not repugnant to the finer sense if
+they were not made the object of a life-long profession and not
+blatantly exhibited to the eyes of the public. A taint clung to the
+money-lender who sat in an office in the Forum, and handed his loans or
+received his interest over the counter;[152] it was not felt by the
+capitalist who stood behind this small dealer, by the nobleman whose
+agent lent seed-corn to the neighbouring yeomen, by the investor in the
+state-contracts who perhaps hardly realised that his profits represented
+but an indirect form of usury. But, whatever restrictions public opinion
+may have imposed on the money-lender as a dealer in Rome and with
+Romans, such restrictions were not likely to be felt by the man who had
+the capital and the enterprise to carry his financial operations beyond
+the sea. Not only was he dealing with provincials or foreigners, but he
+was dealing on a scale so grand that the magnitude of the business
+almost concealed its shame. Cities and kings were now to be the
+recipients of loans and, if the lender occupied a political position
+that seemed inconsistent with the profession of a usurer, his
+personality might be successfully concealed under the name of some local
+agent, who was adequately rewarded for the obloquy which he incurred in
+the eyes of the native populations, and the embarrassing conflicts with
+the Roman government which were sometimes entailed by an excess of zeal.
+Cato had swept both principals and agents out of his province of
+Sardinia;[153] but he was a man who courted hostility, and he lived
+before the age when the enmity of capital would prove the certain ruin
+of the governor and a source of probable danger to the senate. In the
+operations of the money-lender we find the most universal link between
+the Forum and the provinces. There was no country so poor that it might
+not be successfully exploited, and indeed exploitation was often
+conditioned by simplicity of character, lack of familiarity with the
+developed systems of finance, and the lack of thrift which amongst
+peoples of low culture is the source of their constant need. The
+employment of capital for this purpose was always far in advance of the
+limits of Roman dominion. A protectorate might be in the grasp of a
+group of private individuals long before it was absorbed into the
+empire, the extension of the frontiers was conditioned by considerations
+of pecuniary, not of political safety, and the government might at any
+moment be forced into a war to protect the interests of capitalists
+whom, in its collective capacity as a government, it regarded as the
+greatest foes of its dominion.
+
+A more beneficent employment of capital was illustrated by the
+profession of banking which, like most of the arts which exhibit the
+highest refinement of the practical intellect, had been given to the
+Romans by the Greeks.[154] It had penetrated from Magna Graecia to
+Latium and from Latium to Rome, and had been fully established in the
+city by the time of the Second Punic War.[155] The strangers, who had
+introduced an art which so greatly facilitated the conduct of business
+transactions, had been welcomed by the government, and were encouraged
+to ply their calling in the shops rented from the State on the north and
+south sides of the Forum. These _argentarii_ satisfied the two needs of
+the exchange of foreign money, and of advances in cash on easier terms
+than could be gained from the professional or secret usurer, to citizens
+of every grade[156] who did not wish, or found it difficult, to turn
+their real property into gold. Similar functions were at a somewhat
+later period usurped by the money-testers (_nummularii_), who perhaps
+entered Rome shortly after the issue of the first native silver coinage,
+and competed with the earlier-established bankers in most of the
+branches of their trade.[157] Ultimately there was no department of
+business connected with the transference and circulation of money which
+the joint profession did not embrace. Its representatives were concerned
+with the purchase and sale of coin, and the equalisation of home with
+foreign rates of exchange; they lent on credit, gave security for
+others' loans, and received money on deposit; they acted as
+intermediaries between creditors and debtors in the most distant places
+and gave their travelling customers circular notes on associated houses
+in foreign lands; they were equally ready to dissipate by auction an
+estate that had become the property of a congress of creditors or a
+number of legatees. Their carefully kept books improved even the
+methodical habits of the Romans in the matter of business entries, and
+introduced the form of "contract by ledger" (_litterarum obligatio_),
+which greatly facilitated business operations on an extended scale by
+substituting the written record of obligation for other bonds more
+difficult to conclude and more easy to evade.
+
+The business life of Rome was in every way worthy of her position as an
+imperial city, and her business centre was becoming the greatest
+exchange of the commercial world of the day. The forum still drew its
+largest crowds to listen to the voice of the lawyer or the orator; but
+these attractions were occasional and the constant throng that any day
+might witness was drawn thither by the enticements supplied by the
+spirit of adventure, the thirst for news and the strain of business
+life. The comic poet has drawn for us a picture of the shifting crowd
+and its chief elements, good and bad, honest and dishonest. He has shown
+us the man who mingles pleasure with his business, lingering under the
+Basilica in extremely doubtful company; there too is a certain class of
+business men giving or accepting verbal bonds. In the lower part of the
+Forum stroll the lords of the exchange, rich and of high repute; under
+the old shops on the north sit the bankers, giving and receiving loans
+on interest.[158]
+
+The Forum has become in common language the symbol of all the ups and
+downs of business life,[159] and the moralist of later times could refer
+all students, who wish to master the lore of the quest and investment of
+money, to the excellent men who have their station by the temple of
+Janus.[160] The aspect of the market place had altered greatly to meet
+the growing needs. Great Basilicae--sheltered promenades which probably
+derived their names from the Royal Courts of the Hellenic East--had
+lately been erected. Two of the earliest, the Porcian and Sempronian,
+had been raised on the site of business premises which had been bought
+up for the purpose,[161] and were meant to serve the purposes of a
+market and an exchange.[162] Their sheltering roofs were soon employed
+to accommodate the courts of justice, but it was the business not the
+legal life of Rome that called these grand edifices into existence.
+
+The financial activity which centred in the Forum was a consequence, not
+merely of the contract-system encouraged by the State and of the
+business of the banker and the money-lender, but of the great foreign
+trade which supplied the wants and luxuries of Italy and Rome. This was
+an import trade concerned partly with the supply of corn for a nation
+that could no longer feed itself, partly with the supply of luxuries
+from the East and of more necessary products, including instruments of
+production, from the West. The Eastern trade touched the Euxine Sea at
+Dioscurias, Asia Minor chiefly at Ephesus and Apamea, and Egypt at
+Alexandria. It brought Pontic fish, Hellenic wines, the spices and
+medicaments of Asia and of the Eastern coast of Africa, and countless
+other articles, chiefly of the type which creates the need to which it
+ministers. More robust products were supplied by the West through the
+trade-routes which came down to Gades, Genua and Aquileia. Hither were
+brought slaves, cattle, horses and dogs; linen, canvas and wool; timber
+for ships and houses, and raw metal for the manufacture of implements
+and works of art. Neither in East nor West was the product brought by
+the producer to the consumer. In accordance with the more recent
+tendencies of Hellenistic trade, great emporia had grown up in which the
+goods were stored, until they were exported by the local dealers or
+sought by the wholesale merchant from an Italian port. As the Tyrrhenian
+Sea became the radius of the trade of the world, Puteoli became the
+greatest staple to which this commerce centred; thence the goods which
+were destined for Rome were conveyed to Ostia by water or by land, and
+taken by ships which drew no depth of water up the Tiber to the
+city.[163] But it must not be supposed that this trade was first
+controlled by Romans and Italians when it touched the shores of Italy.
+Groups of citizens and allies were to be found in the great staples of
+the world, receiving the products as they were brought down from the
+interior and supplying the shipping by which they were transferred to
+Rome.[164] They were not manufacturers, but intermediaries who reaped a
+larger profit from the carrying trade than could be gained by any form
+of production in their native land. The Roman and Italian trader was to
+be inferior only to the money-lender as a stimulus and a stumbling-block
+to the imperial government; he was, like the latter, to be a cause of
+annexation and a fire-brand of war, and serves as an almost equal
+illustration of the truth that a government which does not control the
+operations of capital is likely to become their instrument.[165]
+
+If we descend from the aristocracy of trade to its poorer
+representatives, we find that time had wrought great changes in the lot
+of the smaller manufacturer and artisan. It is true that the old
+trade-gilds of Rome, which tradition carried back to the days of Numa,
+still maintained their existence. The goldsmiths, coppersmiths,
+builders, dyers, leather-workers, tanners and potters[166] still held
+their regular meetings and celebrated their regular games. But it is
+questionable whether even at this period their collegiate life was not
+rather concerned with ceremonial than with business, whether they did
+not gather more frequently to discuss the prospects of their social and
+religious functions than to consider the rules and methods of their
+trades. We shall soon see these gilds of artificers a great political
+power in the State--one that often alarmed the government and sometimes
+paralysed its control of the streets of Rome. But their political
+activity was connected with ceremonial rather than with trade; it was as
+religious associations that they supported the demagogue of the moment
+and disturbed the peace of the city. They made war against any
+aristocratic abuse that was dangled for the moment before their eyes;
+but they undertook no consistent campaign against the dominance of
+capital. Their activity was that of the radical caucus, not of the
+trade-union. But, if even their industrial character had been fully
+maintained and trade interests had occupied more of their attention than
+street processions and political agitation, they could never have posed
+as the representatives of the interests of the free-born sons of Rome.
+The class of freedmen was freely admitted to their ranks, and the
+freedman was from an economic point of view the greatest enemy of the
+pure-blooded Italian. We shall also see that the freedman was usually
+not an independent agent in the conduct of the trade which he professed.
+He owed duties to his patron which limited his industrial activity and
+rendered a whole-hearted co-operation with his brother-workers
+impossible. It is questionable whether any gild organisation could have
+stood the shock of the immense development of industrial activity of
+which the more fortunate classes at Rome were now reaping the fruits.
+The trades represented by Numa's colleges would at best have formed a
+mere framework for a maze of instruments which formed the complex
+mechanism needed to satisfy the voracious wants of the new society. The
+gold-smithery of early times was now complicated by the arts of chasing
+and engraving on precious stones; the primitive builder, if he were
+still to ply his trade with profit, must associate it with the skill of
+the men who made the stuccoed ceilings, the mosaic pavements, the
+painted walls. The leather-worker must have learnt to make many a kind
+of fashionable shoe, and the dyer to work in violet, scarlet or saffron,
+in any shade or colour to which fashion had given a temporary vogue.
+Tailoring had become a fine art, and the movable decorations of houses
+demanded a host of skilled workmen, each of whom was devoted to the
+speciality which he professed. It would seem as though the very
+weaknesses of society might have benefited the lower middle class, and
+the siftings of the harvest given by the spoils of empire might have
+more than supplied the needs of a parasitic proletariate. It is an
+unquestioned fact that the growing luxury of the times did benefit trade
+with that doubtful benefit which accompanies the diversion of capital
+from purposes of permanent utility to objects of aesthetic admiration or
+temporary display; but it is an equally unquestioned fact that this
+unhealthy nutriment did not strengthen to any appreciable extent such of
+the lower classes as could boast pure Roman blood. The military
+conscription, to which the more prosperous of these classes were
+exposed, was inimical to the constant pursuit of that technical skill
+which alone could enable its possessor to hold the market against freer
+competitors. Such of the freedmen and the slaves as were trained to
+these pursuits--men who would not have been so trained had they not
+possessed higher artistic perception and greater deftness in execution
+than their fellows--were wholly freed from the military burden which
+absorbed much of the leisure, and blunted much of the skill, possessed
+by their free-born rivals. The competition of slaves must have been
+still more cruel in the country districts and near the smaller country
+towns than in the capital itself. At Rome the limitations of space must
+have hindered the development of home-industries in the houses of the
+nobles, and, although it is probable that much that was manufactured by
+the slaves of the country estate was regularly supplied to the urban
+villa, yet for the purchase of articles of immediate use or of goods
+which showed the highest qualities of workmanship the aristocratic
+proprietor must have been dependent on the competition of the Roman
+market. But the rustic villa might be perfectly self-supporting, and the
+village artificer must have looked in vain for orders from the spacious
+mansion, which, once a dwelling-house or farm, had become a factory as
+well. Both in town and country the practice of manumission was
+paralysing the energies of the free-born man who attempted to follow a
+profitable profession. The frequency of the gift of liberty to slaves is
+one of the brightest aspects of the system of servitude as practised by
+the Romans; but its very beneficence is an illustration of the
+aristocrat's contempt for the proletariate; for, where the ideal of
+citizenship is high, manumission--at least of such a kind as shall give
+political rights, or any trading privileges, equivalent to those of the
+free citizen--is infrequent. In the Rome of this period, however, the
+liberation of a slave showed something more than a mere negative neglect
+of the interests of the citizen. The gift of freedom was often granted
+by the master in an interested, if not in a wholly selfish, spirit. He
+was freed from the duty of supporting his slave while he retained his
+services as a freedman. The performance of these services was, it is
+true, not a legal condition of manumission; but it was the result of the
+agreement between master and slave on which the latter had attained his
+freedom. The nobleman who had granted liberty to his son's tutor, his
+own doctor or his barber, might still bargain to be healed, shaved or
+have his children instructed free of expense. The bargain was just in so
+far as the master was losing services for which he had originally paid,
+and juster still when the freedman set up business on the _peculium_
+which his master had allowed him to acquire during the days of his
+servitude. But the contracting parties were on an unequal footing, and
+the burden enforced by the manumittor was at times so intolerable that
+towards the close of the second century the praetor was forced to
+intervene and set limits to the personal service which might be expected
+from the gratitude of the liberated slave.[167] The performance of such
+gratuitous services necessarily diminished the demand for the labour of
+the free man who attempted to practise the pursuit of an art which
+required skill and was dependent for its returns on the custom of the
+wealthier classes; and even such needs as could not be met by the
+gratuitous services of freedmen or the purchased labour of slaves, were
+often supplied, not by the labour of the free-born Roman, but by that of
+the immigrant _peregrinus_. The foreigner naturally reproduced the arts
+of his own country in a form more perfect than could be acquired by the
+Roman or Italian, and as Rome had acquired foreign wants it was
+inevitable that they should be mainly supplied by foreign hands. We
+cannot say that most of the new developments in trade and manufacture
+had slipped from the hands of the free citizens; it would be truer to
+maintain that they had never been grasped by them at all. And, worse
+than this, we must admit that there was little effort to attain them.
+Both the cause and the consequence of the monopoly of trade and
+manufacture of a petty kind by freedmen and foreigners is to be found in
+the contempt felt by the free-born Roman for the "sordid and illiberal
+sources of livelihood." [168] This prejudice was reflected in public law,
+for any one who exercised a trade or profession was debarred from office
+at Rome.[169] As the magistracy had become the monopoly of a class, the
+prejudice might have been little more than one of the working principles
+of an aristocratic government, had not the arts which supplied the
+amenities of life actually tended to drift into the hands of the
+non-citizen or the man of defective citizenship. The most abject Roman
+could in his misery console himself with the thought that the hands,
+which should only touch the plough and the sword, had never been stained
+by trade. His ideal was that of the nobleman in his palace. It differed
+in degree but not in kind. It centred round the Forum, the battlefield
+and the farm.
+
+For even the most lofty aristocrat would have exempted agriculture from
+the ban of labour;[170] and, if the man of free birth could still have
+toiled productively on his holding, his contempt for the rabble which
+supplied the wants of his richer fellow-citizens in the towns would have
+been justified on material, if not on moral, grounds. He would have held
+the real sources of wealth which had made the empire possible and still
+maintained the actual rulers of that empire. Italian agriculture was
+still the basis of the brilliant life of Rome. Had it not been so, the
+epoch of revolution could not have been ushered in by an agrarian law.
+Had the interest in the land been small, no fierce attack would have
+been made and no encroachment stoutly resisted. We are at the
+commencement of the epoch of the dominance of trade, but we have not
+quitted the epoch of the supremacy of the landed interest.
+
+The vital question connected with agriculture was not that of its
+failure or success, but that of the individuals who did the work and
+shared the profits. The labourer, the soil, the market stand in such
+close relations to one another that it is possible for older types of
+cultivation and tenure to be a failure while newer types are a brilliant
+success. But an economic success may be a social failure. Thus it was
+with the greater part of the Italian soil of the day which had passed
+into Roman hands. Efficiency was secured by accumulation and the smaller
+holdings were falling into decay.
+
+A problem so complex as that of a change in tenure and in the type of
+productive activity employed on the soil is not likely to yield to the
+analysis of any modern historian who deals with the events of the
+ancient world. He is often uncertain whether he is describing causes or
+symptoms, whether the primary evil was purely economic or mainly social,
+whether diminished activity was the result of poverty and decreasing
+numbers, or whether pauperism and diminution of population were the
+effects of a weakened nerve for labour and of a standard of comfort so
+feverishly high that it declined the hard life of the fields and induced
+its possessors to refuse to propagate their kind. But social and
+economic evils react so constantly on one another that the question of
+the priority of the one to the other is not always of primary
+importance. A picture has been conjured up by the slight sketches of
+ancient historians and the more prolonged laments of ancient writers on
+agriculture, which gives us broad outlines that we must accept as true,
+although we may refuse to join in the belief that these outlines
+represent an unmixed and almost incurable evil. These writers even
+attempt to assign causes, which convince by their probability, although
+there is often a suspicion that the ultimate and elusive truth has not
+been grasped.
+
+The two great symptoms which immediately impress our imagination are a
+decline, real or apparent, in the numbers of the free population of
+Rome, and the introduction of new methods of agriculture which entailed
+a diminution in the class of freehold proprietors who had held estates
+of small or moderate size. The evidence for an actual decline of the
+population must be gathered exclusively from the Roman census
+lists.[171] At first sight these seem to tell a startling tale. At the
+date of the outbreak of the First Punic War (265 B.C.) the roll of Roman
+citizens had been given as 382,284,[172] at a census held but three
+years before the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus (136 B.C.) the numbers
+presented by the list were 307,833.[173] In 129 years the burgess roll
+had shrunk by nearly 75,000 heads of the population. The shrinkage had
+not always been steadily progressive; sometimes there is a sudden drop
+which tells of the terrible ravages of war. But the return of peace
+brought no upward movement that was long maintained. In the interval of
+comparative rest which followed the Third Macedonian War the census
+rolls showed a decrease of about 13,000 in ten Years.[174] Seven years
+later 2,000 more have disappeared,[175] and a slight increase at the
+next _lustrum_ is followed by another drop of about 14,000.[176] The
+needs of Rome had increased, and the means for meeting them were
+dwindling year by year. This must be admitted, however we interpret the
+meaning of these returns. A hasty generalisation might lead us to infer
+that a wholesale diminution was taking place in the population of Rome
+and Italy. The returns may add weight to other evidence which points
+this way; but, taken by themselves, they afford no warrant for such a
+conclusion. The census lists were concerned, not only purely with Roman
+citizens, but purely with Roman citizens of a certain type. It is
+practically certain that they reproduce only the effective fighting
+strength of Rome,[177] and take no account of those citizens whose
+property did not entitle them to be placed amongst the _classes_.[178]
+But, if it is not necessary to believe that an actual diminution of
+population is attested by these declining numbers, the conclusion which
+they do exhibit is hardly less serious from an economic and political
+point of view. They show that portions of the well-to-do classes were
+ceasing to possess the property which entitled them to entrance into the
+regular army, and that the ranks of the poorer proletariate were being
+swelled by their impoverishment. It is possible that such impoverishment
+may have been welcomed as a boon by the wearied veterans of Rome and
+their descendants. It meant exemption from the heavier burdens of
+military service, and, if it went further still, it implied immunity
+from the tribute as long as direct taxes were collected from Roman
+citizens.[179] As long as service remained a burden on wealth, however
+moderate, there could have been little inducement to the man of small
+means to struggle up to a standard of moderately increased pecuniary
+comfort, which would certainly be marred and might be lost by the
+personal inconvenience of the levy.
+
+The decline in the numbers of the wealthier classes is thus attested by
+the census rolls. But indications can also be given which afford a
+slight probability that there was a positive diminution in the free
+population of Rome and perhaps of Italy. The carnage of the Hannibalic
+war may easily be overemphasised as a source of positive decline. Such
+losses are rapidly made good when war is followed by the normal
+industrial conditions which success, or even failure, may bring. But, as
+we shall soon see reason for believing that these industrial conditions
+were not wholly resumed in Italy, the Second Punic War may be regarded
+as having produced a gap in the population which was never entirely
+refilled. We find evidences of tracts of country which were not annexed
+by the rich but could not be repeopled by the poor. The policy pursued
+by the decaying Empire of settling foreign colonists on Italian soil had
+already occurred to the statesmen of Rome in the infancy of her imperial
+expansion. In 180 B.C. 40,000 Ligurians belonging to the Apuanian people
+were dragged from their homes with their wives and children and settled
+on some public land of Rome which lay in the territory of the Samnites.
+The consuls were commissioned to divide up the land in allotments, and
+money was voted to the colonists to defray the expense of stocking their
+new farms.[180] Although the leading motive for this transference was
+the preservation of peace amongst the Ligurian tribes, yet it is
+improbable that the senate would have preferred the stranger to its
+kindred had there been an outcry from the landless proletariate to be
+allowed to occupy and retain the devastated property of the State.
+
+But moral motives are stronger even than physical forces in checking the
+numerical progress of a race. Amongst backward peoples unusual
+indulgence and consequent disease may lead to the diminution or even
+extinction of the stock; amongst civilised peoples the motives which
+attain this result are rather prudential, and are concerned with an
+ideal of life which perhaps increases the efficiency of the individual,
+but builds up his healthy and pleasurable environment at the expense of
+the perpetuity of the race. The fact that the Roman and Italian physique
+was not degenerating is abundantly proved by the military history of the
+last hundred years of the Republic. This is one of the greatest periods
+of conquest in the history of the world. The Italy, whom we are often
+inclined to think of as exhausted, could still pour forth her myriads of
+valiant sons to the confines marked by the Rhine, the Euphrates and the
+Sahara; and the struggle of the civil wars, which followed this
+expansion, was the clash of giants. But this vigour was accompanied by
+an ideal, whether of irresponsibility or of comfort, which gave rise to
+the growing habit of celibacy--a habit which was to stir the eloquence
+of many a patriotic statesman and finally lead to the intervention of
+the law. When the censor of 131 uttered the memorable exhortation "Since
+nature has so ordained that we cannot live comfortably with a wife nor
+live at all without one, you should hold the eternal safety of the State
+more dear than your own brief pleasure," [181] it is improbable that he
+was indulging in conscious cynicism, although there may have been a
+trace of conscious humour in his words. He was simply bending to the
+ideal of the people whom he saw, or imagined to be, before him. The
+ideal was not necessarily bad, as one that was concerned with individual
+life. It implied thrift, forethought, comfort--even efficiency of a
+kind, for the unmarried man was a more likely recruit than the father of
+a family. But it sacrificed too much--the future to the present; it
+ignored the undemonstrable duty which a man owes to the permanent idea
+of the State through working for a future which he shall never see. It
+rested partly on a conviction of security; but that feeling of security
+was the most perilous sign of all.
+
+The practice of celibacy generally leads to irregular attachments
+between the sexes. In a society ignorant of slavery, such attachments,
+as giving rise to social inconveniences far greater than those of
+marriage, are usually shunned on prudential grounds even where moral
+motives are of no avail. But the existence in Italy of a large class of
+female dependants, absolutely outside the social circle of the citizen
+body, rendered the attachment of the master to his slave girl or to his
+freedwoman fatally easy and unembarrassing. It was unfortunately as
+attractive as it was easy. Amidst the mass of servile humanity that had
+drifted to Italy from most of the quarters of the world there was
+scarcely a type that might not reproduce some strange and wonderful
+beauty. And the charm of manner might be secured as readily as that of
+face and form. The Hellenic East must often have exhibited in its women
+that union of wit, grace and supple tact which made even its men so
+irresistible to their Roman masters. The courtesans of the capital,
+whether of high or low estate,[182] are from the point of view which we
+are considering not nearly so important as the permanent mistress or
+"concubine" of the man who might dwell in any part of Italy. It was the
+latter, not the former, that was the true substitute for the wife. There
+is reason to believe that it was about this period that "concubinage"
+became an institution which was more than tolerated by society.[183] The
+relation which it implied between the man and his companion, who was
+generally one of his freedwomen, was sufficiently honourable. It
+excluded the idea of union with any other woman, whether by marriage or
+temporary association; it might be more durable than actual wedlock, for
+facilities for divorce were rapidly breaking the permanence of the
+latter bond; it might satisfy the juristic condition of "marital
+affection" quite as fully as the type of union to which law or religion
+gave its blessing. But it differed from marriage in one point of vital
+importance for the welfare of the State. Children might be the issue of
+_concubinatus_, but they were not looked on as its end. Such unions were
+not formed _liberûm quaerendorum causâ_.
+
+The decline, or at least the stationary character, of the population may
+thus be shown to be partly the result of a cause at once social and
+economic; for this particular social evil was the result of the economic
+experiment of the extended use of slavery as a means of production. This
+extension was itself partly the result of the accidents of war and
+conquest, and in fact, throughout this picture of the change which was
+passing over Italy, we can never free ourselves from the spectres of
+militarism and hegemony. But an investigation of the more purely
+economic aspects of the industrial life of the period affords a clear
+revelation of the fact that the effects of war and conquest were merely
+the foundation, accidentally presented, of a new method of production,
+which was the result of deliberate design and to some extent of a
+conscious imitation of systems which had in turn built up the colossal
+wealth, and assisted the political decay, of older civilisations with
+which Rome was now brought into contact. The new ideal was that of the
+large plantation or _latifundium_ supervised by skilled overseers,
+worked by gangs of slaves with carefully differentiated duties, guided
+by scientific rules which the hoary experience of Asia and Carthage had
+devised, but, in unskilled Roman hands, perhaps directed with a reckless
+energy that, keeping in view the vast and speedy returns which could
+only be given by richer soils than that of Italy, was as exhaustive of
+the capacities of the land as it was prodigal of the human energy that
+was so cheaply acquired and so wastefully employed. The East, Carthage
+and Sicily had been the successive homes of this system, and the Punic
+ideal reached Rome just at the moment when the tendency of the free
+peasantry to quit their holdings as unprofitable, or to sell them to pay
+their debts, opened the way for the organisation of husbandry on the
+grand Carthaginian model.[184] The opportunity was naturally seized with
+the utmost eagerness by men whose wants were increasing, whose incomes
+must be made to keep pace with these wants, and whose wealth must
+inevitably be dependent mainly on the produce of the soil. Yet we have
+no warrant for accusing the members of the Roman nobility of a
+deliberate plan of campaign stimulated by conscious greed and
+selfishness. For a time they may not have known what they were doing.
+Land was falling in and they bought it up; domains belonging to the
+State were so unworked as to be falling into the condition of rank
+jungle and pestilent morass. They cleared and improved this land with a
+view to their own profit and the profit of the State. Free labour was
+unattainable or, when attained, embarrassing. They therefore bought
+their labour in the cheapest market, this market being the product of
+the wars and slave-raids of the time. They acted, in fact, as every
+enlightened capitalist would act under similar circumstances. It seemed
+an age of the revival of agriculture, not of its decay. The official
+class was filled with a positive enthusiasm for new and improved
+agricultural methods. The great work of the Carthaginian Mago was
+translated by order of the senate.[185] Few of the members of that body
+would have cared to follow the opening maxim of the great expert, that
+if a man meant to settle in the country he should begin by selling his
+house in town;[186] the men of affairs did not mean to become gentlemen
+farmers, and it was the hope of profitable investment for the purpose of
+maintaining their dignity in the capital, not the rustic ideal of the
+primitive Roman, that appealed to their souls. But they might have hoped
+that most of the golden precepts of the twenty-eight books, which
+unfolded every aspect of the science of the management of land, would be
+assimilated by the intelligent bailiff, and they may even have been
+influenced by a patriotic desire to reveal to the small holder
+scientific methods of tillage, which might stave off the ruin that they
+deplored as statesmen and exploited as individuals. But the lessons were
+thrown away on the small cultivator; they probably presupposed the
+possession of capital and labour which were far beyond his reach; and
+science may have played but little part even in the accumulations of the
+rich, although the remarkable spectacle of small holdings, under the
+personal supervision of peasant proprietors, being unable to hold their
+own against plantations and ranches managed by bailiffs and worked by
+slaves, does suggest that some improved methods of cultivation were
+adopted on the larger estates. The rapidity with which the plantation
+system spread must have excited the astonishment even of its promoters.
+Etruria, in spite of the fact that three colonies of Roman citizens had
+lately been founded within its borders,[187] soon showed one continuous
+series of great domains stretching from town to town, with scarcely a
+village to break the monotonous expanse of its self-tilled plains.
+Little more than forty years had elapsed since the final settlement of
+the last Roman colony of Luna when a young Roman noble, travelling along
+the Etruscan roads, strained his eyes in vain to find a free labourer,
+whether cultivator or shepherd.[188] In this part of Italy it is
+probable that Roman enterprise was not the sole, or even the main, cause
+of the wreckage of the country folk. The territory had always been
+subject to local influences of an aristocratic kind; but the Etruscan
+nobles had stayed their hand as long as a free people might help them to
+regain their independence.[189] Now subjection had crushed all other
+ambition but that of gain and personal splendour, while the ravages of
+the Hannibalic war had made the peasantry an easy victim of the
+wholesale purchaser. Farther south, in Bruttii and Apulia, the hand of
+Rome had co-operated with the scourge of war to produce a like result.
+The confiscations effected in the former district as a punishment for
+its treasonable relations with Hannibal, the suitability of the latter
+for grazing purposes, which had early made it the largest tract of land
+in Italy patrolled by the shepherd slave,[190] had swept village and
+cultivator away, and left through whole day's journeys but vast
+stretches of pasture between the decaying towns.
+
+For barrenness and desolation were often the results of the new and
+improved system of management. There were tracts of country which could
+not produce cereals of an abundance and quality capable of competing
+with the corn imported from the provinces; but even on territories where
+crops could be reared productively, it was tempting to substitute for
+the arduous processes of sowing and reaping the cheaper and easier
+industry of the pasturage of flocks. We do not know the extent to which
+arable land in fair condition was deliberately turned into pasturage;
+but we can imagine many cases in which the land recently acquired by
+capitalists, whether from the State or from smaller holders, was in such
+a condition, either from an initial lack of cultivation or from neglect
+or from the ravages of war, that the new proprietor may well have shrunk
+from the doubtful enterprise of sinking his capital in the soil, for the
+purpose of testing its productive qualities. In such cases it was
+tempting to treat the great domain as a sheep-walk or cattle-ranch. The
+initial expenses of preparation were small, the labour to be employed
+was reduced to a minimum, the returns in proportion to the expenses were
+probably far larger than could be gained from corn, even when grown
+under the most favourable conditions. The great difficulty in the way of
+cattle-rearing on a large scale in earlier times had been the treatment
+of the flocks and herds during the winter months. The necessity for
+providing stalls and fodder for this period must have caused the
+proprietor to limit the heads of cattle which he cared to possess. But
+this constraint had vanished at once when a stretch of warm coast-line
+could be found, on which the flocks could pasture without feeling the
+rigour of the winter season. Conversely, the cattle-rearer who possessed
+the advantage of such a line of coast would feel his difficulties
+beginning when the summer months approached. The plains of the Campagna
+and Apulia could have been good neither for man nor beast during the
+torrid season. The full condition which freed a grazier from all
+embarrassment and rendered him careless of limiting the size of his
+flocks, was the combined possession of pastures by the sea for winter
+use, and of glades in the hills for pasturage in summer.[191] Neither
+the men of the hills nor the men of the plains, as long as they formed
+independent communities, could become graziers on an extensive scale,
+and it has been pointed out that even a Greek settlement of the extent
+of Sybaris had been forced to import its wool from the Black Sea through
+Miletus.[192] But when Rome had won the Apennines and extended her
+influence over the coast, there were no limits to the extent to which
+cattle rearing could be carried.[193] It became perhaps the most
+gigantic enterprise connected with the soil of Italy. Its cheapness and
+efficiency appealed to every practical mind. Cato, who had a sentimental
+attachment to agriculture, was bound in honesty to reply to the question
+"What is the best manner of investment?" by the words "Good pasturage."
+To the question as to the second-best means he answered "Tolerable
+pasturage." When asked to declare the third, he replied "Bad pasturage."
+To ploughing he would assign only the fourth place in the descending
+Scale.[194] Bruttii and Apulia were the chief homes of the ranch and the
+fold. The Lucanian conquest of the former country must, even at a time
+preceding the Roman domination, have formed a connection between the
+mountains and the plains, and pasturage on a large scale in the mountain
+glades of the Bruttian territory may have been an inheritance rather
+than a creation of the Romans; but the ruin caused in this district by
+the Second Punic War, the annexation to the State of large tracts of
+rebel land,[195] and the reduction of large portions of the population
+to the miserable serf-like condition of _dediticii_,[196] must have
+offered the capitalists opportunities which they could not otherwise
+have secured; and both here and in Apulia the tendency to extend the
+grazing system to its utmost limits must have advanced with terrible
+rapidity since the close of the Hannibalic war. It was the East coast of
+Southern Italy that was chiefly surrendered to this new form of
+industry, and we may observe a somewhat sharp distinction between the
+pastoral activity of these regions and the agricultural life which still
+continued, although on a diminished scale, in the Western
+districts.[197]
+
+We have already made occasional reference to the accidents on which the
+new industrial methods that created the _latifundia_ were designedly
+based. It is now necessary to examine these accidents in greater detail,
+if only for the purpose of preparing the ground for a future estimate of
+the efficacy of the remedies suggested by statesmen for a condition of
+things which, however naturally and even honestly created, was
+deplorable both on social and political grounds. The causes which had
+led to the change from one form of tenure and cultivation to another of
+a widely different kind required to be carefully probed, if the
+Herculean task of a reversion to the earlier system was to be attempted.
+The men who essayed the task had unquestionably a more perfect knowledge
+of the causes of the change than can ever be possessed by the student of
+to-day; but criticism is easier than action, and if it is not to become
+shamelessly facile, every constraining element in the complicated
+problem which is at all recoverable (all those elements so clearly seen
+by the hard-headed and honest Roman reformers, but known by them to
+possess an invulnerability that we have forgotten) must be examined by
+the historian in the blundering analysis which is all that is permitted
+by his imperfect information, and still more imperfect realisation, of
+the temporary forces that are the millstones of a scheme of reform.
+
+The havoc wrought by the Hannibalic invasion[198] had caused even
+greater damage to the land than to the people. The latter had been
+thinned but the former had been wasted, and in some cases wasted, as
+events proved, almost beyond repair. The devastation had been especially
+great in Southern Italy, the nations of which had clung to the Punic
+invader to the end. But such results of war are transitory in the
+extreme, if the numbers and energy of the people who resume possession
+of their wrecked homes are not exhausted, and if the conditions of
+production and sale are as favourable after the calamity as they were
+before. The amount of wealth which an enemy can injure, lies on the mere
+surface of the soil, and is an insignificant fraction of that which is
+stored in the bosom of the earth, or guaranteed by a favourable
+commercial situation and access to the sea. Carthage could pay her war
+indemnity and, in the course of half a century, affright Cato by her
+teeming wealth and fertility. Her people had resumed their old habits,
+bent wholeheartedly to the only life they loved, and the prizes of a
+crowded haven and bursting granaries were the result. If a nation does
+not recover from such a blow, there must be some permanent defect in its
+economic life or some fatal flaw in its administrative system. The
+devastation caused by war merely accelerates the process of decay by
+creating a temporary impoverishment, which reveals the severity of the
+preceding struggle for existence and renders hopeless its resumption.
+Certainly the great war of which Italy had been the theatre did mark
+such an epoch in the history of its agricultural life. A lack of
+productivity began to be manifested, for which, however, subsequent
+economic causes were mainly responsible. The lack of intensity, which is
+a characteristic of slave labour, lessened the returns, while the
+secondary importance attached to the manuring of the fields was a
+vicious principle inherent in the agricultural precepts of the
+time.[199] But it is probable that from this epoch there were large
+tracts of land the renewed cultivation of which was never attempted; and
+these were soon increased by domains which yielded insufficient returns
+and were gradually abandoned. The Italian peasant had ever had a hard
+fight with the insalubrity of his soil. Fever has always been the
+dreaded goddess of the environs of Rome. But constant labour and
+effective drainage had kept the scourge at bay, until the evil moment
+came when the time of the peasant was absorbed, and his energy spent, in
+the toils of constant war, when his land was swallowed up in the vast
+estates that had rapid profits as their end and careless slaves as their
+cultivators. Then, the moist fields gave out their native pestilence,
+and malaria reigned unchecked over the fairest portion of the Italian
+plain.[200]
+
+One of the leading economic causes, which had led to the failure of a
+certain class of the Italian peasant-proprietors, was the competition to
+which they were exposed from the provinces. Rome herself had begun to
+rely for the subsistence of her increasing population on corn imported
+from abroad, and many of the large coast-towns may have been forced to
+follow her example. The corn-producing powers of the Mediterranean lands
+had now definitely shifted from the regions of the East and North to
+those of the South.[201] Greece, which had been barely able to feed
+itself during the most flourishing period of its history, could not
+under any circumstances have possessed an importance as a country of
+export for Italy; but the economic evils which had fallen on this
+unhappy land are worthy of observation, as presenting a forecast of the
+fate which was in store for Rome. The decline in population, which could
+be attributed neither to war nor pestilence, the growing celibacy and
+childlessness of its sparse inhabitants,[202] must have been due to an
+agricultural revolution similar to that which was gradually being
+effected on Italian soil. The plantation system and the wholesale
+employment of slave labour must have swept across the Aegean from their
+homes in Asia Minor. Here their existence is sufficiently attested by
+the servile rising which was to assume, shortly after the tribunate of
+Tiberius Gracchus, the pretended form of a dynastic war; and the
+troubles which always attended the collection of the Asiatic tithes, in
+the days when a Roman province had been established in those regions,
+give no favourable impression of the agricultural prosperity of the
+countries which lay between the Taurus and the sea. As far south as
+Sicily there was evidence of exhaustion of the land, and of unnatural
+conditions of production, which excluded the mass of the free
+inhabitants from participation both in labour and profits. But even
+Sicily had learned from Carthage the evil lesson that Greece had
+acquired from Asia; the plantation system had made vast strides in the
+island, and the condition of the _aratores_, whether free-holders or
+lessees, was not what it had been in the days of Diocles and Timoleon.
+The growing economic dependence of Rome on Sicily was by no means wholly
+due to any exceptional productive capacities in the latter, but was
+mainly the result of proximity, and of administrative relations which
+enabled the government and the speculator in corn to draw definite and
+certain supplies of grain from the Sicilian cultivators. This was true
+also, although to a smaller degree, of Sardinia. But Sicily and Sardinia
+do mark the beginning of the Southern zone of lands which were capable
+of filling the markets of the Western world. It was the Northern coast
+of Africa which rose supreme as the grain-producer of the time. In the
+Carthaginian territory the natural absence of an agricultural peasantry
+amidst a commercial folk, and the elaboration of a definite science of
+agriculture, had neutralised the ill effects which accompanied the
+plantation system amongst other peoples less business-like and
+scientific; the cultivators had shown no signs of unrest and the soil no
+traces of exhaustion. It has been inferred with some probability that
+the hostility of Cato, the friend of agriculture and of the Italian
+yeoman, to the flourishing Punic state was directed to some extent by
+the fear that the grain of Africa might one day drive from the market
+the produce of the Italian fields;[203] and, if this view entered into
+the calculations which produced the final Punic War, the very
+short-sightedness of the policy which destroyed a state only to give its
+lands to African cities and potentates or to Roman speculators, who
+might continue the methods of the extinct community, is only too
+characteristic of that type of economic jealousy which destroys an
+accidental product and leaves the true cause of offence unassailed. The
+destruction of Carthage had, as a matter of fact, aggravated the danger;
+for the first use which Masinissa of Numidia made of the vast power with
+which Rome had entrusted him, was an attempt to civilise his people by
+turning them into cultivators;[204] and the virgin soil of the great
+country which stretched from the new boundaries of Carthage to the
+confines of the Moors, was soon reckoned amongst the competing elements
+which the Roman agriculturist had to fear.
+
+But the force of circumstances caused the Sicilian and Sardinian
+cultivator to be the most formidable of his immediate competitors. The
+facility of transport from Sicily to Rome rendered that island superior
+as a granary to even the more productive portions of the Italian
+mainland. Sicily could never have revealed the marvellous fertility of
+the valley of the Po, where a bushel and a half of wheat could be
+purchased for five pence half-penny, and the same quantity of barley was
+sold for half this price;[205] but it was easier to get Sicilian corn to
+Rome by sea than to get Gallic corn to Rome by land; and the system of
+taxation and requisitions which had grown out of the provincial
+organisation of the island, rendered it peculiarly easy to place great
+masses of corn on the Roman market at very short notice. Occasionally
+the Roman government enforced a sale of corn from the province
+(_frumentum emptum_),[206] a reasonable price being paid for the grain
+thus demanded for the city or the army; but this was almost the only
+case in which the government intervened to regulate supplies. In the
+ordinary course of things the right to collect the tithes of the
+province was purchased by public companies, who paid money, not grain,
+into the Roman treasury, and these companies placed their corn on the
+market as best they could. The operations of the speculators in grain
+doubtless disturbed the price at times. But yet the certainty, the
+abundance and the facilities for transport of this supply were such as
+practically to shut out from competition in the Roman market all but the
+most favourably situated districts of Italy. Their chance of competition
+depended mainly on their accidental possession of a good road, or their
+neighbourhood to the sea or to a navigable river.[207] The larger
+proprietors in any part of Italy must have possessed greater facilities
+for carrying their grain to a good market than were enjoyed by the
+smaller holders. The Clodian law on trade permitted senators to own
+sea-going ships of a certain tonnage; they could, therefore, export
+their own produce without any dependence on the middle-man, while the
+smaller cultivators would have been obliged to pay freight, or could
+only have avoided such payment by forming shipping-companies amongst
+themselves. But such combination was not to be looked for amongst a
+peasant class, barely conscious even of the external symptoms of the
+great revolution which was dragging them to ruin, and perhaps almost
+wholly oblivious of its cause.
+
+It required less penetration to fathom the second of the great reasons
+for the accumulation of landed property in the hands of the few; for
+this cause had been before the eyes of the Roman world, and had been
+expounded by the lips of Roman statesmen, for generations or, if we
+credit a certain class of traditions,[208] even for centuries. This
+cause of the growing monopoly of the land by the few was the system of
+possession which the State had encouraged, for the purpose of securing
+the use and cultivation of its public domain. The policy of the State
+seems to have changed from time to time with reference to its treatment
+of this particular portion of its property, which it valued as the most
+secure of its assets and one that served, besides its financial end, the
+desirable purpose of assisting it to maintain the influence of Rome
+throughout almost every part of Italy. When conquered domain had first
+been declared "public," the government had been indifferent to the type
+of occupier which served it by squatting on this territory and
+reclaiming land that had not been divided or sold chiefly because its
+condition was too unattractive to invite either of these processes.[209]
+It had probably extended its invitation even to Latin allies,[210] and
+looked with approval on any member of the burgess body who showed his
+enterprise and patriotism by the performance of this great public
+service. If the State had a partiality, it was probably for the richer
+and more powerful classes of its citizens. They could embrace a greater
+quantity of land in their grasp, and so save the trouble which attended
+an estimate of the returns of a great number of small holdings; they
+possessed more effective means of reclaiming waste or devastated land,
+for they had a greater control of capital and labour; lastly, through
+their large bands of clients and slaves, they had the means of
+efficiently protecting the land which they had occupied, and this must
+have been an important consideration at a time when large tracts of the
+_ager publicus_ lay amidst foreign territories which were barely
+pacified, and were owned by communities that often wavered in their
+allegiance to Rome. But, whatever the views of the government, it is
+tolerably clear that the original occupiers must have chiefly
+represented men of this stamp. These were the days when the urban and
+the rustic tribes were sharply divided, as containing respectively the
+men of the town and the men of the country, and when there were
+comparatively few of the latter folk that did not possess some holding
+of their own. It was improbable that a townsman would often venture on
+the unfamiliar task of taking up waste land; it was almost as improbable
+that a small yeoman would find leisure to add to the unaided labour on
+his own holding the toil of working on new and unpromising soil, except
+in the cases where some unclaimed portion of the public domain was in
+close proximity to his estate.
+
+We may, therefore, infer that from very early times the wealthier
+classes had asserted themselves as the chief occupiers of the public
+domain. And this condition of things continued to be unchallenged until
+a time came[211] when the small holders, yielding to the pressure of
+debt and bankruptcy, sought their champions amongst the tribunes of the
+Plebs. The absolute control of the public domain by the State, the
+absolute insecurity of the tenure of its occupants, furnished an
+excellent opportunity for staving off schemes of confiscation and
+redistribution of private property, such as had often shaken the
+communities of Greece, and even for refusing to tamper with the existing
+law of debtor and creditor.[212] It was imagined that bankrupt yeomen
+might be relieved by being allowed to settle on the public domain, or
+that the resumption or retention of a portion of this domain by the
+State might furnish an opportunity for the foundation of fresh colonies,
+and a law was passed limiting the amount of the _ager publicus_ that any
+individual might possess. The enactment, whatever its immediate results
+may have been, proved ineffective as a means of checking the growth of
+large possessions. No special commission was appointed to enforce
+obedience to its terms, and their execution was neglected by the
+ordinary magistrates. The provisions of the law were, indeed, never
+forgotten, but as a rule they were remembered only to be evaded. Devious
+methods were adopted of holding public land through persons who seemed
+to be _bonâ fide_ possessors in their own right, but were in reality
+merely agents of some planter who already held land up to the permitted
+limit.[213] Then came the agricultural crisis which followed the Punic
+Wars. The small freeholds, mortgaged, deserted or selling for a fraction
+of their value, began to fall into the meshes of the vast net which had
+spread over the public domain. In some cases actual violence is said to
+have been used to the smaller yeomen by their neighbouring tyrants,[214]
+and we can readily imagine that, when a holding had been deserted for a
+time through stress of war or military service, it might be difficult to
+resume possession in the face of effective occupation by the bailiff of
+some powerful neighbour. The _latifundium_--acquired, as it was
+believed, in many cases by force, fraud and shameless violation of the
+law--was becoming the standard unit of cultivation throughout
+Italy.[215] When we consider the general social and economic
+circumstances of the time, it is possible to imagine that large
+properties would have grown in Italy, as in Greece, had Rome never
+possessed an inch of public domain; but the occupation of _ager
+publicus_ by the rich is very important from two points of view. On the
+one hand, it unquestionably accelerated the process of the formation of
+vast estates; and a renewed impulse had lately been given to this
+process by the huge confiscations in the South of Italy, and perhaps by
+the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul; for it is improbable that the domain
+possessed by the State in this fertile country had been wholly parcelled
+out amongst the colonies of the northern frontier.[216] But on the other
+hand, the fact that the kernel of these estates was composed of public
+land in excess of the prescribed limit seemed to make resumption by the
+State and redistribution to the poor legally possible. The _ager
+publicus_, therefore, formed the basis for future agitation and was the
+rallying point for supporters and opponents of the proposed methods of
+agricultural reform.
+
+But it was not merely the negligence of the State which led to the
+crushing of the small man by the great; the positive burdens which the
+government was forced to impose by the exigencies of the career of
+conquest and hegemony into which Rome had drifted, rendered the former
+an almost helpless competitor in the uneven struggle. The conscription
+had from early days been a source of impoverishment for the commons and
+of opportunity for the rich. The former could obey the summons of the
+State only at the risk of pledging his credit, or at least of seeing his
+homestead drift into a condition of neglect which would bring the
+inevitable day when it could only be rehabilitated by a loan of seed or
+money. The lot of the warrior of moderate means was illustrated by the
+legend of Regulus. He was believed to have written home to the consuls
+asking to be relieved of his command in Africa. The bailiff whom he had
+left on his estate of seven _jugera_ was dead, the hired man had stolen
+the implements of agriculture and run away; the farm lay desolate and,
+were its master not permitted to return, his wife and children would
+lack the barest necessaries of existence.[217] The struggle to maintain
+a household in the absence of its head was becoming more acute now that
+corn-land was ceasing to pay, except under the most favourable
+conditions, and now that the demand for conscripts was sometimes heavier
+and always more continuous than it had ever been before. Perhaps
+one-tenth of the adult male population of Rome was always in the
+field;[218] the units came and went, but the men who bore the brunt of
+the long campaigns and of garrison duty in the provinces were those to
+whom leisure meant life--the yeomen who maintained their place in the
+census lists by hardy toil, and who risked their whole subsistence
+through the service that had been wrested from them as a reward for a
+laborious career. When they ceased to be owners of their land, they
+found it difficult to secure places even as labourers on some rich man's
+property. The landholder preferred the services of slaves which could
+not be interrupted by the call of military duty.[219]
+
+The economic evils consequent on the conscription must have been felt
+with hardly less severity by such of the Italian allies as lived in the
+regions within which the _latifundia_ were growing up. To these were
+added the pecuniary burdens which Rome had been forced to impose during
+the Second Punic War. These burdens were for the most part indirect, for
+Rome did not tax her Italian _socii_, but they were none the less
+severe. Every contingent supplied from an allied community had its
+expenses, except that of food during service, defrayed from the treasury
+of its own state,[220] and ten continuous years of conscription and
+requisition had finally exhausted the loyalty even of Rome's Latin
+kindred.[221] It is true that the Italians were partially, although not
+wholly, free from the economic struggle between the possessors of the
+public land and the small freeholders; but there is no reason for
+supposing that those of Western Italy were exempt from the consequences
+of the reduction in price that followed the import of corn from abroad,
+and the drain on their incomes and services which had been caused by war
+could scarcely have fitted them to stand this unexpected trial. Rome's
+harsh dealings with the treasonable South, although adopted for
+political motives, was almost unquestionably a political blunder. She
+confiscated devastated lands, and so perpetuated their devastation. She
+left ruined harbours and cities in decay. She crippled her own resources
+to add to the pastoral wealth of a handful of her citizens. In the East
+of Italy there was a far greater vitality than elsewhere in agriculture
+of the older type. The Samnites in their mountains, the Peligni,
+Marrucini, Frentani and Vestini between the Apennines and the sea still
+kept to the system of small freeholds. Their peasantry had perhaps
+always cultivated for consumption rather than for sale; their
+inhabitants were rather beyond the reach of the ample supply from the
+South; and for these reasons the competition of Sicilian and African
+corn did not lead them to desert their fields. They were also less
+exposed than the Romans and Latins to the aggressions of the great
+_possessor_; for, since they possessed no _commercium_ with Rome, the
+annexation of their property by legal means was beyond the reach even of
+the ingenious cupidity of the times.[222] The proof of the existence of
+the yeoman in these regions is the danger which he caused to Rome. The
+spirit which had maintained his economic independence was to aim at a
+higher goal, and the struggle for equality of political rights was to
+prove to the exclusive city the prowess of that class of peasant
+proprietors which she had sacrificed in her own domains.
+
+But, although this sacrifice had been great, we must not be led into the
+belief that there was no hope for the agriculturist of moderate means
+either in the present or in the future. Even in the present there were
+clear indications that estates of moderate size could under careful
+cultivation hold their own. The estate of Lucius Manlius, which Cato
+sketches in his work on agriculture,[223] was far from rivalling the
+great demesnes of the princes of the land. It consisted of 240 _jugera_
+devoted to the olive and of 100 _jugera_ reserved for the vine.
+Provision was made for a moderate supply of corn and for pasturage for
+the cattle that worked upon the fields. But the farm was on the whole a
+representative of the new spirit, which saw in the vine and the olive a
+paying substitute for the decadent culture of grain. Even on an estate
+of this size we note as significant that the permanent and even the
+higher personnel of the household (the latter being represented by the
+_villici_ and the _villicae_) was composed of slaves; yet hirelings were
+needed for the harvest and the corn was grown by cottagers who held
+their land on a _métayer_ tenure. But such an estate demanded unusual
+capital as well as unusual care. On the tiny holdings, which were all
+that the poorest could afford, the scanty returns might be eked out by
+labour on the fields of others, for the small allotment did not demand
+the undivided energies of its holder.[224] There was besides a class of
+_politores_[225] similar to that figured as cultivating the Cornland on
+the estate of Manlius, who received in kind a wage on which they could
+at least exist. They were nominally _métayer_ tenants who were provided
+with the implements of husbandry by their landlord; but the quantity of
+grain which they could reserve to their own use was so small, varying as
+it did from a ninth to a fifth of the whole of the crop which they had
+reaped,[226] that their position was little better than that of the
+poorest labourer by the day.[227] The humblest class of freemen might
+still make a living in districts where pasturage did not reign supreme.
+But it was a living that involved a sacrifice of independence and a
+submission to sordid needs that were unworthy of the past ideal of Roman
+citizenship. It was a living too that conferred little benefit on the
+State; for the day-labourers and the _politores_ could scarcely have
+been in the position on the census list which rendered them liable to
+the conscription.
+
+If it were possible to lessen the incidence of military service and to
+secure land and a small amount of capital for the dispossessed, the
+prospects for the future were by no means hopeless. The smaller culture,
+especially the cultivation of the vine and the olive, is that to which
+portions of Italy are eminently suited. This is especially true of the
+great volcanic plain of the West extending from the north of Etruria to
+the south of Campania and comprising, besides these territories, the
+countries of the Latins, the Sabines, the Volsci and the Hernici. The
+lightness and richness of the alluvion of this volcanic soil is almost
+as suited to the production of cereals as to that of the vine and the
+olive or the growth of vegetables.[228] But, even on the assumption that
+corn-growing would not pay, there was nothing to prevent, and everything
+to encourage the development of the olive plantation, the vineyard and
+the market garden throughout this region. It was a country sown with
+towns, and the vast throat of Rome alone would cry for the products of
+endless labour. Even Cato can place the vine and the olive before
+grazing land and forest trees in the order of productivity,[229] and
+before the close of the Republic the government had learnt the lesson
+that the salvation of the Italian peasantry depended on the cultivation
+of products like these. The conviction is attested by the protective
+edict that the culture of neither the vine nor the olive was to be
+extended in Transalpine Gaul.[230] Market gardening was also to have a
+considerable future, wherever the neighbourhood of the larger towns
+created a demand for such supplies.[231] A new method of tenure also
+gave opportunities to those whose capital or circumstances did not
+enable them to purchase a sufficient quantity of land of their own.
+Leaseholds became more frequent, and the _coloni_ thus created[232]
+began to take an active share in the agricultural life of Italy. Like
+the _villici_, they were a product, of the tendency to live away from
+the estate; but they gained ground at the expense of the servile
+bailiffs, probably in consequence of their greater trustworthiness and
+keener interest in the soil.
+
+But time was needed to effect these changes. For the present the reign
+of the capitalist was supreme, and the plantation system was dominant
+throughout the greater part of Italy. The most essential ingredient in
+this system was the slave,--an alien and a chattel, individually a thing
+of little account, but reckoned in his myriads the most powerful factor
+in the economic, and therefore in the political, life of the times, the
+gravest of the problems that startled the reformer. The soil of Italy
+was now peopled with widely varied types, and echoes of strange tongues
+from West and East could be heard on every hand. Italy seemed a newly
+discovered country, on which the refuse of all lands had been thrown to
+become a people that could never be a nation. The home supply of slaves,
+so familiar as to seem a product of the land, was becoming a mere trifle
+in comparison with the vast masses that were being thrust amongst the
+peasantry by war and piracy. At the time of the protest of Tiberius
+Gracchus against the dominance of slave labour in the fields scarcely
+two generations had elapsed since the great influx had begun. The Second
+Punic War had spread to every quarter of the West; Sicily, Sardinia,
+Cisalpine Gaul and Spain all yielded their tribute in the form of human
+souls that had passed from the victor to the dealer, from the dealer to
+the country and the town. Only one generation had passed since a great
+wave had swept from Epirus and Northern Greece over the shores of Italy.
+In Epirus alone one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners had been
+sold.[233] Later still the destruction of Carthage must have cast vast
+quantities of agricultural slaves upon the market.[234] Asia too had
+yielded up her captives as the result of Roman victories; but the
+Oriental visages that might be seen in the streets of Rome or the plains
+of Sicily, were less often the gift of regular war than of the piracy
+and the systematised slave-hunting of the Eastern Mediterranean. Rome,
+who had crushed the rival maritime powers that had attempted, however
+imperfectly, to police the sea, had been content with the work of
+destruction, and seemed to care nothing for the enterprising buccaneers
+who sailed with impunity as far west as Sicily. The pirates had also
+made themselves useful to the Oriental powers which still retained their
+independence; they had been tolerated, if they had not been employed, by
+Cyprus and Egypt when these states were struggling against the Empire of
+the Seleucids.[235] But another reason for their immunity was the view
+held in the ancient world that slave-hunting was in itself a legitimate
+form of enterprise.[236] The pirate might easily be regarded as a mere
+trader in human merchandise. As such, he had perhaps been useful to
+Carthage;[237] and, as long as he abstained from attacking ports or
+nationalities under the protectorate of Rome, there was no reason why
+the capitalists in power should frown on the trade by which they
+prospered. For the pirates could probably bring better material to the
+slave market than was usually won in war.[238] A superior elegance and
+culture must often have been found in the helpless victims on whom they
+pounced; beauty and education were qualities that had a high marketable
+value, and by seizing on people of the better class they were sure of
+one of two advantages--either of a ransom furnished by the friends of
+the captives, or of a better price paid by the dealer. There was
+scarcely a pretence that the traders were mere intermediaries who bought
+in a cheap market and sold in a dear. They were known to be raiders as
+well, and numbers of the captives exhibited in the mart at Side in
+Pamphylia were known to have been freemen up to the moment of the
+auction.[239] The facility for capture and the proximity of Delos, the
+greatest of the slave markets which connected the East with the West,
+rendered the supply enormous; but it was equalled by the demand, and
+myriads of captives are said to have been shipped to the island and to
+have quitted it in a single day. The ease and rapidity of the business
+transacted by the master of a slave-ship became a proverb;[240] and
+honest mercantile undertakings with their tardy gains must have seemed
+contemptible in comparison with this facile source of wealth.
+
+An abundant supply and quick returns imply reasonable prices; and the
+cheapness of the labour supplied by the slave-trade, whether as a
+consequence of war or piracy, was at once a necessary condition of the
+vitality of the plantation system and a cause of the recklessness and
+neglect with which the easily replaced instruments might be used. Cato,
+a shrewd man of business, never cared to pay more than fifteen hundred
+denarii for his slaves.[241] This must have been the price of the best
+type of labourer, of a man probably who was gifted with intelligence as
+well as strength. Ordinary unskilled labour must have fetched a far
+smaller sum; for the prices which are furnished by the comic poetry of
+the day--prices which are as a rule conditioned by the value of personal
+services or qualities of a particular kind, by the attractions of sex
+and the competition for favours--do not on the average far exceed the
+limit fixed by Cato.[242] For common work newly imported slaves were
+actually preferred, and purchasers were shy of the _veterator_ who had
+seen long service.[243] Employment in the fashionable circles of the
+town doubtless enhanced the value of a slave, when he was known to have
+been in possession of some peculiar gift, whether it were for cookery,
+medicine or literature; but the labours of the country could easily be
+drilled into the newest importation, and prices diminished instead of
+rising with the advancing age and experience of the rustic slave.[244]
+
+The cheapened labour which was now spread over Italy presented as many
+varieties of moral as of physical type, and these came to be well known
+to the prospective owner, not because he aimed at being a moral
+influence, but because he objected to being worried by the vagaries of
+an eccentric type. Sardinians were always for sale, not because they
+were specially abundant, but because they showed an indocility that
+rendered them a sorry possession.[245] The passive Oriental, the
+Spaniard fierce and proud, required different methods of management and
+inspired different precautions; yet experience soon proved that the
+hellenised sons of the East had a better capacity for organising revolt
+than their fellow-sufferers from the North and West, and much of the
+harshness of Roman slavery was prompted by the panic which is the
+nemesis of the man who deals in human lives. But more of it was due to
+the indifference which springs from familiarity, and from the cold
+practical spirit in which the Roman always tended to play with the pawns
+of his business game, even when they were freemen and fellow-citizens. A
+man like Cato, who had sense and honesty enough to look after his own
+business, elaborated a machine-like system for governing his household,
+the aim of which was the maximum of profit with the minimum amount of
+humanity which is consistent with the attainment of such an end. The
+element of humanity is, however, accidental. There is no conscious
+appeal to such a feeling. The slaves seem to be looked on rather as
+automata who perform certain mental and physical processes analogous to
+those of men. Cato's servants were never to enter another house except
+at his bidding or at that of his wife, and were to express utter
+ignorance of his domestic history to all inquirers; their life was to
+alternate between working and sleeping, and the heavy sleeper was valued
+as presumably a peaceful character; little bickerings between the
+servants were to be encouraged, for unanimity was a matter for suspicion
+and fear; the death sentence pronounced on any one of them by the law
+was carried out in the presence of the assembled household, so as to
+strike a wholesome terror into the rest. If they wished to propagate
+their kind, they must pay for the privilege, and a fixed sum was
+demanded from the slave who desired to find a mate amongst his
+fellow-servants.[246] The rations were fixed and only raised at the
+people's festivals of the Saturnalia and Compitalia;[247] a sick slave
+was supposed to need less than his usual share[248]--perhaps an
+excellent hygienic maxim, but one scarcely adopted on purely hygienic
+grounds. Such a life was an emphatic protest against the indulgence of
+the city, the free and careless intercourse which often reversed the
+position of master and slave and formed part of the stock-in-trade of
+the comedian. Yet, even when the bond between the man of fashion and his
+artful Servants had merely a life of pleasure and of mischief as its
+end, we Are at least lifted by such relations into a human sphere, and
+it is exceedingly questionable whether the warped humanity of the city
+did mark so low a level as the brutalised life of the estate over which
+Cato's fostering genius was spread. If we develop Cato's methods but a
+little, if we admit a little more rigour and a little less
+discrimination, we get the dismal barrack-like system of the great
+plantations--a barrack, or perhaps a prison, nominally ruled by a
+governor who might live a hundred miles away, really under the control
+of an anxious and terrified slave, who divided his fears between his
+master who wanted money and his servants who wanted freedom. The
+_villicus_ had been once the mere intendant of the estate on which his
+master lived; he was now sole manager of a vast domain for his absent
+lord,[249] sole keeper of the great _ergastulum_ which enclosed at
+nightfall the instruments of labour and disgorged them at daybreak over
+the fields. The gloomy building in which they were herded for rest and
+sleep showed but its roof and a small portion of its walls above the
+earth; most of it lay beneath the ground, and the narrow windows were so
+high that they could not be reached by the hands of the inmates.[250]
+There was no inspection by the government, scarcely any by the
+owners.[251] There was no one to tell the secrets of these dens, and if
+the unwary traveller were trapped and hidden behind their walls, all
+traces of him might be for ever lost.[252] When the slaves were turned
+out into the fields, the safety of their drivers was secured by the
+chains which bound their limbs, but which were so adjusted as not to
+interfere with the movements necessary to their work.[253] Some whose
+spirit had been broken might be left unbound, but for the majority bonds
+were the only security against escape or vengeance.[254]
+
+There was, however, one type of desperate character who was permitted to
+roam at large. This was the guardian of the flocks, who wandered
+unrestrained over the mountains during the summer months and along the
+prairies in the winter season. These herdsmen formed small bands. It was
+reckoned that there should be one for every eighty or hundred sheep and
+two for every troop of fifty horses.[255] It was sometimes found
+convenient that they should be accompanied by their women who prepared
+their meals--women of robust types like the Illyrian dames to whom
+child-birth was a mere incident in the daily toils.[256] Such a life of
+freedom had its attractions for the slave, but it had its drawbacks too.
+The landowner who preferred pasturage to tillage, saved his capital, not
+only by the small number of hands which the work demanded, but also by
+the niggardly outlay which he expended on these errant serfs. It was not
+needful to provide them with the necessaries of life when they could
+take them for themselves. When Damophilus of Enna was entreated by his
+slaves to give them something better than the rags they wore, his answer
+was: "Do travellers then travel naked through the land? Have they
+nothing for the man who wants a coat?" [257] Brigandage, in fact, was an
+established item In the economic creed of the day.
+
+The desolation of Italy was becoming dangerous, and the master of the
+lonely villa barred himself in at nights as though an enemy were at his
+gates. On one occasion Scipio Africanus was disturbed in his retreat at
+Liternum by a troop of bandits. He placed his armed servants on the roof
+and made every preparation for repelling the assault. But the visitors
+proved to be pacific. They were the very _élite_ of the fraternity of
+brigands and had merely come to do honour to the great man. They sent
+back their troops, threw down their arms, laid presents before his door
+and departed in joyous mood.[258] The immunity of such bands proved that
+a slave revolt might at any moment imperil every life and every dwelling
+in some unprotected canton. It was indeed the epoch of peace, when Roman
+and Phoenician armies no longer held the field in Italy, that first
+suggested the hope of liberation to the slave. Hannibal would have
+imperilled his character of a protector of Italian towns had he
+encouraged a slave revolt, even if the Phoenician had not shrunk from a
+precedent so fatal to his native land. But one of the unexpected results
+of the Second Punic War was to kindle a rising in the very heart of
+Latium, and it was the African slave, not the African freeman, that
+stirred the last relics of the war in Italy. At Setia were guarded the
+noble Carthaginians who were a pledge of the fidelity of their state.
+These hostages, the sons of merchant princes, were allowed to retain the
+dignity of their splendid homes, and a vast retinue of slaves from
+Africa attended on their wants. The number of these was swelled by
+captive members of the same nationalities whom the people of Setia had
+acquired in the recent war.[259] A spirit of camaraderie sprung up
+amongst men who understood one another's language and had acquired the
+spurious nationality that comes from servitude in the same land. Their
+numbers were obvious, the paucity of the native Setians was equally
+clear, and no military force was close at hand. They planned to increase
+their following by spreading disaffection amongst the servile
+populations of the neighbouring country towns, and emissaries were sent
+to Norba in the North and Circei in the South. Their project was to wait
+for the rapidly approaching games of the Setian folk and to rush on the
+unarmed populace as they were gazing at the show; when Setia had been
+taken, they meant to seize on Norba and Circei. But there was treason in
+their ranks. The urban praetor was roused before dawn by two slaves who
+poured the whole tale of the impending massacre into his ear. After a
+hasty consultation of the senate he rushed to the threatened district,
+gathering recruits as he swept with his legates through the country
+side, binding them with the military oath, bidding them arm and follow
+him with all speed. A hasty force of about two thousand men was soon
+gathered; none knew his destination till he reached the gates of Setia.
+The heads of the conspiracy were seized, and such of their followers as
+learnt the fact fled incontinently from the town. From this point onward
+it was only a matter of hunting down the refugees by patrols sent round
+the country districts. Southern Latium was freed from its terror; but it
+was soon found that the evil had spread almost to the gates of Rome. A
+rumour had spread that Praeneste was to be seized by its slaves, and it
+was sufficient to stimulate a praetor to execute nearly five hundred of
+the supposed delinquents.[260]
+
+Two years later a rising, which almost became a war, shook the great
+plantation lands of Etruria.[261] Its suppression required a legion and
+a pitched battle. The leaders were crucified; others of the slaves who
+had escaped the carnage were restored to their masters. But these
+disturbances, that may have seemed mere sporadic relics of the havoc and
+exhaustion left by the Hannibalic war, were only quelled for the moment.
+It was soon found that the seeds of insecurity were deeply planted in
+the settlement that was called a peace. During the year 185 the
+shepherds of Apulia were found to have formed a great society of
+plunder, and robbery with violence was of constant occurrence on the
+grazing lands and public roads. The praetor who was in command at
+Tarentum opened a commission which condemned seven thousand men. Many
+were executed, although a large number of the criminals escaped to other
+regions.[262]
+
+These movements in Italy were but the symptoms of a spirit that was
+spreading over the Mediterranean lands. The rising of the serfs only
+just preceded the great awakening of the masses of the freemen.[263]
+Both classes were ground down by capital; both would make an effort to
+shake the burden from their shoulders; and, as regards the methods of
+assertion, it is a matter of little moment whether they took the form of
+a national rising against a government or a protectorate, a sanguinary
+struggle in the Forum against the dominance of a class, or an attack by
+chattels, not yet brutalised by serfdom but full of the traditions and
+spirit of freemen, against the cruelty and indifference of their owners.
+In one sense the servile movements were more universal, and perhaps
+better organised, than those of the men to whom, free birth gave a
+nominal superiority. A sympathy for each other's sufferings pervaded the
+units of the class who were scattered in distant lands. Sometimes it was
+a sympathy based on a sense of nationality, and the Syrian and Cilician
+in Asia would feel joy and hope stirring in his heart at the doings of
+his brethren who had been deported to the far West. The series of
+organised revolts in the Roman provinces and protectorate which commence
+shortly after the fall of Carthage and close for the moment with the war
+of resistance to the Romans in Asia, forms a single connected chain.
+Dangerous risings had to be repressed at the Italian coast towns of
+Minturnae and Sinuessa; at the former place four hundred and fifty
+slaves were crucified, at the latter four thousand were crushed by a
+military force; the mines of Athens, the slave market of Delos,
+witnessed similar outbreaks,[264] and we shall find a like wave of
+discontent spreading over the serf populations of the countries of the
+Mediterranean just before the second great outbreak in Sicily which
+darkens the close of the second century. The evil fate which made this
+island the theatre of the two greatest of the servile wars is explicable
+on many grounds. The opportunity offered by the sense of superiority in
+numbers was far ampler here than in any area of Italy of equal size. For
+Sicily was a wheat-growing country, and the cultivated plains demanded a
+mass of labour which was not needed in more mountainous or less fertile
+lands, where pasturage yielded a surer return than the tilling of the
+soil. The pasture lands of Sicily were indeed large, but they had not
+yet dwarfed the agriculture of the island. The labour of the fields was
+in the hands of a vast horde of Asiatics, large numbers of whom may
+conceivably have been shipped from Carthage across the narrow sea, when
+that great centre of the plantation system had been laid low and the
+fair estates of the Punic nobles had been seized and broken up by their
+conquerors.[265] In the history of the great Sicilian outbreaks Syrians
+and Cilicians meet us at every turn. These Asiatic slaves had different
+nationalities and they or their fathers had been citizens of widely
+separated towns. But there were bonds other than a common suffering
+which produced a keen sense of national union and a consequent feeling
+of ideal patriotism in the hearts of all. They were the products of the
+common Hellenism of the East; they or their fathers could make a claim
+to have been subjects of the great Seleucid monarchy; many, perhaps most
+of them, could assert freedom by right of birth and acknowledged slavery
+only as a consequence of the accidents of war or piracy. The mysticism
+of the Oriental, the political ideal of the Hellene, were interwoven in
+their moral nature--a nature perhaps twisted by the brutalism of slavery
+to superstition in the one direction, to licence in the other, but none
+the less capable of great conceptions and valiant deeds. The moment for
+both would come when the prophet had appeared, and the prophet would
+surely show himself when the cup of suffering had overflowed.[266]
+
+The masters who worked this human mechanism were driving it at a pace
+which must have seemed dangerous to any human being less greedy, vain
+and confident than themselves. The wealth of these potentates was
+colossal, but it was equalled by their social rivalry and consequent
+need of money. A contest in elegance was being fought between the
+Siceliot and the Italian.[267] The latter was the glass of fashion, and
+the former attempted to rival, first his habits of domestic life and, as
+a consequence, the economic methods which rendered these habits
+possible. Here too, as in Italy, whole gangs of slaves were purchased
+like cattle or sheep; some were weighed down with fetters, others ground
+into subordination by the cruel severity of their tasks. All without
+exception were branded, and men who had been free citizens in their
+native towns, felt the touch of the burning iron and carried the stigma
+of slavery to their graves.[268] Food was doled out in miserable
+quantities,[269] for the shattered instrument could so easily be
+replaced. On the fields one could see little but abject helplessness, a
+misery that weakened while it tortured the soul. But in some parts of
+Sicily bodily want was combined with a wild daring that was fostered by
+the reckless owners, whose greed had overcome all sense of their own
+security or that of their fellow-citizens. The treatment of pastoral
+slaves which had been adopted by the Roman graziers was imitated
+faithfully by the Italians and Siceliots of the island. These slaves
+were turned loose with their flocks to find their food and clothing
+where and how they could. The youngest and stoutest were chosen for this
+hard, wild life: and their physical vigour was still further increased
+by their exposure to every kind of weather, by their seldom finding or
+needing the shelter of a roof, and by the milk and meat which formed
+their staple food. A band of these men presented a terrifying aspect,
+suggesting a scattered invasion of some warlike barbarian tribe. Their
+bodies were clad in the skins of wolves and boars; slung at their sides
+or poised in their hands were clubs, lances and long shepherds' staves.
+Each squadron was followed by a pack of large and powerful hounds.
+Strength, leisure, need, all suggested brigandage as an integral part of
+their profession. At first they murdered the wayfarer who went alone or
+with but one companion. Then their courage rose and they concerted
+nightly attacks on the villas of the weaker residents. These villas they
+stormed and plundered, slaying any one who attempted to bar their way.
+As their impunity increased, Sicily became impracticable to travellers
+by night, and residence in the country districts became a tempting of
+providence. There was violence, brigandage or murder on every hand. The
+governors of Sicily occasionally interposed, but they were almost
+powerless to check the mischief. The influence of the slave-owners was
+such that it was dangerous to inflict an adequate punishment.[270]
+
+The proceedings of these militant shepherds must have opened the eyes of
+the mass of the slaves to the possibilities of the position. Secret
+meetings began to be held at which the word "revolt" was breathed. An
+occasion, a leader, a divine sanction were for the moment lacking. The
+first requisite would follow the other two, and these were soon found
+combined in the person of Eunus. This man was a Syrian by birth, a
+native of Apamea, and he served Antigenes of Enna. He was more than a
+believer in the power of the gods to seize on men and make them the
+channel of their will; he was a living witness to it in his own person.
+At first he saw shadows of superhuman form and heard their voices in his
+dreams. Then there were moments when he would be seized with a trance;
+he was wrapt in contemplation of some divine being. Then the words of
+prophecy would come; they were not his utterance but the bidding of the
+great Syrian goddess. Sometimes the words were preceded by a strange
+manifestation of supernatural power; smoke, sparks or flame would issue
+from his open mouth.[271] The clairvoyance may have been a genuine
+mental experience, the thaumaturgy the type of fiction which the best of
+_media_ may be tempted to employ; but both won belief from his fellows,
+eager for any light in the darkness, and a laughing acceptance from his
+master, glad of a novelty that might amuse his leisure. As a matter of
+fact, Eunus's predictions sometimes came true. People forgot (as people
+will) the instances of their falsification, but applauded them heartily
+when they were fulfilled. Eunus was a good enough _medium_ to figure at
+a fashionable _séance_. His latest profession was the promise of a
+kingdom to himself; it was the Syrian goddess who had held out the
+golden prospect. The promise he declared boldly to his master, knowing
+perhaps the spirit in which the message would be received. Antigenes was
+delighted with his prophet king. He showed him at his own table, and
+took him to the banquets given by his friends. There Eunus would be
+questioned about his kingdom, and each of the guests would bespeak his
+patronage and clemency. His answers as to his future conduct were given
+without reserve. He promised a policy of mercy, and the quaint
+earnestness of the imposture would dissolve the company in laughter.
+Portions of food were handed him from the board, and the donors would
+ask that he should remember their kindness when he came into his
+kingdom. These were requests which Eunus did not forget.
+
+With such an influence in its centre, Enna seemed destined to be the
+spring of the revolt. But there was another reason which rendered it a
+likely theatre for a deed of daring. The broad plateau on which the town
+was set was thronged with shepherds in the winter season,[272] and some
+of the great graziers of Enna owned herds of these bold and lawless men.
+Conspicuous amongst these graziers for his wealth, his luxury and his
+cruelty was one Damophilus, the man who had formulated the theory that
+the shepherd slave should keep himself by robbing others. Damophilus was
+a Siceliot, but none of the Roman magnates of the island could have
+shown a grander state than that which he maintained. His finely bred
+horses, his four-wheeled carriages, his bodyguard of slaves, his
+beautiful boys, his crowd of parasites, were known all over the broad
+acres and huge pasture lands which he controlled. His town house and
+villas displayed chased silverwork, rich carpets of purple dye and a
+table of royal elegance. He surpassed Roman luxury in the lavishness of
+his expense, Roman pride in his sense of complete independence of
+circumstance, and Roman niggardliness and cruelty in his treatment of
+his slaves. Satiety had begotten a chronic callousness and even savagery
+that showed itself, not merely in the now familiar use of the
+_ergastulum_ and the brand, but in arbitrary and cruel punishments which
+were part of the programme of almost every day. His wife Megallis,
+hardened by the same influences, was the torment of her maidens and of
+such domestics as were more immediately under her control. The servants
+of this household had one conviction in common--that nothing worse than
+their present evils could possibly be their lot.
+
+This is the conviction that inspires acts of frenzy; but the madness of
+these slaves was of the orderly, systematic and therefore dangerous
+type. They would not act without a divine sanction to their whispered
+plans. Some of them approached Eunus and asked him if their enterprise
+was permitted by the gods. The prophet first produced the usual
+manifestations which attested his inspiration and then replied that the
+gods assented, if the plan were taken in hand forthwith. Enna was the
+destined place; it was the natural stronghold of the whole island; it
+was foredoomed to be the capital of the new race that would rule over
+Sicily.[273] Heartened by the belief that Heaven was aiding their
+efforts, the leaders then set to work. They secretly released such of
+Damophilus's household as were in bonds; they gathered others together,
+and soon a band to the number of about four hundred were mustered in a
+field in the neighbourhood of Enna. There in the early hours of the
+night they offered a sacrifice and swore their solemn compact. They had
+gathered everything which could serve as a weapon, and when midnight was
+approaching they were ready for the first attempt. They marched swiftly
+to the sleeping town and broke its stillness with their cries of
+exhortation. Eunus was at their head, fire streaming from his mouth
+against the darkness of the night. The streets and houses were
+immediately the scene of a pitiless massacre. The maddened slaves did
+not even spare the children at the breast; they dragged them from their
+mothers' arms and dashed them upon the ground. The women were the
+victims of unspeakable insult and outrage.[274] Every slave had his own
+wrongs to avenge, for the original assailants had now been joined by a
+large number of the domestics of the town. Each of these wreaked his own
+peculiar vengeance and then turned to take his share in the
+general massacre.
+
+Meanwhile Eunus and his immediate following had learnt news of the
+arch-enemy Damophilus, He was known to be staying in his pleasance near
+to the city. Thence he and his wife were fetched with every mark of
+ignominy, and the unhappy pair were dragged into the town with their
+hands bound behind their backs. The masters of the city now mustered in
+the theatre for an act of justice; but Damophilus did not lose his wits
+even when he scanned that sea of hostile faces and accusing eyes. He
+attempted a defence and was listened to in silence--nay, with approval,
+for many of his auditors were visibly stirred by his words. But some
+bolder spirits were tired of the show or fearful of its issue. Hermeias
+and Zeuxis, two of his bitterest enemies, shouted out that he was an
+Impostor[275] and rushed upon him. One of the two thrust a sword through
+his side, the other smote his head off with an axe. It was then the
+women's turn. Megallis's female slaves were given the power to treat her
+as they would. They first tortured her, then led her up to a high place
+and dashed her to the ground. Eunus avenged his private wrongs by the
+death of his own masters, Antigenes and Python. The scene in the theatre
+had perhaps revealed more than the desire for a systematised revenge. It
+may have shown that there was some sense of justice, of order in the
+savage multitude. And indeed vengeance was not wholly indiscriminate.
+Eunus concealed and sent secretly away the men who had given him meat
+from their tables.[276] Even the whole house of Damophilus did not
+perish. There was a daughter, a strange product of such a home, a maiden
+with a pure simplicity of character and a heart that melted at the sight
+of pain. She had been used to soothe the anguish of those who had been
+scourged by her parents and to relieve the necessities of such as were
+put in bonds. Hence the abounding love felt for her by the slaves, the
+pity that thrilled them when her home was doomed. An escort was selected
+to convey her in safety to some relatives at Catana. Its most devoted
+member was Hermeias,[277] perhaps the very man whose hands were stained
+by her father's blood.
+
+The next step in the progress of the revolt was to form a political and
+military organisation that might command the respect of the countless
+slaves who were soon to break their bonds in the other districts of
+Sicily. Eunus was elected king. His name became Antiochus, his subjects
+were "Syrians." [278] It was not the first time that a slave had assumed
+the diadem; for was it not being worn for the moment by Diodotus
+surnamed Tryphon, the guardian and reputed murderer of Alexander of
+Syria?[279] The elevation of Eunus to the throne was due to no belief in
+his courage or his generalship. But he was the prophet of the movement,
+the cause of its inception, and his very name was considered to be of
+good omen for the harmony of his subjects. When he had bound the diadem
+on his brow and adopted regal state, he elevated the woman who had been
+his companion (a Syrian and an Apamean like himself) to the rank of
+queen. He formed a council of such of his followers as were thought to
+possess wits above the average, and he set himself to make Enna the
+adequate centre of a lengthy war. He put to death all his captives in
+Enna who had no skill in fashioning arms; the residue he put in bonds
+and set to the task of forging weapons.
+
+Eunus was no warrior, but he had the regal gift of recognising merit.
+The soul of the military movement which spread from Enna was
+Achaeus,[280] a man pre-eminent both in counsel and in action,[281] one
+who did not permit his reason to be mastered by passion and whose anger
+was chiefly kindled by the foolish atrocities committed by some of his
+followers.[282] Under such a leader the cause rapidly advanced. The
+original four hundred had swelled in three days to six thousand; it soon
+became ten thousand. As Achaeus advanced, the _ergastula_ were broken
+open and each of these prison-houses furnished a new multitude of
+recruits.[283] Soon a vast addition to the available forces was effected
+by a movement in another part of the island. In the territory of
+Agrigentum one Cleon a Cilician suddenly arose as a leader of his
+fellows. He was sprung from the regions about Mount Taurus and had been
+habituated from his youth to a life of brigandage. In Sicily he was
+supposed to be a herdsman of horses. He was also a highwayman who
+commanded the roads and was believed to have committed murders of varied
+types. When he heard of the success of Eunus, he deemed that the moment
+had come for raising a revolt on his own account. He gathered a band of
+followers, overwhelmed the city of Agrigentum and ravaged the
+surrounding territory.[284]
+
+The terrified Siceliots, and perhaps some of the slaves themselves,
+believed that this dual movement might ruin the servile cause. There
+were daily expectations that the armies of Eunus and Cleon would meet in
+conflict. But such hopes or fears were disappointed. Cleon put himself
+absolutely under the authority of Eunus and performed the functions of a
+general to a king. The junction of the forces occurred about thirty days
+after the outbreak at Enna, and the Cilician brought five thousand men
+to the royal standard. The full complement of the slaves when first they
+joined battle with the Roman power amounted to twenty thousand men;
+before the close of the war their army numbered over sixty
+thousand.[285]
+
+The Roman government exhibited its usual slowness in realising the
+gravity of the situation; yet it may be excused for believing that it
+had only to deal with local tumults such as those which had been so
+easily suppressed in Italy. The force of eight thousand men which it put
+into the field under the praetor Lucius Hypsaeus may have seemed more
+than sufficient. Yet it was routed by the insurgent army, now numbering
+twenty thousand men, and in the skirmishes which followed the balance of
+success inclined to the rebels. The immediate progress of the struggle
+cannot be traced in any detail, but there is a general record of the
+storming of Roman camps and the flight of Roman generals.[286]
+
+The theatre of the war was certainly extending at an alarming rate. The
+rebels had first controlled the centre and some part of the South
+Western portion of the island, the region between Enna and Agrigentum;
+but now they had pushed their conquests up to the East, had reached the
+coast and had gained possession of Catana and Tauromenium.[287] The
+devastation of the conquered districts is said to have been more
+terrible than that which followed on the Punic War.[288] But for this
+the slaves were not wholly, perhaps not mainly, responsible. The rebel
+armies, looking to a settlement in the future when they should enjoy the
+fruit of their victories, left the villas standing, their furniture and
+stores uninjured, and did no harm to the implements of husbandry. It was
+the free peasantry of Sicily that now showed a savage resentment at the
+inequality of fortune and of life which severed them from the great
+landholders. Under pretext of the servile war[289] they sallied out, and
+not only plundered the goods of the conquered, but even set fire to
+their villas.
+
+The words of Eunus when, at the beginning of the revolt, he claimed Enna
+as the metropolis of the new nation, and the conduct of his followers in
+sparing the grandeur and comfort which had fallen into their hands, are
+sufficient proofs that the revolted slaves, in spite of their possession
+of the seaports of Catana and Tauromenium, had no intention of escaping
+from Sicily. Perhaps even if they had willed it, such a course might
+have been impossible. They had no fleet of their own; the Cilician
+pirates off the coast might have refused to accept such dangerous
+passengers and to imperil their reputation as honest members of the
+slave trade. And, if the fugitives crossed the sea, what homes had they
+to which they could return? To their own cities they were dead, and the
+long arm of Rome stretched over her protectorates in the East.[290]
+
+It was therefore with a power which intended a permanent settlement in
+Sicily, that the Roman government had to cope. Its sense of the gravity
+of the situation was seen in the despatch of consular armies. The first
+under Caius Fulvius Flaccus seems to have effected little.[291] The
+second under Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the consul of the following year,
+laid siege to Enna,[292] and captured a stronghold of the rebels. Eight
+thousand of the slaves were slain by the sword, all who could be seized
+were nailed to the cross.[293] The crowning victories, and the nominal
+pacification of the island, remained for Piso's successor, Publius
+Rupilius. He drove the rebels into Tauromenium and sat down before the
+city until they were reduced to unspeakable straits by famine. The town
+was at length yielded through treachery; Sarapion a Syrian betrayed the
+acropolis, and the Roman commander found a multitude of starving men at
+his mercy, He was pitiless in his use of victory. The captives were
+first tortured, then taken up to a high place and dashed downwards to
+the ground. The consul then moved on Enna. The rebels defended their
+last stronghold with the utmost courage and persistence. Achaeus seems
+to have already fallen, but the brave Cilician leaders still held out
+with all the native valour of their race. Cleon made a sortie from the
+town and fought heroically until he fell covered with wounds. Cleon's
+brother Coma[294] was captured during the siege and brought before
+Rupilius, who questioned him about the strength and the plans of the
+remaining fugitives. He asked for a moment to collect his thoughts,
+covered his head with his cloak, and died of suffocation, in the hands
+of his guard and in sight of the general, before a compromising word had
+passed his lips. King Eunus was not made of such stern stuff. When Enna,
+impregnable in its natural strength, had been taken by treachery, he
+fled with his bodyguard of a thousand men to still more precipitous
+regions. His companions, knowing that it was impossible to escape their
+fate (for Rupilius was already moving) fell on each others swords. But
+Eunus could not face this death. He took refuge in a cave, from which he
+was dragged with the last poor relics of his splendid court--his cook,
+his baker, his bath attendant and his buffoon. The Romans for some
+reason spared his life, or at least did not doom him to immediate death.
+He was kept a prisoner at Morgantia, where he died shortly afterwards
+of disease.
+
+It is said that by the date of the fall of Enna more than twenty
+thousand slaves had perished.[295] Even without this slaughter, the
+capture of their seaport and their armoury would have been sufficient to
+break the back of the revolt.[296] It only remained to scour the country
+with picked bands of soldiers for organised resistance to be shattered,
+and even for the curse of brigandage to be rooted out for a while. Death
+was no longer meted out indiscriminately to the rebels. Such of the
+slave-owners as survived would probably have protested against wholesale
+crucifixion, and the destruction of all of the fugitives would have
+impaired the resources of Sicily. Thus many were spared the cross and
+restored to their bonds.[297] The extent to which reorganisation was
+needed before the province could resume its normal life, is shown by the
+fact that the senate thought it worth while to give Sicily a new
+provincial charter. Ten commissioners were sent to assist Rupilius in
+the work, which henceforth bore the proconsul's name.[298] The work, as
+we know it, was of a conservative character; but it is possible that no
+complete charter had ever existed before, and the war may have revealed
+defects in the arrangements of Sicily that had heretofore been
+unsuspected.
+
+A climax of the type of the servile war in Sicily was perhaps needed to
+bring the social problem home to thinking men in Rome. Not that it by
+any means sufficed for all who pondered on the public welfare or
+laboured at the business of the State. The men who measured happiness by
+wealth and empire might still have retained their unshaken confidence in
+the Fortune of Rome. Had a Capys of this class arisen, he might have
+given a thrilling picture of the immediate future of his city, dark but
+grimly national in its emergence from trial to triumph. He might have
+seen her conquering arms expanding to the Euphrates and the Rhine, and
+undreamed sources of wealth pouring their streams into the treasury or
+the coffers of the great. If there was blood in the picture, when had it
+been absent from the annals of Rome? Even civil strife and a new Italian
+war might be a hard but a necessary price to pay for a strong government
+and a grand mission. If an antiquated constitution disappeared in the
+course of this glorious expansion, where was the loss?
+
+But there were men in Rome who measured human life by other canons: who
+believed that the State existed for the individual at least as much as
+the individual for the State: who, even when they were imperialists, saw
+with terror the rotten foundations on which the empire rested, and with
+indignation the miserable returns that had been made to the men who had
+bought it with their blood. To them the brilliant present and the
+glorious future were veiled by a screen that showed the ghastly spectres
+of commercial imperialism. It showed luxury running riot amongst a
+nobility already impoverished and ever more thievishly inclined, a
+colossal capitalism clutching at the land and stretching out its
+tentacles for every source of profitable trade, the middle class fleeing
+from the country districts and ousted from their living in the towns,
+and the fair island that was almost a part of their Italian home, its
+garden and its granary, in the throes of a great slave war.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A cause never lacks a champion, nor a great cause one whom it may render
+great. Failure is in itself no sign of lack of spirit and ability, and
+when a vast reform is the product of a mean personality, the individual
+becomes glorified by identification with his work. From this point of
+view it mattered little who undertook the task of the economic
+regeneration of the Roman world. Any senator of respectable antecedents
+and moderate ability, who had a stable following amongst the ruling
+classes, might have succeeded where Tiberius Gracchus failed; it was a
+task in which authority was of more importance than ability, and the
+sense that the more numerous or powerful elements of society were united
+in the demand for reform, of more value than individual genius or
+honesty of purpose. This was the very circumstance that foreshadowed
+failure, for the men of wide connections and established fame had shrunk
+from an enterprise with which they sympathised in various degrees. In
+the proximate history of the Republic there had been three men who
+showed an unwavering belief in the Italian farmer and the blessings of
+agriculture. These were M. Porcius Cato, P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti.
+Sempronius Gracchus. But the influence of Cato's house had become
+extinct with its first founder. The elder son, an amiable man and an
+accomplished jurist, had not out-lived his father; the second still
+survived, but seems to have inherited little of the fighting qualities
+of the terrible censor. The traditions of a Roman house needed to be
+sustained by the efforts of its existing representative, and the
+"newness" of the Porcii might have necessitated generations of vigorous
+leaders to make them a power in the land. Scipionic traditions were now
+represented by Aemilianus, and the glow of the luminary was reflected in
+paler lights, who received their lustre from moving in that charmed
+orbit. One of these, the indefatigable henchman Laelius, had risen to
+the rank of consul, and stimulated by the vigorous theorisings of his
+hellenised environment, he contemplated for a moment the formation of a
+plan which should deal with some of the worst evils of the agrarian
+question. But he looked at the problem only to start back in affright.
+The strength and truculency of the vested interests with which he would
+have to deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by
+philosophy and experience, and Laelius by his retreat justified, if he
+did not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his "sapience".[299] But
+why was Scipio himself idle? The answer is to be found both in his
+temperament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, he
+was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted him in
+his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its cruelties, he
+gloried in its excitement, and the discipline of the camp was more to
+his mind than the turbulence of an assembly. His mind, too, belonged to
+that class which finds it almost impossible to emancipate itself from
+traditional politics. His vast knowledge of the history of other
+civilisations may have taught him, as it taught Polybius, that Rome was
+successful because she was unique.[300] Here there was to be no break
+with the past, no legislator posing as a demi-god, no obedience to the
+cries of the masses who, if they once got loose, might turn and rend the
+enlightened few, and reproduce on Italian soil the shocking scenes of
+Greek socialistic enterprise. As things were, to be a reformer was to be
+a partisan, and Scipio loved the prospect of his probable supporters as
+little as that of his probable opponents. The fact of the Empire, too,
+must have weighed heavily with a man who was no blind imperialist. Even
+though economic reform might create an added efficiency in the army,
+Scipio must have known, as Polybius certainly knew, that soldiers are
+but pawns in the great game, and that the controlling forces were the
+wisdom of the conservative senator, the ambition of the wealthy noble,
+and the capital of the enterprising knight. The wisdom of disturbing
+their influence, and awakening their resentment, could scarcely appeal
+to a mind so perfectly balanced and practical as Scipio's.
+Circumstances, too, must have had their share in determining his
+quiescence. The Scipios had been a power in Rome in spite of the
+nobility. They were used because they were needed, not because they were
+loved, and the necessary man was never in much favour with the senate.
+Although there was no tie of blood between Aemilianus and the elder
+Scipio, they were much alike both in fortune and in temperament. They
+had both been called upon to save military situations that were thought
+desperate; their reputation had been made by successful war; and though
+neither was a mere soldier, they lacked the taste and the patience for
+the complicated political game, which alone made a man a power amidst
+the noble circles and their immediate dependants at Rome.
+
+But the last generation had seen in Tiberius Gracchus a man whose
+political influence had been vast, a noble with but scant respect for
+the indefeasible rights of the nobility and as stern as Cato in his
+animadversions on the vices of his order, a man whose greatest successes
+abroad had been those of diplomacy rather than of war, one who had
+established firm connections and a living memory of himself both in West
+and East, whose name was known and loved in Spain, Sardinia, Asia and
+Egypt. It would have been too much to hope that this honest old
+aristocrat would attempt to grapple with the evils which had first
+become manifest during his own long lifetime; but it was not unnatural
+that people should look to a son of his for succour, especially as this
+son represented the blood of the Scipios as well as of the Gracchi. The
+marriage of the elderly Gracchus with the young Cornelia had marked the
+closing of the feud, personal rather than political, which had long
+separated him from the elder Scipio: and a further link between the two
+families was subsequently forged by the marriage of Sempronia, a
+daughter of Cornelia, to Scipio Aemilianus. The young Tiberius Gracchus
+may have been born during one of his father's frequent absences on the
+service of the State.[301] Certainly the elder Gracchus could have seen
+little of his son during the years of his infancy. But the closing years
+of the old man's life seem to have been spent uninterruptedly in Italy,
+and Tiberius must have been profoundly influenced by the genial and
+stately presence that Rome loved and feared. But he was little more than
+a boy when his father died, and the early influences that moulded his
+future career seem to have been due mainly to his mother. Cornelia would
+have been the typical Roman matron, had she lived a hundred years
+earlier; she would then have trained sons for the battlefield, not for
+the Forum. As it was, the softening influences of Greek culture had
+tempered without impairing her strength of character, had substituted
+rational for purely supernatural sanctions, and a wide political outlook
+for a rude sense of civic duty. Herself the product of an education such
+as ancient civilisations rarely bestowed upon their women, she wrote and
+spoke with a purity and grace which led to the belief that her sons had
+learnt from her lips and from her pen their first lessons in that
+eloquence which swayed the masses and altered the fortunes of Rome.[302]
+But her gifts had not impaired her tenderness. Her sons were her
+"Jewels," and the successive loss of nine of the children which she had
+borne to Gracchus must have made the three that remained doubly dear.
+The two boys had a narrow escape from becoming Eastern princes: for the
+hand of the widow Cornelia was sought in marriage by the King of
+Egypt.[303] Such an alliance with the representative of the two houses
+of the Gracchi and the Scipios might easily seem desirable to a
+protected king, although the attractions of Cornelia may also have
+influenced his choice. She, however, had no aspirations to share the
+throne of the Lagidae, and the hellenism of Tiberius and of his younger
+brother Caius, though deep and far-reaching, was of a kind less violent
+than would have been gained by transportation to Alexandria. They were
+trained in rhetoric by Diophanes an exile from Mitylene, and in
+philosophy by Blossius of Cumae, a stoic of the school of Antipater of
+Tarsus.[304] Many held the belief that Tiberius was spurred to his
+political enterprise by the direct exhortation of these teachers; but,
+even if their influence was not of this definite kind, there can be
+little doubt that the teaching of the two Greeks exercised a powerful
+influence on the political cast of his mind. Ideals of Greek liberty,
+speeches of Greek statesmen who had come forward as champions of the
+oppressed, stories of social ruin averted by the voice and hand of the
+heaven-sent legislator, pictures of self-sacrifice and of resigned
+submission to a standard of duty--these were lessons that may have been
+taught both by rhetorician and philosopher. Nor was the teaching of
+history different. In the literary environment in which the Gracchi
+moved, ready answers were being given to the most vital questions of
+politics and social science. Every one must have felt that the
+approaching struggle had a dual aspect, that it was political as well as
+social. For social conservatism was entrenched behind a political
+rampart: and if reform, neglected by the senate, was to come from the
+people, the question had first to be asked, Had the people a legal right
+to initiate reform? The historians of that and of the preceding
+generation would have answered this question unhesitatingly in the
+affirmative. The _de facto_ sovereignty of the senate had not even
+received a sanction in contemporary literature, while to that of the
+immediate past it was equally unknown. The Roman annalists from the time
+of the Second Punic War had revealed the sovereignty of the people as
+the basis of the Roman constitution,[305] and the history of the long
+struggle of the Plebs for freedom made the protection of the commons the
+sole justification of the tribunate. From the lips of Polybius himself
+Tiberius may have heard the impression which the Roman polity made on
+the mind of the educated Greek: and the fact that this was a Greek
+picture did not lessen its validity; for the Greek was moulding the
+orthodox history of Rome, and the victims of his genius were the best
+Roman intellects of the day. He might have learnt how in this mixed
+constitution the people still retained their inalienable rights, how
+they elected, ratified, and above all how they punished.[306] He might
+have gathered that the identification of the tribunate with the
+interests of the nobility was a perversion of its true and vital
+function: that the tribune exists but to assist the commons and can be
+subject to no authority but the people's will, whether expressed
+directly by them or indirectly through his colleagues.[307] The history
+of the Punic wars did indeed reveal, in the fate of a Varro or a
+Minucius, how popular insubordination might be punished, when its end
+was wrong. Polybius's own voice was raised in prophetic warning against
+a possible demagogy of the future.[308] But that history showed the
+healthy discipline of a healthy people--a people that had vanquished
+genius through subordination, a peasant class whose loyalty and tenacity
+were as great as those of its leaders, and without whom those leaders
+would have been helpless. Where was such a class to be found now? Change
+the subject or turn the page, and the Greek statesman and historian
+could point to the dreadful reverse of this picture.[309] He could show
+a Greek nation, gifted with political genius but doomed to political
+decay--a nation whose sons accumulated money, lived in luxury with
+little forethought for the future, and refused to beget children for the
+State: a nation with a wealthy and cultured upper class, but one that
+was literally perishing for the lack of men.[310] Was this the fate in
+store for Rome? A temperament that was merely vigorous and keen might
+not have been affected by such reflections. One that was merely
+contemplative might have regarded them only as a subject for curious
+study. But Tiberius's mind ran to neither of these two extremes. He was
+a thoughtful and sensitive man of action. Sweet in temper, staid in
+deportment, gentle in language, he attracted from his dependants a
+loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did
+not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished
+oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the
+harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and
+restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the
+stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral
+and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that of the man who
+burdens society with the impression that he has a solemn mission to
+perform. Such men are rarely taken as seriously as they take themselves;
+they do not win aged men of experience to support their cause; the
+demeanour that wearies their friends is even likely to be found irksome
+by the mob.
+
+Roman society must have seen much promise in his youth, for honours came
+early. A seat at the augural board was regarded as a tribute to his
+merit rather than his birth;[312] and indeed the Roman aristocrats, who
+dispensed such favours, were too clever to be the slaves of a name, when
+political manipulation was in question and talent might be diverted to
+the true cause. His marriage was a more important determinant in his
+career. The bride who was offered him was the daughter of Appius
+Claudius Pulcher, a man of consular and censorian rank and now Princeps
+of the senate,[313] a clever representative of that brilliant and
+eccentric house, that had always kept liberalism alive in Rome. Appius
+had already displayed some of the restless individuality of his
+ancestors. When the senate had refused him a triumph after a war with
+the Salassi, he had celebrated the pageant at his own expense, while his
+daughter, a vestal, walked beside the car to keep at bay the importunate
+tribune who attempted to drag him off.[314] A similar unconventionality
+was manifested in the present betrothal. The story runs that Appius
+broached the question to Tiberius at an augural banquet. The proposition
+was readily accepted, and Appius in his joy shouted out the news to his
+wife as he entered his own front door. The lady was more surprised than
+annoyed. "What need for all this haste," she said, "unless indeed you
+have found Tiberius Gracchus for our girl?" [315] Appius, hasty as he
+was, was probably in this case not the victim of a sudden inspiration.
+The restless old man doubtless pined for reform; but he was weighed down
+by years, honours and familiarity with the senate. He could not be the
+protagonist in the coming struggle; but in Tiberius he saw the man of
+the future.
+
+The chances of the time favoured a military even more than a political
+career; the chief spheres of influence were the province and the camp,
+and it was in these that the earliest distinctions of Tiberius were won.
+When a lad of fifteen he had followed his brother-in-law Scipio to
+Africa, and had been the first to mount the walls of Carthage in the
+vain assault on the fortress of Megara.[316] He had won the approval of
+the commander by his discipline and courage, and left general regret
+amongst the army when he quitted the camp before the close of the
+campaign. But an experience as potent for the future as his first taste
+of war, must have been those hours of leisure spent in Scipio's
+tent.[317] If contact with the great commander aroused emulation, the
+talk on political questions of Scipio and his circle must have inspired
+profound reflection. Here he could find aspirations enough; all that was
+lacking was a leader to translate them into deeds. The quaestorship, the
+first round of the higher official ladder, found him attached to the
+consul Mancinus and destined for the ever-turbulent province of Spain.
+It was a fortunate chance, for here was the scene of his father's
+military and diplomatic triumphs. But the sequel was unexpected. He had
+gone to fulfil the duties of a subordinate; he suddenly found himself
+performing those of a commander-in-chief or of an accredited
+representative of the Roman people. The Numantines would treat only with
+a Gracchus, and the treaty that saved Roman lives but not Roman honour
+was felt to be really his work. In a moment he was involved in a
+political question that agitated the whole of Rome. The Numantine treaty
+was the topic of the day. Was it to be accepted or, if repudiated,
+should the authors of the disaster, the causes of the breach of faith,
+be surrendered in time-honoured fashion to the enemy as an expiation for
+the violated pledge? On the first point there was little hesitation; the
+senate decided for the nullity of the treaty, and it was likely that
+this view would be accepted by the people, if the measures against the
+ratifying officials were not made too stringent. For on this point there
+was a difference of opinion. The poorer classes, whose sons and brothers
+had been saved from death or captivity by the treaty, blamed Mancinus as
+the cause of the disaster, but were grateful to Tiberius as the author
+of the agreement. Others who had less to lose and could therefore afford
+to stand on principle, would have enforced the fullest rigour of the
+ancient rules and have delivered up the quaestor and tribunes with the
+defaulting general.[318] It was thought that the influence of Scipio,
+always great with the agricultural voters, might have availed to save
+even Mancinus, nay that, if he would, he might have got the peace
+confirmed.[319] But his efforts were believed to have been employed in
+favour of Tiberius. The matter ended in an illogical compromise. The
+treaty was repudiated, but it was decreed that the general alone should
+be surrendered.[320] A breach in an ancient rule of religious law had
+been made in favour of Tiberius.
+
+But, in spite of this mark of popular favour, the experience had been
+disheartening and its effect was disturbing. Although it is impossible
+to subscribe to the opinion of later writers, who, looking at the matter
+from a conservative and therefore unfavourable aspect, saw in this early
+check the key to Tiberius's future action,[321] yet anger and fear leave
+their trace even on the best regulated minds. The senate had torn up his
+treaty and placed him for the moment in personal peril. It was to the
+people that he owed his salvation. If circumstances were to develop an
+opposition party in Rome, he was being pushed more and more into its
+ranks. And a coolness seems to have sprung up at this time between him
+and the man who had been his great _exemplar_. Tiberius took no counsel
+of Scipio before embarking on his great enterprise; support and advice
+were sought elsewhere. He may have already tested Scipio's lack of
+sympathy with an active propaganda; shame might have kept back the hint
+of a plan that might seem to imply a claim to leadership. But it is
+possible that there was some feeling of resentment against the warrior
+now before Numantia, who had done nothing to save the last Numantine
+treaty and the honour of the name of Gracchus.
+
+His reticence could scarcely have been due to ignorance of his own
+designs; for his brother Caius left it on record that it was while
+journeying northward from Rome on his way to Numantia that Tiberius's
+eyes were first fully opened to the magnitude of the malady that cried
+aloud for cure.[322] It was in Etruria, the paradise of the capitalist,
+that he saw everywhere the imported slave and the barbarian who had
+replaced the freeman. It was this sight that first suggested something
+like a definite scheme. A further stimulus was soon to be found in
+scraps of anonymous writing which appeared on porches, walls and
+monuments, praying for his succour and entreating that the public land
+should be recovered for the poor.[323] The voiceless Roman people was
+seeking its only mode of utterance, a tribune who should be what the
+tribune had been of old, the servant of the many not the creature of the
+few. To Gracchus's mother his plans could hardly have been veiled. She
+is even said to have stimulated a vague craving for action by the
+playful remark that she was still known as the mother-in-law of Scipio,
+not as the mother of the Gracchi.[324]
+
+But there was need of serious counsel. Gracchus did not mean to be a
+mere demagogue, coming before the people with a half-formed plan and
+stirring up an agitation which could end merely in some idle resolution.
+There were few to whom he could look for advice, but those few were of
+the best. Three venerable men, whose deeds and standing were even
+greater than their names, were ready with their support. There was the
+chief pontiff, P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the man who was said to
+combine in a supreme degree the four great blessings of wealth, birth,
+eloquence and legal lore;[325] there was the brother of Crassus, P.
+Mucius Scaevola,[326] the greatest lawyer of his age and already
+destined to the consulship for the following year; lastly there was
+Tiberius's father-in-law, the restless Appius, now eagerly awaiting the
+fulfilment of a cherished scheme by the man of his own choice.[327]
+
+Thus fortified, Tiberius Gracchus entered on his tribunate, and
+formulated the measure which was to leave large portions of the public
+domain open for distribution to the poor. In the popular gatherings with
+which he opened his campaign, he dwelt on the nature of the evils which
+he proposed to remedy. It was the interest of Italy, not merely of the
+Roman proletariate, that was at stake.[328] He pointed out how the
+Italian peasantry had dwindled in numbers, and how that portion of it
+which still survived had been reduced to a poverty that was irremediable
+by their own efforts. He showed that the slave gangs which worked the
+vast estates were a menace, not a help, to Rome. They could not be
+enlisted for service in the legions; their disaffection to their masters
+was notorious; their danger was being proved even now by the horrible
+condition of Sicily, the fate of its slave-owning landlords, the long,
+difficult and eventful war which had not even yet been brought to a
+close.[329] Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of reason in
+his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the Rostra. "The beasts
+that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking-places where they may make
+their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy but the blessings of
+air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you
+wander to and fro with your wives and children. Our generals are in the
+habit of inspiring their soldiers to the combat by exhorting them to
+repel the enemy in defence of their tombs and ancestral shrines. The
+appeal is idle and false. You cannot point to a paternal altar, you have
+no ancestral tomb. No! you fight and die to give wealth and luxury to
+others. You are called the masters of the world; yet there is no clod of
+earth that you can call your own." [330]
+
+The proposal, which was ushered in by these stirring appeals, seemed at
+first sight to be of a moderate and somewhat conservative character. It
+professed to be the renewal of an older law, which had limited the
+amount of domain land which an individual might possess to five hundred
+_jugera_;[331] it professed, that is, to reinforce an injunction which
+had been persistently disobeyed, for this enactment restricting
+possession had never been repealed. The extent to which a proposal of
+this kind is a re-enactment, in the spirit as well as in the letter,
+depends entirely on the length of time which has elapsed since the
+original proposal has begun to be violated. A political society, which
+recognises custom as one of the bases of law, must recognise desuetude
+as equally valid. A law, which has not been enforced for centuries,
+would, by the common consent of the courts of such nations as favour
+progressive legislation, be regarded as no law at all. Again, the age of
+an ordinance determines its suitability to present conditions. It may be
+justifiable to revive an enactment that is centuries old; but the
+revival should not necessarily dignify itself with that name. It must be
+regarded as a new departure, unless the circumstances of the old and the
+new enactment can be proved to be approximately the same. Our attempts
+to judge the Gracchan law by these considerations are baffled by our
+ignorance of the real date of the previous enactment, the stringency of
+whose measures he wished to renew. If it was the Licinian law of the
+middle of the fourth century,[332] this law must have been renewed, or
+must still have continued to be observed, at a period not very long
+anterior to the Gracchan proposal; for Cato could point his argument
+against the declaration of war with Rhodes by an appeal to a provision
+attributed to this measure[333]--an appeal which would have been
+pointless, had the provision fallen into that oblivion which persistent
+neglect of an enactment must bring to all but the professed students of
+law. We can at least assert that the charge against Gracchus of reviving
+an enactment so hoary with age as to be absurdly obsolete, is not one of
+the charges to be found even in those literary records which were most
+unfriendly to his legislation.[334]
+
+The general principle of the measure was, therefore, the limitation to
+five hundred _jugera_ of the amount of public land that could be
+"possessed" by an individual. The very definition of the tenure
+immediately exempted large portions of the State's domain from the
+operation of this rule.[335] The Campanian land was leased by the State
+to individuals, not merely possessed by them as the result of an
+occupation permitted by the government; it, therefore, fell outside the
+scope of the measure;[336] but, as it was technically public land and
+its ownership was vested in the State, it would have been hazardous to
+presume its exemption; it seems, therefore, to have been specifically
+excluded from the operation of the bill, and a similar exception was
+probably made in favour of many other tracts of territory held under a
+similar tenure.[337] Either Gracchus declined to touch any interest that
+could properly describe itself as "vested," even though it took merely
+the form of a leasehold, or he valued the secure and abundant revenue
+which flowed into the coffers of the State from these domains. There
+were other lands strictly "public" where the claim of the holders was
+still stronger, and where dispossession without the fullest compensation
+must have been regarded as mere robbery. We know from later legislation
+that respect was had to such lands as the Trientabula, estates which had
+been granted by the Roman government at a quit rent to its creditors, as
+security for that portion of a national debt which had never been
+repaid. It is less certain what happened in the case of lands of which
+the usufruct alone had been granted to communities of Roman citizens or
+Latin colonists. Ownership in this case still remained vested in the
+Roman people, and if the right of usufruct had been granted by law, it
+could be removed by law. In the case of Latin communities, however, it
+was probably guaranteed by treaty, which no mere law could touch: and so
+similar were the conditions of Roman and Latin communities in this
+particular, that it is probable that the land whose use was conferred on
+whole communities by these ancient grants, was wholly spared by the
+Gracchan legislation. In the case of those commons which were possessed
+by groups of villagers for the purposes of pasturage (_ager
+compascuus_),[338] it is not likely that the group was regarded as the
+unit: and therefore, even in the case of such an aggregate possessing
+over five hundred _jugera_, their occupation was probably left
+undisturbed.
+
+All other possessors must vacate the land which exceeded the prescribed
+limit. Such an ordinance would have been harsh, had no compensation been
+allowed, and Gracchus proposed certain amends for the loss sustained. In
+the first place, the five hundred _jugera_ retained by each possessor
+were to be increased by half as much again for each son that he might
+possess: although it seems that the amount retained was not to exceed
+one thousand _jugera_.[339] Secondly, the land so secured to existing
+possessors was not to be held on a merely precarious tenure, and was not
+to be burdened by the payment of dues to the State; even if ownership
+was not vested in its holders, they were guaranteed gratuitous
+undisturbed possession in perpetuity.[340] Thirdly, the bill as
+originally drafted even suggested some monetary compensation for the
+land surrendered.[341] This compensation was probably based on a
+valuation of stock, buildings, and recent permanent improvements, which
+were to be found on the territory now reverting to the State. It must
+have applied for the most part only to arable land, and practically
+amounted to a purchase by the State of items to which it could lay no
+legal claim; for it was the soil alone, not the buildings on the soil,
+over which its lordship could properly be asserted.
+
+The object of reclaiming the public land was its future distribution
+amongst needy citizens. This distribution might have taken either of two
+forms. Fresh colonies might have been planted, or the acquired land
+might merely be assigned to settlers who were to belong to the existing
+political organisations. It was the latter method of simple assignation
+that Gracchus chose. There was felt to be no particular need for new
+political creations; for the pacification of Italy seemed to be
+accomplished, and the new farming class would perform their duty to the
+State equally well as members of the territory of Rome or of that of the
+existing municipia and coloniae of Roman citizens. There is some
+evidence that the new proprietors were not all to be attached to the
+city of Rome itself, but that many, perhaps most, were to be attributed
+to the existing colonies and municipia, in the neighbourhood of which
+their allotments lay.[342] The size of the new allotments which Gracchus
+projected is not known; it probably varied with the needs and status of
+the occupier, perhaps with the quality of the land, and there is some
+indication that the maximum was fixed at thirty _jugera_.[343] This is
+an amount that compares favourably with the two, three, seven or ten
+_jugera_ of similar assignments in earlier times, and is at once a proof
+of the decrease in the value of land--a decrease which had contributed
+to the formation of the large estates--and of the large amount of
+territory which was expected to be reclaimed by the provisions of the
+new measure. The allotments thus assigned were not, however, to be the
+freehold property of their recipients. They were, indeed, heritable and
+to be held on a perfectly secure tenure by the assignees and their
+descendants; but a revenue was to be paid to the State for their use:
+and they were to be inalienable--the latter provision being a desperate
+expedient to check the land-hunger of the capitalist, and to save the
+new settlers from obedience to the economic tendencies of the
+times.[344]
+
+It is doubtful whether the social object of Gracchus could have been
+fully accomplished, had he confined his attention wholly to the existing
+citizens of Rome. The area of economic distress was wider than the
+citizen body, and it was the salvation of Italy as a whole that Gracchus
+had at heart.[345] There is much reason for supposing that some of the
+Italian allies were to be recipients of the benefits of the
+measure.[346] In earlier assignations the Latins had not been excluded,
+and it is probable that at least these, whether members of old
+communities or of colonies, were intended to have some share in the
+distribution. There could be no legal hindrance to such participation.
+With respect to rights in land, the Latins were already on a level with
+Roman citizens, and their exclusion from the new allotments would have
+been due to a mere political prejudice which is not characteristic
+either of Gracchus or his plans.
+
+The ineffectiveness of laws at Rome was due chiefly to the apathy of the
+executive authority. Gracchus saw clearly that his measure would, like
+other social efforts of the past, become a mere pious resolution, if its
+execution were entrusted to the ordinary officials of the State.[347]
+But a special commission, which should effectually carry out the work
+which he contemplated, must be of a very unusual kind. The magnitude of
+the task, and the impossibility of assigning any precise limit of time
+to its completion, made it essential that the Triumvirate which he
+established should bear the appearance of a regular but extraordinary
+magistracy of the State. The three commissioners created by the bill
+were to be elected annually by the Comitia of the Tribes.[348]
+Re-election of the same individuals was possible, and the new magistracy
+was to come to an end only with the completion of its work. Its
+occupants, perhaps, possessed the Imperium from the date of the first
+institution of the office; they certainly exercised it from the moment
+when, as we shall see, their functions of assignment were supplemented
+by the addition of judicial powers. Gracchus was doubtless led to this
+new creation purely by the needs of his measure; but he showed to later
+politicians the possibility of creating a new and powerful magistracy
+under the guise of an agrarian law.
+
+Such was the measure that seemed to its proposer a reasonable and
+equitable means of remedying a grave injustice and restoring rather than
+giving rights to the poor. He might, if he would, have insisted on
+simple restitution. Had he pressed the letter of the law, not an atom of
+the public domain need have been left to its present occupiers. The
+possessor had no rights against the State; he held on sufferance, and
+technically he might be supposed to be always waiting for his summons to
+ejectment. To give such people something over and above the limit that
+the laws had so long prescribed, to give them further a security of
+tenure for the land retained which amounted almost to complete
+ownership--were not these unexpected concessions that should be received
+with gratitude? And even up to the eve of the polling the murmurs of the
+opposition were sometimes met by appeals to its nobler sentiments. The
+rich, said Gracchus, if they had the interests of Italy, its future
+hopes and its unborn generations at heart, should make this land a free
+gift to the State; they were vexing themselves about small issues and
+refusing to face the greater problems of the day.[349]
+
+But personal interests can never seem small, and the average man is more
+concerned with the present than with the future. The opposition was
+growing in volume day by day, and the murmurs were rising into shrieks.
+The class immediately threatened must have been numerically small; but
+they made up in combination and influence what they lacked in numbers.
+It was always easy to startle the solid commercial world of Rome by the
+cry of "confiscation". A movement in this direction might have no
+limits; the socialistic device of a "re-division of land," which had so
+often thrown the Greek commonwealths into a ferment, was being imported
+into Roman politics. All the forces of respectability should be allied
+against this sinister innovation. It is probable that many who
+propagated these views honestly believed that they exactly fitted the
+facts of the case. The possessors did indeed know that they were not
+owners. They were reminded of the fact whenever they purchased the right
+of occupation from a previous possessor, for such a title could not pass
+by mancipation; or whenever they sued for the recovery of an estate from
+which they had been ejected, for they could not make the plea before the
+praetor that the land was theirs "according to the right of the
+Quirites," but could rely only on the equitable assistance of the
+magistrate tendered through the use of the possessory interdicts; or,
+more frequently still, whenever they paid their dues to the Publicanus,
+that disinterested middle-man, who had no object in compromising with
+the possessors, and could seldom have allowed an acre of land to escape
+his watchful eye. But, in spite of these reminders, there was an
+impression that the tenure was perfectly secure, and that the State
+would never again re-assert its lordship in the extreme form of
+dispensing entirely with its clients. Gracchus might talk of
+compensation, but was there any guarantee that it would be adequate,
+and, even supposing material compensation to be possible, what solace
+was that to outraged feelings? Ancestral homes, and even ancestral
+tombs, were not grouped on one part of a domain, so that they could be
+saved by an owner when he retained his five hundred _jugera_; they were
+scattered all over the broad acres. Estates that technically belonged to
+a single man, and were therefore subject to the operation of the law,
+had practically ceased to confer any benefit on the owner, and were
+pledged to other purposes. They had been divided as the _peculia_ of his
+sons, they had been promised as the dowry of his daughters. Again those
+former laws may have rightly forbidden the occupation of more than a
+certain proportion of land; but much of the soil now in possession had
+not been occupied by its present inhabitant; he had bought the right to
+be there in hard cash from the former tenant. And think of the invested
+capital! Dowries had been swallowed up in the soil, and the Gracchan law
+was confiscating personal as well as real property, taking the wife's
+fortune as well as the husband's. Nay, if the history of the public land
+were traced, could it not be shown that such value as it now possessed
+had been given it by its occupiers or their ancestors? The land was not
+assigned in early times, simply because it was not worth assignation. It
+was land that had been reclaimed for use, and of this use the authors of
+its value were now to be deprived.[350]
+
+Such was the plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and,
+therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business
+men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found
+their own personal interests at stake. So good had the tenure seemed,
+that it had been accepted as security for debt,[351] and the Gracchan
+attack united for once the usually hostile ranks of mortgagers and
+mortgagees. The alarm spread from Rome to the outlying municipalities.
+[352] Even in the city itself a very imperfect view of the scope of the
+bill was probably taken by the proletariate. We may imagine the
+distorted form in which it reached the ears of the occupants of the
+country towns. "Was it true that the land which had been given them in
+usufruct was to be taken away?" was the type of question asked in the
+municipia and in the colonies, whether Roman or Latin. The needier
+members of these towns received the news with very different feelings.
+They had every chance of sharing in the local division of the spoils,
+and their voices swelled the chorus of approval with which the poorer
+classes everywhere received the Gracchan law. Amidst this proletariate
+certain catch-words--well-remembered fragments of Gracchus's speeches--
+had begun to be the familiar currency of the day. "The numberless
+campaigns through which this land has been won," "The iniquity of
+exclusion from what is really the property of the State," "The disgrace
+of employing the treacherous slave in place of the free-born citizen"--
+such was the type of remark with which the Roman working-man or idler
+now entertained his fellow. All Roman Italy was in a blaze, and there
+must have been a sense of insecurity and anxiety even in those allied
+towns whose interest in Roman domain-land was remote. Might not State
+interests be as lightly violated as individual interests by a sovereign
+people: and was not the example of Rome almost as perilous as her action?
+
+The opponents of Gracchus had no illusions as to the numerical strength
+which he could summon to his aid. If the battle were fought to a finish
+in the Comitia, there could be no doubt as to his triumphant victory.
+Open opposition could serve no purpose except to show what a remnant it
+was that was opposing the people's wishes. But there was a means of at
+least delaying the danger, of staving off the attack as long as Gracchus
+remained tribune, perhaps of giving the people an opportunity of
+recovering completely from their delirium. When the college of tribunes
+moved as a united body, its force was irresistible; but now, as often
+before, there was some division in its ranks. It was not likely that ten
+men, drawn from the order of the nobility, should view with equal favour
+such a radical proposal as that of Tiberius Gracchus. But the popular
+feeling was so strong that for a time even the unsympathetic members of
+the board hesitated to protest, and no colleague of Tiberius is known to
+have opposed the movement in its initial stages. Even the man who was
+subsequently won over to the capitalist interest hesitated long before
+taking the formidable step: It was believed, however, that the hesitancy
+of Marcus Octavius was due more to his personal regard for Tiberius than
+to respect for the people's wishes.[353] The tribune who was to scotch
+the obnoxious measure was an excellent instrument for a dignified
+opposition. He was grave and discreet, a personal friend and intimate of
+Tiberius.[354] It is true that he was a large holder on the public
+domain, and that he would suffer by the operation of the new agrarian
+law. But it was fitting that the landlord class should be represented by
+a landlord, and, if there had been the least suspicion of sordid
+motives, it would have been removed by Octavius's refusal to accept
+private compensation for himself from the slender means of Tiberius
+Gracchus.[355] The offer itself reads like an insult, but it was
+probably made in a moment of passionate and unreflecting fervour.
+Neither the profferer nor the refuser could have regarded it in the
+light of a bribe. Even when the veto had been pronounced, the daily
+contest between the two tribunes in the Forum never became a scene of
+unseemly recrimination. The war of words revolved round the question of
+principle. Both disputants were at white heat; yet not a word was said
+by either which conveyed a reflection on character or motive.[356]
+
+These debates followed the first abortive meeting of the Assembly. As
+the decisive moment approached, streams of country folk had poured into
+Rome to register their votes in favour of the measure.[357] The Contio
+had given way to the Comitia, the people had been ready to divide, and
+Gracchus had ordered his scribe to read aloud the words of the bill.
+Octavius had bidden the scribe to be silent;[358] the vast meeting had
+melted away, and all the labours of the reformer seemed to have been in
+vain. To accept a temporary defeat under such circumstances was in
+accordance with the constitutional spirit of the times. The veto was a
+mode of encouraging reflection; it might yield to a prolonged campaign,
+but it was regarded as a barrier against a hasty popular impulse which,
+if unchecked, might prove ruinous to some portion of the community.
+Gracchus, however, knew perfectly well that it was now being used in the
+interest of a small minority, and he held the rights which it protected
+to be non-existent; he believed the question of agrarian reform to be
+bound up with his own personality, and its postponement to be equivalent
+to its extinction; he had no intention of allowing his own political
+life to be a failure, and, instead of discarding his weapons of attack,
+he made them more formidable than before. Perhaps in obedience to
+popular outcries, he redrafted his bill in a form which rendered it more
+drastic and less equitable.[359] It is possible that some of the
+_douceurs_ given to the possessors by his original proposal were not
+really in accordance with his own judgment. They were meant to disarm
+opposition. Now that opposition had not been disarmed, they could be
+removed without danger. The stricter measure had the same chance of
+success or failure as the less severe. We do not know the nature of the
+changes which were now introduced; but it is possible that the pecuniary
+compensation offered for improvements on the land to be resumed was
+either abolished or rendered less adequate than before.
+
+But even the form of the law was unimportant in comparison with the
+question of the method by which the new opposition was to be met. The
+veto, if persisted in by Octavius, would suspend the agrarian measure
+during the whole of Tiberius's year of office. It could only be
+countered by a device which would make government so impossible that the
+opposition would be forced to come to terms. The means were to be found
+in the prohibitive power of the tribunes, that right, which flowed from
+their _major potestas_, of forbidding under threat of penalties the
+action of all other magistrates. It was now rarely used except at the
+bidding of the senate and for certain specified purposes. It had become,
+in fact, little more than the means of enforcing obedience to a
+temporary suspension of business life decreed by the government. But
+recent events suggested a train of associations that brought back to
+mind the great political struggles of the past, and recalled the mode in
+which Licinius and Sextius had for five years sustained their anarchical
+edict for the purpose of the emancipation of the Plebs. The difference
+between the conditions of life in primitive Rome and in the cosmopolitan
+capital of to-day did not appeal to Tiberius. The Justitium was as
+legitimate a method of political warfare as the Intercessio. He issued
+an edict which forbade all the other magistracies to perform their
+official functions until the voting on the agrarian law should be
+carried through; he placed his own seals on the doors of the temple of
+Saturn to prevent the quaestors from making payments to the treasury or
+withdrawing money from it; he forbade the praetors to sit in the courts
+of justice and announced that he would exact a fine from those who
+disobeyed. The magistrates obeyed the edict, and most of the active life
+of the State was in suspense.[360] The fact of their obedience showed
+the overwhelming power which Tiberius now had behind him; for an
+ill-supported tribune, who adopted such an obsolete method of warfare,
+would have been unable to enforce his decrees and would merely have
+appeared ridiculous. The opponents of the law were now genuinely
+alarmed. Those who would be the chief sufferers put on garments of
+mourning, and paced the silent Forum with gloom and despair written on
+their faces, as though they were the innocent victims of a great wrong.
+But, while they took this overt means of stirring the commiseration of
+the crowd, it was whispered that the last treacherous device for
+averting the danger was being tried. The cause would perish with the
+demagogue, and Tiberius might be secretly removed. Confidence in this
+view was strengthened when it was known that the tribune carried a
+dagger concealed about his person.[361]
+
+An attempt was now made to discover whether the pressure had been
+sufficient and whether the veto would be repeated. Gracchus again
+summoned the assembly, the reading of the bill was again commenced and
+again stopped at the instance of Octavius.[362] This second
+disappointment nearly led to open riot. The vast crowd did not
+immediately disperse; it felt its great physical strength and the utter
+weakness of the regular organs of government. There were ominous signs
+of an appeal to force, when two men of consular rank, Manlius and
+Fulvius,[363] intervened as peacemakers. They threw themselves at the
+feet of Tiberius, they clasped his hands, they besought him with tears
+to pause before he committed himself to an act of violence. Tiberius was
+not insensible to the appeal. The immediate future was dark enough, and
+the entreaties of these revered men had saved an awkward situation. He
+asked them what they held that he should do. They answered that they
+were not equal to advise on a matter of such vast import; but that there
+was the senate. Why not submit the whole matter to the judgment of the
+great council of the State? Tiberius's own attitude to this proposal may
+have been influenced by the fact that it was addressed to his colleagues
+as well as to himself,[364] and that they apparently thought it a
+reasonable means of relieving the present situation. It is difficult to
+believe that the man who had never taken the senate into his confidence
+over so vital a matter as the agrarian law, could have had much hope of
+its sympathy now. But his conviction of the inherent reasonableness of
+his proposal,[365] of his own power of stating the case convincingly,
+and his knowledge that the senate usually did yield at a crisis, that
+its government was only possible because it consistently kept its finger
+on the pulse of popular opinion, may have directed his acceptance of its
+advice. Immediate resort was had to the Curia. The business of the house
+must have been immediately suspended to listen to a statement of the
+merits of the agrarian measure, and to a description of the political
+situation which it had created. When the debate began, it was obvious
+that there was nothing but humiliation in store for the leaders of the
+popular movement. The capitalist class was represented by an
+overwhelming majority; carping protests and riddling criticism were
+heard on every side, and Tiberius probably had never been told so many
+home truths in his life. It was useless to prolong the discussion, and
+Tiberius was glad to get into the open air of the Forum again. He had
+formed his resolution, and now made a proposal which, if carried
+through, might remove the deadlock by means that might be construed as
+legitimate. The new device was nothing less than the removal of his
+colleague Octavius from office. He announced that at the next meeting of
+the Assembly two questions would be put before the Plebs, the acceptance
+of the law and the continuance by Octavius of his tenure of the
+tribunate.[366] The latter question was to be raised on the general
+issue whether a tribune who acted contrary to the interests of the
+people was to continue in office. At the appointed time[367] Octavius's
+constancy was again tested, and he again stood firm. Tiberius broke out
+into one of his emotional outbursts, seizing his colleague's hands,
+entreating him to do this great favour to the people, reminding him that
+their claims were just, were nothing in proportion to their toils and
+dangers. When this appeal had been rejected, Tiberius summed up the
+impossibility of the situation in terms which contained a condemnation
+of the whole growth and structure of the Roman constitution. It was not
+in human power, he said, to prevent open war between magistrates of
+equal authority who were at variance on the gravest matters of
+state;[368] the only way which he saw of securing peace was the
+deposition of one of them from office. He did not care in the present
+instance which it was. The people would be the arbiter. Let his own
+deposition be proposed by Octavius; he would walk quietly away into a
+private station, if this were the will of the citizens. The man who
+spoke thus had more completely emancipated himself from Roman formulae
+than any Roman of the past. To Octavius it must have seemed a mere
+outburst of Greek demagogism. The offer too was an eminently safe one to
+make under the circumstances. On no grounds could it be accepted. At
+this point the proceedings were adjourned to allow Octavius time for
+deliberation.
+
+On the following day Gracchus announced that the question of deposition
+would be taken first, and a fresh and equally vain appeal was made to
+the feelings of the unshaken Octavius.[369] The question was then put,
+not as a vague and general resolution, but as a determinate motion that
+Octavius be deprived of the tribunate. The thirty-five tribes voted, and
+when the votes of seventeen had been handed up and proclaimed,[370] and
+the voice of but one was Lacking to make Octavius a private citizen,
+Tiberius as the presiding tribune stopped for a moment the machinery of
+the election. He again showed himself as a revolutionist unfortunate in
+the possession of a political and personal conscience. The people were
+witnessing a more passionate scene than ever, one that may appear as the
+last effort of reconciliation between the two social forces that were to
+meet in terrible conflict. Gracchus's arms were round his opponent's
+neck; broken appeals fell from his lips--the old one that he should not
+break the heart of the people: the new one that he should not cause his
+own degradation, and leave a bitter memory in the mind of the author of
+his fall. Observers saw that Octavius's heart was touched; his eyes were
+filled with tears, and for some time he kept a troubled silence. But he
+soon remembered his duty and his pledge. Tiberius might do with him what
+he would. Gracchus called the gods to witness that he would willingly
+have saved his colleague from dishonour, and ordered the resumption of
+the announcement of the votes. The bill became law and Octavius was
+stripped of his office. It was probably because he declined to recognise
+the legality of the act that he still lingered on the Rostra. One of the
+tribunician _viatores_, a freedman of Gracchus, was commanded to fetch
+him down. When he reached the ground, a rush was made at him by the mob;
+but his supporters rallied round him, and Tiberius himself rushed from
+the Rostra to prevent the act of violence. Soon he was lost in the crowd
+and hurried unobserved from the tumult.[371] His place in the
+tribunician college was filled up by the immediate election of one
+Quintus Mummius.[372]
+
+The members of the assembly that deposed Octavius may have been the
+spectators and authors of a new precedent in Roman history, one that was
+often followed in the closing years of the Republic, but one that may
+have received no direct sanction from the records of the past. The
+abrogation of the imperium of a proconsul had indeed been known,[373]
+but the deposition of a city magistrate during his year of office seems
+to have been a hitherto untried experiment. We cannot on this ground
+alone pronounce it to have been illegal; for an act never attempted
+before may have perfect legal validity, as the first occasion on which a
+legitimate deduction has been made from admitted principles of the
+constitution. It had always been allowed that under certain
+circumstances (chiefly the neglect of the proper formalities of
+election) a magistrate might be invited to abdicate his office; but the
+fact of this invitation is itself an evidence for the absence of any
+legal power of suspension. Tradition, however, often supplemented the
+defects of historical evidence, and one, perhaps the older, tale of the
+removal of the first consul Collatinus stated that it was effected by a
+popular measure introduced by his colleague.[374] This story was a
+fragment of that tradition of popular sovereignty which animated the
+historical literature of the age of the Gracchi: and one deduction from
+that theory may well have seemed to be that the sovereign people could
+change its ministers as it pleased. It was a deduction, however, that
+was not drawn even in the best period of democratic Athens; it ran
+wholly counter to the Roman conception of the magistracy as an authority
+co-ordinate with the people and one that, if not divinely appointed,
+received at least something of a sacred character from the fact of
+investiture with office. Even the prosecution of a magistrate for the
+gravest crime, although technically permissible during his year of
+office, had as a rule been relegated to the time when he again became a
+private citizen; the tribunician college, in particular, had generally
+thrown its protecting shield around its offending members, and had thus
+sustained its own dignity and that of the people. But, even if it be
+supposed that the sovereign could, at any moment and without any of the
+due formalities, proclaim itself a competent court of justice, and even
+though removal from office might be improperly represented as a
+punishment, there was the question of the offence to be considered. No
+crime known to the law had been charged against Octavius. In the
+exercise of his admitted right, or, as he might have expressed it, of
+his sacred duty, he had offended against the will of a majority. The
+analogy of the criminal law was from this point of view hopeless, and
+was therefore not pressed on this occasion. From another point of view
+it was not quite so remote. The tumultuous popular assemblages that had,
+on the bidding of a prosecuting tribune, often condemned commanders for
+vague offences hardly formulated in any particular law, scarcely
+differed, except in the fact that no previous magisterial inquiry had
+been conducted, from the meeting that deposed Octavius. The gulf that
+lies between proceedings in a parliament and proceedings in a court of
+law, was far less in Rome than it would have been in those Hellenic
+communities that possessed a developed system of criminal judicature.
+
+If criminal analogies failed, a purely political ground of defence must
+be adduced. This could hardly be based on considerations of abstract
+justice, although, as we shall see, an attempt was made by Tiberius
+Gracchus to give it even this foundation. Could it be based on
+convenience? Obviously, as Gracchus saw, his act was the only effective
+means of removing a deadlock created by a constitution which knew only
+magistrates and people and had effectively crippled both. So far, it
+might be defended on grounds of temporary necessity. But an act of this
+kind could not die. To what consequences might not its repetition lead?
+Imagine a less serious question, a less representative assembly. Think
+of the possibility of a few hundred desperate members of the
+proletariate gathering on the Capitoline hill and deposing a tribune who
+represented the interests of the vast outlying population of Rome. This
+is a consequence which, it is true, was not realised in the future. But
+that was only because the tribunate was more than Gracchus conceived it,
+and was too strong in tradition and associations of sanctity to be
+broken even by his attack. The scruples which troubled him most arose
+from the suspicion that the sacred office itself might have been held to
+suffer by the deposition of Octavius, and it was to a repudiation of
+this view that he subsequently devoted the larger part of his systematic
+defence of his action.
+
+At the same meeting at which Octavius was deposed, the agrarian bill was
+for the first time read without interruption to the people and
+immediately became law. Shortly after, the election of the commissioners
+was proceeded with and resulted in the appointment of Tiberius Gracchus
+himself, of his father-in-law Appius Claudius and of Gracchus's younger
+brother Caius.[375] It was perhaps natural that the people should pin
+their faith on the family of their champion; but it could hardly have
+increased the confidence of the community as a whole in the wisdom with
+which this delicate task would be executed, to find that it was
+entrusted to a family party, one of which was a mere boy; and the
+mistrust must have been increased when, somewhat later in the course of
+the year, the thorny questions which immediately encompassed the task of
+distribution led to the introduction by Tiberius of another law, which
+gave judicial power to the triumvirs, for the purpose of determining
+what was public land and what was private.[376] The fortunes of the
+richer classes seemed now to be entrusted to one man, who combined in
+his own person the tribunician power and the imperium, whose
+jurisdiction must have seriously infringed that of the regular courts,
+and who was assisted in issuing his probably inappellable decrees by a
+father-in-law and a younger brother. But, although effective protest was
+impossible, the senate showed its resentment by acts that might appear
+petty and spiteful, did we not remember that they were the only means
+open to this body of passing a vote of censure on the recent
+proceedings. The senate controlled every item of the expenditure; and
+when the commissioners appealed to it for their expenses, it refused a
+tent and fixed the limit of supplies at a denarius and a half a day. The
+instigator of this decree was the ex-consul Scipio Nasica, a heavy loser
+by the agrarian law, a man of strong and passionate temper who was every
+day becoming a more infuriated opponent of Tiberius Gracchus.[377]
+
+Meanwhile the latter had celebrated a peaceful triumph which far
+eclipsed the military pageants of the imperators of the past. The
+country people, before they returned to their farms, had escorted him to
+his house; they had hailed him as a greater than Romulus, as the
+founder, not of a city nor of a nation, but of all the peoples of
+Italy.[378] It is true that his escort was only the poor, rude mob.
+Stately nobles and clanking soldiers were not to be seen in the
+procession. But they were better away. This was the true apotheosis of a
+real demagogism. And the suspicion of the masses was as readily fired as
+their enthusiasm. A friend of Tiberius died suddenly and ugly marks were
+seen upon the body. There was a cry of poison; the bier was caught up on
+the shoulders of the crowd and borne to the place of burning. A vast
+throng stood by to see the corpse consumed, and the ineffectiveness of
+the flames was held a thorough confirmation of the truth of their
+suspicions.[379] It remained to see how far this protective energy would
+serve to save their favourite when the day of reckoning came.
+
+Tiberius could hardly have shared in the general elation. To make
+promises was one thing, to fulfil them another. Everything depended on
+the effectiveness of the execution of the agrarian scheme; and, although
+the mechanism for distribution was excellent, some of the material
+necessary for its successful fulfilment was sadly lacking. There were
+candidates enough for land, and there was sufficient land for the
+candidates. But whence were the means for starting these penniless
+people on their new road to virtue and prosperity to be derived? To give
+an ardent settler thirty _jugera_ of soil and to withhold from him the
+means of sowing his first crop or of making his first effort to turn
+pasture into arable land, was both useless and cruel; and we may imagine
+that the evicted possessors had not left their relinquished estates in a
+very enviable condition. The doors of the Aerarium were closed, for its
+key was in the hands of the senate; and Gracchus had to cast an anxious
+eye around for means for satisfying the needs of his clients.
+
+The opportunity was presented when the Roman people came into the
+unexpected inheritance of Attalus the Third, king of Pergamon. The
+testament was brought to Rome by Eudemus the Pergamene, whose first
+business was with the senate. But, when Eudemus arrived in the city, he
+saw a state of things which must have made him doubt whether the senate
+was any longer the true director of the State. It sat passive and
+sullen, while an energetic _prostates_ of the Greek type was doing what
+he liked with the land of Italy. No sane ambassador could have refused
+to neglect Gracchus, and it is practically certain that Eudemus
+approached him. This fact we may believe, even if we do not accept the
+version that the envoy had taken the precaution of bringing in his
+luggage a purple robe and a diadem, as symbols that might be necessary
+for a fitting recognition of Tiberius's future position.[380] It is also
+possible that suspicion of the rule of senators and capitalists may also
+have prompted the Greek to attempt to discover whether a more tolerable
+settlement might not be gained for his country through the leader of the
+popular party.[381] We cannot say whether Gracchus ever contemplated a
+policy with respect to the province as a whole. His mind was probably
+full of his immediate needs. He saw in the treasures of Attalus more
+than an equivalent for the revenues enclosed in the locked Aerarium, and
+he announced his intention of promulgating a plebiscite that the money
+left by the king should be assigned to the settlers provided for by his
+agrarian law.[382] It is possible that he contemplated the application
+of the future revenues of the kingdom of Pergamon to this or some
+similar purpose; and it was perhaps partly for this reason, partly in
+answer to the objection that the treasure could not be appropriated
+without a senatorial decree, that he announced the novel doctrine that
+it was no business of the senate to decide the fate of the cities which
+had belonged to the Attalid monarchy, and that he himself would prepare
+for the people a measure dealing with this question.[383]
+
+This was the fiercest challenge that he had yet flung to the senate.
+There might be a difference of opinion as to the right of a magistrate
+to put a question to the people without the guidance of a senatorial
+decree; the assignment of land was unquestionably a popular right in so
+far as it required ratification by the commons; even the deposition of
+Octavius was a matter for the people and would avenge itself. But there
+were two senatorial rights--the one usurped, the other created--whose
+validity had never been questioned. These were the control of finance
+and the direction of provincial administration. Were the possibility
+once admitted that these might be dealt with in the Comitia, the
+magistrates would cease to be ministers of the senate; for it was
+chiefly through a system of judicious prize-giving that the senate
+attached to itself the loyalty of the official class. There was perhaps
+less fear of what Gracchus himself might do than of the spectre which he
+was raising for the future. For in Roman history the events of the past
+made those of the future; there were few isolated phenomena in its
+development.
+
+From this time the attacks of individual senators on Gracchus became
+more vehement and direct. They proceeded from men of the highest rank. A
+certain Pompeius, in whom we may probably see an ex-consul and a future
+censor, was not ashamed of raising the spectre of a coming monarchy by
+reference to the story of the sceptre and the purple robe, and is said
+to have vowed to impeach Gracchus as soon as his year of magistracy had
+expired;[384] the ex-consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, of Macedonian
+fame, reproached Tiberius with his rabble escort. He compared the
+demeanour of the father and the son. In the censorship of the former the
+citizens used to quench their lights at night, as they saw him pass up
+the street to his house, that they might impress the censorial mind with
+the ideas of early hours and orderly conduct; now the son of this man
+might be seen returning home amidst the blaze of torches, held in the
+stout arms of a defiant body-guard drawn from the neediest classes.[385]
+These arrows may have Missed the mark; the one that hit was winged by an
+aged senator, Titus Annius Luscus, who had held the consulship twenty
+years before. His wit is said to have been better established than his
+character. He excelled in that form of ready altercation, of impaling
+his opponent on the horns of a dilemma by means of some innocent
+question, which, both in the courts and the senate, was often more
+effective than the power of continuous oratory. He now challenged
+Tiberius to a wager (_sponsio_), such as in the public life of Rome was
+often employed to settle a disputed point of honour or of fact, to
+determine the question whether he had dishonoured a colleague, who was
+holy in virtue of his office and had been made sacrosanct by the laws.
+The proposal was received by the senators with loud cries of
+acclamation. A glance at Tiberius would probably have shown that Annius
+had found the weak spot, not merely in his defensive armour, but in his
+very soul. The deposition of Octavius was proving a very nemesis; it was
+a democratic act that was in the highest degree undemocratic, an
+assertion and yet a gross violation of popular liberty.[386] The
+superstitious masses were in the habit of washing their hands and
+purifying their bodies before they entered into the presence of a
+tribune.[387] Might there not be a thrill of awe and repentance when the
+idea was brought home to them that this holy temple had been violated:
+and must not this be followed by a sense of repugnance to the man who
+had prompted them to the unhallowed deed? Tiberius sprang to his feet,
+quitted the senate-house and summoned the people. The majesty of the
+tribunate in his person had been outraged by Annius. He must answer for
+his words. The aged senator appeared before the crowd; he knew his
+disadvantage if the ordinary weapons of comitial strife were employed.
+In power of words and in repute with the masses he stood far behind
+Tiberius. But his presence of mind did not desert him. Might he ask a
+few questions before the regular proceedings began? The request was
+allowed and there was a dead silence. "Now suppose," said Annius, "you,
+Tiberius, were to wish to cover me with shame and abuse, and suppose I
+were to call on one of your colleagues for help, and he were to come up
+here to offer me his assistance, and suppose further that this were to
+excite your displeasure, would you deprive that colleague of yours of
+his office?" To answer that question in the affirmative was to admit
+that the tribunician power was dead; to answer it in the negative was to
+invite the retort that the _auxilium_ was only one form of the
+_intercessio_. The quick-witted southern crowd must have seen the
+difficulty at once, and Tiberius himself, usually so ready and bold in
+speech, could not face the dilemma. He remained silent and dismissed the
+assembly.[388]
+
+But matters could not remain as they were. This new aspect of Octavius's
+deposition was the talk of the town, and there were many troubled
+consciences amongst the members of his own following. Something must be
+done to quiet them; he must raise the question himself. The situation
+had indeed changed rapidly. Tiberius Gracchus was on his defence. Never
+did his power of special pleading appear to greater advantage than in
+the speech which followed. He had the gift which makes the mighty
+Radical, of diving down and seizing some fundamental truth of political
+science, and then employing it with merciless logic for the illustration
+or refutation of the practice of the present. The central idea here was
+one gathered from the political science of the Greeks. The good of the
+community is the only test of the rightness of an institution. It is
+justified if it secures that end, unjustified if it does not: or, to use
+the language of religion, holy in the one case, devoid of sanctity in
+the other. And an institution is not a mere abstraction; we must judge
+it by its use. We must, therefore, say that when it obeys the common
+interest, it is right: when it ceases to obey it, it is wrong. But the
+right must be preserved and the wrong plucked out. So Gracchus
+maintained that the tribune was holy and sacrosanct because he had been
+sanctified to the people's service and was the people's head. If then he
+change his character and do the people wrong, cutting down its strength
+and silencing its voice as expressed through the suffrage, he has
+deprived himself of his office, for he has ceased to conform to the
+terms on which he received it. Should we leave a tribune alone who was
+pulling down the Capitolium or burning the docks? And yet a tribune who
+did these things would remain a tribune, though a bad one. It is only
+when a tribune is destroying the power of the people that he is no
+longer a tribune at all. The laws give the tribune the power to arrest
+the consul. It is a power given against a man elected by the people; for
+consul and tribune are equally mandataries of the people. Shall not then
+the people have the right of depriving the tribune of his authority,
+when he uses this authority in a way prejudicial to the interests of the
+giver? What does the history of the past teach us? Can anything have
+been more powerful or more sacred than the ancient monarchy of Rome? The
+Imperium of the king was unlimited, the highest priestly offices were
+his. Yet the city expelled Tarquin for his crimes. The tyranny of a
+single man was alone sufficient to bring to an end a government which
+had its roots in the most distant past, which had presided over the very
+birth of the city. And, if sanctity alone is to be the ground of
+immunity, what are we to think of the punishment of a vestal virgin? Is
+there anything in Rome more holy and awe-inspiring than the maidens who
+tend and guard the eternal flame? Yet their sin is visited by the most
+horrible of deaths. They hold their sacrosanct character through the
+gods; they lose it, therefore, when they sin against the gods. Should
+the same not be true of the tribune? It is on account of the people that
+he is sacred; he cannot retain this divine character when he wrongs the
+people; he is a man engaged in destroying the very power which is the
+source of his strength. If the tribunate can justly be gained by a
+favourable vote of the majority of the tribes, can it not with greater
+justice be taken away by an adverse vote of all of them? Again, what
+should be the limits of our action in dealing with sacred things? Does
+sanctity mean immobility? By no means. What are more holy and inviolable
+than things dedicated to the gods? Yet this character does not prevent
+the people from handling, moving, transferring them as it pleases. In
+the case of the tribunate, it is the office, not the man, that is
+inviolable; it may be treated as an object of dedication and transferred
+to another. The practice of our own State proves that the office is not
+inviolable in the sense of being inalienable, for its holders have often
+forsworn it and asked to be divested of it.[389]
+
+The strongest part of this utterance was that which dealt with the
+sacred character of office; it was a mere emanation from the performance
+of certain functions; the protection, not the reality, of the thing.
+Gracchus might have added that even a treaty might under certain
+circumstances be legitimately broken. The weakest, from a Roman
+standpoint or indeed from that of any stable political society, was the
+identification of the permanent and temporary character of an
+institution, the assumption that a meeting of the people was the people,
+that a tribune was the tribune. How far the speech was convincing we do
+not know; it certainly did not relieve Tiberius of his embarrassments,
+which were now thickening around him.
+
+Tiberius's success had been mainly due to the country voters. It is true
+that he had a large following in the city; but this was numerically
+inferior to a mass of urban folk, whose attitude was either indifferent
+or hostile. They were indifferent in so far as they did not want
+agrarian assignments, and hostile in so far as they were clients of the
+noble houses which opposed Tiberius's policy. This urban party was now
+in the ascendant, for the country voters had scattered to their
+homes.[390] The situation demanded that he should work steadily for two
+objects, re-election to the tribunate and the support of the city
+voters. If, in addition to this support, he could hold out hopes that
+would attract the great capitalists to his side, his position would be
+impregnable. Hence in his speeches he began to throw out hints of a new
+and wide programme of legislation.[391] There was first the military
+grievance. Recent regulations, by the large decrease which they made in
+the property qualifications required for service,[392] had increased the
+liability to the conscription of the manufacturing and trading classes
+of Rome. Gracchus proposed that the period of service should be
+shortened--his suggestion probably being, not that the years of
+liability to service (the seventeenth to the forty-sixth) should be
+lessened, but that within these years a limited number of campaigns
+should be agreed on, which should form the maximum amount of active
+service for every citizen.[393] Two other proposals dealt with the
+question of criminal jurisdiction. The first allowed an appeal to the
+people from the decision of _judices_. The form in which this proposal
+is stated by our authority, would lead us to suppose that the courts to
+be rendered appellable were those constituted under standing laws. The
+chief of these _quaestiones_ or _judicia publica_ was the court which
+tried cases for extortion, established in the first instance by a Lex
+Calpurnia, and possibly reconstituted before this epoch by a Junian
+law.[394] A permanent court for the trial of murder may also have
+existed at this time.[395] The judges of these standing commissions were
+drawn from the senatorial order; and Gracchus, therefore, by suggesting
+an appeal from their judgment to the people, was attacking a senatorial
+monopoly of the most important jurisdiction, and perhaps reflecting on
+the conduct of senatorial _judices_, as displayed especially in relation
+to the grievances of distressed provincials. But it is probable that he
+also meant to strike a blow at a more extraordinary prerogative claimed
+by the senate, and to deny the right of that body to establish special
+commissions which could decide without appeal on the life and fortunes
+of Roman citizens.[396] So far his proposals, whether based on a
+conviction of their general utility or not, were a bid for the support
+of the average citizen. But when he declared that the qualification for
+the criminal judges of the time could not be allowed to stand, and that
+these judges should be taken either from a joint panel of senators and
+knights, or from the senate increased by the addition of a number of
+members of the equestrian order equal to its present strength, he was
+holding out a bait to the wealthy middle class, who were perhaps already
+beginning to feel senatorial jurisdiction in provincial matters irksome
+and disadvantageous to their interests. We are told by one authority
+that Gracchus's eyes even ranged beyond the citizen body and that he
+contemplated the possibility of the gift of citizenship to the whole of
+Italy.[397] This was not in itself a measure likely to aid in his
+salvation by the people; if it was not a disinterested effort of
+far-sighted genius, it may have been due to the gathering storm which
+his experience showed him the agrarian commission would soon be forced
+to meet.[398] Certainly, if all these schemes are rightly attributed to
+Tiberius Gracchus, it was he more than any man who projected the great
+programme of reform that the future had in store.
+
+Unfortunately for Gracchus the time was short for nursing a new
+constituency or spreading a new ideal. The time for the tribunician
+elections was approaching, an active canvass was being carried on by the
+candidates, and the aggrieved landowners were throwing the whole weight
+of their influence into the opposite scale.[399] Wild rumours of his
+plans were being circulated. The family clique that filled the agrarian
+commission was to snatch at other offices; Gracchus's brother, a youth
+still unqualified even for the quaestorship,[400] was to be thrust into
+the tribunate, and his father-in-law Appius was destined for the
+consulate.[401] Rome was to be ruled by a dynasty, and the tyranny of
+the commission was to extend to every department of the State. Gracchus
+felt that the city-combination against him was too strong, and sent an
+earnest summons to his supporters in the country. But practical needs
+were stronger than gratitude; the farmers were busy with their harvest;
+and it was plain that on this occasion the man of the street was to have
+the decisive voice. The result showed that even he was not unmoved by
+Gracchus's services, and by his last appeal that a life risked on behalf
+of the people should be protected by a renewed investiture with the
+tribunate.[402]
+
+The day of the election arrived and the votes were taken. When they came
+to be read out, it was found that the two first tribes had given their
+voice for Gracchus. Then there was a sudden uproar. The votes were going
+against the landlords; a legal protest must be made. Men rose in the
+assembly, and shouted out that immediate re-election to the tribunate
+was forbidden by the law. They were probably both right and wrong in
+their protest, as men so often were who ventured to make a definite
+assertion about the fluid public law of Rome. There was apparently no
+enactment forbidding the iteration of this office, and appointment to
+the tribunate must have been governed by custom. But recent custom seems
+to have been emphatically opposed to immediate re-election, and the
+appeal was justified on grounds of public practice.[403] It would
+probably have been disregarded, had the Gracchan supporters been in an
+overwhelming majority, or Gracchus's colleagues unanimous in their
+support. But the people were divided, and the president was not
+enthusiastic enough in the cause to risk his future impeachment.
+Rubrius, to whom the lot had assigned the conduct of the proceedings on
+that day, hesitated as to the course which he ought to follow. A bolder
+spirit Mummius, the man who had been made by the deposition of Octavius,
+asked that the conduct of the assembly should be handed over to him.
+Rubrius, glad to escape the difficulty, willingly yielded his place; but
+now the other members of the college interposed. The forms of the
+Comitia were being violated; a president could not be chosen without the
+use of the lot. The resignation of Rubrius must be followed by another
+appeal to sortition. The point of order raised, as usual, a heated
+discussion; the tribunes gathered on the Rostra to argue the matter out.
+Nothing could be gained by keeping the people as the spectators of such
+a scene, and Gracchus succeeded in getting the proceedings adjourned to
+the following day.[404]
+
+The situation was becoming more desperate; for each delay was a triumph
+for the opposition, and could only strengthen the belief in the
+illegality of Gracchus's claim. He now resorted to the last device of
+the Roman; he ceased to be a protector and became a suppliant. Although
+still a magistrate, he assumed the garb of mourning, and with humbled
+and tearful mien begged the help of individuals in the market
+place.[405]
+
+He led his son by the hand; his children and their mother were to be
+wards of the people, for he had despaired of his own life. Many were
+touched; to some the tribunate of Gracchus seemed like a rift in a dark
+cloud of oppression which would close around them at his fall, and their
+hearts sank at the thought of a renewed triumph of the nobility. Others
+were moved chiefly by the fears and sufferings of Gracchus. Cries of
+sympathy and defiance were raised in answer to his tears, and a large
+crowd escorted him to his house at nightfall and bade him be confident
+of their support on the following day. During his appeals he had hinted
+at the fear of a nocturnal attack by his foes: and this led many to form
+an encampment round his house and to remain as its vigilant defenders
+throughout the night.[406]
+
+Before day-break he was up and engaged in hasty colloquy with his
+friends. The fear of force was certainly present; and definite plans may
+have been now made for its repulsion. Some even believed that a signal
+for battle was agreed on by Gracchus, if matters should come to that
+extreme.[407] With a true Roman's scruples he took the omens before he
+left his house. They presaged ill. The keeper of the sacred chickens,
+which Gracchus's Imperium now permitted him to consult, could get
+nothing from the birds, even though he shook the cage. Only one of the
+fowls advanced, and even that would not touch the food. And the unsought
+omens were as evil as those invited. Snakes were found to have hatched a
+brood in his helmet, his foot stumbled on the threshold with such
+violence that blood flowed from his sandal; he had hardly advanced on
+his way when crows were seen struggling on his left, and the true object
+of the sign was pointed when a stone, dislodged by one of them from a
+roof, fell at his own feet. This concourse of ill-luck frightened his
+boldest comrades; but his old teacher, Blossius of Cumae, vehemently
+urged the prosecution of the task. Was a son of Gracchus, the grandson
+of Africanus, chief minister of the Roman people,[408] to be deterred by
+a crow from listening to the summons of the citizens? If the disgrace of
+his absence amused his enemies, they would keep their laughter to
+themselves. They would use that absence seriously, to denounce him to
+the people as a king who was already aping the luxury of the tyrant. As
+Blossius spoke, men were seen running from the direction of the Capitol;
+they came up, they bade him press on, as all was going well. And, in
+fact, it seemed as if all might turn out brightly. The Capitoline
+temple, and the level area before it, which was to be the scene of the
+voting, were filled with his supporters. A hearty cheer greeted him as
+he appeared, and a phalanx closed round him to prevent the approach of
+any hostile element. Shortly after the proceedings began, the senate was
+summoned by the consul to meet in the temple of Fides.[409] A few yards
+of sloping ground was all that now separated the two hostile camps.[410]
+
+The interval for reflection had strengthened the belief of some of the
+tribunes that Gracchus's candidature was illegal, and they were ready to
+support the renewed protests of the rich. The election, however, began;
+for the faithful Mummius was now presiding, and he proceeded to call on
+the tribes to vote. But the business of filing into their separate
+compartments, always complicated, was now impossible. The fringe of the
+crowd was in a continual uproar; from its extremities the opponents of
+the measure were wedging their way in. As his supporters squared their
+shoulders, the whole mass rocked and swayed. There was no hope of
+eliciting a decision from this scuffling and pushing throng. Every
+moment brought the assembly nearer to open riot. Suddenly a man was seen
+at some distance from Tiberius gesticulating with his hand as though he
+had something to impart. He was recognised as Fulvius Flaccus, a
+senator, a man perhaps already known as a sympathiser with schemes of
+reform. Gracchus asked the crowd immediately around him to give way a
+little, and Fulvius fought his way up to the tribune. His news was that
+in the sitting of the senate the rich proprietors had asked the consul
+to use force, that he had declined, and that now they were preparing on
+their own motion to slay Tiberius. For this purpose they had collected a
+large band of armed slaves and retainers.[411] Tiberius immediately
+imparted the news to his friends. Preparations for defence were hastily
+made: an improvised body-guard was formed; togas were girt up, and the
+staves of the lictors were broken into fragments to serve as clubs. The
+Gracchans more distant from the centre of the scene were meanwhile
+marvelling at the strange preparations of which they caught but
+glimpses, and could be seen asking eager questions as to their meaning.
+To reach these distant supporters by his voice was impossible; Tiberius
+could but touch his forehead with his hand to indicate that his life was
+in danger. Immediately a shout went up from the opposite side "Tiberius
+is asking for the diadem," and eager messengers sped with the news to
+the senate.[412] There was probably a knowledge that physical support
+for their cause would be found in that quarter, and the exodus of these
+excited capitalists was apparently assisted by an onslaught from the
+mob. A regular tumult was brewing, and the tribunes, instead of striving
+to preserve order, or staying to interpose their sacred persons between
+the enraged combatants, fled incontinently from the spot. Their fear was
+natural, for by remaining they might seem to be identifying themselves
+with a cause that was either lost or lawless. With the tribunes vanished
+the last trace of legality. The priests closed the temple to keep its
+precincts from the mob. The more timorous of the crowd fled in wild
+disorder, spreading wilder rumours. Tiberius was deposing the remaining
+tribunes from office; he was appointing himself to a further tribunate
+without the formalities of election.[413]
+
+Meanwhile the senate was deliberating in the temple of Fides. In the old
+days their deliberations might have resulted in the appointment of a
+dictator, and one of the historians who has handed down the record of
+these facts marvels that this was not the case now.[414] But the
+dictatorship had been weakened by submission to the appeal, and long
+before it became extinct had lost its significance as a means of
+repressing sedition within the city. The Roman constitution had now no
+mechanism for declaring a state of siege or martial law. From one point
+of view the extinction of the dictatorship was to be regretted. The
+nomination of this magistrate would have involved at least a day's
+delay;[415] some further time would have been necessary before he had
+collected round him a sufficient force in a city which had neither
+police nor soldiers. Had it been decided to appoint a dictator, the
+outrages of the next hour could never have occurred. As things were, it
+seemed as though the senate had to choose between impotence and murder.
+There was indeed another way. Such was the respect for members of the
+senatorial order, that a deputation of that body, headed by the consul,
+would probably have led to the dispersal of the mob. But passions were
+inflamed and it was no time for peaceful counsels. The advocate of
+summary measures was the impetuous Nasica. He urged the consul to save
+the city and to put down the tyrant. He demanded that the sense of the
+house should be taken as to whether extreme measures were now necessary.
+Even at this time a tradition may have existed that a magic formula by
+which the senate advised the magistrates "to see to it that the State
+took no harm," [416] could justify any act of violence in an emergency.
+The sense of the house was with Nasica, but a resolution could not be
+framed unless the consul put the question. The answer of Scaevola was
+that of a lawyer. He would commence no act of violence, he would put to
+death no citizen uncondemned. If, however, the people, through the
+persuasion or compulsion of Tiberius, should come to any illegal
+decision, he would see that such a resolution was not observed. Nasica
+sprang to his feet. "The consul is betraying the city; those who wish
+the salvation of the laws, follow me." [417] With this he drew the hem
+of his toga over his head,[418] and rushed from the door in the
+direction of the Capitoline temple. He was followed by a crowd of
+senators, all wrapping the folds of their togas round their left arms.
+Outside the door they were joined by their retainers armed with clubs
+and staves.[419]
+
+Meanwhile the proceedings in the Area Capitolii had been becoming
+somewhat less turbulent. The turmoil had quieted down with the exclusion
+of the more violent members of the opposition. Gracchus had called a
+Contio, for the purpose, it was said, of encouraging his supporters and
+asserting his own constancy and defiance of senatorial authority. The
+gathering had become a mere partisan mass meeting, such as had often
+been seen in the course of the current year, and the herald was crying
+"Silence," [420] when suddenly the men on the outskirts of the throng
+fell back to right and left. A long line of senators had been seen
+hastening up the hill. A deputation from the fathers had come. That must
+have been the first impression: and the crowd fell back before its
+masters. But in a moment it was seen that the masters had come to
+chastise, not to plead. With set faces and blazing eyes Nasica and his
+following threw themselves on the yielding mass. The unarmed senators
+snatched at the first weapons that lay to hand, the fragments of the
+shattered furniture of the meeting, severed planks and legs of benches,
+while their retinue pressed on with clubs and sticks. The whole column
+made straight for Tiberius and his improvised body-guard. Resistance was
+hopeless, and the tribune and his friends turned to flee. But the idea
+of restoring order occupied but a small place in the minds of the
+maddened senators, The accumulated bitterness of a year found its outlet
+in one moment of glorious vengeance. The fathers were behaving like a
+Greek street mob of the lowest type which had turned against an
+oppressive oligarchy. They were clubbing the Gracchans to death.
+Tiberius was in flight when some one seized his toga. He slipped it off
+and fled, clad only in his tunic, when he stumbled over a prostrate body
+and fell. As he rose, a rain of blows descended on his head.[421] The
+man who was seen to strike the first blow is said to have been Publius
+Saturius, one of his own colleagues. The glory of his death was
+vehemently disputed; one Rufus, since he could not claim the first blow,
+is said to have boasted of being the author of the second. Tiberius is
+said to have fallen by the very doors of the Capitoline temple, not far
+from the statues of the Kings.[422] The number of his adherents that
+perished was over three hundred, and it was noted that not one of these
+was slain by the sword.[423] Their bodies were thrown into the
+Tiber--not by the mob but by the magistrates; the hand of an aedile
+committed that of Tiberius to the stream.[424]
+
+The murder of a young man, who was still under thirty at the time of his
+death,[425] and the slaughter of a few hundreds of his adherents, may
+not seem to be an act of very great significance in the history of a
+mighty empire. Yet ancient historians regarded the event as
+epoch-marking, as the turning point in the history of Rome, as the
+beginning of the period of the civil wars.[426] To justify this
+conclusion it is not enough to point to the fact that this was the first
+blood shed in civic discord since the age of the Kings;[427] for it
+might also have been the last. Though the vendetta is a natural
+outgrowth of Italian soil, yet masses of men are seldom, like
+individuals, animated solely by the spirit of revenge. The blood of the
+innocent is a good battle-cry in politics, but it is little more; it is
+far from being the mere pretext, but it is equally far from being the
+true cause, of future revolution. Familiarity with the use of force in
+civic strife is also a fatal cause of its perpetuation; but familiarity
+implies its renewed employment: it can hardly be the result of the first
+experiment in murder. The repetition of this ghastly phenomenon in Roman
+politics can only be accounted for by the belief that the Gracchan
+_émeute_ was of its very nature an event that could not be isolated:
+that Gracchus was a pioneer in a hostile country, and that his opponents
+preserved all their inherent weakness after the first abortive
+manifestation of their pretended strength. A bad government may be
+securely entrenched. The senate, whether good or bad, had no defences at
+all. Its weakness had in the old days been its pride. It ruled by
+influencing opinion. Now that it had ceased to influence, it ruled by
+initiating a riot in the streets. It had no military support except such
+as was given it by friendly magistrates, and this was a dangerous weapon
+which it hesitated to use. To ignore militarism was to be at the mercy
+of the demagogue of the street, to admit it was found subsequently to be
+equivalent to being at the mercy of the demagogue of the camp. In either
+case authority must be maintained at the cost of civil war. But the
+material helplessness of the senate was only one factor in the problem.
+More fatal flaws were its lack of insight to discover that there were
+new problems to be faced, and lack of courage in facing them. This moral
+helplessness was due partly to the selfishness of individuals, but
+partly also to the fixity of political tradition. In spite of the
+brilliancy and culture of some of its members, the senate in its
+corporate capacity showed the possession of a narrow heart and an
+inexpansive intelligence. Its sympathies were limited to a class; it
+learnt its new lessons slowly and did not see their bearing on the
+studies of the future. Imperialism abroad and social contentment at home
+might be preserved by the old methods which had worked so well in the
+past. But to the mind of the masses the past did not exist, and to the
+mind of the reformer it had buried its dead. The career of Tiberius
+Gracchus was the first sign of a great awakening; and if we regard it as
+illogical, and indeed impossible, to pause here and estimate the
+character of his reforms, it is because the more finished work of his
+brother was the completion of his efforts and followed them as
+inexorably as the daylight follows the dawn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The attitude of the senate after the fall of Gracchus was not that of a
+combatant who had emerged secure from the throes of a great crisis. A
+less experienced victor would have dwelt on the magnitude of the
+movement and been guilty of an attempt at its sudden reversal. But the
+government pretended that there had been no revolution, merely an
+_émeute_. The wicked authors of the sedition must be punished; but the
+Gracchan legislation might remain untouched. More than one motive
+probably contributed to shape this view. In the first place, the
+traditional policy of Rome regarded reaction as equivalent to
+revolution. A rash move should be stopped in its inception; but, had it
+gone a little way and yielded fruit in the shape of some permanent
+organisation, it would be well to accept and, if possible, to weaken
+this product; it would be the height of rashness to attempt its
+destruction. The recognition of the _fait accompli_ had built up the
+Roman Empire, and the dreaded consequences had not come. Why should not
+the same be true of a new twist in domestic policy? Secondly, the
+opposition of the senate to Gracchus's reforms was based far more
+decidedly on political than on economic grounds. The frenzy which seized
+the fathers during the closing act of the tribune's life, was excited by
+his comprehensive onslaught on their monopoly of provincial, fiscal and
+judicial administration. His attempt to annex their lands had aroused
+the resentment of individuals, but not the hatred of a corporation. The
+individual was always lost in the senate, and the wrongs of the
+landowner could be ignored for the moment and their remedy left to time,
+if political prudence dictated a middle course. Again, reflection may
+have suggested the thought whether these wrongs were after all so great
+or so irremediable. The pastoral wealth of Italy was much; but it was
+little compared with the possibilities of enterprise in the provinces.
+Might not the bait of an agrarian law, whose chances of success were
+doubtful and whose operation might in time be impeded by craftily
+devised legislation, lull the people into an acceptance of that
+senatorial control of the foreign world, which had been so scandalously
+threatened by Gracchus? There was a danger in the very raising of this
+question; there was further danger in its renewal. A party cry seldom
+becomes extinct; but its successful revival demands the sense of some
+tangible grievance. To remove the grievance was to silence the
+demagogue; what the people wanted was comfort and not power. And lastly,
+the senate was not wholly composed of selfish or aggrieved land-holders.
+Amongst the sternest upholders of its traditions there were probably
+many who were immensely relieved that the troublesome land question had
+received some approach to a solution. There are always men hide-bound by
+convention and unwilling to move hand or foot in aid of a remedial
+measure, who are yet profoundly grateful to the agitator whom they
+revile, and profoundly thankful that the antics which they deem
+grotesque, have saved themselves from responsibility and their country
+from a danger.
+
+It was with such mixed feelings that the senate viewed the Gracchan
+_débâcle_. It was impossible, however, to accept the situation in its
+entirety; for to recognise the whole of Gracchus's career as legitimate
+was to set a dangerous precedent for the future. The large army of the
+respectable, the bulwark of senatorial power, had not been sufficiently
+alarmed. It was necessary to emphasise the fact that there had been an
+outrageous sedition on the part of the lower classes. With this object
+the senate commanded that the new consuls Popillius and Rupilius should
+sit as a criminal commission for the purpose of investigating the
+circumstances of the outbreak.[428] The commission was empowered to
+impose any sentence, and it is practically certain that it judged
+without appeal. The consuls, as usual, exercised their own discretion in
+the choice of assessors. The extreme party was represented by Nasica.
+Laelius, who also occupied a place on the judgment-seat, might have been
+regarded as a moderate;[429] although, as popular sedition and not the
+agrarian question was on its trial, there is no reason to suppose that a
+member of the Scipionic circle would be less severe than any of his
+colleagues in his animadversions on the wretched underlings of the
+Gracchan movement whom it was his duty to convict of crime. It was in
+fact the street cohort of Tiberius, men whose voices, torches and sticks
+had so long insulted the feelings of respectable citizens, that seems to
+have been now visited with the penalties for high treason; for no
+illustrious name is found amongst the victims of the commission. On some
+the ban of interdiction was pronounced, on others the death penalty was
+summarily inflicted. Amongst the slain was Diophanes the rhetor; and one
+Caius Villius, by some mysterious effort of interpretation which baffles
+our analysis, was doomed to the parricide's death of the serpent and the
+sack.[430] Blossius of Cumae was also arraigned, and his answer to the
+commission was subsequently regarded as expressing the deepest villainy
+and the most exalted devotion. His only defence was his attachment to
+Gracchus, which made the tribune's word his law. "But what," said
+Laelius "if he had willed that you should fire the Capitol?" "That would
+never have been the will of Gracchus," was the reply, "but had he willed
+it, I should have obeyed".[431] Blossius escaped the immediate danger,
+but his fears soon led him to leave Rome, and now an exile from his
+adopted as well as from his parent state, he could find no hope but in
+the fortunes of Aristonicus, who was bravely battling with the Romans in
+Asia. On the collapse of that prince's power he put himself to
+death.[432]
+
+The government may have succeeded in its immediate object of proving
+itself an effective policeman. The sense of order may have been
+satisfied, and the spirit of turbulence, if it existed, may have been
+for the moment cowed. But the memory of the central act of the ghastly
+tragedy on the Capitoline hill could not be so easily obliterated, and
+the chief actor was everywhere received with lowered brows and
+ill-omened cries.[433] It was superstition as well as hatred that
+sharpened the popular feeling against Nasica. A man was walking the
+streets of Rome whose hands were stained by a tribune's blood. He
+polluted the city wherein he dwelt and the presence of all who met him.
+The convenient theory that a mere street riot had been suppressed might
+have been accepted but for the awkward fact that the sanctity of the
+tribunate had been trodden under foot by its would-be vindicators. A
+prosecution of Nasica was threatened; and in such a case might not the
+arguments that vindicated Octavius be the doom of the accused? Popular
+hatred finds a convenient focus in a single man; it is easier to loathe
+an individual than a group. But for this very reason the removal of the
+individual may appease the resentment that the group deserves. Nasica
+was an embarrassment to the senate and he might prove a convenient
+scapegoat. It was desirable that he should be at once rewarded and
+removed; and the opportunity for an honourable banishment was easily
+found. The impending war with Aristonicus necessitated the sending of a
+commission to Asia, and Nasica was included amongst the five members of
+this embassy.[434] There was honour in the possession of such a post and
+wealth to be gained by its tenure; but the aristocracy had eventually to
+pay a still higher price for keeping Nasica beyond the borders of Italy.
+When the chief pontificate was vacated by the fall of Crassus in 130
+B.C., the refugee was invested with the office so ardently sought by the
+nobles of Rome.[435] He was forced to be contented with this shadow of a
+splendid prize, for he was destined never to exercise the high functions
+of his office in the city. He seems never to have left Asia and, after a
+restless change of residence, he died near the city of Pergamon.[436]
+
+The permanence of the land commission was the most important result of
+the senate's determination to detach the political from the economic
+consequences of the Gracchan movement.[437] But they tolerated rather
+than accepted it. Had they wished to make it their own, every nerve
+would have been strained to secure the three places at the annual
+elections for men who represented the true spirit of the nobility. But
+there was every reason for allowing the people's representatives to
+continue the people's work. The commission was an experiment, and the
+government did not wish to participate in possible failure; a seasonable
+opportunity might arise for suspending or neutralising its activities,
+and the senate did not wish to reverse its own work; whether success or
+failure attended its operations, the task of the commissioners was sure
+to arouse fears and excite odium, especially amongst the Italian allies;
+and the nobility were less inclined to excite such sentiments than to
+turn them to account. So the people were allowed year after year to
+perpetuate the Gracchan clique and to replace its members by avowed
+sympathisers with programmes of reform. Tiberius's place was filled by
+Crassus, whose daughter Licinia was wedded to Caius Gracchus.[438] Two
+places were soon vacated by the fall of Crassus in Asia and the death of
+Appius Claudius. They were filled by Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and Gaius
+Papirius Carbo.[439] The Former had already proved his sympathy with
+Gracchus, the latter had Just brought to an end an agitating tribunate,
+which had produced a successful ballot law and an abortive attempt to
+render the tribune re-eligible. The personnel of the commission was,
+therefore, a guarantee of its good faith. Its energy was on a level with
+its earnestness. The task of annexing and distributing the domain land
+was strenuously undertaken, and other officials, on whom fell the purely
+routine function of enforcing the new limit of occupation, seem to have
+been equally faithful to their work. Even the consul Popillius, one of
+the presidents of the commission that tried the Gracchan rioters, has
+left a record of his activity in the words that he was "the first to
+expel shepherds from their domains and install farmers in their
+stead".[440] The boundary stones of the commissioners still survive to
+mark the care with which they defined the limits of occupied land and of
+the new allotments; and the great increase in the census roll between
+the years 131 and 125 B.C. finds its best explanation in the steady
+increase of small landholders effected by the agrarian law. In the
+former year the register had shown rather less than 319,000 citizens; in
+the latter the number had risen to somewhat more than 394,000.[441] If
+this increase of nearly 76,000 referred to the whole citizen body, it
+would be difficult to connect it with the work of the commission, except
+on the hypothesis that numerous vagrants, who did not as a rule appear
+at the census, now presented themselves for assessment; but, when it is
+remembered that the published census list of Rome merely contained the
+returns of her effective military strength, and that this consisted
+merely of the _assidui_, it is clear that a measure which elevated large
+portions of the _capite censi_ to the position of yeoman farmers must
+have had the effect of increasing the numbers on the register; and this
+sudden leap in the census roll may thus be attributed to the successful
+working of the new agrarian scheme.[442] A result such as this could not
+have been wholly transitory; in tracing the agrarian legislation of the
+post-Gracchan period we shall indeed find the trial of experiments which
+prove that no final solution of the land question had been reached; we
+shall see the renewal of the process of land absorption which again led
+to the formation of gigantic estates; but these tendencies may merely
+mark the inevitable weeding-out of the weaker of the Gracchan colonists;
+they do not prove that the sturdier folk failed to justify the scheme,
+to work their new holdings at a profit, and to hand them down to their
+posterity. It is true that the landless proletariate of the city
+continued steadily to increase; but the causes which lead to the
+plethora of an imperial capital are too numerous to permit us to explain
+this increase by the single hypothesis of a renewed depopulation of the
+country districts.
+
+The distribution of allotments, however, represented but the simpler
+element of the scheme. The really arduous task was to determine in any
+given case what land could with justice be distributed. The judicial
+powers of the triumvirs were taxed to the utmost to determine what land
+was public, and what was private. The possessors would at times make no
+accurate profession of their tenure; such as were made probably in many
+cases aroused distrust. Information was invited from third parties, and
+straightway the land courts were the scene of harrowing litigation.[443]
+It could at times be vaguely ascertained that, while a portion of some
+great domain was held on occupation from the State, some other portion
+had been acquired by purchase; but what particular part of the estate
+was held on either tenure was undiscoverable, for titles had been lost,
+or, when preserved, did not furnish conclusive evidence of the justice
+of the original transfer. Even the ascertainment of the fact that a
+tract of land had once belonged to the State was no conclusive proof
+that the State could still claim rights of ownership; for some of it had
+in early times been assigned in allotments, and no historical record
+survived to prove where the assignment had ended and the permission of
+occupation had begun. The holders of private estates had for purposes of
+convenience worked the public land immediately adjoining their own
+grounds, the original landmarks had been swept away, and, although they
+had paid their dues for the possession of so many acres, it was
+impossible to say with precision which those acres were. The present
+condition of the land was no index; for some of the possessors had
+raised their portion of the public domain to as high a pitch of
+cultivation as their original patrimonies: and, as the commissioners
+were naturally anxious to secure arable land in good condition for the
+new settlers, the original occupiers sometimes found themselves in the
+enjoyment of marsh or swamp or barren soil,[444] which remained the sole
+relics of their splendid possessions. The judgments of the court were
+dissolving ancestral ties, destroying homesteads, and causing the
+transference of household gods to distant dwellings. Such are the
+inevitable results of an attempt to pry into ancient titles, and to
+investigate claims the basis of which lies even a few decades from the
+period of the inquisition.
+
+But, while these consequences were unfortunate, they were not likely to
+produce political complications so long as the grievances were confined
+to members of the citizen body. The vested interests which had been
+ignored in the passing of the measure might be brushed aside in its
+execution. Had the territory of Italy belonged to Rome, there would have
+been much grumbling but no resistance; for effective resistance required
+a shadow of legal right. But beyond the citizen body lay groups of
+states which were interested in varying degrees in the execution of the
+agrarian measure: and their grievances, whether legitimate or not,
+raised embarrassing questions of public law. The municipalities composed
+of Roman citizens or of half-burgesses had, as we saw, been alarmed at
+the introduction of the measure, perhaps through a misunderstanding of
+its import and from a suspicion that the land which had been given them
+in usufruct was to be resumed. Possibly the proceedings of the
+commission may have done something to justify this fear, for the limits
+of this land possessed by corporate bodies had probably become very
+ill-defined in the course of years. But, although a corporate was
+stronger than an individual interest and rested on some public
+guarantee, the complaints of these townships, composed as they were of
+burgesses, were merely part of the civic question, and must have been
+negligible in comparison with the protests of the federate cities of
+Italy and the Latins. We cannot determine what grounds the Italian Socii
+had either for fear or protest. It is not certain that land had been
+assigned to them in usufruct,[445] and such portions of their conquered
+territories as had been restored to them by the Roman State were their
+own property. But, whether the territories which they conceived to be
+threatened were owned or possessed by these communities, such ownership
+or possession was guaranteed to them by a sworn treaty, and it is
+inconceivable that the Gracchan legislation, the strongest and the
+weakest point of which was its strict legality, should have openly
+violated federative rights. When, however, we consider the way in which
+the public land of Rome ran in and out of the territories of these
+allied communities, it is not wonderful that doubts should exist as to
+the line of demarcation between state territories and the Roman domain.
+Vexed questions of boundaries might everywhere be raised, and the
+government of an Italian community would probably find as much
+difficulty as a private possessor in furnishing documentary evidence of
+title. The fears of the Latin communities are far more comprehensible,
+and it was probably in these centres that the Italian revolt against the
+proceedings of the commission chiefly originated. The interests of the
+Latins in this matter were almost precisely similar to those of the
+Romans: and this identity of view arose from a similarity of status. The
+Latin colonies had had their territories assigned by Roman
+commissioners: and it is probable, although it cannot be proved, that
+doubts arose as to the legitimate extent of these assignments in
+relation to the neighbouring public land. Many of these territories may
+have grown mysteriously at the expense of Rome in districts far removed
+from the capital: and in Gaul especially encroachments on the Roman
+domain by municipalities or individuals of the Latin colonies most
+recently established may have been suspected. But the Latin community
+had another interest in the question, which bore a still closer
+resemblance to that shown by the Roman burgesses. As the individual
+Latin might be a recipient of the favour of the commissioners, so he
+might be the victim of their legal claims. The fact that he shared the
+right of commerce with Rome and could acquire and sue for land by Roman
+forms, makes it practically certain that he could be a possessor of the
+Roman domain. So eager had been the government in early times to see
+waste land reclaimed and defended, that it could hardly have failed to
+welcome the enterprising Latin who crossed his borders, threw his
+energies into the cultivation of the public land, and paid the required
+dues. Many of the wealthier members of Latin communities may thus have
+been liable to the fate of the ejected possessors of Rome; but even
+those amongst them whose possessions did not exceed the prescribed limit
+of five hundred _jugera_, may have believed that their claims would
+receive, or had received, too little attention from the Roman
+commission, while the difficulties resulting from the fusion of public
+and private land in the same estates may have been as great in these
+communities as they were in the territory of Rome. Such grievances
+presented no feature of singularity; they were common to Italy, and one
+might have thought that a Latin protest would have been weaker than a
+Roman. But there was one vital point of difference between the two. The
+Roman could appeal only as an individual; the Latin appealed as a member
+of a federate state. He did not pause to consider that his grievance was
+due to his being half a Roman and enjoying Roman rights. The truth that
+a suzerain cannot treat her subjects as badly as she treats her citizens
+may be morally, but is not legally, a paradox. The subjects have a
+collective voice, the citizens have ceased to have one when their own
+government has turned against them. The position of these Latins,
+illogical as it may have been, was strengthened by the extreme length to
+which Rome had carried her principle of non-interference in ail dealings
+with federate allies. The Roman Comitia did not legislate for such
+states, no Roman magistrate had jurisdiction in their internal concerns.
+By a false analogy it could easily be argued that no Roman commission
+should be allowed to disturb their peaceful agricultural relations and
+to produce a social revolution within their borders. The allies now
+sought a champion for their cause, since the constitution supplied no
+mechanism for the direct expression of Italian grievances. The
+complaints of individual cities had in the past been borne to the senate
+and voiced by the Roman patrons of these towns. Now that a champion for
+the confederacy was needed, a common patron had to be created. He was
+immediately found in Scipio Aemilianus.[446]
+
+The choice was inevitable and was dictated by three potent
+considerations. There was the dignity of the man, recently raised to its
+greatest height by the capture of Numantia; there was his known
+detachment from the recent Gracchan policy and his forcibly expressed
+dislike of the means by which it had been carried through; there was the
+further conviction based on his recent utterances that he had little
+liking for the Roman proletariate. The news of Gracchus's fall had been
+brought to Scipio in the camp before Numantia; his epitaph on the
+murdered tribune was that which the stern Hellenic goddess of justice
+and truth breathes over the slain Aegisthus:--
+
+    So perish all who do the like again.[447]
+
+To Scipio Gracchus's undertaking must have seemed an act of impudent
+folly, its conduct must have appeared something worse than madness. In
+all probability it was not the agrarian movement which roused his
+righteous horror, but the gross violation of the constitution which
+seemed to him to be involved in the inception and consequences of the
+plan. Of all political temperaments that of the Moderate is the least
+forgiving, just because it is the most timorous. He sees the gulf that
+yawns at his own feet, he lacks the courage to take the leap, and sets
+up his own halting attitude, of which he is secretly ashamed, as the
+correct demeanour for all sensible and patriotic men. The Conservative
+can appreciate the efforts of the Radical, for each is ennobled by the
+pursuit of the impossible; but the man of half measures and
+indeterminate aims, while contemning both, will find the reaction from
+violent change a more potent sentiment even than his disgust at corrupt
+immobility. Probably Scipio had never entertained such a respect for the
+Roman constitution as during those busy days in camp, when the incidents
+of the blockade were varied by messages describing the wild proceedings
+of his brother-in-law at Rome. Yet Scipio must have known that an
+unreformed government could give him nothing corresponding to his
+half-shaped ideals of a happy peasantry, a disciplined and effective
+soldiery, an uncorrupt administration that would deal honestly and
+gently with the provincials. His own position was in itself a strong
+condemnation of the powers at Rome. They were relying for military
+efficiency on a single man. Why should not they rely for political
+efficiency on another? But the latter question did not appeal to Scipio.
+To tread the beaten path was not the way to make an army; but it was
+good enough for politics.
+
+Scipio did not scorn the honours of a triumph, and the victory of
+Numantia was followed by the usual pageant in the streets.[448] He was
+unquestionably the foremost man of Rome, and senate and commons hung on
+his lips to catch some definite expression of his attitude to recent
+events, or to those which were stirring men's minds in the present. They
+had not long to wait, for a test was soon presented. When in 131 Carbo
+introduced his bill permitting re-election to the tribunate, all the
+resources of Scipio's dignified oratory were at the disposal of the
+senate, and the coalition of his admirers with the voters whom the
+senate could dispose of, was fatal to the chances of the bill.[449] Such
+an attitude need not have weakened his popularity; for excellent reasons
+could be given, in the interest of popular government itself, against
+permitting any magistracy to become continuous, But his political
+enemies were on the watch, and in one of the debates on the measure care
+was taken that a question should be put, the answer to which must either
+identify or compromise him with the new radicalism. Carbo asked him what
+he thought about the death of Tiberius Gracchus. Scipio's answer was
+cautious but precise; "If Gracchus had formed the intention of seizing
+on the administration of the State, he had been justly slain." It was
+merely a restatement of the old constitutional theory that one who aimed
+at monarchy was by that very fact an outlaw. But the answer,
+hypothetical as was its expression, implied a suspicion of Gracchus's
+aims. It did not please the crowd; there was a roar of dissent. Then
+Scipio lost his temper. The contempt of the soldier for the civilian, of
+the Roman for the foreigner, of the man of pure for the man of mixed
+blood--a contempt inflamed to passion by the thought that men such as he
+were often at the mercy of these wretches--broke through all reserve. "I
+have never been frightened by the clamour of the enemy in arms," he
+shouted, "shall I be alarmed by your cries, ye step-sons of Italy?" This
+reflection on the lineage of his audience naturally aroused another
+protest. It was met by the sharp rejoinder, "I brought you in chains to
+Rome; you are freed now, but none the more terrible for that!" [450] It
+was a humiliating spectacle. The most respected man in Rome was using
+the vulgar abuse of the streets to the sovereign people; and the man who
+used this language was so blinded by prejudice as not to see that the
+blood which he reviled gave the promise of a new race, that the mob
+which faced him was not a crowd of Italian peasants, willing victims of
+the martinet, that the Asiatic and the Greek, with their sordid clothes
+and doubtful occupations, possessed more intelligence than the Roman
+members of the Scipionic circle and might one day be the rulers of Rome.
+The new race was one of infinite possibilities. It needed guidance, not
+abuse. Carbo and his friends must have been delighted with the issue of
+their experiment. Scipio had paid the first instalment to that treasury
+of hatred, which was soon to prove his ruin and to make his following a
+thing of the past.
+
+Such was the position of Scipio when he was approached by the Italians.
+His interest in their fortunes was twofold. First he viewed them with a
+soldier's eye.[451] They were tending more and more to form the flower
+of the Roman armies abroad: and, although in obedience to civic
+sentiment he had employed a heavier scourge on the backs of the
+auxiliaries than on those of the Roman troops before Numantia,[452] the
+chastisement, which he would have doubtless liked to inflict on all, was
+but an expression of his interest in their welfare. Next he admired the
+type for its own sake. The sturdy peasant class was largely represented
+here, and he probably had more faith in its permanence amongst the
+federate cities than amongst the needy burgesses whom the commissioners
+were attempting to restore to agriculture. He could not have seen the
+momentous consequences which would follow from a championship of the
+Italian allies against the interests of the urban proletariate; that
+such a dualism of interests would lead to increased demands on the part
+of the one, to a sullen resistance on the part of the other; that in
+this mere attempt to check the supposed iniquities of a too zealous
+commission lay the germ of the franchise movement and the Social War.
+His protection was a matter of justice and of interest. The allies had
+deserved well and should not be robbed; they were the true protectors of
+Rome and their loyalty must not be shaken. Scipio, therefore, took their
+protest to the senate. He respected the susceptibilities of the people
+so far as to utter no explicit word of adverse criticism on the Gracchan
+measure; but he dwelt on the difficulties which attended its execution,
+and he suggested that the commissioners were burdened with an invidious
+task in having to decide the disputed questions connected with the land
+which they annexed. By the nature of the case their judgments might
+easily appear to the litigants as tinged with prejudice. It would be
+better, he suggested, if the functions of jurisdiction were separated
+from those of distribution and the former duties given to some other
+authority.[453] The senate accepted the suggestion, and its
+reasonableness must have appealed even to the people, for the measure
+embodying it must have passed the Comitia, which alone could abrogate
+the Gracchan law.[454] Possibly some recent judgments of the
+commissioners had produced a sense of uneasiness amongst large numbers
+of the citizen body, and there may have been a feeling that it would be
+to the advantage of all parties if the cause of scandal were removed.
+Perhaps none but the inner circle of statesmen could have predicted the
+consequences of the change. The decision of the agrarian disputes was
+now entrusted to the consuls, who were the usual vehicles of
+administrative jurisdiction. The history of the past had proved over and
+over again the utter futility of entrusting the administration of an
+extraordinary and burdensome department to the regular magistrates. They
+were too busy to attend to it, even if they had the will. But in this
+case even the will was lacking. Of the two consuls Manius Aquillius was
+destined for the war in Asia, and his colleague Caius Sempronius
+Tuditanus had no sooner put his hand to the new work than he saw that
+the difficulties of adjudication had been by no means the creation of
+the commissioners. He answered eagerly to the call of a convenient
+Illyrian war and quitted the judgment seat for the less harassing
+anxieties of the camp.[455] The functions of the commissioners were
+paralysed; they seem now to have reached a limit where every particle of
+land for distribution was the subject of dispute, and, as there was no
+authority in existence to settle the contested claims, the work of
+assignation was brought to a sudden close. The masses of eager
+claimants, that still remained unsatisfied, felt that they had been
+betrayed; the feeling spread amongst the urban populace, and the name of
+Scipio was a word that now awoke suspicion and even execration.[456] It
+was not merely the sense of betrayal that aroused this hostile
+sentiment; the people charged him with ingratitude. Masses of men, like
+individuals, love a _protégé_ more than a benefactor. They have a pride
+in looking at the colossal figure which they have helped to create. And
+had not they in a sense made Scipio? Their love had been quickened by
+the sense of danger; they had braved the anger of the nobles to put
+power into his hands; they had twice raised him to the consulship in
+violation of the constitution. And now what was their reward? He had
+deliberately chosen to espouse the cause of the allies and oppose the
+interests of the Roman electorate. Scipio's enemies had good material to
+work upon. The casual grumblings of the streets were improved on, and
+formulated in the openly expressed belief that his real intention was
+the repeal of the Sempronian law, and in the more far-fetched suspicion
+that he meant to bring a military force to bear on the Roman mob, with
+its attendant horrors of street massacre or hardly less bloody
+persecution.[457]
+
+The attacks on Scipio were not confined to the informal language of
+private intercourse. Hostile magistrates introduced his enemies to the
+Rostra, and men like Fulvius Flaccus inveighed bitterly against
+him.[458] On the day when one of these attacks was made, Scipio was
+defending his position before the people; he had been stung by the
+charge of ingratitude, for he retorted it on his accusers; he complained
+that an ill return was being made to him for his many services to the
+State. In the evening Scipio was escorted from the senate to his house
+by a crowd of sympathisers. Besides senators and other Romans the escort
+comprised representatives of his new clients, the Latins and the Italian
+allies.[459] His mind was full of the speech which he meant to deliver
+to the people on the following day. He retired early to his sleeping
+chamber and placed his writing tablet beside his bed, that he might fix
+the sudden inspirations of his waking hours. When morning dawned, he was
+found lying on his couch but with every trace of life extinct. The
+family inquisition on the slaves of the household was held as a matter
+of course. Their statements were never published to the world, but it
+was believed that under torture they had confessed to seeing certain men
+introduced stealthily during the night through the back part of the
+house; these, they thought, had strangled their master.[460] The reason
+which they assigned for their reticence was their fear of the people;
+they knew that Scipio's death had not appeased the popular fury, that
+the news had been received with joy, and they did not wish by invidious
+revelations to become the victims of the people's hate. The fears of the
+slaves were subsequently reflected in the minds of those who would have
+been willing to push the investigation further. There was ground for
+suspicion; for Scipio, although some believed him delicate,[461] had
+shown no sign of recent illness. A scrutiny of the body is even said to
+have revealed a livid impress near the throat.[462] The investigation
+which followed a sudden death within the walls of a Roman household, if
+it revealed the suspicion of foul play, was usually the preliminary to a
+public inquiry. The duty of revenge was sacred; it appealed to the
+family even more than to the public conscience. But there was no one to
+raise the cry for retribution. He had no sons, and his family was
+represented but by his loveless wife Sempronia. His many friends must
+indeed have talked of making the matter public, and perhaps began at
+once to give vent to those dark suspicions which down to a late age
+clouded the names of so many of the dead man's contemporaries. But the
+project is said to have been immediately opposed by representatives of
+the popular party;[463] the crime, if crime there was, had been no
+vulgar murder; a suspicion that violence had been used was an insult to
+the men who had fought him fairly in the political field; a _quaestio_
+instituted by the senate might be a mere pretext for a judicial murder;
+it might be the ruse by which the nobles sought to compass the death of
+the people's new favourite and rising hope, Caius Gracchus. Ultimately
+those who believed in the murder and pined to avenge it, were
+constrained to admit that it was wiser to avoid a disgraceful political
+wrangle over the body of their dead hero. But, for the retreat to be
+covered, it must be publicly announced by those who had most authority
+to speak, that Scipio had died a natural death. This was accordingly the
+line taken by Laelius, when he wrote the funeral oration which Quintus
+Fabius Maximus delivered over the body of his uncle;[464] "We cannot
+sufficiently mourn this death by disease" were words purposely spoken to
+be an index to the official version of the decease. The fear of
+political disturbance which veiled the details of the tragedy, also
+dictated that the man, whom friends and enemies alike knew to have been
+the greatest of his age, should have no public funeral.[465]
+
+The government might well fear a scandalous scene--the Forum with its
+lanes and porticoes crowded by a snarling holiday crowd, the laudation
+of the speakers interrupted by gibes and howls, the free-fight that
+would probably follow the performance of the obsequies.
+
+But suppression means rumour. The mystery was profoundly enjoyed by this
+and subsequent ages. Every name that political or domestic circumstances
+could conveniently suggest, was brought into connection with Scipio's
+death. Caius Gracchus,[466] Fulvius Flaccus,[467] Caius Papirius
+Carbo[468] were all indifferently mentioned. Suspicion clung longest to
+Carbo, probably as the man who had lately come into the most direct
+conflict with his supposed victim; even Carbo's subsequent conversion to
+conservatism could not clear his name, and his guilt seems to have been
+almost an article of faith amongst the optimates of the Ciceronian
+period. But there were other versions which hinted at domestic crime.
+Did not Cornelia have an interest in removing the man who was undoing
+the work of her son, and might she not have had a willing accomplice in
+Scipio's wife Sempronia?[469] It was believed that this marriage of
+arrangement had never been sanctioned by love; Sempronia was plain and
+childless, and the absence of a husband's affection may have led her to
+think only of her duties as a daughter and a sister.[470] People who
+were too sane for these extravagances, but were yet unwilling to accept
+the prosaic solution of a natural death and give up the pleasant task of
+conjecture, suggested that Scipio had found death by his own hand. The
+motive assigned was the sense of his inability to keep the promises
+which he had made.[471] These promises may have been held to be certain
+suggestions for the amelioration of the condition of the Latin and
+Italian allies.
+
+But it required no conjecture and no suspicion to emphasise the tragic
+nature of Scipio's death. He was but fifty-six; he was by far the
+greatest general that Rome could command, a champion who could spring
+into the breach when all seemed lost, make an army out of a rabble and
+win victory from defeat; he was a great moral force, the scourge of the
+new vices, the enemy of the provincial oppressor; he was the greatest
+intellectual influence in aristocratic Rome, embellishing the staid
+rigour of the ancient Roman with something of the humanism of the Greek;
+Xenophon was the author who appealed most strongly to his simple and
+manly tastes; and his purity of soul and clearness of intellect were
+fitly expressed in the chasteness and elegance of his Latin style. The
+modern historian has not to tax his fancy in discovering great qualities
+in Scipio; the mind of every unprejudiced contemporary must have echoed
+the thought of Laelius, when he wrote in his funeral speech "We cannot
+thank the gods enough that they gave to Rome in preference to other
+states a man with a heart and intellect like this".[472] But the
+dominant feeling amongst thinking men, who had any respect for the
+empire and the constitution, was that of panic at the loss. Quintus
+Metellus Macedonicus had been his political foe; but when the tidings of
+death were brought him, he was like one distraught. "Citizens," he
+wailed, "the walls of our city are in ruins." [473] And that a great
+breach had been made in the political and military defences of Rome is
+again the burden of Laelius's complaint, "He has perished at a time when
+a mighty man is needed by you and by all who wish the safety of this
+commonwealth." These utterances were not merely a lament for a great
+soldier, but the mourning for a man who might have held the balance
+between classes and saved a situation that was becoming intolerable. We
+cannot say whether any definite means of escape from the brewing storm
+was present to Scipio's mind, or, if he had evolved a plan, whether he
+was master of the means to render it even a temporary success. Perhaps
+he had meddled too little with politics to have acquired the dexterity
+requisite for a reconciler. Possibly his pride and his belief in the
+aristocracy as an aggregate would have stood in his way. But he was a
+man of moderate views who led a middle party, and he attracted the
+anxious attention of men who believed that salvation would not come from
+either of the extremes. He had once been the favourite of the crowd, and
+might be again, he commanded the distant respect of the nobility, and he
+had all Italy at his side. Was there likely to be a man whose position
+was better suited to a reconciliation of the war of jarring interests?
+Perhaps not; but at the time of his death the first steps which he had
+taken had only widened the horizon of war. He found a struggle between
+the commons and the nobles; he emphasised, although he had not created,
+the new struggle between the commons and Italy. His next step would have
+been decisive, but this he was not fated to take.
+
+When we turn from the history of the agrarian movement and its
+unexpected consequences to other items in the internal fortunes of Rome
+during this period, we find that Tiberius Gracchus had left another
+legacy to the State. This was the idea of a magistracy which, freed from
+the restraint of consulting the senate, should busy itself with
+political reform, remove on its own initiative the obstacles which the
+constitution threw in the path of its progress, and effect the
+regeneration of Rome and even of Italy by means of ordinances elicited
+from the people. The social question was here as elsewhere the efficient
+cause; but it left results which seemed strangely disproportionate to
+their source. The career of Gracchus had shown that the leadership of
+the people was encumbered by two weaknesses. These were the packing of
+assemblies by dependants of the rich, whose votes were known and whose
+voices were therefore under control, and the impossibility of
+re-election to office, which rendered a continuity of policy on the part
+of the demagogue impossible. It was the business of the tribunate of
+Carbo to remove both these hindrances to popular power. His first
+proposal was to introduce voting by ballot in the legislative
+assemblies;[474] it was one that could not easily be resisted, since the
+principle of the ballot had already been recognised in elections, and in
+all judicial processes with the exception of trials for treason. These
+measures seem to have had the support of the party of moderate reform:
+and Scipio and his friends probably offered no resistance to the new
+application of the principle. Without their support, and unprovided with
+arguments which might excite the fears or jealousy of the people, the
+nobility was powerless: and the bill, therefore, easily became law. The
+change thus introduced was unquestionably a great one. Hitherto the
+country voters had been the most independent; now the members of the
+urban proletariate were equally free, and from this time forth the voice
+of the city could find an expression uninfluenced by the smiles or
+frowns of wealthy patrons. The ballot produced its intended effect more
+fully in legislation than in election; its introduction into the latter
+sphere caused the nobility to become purchasers instead of directors;
+but it was seldom that a law affected individual interests so directly
+as to make a bargain for votes desirable. The chief bribery found in the
+legislative assemblies was contained in the proposal submitted by the
+demagogue.
+
+Carbo's second proposal, that immediate and indefinite re-election to
+the tribunate should be permitted, was not recommended on the same
+grounds of precedent or reason. The analogies of the Roman constitution
+were opposed to it, and the rules against the perpetuity of office which
+limited the patrician magistracies, and made even a single re-election
+to the consulship illegal,[475] while framed in support of aristocratic
+government, had had as their pretext the security of the Republic, and
+therefore ostensibly of popular freedom and control. Again, the people
+might be reminded that the tribunate was not always a power friendly to
+their interests, and that the veto which blocked the expression of their
+will might be continued to a second year by the obstinate persistence of
+a minority of voters. Excellent arguments of a popular kind could be,
+and probably were, employed against the proposal. Certainly the
+sentiment which really animated the opposition could have found little
+favour with the masses, who ultimately voted for the rejection of the
+bill. All adherents of senatorial government must have seen in the
+success of the measure the threat of a permanent opposition, the
+possibility of the rise of official demagogues of the Greek type,
+monarchs in reality though, not in name, the proximity of a Gracchan
+movement unhampered by the weakness which had led to Gracchus's fall. It
+is easier for an electorate to maintain a principle by the maintenance
+of a personality than to show its fervour for a creed by submitting new
+and untried exponents to a rigid confession of faith. The senate knew
+that causes wax and wane with the men who have formulated them, and it
+had always been more afraid of individuals than of masses. Scipio's view
+of the Gracchan movement and his acceptance of the cardinal maxims of
+existing statecraft, prepare us for the attitude which he assumed on
+this occasion. His speech against the measure was believed to have been
+decisive in turning the scale. He was supported by his henchmen, and the
+faithful Laelius also gave utterance to the protests of the moderates
+against the unwelcome innovation. This victory, if decisive, would have
+made the career of Caius Gracchus impossible--a career which, while it
+fully justified the attitude of the opposition, more than fulfilled the
+designs of the advocates of the change. But the triumph was evanescent.
+Within the next eight years re-election to the tribunate was rendered
+possible under certain circumstances. The successful proposal is said to
+have taken the form of permitting any one to be chosen, if the number of
+candidates fell short of the ten places which were to be filled.[476]
+This arrangement was probably represented as a corollary of the ancient
+religious injunction which forbade the outgoing tribunes to leave the
+Plebs unprovided with guardians; and this presentment of the case
+probably weakened the arguments of the opposition. The aristocratic
+party could hardly have misconceived the import of the change. It was
+intended that a party which desired the re-election of a tribune should,
+by withdrawing some of its candidates at the last moment,[477] qualify
+him for reinvestiture with the magistracy.
+
+The party of reform were rightly advised in attempting to secure an
+adequate mechanism for the fulfilment of a democratic programme before
+they put their wishes into shape. That they were less fortunate in the
+proposals that they formulated, was due to the fact that these proposals
+were at least as much the result of necessity as of deliberate choice.
+The agrarian question was still working its wicked will. It hung like an
+incubus round the necks of democrats and forced them into most
+undemocratic paths. The legacy left by Scipio had become the burdensome
+inheritance of his foes. Italian claims were now the impasse which
+stopped the present distribution and the future acquisition of land. The
+minds of many were led to inquire whether it might not be possible to
+strike a bargain with the allies, and thus began that mischievous
+co-operation between a party in Rome and the protected towns in Italy,
+which suggested hopes that could not be satisfied, led to open revolt as
+the result of the disappointment engendered by failure, and might easily
+be interpreted as veiling treasonable designs against the Roman State,
+The franchise was to be offered to the Italian towns on condition that
+they waived their rights in the public land.[478] The details of the
+bargain were probably unknown, even to contemporaries, for the
+negotiations demanded secrecy; but it is clear that the arrangements
+must have been at once general and complex; for no organisation is
+likely to have existed that could bind each Italian township to the
+agreement, nor could any town have undertaken to prejudice all the
+varying rights of its individual citizens. When the Italians eagerly
+accepted the offer, a pledge must have been got from their leading men
+that the local governments would not press their claims to the disputed
+land as an international question; for it was under this aspect that the
+dispute presented the gravest difficulties. The commons of these states
+might be comforted by the assurance that, when they had become Roman
+citizens, they would themselves be entitled to share in the
+assignations. These negotiations, which may have extended over two or
+three years, ended by bringing crowds of Italians to Rome. They had no
+votes; but the moral influence of their presence was very great. They
+could applaud or hiss the speakers in the informal gatherings of the
+Contio; it was not impossible that in the last resort they might lend
+physical aid to that section of the democrats which had advocated their
+cause. It might even have been possible to manufacture votes for some of
+these immigrants. A Latin domiciled in Rome always enjoyed a limited
+suffrage in the Comitia, and a pretended domicile might easily be
+invented for a temporary resident. Nor was it even certain that the
+wholly unqualified foreigner might not give a surreptitious vote; for
+the president of the assembly was the man interested in the passing of
+the bill, and his subordinates might be instructed not to submit the
+qualifications of the voters to too strict a scrutiny. It was under
+these circumstances that the senate resorted to the device, rare but not
+unprecedented, of an alien act. Following its instructions, the tribune
+Marcus Junius Pennus introduced a proposal that foreigners should be
+excluded from the city.[479] We know nothing of the wording of the act.
+It may have made no specific mention of Italians, and its operation was
+presumably limited to strangers not domiciled before a certain date.
+But, like all similar provisions, it must have contained further
+limitations, for it is inconceivable that the foreign trader, engaged in
+legitimate business, was hustled summarily from the city. But, however
+limited its scope, its end was clear: and the fact that it passed the
+Comitia shows that the franchise movement was by no means wholly
+popular. A crowd is not so easy of conversion as an individual. Recent
+events must have caused large numbers of the urban proletariate to hate
+the very name of the Italians, and the idea of sharing the privileges of
+empire with the foreigner must already have been distasteful to the
+average Roman mind. It was in vain that Caius Gracchus, to whom the
+suggestion of his brother was already becoming a precept, tried to
+emphasise the political ruin which the spirit of exclusiveness had
+brought to cities of the past.[480] The appeal to history and to nobler
+motives must have fallen on deaf ears. It is possible, however, that the
+personality of the speaker might have been of some avail, had he been
+ably supported, and had the people seen all their leaders united on the
+question of the day. But there is reason for supposing that serious
+differences of opinion existed amongst these leaders as to the wisdom of
+the move. Some may have held that the party of reform had merely drifted
+in this direction, that the proposal for enfranchisement had never been
+considered on its own merits, and that they had no mandate from the
+people for purchasing land at this costly price. It may have been at
+this time that Carbo first showed his dissatisfaction with the party, of
+which he had almost been the accepted leader. If he declined to
+accompany his colleagues on this new and untried path, the first step in
+his conversion to the party of the optimates betrays no inconsistency
+with his former attitude; for he could maintain with justice that the
+proposal for enfranchising Italy was not a popular measure either in
+spirit or in fact.
+
+It was, therefore, with more than doubtful chances of success that
+Fulvius Flaccus, who was consul in the following year, attempted to
+bring the question to an issue by an actual proposal of citizenship for
+the allies. The details of his scheme of enfranchisement have been very
+imperfectly preserved.[481] We are unaware whether, like Caius Gracchus
+some three years later, he proposed to endow the Latins with higher
+privileges than the other allies: and, although he contemplated the
+non-acceptance of Roman citizenship by some of the allied communities,
+since he offered these cities the right of appeal to the people as a
+substitute for the status which they declined, we do not know whether
+his bill granted citizenship at once to all accepting states, or merely
+opened a way for a request for this right to come from individual cities
+to the Roman people. But it is probable that the bill in some way
+asserted the willingness of the people to confer the franchise, and
+that, if any other steps were involved in the method of conferment, they
+were little more than formal. The fact that the _provocatio_ was
+contemplated as a substitute for citizenship is at once a proof that the
+old spirit of state life, which viewed absorption as extermination, was
+known still to be strong in some of the Italian communes, and that many
+of the individual Italians were believed to value the citizenship mainly
+as a means of protecting their persons against Roman officialdom. That
+the democratic party was strong at the moment when this proposal was
+given to the world is shown by the fact that Flaccus filled the
+consulship; that it had little sympathy with his scheme is proved by the
+isolation of the proposer and by the manner in which the senate was
+allowed to intervene. The conferment of the franchise had been proved to
+be essentially a popular prerogative;[482] the consultation of the
+senate on such a point might be advisable, but was by no means
+necessary; for, in spite of the ruling theory that the authority of the
+senate should be respected in all matters of legislation, the complex
+Roman constitution recognised shades of difference, determined by the
+quality of the particular proposal, with respect to the observance of
+this rule. The position of Flaccus was legally stronger than that of
+Tiberius Gracchus had been. Had he been well supported by men of
+influence or by the masses, the senate's judgment might have been set at
+naught. But the people were cold, Carbo had probably turned away, and
+Caius Gracchus had gone as quaestor to Sardinia. The senate was
+emboldened to adopt a firm attitude. They invited the consul to take
+them into his confidence. After much delay he entered the senate house;
+but a stubborn silence was his only answer to the admonitions and
+entreaties of the fathers that he would desist from his purpose.[483]
+Flaccus knew the futility of arguing with people who had adopted a
+foregone conclusion; he would not even deign to accept a graceful
+retreat from an impossible position. The matter must be dropped; but to
+withdraw it at the exhortation of the senate, although complimentary to
+his peers and perhaps not unpleasing even to the people in their present
+humour, would prejudice the chances of the future. In view of better
+days it was wiser to shelve than to discard the measure. His attitude
+may also have been influenced by pledges made to the allies; to these,
+helpless as he was, he would yet be personally faithful. His fidelity
+would have been put to a severe test had he remained in Italy; but the
+supreme magistrate at Rome had always a refuge from a perplexing
+situation. The voice of duty called him abroad,[484] and Flaccus set
+forth to shelter Massilia from the Salluvii and to build up the Roman
+power in Transalpine Gaul.[485] Perhaps only a few of the leading
+democrats had knowledge enough to suspect the terrible consequences that
+might be involved in the failure of the proposal for conferring the
+franchise. To the senate and the Roman world they must have caused as
+much astonishment as alarm. It could never have been dreamed that the
+well-knit confederacy, which had known no spontaneous revolt since the
+rising of Falerii in the middle of the third century, could again be
+disturbed by internal war. Now the very centre of this confederacy, that
+loyal nucleus which had been unshaken by the victories of Hannibal, was
+to be the scene of an insurrection, the product of hope long deferred,
+of expectations recently kindled by injudicious promises, of resentment
+at Pennus's success and Flaccus's failure. Fregellae, the town which
+assumed the lead in the movement and either through overhaste or faulty
+information alone took the fatal step,[486] was a Latin colony which had
+been planted by Rome in the territory of the Volsci in the year 328
+B.C.[487] The position of the town had ensured its prosperity even
+before it fell into the hands of Rome. It lay on the Liris in a rich
+vine-growing country, and within that circle of Latin and Campanian
+states, which had now become the industrial centre of Italy. It was
+itself the centre of the group of Latin colonies that lay as bulwarks of
+Rome between the Appian and Latin roads, and had in the Hannibalic war
+been chosen as the mouthpiece of the eighteen faithful cities, when
+twelve of the Latin states grew weary of their burdens and wavered in
+their allegiance.[488] The importance of the city was manifest and of
+long-standing, its self-esteem was doubtless great, and it perhaps
+considered that its signal services had been inadequately recompensed by
+Rome. But its peculiar grievances are unknown, or the particular reasons
+which gave Roman citizenship such an excessive value in its eyes. It is
+possible that its thriving farmer class had been angered by the agrarian
+commission and by undue demands for military service, and, in spite of
+the commercial equality with the Romans which they enjoyed in virtue of
+their Latin rights, they may have compared their position unfavourably
+with that of communities in the neighbourhood which had received the
+Roman franchise in full. Towns like Arpinum, Fundi and Formiae had been
+admitted to the citizen body without forfeiting their self-government.
+Absorption need not now entail the almost penal consequences of the
+dissolution of the constitution; while the possession of citizenship
+ensured the right of appeal and a full participation in the religious
+festivals and the amenities of the capital. It is also possible that, in
+the case of a prosperous industrial and agricultural community situated
+actually within Latium, the desire for actively participating in the
+decisions of the sovereign people may have played its part. But
+sentiment probably had in its councils as large a share as reason: and
+the fact that this sentiment led to premature action, and that the fall
+of the state was due to treason, may lead as to suppose that the Romans
+had to deal with a divided people and that one section of the community,
+perhaps represented by the upper or official class, although it may have
+sympathised with the general desire for the attainment of the franchise,
+was by no means prepared to stake the ample fortunes of the town on the
+doubtful chance of successful rebellion. A prolonged resistance of the
+citizens within their walls might have given the impulse to a general
+rising of the Latins. Had Fregellae played the part of a second
+Numantia, the Social War might have been anticipated by thirty-five
+years. But the advantage to be gained from time was foiled by treason. A
+certain Numitorius Pullus betrayed the state to the praetor Lucius
+Opimius, who had been sent with an army from Rome. Had Fregellae stood
+alone, it might have been spared; but it was felt that some extreme
+measure either of concession or of terrorism was necessary to keep
+discontent from assuming the same fiery form in other communities. In
+the later war with the allies a greater danger was bought off by
+concession. But there the disease had run its course; here it was met in
+its earliest stage, and the familiar devise of excision was felt to be
+the true remedy. The principle of the "awful warning," which Alexander
+had applied to Thebes and Rome to Corinth, doomed the greatest of the
+Latin cities to destruction. Regardless of the past services of
+Fregellae and of the fact that the passion for the franchise was the
+most indubitable sign of the loyalty of the town, the government ordered
+that the walls of the surrendered city should be razed and that the town
+should become a mere open village undistinguished by any civic
+privilege.[489] A portion of its territory was during the next year
+employed for the foundation of the citizen colony of Fabrateria.[490]
+The new settlement was the typical Roman garrison in a disaffected
+country. But it proved the weakness of the present régime that such a
+crude and antiquated method should have to be employed in the heart of
+Latium. Security, however, was perhaps not the sole object of the
+foundation. The confiscated land of Fregellae was a boon to a government
+sadly in need of popularity at home.
+
+An excellent opportunity was now offered for impressing the people with
+the enormity of the offence that had been committed by some of their
+leaders, and prosecutions were directed against the men who had been
+foremost in support of the movement for extending the franchise. It was
+pretended that they had suggested designs as well as kindled hopes. The
+fate of the lesser advocates of the Italian cause is unknown; but Caius
+Gracchus, against whom an indictment was directed, cleared his name of
+all complicity in the movement.[491] The effect of these measures of
+suppression was not to improve matters for the future. The allies were
+burdened with a new and bitter memory; their friends at Rome were
+furnished with a new cause for resentment. If the Roman people continued
+selfish and apathetic, a leader might arise who would find the Italians
+a better support for his position than the Roman mob. If he did not
+arise or if he failed, the sole but certain arbitrament was that of
+the sword.
+
+The foreign activity of Rome during this period did not reflect the
+troubled spirit of the capital. It was of little moment that petty wars
+were being waged in East and West, and that bulletins sometimes brought
+news of a general's defeat. Rome was accustomed to these things; and her
+efforts were still marked by their usual characteristics of steady
+expansion and decorous success. To predicate failure of her foreign
+activity for this period is to predicate it for all her history, for
+never was an empire more slowly won or more painfully preserved. It is
+true that at the commencement of this epoch an imperialist might have
+been justified in taking a gloomy view of the situation. In Spain
+Numantia was inflicting more injury on Roman prestige than on Roman
+power, while the long and harassing slave-war was devastating Sicily.
+But these perils were ultimately overcome, and meanwhile circumstances
+had led to the first extension of provincial rule over the wealthy East.
+
+The kingdom of Pergamon had long been the mainstay of Rome's influence
+in the Orient. Her contact with the other protected princedoms was
+distant and fitful; but as long as her mandates could be issued through
+this faithful vassal, and he could rely on her whole-hearted support in
+making or meeting aggressions, the balance of power in the East was
+tolerably secure. It had been necessary to make Eumenes the Second see
+that he was wholly in the power of Rome, her vassal and not her ally. He
+had been rewarded and strengthened, not for his own deserts, but that he
+might be fitted to become the policeman of Western Asia, and it had been
+successfully shown that the hand which gave could also take away. The
+lesson was learnt by the Pergamene power, and fortunately the dynasty
+was too short-lived for a king to arise who should forget the crushing
+display of Roman power which had followed the Third Macedonian War, or
+for the realisation of that greater danger of a protectorate--a struggle
+for the throne which should lead one of the pretenders to appeal to a
+national sentiment and embark on a national war. Eumenes at his death
+had left a direct successor in the person of his son Attalus, who had
+been born to him by his wife Stratonice, the daughter of Ariarathes King
+of Cappadocia.[492] But Attalus was a mere boy at the time of his
+father's death, and the choice of a guardian was of vital importance for
+the fortunes of the monarchy. Every consideration pointed to the uncle
+of the heir, and in the strong hands of Attalus the Second the regency
+became practically a monarchy.[493] The new ruler was a man of more than
+middle age, of sober judgment, and deeply versed in all the mysteries of
+kingcraft; for a mutual trust, rare amongst royal brethren in the East,
+had led Eumenes to treat him more as a colleague than as a lieutenant.
+He had none of the insane ambition which sees in the diadem the good to
+which all other blessings may be fitly sacrificed, and had resisted the
+invitation of a Roman coterie that he should thrust his suspected
+brother from the throne and reign himself as the acknowledged favourite
+of Rome. In the case of Attalus familiarity with the suzerain power had
+not bred contempt. He had served with Manlius in Galatia[494] and with
+Paulus in Macedonia,[495] and had been sent at least five times as envoy
+to the capital itself.[496] The change from a private station to a
+throne did not alter his conviction that the best interests of his
+country would be served by a steady adherence to the power, whose
+marvellous development to be the mainspring of Eastern politics was a
+miracle which he had witnessed with his own eyes. He had grasped the
+essentials of the Roman character sufficiently to see that this was not
+one of the temporary waves of conquest that had so often swept over the
+unchangeable East and spent their strength in the very violence of their
+flow, nor did he commit the error of mistaking self-restraint for
+weakness. Monarchs like himself were the necessary substitute for the
+dominion which the conquering State had been strong enough to spurn; and
+he threw himself zealously into the task of forwarding the designs of
+Rome in the dynastic struggles of the neighbouring nations. He helped to
+restore Ariarathes the Fifth to his kingdom of Cappadocia,[497] and
+appealed to Rome against the aggressions of Prusias the Second of
+Bithynia. He was saved by the decisive intervention of the senate, but
+not until he had been twice driven within the walls of his capital by
+his victorious enemy.[498] His own peace and the interests of Rome were
+now secured by his support of Nicomedes, the son of Prusias, who had won
+the favour of the Romans and was placed on the throne of his father. He
+had even interfered in the succession to the kingdom of the Seleucidae,
+when the Romans thought fit to support the pretensions of Alexander
+Balas to the throne of Syria.[499] Lastly he had sent assistance to the
+Roman armies in the conflict which ended in the final reduction of
+Greece.[500] There was no question of his abandoning his regency during
+his life-time. Rome could not have found a better instrument, and it was
+perhaps in obedience to the wishes of the senate, and certainly in
+accordance with their will, that he held the supreme power until his
+reign of twenty-one years was closed by his death.[501] Possibly the
+qualities of the rightful heir may not have inspired confidence, for a
+strong as well as a faithful friend was needed on the throne of
+Pergamon. The new ruler, Attalus the Third, threatened only the danger
+that springs from weakness; but, had not his rule been ended by an early
+death, it is possible that Roman intervention might have been called in
+to save the monarchy from the despair of his subjects, to hand it over
+to some more worthy vassal, or, in default of a suitable ruler, to
+reduce it to the form of a province. The restraint under which Attalus
+had lived during his uncle's guardianship, had given him the sense of
+impotence that issues in bitterness of temper and reckless suspicion.
+The suspicion became a mania when the death of his mother and his
+consort created a void in his life which he persisted in believing to be
+due to the criminal agency of man. Relatives and friends were now the
+immediate victims of his disordered mind,[502] and the carnival of
+slaughter was followed by an apathetic indifference to the things of the
+outer world. Dooming himself to a sordid seclusion, the king solaced his
+gloomy leisure with pursuits that had perhaps become habitual during his
+early detachment from affairs. He passed his time in ornamental
+gardening, modelling in wax, casting in bronze and working in
+metal.[503] His last great object in life was to raise a stately tomb to
+his mother Stratonice. It was while he was engaged in this pious task
+that exposure to the sun engendered an illness which caused his death.
+When the last of the legitimate Attalids had gone to his grave, it was
+found that the vacant kingdom had been disposed of by will, and that the
+Roman people was the nominated heir.[504] The genuineness of this
+document was subsequently disputed by the enemies of Rome, and it was
+pronounced to be a forgery perpetrated by Roman diplomats.[505] History
+furnishes evidence of the reality of the testament, but none of the
+influences under which it was made.[506] It is quite possible that the
+last eccentric king was jealous enough to will that he should have no
+successor on the throne, and cynical enough to see that it made little
+difference whether the actual power of Rome was direct or indirect. It
+is equally possible that the idea was suggested by the Romanising party
+in his court; although, when we remember the extreme unwillingness that
+Rome had ever shown to accept a position of permanent responsibility in
+the East, we can hardly imagine the plan to have received the direct
+sanction of the senate. It is conceivable, however, that many leading
+members of the government were growing doubtful of the success of merely
+diplomatic interference with the troubled politics of the East; that
+they desired a nearer point of vantage from which to watch the movements
+of its turbulent rulers; and that, if consulted on the chances of
+success which attended the new departure, they may have given a
+favourable reply. It was impossible by the nature of the case to
+question the validity of the act. The legatees were far too powerful to
+make it possible for their living chattels to raise an effective protest
+except by actual rebellion. But, from a legal point of view, a
+principality like Pergamon that had grown out of the successful seizure
+of a royal estate by its steward some hundred and fifty years before
+this time, might easily be regarded as the property of its kings;[507]
+and certainly if any heirs outside the royal family were to be admitted
+to the bequest, these would naturally be sought in the power, which had
+increased its dominions, strengthened its position and made it one of
+the great powers of the world. Neglected by Rome the principality would
+have become the prey of neighbouring powers; whilst the institution of a
+new prince, chosen from some royal house, would, have excited the
+jealousy and stimulated the rapacity of the others. The acceptance of
+the bequest was inevitable, although by this acceptance Rome was
+departing from the beaten track of a carefully chosen policy. It is
+hinted that Attalus in his bequest, or the Romans in their acceptance,
+stipulated for the freedom of the dominion.[508] This freedom may be
+merely a euphemism for provincial rule when contrasted with absolute
+despotism; but we may read a truer meaning into the term. Rome had often
+guaranteed the liberty of Asiatic cities which she had wrested from
+their overlord, she had once divided Macedonia into independent
+Republics, she still maintained Achaea in a condition which allowed a
+great deal of self-government to many of its towns, and the system of
+Roman protectorate melted by insensible degrees into that of provincial
+government. It is possible that her treatment of the bequeathed
+communities might have been marked by greater liberality than was
+actually shown, had not the dominion been immediately convulsed by a war
+of independence.
+
+A pretender had appeared from the house of the Attalids. He could show
+no legitimate scutcheon; but this was a small matter. If there was a
+chance of a national outbreak, it could best be fomented by a son of
+Eumenes. Aristonicus was believed to have been born of an Ephesian
+concubine of the king.[509] We know nothing of his personality, but the
+history of his two years' conflict with the Roman power proves him to
+have been no figure-head, but a man of ability, energy and resource. A
+strictly national cause was impossible in the kingdom of Pergamon; for
+there was little community of sentiment between the Greek coast line and
+the barbaric interior. But the commercial prosperity of the one, and the
+agricultural horrors of the other, might justify an appeal to interest
+based on different grounds. At first Aristonicus tried the sea. Without
+venturing at once into any of the great emporia, he raised his standard
+at Leucae, a small but strongly defended seaport lying almost midway
+between Phocaea and Smyrna, and placed on a promontory just south of the
+point where the Hermus issues into its gulf. Some of the leading towns
+seem to have answered to his call.[510] But the Ephesians, not content
+with mere repudiation, manned a fleet, sailed against him, and inflicted
+a severe defeat on his naval force off Cyme.[511] Evidently the
+commercial spirit had no liking for his schemes; it saw in the Roman
+protectorate the promise of a wider commerce and a broader civic
+freedom. Aristonicus moved into the interior, at first perhaps as a
+refugee, but soon as a liberator. There were men here desperate enough
+to answer to any call, and miserable enough to face any danger. Sicily
+had shown that a slave-leader might become a king; Asia was now to prove
+that a king might come to his own by heading an army of the
+outcasts.[512] The call to freedom met with an eager response, and the
+Pergamene prince was soon marching to the coast at the head of "the
+citizens of the City of the Sun," the ideal polity which these remnants
+of nationalities, without countries and without homes, seem to have made
+their own.[513] His success was instantaneous. First the inland towns of
+Northern Lydia, Thyatira, and Apollonis, fell into his hands.[514]
+Organised resistance was for the moment impossible. There were no Roman
+troops in Asia, and the protected kings, to whom Rome had sent an urgent
+summons, could not have mustered their forces with sufficient speed to
+prevent Aristonicus sweeping towards the south. Here he threatened the
+coast line of Ionia and Caria; Colophon and Myndus fell into his power:
+he must even have been able to muster something of a fleet; for the
+island of Samos was soon joined to his possessions.[515] It is probable
+that the co-operation of the slave populations in these various cities
+added greatly to his success. His conquests may have been somewhat
+sporadic, and there is no reason to suppose that he commanded all the
+country included in the wide range of his captured cities and extending
+from Thyatira to the coast and from the Gulf of Hermus to that of
+Iassus. The forces which he could dispose of seem to have been
+sufficiently engaged in holding their southern conquests; there is no
+trace of his controlling the country north of Phocaea or of his even
+attempting an attack on Pergamon the capital of his kingdom. His army,
+however, must have been increasing in dimensions as well as in
+experience. Thracian mercenaries were added to his servile bands,[516]
+and the movement had assumed dimensions which convinced the Romans that
+this was not a tumult but a war. Their earlier efforts were apparently
+based on the belief that local forces would be sufficient to stem the
+rising. Even after the revolt of Aristonicus was known, they persisted
+in the idea that the commission, which would doubtless in any case have
+been sent out to inspect the new dependency, was an adequate means of
+meeting the emergency. This commission of five,[517] which included
+Scipio Nasica, journeyed to Asia only to find that they were attending
+on a civil war, not on a judicial dispute, and that the country which
+was to be organised required to be conquered. The client kings of
+Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia and Pontus, all eager for praise or
+for reward, had rallied loyally to the cause of Rome;[518] but the
+auxiliary forces that they brought were quite unable to pacify a country
+now in the throes of a servile war, and they lacked a commander-in-chief
+who would direct a series of ordered operations. Orders were given for
+the raising of a regular army, and in accordance with the traditions of
+the State this force would be commanded by a consul.
+
+The heads of the State for this year were Lucius Valerius Flaccus and
+Publius Licinius Crassus. Each was covetous of the attractive command;
+for the Asiatic campaigns of the past had been easy, and there was no
+reason to suppose that a pretender who headed a multitude of slaves
+would be more difficult to vanquish than a king like Antiochus who had
+had at his call all the forces of Asia. The chances of a triumph were
+becoming scarcer; here was one that was almost within the commander's
+grasp. But there were even greater prizes in store. The happy conqueror
+would be the first to touch the treasure of the Attalids, and secure for
+the State a prize which had already been the source of political strife;
+he would reap for himself and his army a royal harvest from the booty
+taken in the field or from the sack of towns, and he would almost
+indubitably remain in the conquered country to organise, perhaps to
+govern for years, the wealthiest domain that had fallen to the lot of
+Rome, and to treat like a king with the monarchs of the protected states
+around. These attractions were sufficient to overcome the religious
+scruples of both the candidates; for it chanced that both Crassus and
+Flaccus were hampered by religious law from assuming a command abroad.
+The one was chief pontiff and the other the Flamen of Mars; and, if the
+objections were felt or pressed, the obvious candidate for the Asiatic
+campaign was Scipio Aemilianus, the only tried general of the time. But
+Scipio's chances were small. The nature of the struggle did not seem to
+demand extraordinary genius, and Scipio, although necessary in an
+emergency, could not be allowed to snatch the legitimate prizes of the
+holders of office.[519] So the contest lay between the pontiff and the
+priest. The controversy was unequal, for, while the pontiff was the
+disciplinary head of the state religion, the Flamen was in matters of
+ritual and in the rules appertaining to the observance of religious law
+subject to his jurisdiction. Crassus restrained the ardour of his
+colleague by announcing that he would impose a fine if the Flamen
+neglected his religious duties by quitting the shores of Italy. The
+pecuniary penalty was only intended as a means of stating a test case to
+be submitted, as similar cases had been twice before,[520] to the
+decision of the people. Flaccus entered an appeal against the fine, and
+the judgment of the Comitia was invited. The verdict of the people was
+that the fine should be remitted, but that the Flamen should obey the
+pontiff.[521] As Crassus had no superior in the religious world, it was
+difficult, if not impossible, for the objections against his own tenure
+of the foreign command to be pressed.[522] The people, perhaps grateful
+for the Gracchan sympathies of Crassus, felt no scruple about dismissing
+their pontiff to a foreign land, and readily voted him the conduct
+of the war.
+
+The story of the campaign which followed is confined to a few personal
+anecdotes connected with the remarkable man who led the Roman armies.
+The learning of Crassus was attested by the fact that, when he held a
+court in Asia, he could not only deliver his judgments in Greek, but
+adapt his discourse to the dialect of the different litigants.[523] His
+discipline was severe but indiscriminating; it displayed the rigour of
+the erudite martinet, not the insight of the born commander. Once he
+needed a piece of timber for a battering ram, and wrote to the architect
+of a friendly town to send the larger of two pieces which he had seen
+there. The trained eye of the expert immediately saw that the smaller
+was the better suited to the purpose; and this was accordingly sent. The
+intelligence of the architect was his ruin. The unhappy man was stripped
+and scourged, on the ground that the exercise of judgment by a
+subordinate was utterly subversive of a commander's authority.[524]
+Another account represents such generalship as he possessed as having
+been diverted from its true aim by the ardour with which, in spite of
+his enormous wealth, he followed up the traces of the spoils of
+war.[525] But his death, which took place at the beginning of the second
+year of his command,[526] was not unworthy of one who had held the
+consulship. He was conducting operations in the territory between Elaea
+and Smyrna, probably in preparation for the siege of Leucae,[527] still
+a stronghold of the pretender. Here he was suddenly surprised by the
+enemy. His hastily formed ranks were shattered, and the Romans were soon
+in full retreat for some friendly city of the north. But their lines
+were broken by uneven ground and by the violence of the pursuit. The
+general was detached from the main body of his army and overtaken by a
+troop of Thracian horse. His captors were probably ignorant of the value
+of their prize; and, even had they known that they held in their hands
+the leader of the Roman host, the device of Crassus might still have
+saved him from the triumph of a rebel prince and shameful exposure to
+the insults of a servile crowd. He thrust his riding whip into the eye
+of one of his captors. Frenzied with pain, the man buried his dagger in
+the captive's side.[528]
+
+The death of Crassus created hardly a pause in the conduct of the
+campaign; for Marcus Perperna, the consul for the year, was soon in the
+field and organising vigorous measures against Aristonicus. The details
+of the campaign have not been preserved, but we are told that the first
+serious encounter resulted in a decisive victory for the Roman
+arms.[529] The pretender fled, and was finally hunted down to the
+southern part of his dominions. His last stand was made at Stratonicea
+in Caria. The town was blockaded and reduced by famine, and Aristonicus
+surrendered unconditionally to the Roman power.[530] Perperna reserved
+the captive for his triumph, he visited Pergamon and placed on shipboard
+the treasures of Attalus for transport to Rome;[531] by these decisive
+acts he was proving that the war was over, for yet a third eager consul
+was straining every nerve to get his share of glory and of gain. Manius
+Aquillius was hastening to Asia to assume a command which might still be
+interpreted as a reality;[532] the longer he allowed his predecessor to
+remain, the more unsubstantial would his own share in the enterprise
+become. A triumph would be the prize of the man who had finished the
+war, and perhaps even Aristonicus's capture need not be interpreted as
+its close. A scene of angry recrimination might have been the result of
+an encounter between the rival commanders; but this was avoided by
+Perperna's sudden death at Pergamon.[533] It is possible that
+Aristonicus was saved the shame of a Roman triumph, although one
+tradition affirms that he was reserved for the pageant which three years
+later commemorated Aquillius's success in Asia.[534] But he did not
+escape the doom which the State pronounced on rebel princes, and was
+strangled in the Tullianum by the orders of the senate.[535]
+
+Aquillius found in his province sufficient material for the prolongation
+of the war. Although the fall of Aristonicus had doubtless brought with
+it the dissolution of the regular armies of the rebels, yet isolated
+cities, probably terrorised by revolted slaves who could expect no mercy
+from the conqueror, still offered a desperate resistance. In his
+eagerness to end the struggle the Roman commander is said to have shed
+the last vestiges of international morality, and the reduction of towns
+by the poisoning of the streams which provided them with water,[536]
+while it inflicted an indelible stain on Roman honour, was perhaps
+defended as an inevitable accompaniment of an irregular servile war. The
+work of organisation had been begun even before that of pacification had
+been completed. The State had taken Perperna's success seriously enough
+to send with Aquillius ten commissioners for the regulation of the
+affairs of the new province,[537] and they seem to have entered on their
+task from the date of their arrival.[538] There was no reason for delay,
+since the kingdom of Pergamon had technically become a province with the
+death of Attalus the Third.[539] The Ephesians indeed even antedated
+this event, and adopted an era which commenced with the September of the
+year 134,[540] the reason for this anticipation being the usual Asiatic
+custom of beginning the civil year with the autumnal equinox. The real
+point of departure of this new era of Ephesus was either the death of
+Attalus or the victory of the city over the fleet of Aristonicus. But,
+though the work of organisation could be entered on at once, its
+completion was a long and laborious task, and Aquillius himself seems to
+have spent three years in Asia.[541] The limits of the province, which,
+like that of Africa, received the name of the continent to which it
+belonged, required to be defined with reference to future possibilities
+and the rights of neighbouring kingdoms; the taxation of the country had
+to be adjusted; and the privileges of the different cities proportioned
+to their capacity or merits. The law of Aquillius remained in essence
+the charter of the province of Asia down to imperial times, although
+subsequent modifications were introduced by Sulla and Pompeius. The new
+inheritance of the Romans comprised almost all the portion of Asia Minor
+lying north of the Taurus and west of Bithynia, Galatia and Cappadocia.
+Even Caria, which had been declared free after the war with Perseus,
+seems to have again fallen under the sway of the Attalid kings. The
+monarchy also included the Thracian Chersonese and most of the Aegean
+islands.[542] But the whole of this territory was not included in the
+new province of Asia. The Chersonese was annexed to the province of
+Macedonia,[543] a small district of Caria known as the Peraea and
+situated opposite the island of Rhodes, became or remained the property
+of the latter state; in the same neighbourhood the port and town of
+Telmissus, which had been given to Eumenes after the defeat of
+Antiochus, were restored to the Lycian confederation.[544] With
+characteristic caution Rome did not care to retain direct dominion over
+the eastern portions of her new possessions, some of which, such as
+Isauria, Pisidia and perhaps the eastern portion of Cilicia, may have
+rendered a very nominal obedience to the throne of the Attalids. She
+kept the rich, civilised and easily governed Hellenic lands for her own,
+but the barbarian interior, as too great and distant a burden for the
+home government, was destined to enrich her loyal client states.
+Aquillius and his commissioners must have received definite instructions
+not to claim for Rome any territory lying east of Mysia, Lydia and
+Caria; but they seem to have had no instructions as to how the discarded
+territories were to be disposed of. The consequence was that the kings
+of the East were soon begging for territory from a Roman commander and
+his assistants. Lycaonia was the reward of proved service; it was given
+to the sons of Ariarathes the Fifth, King of Cappadocia, who had fallen
+in the war.[545] Cilicia is also said to have accompanied this gift, but
+this no man's land must have been regarded both by donor and recipient
+as but a nominal boon. For Phrygia proper, or the Greater Phrygia as
+this country south of Bithynia and west of Galatia was called,[546]
+there were two claimants.[547] The kings of Pontus and Bithynia competed
+for the prize, and each supported his petition by a reference to the
+history of the past. Nicomedes of Bithynia could urge that his grandsire
+Prusias had maintained an attitude of friendly neutrality during Rome's
+struggle with Antiochus. The Pontic king, Mithradates Euergetes,
+advanced a more specious pretext of hereditary right. Phrygia, he
+alleged, had been his mother's dowry, and had been given her by her
+brother, Seleucus Callinicus, King of Syria.[548] We do not know what
+considerations influenced the judgment of Aquillius in preferring the
+claim of Mithradates. He may have considered that the Pontic kingdom, as
+the more distant, was the less dangerous, and he may have sought to
+attract the loyalty of its monarch by benefits such as had already been
+heaped on Nicomedes of Bithynia. His political enemies and all who in
+subsequent times resisted the claim of the Pontic kings, alleged that he
+had put Phrygia up to auction and that Mithradates had paid the higher
+price; this transaction doubtless figured in the charges of corruption,
+on which he was accused and acquitted: and, doubtful as the verdict
+which absolved him seemed to his contemporaries and successors, we have
+no proof that the desire for gain was the sole or even the main cause of
+his decision. Had he considered that the investiture of Nicomedes would
+have been more acceptable to the home government, the King of Bithynia
+would probably have been willing to pay an adequate sum for his
+advocacy. He may have been guilty of a wilful blunder in alienating
+Phrygia at all. The senate soon discovered his and its own mistake. The
+disputed territory was soon seen to be worthy of Roman occupation.
+Strategically it was of the utmost importance for the security of the
+Asiatic coast, as commanding the heads of the river valleys which
+stretched westward to the Aegean, while its thickly strewn townships,
+which opened up possibilities of inland trade, placed it on a different
+plane to the desolate Lycaonia and Cilicia. It is possible that the
+capitalist class, on whose support the senate was now relying for the
+maintenance of the political equilibrium in the capital, may have joined
+in the protest against Aquillius's mistaken generosity. But, though the
+government rapidly decided to rescind the decision of its commissioners,
+it had not the strength to settle the matter once for all by taking
+Phrygia for itself. A decree of the people was still technically
+superior to a resolution of the senate; it was always possible for
+dissentients to urge that the people must be consulted on these great
+questions of international interest; and Phrygia became, like Pergamon a
+short time before, the sport of party politics. The rival kings
+transferred their claims, and possibly their pecuniary offers, from the
+province to the capital, and the network of intrigue which soon shrouded
+the question was brutally exhibited by Caius Gracchus when, in his first
+or second tribunate, he urged the people to reject an Aufeian law, which
+bore on the dispute. "You will find, citizens," he urged, "that each one
+of us has his price. Even I am not disinterested, although it happens
+that the particular object which I have in view is not money, but good
+repute and honour. But the advocates on both sides of this question are
+looking to something else. Those who urge you to reject this bill are
+expecting hard cash from Nicomedes; those who urge its acceptance are
+looking for the price which Mithradates will pay for what he calls his
+own; this will be their reward. And, as for the members of the
+government who maintain a studious reserve on this question, they are
+the keenest bargainers of all; their silence simply means that they are
+being paid by every one and cheating every one." This cynical
+description of the political situation was pointed by a quotation of the
+retort of Demades to the successful tragedian "Are you so proud of
+having got a talent for speaking? why, I got ten talents from the king
+for holding my peace".[549] This sketch was probably more witty than
+true; condemnation, when it becomes universal, ceases to be convincing,
+and cynicism, when it exceeds a certain degree, is merely the revelation
+of a diseased or affected mental attitude. Gracchus was too good a
+pleader to be a fair observer. But the suspicion revealed by the
+diatribe may have been based on fact; the envoys of the kings may have
+brought something weightier than words or documents, only to find that
+the balance of their gilded arguments was so perfect that the original
+objection to Phrygia being given to any Eastern potentate was the only
+issue which could still be supported with conviction. Yet the government
+still declined to annex. Its hesitancy was probably due to its
+unwillingness to see a new Eastern province handed over to the
+equestrian tax-farmers, to whom Caius Gracchus had just given the
+province of Asia. The fall of Gracchus made an independent judgment by
+the people impossible, and, even had it been practicable for the Comitia
+to decide, their judgment must have been so perplexed by rival interests
+and arguments that they would probably have acquiesced in the equivocal
+decision of the senate. This decision was that Phrygia should be
+free.[550] It was to be open to the Roman capitalist as a trader, but
+not as a collector; it was not to be the scene of official corruption or
+regal aggrandisement. It was to be an aggregate of protected states
+possessing no central government of its own. Yet some central control
+was essential; and this was perhaps secured by attaching Phrygia to the
+province of Asia in the same loose condition of dependence in which
+Achaea had been attached to Macedonia. In one other particular the
+settlement of Aquillius was not final. We shall find that motives of
+maritime security soon forced Rome to create a province of Cilicia, and
+it seems that for this purpose a portion of the gift which had been just
+made to the kings of Cappadocia was subsequently resumed by Rome. The
+old Pergamene possessions in Western Cilicia were probably joined to
+some towns of Pamphylia to form the kernel of the new province. When
+Rome had divested herself of the superfluous accessories of her bequest,
+a noble residue still remained. Mysia, Lydia and Caria with their
+magnificent coast cities, rich in art, and inexhaustible in wealth,
+formed, with most of the islands off the coast,[551] that "corrupting"
+province which became the Favourite resort of the refined and the
+desperate resource of the needy. Its treasures were to add a new word to
+the Roman vocabulary of wealth;[552] its luxury was to give a new
+stimulus to the art of living and to add a new craving or two to the
+insatiable appetite for enjoyment; while the servility of its population
+was to create a new type of Roman ruler in the man who for one glorious
+year wielded the power of a Pergamene despot, without the restraint of
+kingly traditions or the continence induced by an assured tenure
+of rule.
+
+The western world witnessed the beginning of an equally remarkable
+change. On both sides of Italy accident was laying the foundation for a
+steady advance to the North, and forcing the Romans into contact with
+peoples, whose subjection would never have been sought except from
+purely defensive motives. The Iapudes and Histri at the head of the
+Adriatic were the objects of a campaign of the consul Tuditanus,[553]
+while four years later Fulvius Flaccus commenced operations amongst the
+Gauls and Ligurians beyond the Alps,[554] which were to find their
+completion seventy-five years later in the conquests of Caesar. But
+neither of these enterprises can be intelligently considered in
+isolation; their significance lies in the necessity of their renewal,
+and even the proximate results to which they led would carry us far
+beyond the limits of the period which we are considering. The events
+completely enclosed within these limits are of subordinate importance.
+They are a war in Sardinia and the conquest of the Balearic isles. The
+former engaged the attention of Lucius Aurelius Orestes as consul in 126
+and as proconsul in the following year.[555] It is perhaps only the
+facts that a consul was deemed necessary for the administration of the
+island, and that he attained a triumph for his deeds,[556] that justify
+us in calling this Sardinian enterprise a war. It was a punitive
+expedition undertaken against some restless tribes, but it was rendered
+arduous by the unhealthiness of the climate and the difficulty of
+procuring adequate supplies for the suffering Roman troops.[557] The
+annexation of the Balearic islands with their thirty thousand
+inhabitants[558] may have been regarded as a geographical necessity, and
+certainly resulted in a military advantage. Although the Carthaginians
+had had frequent intercourse with these islands and a Port of the
+smaller of the two still bears a Punic name,[559] they had done little
+to civilise the native inhabitants. Perhaps the value attached to the
+military gifts of the islanders contributed to preserve them in a state
+of nature; for culture might have diminished that marvellous skill with
+the sling,[560] which was once at the service of the Carthaginian, and
+afterwards of the Roman, armies. But, in spite of their prowess, the
+Baliares were not a fierce people. They would allow no gold or silver to
+enter their country,[561] probably in order that no temptation might be
+offered to pirates or rapacious traders.[562] Their civilisation
+represented the matriarchal stage; their marriage customs expressed the
+survival of polyandric union; they were tenacious of the lives of their
+women, and even invested the money which they gained on military service
+in the purchase of female captives.[563] They made excellent
+mercenaries, but shunned either war or commerce with the neighbouring
+peoples, and the only excuse for Roman aggression was that a small
+proportion of the peaceful inhabitants had lent themselves to piratical
+pursuits.[564] The expedition was led by the consul Quintus Caecilius
+Metellus and resulted in a facile conquest. The ships of the invaders
+were protected by hides stretched above the decks to guard against the
+cloud of well-directed missiles;[565] but, once a landing had been
+effected, the natives, clad only in skins, with small shields and light
+javelins as their sole defensive weapons, could offer no effective
+resistance at close quarters and were easily put to rout. For the
+security of the new possessions Metellus adopted the device, still rare
+in the case of transmarine dependencies, of planting colonies on the
+conquered land. Palma and Pollentia were founded, as townships of Roman
+citizens, on the larger island; the new settlers being drawn from Romans
+who were induced to leave their homes in the south of Spain.[566] This
+unusual effort in the direction of Romanisation was rendered necessary
+by the wholly barbarous character of the country; and the introduction
+into the Balearic isles of the Latin language and culture was a better
+justification than the easy victory for Metellus's triumph and his
+assumption of the surname of "Baliaricus".[567] The islands flourished
+under Roman rule. They produced wine and wheat in abundance and were
+famed for the excellence of their mules. But their chief value to Rome
+must have lain in their excellent harbours, and in the welcome addition
+to the light-armed forces of the empire which was found in their warlike
+inhabitants.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Rome had lived for nine years in a feverish atmosphere of projected
+reform; yet not a single question raised by her bolder spirits had
+received its final answer. The agrarian legislation had indeed run a
+successful course; yet the very hindrance to its operation at a critical
+moment had, in the eyes of the discontented, turned success into failure
+and left behind a bitter feeling of resentment at the treacherous
+dexterity of the government. The men, in whose imagined interests the
+people had been defrauded of their coveted land, had by a singular irony
+of fortune been driven ignominiously from Rome and were now the victims
+of graver suspicions on the part of the government than on that of the
+Roman mob. The effect of the late senatorial diplomacy had been to
+create two hostile classes instead of one. From both these classes the
+aristocrats drew their soldiers for the constant campaigns that the
+needs of Empire involved: and both were equally resentful of the burdens
+and abuses of military service, for which no one was officially directed
+to suggest a cure. The poorest classes had been given the ballot when
+they wanted food and craved a less precarious sustenance than that
+afforded by the capricious benevolence of the rich. The friction between
+the senatorial government and the upper middle class was probably
+increasing. The equites must have been casting hungry eyes at the new
+province of Asia and asking themselves whether commercial interests were
+always to be at the mercy of the nobility as represented by the senate,
+the provincial administrators and the courts of justice. It was believed
+that governors, commissioners and senators were being bought by the gold
+of kings, and that mines of wealth were being lost to the honest
+capitalist through the utter corruption of the governing few. The final
+threats of Tiberius Gracchus were still in the air, and a vast unworked
+material lay ready to the hand of the aspiring agitator. In an ancient
+monarchy or aristocracy of the feudal type, where abuses have become
+sanctified by tradition, or in a modern nation or state with its
+splendid capacity for inertia due to the habitual somnolence of the
+majority of its electors, such questions may vaguely suggest themselves
+for half a century without ever receiving an answer. But Rome could only
+avoid a revolution by discarding her constitution. The sovereignty of
+the people was a thesis which the senate dared not attack; and this
+sovereignty had for the first time in Roman history become a stern
+reality. The city in its vastness now dominated the country districts:
+and the sovereign, now large, now small, now wild, now sober, but ever
+the sovereign in spite of his kaleidoscopic changes, could be summoned
+at any moment to the Forum. Democratic agitation was becoming habitual.
+It is true that it was also becoming unsafe. But a man who could hold
+the wolf by the ears for a year or two might work a revolution in Rome
+and perhaps be her virtual master.
+
+It was no difficult task to find the man, for there was one who was
+marked out by birth, traditions, temperament and genius as the fittest
+exponent of a cause which, in spite of its intricate complications that
+baffled the analysis of the ordinary mind, could still in its essential
+features be described as the cause of the people. It is indeed singular
+that, in a political civilisation so unkind as the Roman to the merits
+of youth, hopes should be roused and fear inspired by a man so young and
+inexperienced as Caius Gracchus. But the popular fancy is often caught
+by the immaturity that is as yet unhampered by caution and undimmed by
+disillusion, and by the fresh young voice that has not yet been attuned
+to the poor half-truths which are the stock-in-trade of the worldly
+wise. And those who were about Gracchus must soon have seen that the
+traces of youth were to be found only in his passion, his frankness, his
+impetuous vigour; no discerning eye could fail to be aware of the cool,
+calculating, intellect which unconsciously used emotion as its mask, of
+a mind that could map and plan a political campaign in perfect
+self-confident security, view the country as a whole and yet master
+every detail, and then leave the issue of the fight to burning words and
+passionate appeals. This supreme combination of emotional and artistic
+gifts, which made Gracchus so irresistible as a leader, was strikingly
+manifested in his oratory. We are told of the intensity of his mien, the
+violence of his gestures, the restlessness that forced him to pace the
+Rostra and pluck the toga from his shoulder, of the language that roused
+his hearers to an almost intolerable tension of pity or
+indignation.[568] Nature had made him the sublimest, because the most
+unconscious of actors; eyes, tone, gesture all answered the bidding of
+the magic words.[569] Sometimes the emotion was too highly strung; the
+words would become coarser, the voice harsher, the faultless sentences
+would grow confused, until the soft tone of a flute blown by an
+attendant slave would recall his mind to reason and his voice to the
+accustomed pitch.[570] Men contrasted him with his gentle and stately
+brother Tiberius, endowed with all the quiet dignity of the Roman
+orator, and diverging only from the pure and polished exposition of his
+cause to awake a feeling of commiseration for the wrongs which he
+unfolded.[571] Tiberius played but on a single chord; Caius on many.
+Tiberius appealed to noble instincts, Caius appealed to all and his
+Protean manifestations were a symbol of a more complex creed, a wider
+knowledge of humanity, a greater recklessness as to his means, and of
+that burning consciousness, which Tiberius had not, that there were
+personal wrongs to be avenged as well as political ideas to be realised.
+To a narrow mind the vendetta is simply an act of justice; to an
+intellectual hater such as Gracchus it is also a work of reason. The
+folly of crime but exaggerates its grossness, and the hatred for the
+criminal is merged in an exalting and inspiring contempt. Yet the man
+thus attuned to passion was, what every great orator must be, a painful
+student of the most delicate of arts. The language of the successful
+demagogue seldom becomes the study of the schools; yet so it was with
+Gracchus. The orators of a later age, whose critical appreciation was
+purer than their practice, could find no better guide to the aspirant
+for forensic fame than the speeches of the turbulent tribune. Cicero
+dwells on the fulness and richness of his flow of words, the grandeur
+and dignity of the expression, the acuteness of the thought.[572] They
+seemed to some to lack the finishing touch;[573] which is equivalent to
+saying that with him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few
+fragments that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous
+simplicity and clearness: then, for the dexterous perfection of their
+form. The balance of the rhythmic clauses never obscures or overloads
+the sense. Gracchus could tell a tale, like that of the cruel wrongs
+inflicted on the allies, which could arouse a thrill of horror without
+also awakening the reflection that the speaker was a man of great
+sensibility and had a wonderful command of commiserative terminology. He
+could ask the crowd where he should fly, whether to the Capitol dripping
+with a brother's blood, or to the home where the widowed mother sat in
+misery and tears;[574] and no one thought that this was a mere figure of
+speech. It all seemed real, because Gracchus was a true artist as well
+as a true man, and knew by an unerring instinct when to pause. This type
+of objective oratory, with its simple and vivid pictures, its brilliant
+but never laboured wit, its capacity for producing the illusion that the
+man is revealed in the utterance, its suggestion of something deeper
+than that which the mere words convey--a suggestion which all feel but
+only the learned understand--is equally pleasing to the trained and the
+unlettered mind. The polished weapon, which dazzled the eyes of the
+crowd, was viewed with respect even by the cultured nobles against whom
+it was directed.
+
+Caius's qualities had been tested for some years before he attained the
+tribunate, and the promise given by his name, his attitude and his
+eloquence was strengthened by the fact that he had no rival in the
+popular favour. Carbo was probably on his way to the Optimates, and
+Flaccus's failure was too recent to make him valuable in any other
+quality than that of an assistant. But Caius had risen through the
+opportunities given by the agitation which these men had sustained,
+although his advance to the foremost place seemed more like the work of
+destiny than of design. When a youth of twenty-one, he had found himself
+elevated to the rank of a land commissioner;[575] but this accidental
+identification with Tiberius's policy was not immediately followed by
+any action which betrayed a craving for an active political career. He
+is said to have shunned the Forum, that training school and advertising
+arena where the aspiring youth of Rome practised their litigious
+eloquence, and to have lived a life of calm retirement which some
+attributed to fear and others to resentment. It was even believed by a
+few that he doubted the wisdom of his brother's career.[576] But It was
+soon found that the leisure which he cultivated was not that of easy
+enjoyment and did not promise prolonged repose. He was grappling with
+the mysteries of language, and learning by patient study the art of
+finding the words that would give to thought both form and wings. The
+thought, too, must have been taking a clearer shape: for Tiberius had
+left a heritage of crude ideas, and men were trying to introduce some of
+these into the region of practical politics. The first call to arms was
+Carbo's proposal for legalising re-election to the tribunate. It drew
+from Gracchus a speech in its support, which contained a bitter
+indictment of those who had been the cause of the "human sacrifice"
+fulfilled in his brother's murder.[577] Five years later he was amongst
+the foremost of the opponents of the alien-act of Pennus, and exposed
+the dangerous folly involved in a jealous policy of exclusion. But the
+courts of law are said to have given him the first great opportunity of
+revealing his extraordinary powers to the world. As an advocate for a
+friend called Vettius, he delivered a speech which seemed to lift him to
+a plane unapproachable by the other orators of the day. The spectacle of
+the crowd almost raving with joy and frantically applauding the
+new-found hero, showed that a man had appeared who could really touch
+the hearts of the people, and is said to have suggested to men of
+affairs that every means must be used to hinder Gracchus's accession to
+the tribunate.[578] The chance of the lot sent him as quaestor with the
+consul Orestes to Sardinia. It was with joyful hearts that his enemies
+saw him depart to that unhealthy clime,[579] and to Caius himself the
+change to the active life of the camp was not unpleasing. He is said
+still to have dreaded the plunge into the stormy sea of politics, and in
+Sardinia he was safe from the appeals of the people and the entreaties
+of his friends.[580] Yet already he had received a warning that there
+was no escape. While wrestling with himself as to whether he should seek
+the quaestorship, his fevered mind had conjured up a vision. The phantom
+of his brother had appeared and addressed him in these words "Why dost
+thou linger, Caius? It is not given thee to draw back. One life, one
+death is fated for us both, as defenders of the people's rights." His
+belief in the reality of this warning is amply attested;[581] but the
+sense that he was predestined and foredoomed, though it may have given
+an added seriousness to his life, left him as calm and vigorous as
+before. Like Tiberius he was within a sphere of his father's influence,
+and this memory must have stimulated his devotion to his military and
+provincial duties. He won distinction in the field and a repute for
+justice in his dealings with the subject tribes, while his simplicity of
+life and capacity for toil suggested the veteran campaigner, not the
+tyro from the most luxurious of cities.[582] The extent of the services
+in Sardinia and neighbouring lands which his name and character enabled
+him to render to the State, has been perhaps exaggerated, or at least
+faultily stated, by our authority; but, in view of the unquestioned
+confidence shown by the Numantines in his brother when as young a man,
+there is no reason to doubt their reality. It is said that, when the
+treacherous winter of Sardinia had shaken the troops with chills, the
+commander sent to the cities asking for a supply of clothing. These
+towns, which were probably federate communities and exempt by treaty
+from the requisitions of Rome, appealed to the senate. They feared no
+doubt the easy lapse of an act of kindness into a burden fixed by
+precedent. The senate, as in duty bound, upheld their contention; and
+suffering and disease would have reigned in the Roman camp, had not
+Gracchus visited the cities in person and prevailed on them to send the
+necessary help.[583] On another occasion envoys from Micipsa of Numidia
+are said to have appeared at Rome and offered a supply of corn for the
+Sardinian army. The request had perhaps been made by Gracchus. To the
+Numidian king he was simply the grandson of the elder Africanus: And the
+envoys in their simplicity mentioned his name as the Intermediary of the
+royal bounty. The senate, we are told, rejected the Proffered help. The
+curious parallelism between the present career of Caius and the early
+activities of his brother must have struck many; to the senate these
+proofs of energy and devotion seemed but the prelude to similar
+ingenious attempts to capture public favour at home: and their fears are
+said to have helped them to the decision to keep Orestes for a further
+year as proconsul in Sardinia.[584] It is possible that the resolution
+was partly due to military exigencies; the fact that the troops were
+relieved was natural in consideration of the sufferings which they had
+undergone, but the retention of the general to complete a desultory
+campaign which chiefly demanded knowledge of the country, was a wise and
+not unusual proceeding. It was, however, an advantage that, as custom
+dictated, the quaestor must remain in the company of his commander.
+Gracchus's reappearance in Rome was postponed for a year. It was a
+slight grace, but much might happen in the time.
+
+It was in this latter sense that the move was interpreted by the
+quaestor. A trivial wrong inflamed the impetuous and resentful nature
+which expectation and entreaty had failed to move. Stung by the belief
+that he was the victim of a disgraceful subterfuge, Gracchus immediately
+took ship to Rome. His appearance in the capital was something of a
+shock even to his friends.[585] Public sentiment regarded a quaestor as
+holding an almost filial relation to his superior; the ties produced by
+their joint activity were held to be indissoluble,[586] and the
+voluntary departure of the subordinate was deemed a breach of official
+duty. Lapses in conduct on the part of citizens engaged in the public
+service, which fell short of being criminal, might be visited with
+varying degrees of ignominy by the censorship: and it happened that this
+court of morals was now in existence in the persons of the censors Cn.
+Servilius Caepio and L. Cassius Longinus, who had entered office in the
+previous year. The censorian judgments, although arbitrary and as a rule
+spontaneous, were sometimes elicited by prosecution: and an accuser was
+found to bring the conduct of Gracchus formally before the notice of the
+magistrates. Had the review of the knights been in progress after his
+arrival, his case would have been heard during the performance of this
+ceremony; for he was as yet but a member of the equestrian order, and
+the slightest disability pronounced against him, had he been found
+guilty, would have assumed the form of the deprivation of his public
+horse and his exclusion from the eighteen centuries. But it is possible
+that, at this stage of the history of the censorship, penalties could be
+inflicted upon the members of all classes at any date preceding the
+lustral sacrifice, that the usual examination of the citizen body had
+been completed, and that Gracchus appeared alone before the tribunal of
+the censors. His defence became famous;[587] its result is unknown. The
+trial probably ended in his acquittal,[588] although condemnation would
+have exercised little influence on his subsequent career, for the
+ignominy pronounced by the censors entailed no disability for holding a
+magistracy. But, whatever may have been the issue, Gracchus improved the
+occasion by an harangue to the people,[589] in which he defended his
+conduct as one of their representatives in Sardinia. The speech was
+important for its caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility
+when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he
+worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a
+scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, of the
+self-seeking, the luxury, the unnatural vices, the rampant robbery of
+the average provincial despot. His auditors learnt the details of a
+commander's environment--the elaborate cooking apparatus, the throng of
+handsome favourites, the jars of wine which, when emptied, returned to
+Rome as receptacles of gold and silver mysteriously acquired. Gracchus
+must have delighted his audience with a subject on which the masses love
+to dwell, the vices of their superiors. The luridness of the picture
+must have given it a false appearance of universal truth. It seemed to
+be the indictment of a class, and suggested that the speaker stood aloof
+from his own order and looked only to the pure judgment of the people.
+His enemies tried a new device. They knew that one flaw in his armour
+was his sympathy with the claims of the allies. Could he be compromised
+as an agent in that dark conspiracy which had prompted the impudent
+Italian claims and ended in open rebellion, his credit would be gone,
+even if his career were not closed by exile. He was accordingly
+threatened with an impeachment for complicity in the movement which had
+issued in the outbreak at Fregellae. It is uncertain whether he was
+forced to submit to the judgment of a court; but we are told that he
+dissipated every suspicion, and surmounted the last and most dangerous
+of the obstacles with which his path was blocked.[590] Straightway he
+offered himself for the tribunate, and, as the day of the election
+approached, every effort was made by the nobility to secure his defeat.
+Old differences were forgotten; a common panic produced harmony amongst
+the cliques; it even seems as if his opponents agreed that no man of
+extreme views should be advanced against him, for Gracchus in his
+tribunate had to contend with no such hostile colleague as Octavius. The
+candidature of an extremist might mean votes for Gracchus: and it was
+preferable to concentrate support on neutral men, or even on men of
+liberal views who were known to be in favour with the crowd. The great
+_clientèle_ of the country districts was doubtless beaten up; and we
+know that, on the other side, the hopes of the needy agriculturist, and
+the gratitude of the newly established peasant farmer, brought many a
+supporter to Gracchus from distant Italian homesteads. The city was so
+flooded by the inrush of the country folk that many an elector found
+himself without a roof to shelter him, and the place of voting could
+accommodate only a portion of the crowd. The rest climbed on roofs and
+tiles, and filled the air with discordant party cries until space was
+given for a descent to the voting enclosures. When the poll was
+declared, it was found that the electoral manoeuvres of the nobility had
+been so far successful that Gracchus occupied but the fourth place on
+the list.[591] But, from the moment of his entrance on office, his
+predominance was assured. We hear nothing of the colleagues whom he
+overshadowed. Some may have been caught in the stream of Gracchus's
+eloquence; others have found it useless or dangerous to oppose the
+enthusiasm which his proposals aroused, and the formidable combination
+which he created by the alluring prospects that he held out to the
+members of the equestrian order. The collegiate character of the
+magistracy practically sank into abeyance, and his rule was that of a
+single man. First he gave vent to the passions of the mob by dwelling,
+as no one had yet dared to do, on the gloomy tragedy of his brother's
+fall and the cruel persecution which had followed the catastrophe. The
+blood of a murdered tribune was wholly unavenged in a state which had
+once waged war with Falerii to punish a mere insult to the holy office,
+and had condemned a citizen to death because he had not risen from his
+place while a tribune walked through the Forum. "Before your very eyes,"
+he said, "they beat Tiberius to death with cudgels; they dragged his
+dead body from the Capitol through the midst of the city to cast it into
+the river; those of his friends whom they seized, they put to death
+untried. And yet think how your constitution guards the citizen's life!
+If a man is accused on a capital charge and does not immediately obey
+the summons, it is ordained that a trumpeter come at dawn before his
+door and summon him by sound of trumpet; until this is done, no vote may
+be pronounced against him. So carefully and watchfully did our ancestors
+regulate the course of justice." [592] A cry for vengeance is here
+merged in a great constitutional principle; and these utterances paved
+the way for the measure immediately formulated that no court should be
+established to try a citizen on a capital charge, unless such a court
+had received the sanction of the people.[593] The power of the Comitia
+to delegate its jurisdiction without appeal is here affirmed; the right
+of the senate to institute an inquisition without appeal is here denied.
+The measure was a development of a suggestion which had been made by
+Tiberius Gracchus, who had himself probably called attention to the fact
+that the establishment of capital commissions by the senate was a
+violation of the principle of the _provocatio_ Caius Gracchus, however,
+did not attempt to ordain that an appeal should be possible from the
+judgment of the standing commissions (_quaestiones perpetuae_); for,
+though the initiative in the creation of these courts had been taken by
+the senate, they had long received the sanction of law, and their
+self-sufficiency was perhaps covered by the principle that the people,
+in creating a commission, waived its own powers of final jurisdiction.
+But there were other technical as well as practical disadvantages in
+instituting an appeal from these commissions. The _provocatio_ had
+always been the challenge to the decision of a magistrate; but in these
+standing courts the actions of the president and of the _judices_ who
+sat with him were practically indistinguishable, and the sentence
+pronounced was in no sense a magisterial decision. The courts had also
+been instituted to avoid the clumsiness of popular jurisdiction; but
+this clumsiness would be restored, if their decision was to be shaken by
+a further appeal to the Comitia. Gracchus, in fact, when he proposed
+this law, was not thinking of the ordinary course of jurisdiction at
+all. He had before his mind the summary measures by which the senate
+took on itself to visit such epidemics of crime as were held to be
+beyond the strength of the regular courts, and more especially the
+manner in which this body had lately dealt with alleged cases of
+sedition or treason. The investigation directed against the supporters
+of his brother was the crucial instance which he brought before the
+people, and it is possible that, at a still later date, the inquiry
+which followed the fall of Fregellae had been instituted on the sole
+authority of the senate and had found a certain number of victims in the
+citizen body. Practically, therefore, Gracchus in this law wholly
+denied, either as the result of experience or by anticipation, the
+legality of the summary jurisdiction which followed a declaration of
+martial law.
+
+In the creation of these extraordinary commissions the senate never took
+upon itself the office of judge, nor was the commission itself composed
+of senators appointed by the house. The jurisdiction was exercised by a
+magistrate at the bidding of the senate, and the court thus constituted
+selected its assessors, who formed a mere council for advice, at its own
+discretion. It was plain that, if the law was to be effective, its chief
+sanction must be directed, not against the corporation which appointed,
+but against the judge. The responsibility of the individual is the
+easiest to secure, and no precautions against martial law can be
+effective if a division of authority, or even obedience to authority, is
+once admitted. Gracchus, therefore, pronounced that criminal proceedings
+should be possible against the magistrate who had exercised the
+jurisdiction now pronounced illegal.[594] The common law of Rome went
+even further, and pronounced every individual responsible for illegal
+acts done at the bidding of a magistrate. The crime which the magistrate
+had committed by the exercise of this forbidden jurisdiction was
+probably declared to be treason: and, as there was no standing court at
+Rome which took cognisance of this offence, the jurisdiction of the
+Comitia was ordained. The penalty for the crime was doubtless a capital
+one, and by ancient prescription such a punishment necessitated a trial
+before the Assembly of the Centuries. It is, however, possible that
+Gracchus rendered the plebeian assembly of the Tribes competent to
+pronounce the capital sentence against the magistrate who had violated
+the prescriptions of his law. But, although the magistrate was the
+chief, he appears not to have been the sole offender under the
+provisions of this bill. In spite of the fact that the senate as a whole
+was incapable of being punished for the advice which had prompted the
+magistrate to an illegal course of action, it seems that the individual
+senator who moved, or perhaps supported, the decree which led to the
+forbidden jurisdiction, was made liable to the penalties of the
+law.[595] The operation of the enactment was made retrospective, or was
+perhaps conceived by its very nature to cover the past abuses which had
+called it into being; for in a sense it created no new crime, but simply
+restated the principle of the appeal in a form suited to the proceedings
+against which it wished to guard. It might have been argued that
+customary law protected the consul who directed the proceedings of the
+court which doomed the supporters of Tiberius Gracchus; but the
+argument, if used, was of no avail. Popillius was to be the witness to
+all men of the reality of this reassertion of the palladium of Roman
+liberty. An impeachment was framed against him, and either before or
+after his withdrawal from Rome, Caius Gracchus himself formulated and
+carried through the Plebs the bill of interdiction which doomed him to
+exile.[596] It was in vain that Popillius's young sons and numerous
+relatives besought the people for mercy.[597] The memory of the outrage
+was too recent, the joyful sense of the power of retaliation too novel
+and too strong. All that was possible was a counter demonstration which
+should emphasise the sympathy of loyalists with the illustrious victim,
+and Popillius was escorted to the gates by a weeping crowd.[598] We know
+that condemnation also overtook his colleague Rupilius,[599] and it is
+probable that he too fell a victim to the sense of vengeance or of
+justice aroused by the Gracchan law.
+
+A less justifiable spirit of retaliation is exhibited by another
+enactment with which Gracchus inaugurated his tribunate, although in
+this, as in ail his other acts, the blow levelled at his enemies was not
+devoid of a deep political significance. He introduced a proposal that a
+magistrate who had been deposed by the people should not be allowed to
+hold any further office.[600] Octavius was the obvious victim, and the
+mere personal significance of the measure does not necessarily imply
+that Gracchus was burning with resentment against a man, whose
+opposition to his brother had rapidly been forgotten in the degradation
+which he had experienced at that brother's hands. Hatred to the injured
+may be a sentiment natural to the wrongdoer, but is not likely to be
+imparted even to the most ardent supporter of the author of the
+mischief. It were better to forget Octavius, if Octavius would allow
+himself to be forgotten; but the sturdy champion of the senate, still in
+the middle of his career, may have been a future danger and a present
+eyesore to the people: Gracchus's invectives probably carried him and
+his auditors further than he intended, and the rehabilitation of his
+brother's tribunate in its integrity may have seemed to demand this
+strong assertion of the justice of his act. But the legality of
+deposition by the people was a still more important point. Merely to
+assert it would be to imply that Tiberius had been wrong. How could it
+be more emphatically proclaimed than by making its consequences
+perpetual and giving it a kind of penal character? But the personal
+aspect of the measure proved too invidious even for its proposer. A
+voice that commanded his respect was raised against it: and Gracchus in
+withdrawing the bill confessed that Octavius was spared through the
+intercession of Cornelia.[601]
+
+So far his legislation had but given an outlet to the justifiable
+resentment of the people, and a guarantee for the security of their most
+primitive rights. This was to be followed by an appeal to their
+interests and a measure for securing their permanent comfort. The
+wonderful solidarity of Gracchus and his supporters, the crowning
+triumph of the demagogue which is to make each man feel that he is an
+agent in his own salvation, have been traced to this constructive
+legislation for the benefit of classes, which ancient authors, writing
+under aristocratic prepossessions, have described by the ugly name of
+bribery.[602] The poor of Rome, if we include in this designation those
+who lived on the margin as well as those who were sunk in the depths of
+destitution, probably included the majority of the inhabitants of the
+town. The city had practically no organised industries. The retail
+trader and the purveyor of luxuries doubtless flourished; but, in the
+scanty manufactures which the capital still provided, the army of free
+labour must have been always worsted by the cruel competition of the
+cheaper and more skilful slave or freedman. But the poor of Rome did not
+form the cowed and shivering class that are seen on the streets of a
+northern capital. They were the merry and vivacious lazzaroni of the
+pavement and the portico, composite products of many climes, with all
+the lively endurance of the southerner and intellects sharpened by the
+ingenious devices requisite for procuring the minimum sustenance of
+life. Could they secure this by the desultory labour which alone was
+provided by the economic conditions of Rome, their lot was far from
+unhappy. As in most ancient civilisations, the poor were better provided
+with the amenities than with the bare necessities of existence. Although
+the vast provision for the pleasures of the people, by which the Caesars
+maintained their popularity, was yet lacking, and even the erection of a
+permanent theatre was frowned on by the senate,[603] yet the capital
+provided endless excitement for the leisured mind and the observant eye.
+It was for their benefit that the gladiatorial show was provided by the
+rich, and the gorgeous triumph by the State; but it was the antics of
+the nobility in the law courts and at the hustings that afforded the
+more constant and pleasing spectacle. Attendance at the Contiones and
+the Comitia not only delighted the eye and ear, but filled the heart
+with pride, and sometimes the purse with money. For here the units,
+inconsiderable in themselves, had become a collective power; they could
+shout down the most dignified of the senators, exalt the favourite of
+the moment, reward a service or revenge a slight in the perfect security
+given by the secrecy of the ballot. Large numbers of the poorer class
+were attached to the great houses by ancestral ties; for the descendants
+of freedmen, although they could make no legal claim on the house which
+represented the patron of their ancestors, were too valuable as voting
+units to be neglected by its representatives, even when the sense of the
+obligations of wealth, which was one of the best features of Roman
+civilisation, failed to provide an occasional alleviation for the misery
+of dependants. From a political point of view, this dependence was
+utterly demoralising; for it made the recipients of benefits either
+blind supporters of, or traitors to, the personal cause which they
+professed. It was on the whole preferable that, if patronage was
+essential, the State should take over this duty; the large body of the
+unattached proletariate would be placed on a level with their more
+fortunate brethren, and the latter would be freed from a dependence
+which merely served private and selfish interests. A semi-destitute
+proletariate can only be dealt with in three ways. They may be forced to
+work, encouraged to emigrate, or partially supported by the State. The
+first device was impossible, for it was not a submerged fraction with
+which Rome had to deal, but the better part of the resident sovereign
+body; the second, although discredited by the senate, had been tried in
+one form by Tiberius Gracchus and was to be attempted in another shape
+by Caius; but it is a remedy that can never be perfect, for it does not
+touch the class, more highly strung, more intelligent, and at the same
+time more capable of degradation, which the luxury of the capital
+enthrals. The last device had not yet been attempted. It remained for
+Gracchus to try it. We have no analysis of his motives; but many
+provocatives to his modest attempt at state socialism may be suggested.
+There was first the Hellenic ideal of the leisured and independent
+citizen, as exemplified by the state payments and the "distributions"
+which the great leaders of the old world had thought necessary for the
+fulfilment of democracy. There was secondly the very obvious fact that
+the government was reaping a golden harvest from the provinces and
+merely scattering a few stray grains amongst its subjects. There was
+thirdly the consideration that much had been done for the landed class
+and nothing for the city proletariate. Other considerations of a more
+immediate and economic character were doubtless present. The area of
+corn production was now small. Sicily was still perhaps beggared by its
+servile war, and the granary of Rome was practically to be found in
+Africa. The import of corn from this quarter, dependent as it was on the
+weather and controlled purely by considerations of the money-market, was
+probably fitful, and the price must have been subject to great
+variations. But, at this particular time, the supply must have been
+diminished to an alarming extent, and the price proportionately raised,
+by the swarm of locusts which had lately made havoc of the crops of
+Africa.[604] Lastly, the purely personal advantage of securing a
+subsidised class for the political support of the demagogue of the
+moment--a consideration which is but a baser interpretation of the
+Hellenic ideal--must have appealed to the practical politician in
+Gracchus as the more impersonal view appealed to the statesman. He would
+secure a permanent and stable constituency, and guard against the
+danger, which had proved fatal to his brother, of the absence from Rome
+of the majority of his supporters at some critical moment.
+
+From the imperfect records of Gracchus's proposal we gather that a
+certain amount of corn was to be sold monthly at a reduced price to any
+citizen who offered himself as a purchaser.[605] The rate was fixed at
+6-1/3 asses the modius, which is calculated to have been about half the
+market-price.[606] The monthly distribution would practically have
+excluded all but the urban proletariate, and would thus have both
+limited the operation of the relief to the poor of the city and invited
+an increase in its numbers. But the details of the measure, which would
+be decisive as to its economic character, are unknown to us. We are not
+told what proportion the monthly quantity of grain sold at this cheap
+rate bore to the total amount required for the support of a family;
+whether the relief was granted only to the head of a house or also to
+his adult sons; whether any one who claimed the rights of citizenship
+could appear at the monthly sale, or only those who had registered their
+names at some given time. The fact of registration, if it existed, might
+have been regarded as a stigma and might thus have limited the number of
+recipients. Some of the economic objections to his scheme were not
+unknown to Gracchus; indeed they were pressed home vigorously by his
+opponents. It was pointed out that he was enervating the labourer and
+exhausting the treasury, The validity of the first objection depends to
+a large extent on the unknown "data" which we have just mentioned.
+Gracchus may have maintained that a greater standard of comfort would be
+secured for the same amount of work. The second objection he was so far
+from admitting that he asserted that his proposal would really lighten
+the burdens of the Aerarium.[607] He may have taken the view that a
+moderate, steady and calculable loss on corn purchased in large
+quantities, and therefore presumably at a reduced price, would be
+cheaper in the end than the cost entailed by the spasmodic attempts
+which the State had to make in times of crisis to put grain upon the
+market; and there may have been some truth in the idea that, when the
+State became for the first time a steady purchaser, competition between
+the publicans of Sicily or the proprietors of Africa might greatly
+reduce the normal market price. He does not seem to have been disturbed
+by the consideration that the sale of corn below the market price at
+Rome was hardly the best way of helping the Italian farmer. The State
+would certainly buy in the cheapest market, and this was not to be found
+in Italy. But it is probable that under no circumstances could Rome have
+become the usual market for the produce of the recently established
+proprietors, and that, except at times of unusual scarcity in the
+transmarine provinces, imported corn could always have undersold that
+which was grown in Italy. Under the new system the Italian husbandman
+would find a purchaser in the State, if Sicily and Africa were visited
+by some injury to their crops. A vulnerable point in the Gracchan system
+of sale was exhibited in the fact that no inquiry was instituted as to
+the means of the applicants. This blemish was vigorously brought home to
+the legislator when the aged noble, Calpurnius Piso surnamed "the
+Frugal," the author of the first law that gave redress to the
+provincials, and a vigorous opponent of Gracchus's scheme, gravely
+advanced on the occasion of the first distribution and demanded his
+appropriate share.[608] The object lesson would be wasted on those who
+hold that the honourable acceptance of relief implies the universality
+of the gift: that the restraining influences, if they exist, should be
+moral and not the result of inquisition. But neither the possibility nor
+the necessity of discrimination would probably have been allowed by
+Gracchus. It would have been resented by the people, and did not appeal
+to the statesmanship, widely spread in the Greek and not unknown in the
+Roman world, which regarded it as one of the duties of a State to
+provide cheap food for its citizens. The lamentations of a later day
+over a pauperised proletariate and an exhausted treasury[609] cannot
+strictly be laid to the account of the original scheme, Except in so far
+as it served as a precedent; they were the consequence of the action of
+later demagogues who, instructed by Gracchus as to the mode in which an
+easy popularity might be secured, introduced laws which sanctioned an
+almost gratuitous distribution of grain. The Gracchan law contained a
+provision for the building of additional store-houses for the
+accumulation of the great reserve of corn, which was demanded by the new
+system of regular public sales, and the Sempronian granaries thus
+created remained as a witness of the originality and completeness of the
+tribune's work.[610]
+
+The Roman citizen was still frequently summoned from his work, or roused
+from his lethargy, by the call of military service; and the practice of
+the conscription fostered a series of grievances, one of which had
+already attracted the attention of Tiberius Gracchus. Caius was bound to
+deal with the question: and the two provisions of his enactment which
+are known to us, show a spirit of moderation which neither justifies the
+belief that the demagogue was playing to the army, nor accredits the
+view that his interference relaxed the bonds of discipline amongst the
+legions.[611] The most scandalous anomaly in the Roman army-system was
+the miserable pittance earned by the conscript when the legal deductions
+had been made from his nominal rate of pay. His daily wage was but
+one-third of the denarius, or five and one-third asses a day, as it had
+remained unaltered from the times of the Second Punic War, in spite of
+the fact that the conditions of service were now wholly different and
+that garrison duty in the provinces for long periods of years had
+replaced the temporary call-to-arms which the average Italian campaign
+alone demanded; and from this quota was deducted the cost of the
+clothing which he wore and, as there is every reason to believe, of the
+whole of the rations which he consumed. We should have expected a
+radical reformer to have raised his pay or at least to have given him
+free food. But Gracchus contented himself with enacting that the
+soldier's clothing should be given him free of charge by the State.[612]
+Another military abuse was due to the difficulty which commanders
+experienced in finding efficient recruits. The young and adventurous
+supplied better and more willing material than those already habituated
+to the careless life of the streets, or already engaged in some settled
+occupation: and, although it is scarcely credible that boys under the
+age of eighteen were forced to enlist, they were certainly permitted and
+perhaps encouraged to join the ranks. The law of Gracchus forbade the
+enlistment of a recruit at an age earlier than the completion of the
+seventeenth year.[613] These military measures, slight in themselves,
+were of importance as marking the beginning of the movement by which the
+whole question of army reform, utterly neglected by the government, was
+taken up and carried out by independent representatives of the people.
+But a Roman army was to a large extent the creation of the executive
+power; and it required a military commander, not a tribune, to produce
+the radical alterations which alone could make the mighty instrument,
+which had won the empire, capable of defending it.
+
+The last boon of Gracchus to the citizen body as a whole was a new
+agrarian law.[614] The necessity of such a measure was chiefly due to
+the suspension of the work of the agrarian commission, which had proved
+an obstacle to the continued execution of his brother's scheme; and
+there is every reason for believing that the new Sempronian law restored
+their judicial powers to the commissioners. But experience may have
+shown that the substance of Tiberius's enactment required to be
+supplemented or modified; and Caius adopted the procedure usually
+followed by a Roman legislator when he renewed a measure which had
+already been in operation. His law was not a brief series of amendments,
+but a comprehensive statute, so completely covering the ground of the
+earlier Sempronian law that later legislation cites the law of Caius,
+and not that of Tiberius Gracchus, as the authority for the regulations
+which had revolutionised the tenure of the public land.[615] The new
+provisions seem to have dealt with details rather than with principles,
+and there is no indication that they aimed at the acquisition of
+territory which had been exempted from the operation of the previous
+measure, or even touched the hazardous question of the rights of Rome to
+the land claimed by the Italian allies. We cannot attempt to define the
+extent to which the executive power granted by the new agrarian law was
+either necessary or effective. Certainly the returns of the census
+during the next ten years show no increase in the number of registered
+citizens;[616] but this circumstance may be due to the steps which were
+soon to be taken by the opponents of the Gracchi to nullify the results
+of their legislation. It is possible, however, that the new corn law may
+have somewhat damped the ardour of the proletariate for a life of
+agriculture which would have deprived them of its benefits.
+
+The first tribunate of Caius Gracchus doubtless witnessed the completion
+of these four acts of legislation, by which the debt to his supporters
+was lavishly paid and their aid was enlisted for causes which could only
+indirectly be interpreted as their own. But this year probably witnessed
+as well the promulgation of the enactments which were to find their
+fulfilment in a second tribunate.[617] Foremost amongst these was one
+which dealt with the tenure of the judicial power as exercised, not by
+the magistrate, but by the panels of jurors who were interpreters both
+of law and fact on the standing commissions which had recently been
+created by statute. The interest of the masses in this question was
+remote. A permanent murder court seems indeed to have had its place
+amongst the commissions; but, even though the corruption of its
+president had on one occasion been clearly proved,[618] it is not likely
+that senatorial judges would have troubled to expose themselves to undue
+influences when pronouncing on the _caput_ of a citizen of the lower
+class. The fact that this justice was administered by the nobility may
+have excited a certain degree of popular interest; but the question of
+the transference of the courts from the hands of the senatorial
+_judices_ would probably never have been heard of, had not the largest
+item in this judicial competence had a decisively political bearing. The
+Roman State had been as unsuccessful as others of the ancient world in
+keeping its judicial machinery free from the taint of party influences.
+It had been accounted one of the surest signs of popular sovereignty
+that the people alone could give judgment on the gravest crimes and
+pronounce the capital penalty,[619] and recent political thought had
+perhaps wholly adapted itself to the Hellenic view that the government
+of a state must be swayed by the body of men that enforces criminal
+responsibility in political matters. This vital power was still retained
+by the Comitia when criminal justice was concerned with those elemental
+facts which are the condition of the existence of a state. The people
+still took cognisance of treason in all its degrees--a conception which
+to the Roman mind embraced almost every possible form of official
+maladministration--and the gloomy record of trials before the Comitia,
+from this time onward to the close of the Republic, shows that the
+weapon was exercised as the most forcible implement of political
+chastisement. But chance had lately presented the opportunity of making
+the interesting experiment of assimilating criminal jurisdiction in some
+of its branches to that of the civil courts. The president and jurors of
+one of the newly established _quaestiones_ formed as isolated a group as
+the _judex_ of civil justice with his assessors, or the greater panels
+of Centumvirs and Decemvirs. They possessed no authority but that of
+jurisdiction within their special department; there seemed no reason why
+they should be influenced by considerations arising from issues whether
+legislative or administrative. But this appearance of detachment was
+wholly illusory, and the well-intentioned experiment was as vain as that
+of Solon, when he carefully separated the administrative and judicial
+boards in the Athenian commonwealth and composed both bodies of
+practically identical individuals. The new court for the trial of
+extortion, constituted by the Calpurnian and renewed later by a Junian
+law, was controlled by a detachment of the governing body which saw in
+each impeachment a libel on its own system of administration, and in
+each condemnation a new precedent for hampering the uncontrolled power
+exercised in the past or coveted for the future by the individual juror.
+This class spirit may have been more powerful than bribery in its
+production of suspicious acquittals; and the fact that prosecution was
+frankly recognised as the commonest of party weapons, and that speeches
+for the prosecution and defence teemed with irrelevant political
+allusions, reduced the question of the guilt of the accused to
+subordinate proportions in the eyes of all the participants in this
+judicial warfare. Charges of corruption were so recklessly hurled at
+Rome that we can seldom estimate their validity; but the strong
+suspicion of bribery is almost as bad for a government as the proved
+offence; and it was certain that senatorial judges did not yield to the
+evidence which would have supplied conviction to the ordinary man. Some
+recent acquittals furnished an excellent text to the reformer. L.
+Aurelius Cotta had emerged successfully from a trial, which had been a
+mere duel between Scipio Aemilianus for the prosecution and Metellus
+Macedonicus for the defence. The judges had shown their resentment of
+Scipio's influence by acquitting Cotta; and few of the spectators of the
+struggle seem even to have pretended to believe in the innocence of the
+accused.[620] The whole settlement of Asia had been so tainted with the
+suspicion of pecuniary influences that, when Manius Aquillius
+successfully ran the gauntlet of the courts,[621] it was difficult to
+believe that the treasures of the East had not co-operated towards the
+result, especially as the senate itself by no means favoured some of the
+features of Aquillius's organisation of the province. The legates of
+some of the plundered dependencies were still in Rome, bemoaning the
+verdict and appealing for sympathy with their helpless fellow
+subjects[622] Circumstances favoured the reformer; it was possible to
+bring a definite case and to produce actual sufferers before the people;
+while the senate, perhaps in consequence of the attitude of some honest
+dissentients, was unable to make any effectual resistance to the scandal
+and its consequences.
+
+Had Gracchus thought of restoring this jurisdiction to the Comitia, he
+would have taken a step which had the theoretical justification that, of
+all the powers at Rome, the people was the one which had least interest
+in provincial misgovernment. But it would have been a retrograde
+movement from the point of view of procedure; it would not necessarily
+have abolished senatorial influence, and it would not have attained his
+object of holding the government permanently in check by the political
+recognition of a class which rivalled the senate in the definiteness of
+its organisation and surpassed it in the homogeneity of its interests.
+The body of capitalists who had assumed the titular designation of
+knights, had long been chafing at the complete subjection of their
+commercial interests to the caprice of the provincial governor and the
+arbitrary dispositions of the home government. Tiberius Gracchus, when
+he revealed the way to the promised land, had probably reflected rather
+than suggested the ambition of the great business men to have a more
+definite place in the administration assigned them. His appeal had come
+too late, or seemed too hopeless of success, to win their support for a
+reformer who had outraged their feelings as capitalists; but since his
+death ten years for reflection had elapsed, and they were years which
+witnessed a vast extension of their potential activity, and aroused an
+agonised feeling of helplessness at the subordinate part which they
+played both to senate and people when the disposal of kingdoms was in
+question. The suggestions for giving them a share in the control of the
+provincial world may have been numerous, and their variety is reflected
+in the different plans which Caius Gracchus himself advanced. The system
+at which his brother had hinted was that of a joint board composed of
+the existing senators with the addition of an equal number of equites;
+and we have already suggested the possibility that this House of Six
+Hundred was intended to be the senate of the future, efficient for all
+purposes and not exclusively devoted to the work of criminal
+jurisdiction. The same significance may attach to the scheme, which
+seems to have been propounded by Caius Gracchus during, or perhaps even
+before, his first tenure of the tribunate, and appears at intervals in
+proposals made by reformers down to the time of Sulla. Gracchus is said
+to have suggested the increase of the senate by the addition of three,
+or, as one authority states, six hundred members of the equestrian
+order.[623] The proposal, if it was one for an enlarged senate, and not
+for a joint panel of _judices_, in which a changing body of equites
+would act as a check on the permanent senatorial jurors, must soon have
+been seen to be utterly unsuited to its purpose. It is a scheme
+characteristic of the aristocrat who is posing as a friend of the
+mercantile class and hopes to deceive the vigilance of that keen-sighted
+fraternity. To give the senate a permanent infusion of new blood would
+be simply to strengthen its authority, while completely cutting away the
+links which bound the new members to their original class. Even the
+swamping of the existing body by a two-thirds majority of new members
+would have been transitory in its effects. The new member of the Curia
+would soon have shed his old equestrian views and assumed the outlook of
+his older peers. It might indeed have been possible to devise a system
+by which the senate would, at the recurring intervals of the _lustra_,
+have been filled up in equal proportions from ex-magistrates and
+knights: and in this way a constant supply of middle-class sentiment
+might have been furnished to the governing body. But even this scheme
+would have secured to the elected a life-long tenure of power, and this
+was a fatal obstacle both to the intentions of the reformer and the
+aspirations of the equestrian order. While the former desired a balance
+of power, the latter wished that the interests of their class should be
+enforced by its genuine representatives. Both knew that a participation
+in the executive power was immaterial, and that all that was needed
+might be gained by the possession of judicial authority alone.
+Gracchus's final decision, therefore, was to create a wholly new panel
+of _judices_ which should be made up exclusively from the members of the
+titular class of knights.[624]
+
+It was not necessary or desirable that the judiciary law should make any
+mention of a class, or employ the courtesy title of _equites_ to
+designate the new judges. The effect might be less invidiously secured
+by demanding qualifications which were practically identical with the
+social conditions requisite for the possession of titular knighthood.
+One of the determining factors was a property qualification, and this
+was possibly placed at the modest total of four hundred thousand
+sesterces.[625] This was the amount of capital which seems at this
+period to have given its possessor the right of serving on horseback in
+the army and therefore the claim to the title of _eques_, but it was a
+sum that did not convey alarming suggestions of government by
+millionaires, but rather pointed to the upper middle class as the
+fittest depositaries of judicial power. Not only were magistrates and
+ex-magistrates excluded from the Bench, but the disqualification
+extended to the fathers, brothers and sons of magistrates and of past or
+present senators. The ostensible purpose of these provisions was
+doubtless to ensure that the selected jurors should be bound by no tie
+of kindred to the individuals who would appear before their judgment
+seat; but they must have had the effect of excluding from the new panel
+many of the true knights belonging to the eighteen centuries; for this
+select corps was largely composed of members of the noble families. A
+similar effect would have been produced by the age qualification. The
+Gracchan jurors were to be over thirty and under sixty, while a large
+number of the military _equites_ were under the former limit of age, in
+consequence of the practice of retiring from the corps after the
+attainment of the quaestorship or selection into the senate. The
+aristocratic element in the equestrian order, if this latter expression
+be used in its widest sense to include both the military and civilian
+knights, was thus rigorously excluded: and there remained but the men
+whose business interests were in no way complicated by respect for
+senatorial traditions. The official list of the new jurors _(album
+judicum)_ was probably to be made out annually; and there is every
+reason to suppose that there was a considerable change of personnel at
+each revision, since one of the conditions of membership of the
+panel--residence within a mile of Rome--could hardly have been observed
+by business men with world-wide interests for any extended period. The
+conception which still prevailed that judicial service was a burden
+_(munus)_, would alone have led the revising authority to free past
+jurors from the service: and the practice must have been welcome to the
+capitalists themselves, many of whom may well have desired the share of
+power and perhaps of profit which jurisdiction over their superiors
+conferred. We are told that the selection of the first panel was
+entrusted to the legislator himself;[626] for the future the Foreign
+Praetor was to draw up the annual list of four hundred and fifty who
+were qualified to hear cases of extortion.[627] It is not known whether
+this was the full number of the new jurors, or whether there were
+additional members selected by a different authority for the trial of
+other offences. It is not probable that the judiciary law of Gracchus
+imposed the new class of _judices_ directly on the civil courts. The
+_judex_ of private law still retained his character of an arbitrator
+appointed by the consent of the parties, and it would have been improper
+to restrict this choice to a class defined by statute. But the practical
+monopoly of jurisdiction in important cases, which senators seem to have
+acquired, was henceforth broken through, and the _judex_ in civil suits
+was sometimes taken from the equestrian order.[628]
+
+The superficial aspect of this great change seemed full of promise for
+the future. The ample means of the new jurors might be taken as a
+guarantee of their purity; their selection from the middle class, as a
+security of the soundness and disinterestedness of their judgments.
+Perhaps Gracchus himself was the victim of this hope, and believed that
+the scourge of the nobility which he had placed in the hands of the
+knights, might at least be decorously wielded. The judgment of the
+after-world varied as to the mode in which they exercised their power.
+Cicero, in advocating the claims of the order to a renewed tenure of
+authority, could urge that during their possession of the courts for
+nearly fifty years, their judgments had never been tainted by the least
+suspicion of corruption.[629] This was a safe assertion if suspicion is
+only justified by proof; for the Gracchan jurors seem to have been from
+the first exempted from all prosecution for bribery.[630] This legal
+exemption is all the more remarkable as Gracchus himself was the author
+of a law which permitted a criminal prosecution for a corrupt
+judgment.[631] It is difficult to understand the significance of this
+enactment, for the magistrates, against whom it was directed, were in
+few cases judges of fact, except in the military domain. It could not
+have referred to the president of a standing commission who was a mere
+vehicle for the judgment of the jury; but Gracchus probably contemplated
+the occasional revival of special commissions sanctioned by the people,
+and it is possible that even the two praetors who presided over the
+civil courts may have been subject to the operation of the law, which
+may not have been directed merely against corrupt sentences in criminal
+matters, as was subsequently the case when the law was renewed by Sulla.
+It is even possible that the law dates from a period anterior to the
+creation of the equestrian _judices_; but, even on this hypothesis, the
+exclusion of the latter from its operation was something of an anomaly;
+for even the civil _judex_ of Rome, on whose analogy the jurors of the
+standing commissions had been created, was in early times criminally,
+and at a later period at least pecuniarily, liable for an unjust
+sentence.[632] We shall elsewhere have occasion to dwell on the value
+which the equestrian order attached to this immunity, and we shall see
+that its relief at the freedom from vexatious prosecution is of itself
+no sign of corruption. One of our authorities does indeed emphatically
+assert the ultimate prevalence of bribery in the equestrian courts:[633]
+and circumstances may be easily imagined which would have made this
+resort natural, if not inevitable. A band of capitalists eager to secure
+a criminal verdict, which had a purely commercial significance, would
+scarcely be slow to employ commercial methods with their less wealthy
+representatives on the Bench, and votes might have been purchased by
+transactions in which cash payments played no part. But the corruption
+of individuals was of far less moment than the solidarity of interest
+and collective cupidity of the mercantile order as a whole. The verdicts
+of the courts reflected the judgment of the Exchange. It was even
+possible to create a prosecution[634] simply for the purpose of damning
+a man who, in the exercise of his authority, had betrayed tendencies
+which were interpreted as hostile to capitalism.
+
+The future war between the senate and the equites would not have been
+waged so furiously, had not Gracchus given his favoured class the chance
+of asserting a positive control, in virtue of an almost official
+position, over the richest domains of the Roman world. The fatal bequest
+of Attalus was still the plaything of parties; but the prize which
+Tiberius had destined for the people was used by Caius to seal his
+compact with the knights. The concession, which could not be openly
+avowed, was accomplished by means so indirect that its meaning must have
+escaped the majority of the voters who sanctioned it, and its
+consequences may not have been fully grasped by the legislator himself.
+The masses who applauded the new law about the province of Asia, may
+have seen in it but a promise of the increase of their revenues; while
+the desire of swelling the public finances, which he had so heavily
+burdened, of putting an end to the anomalous condition of a district
+which was neither free nor governed, neither protectorate nor province,
+perhaps even of meeting the wishes of some of the Asiatic provincials,
+who preferred regular to irregular exactions, may have been combined in
+the mind of Gracchus with the wish to see the equites confront the
+senate in yet another sphere. The change which he proposed was one
+concerned with the taxation of the province. It cannot be determined how
+far he was responsible for the infliction of new burdens on Rome's
+Asiatic subjects. The increase of the public revenue, of which he
+boasted in one of his speeches to the people,[635] the new harbour dues
+with which he is credited,[636] may point to certain creations of his
+own; but the end at which he aimed seems to have been mainly a revival
+of the system of taxation which had been current in the kingdom of the
+Attalids, accompanied by a new and, as he possibly thought, better
+system of collection. It could not have been he who first burdened the
+taxpayer with the payment of tithes; for this method of revenue was of
+immense antiquity in all Hellenised lands and is not likely to have been
+unknown to the kings of Pergamon. It is a method that, from its elastic
+nature, bears less heavily on the agriculturist than that of a direct
+impost; for the payment is conditioned by the size of the crops and is
+independent of the changing value of money. The chief objection to the
+tax, considered in itself and apart from its accompanying circumstances,
+was the immensity of the revenue which it yielded; the sums exacted by
+an Oriental despot were unnecessary for the economical administration of
+Rome; and the Roman administration of half a century earlier might have
+reduced the tithe to a twentieth as it had actually cut down the taxes
+of Macedonia to one-half of their original amount. Sicily, indeed,
+furnished an example of the tithe system; but the expenses of a
+government decrease in proportion to the area of administration, and
+Sicily could not furnish the ample harbour dues and other payments in
+money, which should have made the commercial wealth of Asia lighten the
+burden on the holder of land. The rating of the new province was, in
+fact, an admission of a change in the theory of imperial taxation. Asia
+was not merely to be self-supporting; her revenues were to yield a
+surplus which should supplement the deficit of other lands, or aid in
+the support of the proletariate of the capital.
+
+The realisation of this principle may not have imposed heavier burdens
+than Asia had known in the time of her kings. But the fiction that the
+new dependency was to be maintained in a state of "freedom," which even
+after the downfall of Aristonicus seems to have exercised some influence
+on Roman policy, had led to a suspension of regular taxation for the
+purposes of the central government, which caused the Gracchan proposals
+to be regarded by certain political circles at Rome in the light of a
+novelty, and probably of a hardship.[637] They could hardly have borne
+either character to the Asiatic provincials themselves. The war
+indemnities and exactions which followed the great struggle, must have
+been a more grievous burden than the system of taxation to which they
+were inured: and it is incredible that during the six years which had
+elapsed since the suppression of the revolt, or even the three years
+that had passed since the completion of Aquillius's organisation, no
+revenues had been raised by Rome from her new subjects for
+administrative purposes. They probably had been raised, but in a manner
+exasperating because irregular. What was needed was a methodical system,
+which should abolish at once the fiction of "freedom" and the reality of
+the exactions meted out at the caprice of the governor of the moment.
+Such a system was supplied by Gracchus, and it was doubtless reached by
+the application of the characteristic Roman method of maintaining,
+whether for good or ill, the principles of organisation which were
+already in existence in the new dependency.
+
+The novelty of the Gracchan system lay, not in the manner of taxation,
+but in the method adopted for securing the returns. The greatest
+obstacle to the tithe system is the difficulty of instituting an
+efficient method of collection. To gather in taxes which are paid in
+kind and to dispose of them to the best advantage, is a heavy burden for
+a municipality. The desire for a system of contract is sure to arise,
+and in an Empire the efficient contractor is more likely to be found in
+the central state than in any of its dependencies. It was of this
+feeling that Gracchus took advantage when he enacted that the taxes of
+Asia should be put up for auction at Rome,[638] and that the whole
+province should be regarded as a single area of taxation at the great
+auction which the censor held in the capital. It was certain that no
+foreign competition could prevail in this sale of a kingdom's revenues.
+The right to gather in the tithes could be purchased only by a powerful
+company of Roman capitalists. The Decumani of Asia would represent the
+heart and brain of the mercantile body; they would form a senate and a
+Principate amongst the Publicani.[639] They would flood the province
+with their local directors, their agents and their freedmen; and each
+station would become a centre for a banking business which would involve
+individuals and cities in a debt, of which the tithe was but a fraction.
+Nor need their operations be confined to the dominions of Rome; they
+would spread over Phrygia, rendered helpless by the gift of freedom, and
+creep into the realms of the neighbouring protected kings, safe in the
+knowledge that the magic name of "citizen of Rome" was a cover to the
+most doubtful transaction and a safeguard against the slightest
+punishment. The collectors were liable to no penalties for extortion,
+for that crime could be committed only by a Roman magistrate: and their
+possession of the courts enabled them to raise the spectre of conviction
+on this very charge before the eyes of any governor who might attempt to
+check the devastating march of the battalions of commerce.
+
+As merchants and bankers the Knights would be sufficiently protected by
+the judicial powers of their class; but their operations as speculators
+in tithes needed another safeguard. The contracts made with the censor
+would extend over a period of five years, and the keenness of the
+competing companies would generally ensure to the State the promise of
+an enormous sum for the privilege of farming the taxes. But the tithe
+might be reduced in value by a bad harvest or the ravages of war, and
+the successful company might overreach itself in its eagerness to secure
+the contract. The power of revising such bargains had once assured to
+the senate the securest hold which it possessed over the mercantile
+class.[640] This complete dependence was now to be removed, and
+Gracchus, while not taking the power of decision from the senate,
+formulated in his law certain principles of remission which it was
+expected to observe.[641]
+
+By these indirect and seemingly innocent changes in the relations of the
+mercantile order to the senate, a new balance of power had been created
+in the State. The Republic, according to the reflection of a later
+writer, had been given two heads,[642] and this new Janus, more ominous
+than the old, was believed to be the harbinger of deadly conflict
+between the rival powers. In moments of calm Gracchus may have believed
+that his reforms were but a renewed illustration of that genius for
+compromise out of which the Roman constitution had grown, and that he
+had but created new and necessary defences against a recently developed
+absolutism; but, in the heat of the conflict into which he was soon
+plunged, his vindictive fancy saw but the gloomier aspect of his new
+creation, and he boasted that the struggle for the courts was a dagger
+which he had hurled into the Forum, an instrument which the possessor
+would use to mangle the body of his opponent.[643]
+
+But even these limitations of senatorial prerogative were not deemed
+sufficient. A proposal was made which had the ingenious scope of
+limiting the senate's control over the more important provinces in
+favour of the magistrates, the equestrian order and the people. One of
+the most valuable items of patronage which the senate possessed was the
+assignment of the consular provinces. They claimed the right of deciding
+which of the annual commands without the walls should be reserved for
+the consuls of the year, and by their disposition in this matter could
+reward a favourite with wealth or power, and condemn a political
+opponent to impotence or barren exile. This power had long been employed
+as a means of coercing the two chief magistrates into obedience to the
+senate's will, and the equestrian order must have viewed with some alarm
+the possibility of Asia becoming the prize of the candidates favoured by
+the nobility. Had Gracchus declared that the direct election to
+provincial commands should henceforth be in the hands of the people, the
+change would have been but a slight departure from an admitted
+constitutional precedent; for there is little more than a technical
+difference between electing a man for an already ascertained sphere of
+operations, as had been done in the cases of Terentius Varro and the two
+Scipios during the Punic wars, and attaching a special command to an
+individual already elected. But Gracchus preferred the traditional and
+indirect method. He did not question the right of the senate to decide
+what provinces should be assigned to the consuls, but he enacted that
+this decision should be made before these magistrates were elected to
+office.[644] The people would thus, in their annual choice of the
+highest magistrates, be electing not only to a sphere of administration
+at home, but to definite foreign commands as well; the prize which the
+senate had hitherto bestowed would be indirectly the people's gift, and
+the nominees of the Comitia would find themselves in possession of
+departments which were presumably the most important that lay at the
+disposal of the senate. To secure the finality of the arrangement made
+by the senate, and to prevent this body subsequently reversing an
+awkward assignment to which it had unwittingly committed itself,
+Gracchus ordained that the tribunician veto should not be employed
+against the senate's decision as to what provinces should be reserved
+for the future consuls;[645] for he knew that the tribune was often the
+instrument of the government, and that the suspensory veto of this
+magistrate could cause the question of assignment to drag on until after
+the consuls were elected, and thus restore to the senate its ancient
+right of patronage. The change, although it produced the desired results
+of freeing the magistrates from subservience, the mercantile order from
+a reasonable fear, and the people from the pain of seeing their
+favourite nominee rendered useless for the purposes for which he was
+appointed, cannot be said to have added anything to the efficiency of
+provincial administration. It may even be regarded as a retrograde step,
+as the commencement of that system of routine in provincial
+appointments, which regarded proved capacity for the government and
+defence of the subjects of Rome as the last qualification necessary for
+foreign command. The senate in its award may often have been swayed by
+unworthy motives; but it was sometimes moved by patriotic fears. Of the
+two consuls it might send the one of tried military ability to a
+province threatened by war and dismiss the mere politician to a peaceful
+district. But now, without any regard to present conditions or future
+contingencies, it was forced to assign departments to men whose very
+names were unknown. The people, in the exercise of their elective power,
+were acting almost as blindly as the senate; for the issues of a Roman
+election were often so ill-defined, its cross-currents, due to personal
+influence and the power of the canvass, so strong and perplexing, that
+it was rarely possible to predict the issue of the poll. On the other
+hand, if there was a candidate so eminent that his return could be
+predicted as a certainty, the senate might assign some insignificant
+spheres of administration as the provinces of the future consuls; and
+thus, in the one case where the decision might be influenced by
+knowledge and reason, the Gracchan law was liable to defeat its own
+ends. A further weakness of the enactment, from the point of view of
+efficiency, was that it made no attempt to alter the mode in which the
+designated provinces were to be occupied by their claimants. If the
+consuls could not come to an agreement as to which _provincia_ each
+should hold, the chance of the lot still decided a question on which the
+future fortunes of the empire might turn.
+
+It is a relief to turn from this work of demolition, which in spite of
+its many justifications is pervaded by a vindictive suspicion, to some
+great constructive efforts by which Gracchus proved himself an
+enlightened and disinterested social reformer. He did not view agrarian
+assignation as an alternative to colonisation, but recognised that the
+industrial spirit might be awakened by new settlements on sites
+favourable to commerce, as the agricultural interest had been aroused by
+the planting of settlers on the desolated lands. Gracchus was, indeed,
+not the first statesman to employ colonisation as a remedy for social
+evils; for economic distress and the hunger for land had played their
+part from the earliest times in the military settlements which Rome had
+scattered over Italy. But down to his time strategic had preponderated
+over industrial motives, and he was the first to suggest that
+colonisation might be made a means of relief for the better classes of
+the urban proletariate, whose activities were cramped and whose energies
+were stifled by the crowded life and heated atmosphere of the city. His
+settlers were to be carefully selected. They were actually to be men who
+could stand the test of an investigation into character.[646] It seems
+clear that the new opportunities were offered to men of the lower middle
+class, to traders of cramped means or of broken fortunes. His other
+protégés had been cared for in other ways; the urban masses who lived on
+the margin of destitution had been assisted by the corn law, and the
+sturdy son of toil could look for help to the agrarian commission. Of
+the many settlements which he projected for Italy,[647] two which were
+actually established during his second tribunate[648] occupied maritime
+positions favourable for commerce. Scylacium, on the bay which lies
+southward of the Iapygian promontory, was intended to revivify a decayed
+Greek settlement and to reawaken the industries of the desolated
+Bruttian coast; while Neptunia was seemingly the name of the new
+entrepôt which he founded at the head of the Tarentine Gulf. It was
+apparently established on the land which Rome had wrested from Tarentum,
+and may have originally formed a town distinct from this Greek city,
+once the great seaport of Calabria, but retaining little of its former
+greatness since its partial destruction in the Punic wars.[649] Its
+Hellenism was on the wane, and this decline in its native civilisation
+may account for the fact that the new and the old foundations seem
+eventually to have been merged into one, and that Tarentum could receive
+a purely Latin constitution after the close of the Social War.[650] Its
+purple fisheries and rich wine-producing territory were worthy objects
+of the enterprise of Gracchus. Capua was a still greater disgrace to the
+Roman administration than Tarentum. Its fertile lands were indeed
+cultivated by lessees of Rome and yielded a large annual produce to the
+State. But the unredeemed site, on which had stood the pride of Southern
+Italy, was still a lamentable witness to the jealousy of the conqueror.
+Here Gracchus proposed to place a settlement[651] which through its
+commercial promise might amply have compensated for a loss of a portion
+of the State's domain. Neither he nor his brother had ever threatened
+the distribution of the territory of Capua, and it is, therefore,
+probable that in this case he did not contemplate a large agricultural
+foundation, but rather one that might serve better than the existing
+village to focus the commerce of the Campanian plain. But the revenue
+from the domain, and the jealousy of Rome's old and powerful rival,
+which might be awakened in all classes, were strong weapons in the hands
+of his opponents, and the renewal of Capua was destined to be the work
+of a later and more fortunate leader of the party of reform. The
+colonising effort of Gracchus was plainly one that had the regeneration
+of Italy, as well as the satisfaction of distressed burgesses, as its
+object; none of the three sites, on which he proposed to establish his
+communes of citizens, possessed at the time an urban centre capable of
+utilising the vast possibilities of the area in which it was placed. But
+this twofold object was not to be limited to Italy. He dreamed of
+transmarine enterprise taking a more solid and more generally useful
+form than that furnished by the vagrant trader or the local agent of the
+capitalist.[652] The idea and practice of colonisation across the sea
+were indeed no new ones; isolated foundations for military purposes,
+such as Palma and Pollentia in the Balearic Isles, were being planted by
+the direction of the government. But these were small settlements
+intended to serve a narrow purpose; they doubtless spread Roman customs
+and formed a basis for Roman trade; but, if these motives had entered
+into their foundation, the experiment would have been tried on a far
+larger scale. In truth the idea of permanent settlement beyond the seas
+did not appeal either to the Roman character or to the political
+theories of the governing classes. It is questionable whether an
+imperial people, forming but a tiny minority amongst its subjects, and
+easily reaping the fruits of its conquests, could ever take kindly to
+the adventure, the initial hardships, and the lasting exclusion from the
+dazzling life of the capital, which are implied in permanent residence
+abroad. The Roman in pursuit of gain was a restless spirit, who would
+voyage to any land that was, or was likely to be, under imperial
+control, establish his banking house and villa under any clime, and be
+content to spend the most active years of his life in the exploitation
+of the alien; but to him it was a living truth that all roads led to
+Rome. The city was the nucleus of enterprise, the heart of commerce; and
+such sentiment as the trader possessed was centred on the commercial
+life of the Forum and the political devices on which it fed. Such a
+spirit is not, favourable to true colonisation, which implies a
+detachment from the affairs of the mother city; and it was not by this
+means, but rather by the spontaneous evolution of natural centres for
+the teeming Italian immigrants already settled in the provinces, that
+the Romanisation of the world was ultimately assisted. Consequently no
+great pressure had ever been put on the government to induce it to relax
+the principles which led it to look with indifference or disfavour on
+the foundation of Roman settlements abroad. There was probably a fear
+that the establishment of communities of Roman citizens in the provinces
+might awaken the desire of the subject states to participate in Roman
+rights. It was deemed better that the highest goal of the provincial's
+ambition should be the freedom of his state, and that he should never
+dream of that absorption into the ruling body to which the Italian alone
+was permitted to aspire. Added to this maxim of statecraft was one of
+those curious superstitions which play so large a part in imperial
+politics and attain a show of truth from the superficial reading of
+history. It was pointed out by the wise that colonies had often proved
+more potent than their parent states, that Carthage had surpassed Tyre,
+Massilia Phocaea, Syracuse Corinth, and Cyzicus Miletus. In the same way
+a daughter of Rome might wax greater than her mother, and the city that
+governed Italy might be powerless to cope with a rebellious dependency
+in the provinces.[653] This was not altogether an idle fear in the
+earlier days of conquest; for at any period before the war with Pyrrhus
+a transmarine city of Italian blood and customs might have proved a
+formidable rival. Nor at the stage which the empire had reached at the
+time of Gracchus was it without its justification; for Rome was by no
+means a convenient centre for a government that ruled in Asia as well as
+in Europe. It is more likely that the dread of rivalry was due to the
+singular defects of the aspect and environment of Rome, of which its
+citizens were acutely conscious, rather than to the awkwardness of its
+geographical position; but, had the latter deficiency been realised, it
+would be unfair to criticise the narrowness of view which failed to see
+that the change of a capital does not necessarily involve the surrender
+of a government. But, whether the objections implied in this
+superstition were shadowy or well defined, they could not have been
+lessened by the choice which was made by Gracchus and his friends of the
+site for their new transmarine settlement. It was none other than
+Carthage, the city which had been destroyed because the blessings of
+nature had made a mockery of conquest, the city that, if revived, would
+be the centre of the granary of Rome. A proposal for the renewal of
+Carthage under the name of Junonia was formulated by Rubrius, one of the
+colleagues of Gracchus in his first tribunate.[654] The number of the
+colonists, which was less than six thousand, was specified in the
+enactment, and the proportion of the emigrants to the immense territory
+at his disposal rendered it possible for the legislator to assign
+unusually large allotments of land. A better and an inferior class of
+settlers were apparently distinguished, the former of whom were to hold
+no less than two hundred _jugera_ apiece.[655] The recipients of all
+allotments were to maintain them in absolute ownership, a system of
+tenure which had hitherto been confined to Italy being thus extended to
+provincial soil.[656] Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus were named
+amongst the triumvirs who were to establish the new colony.[657] It is
+probable that Roman citizens were alone considered eligible for the
+colonies both in Italy and abroad, when these foundations were first
+proposed, and that it was not until Gracchus had embarked on his
+enterprise of enfranchising the Latins, that he allowed them to
+participate in the benefits of his colonial schemes and thus indirectly
+acquire full Roman citizenship.
+
+But the commercial life of Italy might be quickened by other means than
+the establishment of colonies whether at home or abroad. Gracchus saw
+that the question of rapid and easy communication between the existing
+towns was all important. The great roads of Rome betrayed their military
+intent in the unswerving inflexibility of their course. The positions
+which they skirted were of strategic, but not necessarily of industrial,
+importance. To bring the hamlet into connection with the township, and
+the township into touch with the capital, a series of good cross-roads
+was needed; and it was probably to this object that the law of
+Gracchus[658] was directed. But ease of communication may serve a
+political as well as a commercial object. The representative character
+of the Comitia would be increased by the provision of facilities for the
+journey to Rome; and perhaps when Gracchus promulgated his measure,
+there was already before his mind the possibility of the extension of
+the franchise to the Latins, which would vastly increase the numbers of
+the rural electorate. In any case, the measure was one which tended to
+political centralisation, and Gracchus must have known that the
+attainment of this object was essential to the unity and stability of a
+popular government.
+
+The great enterprise was carried through with extraordinary rapidity
+during his second tribunate. But the hastiness of the construction did
+not impair the beauty of the work. We are told that the roads ran
+straight and fair through the country districts, showing an even surface
+of quarried stone and tight-packed earth. Hollows were filled up,
+ravines and torrent beds were bridged, and mounting-blocks for horsemen
+lay at short and easy distances on both sides of the level course.[659]
+Although the initial expense of this construction may have borne heavily
+on the finances of the State, it is probable that the future maintenance
+of the roads was provided for in other ways. The commerce which they
+fostered may have paid its dues at toll-gates erected for the
+purpose:[660] and the ancient Roman device of creating a class of
+settlers on the line of a public road, for the purpose of keeping it in
+repair,[661] was probably extended. Road-making was often the complement
+of agrarian assignation,[662] and the two may have been employed
+concurrently by Gracchus. It was the custom to assign public land on the
+borders of a highway to settlers, the tenure of which was secured to
+them and their heirs on condition of keeping the road in due repair.
+Sometimes their own labour and that of their slaves were reckoned the
+equivalent of the usual dues; at other times the dues themselves were
+used by the public authorities for the purpose. Gracchus may thus have
+turned his agrarian law to an end which was not contemplated by that
+of Tiberius.
+
+The execution of the law must have been a heavy blow to the power and
+prestige of the senate. Its control of the purse was infringed and it
+ceased to be the sole employer of public labour. For Gracchus, in
+defiance of the principle that the author of a measure should not be its
+executant,[663] was his own road-maker, as his brother Tiberius had been
+his own land commissioner. He was the patron of the contractor and the
+benefactor of the Italian artisan. The bounties which he now gave were
+the reward of labour, and not subject to the criticism which had
+attended his earlier efforts for the relief of poverty in Rome; but some
+pretended to take the sinister view that the bands of workmen by which
+he was surrounded might be employed for a less innocent purpose than the
+making of roads.[664].
+
+The proceedings of Gracchus during his first year of office had made it
+inevitable that he should hold the tribunate for a second time. Enough
+had been performed to win him the ardent support of the masses; enough
+had been promised to make his return to office desirable, not only to
+the people, but to the expectant capitalists. The legal hindrances to
+re-election had been removed, or could be evaded, and the continuity of
+power, which was essential to the realisation of an adequate programme
+of reform, could now for the first time be secured. In the present state
+of public feeling there was little probability of the veto being
+employed by any one of his future colleagues, although some of these
+would inevitably be moderates or members of the senatorial party. But
+Gracchus was eager that his cause should be represented in another
+department of the State, which presented possibilities of assistance or
+of mischief, and that the spectacle of the tribunate as the sole focus
+of democratic sentiment, exalting itself in opposition to the higher
+magistracies of the people, should, if possible, be averted. In one of
+his addresses to the commons he said he had to ask a favour of them.
+Were it granted, he would value it above all things; should they think
+good to refuse, he would bear no grudge against them. Here he paused;
+the favour remained undisclosed; and he left popular imagination to
+revel in the possibilities of his claims. It was a happy stroke; for he
+had filled the minds of his auditors with a gratifying sense of their
+own boundless power, and with suspicions of illegal ambitions, with
+which it was well that they should become familiar, but which one
+dramatic moment would for the time dispel. His words were interpreted as
+a request for the consulship: and the prevalent opinion is said to have
+been that he desired to hold this office in combination with the
+tribunate. The time for the consular elections was approaching and
+expectation was roused to its highest pitch, when Gracchus was seen
+conducting Gaius Fannius into the Forum and, with the assistance of his
+own friends, accosting the electors in his behalf.[665] The candidate
+was a man whose political temperament Caius had had full opportunities
+of studying. As a tribune he had been much under the influence of Scipio
+Aemilianus,[666] and as he rose slowly through the grades of curule
+rank,[667] he must still have retained his character as a moderate. He
+was therefore preferable to any candidate put forward by the optimates:
+and the influence of Gracchus secured Fannius the consulship almost at
+the moment when, without the trouble of a canvass or even of a formal
+candidature, he himself secured his second term of office. His position
+was further strengthened by the return of the ex-consul Fulvius Flaccus,
+as one of his colleagues in the tribunate.
+
+It was now, when the grand programme was actually being carried through,
+and the execution of the most varied measures was being pressed on by a
+single hand, that the possibilities of personal government were first
+revealed in Rome. The fiery orator was less to be dreaded than the
+unwearied man of action, whose restless energy was controlled by a
+clearness of judgment and concentration of purpose, which could
+distinguish every item of his vast sphere of administration and treat
+the task of the moment as though it were the one nearest to his heart.
+Even those who hated and feared Gracchus were struck with amazement at
+the practical genius which he revealed; while the sight of the leader in
+the midst of his countless tasks, surrounded by the motley retinue which
+they involved, roused the wondering admiration of the masses.[668] At
+one moment he was being interviewed by a contractor for public works, at
+another by an envoy from some state eager to secure his mediation; the
+magistrate, the artisan, the soldier and the man of letters besieged his
+presence chamber, and each was received with the appropriate word and
+the kindly dignity, which kings may acquire from training, but men of
+kingly nature receive from heaven as a seal of their fitness to rule.
+The impression of overbearing violence which had been given by his
+speeches, was immediately dispelled by contact with the man. The time of
+storm and stress had been passed for the moment, and in the fruition of
+his temporary power the true character of Gracchus was revealed. The
+pure intellectual enjoyment which springs from the sense of efficiency
+and the effective pursuit of a long-desired task, will not be shaken by
+the awkward impediments of the moment. All the human instruments, which
+the work demands, reflect the value of the object to which they
+contribute: and Gracchus was saved from the insolent pride of the
+patrician ruler and the helpless peevishness of the mere agitator whom
+circumstances have thrust into power, by the fact that his emotional
+nature was mastered by an intellect which had outlived prejudice and had
+never known the sense of incapacity. By the very character of its
+circumstances the regal nature was forced into a style of life which
+resembled and foreshadowed that of the coming monarchy. The
+accessibility to his friends and clients of every grade was the pride of
+the Roman noble, and doubtless Gracchus would willingly have modelled
+his receptions on the informal pattern which sufficed the proudest
+patrician at the head of the largest _clientèle_. But Gracchus's callers
+were not even limited to the whole of Rome; they came from Italy and the
+provinces: and it was found to be essential to adopt some rules of
+precedence, which would produce a methodical approach to his presence
+and secure each of his visitors an adequate hearing. He was the first
+Roman, we are told, to observe certain rules of audience. Some members
+of the crowd which thronged his ante-chamber, were received singly,
+others in smaller or in larger groups.[669] It is improbable that the
+mode of reception varied wholly with the official or social rank of
+those admitted; the nature of the client's business must also have
+dictated the secrecy or publicity of the interview; but the system must
+have seemed to his baffled enemies a welcome confirmation of their real
+or pretended fears--a symptom of the coming, if not actual, overthrow of
+Republicanism, the suspicion of which might one day be driven even into
+the thick heads of the gaping crowds, who stood by the portals to gaze
+at the ever-shifting throng of callers and to marvel at the power and
+popularity of their leader. Had Gracchus been content to live in the
+present and to regard his task as completed, it is just possible that
+the diverse interests which he had so dexterously welded together might
+have enabled him to secure, not indeed a continuity of power (for that
+would have been as strenuously resisted by the middle as by the upper
+class), but immediate security from the gathering conspiracy, the
+preservation of his life, and the probability of a subsequent political
+career. It is, however, difficult, to conceive that the position which
+Gracchus held could be either resigned or forgiven; and, although we
+cannot credit him with any conscious desire for holding a position not
+admitted by the laws, yet his genius unconsciously led him to identify
+the commonwealth with himself, while his mind, as receptive as it was
+progressive, would not have readily acquiesced in the view that a
+political creation can at any moment be called complete. The
+disinterested statesman will cling to power as tenaciously as one
+devoured by the most sordid ambition: and even on the lowest ground of
+personal security, the possession of authority is perhaps more necessary
+to the one than to the other. So indissolubly blended are the power and
+the projects of a leader, that it is idle to raise the question whether
+personal motives played any part in the project with which Gracchus was
+now about to delight his enemies and alienate his friends. He took up
+anew the question of the enfranchisement of the Italians--a question
+which the merest political tyro could have told him was enough to doom
+the statesman who spoke even a word in its favour. But Caius's position
+was no ordinary one, and he may have regarded his present influence as
+sufficient to induce the people to accept the unpalatable measure, the
+success of which might win for himself and his successors a wider
+constituency and a more stable following. The error in judgment is
+excusable in one who had never veiled his sympathy with the Italian
+cause, and had hitherto found it no hindrance to his popularity; but so
+clear-sighted a man as Gracchus must have felt at times that he was
+staking, not only his own career, but the fate of the programme and the
+party which he had built up, on the chance of securing an end, which had
+ceased to be regarded as the mere removal of an obstacle and had grown
+to be looked on as the coping-stone of a true reformer's work.
+
+The scope of his proposal[670] was more moderate than that which had
+been put forward by Flaccus. He suggested the grant of the full rights
+of citizenship to the Latins, and of Latin rights to the other Italian
+allies.[671] Italy was thus, from the point of view of private law, to
+be Romanised almost up to the Alps;[672] while the cities already in
+enjoyment of some or all of the private privileges of the Roman, were to
+see the one anomaly removed, which created an invidious distinction
+between them and the burgess towns, hampered their commerce, and
+imperilled their landed possessions. The proposal had the further
+advantage that it took account of the possible unwillingness of many of
+the federate cities to accept the Roman franchise; such a refusal was
+not likely to be made to the offer of Latin rights: for the Latin
+community was itself a federate city with its own laws, magistrates and
+courts, and the sense of autonomy would be satisfied while many of the
+positive benefits of Roman citizenship would be gained. Grades of
+privilege would still exist in Italy, and a healthy discontent might in
+time be fostered, which would lead all Italian communities to seek
+absorption into the great city. Past methods of incorporation might be
+held to furnish a precedent; the scheme proposed by Gracchus was hardly
+more revolutionary than that which had, in the third and at the
+beginning of the second centuries, resulted in the conferment of full
+citizenship on the municipalities of half-burgesses. It differed from it
+only in extending the principle to federate towns; but the rights of the
+members of the Latin cities bore a close resemblance to those of the old
+_municipes_, and they might easily be regarded as already enjoying the
+partial citizenship of Rome. The conferment of this partial citizenship
+on the other Italians, while in no way destroying local institutions or
+impairing local privileges, would lead to the possibility of a common
+law for the whole of Italy, would enable every Italian to share in the
+benefits of Roman business life, and appear in the court of the urban
+praetor to defend such rights as he had acquired, by the use of the
+forms of Roman law. The tentativeness of the character of Gracchus's
+proposal, while recommending it as in harmony with the cautious spirit
+of Roman development which had worked the great changes of the past, may
+also have been dictated by the feeling that the more moderate scheme
+stood a better chance of acceptance by the mob of Rome. All he asked was
+that the grievances which had led to the revolt of Fregellae, and the
+dangers revealed by that revolt, should be removed. The numbers of the
+added citizens would not be overwhelming; for the majority of Italians
+all that was asked was the possession of certain private rights, which
+had been so ungrudgingly granted to communities in the past. Throughout
+the campaign he probably laid more stress on the duty of protecting the
+individual than on the right of the individual to power. And the fact
+that the protection was demanded, not against the Roman State, but
+against an oppressive nobility that disgraced it by a misuse of its
+powers, gave a democratic colouring to the demand, and suggested a
+community of suffering, and therefore of sympathy, between the donors
+and recipients of the gift. Even before his franchise law was before the
+world, he seems to have been engaged in educating his auditors up to
+this view of the case; for it was probably in the speeches with which he
+introduced his law for the better protection of the life of the Roman
+citizen, that he illustrated the cruel caprice of the nobility by grisly
+stories of the sufferings of the Italians. He had told of the youthful
+legate who had had a cow-herd of Venusia scourged to death, as an answer
+to the rustic's jesting query whether the bearers of the litter were
+carrying a corpse: and of the consul who had scourged the quaestor of
+Teanum Sidicinum, the man of noblest lineage in his state, because the
+men's baths, in which the consul's wife had elected to bathe, were not
+adequately prepared for her reception.[673] Since the objections of the
+populace to the extension of the franchise were the result of prejudice
+rather than of reason, they might be weakened if the sense of jealousy
+and distrust could be diverted from the people's possible rivals to the
+common oppressors of Rome and Italy.
+
+The appeal to sentiment might have been successful, had not the most
+sordid passions of the mob been immediately inflamed by the oratory of
+the opponents of the measure. The most formidable of these opponents was
+drawn from the ranks of Gracchus's own supporters; for the franchise
+question had again proved a rock which could make shipwreck of the unity
+of the democratic party. His _protégé_, the consul Fannius, was not
+ashamed to appeal to the most selfish instincts of the populace. "Do you
+suppose," he said, "that, when you have given citizenship to the Latins,
+there will be any room left for you at public gatherings, or that you
+will find a place at the games or festivals? Will they not swamp
+everything with their numbers?" [674]
+
+Fannius, as a moderate, was an excellent exponent of senatorial views,
+and it was believed that many noble hands had collaborated in the
+crushing speech which inflicted one of its death-blows on the Gracchan
+proposal.[675]
+
+The opportunity for active opposition had at last arrived, and the
+senate was emboldened to repeat the measure which four years earlier had
+swept the aliens out of Rome. Perhaps in consequence of powers given by
+the law of Pennus, the consul Fannius was empowered to issue an edict
+that no Italian, who did not possess a vote in the Roman assemblies,
+should be permitted within five miles of Rome at the time when the
+proposal about the franchise was to be submitted to the Comitia.[676]
+Caius answered this announcement with a fiery edict of his own, in which
+he inveighed against the consul and promised his tribunician help to any
+of the allies who chose to remain in the city.[677] The power which he
+threatened to exercise was probably legal, since there is no reason to
+suppose that the tribunician _auxilium_ could be interposed solely for
+the assistance of members of the citizen body;[678] but he must have
+known that the execution of this promise was impracticable, since the
+injured party could be aided only by the personal interposition of the
+tribune, and it was clear that a single magistrate, burdened with many
+cares, and living a life of the most varied and strenuous activity,
+could not be present in every quarter of Rome and in a considerable
+portion of the surrounding territory. Even the cooperation of his ardent
+colleague Flaccus could not have availed for the protection of many of
+his Italian friends, and the course of events so soon taught him the
+futility of this means of struggling for Italian rights that when,
+somewhat later in the year, one of his Italian friends was seized by a
+creature of Fannius before his eyes, he passed by without an attempt at
+aid. His enemies, he knew, were at the time eager for a struggle in
+which, when they had isolated him from his Italian supporters, physical
+violence would decide the day: and he remarked that he did not wish to
+give them the pretext for the hand-to-hand combat which they
+desired.[679] One motive, indeed, of the invidious edict issued by the
+consul seems to have been to leave Gracchus to face the new position
+which his latest proposal had created, without any external help; but as
+external help, if successfully asserted, could only have taken the form
+of physical violence, there was reasonable ground for holding that the
+decree excluding the Italians was the only means of preventing a serious
+riot or even a civil war. The senate could scarcely have feared the
+moral influence of the Italians on the voting populace of Rome, and they
+knew that, in the present state of public sentiment, the constitutional
+means of resistance which had failed against Tiberius Gracchus might be
+successfully employed against his brother. The whole history of the
+first tribunate of Caius Gracchus proves the frank recognition of the
+fact that the tribunician veto could no longer be employed against a
+measure which enlisted anything like the united support of the people;
+but, like all other devices for suspending legislation, its employment
+was still possible for opponents, and welcome even to lukewarm
+supporters, when the body politic was divided on an important measure
+and even the allies of its advocate felt their gratitude and their
+loyalty submitted to an unwelcome strain. Resistance by means of the
+intercession did not now require the stolid courage of an Octavius, and
+when Livius Drusus threatened the veto,[680] there was no question of
+his deposition. Some nerve might have been required, had he made this
+announcement in the midst of an excited crowd of Italian postulants for
+the franchise; but from this experience he was saved by the
+precautionary measure taken by the senate. It is probable that Drusus's
+announcement caused an entire suspension of the legal machinery
+connected with the franchise bill, and that its author never ventured to
+bring it to the vote.
+
+It is possible that to this stage of Gracchus's career belongs a
+proposal which he promulgated for a change in the order of voting at the
+Comitia Centuriata. The alteration in the structure of this assembly,
+which had taken place about the middle of the third century, had indeed
+done much to equalise the voting power of the upper and lower classes;
+but the first class and the knights of the eighteen centuries were still
+called on to give their suffrage first, and the other classes doubtless
+voted in the order determined by the property qualification at which
+they were rated. As the votes of each century were separately taken and
+proclaimed, the absolute majority required for the decisions of the
+assembly might be attained without the inferior orders being called on
+to express their judgment, and it was notorious that the opinion of
+later voters was profoundly influenced by the results already announced.
+Gracchus proposed that the votes of all the classes should be taken in
+an order determined solely by the lot.[681] His interest in the Comitia
+Centuriata was probably due to the fact that it controlled the consular
+elections, and a democratic consulship, which he had vainly tried to
+secure by his support of Fannius, might be rendered more attainable by
+the adoption of the change which he advocated. The great danger of the
+coming year was the election of a consul strongly identified with the
+senatorial interest--of a man like Popillius who would be keen to seize
+some moment of reaction and attempt to ruin the leaders of the reform
+movement, even if he could not undo their work. It is practically
+certain that this proposal of Gracchus never passed into law, it is
+questionable whether it was ever brought before the Comitia. The
+reformer was immediately plunged into a struggle to maintain some of his
+existing enactments, and to keep the favour of the populace in the face
+of insidious attempts which were being made to undermine their
+confidence in himself.
+
+The senate had struck out a new line of opposition, and they had found a
+willing, because a convinced, instrument for their schemes. It is
+inconceivable that a council, which reckoned within itself
+representatives of all the noblest houses at Rome, should not have
+possessed a considerable number of members who were influenced by the
+political views of a Cato or a Scipio, or by the lessons of that
+humanism which had carried the Gracchi beyond the bounds of Roman
+caution, but which might suffuse a more conservative mind with just
+sufficient enlightenment to see that much was wrong, and that moderate
+remedies were not altogether beyond the limits of practicability. But
+this section of senatorial opinion could find no voice and take no
+independent action. It was crushed by the reactionary spirit of the
+majority of the peers, and frightened at the results to which its
+theories seem to lead, when their cautious qualifications, never likely
+to find acceptance with the masses, were swept away by more
+thorough-going advocates. But the voice, which the senate kept stifled
+during the security of its rule, might prove valuable in a crisis. The
+moderate might be put forward to outbid the extremist; for his
+moderation would certainly lead him to respect the prejudices of the
+mob, while any excesses, which he was encouraged or instructed to
+commit, need not touch the points essential to political salvation, and
+might be corrected, or left to a natural dissolution, when the crisis
+had been passed and the demagogue overthrown. The instrument chosen by
+the senate was Marcus Livius Drusus,[682] the tribune who had threatened
+to interpose his veto on the franchise bill. There is no reason why the
+historian should not treat the political attitude of this rival of
+Gracchus as seriously as it seems to have been treated by Drusus's
+illustrious son, who reproduced, and perhaps borrowed from his father's
+career, the combination of a democratic propaganda, which threw specious
+unessentials to the people, with the design of maintaining and
+strengthening the rule of the nobility. The younger Drusus was, it is
+true, a convert to the Italian claims which his father had resisted; but
+even this advocacy shows development rather than change, for the party
+represented by the elder Drusus was by no means blind to the necessity
+for a better security of Italian rights. The difference between the
+father and the son was that the one was an instrument and the other an
+agent. But a man who is being consciously employed as an instrument, may
+not only be thoroughly honest, but may reap a harvest of moral and
+mental satisfaction at the opportunities of self-fulfilment which chance
+has thrown in his way. The position may argue a certain lack of the
+sense of humour, but is not necessarily accompanied by any conscious
+sacrifice of dignity. Certainly the public of Rome was not in the secret
+of the comedy that was being played. It saw only a man of high birth and
+aristocratic culture, gifted with all the authority which great wealth
+and a command of dignified oratory can give,[683] approaching them with
+bounties greater in appearance than those which Gracchus had recently
+been willing to impart, attaching no conditions to the gift and, though
+speaking in the name of the senate, conveying no hint of the deprivation
+of any of the privileges that had so recently been won. And the new
+largess was for the Roman people alone; it was not depreciated by the
+knowledge that the blessings, which it conferred or to which it was
+added, would be shared by rivals from every part of Italy.
+
+An aspirant for favour, who wished to enter on a race with the recent
+type of popular leader, must inevitably think of provision for the poor;
+but a mere copy or extension of the Gracchan proposals was impossible.
+No measure that had been fiercely opposed by the senate could be
+defended with decency by the representative, and, as Drusus came in
+after time to be styled, the "advocate" of that body.[684] Such a scheme
+as an extension of the system of corn distribution would besides have
+shocked the political sense both of the patron and his clients, and
+would not have served the political purposes of the latter, since such a
+concession could not easily have been rescinded. The system of agrarian
+assignation, in the form in which it had been carried through by the
+hands of the Gracchi, had at the moment a complete machinery for its
+execution, and there was no plausible ground for extending this measure
+of benevolence. The older system of colonisation was the device which
+naturally occurred to Drusus and his advisers, and the choice was the
+more attractive in that it might be employed in a manner which would
+accentuate certain elements in the Gracchan scheme of settlement that
+had not commended themselves to public favour. The masses of Rome
+desired the monopoly of every prize which the favourite of the moment
+had to bestow; but Gracchus's colonies were meant for the middle class,
+not for the very poor, and the preliminary to membership of the
+settlements was an uncomfortable scrutiny into means, habits and
+character.[685] The masses desired comfort. Capua may have pleased them,
+but they had little liking for a journey across the sea to the site of
+desolated Carthage. The very modesty of Gracchus's scheme, as shown in
+the number of the settlements projected and of the colonists who were to
+find a home in each, proved that it was not intended as a benefit to the
+proletariate as a whole. Drusus came forward with a proposal for twelve
+colonies, all of which were probably to be settled on Italian and
+Sicilian soil;[686] each of these foundations was to provide for three
+thousand settlers, and emigrants were not excluded on the ground of
+poverty. An oblique reflection on the disinterestedness of Gracchus's
+efforts was further given in the clause which created the commissioners
+for the foundation of these new colonies, Drusus's name did not appear
+in the list. He asked nothing for himself, nor would he touch the large
+sums of money which must flow through the hands of the commissioners for
+the execution of so vast a scheme.[687] The suspicion of self-seeking or
+corruption was easily aroused at Rome, as it must have been in any state
+where such large powers were possessed by the executive, and where no
+control of the details of execution or expenditure had ever been
+exercised by the people; and Gracchus's all-embracing energy had
+betrayed him into a position, which had been accepted in a moment of
+enthusiasm, but which, disallowed as it was by current sentiment and
+perhaps by the law, might easily be shaken by the first suggestion of
+mistrust. The scheme of Drusus, although it proved a phantom and perhaps
+already possessed this elusive character when the senate pledged its
+credit to the propounder of the measure, was of value as initiating a
+new departure in the history of Roman colonisation. Even Gracchus had
+not proposed to provide in this manner for the dregs of the city, and
+the first suggestion for forming new foundations simply for the object
+of depleting the plethora of Rome--the purpose real or professed of many
+later advocates of colonisation--was due to the senate as an accident in
+a political game, to Drusus perhaps as the result of mature reflection.
+Since his proposal, which was really one for agrarian assignation on an
+enormous scale, was meant to compete with Gracchus's plan for the
+founding of colonies, it was felt to be impossible to burden the new
+settlers with the payment of dues for the enjoyment of their land.
+Gracchus's colonists were to have full ownership of the soil allotted to
+them, and Drusus's could not be placed in an inferior position. But the
+existence of thirty-six thousand settlers with free allotments would
+immediately suggest a grievance to those citizens who, under the
+Gracchan scheme of land-assignment, had received their lots subject to
+the condition of the payment of annual dues to the State. If the new
+allotments were to be declared free, the burden must be removed from
+those which had already been distributed.[688] Drusus and the senate
+thus had a logical ground for the step which seems to have been taken,
+of relieving all the land which had been distributed since the tribunate
+of the elder Gracchus from the payment of _vectigal_. It was a popular
+move, but it is strange that the senate, which was for the most part
+playing with promises, should have made up its mind to a definite step,
+the taking of which must have seriously injured the revenues of the
+State. But perhaps they regarded even this concession as not beyond
+recall, and they may have been already revolving in their minds those
+tortuous schemes of land-legislation, which in the near future were to
+go far to undo the work of the reformers.
+
+The senate also permitted Drusus to propose a law for the protection of
+the Latins, which should prove that the worst abuses on which Gracchus
+dwelt might be removed without the gift of the franchise. The enactment
+provided that no Latin should be scourged by a Roman magistrate, even on
+military service.[689] Such summary punishment must always have been
+illegal when inflicted on a Latin who was not serving as a soldier under
+Roman command and was within the bounds of the jurisdiction of his own
+state; the only conceivable case in which he could have been legally
+exposed to punishment at the hands of Roman officials in times of peace,
+was that of his committing a crime when resident or domiciled in Rome.
+In such circumstances the penalty may have been summarily inflicted, for
+the Latins as a whole did not possess the right of appeal to the Roman
+Comitia.[690] The extension of the magisterial right of coercion over
+the inhabitants of Latin towns, and its application in a form from which
+the Roman citizen could appeal, were mere abuses of custom, which
+violated the treaties of the Latin states and were not first forbidden
+by the Livian law. But the declaration that the Latin might not be
+scourged by a Roman commander even on military service, was a novelty,
+and must have seemed a somewhat startling concession at a time when the
+Roman citizen was himself subject to the fullest rigour of martial law.
+It was, however, one that would appeal readily to the legal mind of
+Rome, for it was a different matter for a Roman to be subject to the
+martial law of his own state, and for the member of a federate community
+to be subjected to the code of this foreign power. It was intended that
+henceforth the Latin should suffer at least the degrading punishment of
+scourging only after the jurisdiction and on the bidding of his own
+native commander; but it cannot be determined whether he was completely
+exempted from the military jurisdiction of the Roman commander-in-chief
+--an exemption which might under many circumstances have proved fatal to
+military discipline and efficiency. There is every reason to suppose
+that this law of Drusus was passed, and some reason to believe that it
+continued valid until the close of the Social War destroyed the
+distinctions between the rights of the Latin and the Roman. Its enactment
+was one of the cleverest strokes of policy effected by Drusus and the
+senate; for it must have satisfied many of the Latins, who were eager
+for protection but not for incorporation, while it illustrated the
+weakness, and as it may have seemed to many, the dishonesty, of
+Gracchus's seeming contention that abuses could only be remedied by the
+conferment of full political rights. The whole enterprise of Drusus
+fully attained the immediate effect desired by the senate. The people
+were too habituated to the rule of the nobility to remember grievances
+when approached as friends; the advances of the senate were received in
+good faith, and Drusus might congratulate himself that a representative
+of the Moderates had fulfilled the appropriate task of a mediator
+between opposing factions.[691]
+
+We might have expected that Gracchus, in the face of such formidable
+competition, would have stood his ground in Rome and would have
+exhausted every effort of his resistless oratory in exhibiting the
+dishonesty of his opponents and in seeking to reclaim the allegiance of
+the people. But perhaps he held that the effective accomplishment of
+another great design would be a better object-lesson of his power as a
+benefactor and a surer proof of the reality of his intentions, as
+contrasted with the shadowy promises of Drusus. He availed himself of
+his position of triumvir for the foundation of the colony of Junonia--an
+office which the senate gladly allowed him to accept--and set sail for
+Africa to superintend in person the initial steps in the creation of his
+great transmarine settlement.[692] His original plan was soon modified
+by the opposition which it encountered; the promised number of
+allotments was raised to six thousand, and Italians were now invited to
+share in the foundation.[693] Both of these steps were doubtless the
+result of the senate's dalliance with colonial schemes and with the
+Latins, but the latter may also be interpreted as a desperate effort to
+get the colony under weigh at any cost. Fulvius Flaccus, who was also
+one of the colonial commissioners, either stayed at Rome during the
+entire period of his colleague's absence or paid but the briefest visit
+to Africa; for he is mentioned as the representative of the party's
+interests in Rome during Gracchus's residence in the province. The
+choice of the delegate was a bad one. Not only was Flaccus hated by the
+senate, but he was suspected by the people. These in electing him to the
+tribunate had forgiven his Italian leanings when the Italian cause was
+held to be extinct; but now the odium of the franchise movement clung to
+him afresh, and suspicion was rife that the secret dealings with the
+allies, which were believed to have led to the outbreak of Fregellae,
+had never been interrupted or had lately been renewed. The difficulties
+of his position were aggravated by faults of manner. He possessed
+immense courage and was an excellent fighter; but, like many men of
+combative disposition, he was tactless and turbulent. His reckless
+utterances increased the distrust with which he was regarded, and
+Gracchus's popularity necessarily waned with that of his
+lieutenant.[694]
+
+Meanwhile the effort was being made to reawaken Carthage and to defy the
+curse in which Scipio had declared that the soil of the fallen city
+should be trodden only by the feet of beasts. No scruple could be
+aroused by the division of the surrounding lands; the site where
+Carthage had stood was alone under the ban,[695] and had Gracchus been
+content with mere agrarian assignment or had he established Junonia at
+some neighbouring spot, his opponents would have been disarmed of the
+potent weapon which superstition invariably supplied at Rome. As it was,
+alarming rumours soon began to spread of dreadful signs which had
+accompanied the inauguration of the colony.[696] When the colonists
+according to ancient custom were marching to their destined home in
+military order with standards flying, the ensign which headed the column
+was caught by a furious wind, torn from the grip of its resisting
+bearer, and shattered on the ground. When the altars had been raised and
+the victims laid upon them, a sudden storm-blast caught the offerings
+and hurled them beyond the boundaries of the projected city which had
+recently been cut by the share. The boundary-stones themselves were
+visited by wolves, who seized them in their teeth and carried them off
+in headlong flight. The reality of the last alarming phenomenon, perhaps
+of all these omens, was vehemently denied by Gracchus and by
+Flaccus;[697] but, even if the reports now flying abroad in Rome had any
+basis in fact, the circumstances of the foundation did not deter the
+leader nor frighten away his colonists. Gracchus proceeded with his work
+in an orderly and methodical manner, and when he deemed his personal
+supervision no longer essential, returned to Rome after an absence of
+seventy days. He was recalled by the news of the unequal contest that
+was being waged between the passionate Fulvius and the adroit Drusus.
+Clearly the circumstances required a cooler head than that possessed by
+Flaccus; and there was the threat of a still further danger which
+rendered Gracchus's presence a necessity. The consulship for the
+following year was likely to be gained by one of the most stalwart
+champions of ultra-aristocratic views. Lucius Opimius had been defeated
+when seeking that office in the preceding year, chiefly through the
+support which Gracchus's advocacy had secured to Fannius. Now there was
+every chance of his success;[698] for Opimius's chief claim to
+distinction was the prompt action which he had shown in the conquest of
+Fregellae, and the large numbers of the populace who detested the
+Italian cause were likely to aid his senatorial partisans in elevating
+him to the consulship. The consular elections might exercise a
+reactionary influence on the tribunician; and, if Gracchus's candidature
+was a failure, he might be at the mercy of a resolute opponent, who
+would regard his destruction as the justifiable act of a saviour
+of society.
+
+When Caius returned, the people as a whole seemed more apathetic than
+hostile. They listened with a cold ear both to appeals and promises, and
+this coldness was due to satiety rather than suspicion. They had been
+promised so much within the last few months that demagogism seemed to be
+a normal feature of existence, and no keen emotion was stirred by any
+new appeal to their vanity or to their interests. Such apathy, although
+it may favour the military pretender, is more to be dreaded than actual
+discontent by the man who rules merely by the force of character and
+eloquence. Criticism may be met and faced, and, the keener it is, the
+more it shows the interest of the critics in their leader. Pericles was
+hated one moment, deified the next; but no man could profess to be
+indifferent to his personality and designs. Gracchus took the lesson to
+heart, and concentrated his attention on the one class of his former
+supporters, whose daily life recalled a signal benefit which he had
+conferred, a class which might be moved by gratitude for the past and
+hope for the future. One of his first acts after his return was to
+change his residence from the Palatine to a site lying below the
+Forum.[699] Here he had the very poor as his neighbours, the true urban
+proletariate which never dreamed of availing itself of agrarian
+assignments or colonial schemes, but set a very real value on the
+corn-distributions, and may have believed that their continuance would
+be threatened by Gracchus's fall from power. It is probable, however,
+that, even without this motive, the characteristic hatred which is felt
+by the partially destitute for the middle class, may have deepened the
+affection with which Gracchus was regarded by the poorer of his
+followers, when they saw him abandoned by the more outwardly respectable
+of his supporters. The present position of Gracchus showed clearly that
+the powerful coalition on which he had built up his influence had
+crumbled away. From a leader of the State he had become but the leader
+of a faction, and of one which had hitherto proved itself powerless to
+resist unaided a sudden attack by the government.
+
+From this democratic stronghold he promulgated other laws, the tenor of
+which is unknown, while he showed his sympathy with the lower orders in
+a practical way which roused the resentment of his fellow-magistrates.
+[700] A gladiatorial show was to be given in the Forum on a certain day,
+and most of the magistrates had erected stands, probably in the form of
+a rude wooden amphitheatre, which they intended to let on hire.[701]
+Gracchus chose to consider this proceeding as an infringement of the
+people's rights. It was perhaps not only the admission by payment, but
+the opinion that the enclosure unduly narrowed the area of observation
+and cut off all view of the performance from the surrounding crowd,[702]
+that aroused Gracchus's protest, and he bade the magistrates pull down
+the erection that the poorer classes might have a free view of the
+spectacle. His request was disregarded, and Gracchus prepared a surprise
+for the obstinate organisers. On the very night before the show he
+sallied out with the workmen that his official duties still placed at his
+disposal; the tiers of seats were utterly demolished, and when day dawned
+the people beheld a vacant site on which they might pack themselves as
+they pleased. To the lower orders it seemed the act of a courageous
+champion, to the officials the wild proceeding of a headstrong
+demagogue. It could not have improved Gracchus's chances with the
+moneyed classes of any grade; he had merged their chances of enjoyment
+with that of the crowd and violated their sense of the prerogatives
+of wealth.
+
+But, although Gracchus may have been acting violently, he was not acting
+blindly. He must have known that his cause was almost lost, but he must
+also have been aware that the one chance of success lay in creating a
+solidarity of feeling in the poorer classes, which could only be
+attained by action of a pronounced and vigorous type. To what extent he
+was successful in reviving a following which furnished numerical support
+superior, or even equivalent to, the classes alienated by his conduct or
+won over by the intrigues of his opponents, is a fact on which we have
+no certain information. Only one mention has been preserved of his
+candidature for a third tribunate: and this narrative, while asserting
+the near approach which Gracchus made to victory, confesses the
+uncertainty of the accounts which had been handed down of the election.
+The story ran that he really gained a majority of the votes, but that
+the tribune who presided, with the connivance of some of his colleagues,
+basely falsified the returns.[703] It is a story that cannot be tested
+on account of our ignorance of the precautions taken, and therefore of
+the possibilities of fraud which might be exhibited, in the elections of
+this period. At a later period actual records of the voting were kept,
+in case a decision should be doubted;[704] and had an appeal to a
+scrutiny been possible at this time, Gracchus was not the man to let the
+dubious result remain unchallenged. But the story, even if we regard it
+as expressing a mere suspicion, suggests the profound disappointment of
+a considerable class, which had given its favourite its united support
+and received the news of his defeat with surprise and resentment. It
+breathes the poor man's suspicion of the chicanery of the rich, and may
+be an index that Gracchus retained the confidence of his humbler
+supporters until the end.
+
+The defeat, although a terrible blow, did not crush the spirit of
+Gracchus; it only rendered it more bitter and defiant. It was now that
+he exulted openly in the destructive character of his work, and he is
+said to have answered the taunts of his enemies by telling them that
+their laughter had a painful ring, and that they did not yet know the
+great cloud of darkness which his political activity had wrapped around
+their lives.[705] The dreaded danger of Opimius's election was soon
+realised, and members of the newly appointed tribunician college were
+willing to put themselves at the orders of the senate. The surest proof
+that Gracchus had fallen would be the immediate repeal of one of his
+laws, and the enactment which was most assailable was that which, though
+passed under another's name, embodied his project for the refoundation
+of Carthage. This Rubrian law might be attacked on the ground that it
+contravened the rules of religious right, the violation of which might
+render any public act invalid;[706] and the stories which had been
+circulated of the evil omens that had attended the establishment of
+Junonia, were likely to cause the scruples of the senate to be supported
+by the superstition of the people. Gracchus still held an official
+position as a commissioner for colonies, if not for land-distribution
+and the making of roads, but none of these positions gave him the
+authority to approach the people or the power to offer effective legal
+resistance to the threatened measure; any further opposition might
+easily take the form of a breach of the peace by a private individual
+and give his enemies the opportunity for which they were watching; and
+it was therefore with good reason that Gracchus at first determined to
+adopt a passive attitude in the face of the proposal of the tribune
+Minucius Rufus for the repeal of the Rubrian law.[707] Even Cornelia
+seems to have counselled prudence, and it was perhaps this crisis in her
+son's career which drew from her the passionate letter, in which the
+mother triumphs over the patriot and she sees the ruin of the Republic
+and the madness of her house in the loss which would darken her
+declining years.[708] This protest is more than consistent with the
+story that she sent country folk[709] to swell the following and protect
+the person of her son, when she saw that he would not yield without
+another effort to maintain his cause. The change of attitude is said to
+have been forced on Gracchus by the exhortations of his friends and
+especially of the impetuous Fulvius. The organisation of a band such as
+Gracchus now gathered round him, although not in itself illegal, was a
+provocation to riot; and a disastrous incident soon occurred which gave
+his opponents the handle for which they had long been groping. At the
+dawn of the day, on which the meeting was to be held for the discussion,
+and perhaps for the voting, on the repeal of the threatened law,
+Gracchus and his followers ascended to the Capitol, where the opposite
+party was also gathering in strength. It seems that the consul Opimius
+himself, although he could not preside at the final meeting of the
+assembly, which was purely plebeian, was about to hold a Contio[710] or
+to speak at one summoned by the tribunes. Gracchus himself did not
+immediately enter the area in which the meeting was to be held, but
+paced the portico of the temple buried in his thoughts.[711] What
+immediately followed is differently told; but the leading facts are the
+same in every version.[712] A certain Antullus or Antullius, spoken of
+by some as a mere unit amongst the people, described by others as an
+attendant or herald of Opimius, spoke some words--the Gracchans said, of
+insolence: their opponents declared, of patriotic protest--to Gracchus
+or to Fulvius, at the same time stretching out his arm to the speaker
+whom he addressed. The gesture was misinterpreted, and the unhappy man
+fell pierced with iron pens, the only weapons possessed by the unarmed
+crowd. There could be no question that the first act of violence had
+come from Gracchus's supporters, and the end for which Opimius had
+waited had been gained. Even the eagerness with which the leader had
+disclaimed the hasty action of his followers might be interpreted as a
+renewed infringement of law. He had hurried from the Capitol to the
+Forum to explain to all who would listen the unpremeditated nature of
+the deed and his own innocence of the murder; but this very action was a
+grave breach of public law, implying as it did an insult to the majesty
+of the tribune in summoning away a section of the people whom he was
+prepared to address.[713]
+
+The meeting on the Capitol was soon dissolved by a shower of rain,[714]
+and the tribunes adjourned the business to another day; while Gracchus
+and Fulvius Flaccus, whose half-formed plans had now been shattered,
+hastened to their respective homes. The weakness of their position had
+been that they refused to regard themselves in their true light as the
+leaders of a revolution against the government. Whatever their own
+intentions may have been, it is improbable that their supporters
+followed them to the Capitol simply with the design of giving peaceful
+votes against the measure proposed: and, had Antullius not fallen, the
+meeting on the Capitol might have been broken up by a rush of Gracchans,
+as that which Tiberius once harangued had been invaded by a band of
+senators. Success and even salvation could now be attained solely by the
+use of force; and the question of personal safety must have appealed to
+the rank and file as well as to the leaders, for who could forget the
+judicial massacre which had succeeded the downfall of Tiberius? But the
+security of their own lives was probably not the only motive which led
+numbers of their adherents to follow the two leaders to their
+homes.[715] Loyalty, and the keen activity of party spirit, which
+stimulates faction into war, must also have led them to make a last
+attempt to defend their patrons and their cause. The whole city was in a
+state of restless anticipation of the coming day; few could sleep, and
+from midnight the Forum began to be filled with a crowd excited but
+depressed by the sense of some great impending evil.[716]
+
+At daybreak the consul Opimius sent a small force of armed men to the
+Capitol, evidently for the purpose of preventing the point of vantage
+being seized by the hostile democrats, and then he issued notices for a
+meeting of the senate. For the present he remained in the temple of
+Castor and Pollux to watch events. When the fathers had obeyed his
+summons, he crossed the Forum and met them in the Curia. Shortly after
+their deliberations had begun, a scene, believed to have been carefully
+prepared, began to be enacted in the Forum.[717] A band of mourners was
+seen slowly making its way through the crowded market-place; conspicuous
+on its bier was the body of Antullius, stripped so that the wound which
+was the price of his loyalty might be seen by all. The bearers took the
+route that led them past the senate-house, sobbing as they went and
+wailing out the mourning cry. The consul was duly startled, and curious
+senators hastened to the door. The bier was then laid on the ground, and
+the horrified aristocrats expressed their detestation of the dreadful
+crime of which it was a witness. Their indignation may have imposed on
+some members of the crowd; others were inclined to mock this outburst of
+oligarchic pathos, and to wonder that the men who had slain Tiberius
+Gracchus and hurled his body into the Tiber, could find their hearts
+thus suddenly dissolved at the death of an unfortunate but
+undistinguished servant. The motive of the threnody was somewhat too
+obvious, and many minds passed from the memory of Tiberius's death to
+the thought of the doom which this little drama was meant to presage for
+his brother.
+
+The senators returned to the Curia, and the final resolution was taken.
+Opimius was willing to venture on the step which Scaevola had declined,
+and a new principle of constitutional law was tentatively admitted. A
+state of siege was declared in the terms that "the consul should see
+that the State took no harm," [718] and active measures were taken to
+prepare the force which this decree foreshadowed. Opimius bade the
+senators see to their arms, and enjoined each of the members of the
+equestrian centuries to bring with him two slaves in full equipment at
+the dawn of the next day.[719] But an attempt was made to avert the
+immediate use of force by issuing a summons to Gracchus and Flaccus to
+attend at the senate and defend their conduct there.[720] The summons
+was perfectly legal, since the consul had the right to demand the
+presence of any citizen or even any inferior magistrate; but the two
+leaders may well be excused for their act of contumacy in disobeying the
+command. They knew that they would merely be putting themselves as
+prisoners into the hands of a hostile force; nor, in the light of past
+events, was it probable that their surrender and punishment would save
+their followers from destruction. Preparations for defence, or a
+counter-demonstration which would prove the size and determination of
+their following, might lead the senate to think of negotiation. Its
+members had an inducement to take this view. Their legal position, with
+respect to the step which they were now contemplating, was unsound; and
+although they might claim that they had the government in the shape of
+its chief executive officer on their side, and that their late policy
+had attracted the support of the majority of the citizens, yet there was
+no uncontested precedent for the legitimacy of waging war against a
+faction at Rome; they had no mandate to perform this mission, and its
+execution, which had lately been rendered illegal by statute law, might
+subsequently be repudiated even by many of those whom they now regarded
+as their supporters. Yet we cannot wonder at the uncompromising attitude
+of the senate. They held themselves to be the legitimate government of
+the State; they had learnt the lesson that a government must rest either
+on its merits or on force; they were unwilling to repeat the scandalous
+scene which, on the occasion of Tiberius Gracchus's death, had proved
+their weakness, and were perhaps unable to resort to such unpremeditated
+measures in the face of the larger following of Caius; they could enlist
+on their side some members of the upper middle class who would share in
+the guilt, if guilt there was: and lastly they had at their mercy two
+men, of whom one had twice shaken the commonwealth and the other had
+gloried in the prospect of its self-mutilation in the future.
+
+The wisdom and justice of resistance appealed immediately to the mind of
+Flaccus, whose combative instincts found their natural satisfaction in
+the prospect of an interchange of blows. The finer and more complex
+spirit of Gracchus issued in a more uncertain mood. The bane of the
+thinker and the patriot was upon him. Was a man who had led the State to
+fight against it, and the rule of reason to be exchanged for the base
+arbitrament of the sword? None knew the emotions with which he turned
+from the Forum to gaze long and steadfastly at the statue of his father
+and to move away with a groan;[721] but the sight of his sorrow roused a
+sympathy which the call to arms might not have stirred. Many of the
+bystanders were stung from their attitude of indifference to curse
+themselves for their base abandonment of the man who had sacrificed so
+much, to follow him to his house, and to keep a vigil before his doors.
+The night was passed in gloomy wakefulness, the spirits of the watchers
+were filled with apprehension of the common sacrifice which the coming
+day might demand, and the silence was only broken when the voluntary
+guard was at intervals relieved by those who had already slumbered.
+Meanwhile the neighbours of Flaccus were being startled by the sounds of
+boisterous revelry that issued from his halls. The host was displaying
+an almost boyish exuberance of spirits, while his congenial comrades
+yelled and clapped as the wine and the jest went round. At daybreak
+Fulvius was dragged from his heavy slumbers, and he and his companions
+armed themselves with the spoils of his consulship, the Gallic weapons
+that hung as trophies upon his walls.[722] They then set out with
+clamorous threats to take possession of the Aventine. The home that
+Icilius had won for the Plebs was to be the scene of another struggle
+for freedom. It was in later times pretended that Fulvius had taken the
+step, from which even Catilina shrank, of calling the slaves to arms on
+a promise of freedom.[723] We have no means of disproving the
+allegation, which seems to have occurred with suspicious frequency in
+the records left by aristocratic writers of the popular movements which
+they had assisted to crush. But it is easy to see that the devotion of
+slaves to their own masters during such struggles, and the finding of
+their bodies amidst the slain, would be proof enough to a government,
+anxious to emphasise its merits as a saviour of society, that general
+appeals had been made to the servile class. Such a deduction might
+certainly have been drawn from a view of the forces mustered under
+Opimius; for in these the slaves may have exceeded the citizens in
+number.[724]
+
+Gracchus's mind was still divided between resistance and resignation. He
+consented to accompany his reckless friend to the Aventine, as the only
+place of refuge; but he declined to don his armour, merely fastening
+under his toga a tiny dagger,[725] as a means of defence in the last
+resort, or perhaps of salvation, did all other measures fail. The
+presage of his coming doom was shared by his wife Licinia who clung to
+him at the door, and when he gently disengaged himself from her arms,
+made one more effort to grasp his robe and sank senseless on the
+threshold. When Gracchus reached the Aventine with his friends, he found
+that Flaccus and his party had seized the temple of Diana and had made
+hasty preparations for fortifying it against attack. But Gracchus,
+impressed with the helplessness or the horror of the situation,
+persuaded him to make an effort at accommodation, and the younger son of
+Flaccus, a boy of singular beauty, was despatched to the Curia on the
+mission of peace.[726] With modest mien and tears streaming from his
+eyes he gave his message to the consul. Many--perhaps most--of those who
+listened were not averse to accept a compromise which would relieve the
+intolerable strain and avert a civil strife. But Opimius was inflexible;
+the senate, he said, could not be approached by deputy; the principals
+must descend from the Aventine, lay down their arms, deliver themselves
+up to justice as citizens subject to the laws, and then they might
+appeal to the senate's grace; he ended by forbidding the youth to
+return, if he could not bring with him an acceptance of these final
+terms. The more pacific members of the senate could offer no effective
+objection, for it was clear that the consul was acting within his legal
+rights. The coercion of a disobedient citizen was a matter for the
+executive power and, though Opimius had spoken in the name of the
+senate, the authority and the responsibility were his. Retirement would
+have been their only mode of protest; but this would have been a
+violation of the discipline which bound the Council to its head, and
+would have betrayed a suspicious indifference to the cause which was
+regarded as that of the constitution. It is said that, on the return of
+the messenger, Gracchus expressed willingness to accept the consul's
+terms and was prepared to enter the senate and there plead his own cause
+and that of his followers.[727] But none of his comrades would agree,
+and Flaccus again despatched his son with proposals similar to those
+which had been rejected. Opimius carried out his injunction by detaining
+the boy and, thirsting for battle to effect the end which delay would
+have assured, advanced his armed forces against the position held by
+Flaccus. He was not wholly dependent on the improvised levies of the
+previous day. There were in Rome at that moment some bands of Cretan
+archers,[728] which had either just returned from service with the
+legions or were destined to take part in some immediate campaign. It was
+to their efforts that the success of the attack was mainly due. The
+barricade at the temple might have resisted the onslaught of the
+heavily-armed soldier; but its defenders were pierced by the arrows, the
+precinct was strewn with wounded men, and the ranks were in utter
+disorder when the final assault was made. There were names of
+distinction which lent a dignity to the massacre that followed. Men like
+Publius Lentulus, the venerable chief of the senate, gave a perpetual
+colour of respectability to the action of Opimius by appearing in their
+panoplies amongst the forces that he led.[729]
+
+When the rout was complete and the whole crowd in full flight, Flaccus
+sought escape in a workshop owned by a man of his acquaintance; but the
+course of his flight had been observed, the narrow court which led to
+the house was soon crowded by pursuers, who, maddened by their ignorance
+of the actual tenement that concealed the person of Flaccus, vowed that
+they would burn the whole alley to the ground if his hiding-place were
+not revealed.[730] The trembling artisan who had befriended him did not
+dare to betray his suppliant, but relieved his scruples by whispering
+the secret to another. The hiding place was immediately revealed, and
+the great ex-consul who had laid the foundations of Rome's dominion in
+farther Gaul, a man strenuous and enlightened, ardent and faithful but
+perhaps not overwise, was hacked to pieces by his own citizens in an
+obscure corner of the slums of Rome. His elder son fell fighting by his
+side. To the younger, the fair ambassador of that day, now a prisoner of
+the consul, the favour was granted of choosing his own mode of death.
+Early Rome had repudiated the principle of visiting the sins of the
+fathers upon the children;[731] but the cold-blooded horrors of the
+Oriental and Hellenic world were now becoming accepted maxims of state
+to a government trembling for its safety and implacable in its revenge.
+
+Meanwhile Gracchus had been saved from both the stain of civil war and
+the humiliation of capture by his foes. No man had seen him strike a
+blow throughout the contest. In sheer disgust at the appalling scene he
+had withdrawn to the shrine of Diana, and was there prepared to compass
+his own death.[732] His hand was stayed by two faithful friends,
+Pomponius and Laetorius,[733] who urged him to escape. Gracchus obeyed,
+but it was believed by some that, before he left the temple, he
+stretched forth his hand to the goddess and prayed that the Roman people
+might never be quit of slavery as a reward for their ingratitude and
+treachery.[734] This outburst of anger, a very natural consequence of
+his own humiliating plight, is said to have been kindled by the
+knowledge that the larger portion of the mob had already listened to a
+promise of amnesty and had joined the forces of Opimius. Unlike most
+imprecations, that of Gracchus was destined to be fulfilled.
+
+The flight of Gracchus led him down the slope of the Aventine to the
+gate called Trigemina which stood near the Tiber's bank. In hastening
+down the hill he had sprained his ankle, and time for his escape was
+only gained by the devotion of Pomponius,[735] who turned, and
+single-handed kept the pursuing enemy at bay until trampling on his
+prostrate body they rushed in the direction of the wooden bridge which
+spanned the river. Here Laetorius imitated the heroism of his comrade.
+Standing with drawn sword at the head of the bridge, he thrust back all
+who tried to pass until Gracchus had gained the other bank. Then he too
+fell, pierced with wounds. The fugitive had now but a single slave to
+bear him company in his flight; it led them through frequented streets,
+where the passers-by stopped on their way, cheered them on as though
+they were witnessing a contest of speed, but gave no sign of help and
+turned deaf ears to Gracchus's pleading for a horse; for the pursuers
+were close behind, and the dulled and panic-stricken mob had no thought
+but for themselves. The grove of Furrina[736] received them just before
+they were overtaken by the pursuing band; and in the sacred precinct the
+last act was accomplished. It was known only that master and slave had
+been found lying side by side. Some believed that the faithful servant
+had slain Gracchus and then pierced his own breast; others held that
+they were both living when the enemy came upon them, but that the slave
+clung with such frantic devotion to his master that Gracchus's body
+could not be reached until the living shield had been pierced and torn
+away.[737] The activity of the pursuers had been stimulated by greed,
+for Opimius had put a price upon the heads of both the leaders of the
+faction on the Aventine. The bearers of these trophies of victory were
+to receive their weight in gold. The humble citizens who produced the
+head of Flaccus are said to have been defrauded of their reward; but the
+action of the man who wrested the head of Gracchus from the first
+possessor of the prize and bore it on a javelin's point to Opimius, long
+furnished a text to the moralist who discoursed on the madness of greed
+and the thirst of gold. Its unnatural weight is said to have revealed
+the fact that the brain had been extracted and the cavity filled with
+molten lead.[738] The bodies of the slain were for the most part thrown
+into the Tiber, but one account records that that of Gracchus was handed
+over to his mother for burial.[739] The number of the victims of the
+siege, the pursuit and the subsequent judicial investigation is said to
+have been three thousand.[740] The resistance to authority, which was
+all that could be alleged against the followers of Gracchus, was
+treated, not as a riot, but as a rebellion. The Tullianum saw its daily
+dole of victims, who were strangled by the executioner; the goods of the
+condemned were confiscated by the State and sold at public auction. All
+public signs of mourning were forbidden to their wives;[741] and the
+opinion of Scaevola, the greatest legal expert of the day, was that some
+property of his niece Licinia, which had been wrecked in the general
+tumult, could be recovered only from the goods of her husband, to whom
+the sedition was due.[742] The attitude of the government was, in fact,
+based on the view that the members of the defeated party, whether slain
+or executed, had been declared enemies of the State. Their action had
+put them outside the pale of law, and the decree of the senate, which
+had assisted Opimius in the extreme course that he had taken, was an
+index that the danger, which it vaguely specified, aimed at the actual
+existence of the commonwealth and undermined the very foundations of
+society. Such was the theory of martial law which Opimius's bold action
+gave to his successors. Its weakness lay in the circumstance that it was
+unknown to the statutes and to the courts; its plausibility was due
+partly to the fact that, since the desuetude of the dictatorship, no
+power actually existed in Rome which could legally employ force to crush
+even the most dangerous popular rising, and partly to the peculiarities
+of the movement which witnessed the first exercise of this authority.
+The killing of Caius Gracchus and his followers, however useless and
+mischievous the act may have been, had about it an air of spurious
+legality, with which no ingenuity could invest the murder of Tiberius
+and his adherents. The fallen chiefs were in enjoyment of no magisterial
+authority that could justify either their initial action or their
+subsequent disobedience; they had fortified a position in the town, and
+had certainly taken up arms, presumably for the purpose of inflicting
+grievous harm on loyal fellow-citizens. As their opponents were
+certainly the government, what could they be but declared foes who had
+been caught red-handed in an act of treason so open and so violent that
+the old identity of "traitors" and "enemies" was alone applicable to
+their case? Thus legal theory itself proclaimed the existence of civil
+war, and handed on to future generations of party leaders an instrument
+of massacre and extirpation which reached its culminating point in the
+proscription list of Sulla.
+
+Opimius, after he had ceased to preside at his death-dealing commission,
+expressed the view that he had removed the rabies of discord from the
+State by the foundation of a temple to Harmony. The bitter line which
+some unseen hand scribbled on the door,[743] expressed the doubt, which
+must soon have crept over many minds, whether the doctor had not been
+madder than the patient, and the view, which was soon destined to be
+widely held, that the authors of the discord which had been professedly
+healed, the teachers who were educating Rome up to a higher ideal of
+civil strife, were the very men who were now in power.[744] We shall see
+in the sequel with what speed Time wrought his political revenge. In the
+hearts of men the Gracchi were even more speedily avenged. The Roman
+people often alternated between bursts of passionate sentiment and
+abject states of cowardly contentment; but through all these phases of
+feeling the memory of the two reformers grew and flourished. To accept
+the Gracchi was an article of faith impressed on the proudest noble and
+the most bigoted optimate by the clamorous crowd which he addressed. The
+man who aped them might be pronounced an impostor or a traitor; the men
+he aped belonged almost to the distant world of the half-divine. Their
+statues were raised in public places, the sites on which they had met
+their death were accounted holy ground and were strewn with humble
+offerings of the season's fruits. Many even offered to their images a
+daily sacrifice and sank on their knees before them as before those of
+the gods.[745] The quiet respect or ecstatic reverence with which the
+names and memories of the Gracchi were treated, was partly due to a
+vague sense in the mind of the common man that they were the authors of
+the happier aspects of the system under which he lived, of the brighter
+gleams which occasionally pierced the clouds of oppression and
+discomfort; it was also due to the conviction in the mind of the
+statesman, often resisted but always recurring, that their work was
+unalterable. To undo it was to plunge into the dark ages, to attempt to
+modify it was immediately to see the necessity of its renewal. At every
+turn in the paths of political life the statesman was confronted by two
+figures, whom fear or admiration raised to gigantic proportions. The
+orthodox historian would angrily declare that they were but the figures
+of two young men, whose intemperate action had thrown Rome into
+convulsion and who had met their fate, not undeserved however
+lamentable, the one in a street riot, the other while heading an armed
+sedition. But the criticism contained the elements of its own
+refutation. The youth, the brotherhood, the martyrdom of the men were
+the very elements that gave a softening radiance to the hard contour of
+their lives. The Gracchi were a stern and ever-present reality; they
+were also a bright and gracious memory. In either character they must
+have lived; but the combination of both presentments has secured them an
+immortality which age, wisdom, experience and success have often
+struggled vainly to secure. That strange feeling which a great and
+beautiful life has often inspired, that it belongs to eternity rather
+than to the immediate past, and that it has few points of contact with
+the prosaic round of present existence, had almost banished from
+Cornelia's mind the selfish instincts of her loss, and had perhaps even
+dulled the tender memories which cluster round the frailer rather than
+the stronger elements in the characters of those we love. Those who
+visited her in her villa at Misenum, where she kept her intellectual
+court, surrounded by all that was best in letters, and exchanging
+greetings or gifts with the potentates of the earth, were amazed at the
+composure with which she spoke of the lives and actions of her
+sons.[746] The memory drew no tear, her voice conveyed no intonation of
+sorrow or regret. She spoke of them as though they were historical
+figures of the past, men too distant and too great to arouse the weak
+emotion which darkens contemplation. Some thought that her mind had been
+shaken by age, or that her sensibility had been dulled by misfortune.
+"In this they proved their own utter lack of sensibility" says the
+loving biographer of the Gracchi: They did not know, he adds, the signs
+of that nobility of soul, which is sometimes given by birth and is
+always perfected by culture, or the reasonable spirit of endurance which
+mental and moral excellence supply. The calmness of Cornelia proved, as
+well, that she was at one with her children after their death, and their
+identity with a mind so pure is as great a tribute to their motives as
+the admiration or fear of the Romans is to their intellect and their
+deeds, Cornelia deserved a memorial in Rome for her own intrinsic worth;
+but the demeanour of her latter days justifies the legend engraved on
+the statue which was to be seen in the portico of Metellus: "To
+Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi".[747]
+
+We are now in a position to form some estimate of the political changes
+which had swept over Rome during the past twelve years. The
+revolutionary legislation of this period was, strictly speaking, not
+itself the change, but merely the formula which marked an established
+growth; nor can any profit be derived from drawing a marked contrast
+between the aims and methods of the two men who were responsible for the
+most decisive of these reforms. A superficial view of the facts might
+lead us to suppose that Tiberius Gracchus had bent his energies solely
+to social amelioration, and that it was reserved for his brother Caius
+to effect vast changes in the working, though not in the structure, of
+the constitution. But even a chronological survey of the actions of
+these two statesmen reveals the vast union of interests that suddenly
+thrust themselves forward, with a vehemence which demanded either such a
+resistance as no political society is homogeneous enough to maintain, or
+such concessions as may be graciously made by a government which after
+the grant may still retain most of the forms and much of the substance
+of its former power. So closely interwoven were social and political
+questions, so necessary was it for the attempted satisfaction of one
+class immediately to create the demand for the recognition or
+compensation of another, that Tiberius Gracchus had no sooner formulated
+his agrarian proposals than he was beset with thoughts of legislating
+for the army, transferring some of the judicial power to the equestrian
+order, and granting the franchise to the allies. Even the belief that
+these projects were merely a device for securing his own ascendency,
+does not prove that their announcement was due to a brilliant discovery
+of their originator, or that he created wants which he thereupon
+proposed to satisfy. The desperate statesman seizes on the grievance
+which is nearest to hand; it is true that he may increase a want by
+giving the first loud and clear expression to the low and confused
+murmurings of discontent; but a grievance that lives and gives violent
+tokens of its presence, as did that of the Italian allies in the
+Fregellan revolt, must be real, not fictitious: and when it finds a
+remedy, as the needs of the poor and the political claims of the knights
+did under the régime of Caius Gracchus, the presumption is that the
+disease has been of long standing, and that what it has for a long time
+lacked was not recognition, but the opportunity and the intelligence
+necessary to secure redress. Caius Gracchus was as little of a political
+explorer as his brother; it did not require the intuition of genius to
+see facts which formed the normal environment of every prominent
+politician of the age. His claim to greatness rests, partly on the
+mental and moral strength which he shared with Tiberius and which gave
+him the power to counteract the force of inertia and transmute vague
+thought, first into glowing words and then into vigorous action; partly
+on the extraordinary ingenuity with which he balanced the interests and
+claims of classes so as to form a coalition which was for the time
+resistless: and partly on the finality with which he removed the
+jealousies of the hour from the idle arena of daily political strife,
+and gave them their place in the permanent machinery of the
+constitution, there to remain as the necessary condition of the
+precarious peace or the internecine war which the jarring elements of a
+balance of power bring in turn to its possessors.
+
+Since the reality of the problems with which the Gracchi dealt is
+undeniable, and since few would be inclined to admit that the most
+effective treatment of a problem, whether social or political, is to
+refuse it a solution, any reasonable criticism of their reforms must be
+based solely on a consideration of their aims and methods. The land
+question, which was taken up by both these legislators, attracts our
+first attention. The aim of the resumption and redistribution of the
+public domain had been the revival of the class of peasant holders, whom
+legend declared, perhaps with a certain element of truth, to have formed
+the flower of the civic population during the years when Rome was
+struggling for a place amongst the surrounding peoples and in the
+subsequent period of her expansion over Italy. Such an aim may be looked
+at from two points of view. It may be regarded as an end in itself,
+without any reference to its political results, or it may be looked on
+as an effort to increase the power and security of the State without any
+peculiar consideration of the comfort and well-being of its individual
+members. The Gracchan scheme, regarded from the first point of view,
+can, with respect to its end as distinguished from its methods, be
+criticised unfavourably only by those who hold that an urban life does
+under all circumstances convey moral, mental and physical benefits which
+are denied by the conditions of residence in country districts. It is
+true that the objector may in turn point out that the question of the
+standard of comfort to be attained in either sphere is here of supreme
+importance; but such an issue brings us at once within the region of
+means and not of ends, and an ideal of human life cannot be judged
+solely with reference to the practicability of its realisation. It is
+the second point of view from which the aim of this land legislation may
+be contemplated, which first gives the critic the opportunity of denying
+the validity of the end as well as the efficiency of the means. If the
+new agriculturist was meant to be an element of strength to the Roman
+State, to save it from the selfishness of a narrow oligarchy, the
+instability of a city mob and the corruption of both, to defend the
+conquests which the city had won or to push her empire further, it was
+necessary to prove that he could be of utility both as a voting unit and
+as a soldier in the legions. His capacity for performing the first
+function efficiently was, at the very least, extremely questionable. The
+reality of the farmer's vote obviously depended on the closeness of his
+residence to the capital, since there is not the least trace, at this or
+at any future time during the history of the Republic, of the formation
+of any design for modifying the rigidly primary character of the popular
+assemblies of Rome. The rights of the voter at a distance had always
+been considered so purely potential, that the inland and northern
+settlements which Rome established in Italy had generally been endowed
+with Latin rights, while the colonies of Roman citizens clustered more
+closely round their mother; and men had always been found ready to
+sacrifice the active rights of Roman citizenship, on account of the
+worthlessness of their possession in a remote colony. It was even
+difficult to reconcile the passive rights of Roman citizenship with
+residence at a distance from the capital; for all the higher
+jurisdiction was centred in Rome and could not easily be sought by the
+inhabitants of distant settlements.[748] But, even if we exclude the
+question of relative distance from the centre of affairs, it was still
+not probable that the dweller in the country would be a good citizen
+according to the Hellenic comprehension of that phrase. When Aristotle
+approves of a country democracy, simply because it is not strictly a
+democracy at all,[749] he is thinking, not merely of the farmer's lack
+of interest in city politics, but of the incompatibility of the
+perpetual demands which rural pursuits make on time and energy with
+attendance on public business at the centre of affairs. The son of the
+soil soon learns that he owes undivided allegiance to his mother: and he
+will seldom be stirred by a political emotion strong enough to overcome
+the practical appeals which are made by seed-time and harvest. But the
+opportunities for discarding civic obligations were far greater in Rome
+than in the Greek communities. The Roman assemblies had no stated days
+of meeting, laws might be promulgated and passed at any period of the
+year, their tenor was explained at public gatherings which were often
+announced on the very morning of the day for which they were summoned,
+and could be attended only by those whom chance or leisure or the
+habitual pursuit of political excitement had brought to the Capitol or
+the Forum. There was not at this period a fixed date even for the
+elections of the higher magistrates. An attempt was perhaps made to
+arrange them for the summer, when the roads were passable, the labours
+of spring were over, and the toils of harvest time had not yet
+commenced.[750] But the creation of the magistrates with Imperium
+depended to a large extent on the convenience of the consuls, one of
+whom had sometimes to be summoned back from a campaign to preside at the
+Comitia which were to elect his successors; while even the date of the
+tribunician elections might have been conditioned by political
+considerations. The closing events of the life of Tiberius Gracchus
+prove how difficult it was to secure the attendance of the country voter
+even when an election of known political import was in prospect; while
+Caius realised that the best security for the popular leader, whether as
+a legislator or a candidate, was to attach the urban resident to himself
+by the ties of gratitude and interest. We can scarcely admit, in the
+face of facts like these, that the agriculturist created by the Gracchan
+reforms was likely to render any signal political assistance to his
+city. It is true that the existence of a practically disfranchised
+proletariate may have a modifying influence on politics. It could not in
+Rome serve the purpose, which it sometimes fulfils in the modern world,
+of moulding the opinion of the voter; but even in Rome it suggested a
+reserve that might be brought up on emergencies. A state, however, does
+not live on emergencies but on the constant and watchful activity of its
+members. Such activity could be displayed at Rome only by the leisured
+senator or the leaders of the city mob. The forces that had worked for
+oligarchy in the past might under changed conditions produce a narrow
+type of urban democracy; but they presented no hope of the realisation
+of a true popular government.
+
+It might be hoped, however, that the newly created farmer might add to
+the military, if not the political, strength of the State. The hope, so
+far as it rested on the agriculturist himself, was rendered something of
+an anachronism by the present conditions of service. Even in the old
+days a campaign prolonged beyond the ordinary duration of six months had
+often effected the ruin of the peasant proprietor; and now that the
+cautious policy of the protectorate had been so largely abandoned and
+Rome's military efforts, no longer limited to wars of defence or
+aggression, were directed to securing her ascendency in distant
+dependencies by means of permanent garrisons, service in the legions was
+a still more fatal impediment to industrial development. Rome had not
+yet learnt the lesson that an empire cannot be garrisoned by an army of
+conscripts; but she was becoming conscious of the inadequacy of her own
+military system, and this consciousness led her to take the easy but
+fatal step of throwing far the larger burden of foreign service on the
+Latins and Italian allies. Any increase in the number and efficiency of
+her own military forces would thus remove a dangerous grievance, while
+it added to the strength which, in the last resort, could alone secure
+the permanence of her supremacy even in Italy. Such an increase was
+finally effected in the only possible manner--by the adoption of a
+system of voluntary enlistment and by carrying still further the
+increasing disregard for those antiquated conditions of wealth and
+status, which were a part of the theory that service was a burden and
+wholly inconsistent with the new requirement that it should become a
+profession. Although it must be confessed that little assistance in this
+direction was directly tendered by the Gracchan legislation, yet it
+should be remembered that, even if we exclude from consideration the
+small efforts made by Caius to render military service a more attractive
+calling, the increase of the farmer class might of itself have done much
+to solve the problem. Although the single occupant of a farm was clearly
+incapable of taking his part in expeditions beyond the seas without
+serious injury to his own interests, yet the sons of such a man might
+have performed a considerable term of military service without
+disastrous consequences to the estate, and where the inheritance had
+remained undivided and several brothers held the land in common, the
+duties of the soldier and the farmer might have been alternated without
+leaving the homestead divested of its head. The recognition of the
+military life as a profession must have profited still more by the
+policy which encouraged the growth of the country population; for the
+energy of the surplus members of the household, whose services were not
+needed or could not be adequately rewarded on the farm, would find a
+more salutary outlet in the stirring life of the camp than in the
+enervating influences of the city. The country-side might still continue
+to supply a better physique and a finer morale than were likely to be
+discovered in the poorer quarters of Rome.
+
+The objects aimed at in the Gracchan scheme of land-reform, although in
+some respects difficult of realisation, have aroused less hostile
+criticism than the methods which were adopted for their fulfilment. It
+may be held that the scheme of practical confiscation, which, advocated
+by Tiberius Gracchus, plunged him at once into a fierce political
+struggle and encountered resistance which could only be overcome by
+unconstitutional means, might have been avoided had the reformer seen
+that an economic remedy must be ultimate to be successful, and that an
+economic tendency can only be resisted by destroying the conditions
+which give it the false appearance of a law. The two conditions which
+were at the time fatal to the efforts of the moderate holder of land,
+are generally held to have been the cheapness and, under the inhumane
+circumstances of its employment, even efficiency of slave labour, and
+the competition of cheap corn from the provinces. The remedial measures
+which might immediately present themselves to the mind of a modern
+economist, who was unfettered by a belief in free trade or in the
+legitimacy of securing the cheapest labour available, are the
+prohibition of, or restrictions on, the importation of slaves, and the
+imposition of a duty on foreign corn. The first device might in its
+extreme form have been impracticable, for it would have been difficult
+to ensure such a supervision of the slave market as to discriminate
+between the sale of slaves for agricultural or pastoral work and their
+acquirement for domestic purposes. A tax on servile labour employed on
+land, or the moderate regulation which Caesar subsequently enforced that
+a certain proportion of the herdsmen employed on the pasture lands
+should be of free birth,[751] would have been more practicable measures,
+and perhaps, if presented as an alternative to confiscation, might not
+have encountered an unconquerable resistance from the capitalists,
+although their very moderation might have won them but a lukewarm
+support from the people, and ensured the failure that attends on
+half-measures which do not carry their meaning on their face and lack
+the boldness which excites enthusiasm. But the real objection which the
+Gracchi and their circle would have had to legislation of this type,
+whether it had been suggested to them in its extreme shape or in some
+modified form, would have been that it could not have secured the object
+at which they aimed. Such measures would merely have revived the free
+labourer, while their dream was to re-establish the peasant proprietor,
+or at least the occupant who held his land on a perfectly secure tenure
+from the State. And even the revival of the free labourer would only
+have been exhibited on the most modest scale; for such legislation would
+have done nothing to reclaim arable land which had degenerated into
+pasturage, and to reawaken life in the great deserted tracts, whose
+solitude was only broken by the rare presence of the herdsman's cabin.
+To raise a cry for the restoration of free labour on this exiguous scale
+might have exposed a legislator to the disappointment, if not derision,
+of his friends and invited the criticism, effective because popular, of
+all his secret foes. The masters of the world were not likely to give
+enthusiastic support to a leader who exhibited as their goal the lonely,
+barren and often dangerous life of sheep-driver to some greedy
+capitalist, and who offered them the companionship, and not the service,
+of the slaves that their victorious arms had won.
+
+The alternative of protective legislation for the defence of Italian
+grain may be even more summarily dismissed. It was, in the first place,
+impossible from the point of view of political expediency. The Gracchi,
+or any other reforming legislators, had to depend for their main support
+on the voting population of the city of Rome: and such a constituency
+would never have dreamed for a moment of sanctioning a measure which
+would have made the price of corn dearer in the Roman market, even if
+the objections of the capitalists who placed the foreign grain on that
+market could have been successfully overcome. So far from dreaming of
+the practicability of such a scheme, Caius Gracchus had been forced to
+allow the sale of corn at Rome at a cost below the current market-price.
+But, even had protection been possible, it must have come as the last,
+not as the first, of the constructive measures necessary for the
+settlement of the agrarian question. It might have done something to
+keep the small farms standing, but these farms had to be created before
+their maintenance was secured; and if adopted, apart from some scheme
+aiming at a redivision of the land, such a protective measure would
+merely have benefited such existing owners of the large estates as still
+continued to devote a portion of their domains to agriculture. The fact,
+however, which may be regarded as certain, that foreign corn could
+undersell that of Italy in the Roman market, and probably in that of all
+the great towns within easy access of the sea, may seem a fatal flaw in
+the agrarian projects of the Gracchi. What reason was there for
+supposing that the tendencies which in the past had favoured the growth
+of large holdings and replaced agriculture by pasturage, should remain
+inoperative in the future? Tiberius Gracchus's own regulation about the
+inalienability of the lands which he assigned, seemed to reveal the
+suspicion that the tendencies towards accumulation had not yet been
+exhausted, and that the occupants of the newly created farms might not
+find the pursuit of agriculture so profitable as to cling to them in
+scorn of the enticements of the encroaching capitalist. Doubtless the
+prohibition to sell revealed a weakness in the agricultural system of
+the times; but the regulation was probably framed, not in despair of the
+small holder securing a maintenance, but as a protection against the
+money-lender, that curse of the peasant-proprietor, who might now be
+less willing to approach the peasant, when the security which he
+obtained could under no circumstances lead to his acquiring eventual
+ownership. With respect to the future, there was reasonable hope that
+the farmer, if kept in tolerable security from the strategic advances of
+his wealthier neighbours, would be able to hold his own. In a modern
+state, possessing a teeming population and a complex industrial
+organisation, where the profits of a widely spread commercial life have
+raised the standard of comfort and created a host of varied needs, the
+view may reasonably be taken that, before agriculture can declare itself
+successful, it must be able to point to some central market where it
+will receive an adequate reward for the labour it entails. But this view
+was by no means so prevalent in the simpler societies of antiquity. The
+difficulties of communication, which, with reference to transport, must
+have made Rome seem nearer to Africa than to Umbria, and must have
+produced a similar tendency to reliance on foreign imports in many of
+the great coast towns, would alone have been sufficient to weaken the
+reliance of the farmer on the consumption of his products by the larger
+cities. The belief that the homestead might be almost self-sufficient
+probably lingered on in remote country districts even in the days of the
+Gracchi; or, if absolute self-existence was unattainable, the
+necessities of life, which the home could not produce, might be procured
+without effort by periodical visits to the market or fair, which formed
+the industrial centre of a group of hamlets. The seemingly ample size of
+the Gracchan allotments, some of which were three times as great as the
+larger of the colonial assignments of earlier days,[752] pointed to the
+possibility of the support of a large family, if the simpler needs of
+life were alone considered. The farmer's soul need not be vexed by
+competition if he was content to live and not to trade, and it might
+have been hoped that the devotion to the soil, which ownership inspires,
+might have worked its magic even on the lands left barren through
+neglect. There might even be a hope for the cultivator who aimed at the
+markets of the larger towns; for, if corn returned no profit, yet oil
+and wine were not yet undersold, and were both of them commodities which
+would bring better returns than grain to the minute and scrupulous care
+in which the smaller cultivator excels the owner of a great domain. The
+failure of corn-growing as a productive industry, perhaps the
+legislation of the Gracchi itself, must have given a great impetus to
+the cultivation of the vine and the olive, the value attached to which
+during the closing years of the Republic is, as we have seen, attested
+by the fact that the extension of these products was prohibited in the
+Transalpine regions in order to protect the interests of the
+Roman producer.
+
+An agricultural revival was, therefore, possible; but its success
+demanded a spirit that would enter readily into the work, and submit
+without a murmur to the conditions of life which the stern task
+enjoined. It was here that the agrarian legislation of the Gracchi found
+its obstacle. So far as it did fail--so far, that is, as it was not
+sufficient to prevent the renewed accumulation of the people in the
+towns and the continued depopulation of the country districts--it failed
+because it offended against social ideals rather than against economic
+tendencies. Many of the settlers whom it planted on the allotments, must
+already have been demoralised by the feverish atmosphere of Rome; while
+others of a saner and more vigorous type may have soon looked back on
+the capital, not as the lounging-place of the idler, but as the exchange
+of the world, or have turned their thoughts to the provinces as the
+sphere where energy was best rewarded and capital gave its speediest
+returns. Of the other social measures of this period, colonisation, in
+so far as it had a purely agricultural object, is subject to the
+criteria that have been applied to the agrarian movements of the time;
+although it is possible that the formation of new or the remodelling of
+old political societies, which must have followed the scheme of Drusus,
+had this been ever realised, would have infused a more vigorous life in
+agricultural settlements of this type than was likely to be awakened in
+those which formed a mere outlying part of Rome or some existing
+municipality. We have seen how the colonial plan of Drusus differed in
+its intention from that of Caius Gracchus; but the latter statesman had,
+in the settlement which he projected at Junonia, planned a foundation
+which would proximately have lived on the wealth of its territory rather
+than on its trade, and must always have been, like Carthage of old, as
+much an agricultural as a commercial state. To an agrarian project such
+as this no economic objection could have been offered and, had the
+scheme of transmarine colonisation been fully carried out, the provinces
+themselves might have been made to benefit the farming class of Italy,
+whose economic foes they had become. The distance also of such
+settlements from Rome would have blunted the craving for the life of the
+capital, which beset the minds and paralysed the energies of the
+occupants of Italian land.
+
+But, on the whole, the Gracchan scheme of colonisation was, as we have
+seen, commercial rather than agricultural, and was probably intended to
+benefit a class that was not adapted to rural occupations, either by
+association or training. By this enterprise Caius Gracchus showed that
+he saw with perfect clearness the true reason, and the final evidence,
+of the stagnation of the middle class. A nation which has abandoned
+agriculture and allows itself to be fed by foreign hands, even by those
+of its own subjects, is exposed to military dangers which are obvious,
+and to political perils somewhat more obscure but bearing their evil
+fruit from time to time; but such treason to the soil is no sign of
+national decay, if the legions of workers have merely transferred their
+allegiance from the country to the town, from agriculture to manufacture
+and commerce. In Italy this comforting explanation was impossible.
+Except perhaps in Latium and Campania, there were few industrial
+centres; many of those that existed were in the hands of Greeks, many
+more had sunk under the stress of war and had never been revived. The
+great syndicates in which Roman capital was invested, employed slaves
+and freedmen as their agents; the operations of these great houses were
+directed mainly to the provinces, and the Italian seaports were employed
+merely as channels for a business which was speculative and financial
+and, so far as Italy was concerned, only to a very slight, if to any,
+degree productive. To re-establish the producer or the trader of
+moderate means, was to revive a stable element in the population, whose
+existence might soften the rugged asperity with which capital confronted
+power on the one hand and poverty on the other. But to revive it at Rome
+would have demanded artificial measures, which, attacking as they must
+have done the monopolies possessed by the Equites, would have defeated
+the legislator's immediate object and probably proved impracticable,
+while such a revival would also have accentuated the centralisation,
+which might be useful to the politician but was deplored by the social
+reformer. The debilitated class might, however, recover its elasticity
+if placed in congenial surroundings and invited to the sites which had
+once attracted the enterprise of the Greek trader; and Caius Gracchus's
+settlements in the south of Italy were means to this end. We have no
+warrant for pronouncing the experiment an utter failure. Some of these
+colonies lived on, although in what guise is unknown. But even a
+moderate amount of success would have demanded a continuity in the
+scheme, which was rudely interrupted by the fall of its promoter, and it
+is not to be imagined that the larger capitalists, whose power the
+reformer had himself increased, looked with a friendly eye upon these
+smaller rivals. The scheme of social reform projected by Gracchus found
+its completion in his law for the sale of corn. When he had made
+provision for the born agriculturist and the born tradesman, there still
+remained a residuum of poorer citizens whose inclination and habits
+prompted them to neither calling. It was for these men that the monthly
+grant of cheapened grain was intended. Their bread was won by labour,
+but by a labour so fitful and precarious that it was known to be often
+insufficient to secure the minimum means of subsistence, unless some
+help was furnished by the State. The healthier form of state-aid--the
+employment of labour--was certainly practised by Caius Gracchus, and
+perhaps the extensive public works which he initiated and supervised,
+were intended to benefit the artisan who laboured in their construction
+as well as the trader who would profit by their completion.
+
+Whatever may be our judgment on the merits and results of this social
+programme, the importance of the political character which it was to
+assume, from the close of the career of Caius Gracchus to the downfall
+of the Republic, can hardly be exaggerated. The items of reform as
+embodied in his legislation became the constant factors in every
+democratic programme which was to be issued in the future. In these we
+see the demand for land, for colonial assignations, for transmarine
+settlements, for a renewal or extension of the corn law, perpetually
+recurring. It is true that this recurrence may be in part due to the
+very potency of the personality of the first reformer and to the magic
+of the memory which he left behind him. Party-cries tend to become
+shibboleths and it is difficult to unravel the web that has been spun by
+the hand of a master. Even the hated cry for the Italian franchise,
+which had proved the undoing of Caius Gracchus, became acceptable to
+party leaders and to an ever-growing section of their followers, largely
+because it had become entwined with his programme of reform. But the
+vigorous life of his great manifesto cannot be explained wholly on this
+ground. It is a greater exaltation of its author to believe that its
+life was due to its intrinsic utility, and that Gracchus indicated real
+needs which, because they remained unsatisfied until the birth of the
+Principate, were ever the occasion for the renewal of proposals so
+closely modelled on his own.
+
+When we turn from the social to the political changes of this period, we
+are on far less debatable ground. Although there may be some doubt as to
+the intention with which each reform was brought into existence by Caius
+Gracchus, its character as illustrated by its place in the economy of
+the commonwealth is so clearly stamped upon it and so potently
+manifested in the immediately following years, that a comprehensive
+discussion of the nature of his single measures would be merely an
+unprofitable effort to recall the past or anticipate the future. But the
+collective effect of his separate efforts has been subjected to very
+different interpretations, and the question has been further complicated
+by hazardous, and sometimes overconfident, attempts to determine how far
+the legislator's intentions were fulfilled in the actual result of his
+reforms. Because it can be shown that the changes introduced by
+Gracchus, or, to be more strictly accurate, the symptoms which elicited
+these changes, ultimately led to monarchical rule, Gracchus has been at
+times regarded as the conscious author and possessor of a personal
+supremacy which he deliberately intended should replace the intricate
+and somewhat cumbrous mechanism which controlled the constitutional
+government of Rome; because he sowed the seeds of a discord so terrible
+as to be unendurable even in a state which had never known the absence
+of faction and conflict, and had preserved its liberties through
+carefully regulated strife, his work has been held to be that of some
+avenging angel who came, not to renew, but to destroy. There is truth in
+both these pictures; but the Gracchus whom they portray as the force
+that annihilated centuries of crafty workmanship, as the first precursor
+of the coming monarchy, is the Gracchus who rightly lives in the
+historic imagination which, unfettered by conditions of space or time,
+prefers the contemplation of the eternity of the work to that of the
+environment of the worker; it is a presentment which would be applicable
+to any man as able and as resolute as Gracchus, who attempted to meet
+the evils created by a weak and irresponsible administration, partly by
+the restoration of old forms, partly by the recognition of new and
+pressing claims. There is a point at which reform, except it go so far
+as to blot out a constitution and substitute another in its place, must
+act as a weakening and dissolving force. That point is reached when an
+existing government is effectually hampered from exercising the
+prerogatives of sovereignty and no other power is sufficiently
+strengthened to act as its unquestioned substitute. The dissolution will
+be easier if reform bears the not uncommon aspect of conservatism, and a
+nominal sovereign, whose strength, never very great, has been sapped by
+disuse and the habit of mechanical obedience, is placed in competition
+with a somewhat effete usurper. It is not, however, fair to regard
+Gracchus as a radical reactionary who was the first to drag a prisoned
+and incapable sovereign into the light of day. Had he done this, he
+would have been the author of a revolution and the creator of a new
+constitution. But this he never attempted to be, and such a view of his
+work rests on the mistaken impression that, at the time of his reforms,
+the senate was recognised as the true government of Rome. Such a
+pretension had never been published nor accepted. We are not concerned
+with its reality as a fact; but no sound analysis, whether undertaken by
+lawyer or historian, would have admitted its theoretical truth. The
+literary atmosphere teemed with theories of popular sovereignty of a
+limited kind, and Gracchus, while recognising this sovereignty, did
+little to remove its limitations. It is true that, like his brother, he
+legislated without seeking the customary sanction of the senate; but
+initial reforms could never have been carried through, had the
+legislator waited for this sanction; and the future freedom of the
+Comitia from senatorial control was at best guaranteed by the force of
+the example of the Gracchi, not by any new legal ordinances which they
+ordained. Earlier precedents of the same type had not been lacking, and
+it was only the comprehensiveness of the Gracchan legislation which
+seemed to give a new impetus to the view that in all fundamental
+matters, which called for regulation by Act of Parliament, the people
+was the single and uncontrolled sovereign. Thus was developed the idea
+of the possibility of a new period of growth, which should refashion the
+details of the structure of the State into greater correspondence with
+the changed conditions of the times. As the earlier process of change
+had raised the senate to power, the latter might be interpreted as
+containing a promise that a new master was to be given to the Roman
+world. But it is highly improbable that to Gracchus or to any of his
+contemporaries was the true nature of the prophecy revealed. For the
+moment a balance of power was established, and the moneyed class stood
+midway between the opposing factions of senate and people. Its new
+powers were intended to constrain the senate into efficiency rather than
+to reduce it to impotence, and to create these powers Gracchus had
+endowed the equestrian order with that right of audit which, in the
+earlier theory of the constitution, had been held to be one of the
+securest guarantees of the power of the people. Gracchus predicted the
+strife that was likely to follow this friction between the government
+and the courts; but this prediction, while it perhaps reveals the hope
+that in the issues of the future the mercantile class would generally be
+found on the side of the people, betrays still more clearly the belief
+that the people, and their patron of the moment, were utterly incapable
+of standing alone, and that no true democratic government was possible
+for Rome. In spite of his Hellenism Gracchus betrayed two
+characteristics of the true Roman. He believed in the advisability of
+creating a political impasse, from which some mode of escape would
+ultimately be devised by the wearied and lacerated combatants; and he
+held firmly to the view that the people, considered strictly in itself,
+had no organic existence; that it never was, and never could be, a power
+in its own right. He made no effort to give the Roman Comitia an
+organisation which would have placed it on something like the
+independent level of a Greek Ecclesia. Such an omission was perhaps the
+result of neglect rather than of deliberation; but this very neglect
+proves that Gracchus had in no way emancipated himself from the typical
+Roman idea that the people could find expression only through the voice
+of a magistrate. This idea unquestionably made the leader of the moment
+the practical head of the State during any crisis that called for
+constant intervention on the part of the Comitia; but there is no reason
+to suppose a belief on the part of Gracchus that such intervention would
+be unremittingly demanded, would become as integral a part of the
+every-day mechanism of government as the senate's direction of the
+provinces or the knight's control of the courts. But even had he held
+this view, the situation which it conjured up need not have borne a
+close resemblance to monarchy. The natural vehicle for the expression of
+the popular will would have been the tribunate--an office which by its
+very nature presented such obvious hindrances to personal rule as the
+existence of colleagues armed with the power of veto, the short tenure
+of office, and the enjoyment of powers that were mainly negative. It is
+true that the Gracchi themselves had shown how some of these
+difficulties might be overcome. The attempt at re-election, the
+accumulation of offices, the disregard of the veto, were innovations
+forced on them by the knowledge, gained from bitter experience, that
+reform could proceed only from a power that was to some extent outside
+the constitution, and that the efficient execution of the contemplated
+measures demanded the concentration of varied types of authority in a
+single hand. Perhaps Caius faced the situation more frankly than his
+brother; but his consciousness of the necessity of such an occasional
+power in the State was accompanied by the belief that it would prove the
+ruin of the man who grasped it, that the work might be done but that the
+worker would be doomed. These gloomy anticipations were not the result
+of disordered nerves, but the natural fruit of the coldly calculating
+intellect which saw that supremacy either of or through the people was
+an illusion, that the power of the nobility must be resisted by keener
+and more durable weapons than the Comitia and its temporary leaders,
+that the authority of the senate might yield to a slow process of
+attrition, but would never be engulfed by any cataclysmic outburst of
+popular hostility. It was no part of the statesman's task to pry into
+the future and vex himself with the query whether a new and permanent
+headship of the State might not be created, to play the all-pervading
+part which destiny had assigned to the senate. The senate's power had
+not vanished, it was not even vanishing. It was a solid fact, fully
+accepted by the very masses who were howling against it. Its decadence
+would be the work of time, and all the great Roman reformers of the past
+had left much to time and to fortune. The materials with which the
+Gracchi worked were far too composite to enable them to forecast the
+shape of the structure of which they were laying the foundations. The
+essential fact of the future monarchy, the growth of the military power,
+must have been almost completely hidden from their eyes. It is true
+that, in relation to the fall of the Republic and the growth of the
+monarchical idea, the Gracchi were more than mere preparatory or
+destructive forces. They furnished faint types, which were gladly
+welcomed by subsequent pretenders, of what a constitutional monarch
+should be. But it is ever hazardous to identify the destroyer with the
+creator or the type with the prophet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The common destiny which had attended the Gracchi was manifested even in
+the consequences of their fall. At both crises a brilliant but
+disturbing element had vanished, the work of the reformer remained,
+because it was the utterance of the people before whose sacred name the
+nobility continued to bow, the political atmosphere was cleared, the
+legitimate organs of government resumed their acknowledged sway. To
+speak of a restoration of power to the nobility after the fall of Caius
+Gracchus is to belie both the facts of history and the impressions of
+the times. There is little probability that either the nobles or the
+commons felt that the two years of successful agitation amounted to a
+change of government, or that the senate ever abandoned the conviction
+that the reformer, embarrassing as his proceedings might be on account
+of the obvious necessity for their acceptance, must succumb to the
+devices which had long formed the stock-in-trade of a successful
+senatorial campaign; while the transition from the guidance of Gracchus
+to that of the accredited representatives of the nobility was rendered
+all the easier by the facts that the authority of the tribune had long
+been waning, and that, for some months before his death, a large section
+of the people had been greedily fixing its eyes on an attractive
+programme which had been presented in the name of the senate. The
+suppression of the final movement had, it is true, been marked by an
+unexampled severity; but these stern measures had followed on an actual
+appeal to arms, which had elicited a response from the passive or
+quaking multitude and had made them in some sense participants in the
+slaughter. If it was terrible to think that three thousand citizens had
+been butchered in the streets or in the Tullianum, it was comforting to
+remember that they had been officially denounced as public enemies by
+the senate. There was no haunting sense of an inviolable wrong inflicted
+on the tribunate, for Caius Gracchus had not been tribune when he fell;
+there was no memory, half bitter, half grotesque, of indiscriminate
+slaughter dealt by a mob of infuriated senators, for this latter and
+greater _émeute_ had been suppressed by the regular forces of the State,
+led by its highest magistrate. The position of the government was more
+secure, the conscience of the people more easy than it had been after
+the massacre of Tiberius Gracchus and his followers. This feeling of
+security on the part of the government, and of acquiescence on that of
+the people, was soon put to the test by the prosecution of the ex-consul
+Lucius Opimius. His impeachment before the people by the tribune
+Decius[753] raised the vital question whether the novel powers which he
+had exercised in crushing Gracchus and his adherents, could be justified
+on the ground that they were the necessary, and in fact the only, means
+of maintaining public security. It was practically a question whether a
+new form of martial law should be admitted to recognition by the highest
+organ of the State, the voice of the sovereign people itself; and the
+discussion was rendered all the more piquant by the fact that that very
+sovereign was reminded that it had lately sanctioned an ordinance which
+forbade a capital penalty to be pronounced against a Roman citizen
+except by consent of the people, The arguments used on either side were
+of the most abstract and far-reaching character.[754] In answer to
+Decius's objection that the proceedings of Opimius were an obvious
+contravention of statute law, and that the most wanton criminality did
+not justify death without trial, the view, never unwelcome to the Roman
+mind, that there was a higher justice than law, was advanced by the
+champions of the accused. It was maintained that an ultimate right of
+self-defence was as necessary to a state as to an individual. The man
+who attempted to overturn the foundations of society was a public enemy
+beyond the pale of law; the man who resisted his efforts by every means
+that lay to hand was merely fulfilling the duty to his country which was
+incumbent on a citizen and a magistrate. If this view were accepted, the
+complex issue at law resolved itself into a simple question of fact. Had
+the leader and the party that had been crushed shown by their actions
+that they were overt enemies of the State? The majority which acquitted
+Opimius practically decided that Gracchus and his adherents had been
+rendered outlaws by their deeds. The sentiment of the moment had been
+cleverly stirred by the nature of the issue which was put before them.
+Had the voters been Gracchans at heart, they would probably have paid
+but little attention to these unusual appeals to the fundamental
+principles of political life, and would have shown themselves supporters
+of the spirit, as well as of the letter, of the enactment whose author
+they had just pronounced an outlaw. For there could be no question that
+the Gracchan law, which no one dared assail, was meant to cover just the
+very acts of which Opimius had been guilty after the slaughter of the
+Gracchans in the streets had ended. The right to kill in an _émeute_
+might be a questionable point; but the power of establishing a military
+court for the trial of captured offenders was notoriously illegal, and
+could under very few circumstances have been justified even on the
+ground of necessity. The decision of the people also seemed to give a
+kind of recognition to the utterance of the senate which had preceded
+Opimius's display of force. It is quite true that no successful defence
+of violence could ever be rested on the formula itself. This "ultimate
+decree of the senate" was valued as a weighty and emphatic declaration
+of the existence of a situation which demanded extreme measures, rather
+than as a legal permit which justified the disregard of the ordinary
+rights of the citizen. But formulae often have a power far in excess of
+their true significance; they impose on the ignorant, and furnish both a
+shield and a weapon to their cunning framers. The armoury of the senate,
+or of any revolutionary who had the good fortune to overawe the senate,
+was materially strengthened by the people's judgment in Opimius's
+favour.[755] The favourable situation was immediately used to effect the
+recall of Publius Popillius Laenas. His restoration was proposed to the
+people by Lucius Bestia a tribune;[756] and the people which had just
+sanctioned Opimius's judicial severities, did not betray the
+inconsistency of continuing to resent the far more restricted
+persecution of Popillius. Yet the step was an advance on their previous
+action; for they were now actually rescinding a legal judgment of their
+own, and approving of the actions of a court which had been established
+by the senate on its own authority without any previous declaration of
+the outlawry of its victims--a court whose proceedings were known to
+have directed the tenor of that law of Caius Gracchus, the validity of
+which was still unquestioned.
+
+But even on the swell of this anti-Gracchan tide the nobility had still
+to steer its course with caution and circumspection. Personal prejudices
+were stronger than principles with the masses. They might sanction
+outrages which already had the blessing of men who represented,
+externally at least, the more respectable portion of Roman society; but
+they continued to detest individuals whose characters seemed to have
+grown blacker rather than cleaner by participation in, or even
+justification of, the recent acts of violence. One of our authorities
+would have us believe that even the aged Publius Lentulus, once chief of
+the senate, was sacrificed by his peers to the fate which had attended
+Scipio Nasica. He had climbed the Aventine with Opimius's troops and had
+been severely wounded in the ensuing struggle.[757] But neither his age
+nor his wounds sufficed to overcome the strange prejudice of the mob.
+Obloquy and abuse dogged his footsteps, until at length he was forced,
+in the interest of his own peace or security, to beg of the senate one
+of those honorary embassies which covered the retirement of a senator
+either for private business or for leisure, and to seek a home in
+Sicily.[758] His last public utterance was an impassioned prayer that he
+might never return to his ungrateful country: and the gods granted him
+his request. If this story is true, it proves that public opinion was
+stronger even than the voice of the Comitia. Lentulus, if put on his
+trial, would probably have been acquitted; but the resentful minority,
+which was powerless in the assembly, may have been sufficiently strong
+to make life unbearable to its chosen victim by its demeanour at public
+gatherings and in the streets. But even the Comitia had limits to its
+endurance. During the year which followed Opimius's acquittal there
+appeared before them a suppliant for their favour who had about equal
+claims to the gratitude and the hatred of both sections of the people.
+They were the self-destructive or corroborative claims of the statesman
+who is called a convert by his friends and a renegade by his foes. No
+living man of the age had stood in a stronger political light than
+Carbo. An active assistant of Tiberius Gracchus, and so embittered an
+opponent of Scipio Aemilianus as to be deemed the author of his death,
+he had severed his connection with the party of reform, probably in
+consequence of the view that the extension of the franchise which had
+become embedded in their programme was either impracticable or
+undesirable. He must have proved a welcome ally to the nobility in their
+struggle with Caius Gracchus, and their appreciation of his value seems
+proved by the fact that he was elected to the consulship in the very
+year of the tribune's fall, when the influence of the senate, and
+therefore in all probability their power of controlling the elections,
+had been fully re-established. The debt was paid by a vigorous
+championship of the cause of Opimius, which was heard during the
+consulship of Carbo.[759] The chief magistrate spoke warmly in defence
+of his accused predecessor in office, and declared that the action of
+Opimius in succouring his country was an act incumbent on the consul as
+the recognised guardian of the State.[760] No man had greater reason to
+feel secure than Carbo, who had so lately tested the suffrages of the
+people as electors and as judges; yet no man was in greater peril. It
+seems that, while exposed on the side of his former associates to the
+impotent rage which is excited by the success of the convert, who is
+believed to have been rewarded for his treachery, he had not won the
+confidence, or at least could not arouse the whole-hearted support, of
+his new associates and their following in the assembly. Perhaps the
+landlords had not forgiven the agrarian commissioner, nor the moderates
+the vehement opponent of Scipio; to the senate he had served his
+purpose, and they may not have thought him serviceable enough to deserve
+the effort which had rescued Opimius. Carbo was, in fact, an inviting
+object of attack for any young political adventurer who wished to
+inaugurate his career by the overthrow of a distinguished political
+victim, and to sound a note of liberalism which should not grate too
+harshly in the ears of men of moderate views. The assailant was Lucius
+Crassus,[761] destined to be the greatest orator of his day, and a youth
+now burning to test his eloquence in the greatest field afforded by the
+public life of Rome, but scrupulous enough to take no unfair advantage
+of the object of his attack.[762] We do not know the nature of the
+charge on which Carbo was arraigned. It probably came under the
+expansive conception of treason, and was possibly connected with those
+very proceedings in consequence of which Opimius had been accused and
+acquitted.[763] That the charge was of a character that had reference to
+recent political events, or at least that the prosecutor felt himself
+bound to maintain some distinct political principle of a liberal kind,
+is proved by the regret which Crassus expressed in his maturer years
+that the impetus of youth had led him to take a step which limited his
+freedom of action for the future.[764] Some compunction may also have
+been stirred by the unexpected consequence of his attack; for Carbo,
+perhaps realising the animosity of his judges and the weakness or
+coldness of his friends, is said to have put an end to his life by
+poison.[765] Voluntary exile always lay open to the Roman who dared not
+face the final verdict; and the suicide of Carbo cannot be held to have
+been the sole refuge of despair; it is rather a sign of the bitterness
+greater than that of death, which may fall on the soul of a man who can
+appeal for sympathy to none, who knows that he has been abandoned and
+believes that he has been betrayed. The hostility of his countrymen
+pursued him beyond the grave; the aristocratic historian could not
+forget the seditious tribune, and the contemporary chronicles which
+moulded and handed on the conception of Carbo's life, showed the usual
+incapacity of such writings to appreciate the possibility of that honest
+mental detachment from a suspected cause which often leads, through
+growing dissension with past colleagues and increasing co-operation with
+new, to a more violent advocacy of a new faith than is often shown by
+its habitual possessors.
+
+The records of the political contests which occupied the two years
+succeeding the downfall of Caius Gracchus, are sufficient to prove that
+political thought was not stifled, that practically any political
+views--saving perhaps such as expressed active sympathy with the final
+efforts of Caius Gracchus and his friends--might be pronounced, and that
+the nobility could only maintain its influence by bending its ear to the
+chatter of the streets and employing its best instruments to mould the
+opinion of the Forum by a judicious mixture of deference and
+exhortation. The senate knew itself to be as weak as ever in material
+resources; government could not be maintained for ever by a series of
+_coups d'état_, and the only method of securing the interests of the
+rulers was to maintain the confidence of the majority and to presume
+occasionally on its apathy or blindness. This was the attitude adopted
+with reference to the proposals which had lately been before the people.
+Drusus's scheme of colonisation was not withdrawn, but its execution was
+indefinitely postponed,[766] and the same treatment was meted out to the
+similar proposals of Caius Gracchus. Two of his Italian colonies,
+Neptunia near Tarentum and Scylacium, seem actually to have survived;
+but this may have been due to the fact that the work of settlement had
+already commenced on these sites, and that the government did not
+venture to rescind any measure which had been already put into
+execution. It was indeed possible to stifle the settlement on the site
+of Carthage, for here the superstition of the people supported the
+objections of the senate, and the question of the abrogation of this
+colony had been raised to such magnitude by the circumstances of
+Gracchus's fall that to withdraw would have been a sign of weakness. But
+even this objectionable settlement in Africa gave proof of the scruples
+of the senate in dealing with an accomplished fact. When the Rubrian law
+was repealed, it was decided not to take from the _coloni_ the lands
+which had already been assigned; no religious pretext could be given for
+their disturbance, for the land of Carthage was not under the ban that
+doomed the city to desolation; and the colonists remained in possession
+of allotments, which were free from tribute, were held as private
+property, and furnished one of the earliest examples of a Roman tenure
+of land on provincial soil.[767] The assignment was by the nature of the
+case changed from that of the colonial to that of the purely agrarian
+type; the settlers were members of Rome alone and had no local
+citizenship, although it is probable that some modest type of urban
+settlement did grow up outside the ruined walls of Carthage to satisfy
+the most necessary requirements of the surrounding residents.
+
+The benefits conferred by the Gracchi on the poorer members of the
+proletariate were also respected. The corn law may have been left
+untouched for the time being[768]--a natural concession, for the senate
+could only hope to rule by its influence with the urban mob, and, in the
+case of so simple an institution, any modification would have been so
+patent an infringement of the rights of the recipients as to have
+immediately excited suspicion and anger. With the agrarian law it was
+different. Its repeal was indeed impossible; but the land-hunger of the
+dispossessed capitalists might to some extent be appeased by a measure
+that was not only tolerable, but welcome; and modifications, so gradual
+and subtle that their meaning would be unintelligible to the masses,
+might subsequently be introduced to remedy observed defects, to calm the
+apprehensions of the allies, and perhaps to secure the continuance of
+large holdings, if economic causes should lead to their revival. The
+agrarian legislation of the ten years that followed the fall of Caius
+Gracchus, seems to have been guided by the wishes of the senate; but
+much of it does not bear on its surface the signs which we might expect
+of capitalistic influence or oligarchic neglect of the poor. Large
+portions of it seem rather to reveal the desire of banishing for ever a
+harrowing question which was the opportunity of the demagogue; and the
+peculiar mixture of prudence, liberality, and selfishness which this
+legislation reveals, can only be appreciated by an examination of its
+separate stages.
+
+Shortly after the death of Caius Gracchus--perhaps in the very year of
+his fall--a law was passed permitting the alienation of the
+allotments.[769] This measure must have been as welcome to the lately
+established possessors as it was to the large proprietors; it removed
+from the former a galling restraint which, like all such legal
+prohibitions, formed a sentimental rather than an actual grievance, but
+one that was none the less keenly felt on that account; while to the
+latter it offered the opportunity of satisfying those expectations,
+which the initial struggles of the newly created farmers must in many
+cases have aroused. The natural consequence of the enactment was that
+the spurious element amongst the peasant-holders, represented by those
+whose tastes and capacities utterly unfitted them for agriculture,
+parted with their allotments, which went once more to swell the large
+domains of their wealthier neighbours.[770] We do not know the extent or
+rapidity of this change, or the stage which it had reached when the
+government thought fit to introduce a new agrarian law, which may have
+been two or three years later than the enactment which permitted
+alienation.[771] The new measure contained three important
+provisions.[772] Firstly, it forbade the further distribution of public
+land, and thus put an end to the agrarian commission which had never
+ceased to exist, and had continued to enjoy, if not to exercise, its
+full powers since the restoration of its judicial functions by Caius
+Gracchus. We cannot say to what extent the commission was still
+Encountering claims on its jurisdiction and powers of distribution at
+the time of its disappearance; but fourteen years is a long term of
+power for such an extraordinary office, whose work was necessarily one
+of perpetual unsettlement; and the disappearance of the triumvirs must
+have been welcome, not only to the existing Roman occupants of land
+which still remained public, but to those of the Italians to whom the
+commission had ever been a source of apprehension. The extinction of the
+office must have been regarded with indifference by those for whom the
+commission had already provided, and by the large mass of the urban
+proletariate which did not desire this type of provision. The residuum
+of citizens which still craved land may be conceived to have been small,
+for eagerness to become an agriculturist would have suggested an earlier
+claim; and the passing of the commission was probably viewed with no
+regret by any large section of the community. The law then proceeded to
+establish the rights of all the occupants of land in Italy that had once
+been public and had been dealt with by the commission. To all existing
+occupants of the land which had been assigned, perfect security of
+tenure was given, and this security may have been extended now, as it
+certainly was later, to many of the occupants who still remained on
+public land which had not been subjected to distribution. So far as the
+land which had been assigned was concerned, this law could have made no
+specification as to the size of the allotments, for the law permitting
+alienation had made it practically private property and given its
+purchaser a perfectly secure title. Hence the accumulations which
+followed the permit to alienate were secured to their existing
+possessors, and a legal recognition was given to the formation of such
+large estates as had come into existence during the last three years.
+But the security of tenure was conditioned by the reimposition of the
+dues payable to the State, which had been abolished by Drusus. We are
+not informed whether these dues were to be henceforth paid only by those
+who had received allotments from the land commission, or by all in whose
+hands such allotments were at the moment to be found; perhaps the
+intention was to impose them on all lands that had been public before
+the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus; although many of the larger
+proprietors, who had recently added to their holdings, might have urged
+in their defence that they had acquired the land as private property and
+that it was burdened by no dues at the time of its acquisition. But,
+even if this burden fell mainly on the class of smaller possessors, it
+could scarcely be regarded as a grievance, for it had formed part of the
+Gracchan scheme, and there was no legitimate reason why the newly
+established class of cultivators should be placed in a better position
+than the older occupants of the public domain, who still paid dues both
+on arable land and for the privilege of pasturing their flocks. The
+temporary motive which had led to their abolition had now ceased to
+exist, for the agricultural colonies of Drusus, who had promised land
+free from all taxes, had not been established, and the chief, almost the
+sole, example of a recent assignment on such liberal principles was to
+be discovered in distant Africa. But, even if the cultivators grumbled,
+their complaints were not dangerous to the government. They would have
+found no echo at Rome, where the urban proletariate was content with the
+easier provision which had been made for its support; and the new
+revenues from the public land were made still more acceptable to the
+eyes of the masses by the provision contained in this agrarian law that
+they should be employed solely for the benefit of needier citizens. The
+precise nature of the promised employment is unhappily unknown, our
+authority merely informing us that "they were to be used for purposes of
+distribution". We cannot understand by these words free gifts either in
+money or corn; for such extreme measures never entered even into the
+social ideals of Caius Gracchus, and the senate to its credit never
+deigned to purchase popularity through the pauperising institutions by
+which the Caesars maintained the security of their rule in Rome. The
+words might imply an extension of the system of the sale of cheap corn,
+or a cheapening of the rates at which it was supplied; but the Gracchan
+system seems hardly to have admitted of extension, so far as the number
+of recipients was concerned, and cheaper sales would hardly have been
+encouraged by a government, which, anxious as it was to secure
+popularity, was responsible for the financial administration of the
+State and looked with an anxious eye upon the existing drain on the
+resources of the treasury.[773] Perhaps the new revenues were held up to
+the people as a guarantee that the sale of cheap corn would be
+continued, and public confidence was increased when it was pointed out
+that there was a special fund available for the purpose. If we abandon
+the view that the promised employment of the revenues in the interest of
+the people referred to the distribution of corn, there remains the
+possibility that it had reference to the acquisition of fresh land for
+assignation. This promise would indeed have rendered practicable the
+partial realisation of the shadowy schemes of Drusus, which had never
+been officially withdrawn; but it is doubtful whether it would have done
+much to strengthen the hold of the government upon the urban voter; for
+the whole scheme of this new land law seems to prove that the agrarian
+question was viewed with indifference, and no pressure seems to have
+been put on the government to carry their earlier promises into effect.
+
+Apart from the welcome prospect implied in the abolition of the agrarian
+commission, no positive guarantee against disturbance had yet been given
+to the Latins and Italians. This was formally granted, in terms unknown
+to us, at the appropriate hands of Marcus Livius Drusus during his
+tenure of the consulship.[774] The senate, now that it had satisfied the
+larger proprietors and the urban proletariate, and could boast that it
+had at least not injured the smaller cultivators, completed its work of
+pacification by holding out the hand of fellowship to the allies. It was
+tacitly understood that the new friend was not to ask for more, but he
+might be induced to look to the senate as his refuge against the
+rapacity of the mob and the recklessness of its leaders.
+
+Shortly afterwards the tribune Spurius Thorius[775] carried a law which
+again abolished the _vectigal_ on the allotments. If we regard this
+measure as an independent effort on the part of the tribune, it may have
+been an answer to the protests of the smaller agriculturists still
+struggling for existence; if it was dictated by the senate, it may have
+been due to the absorption of the allotments by the larger proprietors
+and their unwillingness to pay dues for land which they had added to
+their private property. But, to whatever party we may assign it, we may
+see in it also the desire to reach a final settlement of the agrarian
+question by abolishing all the invidious distinctions between the
+different tenures of land which had once formed part of the public
+domain. It removed the injustice of burdening the small holding with a
+rent which was not exacted from estates that had been partly formed by
+accretions of such allotments; and by the abolition of all dues[776] it
+tended to remove all land which had been assigned, from the doubtful
+category to which it had hitherto belonged of possessions which, though
+in a sense private, still recognised the overlordship of the State, and
+to revive in all its old sharpness the simple distinction between public
+and private land. This tendency makes it probable that the law of
+Thorius is identical with one of which we possess considerable
+fragments; for this partially preserved enactment is certainly as
+sweeping a measure as could have been devised by any one eager to see
+the agrarian question, so far as it affected Italian soil, finally
+removed from the region of political strife.
+
+Internal evidence makes it probable that this law was passed in the year
+111 B.C.,[777] and consequently at the close of that period of
+comparative quiescence which was immediately followed by the political
+storm raised by the conduct of the war in Numidia. It may, therefore, be
+regarded as a product of senatorial enlightenment, although its
+provisions would be quite as consistent with the views of a tolerably
+sober democrat. The main scope of the enactment is to give the character
+of absolute private ownership, unburdened by any restrictions such as
+the payment of dues to the State, to nearly all the land which had been
+public at the time of the passing of the agrarian law of Tiberius
+Gracchus. The first provisions refer to lands which had not been dealt
+with by the agrarian commissioners. Any occupant of the public domain,
+who has been allowed to preserve his allotment intact, because it does
+not exceed the limit fixed by the earlier laws, and any one who has
+received public land from the State in exchange for a freehold which he
+has surrendered for the foundation of a colony, is henceforth to hold
+such portions of the public domain as his private property. The same
+provision holds for all land that has been assigned, whether by colonial
+or agrarian commissioners. The first class of assignments are those
+incidental to the one or two colonies of Caius Gracchus, and perhaps of
+Drusus, that were actually established in Italy. Even at the time of
+settlement such land must have been made the private property of its
+holders; and this law, therefore, but confirms the tenure, and implies
+the validity of the act of colonisation. Such land is mentioned as
+having been "given and assigned in accordance with a resolution of the
+people and the plebs," and all eases in which recent colonial laws had
+been repealed or dropped--cases which would include Caius Gracchus's
+threatened partition of the Campanian territory--are tacitly excluded.
+The second class of assignments refer to those made by the
+land-commissioners during the whole period of their chequered existence,
+and the land whose private character is thus confirmed, must have
+covered much the larger part of what had once been the State's domain
+in Italy.
+
+A certain portion of this domain still remains, however, the property of
+the State and is not converted into private land. The whole of the soil
+which had been given in usufruct to colonies and municipal towns, is
+retained in its existing condition; the holders, whether Latin colonists
+or Roman citizens, are confirmed in their possessions; but, as the land
+still remains public, they are doubtless expected to continue to pay
+their quit-rent to the State. Similar provision is made for a peculiar
+class of land, which had been given by Rome as security for a national
+debt. The debt had never been liquidated, probably because the creditors
+preferred the land. This they were now to retain on condition of
+continued payment of the quit-rent, which marked the fact that the State
+was still its nominal owner. A public character is also maintained for
+land which had been assigned for the maintenance of roads. Here we find
+the only instance of an actual assignation of the Gracchan commissioners
+which was not converted, into private property; the obvious reason for
+this exception being that these occupants performed a specific and
+necessary duty, which would disappear if their tenure was converted into
+absolute ownership. Exception against ownership was also made for those
+commons on which the occupants of surrounding farms had an exclusive
+right of sending their flocks to pasture;[778] for the conversion of
+such grazing land into private lots would have injured the collective
+interests, and conferred little benefit on the individuals of the
+group.[779] The remaining classes of land which still remain the
+property of the State, are the roads of Italy, such public land as had
+been specially exempted from distribution by the legislation of the
+Gracchi, and such as had remained public on other grounds. The only
+known instance of the first class is the Campanian territory, which
+continued to be let on leases by the State and to bring to the treasury
+a sure and considerable revenue; the second class was probably
+represented by land which was not arable and had for this reason escaped
+distribution. The law provides that it is not to be occupied but to
+serve the purposes of grazing-land, and a limit is fixed to the number
+of cattle and sheep belonging to a single owner to which it is to afford
+free pasturage. For the enjoyment of grazing-rights beyond this limit
+dues are to be paid to the contractors who have purchased the right of
+collection from the State.
+
+The law then quits the public domains of Italy for those of Africa and
+Corinth, partly for the purpose of specifying with exactitude the rights
+of the various occupiers and tenants who were settled on the
+territories, but chiefly with the object of effecting the sale of some
+of the public domain in the province of Africa and the dependency of
+Achaea. This intention of alienation is perhaps the chief reason why the
+great varieties of tenure of the African soil are marshalled before us
+with such detail and precision; for it was necessary, in view of the
+contemplated sale, to re-assert the stability of rights that should be
+secure by their very nature or had been guaranteed by solemn compact.
+But the occasion of a comprehensive settlement of the agrarian question
+in Italy was no doubt gladly seized as affording the right opportunity
+for surveying, revising, and establishing the claims of those who were
+in enjoyment of what was, or had been, the provincial domain of Rome
+across the seas. The rights of Roman citizens and subjects are
+indifferently considered, and amongst the former those of the settlers
+who had journeyed to Africa in accordance with the promises of the
+Rubrian law are fully recognised. The degree of permanence accorded to
+the manifold kinds of tenure passed in review can not be determined from
+our text; but, even when all claims that deserved a permanent
+recognition had been subtracted, there still remained a residuum of
+land, leased at quinquennial intervals by the censors, which might be
+alienated without the infliction of injury on established rights. We do
+not know to what extent this sale, the mechanism for which was minutely
+provided for in the law, was carried in Africa; its application to the
+domain land of Corinth was either withdrawn or, if carried out, was but
+slight or temporary; for Corinthian land remained to be threatened by
+later agrarian legislation. It is not easy to suggest a motive for this
+sale; for it would seem a short-sighted policy to part, on an extensive
+scale and therefore presumably at a cheapened rate, with some of the
+most productive land in the world, such as was the African domain of the
+period, in order to recoup the treasury for the immediate pecuniary
+injury which it was suffering in the loss of the revenues from the
+public land of Italy. Perhaps the government had grown suspicious of the
+operations of the middle-men, and, since they had restricted their
+activity by limiting the amount of public land in Italy, deemed a
+similar policy advisable in relation to some of their foreign
+dependencies.
+
+The length at which we have dwelt on this law is proportionate to its
+importance in the political history of the times, and if we possessed
+fuller knowledge of its effects, we should doubtless be able to add, in
+their social history as well. Its economic results, however, are
+exceedingly obscure, and possibly it produced none worthy of serious
+consideration; for the artificial stability which it may have seemed to
+give to the existing tenure of land could in no way check the play of
+economic forces. If these tendencies were still in favour of large
+holdings,[780] the process of accumulation must have continued, and, as
+we have before remarked, the accumulator was in a securer position when
+purchasing land which was admittedly the private property of its owner,
+than when buying allotments which might be held to be still liable to
+the public dues. On the other hand, the remission of the impost must
+have relieved, and the sense of private ownership inspired, the labours
+of the smaller proprietors; and the perpetuation of a considerable
+proportion of the Gracchan settlers is probable on general grounds. The
+reason why it is difficult to give specific reasons for this belief is
+that, at the time when we next begin to get glimpses of the condition of
+the Italian peasant class, the great reform had been effected which
+incorporated the nations of Italy into Rome. The existence of numerous
+small proprietors in the Ciceronian period is attested, but many of
+these may have been citizens recently given to Rome by the Italian
+stocks, amongst whom agriculture on a small scale had never
+become extinct.
+
+But the political import of this measure is considerable. By restricting
+to narrow limits all the land of Italy to which the State could make a
+claim, it altered the character of agrarian agitation for the future. It
+did not indeed fulfil its possible object of obviating such measures;
+but it rendered the vested interests of all Italian cultivators secure,
+with the exception of the lessees of the leased domain, who perhaps had
+no claim to permanence of tenure. This domain was represented chiefly by
+the Campanian land: and the reformer who would make this territory his
+prey, injured the finances of the State more than the interests of the
+individual. If he desired more, he must seek it either in the foreign
+domains of Rome or by the adoption of some scheme of land purchase.
+Assignment of lands in particular districts of Italy or in the provinces
+naturally took the form of colonisation, and this is the favourite shape
+assumed by the agrarian schemes of the future. Rome was still to witness
+many fierce controversies as to the merits of the policy of colonial
+expansion, and as to the wisdom of employing public property and public
+revenues to this end; the rights of the conqueror to the lands of his
+vanquished fellow-citizens were also to be cruelly asserted, and the
+civil wars also invited a species of brigandage for the attainment of
+possession which too often replaced the judgments of the courts; but
+never again do we find a regular political warfare waged between the
+rich and the poor for the possession of territories to which each of the
+disputants laid claim. The storm which had burst on the Roman world with
+the land law of Tiberius Gracchus had now spent its force. It had
+undoubtedly produced a great change on the face of Italy; but this was
+perhaps more striking in appearance than in reality; neither the work of
+demolition, nor the opportunities offered for renewal, attained the
+completeness which they had presented in the reformer's dreams.
+
+But the peace of the citizen body was not the only blessing believed to
+be secured by this removal of a temptation to tamper with Italian lands.
+The anxieties of the Latins and Italians were also quieted, although it
+may be questioned whether the memory of past wrongs, now rendered
+irrevocable by the progress of recent agrarian experiments, did not
+enter into the agitation for the conferment of the franchise, which they
+still continued to sustain. The last great law, following the spirit of
+the enactment of Drusus which had preceded it by about a year, does
+indeed show traces of an anxiety to respect Italian claims. Apart from
+the fact, which we have already mentioned, that all lands which had been
+granted in usufruct to colonists, were still to be public and were,
+therefore, in the case of Latin colonies, to be at the disposal of the
+communities to which they had been granted by treaty, the law contains a
+special provision for the maintenance of the rights of Latins and
+Italians, so far as they are in harmony with the rights allowed to Roman
+citizens by the enactment.[781] The guarantees which had been sanctioned
+by Drusus, were therefore respected; but their observance was
+conditioned by the rule that all prohibitions now created for Romans
+should be extended to the allies. As we do not know the purport of
+Drusus's measure, or the practices current on the Roman domains occupied
+by Latins, we cannot say whether this clause produced any derogation of
+their rights; but it must have limited the right of free pasturage on
+the public commons, if they had possessed this in a higher degree than
+was now permitted, and the right to occupy public land was also
+forbidden them in the future. But it was from the negative point of view
+that the law might be interpreted as creating or perpetuating a
+grievance; for some of the positive benefits which it conferred seem to
+have been limited to Romans. The land which it makes private property,
+is land which has been assigned by colonial or agrarian commissioners,
+or land which has been occupied up to a certain limit. If colonial land
+had really been assigned to Latins by Caius Gracchus, their rights are
+retained by this law, if they had been made Roman citizens at the time
+of the settlement; but if they had been admitted as participants in the
+agrarian distribution throughout Italy, their rights as owners are not
+confirmed with those of Roman citizens; and the Latin who merely
+occupied land was not given the privilege of the Roman possessor of
+becoming the owner of the soil, if his occupation were restricted within
+a certain limit.[782] He still retained merely a precarious possession,
+for which dues to the State were probably exacted. It was something to
+have rights confirmed, but they probably appeared less valuable when
+those of others were extended. A more generous treatment could hardly
+have been expected from a law of Rome dealing with her own domain,
+primarily in the interests of her own citizens; but the Italians were
+tending to forget their civic independence, and chose rather to compare
+their personal rights with those of the Roman burgesses. Such a
+comparison applied to the final agrarian settlement must have done
+something to emphasise their belief in the inferiority of
+their position.
+
+This review of the legislation on social questions which was initiated
+or endured by the senate, shows the tentative attitude adopted by the
+nobility in their dealings with the people, and proves either a
+statesmanlike view of the needs of the situation or the entire lack of a
+proud consciousness of their own immunity from attack. Even had they
+possessed the power to dictate to the Comitia, they were hemmed in on
+another side; for they had not dared to raise a protest against the law
+of Gracchus which transferred criminal jurisdiction over the members of
+their own order to the knights. The equestrian courts sat in judgment on
+the noblest members of the aristocracy; for the political or personal
+motives which urged to prosecution were stronger even than the
+camaraderie of the order, and governors of provinces were still in
+danger of indictment by their peers. Within two years of the
+transference of the courts, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, known in later life
+as "the Augur" and famed for his knowledge of the civil law, returned
+from his province of Asia to meet the accusation of Titus Albucius.[783]
+The knights did not begin by a vindictive exercise of their authority.
+Although Asia was the most favoured sphere of their activity, Scaevola
+was acquitted. Seven years later they gave a stern and perhaps righteous
+example of their severity in the condemnation of Caius Porcius
+Cato.[784] The accused when consul had obtained Macedonia as his
+province, and had waged a frontier war with the Scordisci, which ended
+in the annihilation of his forces and his own narrow escape from the
+field of battle. His ill-success perhaps deepened the impression made by
+his extortions in Macedonia, and he was sentenced to the payment of a
+fine. Neither in the case of the acquittal nor in that of the
+condemnation does political bias seem to have influenced the judgment of
+the courts, and the equestrian jurors may have seemed for a time to
+realise the best hopes which had inspired their creation.
+
+The attention of the leading members of the nobility was probably too
+absorbed by the problem of adapting senatorial rule to altered
+circumstances to allow them the leisure or the inclination to embark on
+fresh legislative projects of their own. Our record of these years is so
+imperfect that it would be rash to conclude that the scanty proposals on
+new subjects which it reveals exhausted the legislative activity of the
+senate; but had they done so, the circumstance would be intelligible;
+for the work that invited the attention of the senate in its own
+interest, was one of consolidation rather than of reform; the political
+feeling of the time put measures of a distinctly reactionary character,
+such as might have been welcomed by the more conservative members of the
+order, wholly out of the question; and the government was not likely,
+except under compulsion, to undertake legislation of a progressive type.
+The only important law of the period certainly proceeding from
+governmental circles, and dealing with a question that was novel, in the
+sense that it had not been heard of for a considerable number of years
+and had played no part in the Gracchan movements, was one passed by the
+consul Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. It dealt with the voting power of the
+freedmen,[785] and probably confirmed its restriction to the four city
+tribes. It is difficult to assign a political meaning to this law, as we
+do not know the practice which prevailed at the time of Scaurus's
+intervention; but it is probable that the restriction imposed by the
+censors of 169, who had confined the freedmen to a single tribe,[786]
+had not been observed, that great irregularity prevailed in the manner
+of their registration, and that Scaurus's measure, which was a return to
+the arrangement reached at the end of the fourth century, was intended
+to restrict the voting privileges of the class. This interpretation of
+his intention would seem to show that the increasing liberality of the
+Roman master had created a class the larger portion of which was not
+dependent on the wealthier and more conservative section of the citizen
+body, or was at least enabled to assert its freedom from control through
+the secrecy of the ballot. The interests of the class were almost
+identical with those of the free proletariate, in which the descendants
+of the freedmen were merged: and the law of Scaurus, which strengthened
+the country vote by preventing this urban influence spreading through
+all the tribes, may be an evidence that the senate distrusted the
+present passivity of the urban folk, and looked forward with
+apprehension to a time when they might have to rely on the more stable
+element which the country districts supplied. We shall see in the sequel
+that this anticipation of the freedmen's attitude was not unjustified,
+and that the increase of their voting power still continued to be an
+effective battle-cry for the demagogue who was eager to increase his
+following in the city.
+
+Scaurus was also the author of a sumptuary law.[787] It came
+appropriately from a man who had been trained in a school of poverty,
+and shows the willingness of the nobility to submit, at least in
+appearance, to the discipline which would present it to the world as a
+self-sacrificing administration, reaping no selfish reward for its
+intense labour, and submitting to that equality of life with the average
+citizen which is the best democratic concession that a powerful
+oligarchy can make. The activity of the censorship was exhibited in the
+same direction. Foreign and expensive dishes were prohibited by the
+guardians of public morals, as they were by Scaurus's sumptuary
+law:[788] and the censors of 115, Metellus and Domitius, undertook a
+scrutiny of the stage which resulted in the complete exclusion from Rome
+of all complex forms of the histrionic art and its reduction to the
+simple Latin type of music and song.[789] Their energy was also
+displayed in a destructive examination of the morals of their own order,
+and as a result of the scrutiny thirty-two senators were banished from
+the Curia.[790] To guard the senate-house from scandal was indeed the
+necessary policy of a nobility which knew that its precarious power
+rested on the opinion of the streets; and the efforts of the censors,
+directed like those of their predecessors, to a regeneration which had a
+national type as its goal, show that that opinion could not yet have
+been considered wholly cosmopolitan or corrupt. The frequent splendour
+of triumphal processions, such as those which celebrated the victories
+of Domitius and Fabius over the Allobroges, of Metellus over the
+Dalmatians, and of Scaurus over the Ligurians,[791] produced a
+comfortable impression of the efficiency of the government in extending
+or preserving the frontiers of the empire; the triumph itself was the
+symbol of success, and few could have cared to question the extent and
+utility of the achievement. Satisfied with the belief that they were
+witnessing the average type of successful administration, the electors
+pursued the course, from which they so seldom deflected, of giving their
+unreserved confidence to the ancient houses; and this epoch witnessed a
+striking instance of hereditary influence, if not of hereditary talent,
+when Metellus Macedonicus was borne to his grave by sons, of whom four
+had held curule office, three had possessed the consulship, and one had
+fulfilled in addition the lofty functions of the censor and enjoyed the
+honour of a triumph.[792]
+
+Yet distinction without a certain degree of fitness was now, as at every
+other time, an impossibility in Rome. The nobility, although it did not
+love originality, extended a helping hand to the capacity that was
+willing to support its cause and showed the likelihood of dignifying its
+administration; a career was still open to talent and address, if they
+were held to be wisely directed; and the man of the period who best
+deserves the title of leader of the State, was one who had not even
+sprung from the second strata of Roman society, but had struggled with a
+poverty which would have condemned an ordinary man to devote such
+leisure as he could spare for politics to swelling the babel of the
+Forum and the streets. It is true that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus bore a
+patrician name, and was one of those potential kings who, once in the
+senate, might assume the royal foot-gear and continue the holy task,
+which they had performed from the time of Romulus, of guarding and
+transmitting the auspices of the Roman people. But the splendour of the
+name had long been dimmed. Even in the history of the great wars of the
+beginning of the century but one Aemilius Scaurus appears, and he holds
+but a subordinate command as an officer of the Roman fleet. The father
+of the future chief of the senate had been forced to seek a livelihood
+in the humble calling of a purveyor of charcoal.[793] The son, resolute,
+ambitious and conscious of great powers, long debated with himself the
+question of his future walk in life.[794] He might remain in the ranks
+of the business world, supply money to customers in place of coal, and
+seize the golden opportunities which were being presented by the
+extension of the banking industry in the provincial world. Had he chosen
+this path, Scaurus might have been the chief of the knights and the most
+resolute champion of equestrian claims against the government. But his
+course was decided by the afterthought that the power of words was
+greater than that of gold, and that eloquence might secure, not only
+wealth, but the influence which wealth alone cannot attain. The fame
+which he gained in the Forum led inevitably to service in the field. He
+reaped distinction in the Spanish campaigns and served under Orestes in
+Sardinia. His narrow means rather than his principles may have been the
+reason why his aedileship was not marked by the generous shows to which
+the people were accustomed and by which their favour was usually
+purchased; in Scaurus's tenure of that office splendour was replaced by
+a rigorous performance of judicial duties;[795] but that such an
+equivalent could serve his purpose, that it should be even no hindrance
+to his career, proves the respect that his strenuous character had won
+from the people, and the anticipation formed by the government of the
+value of his future services. Now, when he was nearing his fiftieth
+year, he had secured the consulship, the bourne of most successful
+careers, but not to be the last or greatest prize of a man whose stately
+presence, unbending dignity, and apparent simplicity of purpose, could
+generally awe the people into respect, and whose keenness of vision and
+talent for intrigue impressed the senatorial mind with a sense of his
+power to save, when claims were pressing and difficulties acute.[796]
+His consulship, though without brilliancy, added to the respectable
+laurels that he had already attained. A successful raid on some Illyrian
+tribes[797] showed at least that he had retained the physical endurance
+of his youth; while his legislation on sumptuary matters and the
+freedman's vote showed the spirit of a milder Cato, and the moderate
+conservatism, not distasteful to the Roman of pure blood, which would
+preserve the preponderance in political power to the citizen untainted
+by the stain of servitude. A stormy event of his period of office gave
+the crowd an opportunity of seeing the severity with which a magistrate
+of the older school could avenge an affront to the dignity of his
+office. Publius Decius, who was believed to be a conscious imitator of
+Fulvius Flaccus in the exaggerated vehemence of his oratory, and who had
+already proved by his prosecution of Opimius that he was ready to defend
+certain features of the Gracchan cause even when such championship was
+fraught with danger, was in possession of the urban praetorship at the
+time when Scaurus held the consulship. One day the consul passed the
+open court of justice when the praetor was giving judgment from the
+curule chair. Decius remained seated, either in feigned oblivion or in
+ostentatious disregard of the presence of his superior. The politic
+wrath of Scaurus was aroused; an enemy had been delivered into his
+hands, and the people might be given an object-lesson of the way in
+which the most vehement champion of popular rights was, even when
+covered with the dignity of a magistracy, but a straw in the iron grasp
+of the higher Imperium. The consul ordered Decius to rise, his official
+robe to be rent, the chair of justice to be shattered in pieces, and
+published a warning that no future litigant should resort to the court
+of the contumacious praetor.[798] The vulgar mind is impressed, when it
+is not angered, by such scenes of violence. A repute for sternness is
+the best cloak for the flexibility which, if revealed, would excite
+suspicion. Scaurus to the popular mind was an embodiment of stiff
+patrician dignity, perhaps happily devoid of that touch of insolence
+which is often the mark of a career assured without a struggle; of a
+self-complacent dignity, quietly conscious of its own deserts and
+demanding their due reward, of the calmness of a soul that is above
+suspicion and refuses to admit even in its inmost sanctuary the thought
+that its motives can be impugned. Meanwhile certain disrespectful
+onlookers were expressing wonder at his mysteriously growing wealth and
+marvelling as to its source. But, marvel as they might, they never drove
+Scaurus to the necessity of an explanation. We shall find him as an old
+man repelling all attacks by the irresistible appeal to his services and
+his career. The condemnation of Scaurus appealed to the conservative as
+a blow struck at the dignity of the State itself; to the man of a more
+open mind it was at least the shattering of a delightful illusion.
+
+The period which witnessed the crowning of the efforts of the poor and
+struggling patrician was also sufficiently liberal, or sufficiently poor
+in aristocratic talent, to admit the initial steps in the official
+career of a genuine son of the people. It was now that Caius Marius was
+laboriously climbing the grades of curule rank, and showing in the
+pursuit of political influence at home the rugged determination which
+had already distinguished him in the field. A Volscian by descent, he
+belonged to Rome through the accident of birth in the old municipality
+of Arpinum, which since the early part of the second century had enjoyed
+full Roman citizenship and therefore gave its citizens the right of
+suffrage and of honours in the capital. Born of good yeoman stock in the
+village of Cereatae in the Arpinate territory,[799] he had passed a
+boyhood which derived no polish from the refinements, and no taint from
+the corruptions, of city life. In his case there was no puzzling
+discrepancy between the outer and the inner man. His frame and visage
+were the true index of a mind, somewhat unhewn and uncouth, but with a
+massive reserve of strength, a persistence not blindly obstinate, a
+patience that could wear out the most brilliant efforts of his rivals
+and opponents. He did not court hostility, but simply shouldered his way
+sturdily to the front, encouraged by Rome's better spirits, who saw in
+him the excellent officer with qualities that might make the future
+general, and appealing to the people, when they gradually became
+familiar with his presence, as a type of that venerable myth, the rustic
+statesman of the past. The poverty of his early lot was perhaps
+exaggerated by historians[800] who wished to point the contrast between
+his humble origin and his later glory, and to find a suitable cradle for
+his rugged nature; even the initial stages of his career afford no
+evidence of a struggle against pressing want, nor is there any proof
+that he was supported by the bounty of his powerful friends. Even if he
+entered the army as a common foot-soldier, he would merely have shared
+the lot of many a well-to-do yeoman who obeyed the call of the
+conscription. With Marius, however, military service was not to be an
+incident, but a profession. The needs of a widening empire were calling
+for special capacities such as had never been demanded in the past. The
+career of Scaurus had shown the successful pleader surmounting the
+obstacle of poverty; even the higher barrier of birth might be leaped
+amidst the democratising influences of the camp. The nobility was not
+sufficiently self-centred to be wholly blind to its own interests; and
+it was easier to patronise a soldier than a pleader. In the latter case
+the aspirant's political creed must be examined; in the former the last
+question that would be asked was whether the officer possessed any
+political creed at all. It might be a question of importance for the
+future with respect to the candidature for those offices which alone
+conferred high military command, even though there was as yet no dream
+of the sword becoming the arbiter of political life; but the genuine
+commander, engaged in the difficult task of remodelling an army, had no
+eye but for the bearing and qualities of the soldier, and would not
+scruple to cast aside his patrician prejudices in a despairing effort to
+find the fittest instruments for the perfecting of his great design. It
+was Marius's fortunate lot to enter the field at a time of trial, and to
+serve his first campaign under a general, who was combating the adverse
+forces of influence, licence and incompetence in the official staff
+supplied by the government and represented by the young scions of the
+nobility. To the camp before Numantia, where Scipio was scourging his
+men into obedience, rooting out the amenities of life, and astonishing
+his officers with new ideas of the meaning of a campaign, Marius brought
+the very qualities on which the general had set his heart. An
+unflinching courage, shown on one occasion in single combat when he
+overthrew a champion of the foe, a power of physical endurance which
+could submit to all changes of temperature and food, a minute precision
+in the performance of the detailed duties of the camp, soon led to his
+rapid advancement and to his selection as a member of the intimate
+circle which surrounded the commander-in-chief. Every great specialist
+has a small claim to the gift of prophecy; for he possesses an instinct
+which reveals more than his reason will permit him to prove; and we need
+not wonder at the story that, when once the debate grew warm round
+Scipio's table as to who would succeed him as the chosen commander of
+the Roman host, he lightly touched the shoulder of Marius and answered
+"Perhaps we shall find him here".[801]
+
+The higher commands in the army could be sought only through a political
+career; and Marius, inspired with the highest hopes by Scipio's
+commendation, was forced to breathe the uncongenial atmosphere of the
+city and to fight his way upwards to the curule offices. There is no
+proof that he took advantage of the current of democratic feeling which
+accompanied the movements of the Gracchi. It was, perhaps, as well that
+he did not; for such an association might have long delayed his higher
+political career. The nobles who posed as democrats probably attached
+more importance to forensic skill than to military merit; and the
+support which Marius enjoyed was sought and found amongst the
+representatives of the opposite party. Scipio's death removed a man who
+might have been a powerful advocate on his behalf; the vague
+relationship of clientship in which the family of Marius had stood to
+the clan of the Herennii[802]--a relation common between Roman families
+and the members of Italian townships, and in this case probably dating
+from a time before Arpinum had received full Roman rights--seems never
+to have led to active interference on his behalf on the part of the
+representatives of that ancient Samnite house. Perhaps the Herennii were
+too weak to assist the fortunes of their client; they certainly give no
+names to the Fasti of this period. It is also possible that the proud
+soldier was galled by the memory of the hereditary yoke, and sought
+assistance where it would be given simply as a mark of merit, not as a
+duty conditioned by the claim to irksome reciprocal obligations. The
+all-powerful family of the Caecilii Metelli, who were at this time
+vigorously fulfilling the destiny of office which heaven had prescribed
+for their clan, stretched out a helping hand to the distinguished
+soldier;[803] a family born to military command might consult its
+interests, while it gratified its sympathies, by attaching to its
+_clientèle_ a warrior who had received the best training of the school
+of Africanus. After he had held the military tribunate and the
+quaestorship,[804] Marius attained the tribunate of the Plebs with the
+assistance of Lucius Caecilius Metellus.[805] He was in his thirty-ninth
+year when he entered on the first office which gave him the opportunity
+of claiming the attention of the people by the initiation of legislative
+measures. The slowness of his rise may have led him to believe that he
+might accelerate his career by taking his fortune into his own hands;
+certainly if the law which bore his name was not unwelcome to the better
+portion of the nobility, the methods by which he forced it through did
+not commend themselves even to his patron. His proposal was meant to
+limit the exercise of undue influence at the Comitia, and although the
+law doubtless referred to legislative meetings summoned for every
+purpose, it was chiefly directed to securing the independence of the
+voter in such public trials as still took place before the people,[806]
+and was perhaps inspired by scenes that might have been witnessed at the
+acquittal of Opimius one year previously. One of the clauses of the bill
+provided that the exits to the galleries, through which the voters filed
+to give their suffrages to the tellers, should be narrowed,[807] the
+object being to exclude the political agents who were accustomed to
+occupy the sides of the passages, and influence or intimidate, by their
+presence if not by their words, the voting citizen at the critical
+moment when he was about to record his verdict. Such methods were
+probably found effective even where the ballot was used, but their
+success must have been even greater in trials for treason, at which
+voting by word of mouth was still employed. It was difficult for a
+government, which had accepted the ballot, to offer a decent resistance
+to a measure of this kind. The proposal attacked indifferently political
+methods which might be, and probably were, employed by both parties;
+and, although its success would no doubt inflict more injury on the
+government than on the opposition, it could not be repudiated by the
+senate on the ground that it was tainted by an aggressively "popular"
+character. The opposition which it actually encountered was apparently
+based on the formal ground that the heads of the administration had not
+been sufficiently consulted. The law was not the outcome of any
+senatorial decree, nor had the senate's opinion been deliberately taken
+on the utility of the measure. The consul Cotta persuaded the house to
+frame a resolution expressing dissatisfaction with the proposal as it
+stood, and to summon Marius for an explanation. The summons was promptly
+obeyed, but the expected scene of humiliation of the untried parvenu was
+rudely interrupted at an early period of the debate. Marius knew that he
+had the people and the tribunician college with him, and that even the
+most perverse ingenuity could never construe the measure as a factious
+opposition to the interests of the State. Obedience to the senate would
+in this instance mean the sacrifice of a reputation for political
+honesty and courage; it might be better to burn his boats and to trust
+for the future to the generosity of the people for the gifts which the
+nobility so grudgingly bestowed. He chose to regard the controversy as
+one of those cases of hopeless conflict between the members of the
+magistracy, for the solution of which the law had provided regular
+though exceptional means. He fell back on the majesty of the tribunician
+power, and threatened Cotta with imprisonment if he did not withdraw his
+resolution.[808] It is probable that up to this point no decree
+expressing wholesale condemnation of the bill had been passed, and the
+senate might therefore be coerced through the magistrate, without its
+authority being utterly disregarded. Cotta turned to his colleague
+Metellus, known to be the friend of the obstinate tribune, and Metellus
+rising gave the consul his support. Marius, undaunted by the attitude of
+his patron, hurried matters to a close. He summoned his attendant to the
+Curia, and bade him take Metellus himself into custody and conduct him
+to a place of confinement. Metellus appealed to the other tribunes, but
+none would offer his help; and the senate was forced to save the
+situation by sacrificing its vote of censure. So rapid and complete a
+victory, even on an issue of no great importance, delighted the popular
+mind. The senate was then in good favour at Rome; but a chance for
+realising their superiority over the greatest of their servants was
+always welcome to the people. They also loved those exhibitions of
+physical force by which the genius of Rome had solved the difficulties
+of her constitution: and the violence of a tribune was as impressive now
+as was that of a consul four years later. Marius had gained a character
+for sturdy independence and unshaken constancy, which was to produce
+unexpected results in the political world of the future, and was to be
+immediately tested in a manner that must have proved profoundly
+disappointing to many who acclaimed him. It seems as though this victory
+over the resolution of the senate may have urged certain would-be
+reformers to believe that measures of a Gracchan type might win the
+favour of the people, and secure the support of a tribunician college
+which seemed to be out of sympathy with the government. Some proposal
+dealing with the distribution of corn,[809] perhaps an extension of the
+existing scheme, was made. It found no more resolute opponent than
+Marius, and his opposition helped to secure its utter defeat. In this
+resistance we may perhaps see the genuinely neutral character of the
+man; for the attribution of interested motives, although the historian's
+favourite revenge for the difficulties of his task, endows his
+characters with a foresight which is as abnormal as their lack of
+principle; although it is questionable whether Marius would have gained
+by identifying himself with a cause which had not yet emerged from the
+ruin of its failure.
+
+The lack of official support and the alienation of a section of the
+people may perhaps be traced in the successive defeats of his
+candidature for the curule and plebeian aedileships,[810] although in
+the elections to these offices the attention of the people was so keenly
+directed to the candidate's pecuniary means as a guarantee of their
+gratification by brilliant shows, that the aedileship must have been of
+all magistracies the most difficult of attainment by merit unsupported
+by wealth. Even when the rejected candidate had won favour on other
+grounds, the electors could salve their consciences with the reflection
+that the aedileship was no obligatory step in an official career, and
+that, where merit and not money was in question, they could show their
+appreciation of personal qualities in the elections to the praetorship.
+A year after his repulse Marius turned to the candidature for this
+office, which conveyed the first opportunity of the tenure of an
+independent military command. He was returned at the bottom of the poll,
+and even then had to fight hard to retain his place in the praetorian
+college.[811] A charge of undue influence was brought against the man
+who had struggled successfully to preserve the purity of the Comitia,
+and it was pretended that a slave of one of his closest political
+associates had been seen within the barriers mixing with the voters.
+That the charge was supported by powerful influences, or was generally
+believed to be correct, is perhaps shown by the conduct of the censors
+of the succeeding year who expelled this associate from the senate.[812]
+The jurors[813] before whom the case was tried--representatives, as we
+must suppose, of the equestrian order and therefore presumably
+uninfluenced by senatorial hostility--were long perplexed by the
+conflict of evidence. During the first days of the trial it seemed as
+though the doom of Marius was sealed, and his unexpected acquittal was
+only secured by the scrutiny of the tablets revealing an equality of
+votes, a condition which, according to the rules of Roman process,
+necessitated a favourable verdict.
+
+His praetorship, in accordance with the rules which now governed this
+magistracy in consequence of the multiplication of the courts of
+justice, confined his energies to Rome. We do not know what department
+of this office he administered; but, as the charge of no department
+could make an epoch in the career of any one but a lawyer gifted with
+original ideas, we are not surprised to find that Marius's tenure of
+this magistracy, although creditable, did not excite any marked
+attention.[814] After his praetorship he obtained his first independent
+military command in Farther Spain. Such a province had always its little
+problems of pacification to present to an energetic commander, and
+Marius's military talents were moderately exercised by the repression of
+the habitual brigandage of its inhabitants.[815] His tenure of a foreign
+command may have added to his wealth, for provincial government could be
+made to increase the means of the most honest administrator. It was
+still more important that his tenure of the praetorship had added him to
+the ranks of the official nobility. His birth was now no bar to any
+social distinction to which his simple and resolute soul might think it
+profitable to aspire: and a family of the patrician Julii was not
+ashamed to give one of its daughters to the adventurer from
+Arpinum.[816] Thus Marius remained for a while; to Roman society an
+interesting specimen of the self-made man, marked by a bluntness and
+directness appropriate to the type and provocative of an amused regard;
+to the professed politician a man with a fairly successful but puzzling
+political career, and one that perhaps needed not to be too seriously
+considered. For to all who understood the existent conditions of Roman
+public life, his attainment of the consulship and of a dominant position
+in the councils of the State must have seemed impossible. There was but
+one contingency that could make Marius a necessary man. This was war on
+a grand scale. But the contingency was distant, and, even if it arose,
+the government might employ his skill while keeping him in a
+subordinate position.
+
+The career of Marius is not the only proof that the tradition of
+successful opposition to the senate could be easily revived. In the year
+following his tribunate a new and successful effort was made in the
+direction of transmarine colonisation.[817] The pretext for the measure
+was the necessity for preserving command of the territory which had been
+won by the great victories of Domitius and Fabius on the farther side of
+the Alps; the strategic value of the foundation was undeniable, and the
+opposition of the government was probably directed by the form which it
+was proposed that the new settlement should take. It was not to be a
+mere fort in the enemy's country, like the already-established Aquae
+Sextiae,[818] but a true _colonia_ of Roman citizens,[819] the creation
+of which was certain to lead to excessive complications in the foreign
+policy which dealt with the frontiers of the north. Such a colony would
+become the centre of an active trade with the surrounding tribes; though
+professedly founded in the people's interest, it would rapidly become a
+mere feeler for extending the operations of the great mercantile class;
+the growth of Roman trade-interests would necessarily involve a policy
+of defence and probably of expansion, which would tell heavily on the
+resources of the State. The success of the government was dependent on
+the restriction of its efforts, and there is nothing surprising in the
+hearty opposition which it offered to the projected colony of Narbo
+Martius. Even after the original measure sanctioning the settlement had
+passed the Comitia, senatorial influence led to the promulgation of a
+new proposal in which the people was asked to reconsider its
+decision.[820] But the project had found an ardent champion in the young
+Lucius Crassus, who strengthened the position which he had won in the
+previous year, by a speech weighty beyond the promise of his age.[821]
+In his successful advocacy of a national undertaking he was not afraid
+to impugn the authority of the senate, and reaped an immediate reward in
+being selected, despite his youth, as one of the commissioners for
+establishing the settlement.[822]
+
+It is probable that without the support of the equestrian order the
+project for the foundation of Narbo Martius might have fallen through.
+The man of popular sympathies whose measures attracted their support was
+tolerably certain of success, and the man who posed as the champion of
+the order was still more firmly placed. The latter position was occupied
+for a considerable time by Caius Servilius Glaucia, whose tribunate
+probably belongs to the close of the period which we are
+describing.[823] Glaucia himself, probably one of those scions of the
+nobility whom an original bent of mind had alienated from the narrow
+interests of his order, was a man who, lacking in the gift of passionate
+but steadfast seriousness which makes the great reformer, possessed
+powers admirably adapted for holding the popular ear and inspiring his
+auditors with a kind of robust confidence in himself. Ready, acute and
+witty,[824] he possessed the happy faculty of taking the Comitia, under
+the guise of the plain and honest man, into his confidence. The very
+ignorance of his auditors became a respectable attribute, when it was
+figured as ingenuous simplicity which needed protection against the
+tortuous wiles of the legislator and the official draughtsman. On one
+occasion he told his audience that the essence of a law was its
+preamble. If, when read to them, it was found to contain the words
+"dictator, consul, praetor or magister equitum," the bill was no concern
+of theirs. But, if they caught the utterance "and whosoever after this
+enactment," then they must wake up, for some new fetter of law was being
+forged to bind their limbs.[825] A man of this unconventional type was
+not likely to be popular in the senate, and the opprobrious name, which
+he subsequently bore in the Curia,[826] is a proof of the liveliness
+which he imparted to debate.
+
+At the time of Glaucia's tribunate some subtle movement seems to have
+been on foot for undoing the judiciary law of Caius Gracchus and ousting
+the knights from their possession of the court before which senators
+most frequently appeared. The law which dealt with the crime of
+extortion by Roman officials had been frequently renewed, and, whenever
+a proposal was made for recasting the enactment with a view to effecting
+improvements in procedure, the equestrian tenure of the court was
+threatened; for a new law might state qualifications for the jurors
+differing from those which had given this department of jurisdiction to
+the knights. The relief of the order was therefore great when the
+necessary work of revision was undertaken by one who showed himself an
+ardent champion of equestrian claims.[827] Glaucia's alteration in
+procedure was thorough and permanent. He introduced the system of the
+"second hearing "--an obligatory renewal of the trial, which rendered it
+possible for counsel to discuss evidence which had been already given,
+and for jurors to get a grasp of the mass of scattered data which had
+been presented to their notice--[828] and he also made it possible to
+recover damages, not only from the chief malefactor, but from all who
+had dishonestly shared his spoils.[829] These principles continued to be
+observed in trials for extortion to the close of the Republic, and may
+have been the only permanent relic of Glaucia's feverish political
+career. But for the moment the clauses of his law which dealt with the
+qualifications of the jurors, were those most anxiously awaited and most
+heartily acclaimed. He had stemmed a reaction and consolidated, beyond
+hope of alteration for a long term of years, the system of dual control
+established by Caius Gracchus.
+
+The careers and successes of Marius, Crassus and Glaucia exhibit the
+spirit of unrest which broke at intervals through the apathetic
+tolerance displayed by the people towards the rule of the nobility.
+These alternations of confidence and distrust find their counterpart in
+the religious history of the times; but a panic springing from a belief
+in the anger of the gods was even more difficult to control than the
+alarm excited by the attitude of the government. Such a panic knew no
+distinctions of station, sex or age; it seized on citizens who cared
+nothing for the problems of administration, it was strong in proportion
+to the weakness of its victims, and gathered from the dark thoughts and
+wild words of the imbecile the poison which infected the sober mind and
+assumed, from the very universality of the sickness, the guise of a
+healthy effort at rooting out some deep-seated pollution from the State.
+The gloomy record of the religious persecutions of the past made it
+still more difficult for a government, which prided itself on the
+retention of the ancient control of morals, which gloried in its
+monopoly of an historic priesthood that had often set its hand to the
+work of extirpation, to stifle such a cry. The demand for atonement was
+the voice of the conserver of Rome's moral life, of the patriotic
+devotee who was striving earnestly to reclaim the waning favour of her
+tutelary gods. If it was further believed that the seat of the
+corruption was to be found amidst the families of the nobility itself,
+the last barrier to resistance had been broken down, for even to seem to
+shield the unholy thing was to make its lurking place an object of
+horror and execration.
+
+The nerves of the people were first excited by various prodigies that
+had appeared; a confirmation of their fears might have been found in the
+utter destruction of the army of Porcius Cato in Thrace;[830] and a
+strange calamity soon gave an index to the nature of the offence which
+excited the anger of the gods. When Helvius, a Roman knight, was
+journeying with his wife and daughter from Rome to Apulia, they were
+enveloped in a sudden storm. The alarm of the girl urged the father to
+seek shelter with all speed. The horses were loosed from the vehicle,
+the maiden was placed on one, and the party was hastening along the
+road, when suddenly there was a blinding flash and, when it had passed,
+the young Helvia and her horse were seen prone upon the ground. The
+force of the lightning had stripped every garment and ornament from her
+body, and the dead steed lay a few paces off with its trappings riven
+and scattered around it.[831] Death by a thunderbolt had always a
+meaning, which was sometimes hard to find; but here the gods had not
+left the inquiring votary utterly in doubt. The nakedness of the
+stricken maiden was a riddle that the priests could read. It was a
+manifest sign that a virginal vow had been broken, and that some of the
+keepers of the eternal fire were tainted with the sin of unchastity. The
+destruction of the horse seemed to portend that a knight would be found
+to be a partner in the crime.[832] Evidence was invited and was soon
+forthcoming. The slave of a certain Barrus came forward and deposed to
+the corruption of three of the vestal virgins, Aemilia, Licinia and
+Marcia.[833] He pretended that the incestuous intercourse had been of
+long standing, and he named his own master amongst many other men whom
+he declared to be the authors of the sacrilege. The maidens were
+believed to have added to their lovers to screen their first offence;
+the sacrifice of their honour became the price of silence; and their
+first corrupters were forced to be dumb when jealousy was mastered by
+fear. The knowledge of the crime is believed to have been widely spread
+amongst the circles of the better class, until the conspiracy of silence
+was broken down by the action of a slave,[834] and all who would not be
+deemed accomplices were forced to add their share to the weight of the
+accusing testimony.
+
+A scandal of this magnitude called for a formal trial by the supreme
+religious tribunal, and towards the close of the year[835] Lucius
+Metellus, the chief pontiff, summoned the incriminated vestals before
+the college. Aemilia was condemned, but Licinia and Marcia were
+acquitted. There was an immediate outcry; the pontiff's leniency was
+severely censured; and the anger and fear of the people emboldened a
+tribune, Sextus Peducaeus, to propose for the first time that the
+secular arm should wrest from the pontifical college the spiritual
+jurisdiction that it had abused. He carried a resolution that a special
+commission should be established by the people to continue the
+investigation.[836] The judges were probably Roman knights after the
+model of the Gracchan jurors; the president was the terrible Lucius
+Cassius Longinus, already known for his severity as a censor and famed
+for his penetration as a criminal judge. This fatal penetration, which
+had endowed his tribunal with the nickname "the reef of the
+accused," [837] was now welcomed as a surety that the inquiry would be
+searching, and that the innocence which survived it would be so well
+established that all doubt and fear would be dissolved. This commission
+condemned, not only the two vestals whom the pontiffs had acquitted, but
+many of their female intermediaries as well.[838] Some of their supposed
+paramours must also have been convicted; amongst the accused was Marcus
+Antonius, who was in future days to share the realm of oratory with
+Lucius Crassus. He was on the eve of his departure to Asia, where he was
+to exercise the duties of a quaestor, when he was summoned to appear
+before the court over which Cassius presided. He might have pleaded the
+benefit of his obligation to continue his official duties;[839] but he
+preferred to waive his claim and face his judges. His escape was
+believed to have been mainly due to the heroic conduct of a young slave,
+who, presented of his own free will to the torture, bore the anguish of
+the rack, the scourge and the fire without uttering a word that might
+incriminate his master.[840] The free employment of such methods in
+trials for incest throws a grave doubt on the value of the judgment
+which they elicited; and, when a court is established for the purpose of
+appeasing the popular conscience, a part at least of its conduct may be
+easily suspected of being preordained. Cassius's rigour in this matter
+was thought excessive;[841] but, even had he and the jurors meted out
+nothing but the strictest justice, the memory of their sentence would
+long have rankled in the minds of the influential families whose members
+they had condemned, and thus perpetuated the tradition of their
+unnecessary severity. It may be doubted, however, whether a secular
+court was competent to inflict the horrible penalties of pontifical
+jurisdiction, to condemn the vestal to a living grave and her paramour
+to death by the scourge;[842] interdiction, and perhaps in the more
+serious cases the death by strangling usually reserved for traitors, may
+have been meted out to the men, while the women may have been handed
+over to their relatives for execution. But even this exemplary
+visitation of the vices which lurked in the heart of the State was not
+deemed sufficient to appease the gods or to quiet the popular
+conscience. To punish the guilty was to offer the barest satisfaction to
+heaven and to conscience; a fuller atonement was demanded, and the
+Sibylline oracles, when consulted on the point, were understood to
+ordain the cultivation of certain strange divinities by the living
+sacrifice of four strangers, two of Hellenic and two of Gallic
+race.[843] The accomplishment of this act must have been a severe strain
+on the reason and conscience of a government which sixteen years later
+absolutely prohibited the performance of human sacrifice[844] and soon
+made efforts to stamp out the barbarous ritual even in its foreign
+dependencies.[845] Even this concession to the panic of the times could
+not be regarded as fraught with much worldly success. The gods seemed
+still to retain an unkind feeling both to the city and the government.
+Two years later there was a return of dreadful prodigies, and a great
+part of Rome was laid waste by a terrible fire. A few months more and
+news was brought from Africa which shook to its very foundations the
+fabric of senatorial rule.[846]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The land, on which the eyes of the world were soon to be fastened, was
+the neglected protectorate which had been built up to secure the
+temporary purpose of the overthrow of Carthage, and had since remained
+in the undisturbed possession of the peaceful descendants of Masinissa.
+The fortunes of the kingdom of Numidia, so far as they affected that
+kingdom itself, deserved to be neglected by its suzerain; for the power
+which Masinissa had won by arms and diplomacy was more than sufficient
+to protect its own interests. The Numidia of the day formed in
+territorial extent one of the mightiest kingdoms of the world, and
+ranked only second to Egypt amongst the client powers of Rome.[847] It
+extended from Mauretania to Cyrenaica,[848] from the river Muluccha to
+the greater Syrtis, thus touching on the west the Empire of the Moors,
+at that time confined to Tingitana, on the east almost penetrating to
+Egypt, and enjoying the best part of the fertile region which borders
+the coast of the Mediterranean.[849] For the Moroccan boundary of the
+kingdom--the river Muluccha or Molocath--see Göbel _Die Westküste
+Afrikas im Altertum_ pp. 79,80. From this vast tract of country Rome had
+cut out for herself a small section on the north-east. In the creation
+of the province of Africa her moderation and forbearance must have
+astonished her Numidian client; and, if Masinissa showed signs of
+hesitancy in rousing himself for the destruction of Carthage, the fears
+of his sons must have been immediately dispelled when they saw the
+slender profits which Rome meant to reap from the suppression of their
+joint rival. The Numidian kings were even allowed to keep the territory
+which had been wrested from Carthage between the Second and Third Punic
+Wars. This comprised the region about the Tusca, which boasted not less
+than fifty towns, the district known as the Great Plains,[850] which has
+been identified with the great basin of the Dakhla of the
+Oulad-bon-Salem, and probably the plateau of Vaga (Bêdja) which
+dominates this basin.[851] The Roman lines merely extended from the
+Tusca (the Wäd El-Kebir) in the North, where that river flows into the
+Mediterranean opposite the island of Thabraca (Tabarka) to Thenae
+(Henschir Tina) on the south-east.[852] But even the upper waters of the
+Tusca belonged to Numidia, as did the towns of Vaga, Sicca Veneria and
+Zama Regia. Consequently the Roman frontier must have curved eastward
+until it reached the point where a rocky region separates the basin of
+the Bagradas (Medjerda) from the plains of the Sahel; thence it ran to
+the neighbourhood of Aquae Regiae and thence, probably following the
+line of a ditch drawn between the two great depressions of Kairouan and
+El-Gharra, to its ultimate bourne at Thenae.[853] It is clear that the
+Romans did not look on their province as an end desirable in itself.
+They had left in the hands of their Numidian friends some of the most
+fertile lands, some of the richest commercial towns, situated in a
+district which they might easily have claimed. Against such annexation
+Masinissa could have uttered no word of legitimate protest. His kingdom
+had already been almost doubled by the acquisition of the lands of his
+rival Syphax, and his sons saw themselves through the aid of Rome in
+possession of an artificially created kingdom, which was so entirely out
+of harmony with the traditions of Numidian life that it could scarcely
+have entered into the dreams of any prince of that race. But the
+conquering city reposed some faith in gratitude, and reposed still more
+in its habitual policy of caution. The province which it created was
+simply a political and strategic necessity. It was intended to secure
+the negative object of preventing the reconstitution of the great
+political and commercial centre which had fallen.[854] If Carthage was
+never to rise again, a fragment of the coast-line must be kept in the
+hands of the possessors of its devastated site. It might have been
+better for the peace of Africa had the Romans been a little more
+grasping and had the Roman position been stronger than it was. The
+Phoenicians scattered along the coast had become familiar objects to the
+Berber inhabitants and their kings; to the enlightened monarch they were
+a valuable addition to the population of any of his cities--all the more
+valuable now that they were politically powerless. But with the Roman
+official and the Roman trader it was different. Here was an alien and
+(in spite of the restraint of the government) an encroaching
+civilisation, utterly unfamiliar to the eyes of the natives, but known
+to justify its lordly security by that dim background of power which
+clung to the name of the paramount city of the West. The Roman
+possessions were an ugly eyesore to a man who held that Africa should be
+for the Africans. The wise Masinissa might tolerate the spectacle,
+content (as, indeed, he should have been) with the power and security
+which Rome's friendship had brought to her ally. But it remained to be
+seen whether his views would always be held by his own subjects or by
+some less cautious or less happily placed successor of his own line.
+
+It was indeed possible that a hostile feeling of nationality might be
+awakened beyond the limits even of the great kingdom of Numidia. The
+designations which the Romans employ for the natives of North Africa
+obscure the fact, which was recognised in later times by the Arab
+conquerors, of the unity of the great Berber folk.[855] Roman historians
+and geographers speak of the Numidians and Mauretanians as though they
+were distinct peoples; but there can be little doubt that, then as
+to-day, they were but two fractions of the same great race, and that
+even the wild Gaetulians of the South are but representatives of the
+parent stock of this indigenous people. As in the case of nearly all
+races which in default of historical data we are forced to call
+indigenous, two separate elements may be distinguished in this stock, an
+earlier and a later, and survivals of the original distinctions between
+these elements were clearly discernible in many parts of Northern
+Africa; but, as the fusion between these stocks had been effected in
+prehistoric times, a common Berber nationality may be held to have
+extended from the Atlantic almost to Egypt, at the time when the Romans
+were added to the immigrant Semites and Greeks who had already sought to
+dwell amidst its borders. The basis of this nationality is thought to be
+found in the aborigines of the Sahara who had gradually moved up from
+the desert to the present littoral. There they were joined by a race of
+another type who were wending their way from what is now the continent
+of Europe. The Saharic man was of a dark-brown colour but with no traces
+of the negroid type. His European comrade was a man of fair complexion
+and light hair; and these curiously blended races continued to live side
+by side and to form a single nation, preserving perhaps each some of its
+own psychical characteristics, but speaking in common the language of
+the older Saharic stock.[856] But the two races were not uniformly
+distributed over the various territories of Northern Africa. The white
+race was perhaps more in evidence in Mauretania, as it is in the Morocco
+of to-day;[857] the dark race was probably most strongly represented
+amongst the Gaetulians of the South. There were, in short, in Northern
+Africa two zones, marked by differences of civilisation as well as of
+ethnic descent, which were clearly distinguished in antiquity. The first
+is represented by the Afri, Numidians, and Moors, who inhabited the
+coast region from East to West. These were early subjected to alien
+influences, the greatest of which, before the coming of the Roman, was
+the advent of the Semite. The second is shown by the vast aggregate of
+tribes which form a curve along the south from the ocean to the
+Cyrenaica. These tribes, which were called by the common name of
+Gaetuli, were almost exempt from European influences in historic, and
+probably in prehistoric, times. A few intermingled with the Aethiopians
+of the Sahara,[858] but, taken as a whole, they are believed to
+represent the primitive race of brown Saharic dwellers in all
+its purity.
+
+Had the term Nomad or Numidian been applied to the southern races, the
+designation might have been justified by the migratory character of
+their life. But it is more than questionable whether the designation is
+defensible as applied to the people to whom it is usually attached. The
+Numidians do not seem to have possessed either the character or habits
+of a genuinely nomadic people such as the Arabs.[859] They lived in huts
+and not in tents. These huts (_mapalia_), which had the form of an
+upturned boat, may have seemed a poor habitation to Phoenicians, Greeks
+and Romans; but, as habitations, they were meant to be permanent; they
+were an index of the possession of property, of a lasting attachment to
+the soil. The village formed by a group of these little homes clustering
+round a steep height, was a still further index of a political and
+military society that intended to maintain and defend the area on which
+it had settled. The pages of Sallust give ample evidence of an active
+village life engrossed with the toils of agriculture, and the mass of
+the population of the region of the Tell must have been for a long time
+fixed to the soil which yielded it a livelihood. Elsewhere there was
+indeed need of something like periodic migration. On the high plateaux
+pastoral life made the usual change from summer to winter stations
+necessary. But this regulated movement does not correspond strictly to
+the desultory life of a truly nomadic people. Yet it is easy to see how,
+in contrast to the regular and often sedentary mercantile life of the
+Phoenician and the Greek, that of the Numidian might be considered wild
+and migratory. He was in truth a "trekker" rather than a nomad, and he
+possessed the invaluable military attributes of the man unchained by
+cities and accustomed to wander far in a hard and bracing country. A
+skill in horsemanship that was the wonder of the world, the eye for a
+country hastily traversed, the memory for the spot once seen, the power
+of rapid mobilisation and of equally rapid disappearance, the gift of
+being a knight one day, a shepherd or a peasant the next--these were the
+attributes that made a Roman conquest of Numidia so long impossible and
+rendered diplomacy imperative as a supplement to war.
+
+It is less easy to reconstruct the moral and political attributes of
+this people from the data which we at present possess, or to reconcile
+the experience of to-day with the impressions of ancient historians. But
+so permanent has been the great bulk of the population of Northern
+Africa that it is tempting to interpret the ancient Numidian in the
+light of the modern Kabyle. One who has had experience of the latter
+endows him with an intelligent head, a frank and open physiognomy and a
+lively eye, describes him as active and enterprising, lively and
+excitable, possessed of moral pride, eminently truthful, a stern holder
+of his plighted word and a respecter of women--a respect shown by the
+general practice of monogamy.[860] Even when stirred to war he is said
+not to lend himself to unnecessary cruelty.[861] The activity,
+liveliness and excitability of this people may be traced in the accounts
+of antiquity; but Roman records would add the impression of duplicity,
+treachery and cruelty as characteristics of the race. Yet as these
+characteristics are exhibited in the record of a great national war
+against a hated invader, and are chiefly illustrated in the persons of a
+king or his ministers--individuals spoilt by power or maddened by
+fear--we need not perhaps attach too much importance to the discrepancy
+between the evidence of the ancient and modern world.
+
+Much of the history of Numidia, especially during the epoch of the war
+of the Romans against Jugurtha, would be illuminated if we could
+interpret the political tendencies of its ancient inhabitants by those
+of the Kabyle of modern times. The latter is said to be a sturdy
+democrat, founding his society on the ideas of equality and
+individuality. Each member of this society enjoys the same rights and is
+bound down to the same duties. There is no military or religious
+nobility, there are no hereditary chiefs. The affairs of the society,
+about which all can speak or vote, are administered by simple
+delegates.[862] There is nothing in the history of the war with Jugurtha
+to belie these characteristics, there is much which confirms them. In
+the narrative of that war there is no mention of a nobility. The
+influential men described are simply those who have been elevated by
+wealth or familiarity with the king. The monarchy itself is a great
+power where the king is present, but the life of the community is not
+broken when the king is a fugitive; and loyalty to the crown centres
+round a great personality, who is expected to drive the hated invaders
+into the sea, not merely round the name of a legitimate dynasty.
+
+Monarchy, in fact, seems a kind of artificial product in Numidia; but,
+artificial as it may have been, it had done good work. An active reign
+of more than fifty years by a man who united the absolutism of the
+savage potentate with the wisdom and experience of the civilised ruler,
+had produced effects in Numidia that could never die, Masinissa had
+proved what Numidian agriculture might become under the guidance of
+scientific rules by the creation of model farms, whose fertile acres
+showed that cultivated plants of every kind could be grown on native
+soil;[863] while under his rule and that of his son Micipsa the life of
+the city showed the same progress as that of the country. Numidia could
+not become one of the granaries of the world without its capital rising
+to the rank of a great commercial city. Cirta, though situated some
+forty-eight Roman miles from the sea,[864] was soon sought by the
+Greeks, those ubiquitous bankers of the Mediterranean world,[865] while
+Roman and Italian capitalists eagerly plied their business in this new
+and attractive sphere which had been presented to their efforts by the
+conquests of Rome and the civilising energy of its native rulers.
+
+The kingdom of Numidia suffered from a weakness common to monarchies
+where the strong spirits of subjects and local chiefs can be controlled
+only by the still stronger hand of the central potentate, and where the
+practice of polygamy and concubinage in the royal house sometimes gave
+rise to many pretenders but to no heir with an indefeasible claim to
+rule. There was no settled principle of succession to the throne, and
+the death of the sovereign for the time being threatened the peace or
+unity of the kingdom, while it entailed grave responsibilities upon its
+nominal protector. Masinissa himself had been excluded from the throne
+by an uncle,[866] and but for his vigour and energy might have remained
+the subject of succeeding pretenders.
+
+A crisis was threatened at his own decease but was happily averted by
+the prudence of the dying monarch. Loath as he probably was to
+acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, he thrust on her the invidious task
+of deciding the succession to the throne. He felt that Roman authority
+would be more effective than paternal wishes; perhaps he saw that
+amongst his sons there was not one who could be trusted alone and
+unaided to continue to build up the fortunes of the state and to claim
+recognition from his brothers as their undisputed lord, while the show
+of submission to Rome might weaken the vigilance and disarm the jealousy
+of the protecting power. Scipio was summoned to his deathbed to
+apportion the kingdom between the legitimate sons who survived him,
+Micipsa, Gulussa and Mastanabal.[867] To Micipsa was given the capital
+Cirta, the royal palace and the general administration of the kingdom,
+the warlike Gulussa was made commander-in-chief, while to Mastanabal the
+youngest was assigned the task of directing the judicial affairs of the
+dominion.[868] This division of authority was soon disturbed by the
+death of the two younger brothers, and Micipsa was left alone to indulge
+his peaceful inclinations during a long and uneventful reign of nearly
+thirty years. The fall of Carthage had left him free from all irritating
+external relations; for the King of Numidia was no longer required to
+act the part of a constant spy on the actions, and an occasional
+trespasser on the territory, of the greatest of African powers. The
+nearest scene of disturbance was the opposite continent of Spain, and
+here he did Rome good service by sending her assistance against
+Viriathus and the Numantines.[869] Unvexed by troubles within his
+borders, Micipsa devoted his life to the arts of peace. He beautified
+Cirta and attracted Greek settlers to the town, amongst them men of arts
+and learning, who delighted the king with their literary and philosophic
+discourse.[870] The period of rest fostered the resources of the
+kingdom, and in spite of a devastating pestilence which is said to have
+swept off eight hundred thousand of the king's subjects,[871] the state
+could boast at his death of a regular army of ten thousand cavalry and
+twenty thousand foot.[872] This was but the nucleus of the host that
+might be raised in the interior, and swelled by the border tribes of
+Numidia; and the man who could win the confidence of the soldiers and
+the attachment of the peasantry held the fortune of Numidia in his
+hands. This reflection may have cast a shadow over the latter years of
+Micipsa. Certainly the prospect of the succession was as dark to him as
+it had been to his father, Masinissa. Like his predecessor he believed
+that a dynasty was stronger than an individual, and he deliberately
+imitated the work of Scipio by leaving a collegiate rule to his
+successors. One of these successors, however, was not his own offspring.
+His brother Mastanabal had left behind him an illegitimate son named
+Jugurtha. The boy had been neglected during the lifetime of his
+grandfather, Masinissa; perhaps the hope that Mastanabal might yet beget
+a representative worthy of the succession caused little importance to be
+attached to the concubine's son, in spite of the fact that it was the
+policy of the Numidian monarchs to keep as many heirs in reserve as it
+was possible for them to procure. But when Gauda, the only legitimate
+son of Mastanabal, proved to be weak in body and deficient in mind,[873]
+greater regard was paid to the vigorous boy who was now the sole
+efficient representative of one branch of the late dynasty. Even without
+this motive the kindly nature of Micipsa would probably have led him to
+look with favour on the orphan child of his brother; the young Jugurtha
+was reared in the palace and educated with the heirs presumptive,
+Adherbal and Hiempsal, the two sons of the reigning king. It soon became
+manifest that a very lion had been begotten and was growing to strength
+in the precincts of the royal court. All the graces of the love-born
+offspring seem to have been present at Jugurtha's birth. A mighty frame,
+a handsome face, were amongst his lesser gifts. More remarkable were the
+vigour and acuteness of his mind, the moral strength which yielded to no
+temptation of ease or indolence, the keen zest for life which led him to
+throw himself into the hardy sports of his youthful compeers, to run, to
+ride, to hurl the javelin with a skill known only to the nomad, the
+_bonhomie_ and bright good temper which endeared him to the comrades
+whom his skill had vanquished. Much of his leisure was passed in
+tracking the wild beasts of the desert; his skill as a hunter was
+matchless, or was equalled only by his easy indifference to his
+success.[874]
+
+The sight of these qualities gladdened Micipsa's heart; for the military
+leader, so essential to the safety of the Numidian monarchy, seemed to
+be now assured. We are told that a shade of anxiety crossed his mind
+when he compared the youth of his own sons with the glorious manhood of
+Jugurtha, and thought of the temptations which the prospect of an
+undivided monarchy might present to a mind gradually weaned from loyalty
+by the very sense of its own greatness;[875] but there is no reason to
+believe that the good old king allowed his imagination to embrace
+visions of the dagger or the poisoned bowl, and that the mysterious
+death of his nephew was only hindered by the thought of the resentment
+which it would arouse amongst the Numidian chiefs and their dependents.
+Certainly the mission with which Jugurtha was soon credited--the mission
+which was perhaps to alter the whole tone of his mind and to concentrate
+its energies on an unlawful end--was one which any Numidian king might
+have destined for the most favoured of his sons. Jugurtha was to be sent
+to Numantia to lead the Numidian auxiliaries of horse and foot, to be a
+member of the charmed circle that surrounded Scipio, to see, as he moved
+amongst the young nobility, the promise of greatness that was in store
+for Rome in the field whether of politics or of war, to form perhaps
+binding friendships and to lay up stores of gratitude for future use. In
+dismissing his nephew, Micipsa was putting the issue into the hands of
+fate. Jugurtha might never return; but, if he did, it would be with an
+experience and a prestige which would render him more than ever the
+certain arbiter of the destinies of the kingdom.
+
+The advantage which Jugurtha took of this marvellous opportunity was a
+product of his nature and proves no ulterior design. Had he been the
+simplest and most loyal of souls, he would have been forced to act as he
+did. As a man of insight he soon learnt Scipio by heart, as a born
+strategist and trained hunter he soon saw through the tricks of the
+enemy, as a man devoid of the physical sense of fear he was foremost in
+every action. He had grasped at once the secret of Roman discipline, and
+his habit of implicit obedience to the word of command was as remarkable
+as his readiness in offering the right suggestion, when his opinion was
+asked. Intelligence was not a striking feature in the mental equipment
+of the staff which surrounded Scipio; it was grasped by the general
+wherever found without respect to rank or nationality; and while Marius
+was rising step by step in virtue of his proved efficiency, the Numidian
+prince, who might have been merely an ornamental adjunct to the army,
+was made the leader or participant in almost every enterprise which
+demanded a shrewd head and a stout heart. The favour of Scipio increased
+from day to day.[876] This was to be won by merit and success alone.
+With Romans of a weaker mould Jugurtha's wealth and social qualities
+produced a similar result. He entertained lavishly, he was clever,
+good-natured and amusing. He charmed the Romans whom he excelled as in
+his childish days he had charmed the Numidian boys whom he outraced.
+
+In these rare intervals of rest from warfare there was opportunity for
+converse with men of influence and rank. Jugurtha's position and the
+future of Numidia were sometimes discussed, and the youthful wiseacres
+who claimed his friendship would sometimes suggest, with the cheerful
+cynicism which springs from a shallow dealing with imperial interests,
+that merit such as his could find its fitting sphere only if he were the
+sole occupant of the Numidian throne.[877] The words may often have been
+spoken in jest or idle compliment; although some who used them may have
+meant them to be an expression of the maxim that a protectorate is best
+served by a strong servant, and that a divided principality contains in
+itself the seeds of disturbance. Others went so far as to suggest the
+means as well as the end. Should difficulties arise with Rome, might not
+the assent of the great powers be purchased with a price? Scipio had not
+been blind to the colloquies of his favourite. When Numantia had been
+destroyed and the army was folding its tents, he gave Jugurtha the
+benefit of a public ovation and a private admonition. Before the
+tribunal he decorated him with the prizes of war, and spoke fervidly in
+his praise; then he invited him secretly to his tent and gave him his
+word of warning. "The friendship of the Roman people should be sought
+from the Roman people itself; no good could come of securing the support
+of individuals by equivocal means; there was a danger in purchasing
+public interest from a handful of vendors who professed to have power to
+sell; Jugurtha's own qualities were his best asset; they would secure
+him glory and a crown; if he tried to hasten on the course of events,
+the material means on which he relied might themselves provoke his utter
+ruin." [878]
+
+On one point only Scipio seems to have been in agreement with the evil
+counsellors of Jugurtha. He seems to have believed that the true
+guardian of Numidia had been found, and the prince took with him a
+splendid testimonial to be presented to his uncle Micipsa. Scipio wrote
+in glowing terms of the great qualities which Jugurtha had displayed
+throughout the war; he expressed his own delight at these services, his
+own intention of making them known to the senate and Roman people, his
+sense of the joy that they must have brought to the monarch himself. His
+old friendship with Micipsa justified a word of congratulation; the
+prince was worthy of his uncle and of his grandfather Masinissa.[879]
+
+Whatever Micipsa's later intentions may have been, whether under
+ordinary circumstances his natural benevolence and even his patriotism
+would have continued to war with an undefined feeling of distrust, this
+letter relieved his doubts, if only because it showed that Jugurtha
+could never fill a private station. The act of adoption was immediately
+accomplished, and a testament was drawn up by which Jugurtha was named
+joint heir with Micipsa's own sons to the throne of Numidia.[880] A few
+years later the aged king lay on his deathbed. As he felt his end
+approaching, he is said to have summoned his friends and relatives
+together with his two sons, and in their presence to have made a parting
+appeal to Jugurtha. He reminded him of past kindnesses but acknowledged
+the ample return; he had made Jugurtha, but Jugurtha had made the
+Numidian name again glorious amongst the Romans and in Spain. He
+exhorted him to protect the youthful princes who would be his colleagues
+on the throne, and reminded him that in the maintenance of concord lay
+the future strength of the kingdom. He appealed to Jugurtha as a
+guardian rather than as a mere co-regent; for the power and name of the
+mature and distinguished ruler would render him chiefly responsible for
+harmony or discord; and he besought his sons to respect their cousin, to
+emulate his virtues, to prove to the world that their father was as
+fortunate in the children whom nature had given him as in the one who
+had been the object of his adoption.[881] The appeal was answered by
+Jugurtha with a goodly show of feeling and respect, and a few days later
+the old king passed away. The hour which closed his splendid obsequies
+was the last in which even a show of concord was preserved between the
+ill-assorted trio who were now the rulers of Numidia. The position of
+Jugurtha was difficult enough; for to rule would mean either the
+reduction of his cousins to impotence or the perpetual thwarting of his
+plans by crude and suspicious counsels. For that these would be
+suspicious as well as crude, was soon revealed: and the situation was
+immediately rendered intolerable by the conduct of Hiempsal. This
+prince, the younger of the two brothers, was a headstrong boy filled
+with a sense of resentment at Jugurtha's elevation to the throne and
+smarting at the neglect of what he held to be the legitimate claim to
+the succession. When the first meeting of the joint rulers was held in
+the throne room, Hiempsal hurried to a seat at the right of Adherbal,
+that Jugurtha might not occupy the place of honour in the centre; it was
+with difficulty that he was induced by the entreaties of his brother to
+yield to the claims of age and to move to the seat on the other side.
+This struggle for precedence heralded the coming storm. In the course of
+a long discussion on the affairs of the kingdom Jugurtha threw out the
+suggestion that it might be advisable to rescind the resolutions and
+decrees of the last five years, since during that period age had
+impaired the faculties of Micipsa. Hiempsal said that he agreed, since
+it was within the last three years that Jugurtha had been adopted to a
+share in the throne. The object of this remark betrayed little emotion;
+but it was believed that the peevish insult was the stimulus to an
+anxious train of thought which, as was to be expected from the resolute
+character of the thinker, soon issued into action. To be a usurper was
+better than to be thought one; the first situation entailed power, the
+second only danger. Anger played its part no doubt; but in a temperament
+like Jugurtha's such an emotion was more likely to be the justification
+than the cause of a crime. His thoughts from that moment were said to
+have been bent on ensnaring the impetuous Hiempsal. But guile moves
+slowly, and Jugurtha would not wait.[882]
+
+The first meeting of the kings had given so thorough a proof of the
+impossibility of united rule that a resolution was soon framed to divide
+the treasures and territories of the monarchy. A time was fixed for the
+partition of the domains, and a still earlier date for the division of
+the accumulated wealth. The kings meanwhile quitted the capital to
+reside in close propinquity to their cherished treasures. Hiempsal's
+temporary home was in the fortified town of Thirmida,[883] and, as
+chance would have it, he occupied a house which belonged to a man who
+had once been a confidential attendant on Jugurtha.[884] The inner
+history of the events which followed could never have been known with
+certainty; but it was believed that Jugurtha induced this man to visit
+the house under some pretext and bring back impressions of the keys. The
+security of Hiempsal's person and treasures was supposed to be
+guaranteed by his regularly receiving into his own hands the keys of the
+gates after they had been locked; but a night came in which the portals
+were noiselessly opened and a band of soldiers burst into the house.
+They divided into parties, ranging each room in turn, prying into every
+recess, bursting doors that barred their entrance, stabbing the
+attendants, some in their sleep, others as they ran to meet the
+invaders. At last Hiempsal was found crouching in a servant's room; he
+was slain and beheaded, and those who held Jugurtha to be the author of
+the crime reported that the head of the murdered prince was brought to
+him as a pledge of the accomplished act.[885]
+
+The news of the crime was soon spread through the whole of Northern
+Africa. It divided Numidia into two camps. Adherbal was forced by panic
+to arm in his own defence, and most of those who remained loyal to the
+memory of Micipsa gathered to the standard of the legitimate heir. But
+Jugurtha's fame amongst the fighting men of the kingdom stood him in
+good stead. His adherents were the fewer in number, but they were the
+more effective warriors.[886] He rapidly gathered such forces as were
+available, and dashed from city to city, capturing some by storm and
+receiving the voluntary submission of others. He had plunged boldly into
+a civil war, and by his action declared the coveted prize to be nothing
+less than the possession of the whole Numidian kingdom. But boldness was
+his best policy; Rome might more readily condone a conquest than a
+rebellion, and be more willing to recognise a king than a claimant.
+
+Adherbal meanwhile had sent an embassy to the protecting State, to
+inform the senate of his brother's murder and his own evil plight. But,
+diffident as he was, he must have felt that a passive endurance of the
+outrages inflicted by Jugurtha dimmed his prestige and imperilled his
+position; he found himself at the head of the larger army, and trusting
+to his superiority in numbers ventured to risk a battle with his veteran
+enemy. The first conflict was decisive; his forces were so utterly
+routed that he despaired of maintaining his position in any part of the
+kingdom. He fled from the battlefield to the province of Africa and
+thence took ship to Rome.[887]
+
+Jugurtha was now undisputed master of the whole of Numidia and had
+leisure to think out the situation. It could not have needed much
+reflection to show that the safer course lay in making an appeal to
+Rome. It was no part of his plan to detach Numidia entirely from the
+imperial city; even if such an end were desirable, a national war could
+not be successfully waged by a people divided in allegiance, against a
+state whose tenacious policy and inexhaustible resources were only too
+well known to Jugurtha. But he also knew that Rome, though tenacious,
+had the tolerance which springs from the unwillingness to waste blood
+and treasure on a matter of such little importance as a change in the
+occupancy of a subject throne, that a dynastic quarrel would seem to
+many _blasé_ senators a part of the order of nature in a barbarian
+monarchy, that it is usually to the interest of a protecting state to
+recognise a king in fact as one in law, and that he himself possessed
+many powerful friends in the capital and had been told on good authority
+that royal presents judiciously distributed might confirm or even mould
+opinion. Within a few days of his victory he had despatched to Rome an
+embassy well equipped with gold and silver. His ambassadors were to
+confirm the affection of his old friends, to win new ones to his cause,
+and to spare no pains to gain any fraction of support that a bountiful
+generosity could buy.[888] Possibly few, who received courteous visits
+or missives from these envoys, would have admitted that they had been
+bribed. It was the custom of kings to send presents, and they did but
+answer to the call of an old acquaintance and a man who had done signal
+service to Rome. The news of Hiempsal's tragic end, the flight and
+arrival of his exiled brother, had at the moment caused a painful
+sensation in Roman circles. Now many members of the nobility plucked up
+courage to remark that there might be another side to the question. The
+newly gilded youth thronged their seniors in the senate and begged that
+no inconsiderate resolution should be taken against Jugurtha. The
+envoys, as men conscious of their virtue, calmly expressed their
+readiness to await the senate's pleasure. The appointed day arrived, and
+Adherbal, who appeared in person, unfolded the tale of his wrongs.[889]
+
+Apart from the emotions of pity and consequent sympathy which may have
+been awakened in some breasts by the story of the ruined and exiled
+king, his appeal--passionate, vigorous and telling as it was--could not
+have been listened to with any great degree of pleasure by the assembled
+fathers; for it brought home to the government of a protecting state
+that most unpleasant of lessons, its duty to the protected. With the
+ingenuity of despair Adherbal exaggerated the degree of Roman
+government, in order to emphasise the moral and political obligations of
+the rulers to their dependents. If the King of Numidia was a mere agent
+of the imperial[890] city, subordinating his wishes to her ends, seeing
+the security of his own possessions in the extension of her influence
+alone, clinging to her friendship with a trust as firm as that inspired
+by ties of blood, it was the duty of the mistress to protect such a
+servant, and to avenge an outrage which reflected alike on her gratitude
+and her authority. It had been a maxim of Micipsa's that the clients of
+Rome supported a heavy burden, but were amply compensated by the
+immunity from danger that they enjoyed. And, if Rome did not protect, to
+whom could a client-king look for aid? His very service to Rome had made
+him the enemy of all neighbouring powers. It was true that Adherbal
+could claim little in his own right; he was a suppliant before he could
+be a benefactor, stripped of all power of benefiting his great protector
+before his devotion could be put to the test. Yet he could claim a debt;
+for he was the sole relic of a dynasty that had given their all to Rome.
+Jugurtha was destroying a family whose loyalty had stood every test, he
+was committing horrid atrocities on the friends of Rome, his insolence
+and impunity were inflicting as grave an injury on the Roman name as on
+the wretched victims of his cruelty.
+
+Such was the current of subtle and cogent reasoning that ran through the
+passionate address of the exiled king, crying for vengeance, but above
+all for justice. The answer of Jugurtha's envoys was brief and to the
+point. They had only to state their fictitious case. A plausible case
+was all that was needed; their advocates would do the rest. Hiempsal,
+they urged, had been put to death by the Numidians in consequence of the
+cruelty of his rule. Adherbal had been the aggressor in the late war. He
+had suffered defeat, and was now petitioning for help because he had
+found himself unable to perpetrate the wrong which he had intended.
+Jugurtha entreated the senate to let the knowledge which had been gained
+of him at Numantia guide their opinion of him now, and to set his own
+past deeds before the words of a personal enemy.[891] Both parties then
+withdrew and the senate fell to debate.
+
+It is sufficiently likely that, even had there been no corruption or
+suspicion of corruption, the opinions of the House would have been
+divided on the question that was put before them. Some minds naturally
+suspicious might have been doubtful of the facts. Were Hiempsal's death
+and Adherbal's flight due to national discontent or the unprovoked
+ambition of Jugurtha? If the former was the case, was the restoration of
+the king to an unwilling people by an armed force a measure conducive to
+the interest of the protecting state? But even some who accepted
+Adherbal's statement of the case, may have doubted the wisdom of a
+policy of armed intervention; for it was manifest that a considerable
+degree of force would have to be employed to lead Jugurtha to relinquish
+his claims and to stamp out the loyalty of his adherents. The senate
+could have been in no humour for another African war; they regarded
+their policy as closed in that quarter of the world; they had shifted
+the burden of frontier defence on to the Kings of Numidia, and must have
+viewed with alarm the prospect of something far worse than a frontier
+war arising from the quarrels of those kings. It is probable, therefore,
+that proposals for a peaceful settlement would in any case have
+commanded the respectful attention of the senate; had these been made
+with a show of decency, with a general recognition of Adherbal's claims,
+and some censure of Jugurtha's overbearing conduct (for this must have
+been better attested than his share in Hiempsal's death), but little
+adverse comment might have been excited by the tone of the debate. As it
+was, when member after member rose, lauded Jugurtha's merits to the
+skies and poured contempt on the statements of Adherbal,[892] an
+unpleasant feeling was excited that this fervour was not wholly due to a
+patriotic interest in the security of the empire. The very
+boisterousness of the championship induced a more rigorous attitude on
+the part of those who had not been approached by Jugurtha's envoys or
+had resisted their overtures. They maintained that Adherbal must be
+helped at all costs, and that strict punishment should be exacted for
+Hiempsal's murder. This minority found an ardent advocate in Scaurus,
+the keeper of the conscience of the senate, the man who knew better than
+any that an individual or a government lives by its reputation, who saw
+with horror that no specious pretexts were being employed to clothe a
+policy which the malevolent might interpret as a political crime, and
+that the sinister rumours which had been current in Rome were finding
+their open verification in the senate. A vigorous championship of the
+cause of right from the foremost politician of the day, might not
+influence the decision of the House, and would certainly not lead to a
+quixotic policy of armed intervention; but it might prove to critics of
+the government that the inevitable decision had not been reached wholly
+in defiance of the claims of the suppliant and wholly in obedience to
+the machinations of a usurper. The decision, which closed the unreal
+debate, recognised Jugurtha and Adherbal as joint rulers of Numidia. It
+wilfully ignored Hiempsal's death, it wantonly exposed the lamb to the
+wolf, it was worthless as a settlement of the dynastic question, unless
+Jugurtha's supporters entertained the pious hope that their favourite's
+ambition might be satisfied with the increase now granted to his wealth
+and territory, and that his prudence might withhold him from again
+testing the forbearance of the protecting power. But those who possessed
+keener insight or who knew Jugurtha better, must have foreseen the
+probable result of the impunity which had been granted; they must have
+presaged, with anxious foreboding or with patient cynicism, the final
+disappearance of Adherbal from the scene and a fresh request for the
+settlement of the Numidian question, which would have become less
+complex when there was but one candidate for the throne. The decree of
+the senate enjoined the creation of a commission of ten, which should
+visit Numidia and divide the whole of the kingdom which had been
+possessed by Micipsa, between the rival chiefs.[893]
+
+The head of the commission was Lucius Opimius, whose influence amongst
+the members of his order had never waned since he had exercised and
+proved his right of saving the State from the threatened dangers of
+sedition. His selection on this occasion gave an air of impartiality to
+the commission, for he was known to be no friend to Jugurtha.[894]
+
+That prince, however, did not allow his past relations to be an obstacle
+to his present enterprise. The conquest of Opimius was the immediate
+object to which he devoted all his energies. As soon as the
+commissioners had appeared on African soil, they and their chief were
+received with the utmost deference by the king. The frequent and secret
+colloquies which took place between the arbitrators and one of the
+parties interested in their decision were not a happy omen for an
+impartial judgment, and, if the award could by the exercise of
+malevolent ingenuity be interpreted as unfair, would certainly breed the
+suspicion, and, in case the matter was ever submitted to a hostile court
+of law, the proof that the honour of the commissioners had succumbed to
+the usual vulgar and universally accredited methods of corruption. On
+the face of it the award seemed eminently just. Numidia was becoming a
+commercial and agricultural state; but since commerce and agriculture
+did not flourish in the same domains, it was impossible to endow each of
+the claimants equally with both these sources of wealth. To Adherbal was
+given that part of the kingdom which in its external attributes seemed
+the more desirable; he was to rule over the eastern half of Numidia
+which bordered on the Roman province, the portion of the country which
+enjoyed a readier access to the sea and could boast of a fuller
+development of urban life. Cirta the capital lay within this sphere, and
+Adherbal could continue to give justice from the throne of his fathers.
+But those who held that the strength of a country depended mainly on its
+people and its soil, believed that Jugurtha had received the better
+part. The territories with which he was entrusted were those bordering
+on Mauretania, rich in the products of the soil and teeming with healthy
+human life.[895] From the point of view of military resources there
+could be no question as to which of the two kings was the stronger. The
+peaceful character of Adherbal may have seemed a justification for his
+peaceful sphere of rule; but the original aggressor was kept at his
+normal strength. Jugurtha ruled over the lands in which the national
+spirit, of which he was himself the embodiment, found its fullest and
+fiercest expression. He did not mean to acquiesce for a moment in the
+settlement effected by the commission. No sooner had it completed its
+task and returned home, than he began to devise a scheme which would
+lead to war between the two principalities and the consequent
+annihilation of Adherbal. He shrank at first from provoking the senate
+by a wanton attack on the neighbouring kingdom which they had just
+created; his design was rather to draw Adherbal into hostilities which
+would lead to a pitched battle, a certain victory, the disappearance of
+the last of Micipsa's race and the union of the two crowns. With this
+object he massed a considerable force on the boundary between the two
+kingdoms and suddenly crossed the frontier. His mounted raiders captured
+shepherds with their flocks, ravaged the fields of the peasantry, looted
+and burned their homes; then swept back within their own borders.[896]
+But Adherbal was not moved to reprisals. His circumstances no less than
+his temperament dictated methods of peace: and, if he could not keep his
+crown by diplomacy, he must have regarded it as lost. The Roman people
+was a better safeguard than his Numidian subjects, and it was necessary
+to temporise with Jugurtha until the senate could be moved by a strong
+appeal. Envoys were despatched to the court of the aggressor to complain
+of the recent outrage; they brought back an impudent reply; but
+Adherbal, steadfast in his pacific resolutions, still remained
+quiescent, Jugurtha's plan had failed and he was in no mood for further
+delay; he held now, as he had done once before, that his end could best
+be effected by vigorous and decisive action. The lapse of time could not
+improve his own position but might strengthen that of Adherbal, and it
+was advisable that a new Roman commission should witness an accomplished
+fact and make the best of it rather than engage again in the settlement
+of a disputed claim. It was no longer a predatory band but a large and
+regular army that he now collected; his present purpose was not a foray
+but a war.[897] He advanced into his rival's territory ravaging its
+fields, harrying its cities and gathering booty as he went. At every
+step the confidence of his own forces, the dismay of the enemy
+increased.
+
+Adherbal was at last convinced that he must appeal to the sword for the
+security of his crown. A second flight to Rome would have utterly
+discredited him in the eyes of his subjects, perhaps in those of the
+Roman government itself; yet, as his chief hope still lay in Rome, he
+hurriedly despatched an embassy to the suzerain city[898] while he
+himself prepared to take the field. With unwilling energy he gathered
+his available forces and marched to oppose Jugurtha's triumphant
+progress. The invading host had now skirted Cirta to the west and was
+apparently attempting to cut off its communications with the sea. The
+disastrous results that would have followed the success of this attempt,
+may have been the final motive that spurred Adherbal to his appeal to
+arms; and it was somewhere within the fifty miles that intervened
+between the capital and its port of Rusicade and at a spot nearer to the
+sea than to Cirta,[899] that the opposing armies met. The day was
+already far spent when Adherbal came into touch with his enemy: there
+was no thought of a pitched battle in the gathering gloom, and either
+party took up his quarters for the night. Towards the late watches of
+the night, in the doubtful light of the early dawn, the soldiers of
+Jugurtha crept up to the outposts of the enemy; at a given signal they
+rushed on the camp and carried it by storm. Adherbal's soldiers, heavy
+with sleep and groping for their arms, were routed or slain; the prince
+himself sprang on his horse and with a handful of his knights sped for
+safety to the walls of Cirta, Jugurtha's troops in hot pursuit. They had
+almost closed on the fugitive before the walls were reached; but the
+race had been watched from the battlements, and, as the flying Adherbal
+passed the gates, the walls were manned by a volunteer body of Italian
+merchants who kept the pursuing Numidians at bay.[900] It was the
+merchant class that had most to fear from the cruelty and cupidity of
+the nomad hordes that now beat against the fortress, and during the
+siege that followed they controlled the course of events far more
+effectually than the unhappy king whom they had for the moment saved
+from destruction.
+
+Jugurtha's plans were foiled; Adherbal had escaped, and there lay before
+him the irksome prospect of a siege, of probable interference from Rome
+and, it might be, of the necessity of openly defying the senate's
+commands. But it was now too late to draw back, and he set himself
+vigorously to the work of reducing Cirta by assault or famine. The task
+must have been an arduous one. The town formed one of the strongest
+positions for defence that could be found in the ancient world. It was
+built on an isolated cube of rock that towered above the vast cultivated
+tracts of the surrounding plain. At its eastern extremity the precipice
+made a sheer drop of six hundred feet, and was perhaps quite
+inaccessible on this side, although it threw out spurs, whether natural
+or of artificial construction, which formed a difficult and easily
+defensible communication with the lower land around. Its natural
+bastions were completed by a natural moat, for the river Ampsaga (the
+Wäd Remel) almost encircled the town, and on the eastern side its deep
+and rushing waters could only be crossed by a ledge of rock, through
+which it bored a subterranean channel and over which some kind of bridge
+or causeway had probably been formed.[901] The natural and easy mode of
+approach to the city was to be found in the south-west, where a neck of
+land of half a furlong's breadth led up to the principal gate.
+
+In spite of the formidable difficulties of the task Jugurtha attempted
+an assault, for it was of the utmost importance that he should possess
+the person of Adherbal before interference was felt from Rome. Mantlets,
+turrets and all the engines of siege warfare were vigorously employed to
+carry the town by storm;[902] but the stout walls baffled every effort,
+and Jugurtha was forced to face as best he might another Roman embassy
+which Adherbal's protests had brought to African soil. The senate, when
+it had learnt the news of the renewed outbreak of the war, was as
+unwilling as ever to intervene as a third partner in a three-sided
+conflict. To play the part of the policeman as well as of the judge was
+no element in Roman policy; the very essence of a protectorate was that
+it should take care of itself; were intervention necessary, it should be
+decisive, and it would be a lengthy task and an arduous strain to gather
+and transport to Africa a force sufficient to overawe Jugurtha. The easy
+device of a new commission was therefore adopted. If its Suggestions
+were obeyed, all would be well; if they were neglected, matters could
+not be much worse than they were at present. As the new commissioners
+had merely to take a message and were credited with no discretionary
+power, it was thought unnecessary to burden the higher magnates of the
+State with the unenviable task, or to expose them to the undignified
+predicament of finding their representations flouted by a rebel who
+might have eventually to be recognised as a king. A chance was given to
+younger members of the senatorial order, and the three who landed in
+Africa were branded by the hostile criticism that was soon to find
+utterance and in the poverty of its indictment to catch at every straw,
+as lacking the age and dignity demanded by the mission--qualities which,
+had they been present, would probably have failed to make the least
+impression on Jugurtha's fixed resolve. The commissioners were to
+approach both the kings and to bring to their notice the will and
+resolution of the Roman senate and people, which were to the effect that
+hostilities should be suspended and that the questions at issue between
+the rivals should be submitted to peaceful arbitration. This conduct the
+senate recommended as the only one worthy of its royal clients and of
+itself.[903]
+
+The speed of the envoys was accelerated by the impression that they
+might find but one king to be the recipient of their message. On the eve
+of their departure the news of the decisive battle and the siege of
+Cirta had reached their ears. Haste was imperative, if they were to
+retain their position as envoys, for the next despatch might bring news
+of Adherbal's death. The actual news received fell short of the
+truth,[904] and was perhaps still further softened for the public ear;
+the fact that the envoys had sailed was itself an official indication
+that all hope had not been abandoned. If they cherished a similar
+illusion themselves, it must almost have vanished before the sight that
+met their eyes in Numidia. They saw a closely beleaguered town in which
+one of the kings, who were to be the recipients of their message, was so
+closely hemmed that access to him was impossible.[905] The other,
+without abating one jot of his military preparations, met them with an
+answer as uncompromising as it was courteous. Jugurtha held nothing more
+precious than the authority of the senate; from his youth up he had
+striven to meet the approbation of the good; it was by merit not by
+artifice, that he had gained the favour of Scipio; it was desert that
+had won him a place amongst Micipsa's children and a share in the
+Numidian crown. But qualities carry their responsibilities; the very
+distinction of his services made it the more incumbent on him to avenge
+a wrong. Adherbal had treacherously plotted against his life; the crime
+had been revealed and he had but taken steps to forestall it; the Roman
+people would not be acting justly or honourably, if they hindered him
+from taking such steps in his own defence as were the common right of
+all men.[906]
+
+He would soon send envoys to Rome to deal with the whole question in
+dispute.
+
+This answer showed the Roman commissioners the utter helplessness of
+their position. Their presence in Jugurtha's camp within sight of a city
+in which a client king and a number of their own citizens were
+imprisoned, was itself a stigma on the name of Rome. If they had prayed
+to see Adherbal, the request, must have been refused; to prolong the
+negotiations was to court further insult, and they set their faces once
+more for Rome after faithfully performing the important mission of
+repeating a message of the senate with verbal correctness. Jugurtha
+granted them the courtesy of not renewing his active operations until he
+thought that they had quitted Africa. Then, despairing of carrying the
+town by assault, he settled to the work of a regular siege. The nature
+of the ground must have made a complete investment impossible; but it
+also rendered it unnecessary. The cliffs and the river bed made escape
+as difficult as attack. On some sides it was but necessary to maintain a
+strenuous watch on every possible egress; on others lines of
+circumvallation, with ramparts and ditches, kept the beleaguered within
+their walls. Siege-towers were raised to mate the height of the
+fortifications which they threatened, and manned with garrisons to harry
+the town and repel all efforts of its citizens to escape. The blockade
+was varied by a series of surprises, of sudden assaults by day or night;
+no method of force or fraud was left untried; the loyalty of the
+defenders who appeared on the walls was assailed by threats or promises;
+the assailants were strenuously exhorted to effect a speedy entry.
+
+It would seem that Cirta was ill-provided with supplies.[907] Adherbal,
+who had made it the basis of his attack and must have foreseen the
+probability of his defeat, should have seen that it was well
+provisioned; and the vast cisterns and granaries cut in the solid rock,
+that were in later times to be found within the city, should have
+supplied water and food sufficient to prolong the siege to a degree that
+might have tried the senate's patience as sorely as Jugurtha's. But
+neither the king nor his advisers were adepts in the art of war; it must
+have been difficult to regulate the distribution of provisions amidst
+the trading classes, of unsettled habits and mixed nationalities, that
+were crowded within the walls; discontent could not be restrained by
+discipline and might at any moment be a motive to surrender. The
+imprisoned king saw no prospect of a prolongation of the war that could
+secure even his personal safety; no help could be looked for from
+without and a ruthless enemy was battering at his gates. His only hope,
+a faint one, lay in a last appeal to Rome; but the invader's lines were
+drawn so close that even a chance of communicating with the protecting
+city seemed denied. At length, by urgent appeals to pity and to avarice,
+he induced two of the comrades who had joined his flight from the field
+of battle, to risk the venture of penetrating the enemy's lines and
+reaching the sea.[908] The venture, which was made by night, succeeded;
+the two bold messengers stole through the enclosing fortifications,
+rapidly made for the nearest port, and thence took ship to Rome. Within
+a few days they were in the presence of the senate,[909] and the
+despairing cry of Adherbal was being read to an assembly, to whom it
+could convey no new knowledge and on whom it could lay no added burden
+of perplexity. But emotion, although it cannot teach, may focus thought
+and clarify the promptings of interest. To many a loose thinker
+Adherbal's missive may have been the first revelation, not only of the
+shame, but of the possible danger of the situation. The facts were too
+well known to require detailed treatment. It was sufficient to remind
+the senate that for five months a friend and ally of the Roman people
+had been blockaded in his own capital; his choice was merely one between
+death by the sword and death by famine. Adherbal no longer asked for his
+kingdom; nay, he barely ventured to ask for his life; but he deprecated
+a death by torture--a fate that would most certainly be his if he fell
+into the hands of his implacable foe. The appeal to interest was
+interwoven with that made to pity and to honour. What were Jugurtha's
+ultimate motives? When he had consummated his crimes and absorbed the
+whole of Numidia, did he mean to remain a peaceful client-king, a
+faithful vassal of Rome? His fidelity and obedience might be measured by
+the treatment which he had already accorded to the mandate and the
+envoys of the senate. The power of Rome in her African possessions was
+at stake; and the majesty of the empire was appealed to no less than the
+sense of friendship, loyalty, and gratitude, as a ground for instant
+assistance which might yet save the suppliant from a terrible and
+degrading end.
+
+The impression produced by this appeal was seen in the bolder attitude
+adopted by that section of the senate which had from the first regarded
+Jugurtha as a criminal at large, and had never approved the policy of
+leaving Numidia to settle its own affairs. Voices were heard advocating
+the immediate despatch of an army to Africa, the speedy succour of
+Adherbal, the consideration of an adequate punishment for the contumacy
+of Jugurtha in not obeying the express commands of Rome.[910] But the
+usual protests were heard from the other side, protests which were
+interpreted as a proof of the utter corruption of those who uttered
+them,[911] but which were doubtless veiled in the decent language, and
+may in some cases have been animated by the genuine spirit, of the
+cautious imperialist who prefers a crime to a blunder. The conflict of
+opinion resulted in the usual compromise. A new commission was to be
+despatched with a more strongly worded message from the senate; but, as
+rumour had apparently been busy with the adventures of the "three young
+men" whom Jugurtha had turned back, it was deemed advisable to select
+the present envoys from men whose age, birth and ample honours might
+give weight to a mission that was meant to avert a war.[912] The
+solemnity of the occasion was attested, and some feeling of assurance
+may have been created, by the fact that there figured amongst the
+commissioners no less a person than the chief of the senate Marcus
+Aemilius Scaurus, beyond all question the foremost man of Rome,[913] the
+highest embodiment of patrician dignity and astute diplomacy. The
+pressing appeal of Adherbal's envoys, the ugly rumours which were
+circulating in Rome, urged the commissioners to unwonted activity.
+Within three days they were on board, and after a short interval had
+landed at Utica in the African province. The experience of the former
+mission had taught them that their dignity might be utterly lost if they
+quitted the territory of the Roman domain. They did not deign to set
+foot in Numidia, but sent a message to Jugurtha informing him that they
+had a mandate from the senate and ordering him to come with all speed to
+the Roman province.
+
+Jugurtha was for the moment torn by conflicting resolutions. The very
+audacity of his acts had been tempered and in part directed by a secret
+fear of Rome. Whether in any moments of ambitious imagination he had
+dreamed of throwing off the protectorate and asserting the unlimited
+independence of the Numidian kingdom, must remain uncertain; but in any
+case that consummation must belong to the end, not to the intermediate
+stage, of his present enterprise. His immediate plan had been to win or
+purchase recognition of an accomplished fact from the somnolence,
+caution or corruption of the government; and here was intervention
+assuming a more formidable shape while the fact was but half
+accomplished and he himself was but playing the part of the rebel, not
+of the king. The dignity of the commissioners, and the peremptory nature
+of their demand, seemed to show that negotiations with Rome were losing
+their character of a conventional game and assuming a more serious
+aspect. It is possible that Jugurtha did not know the full extent of the
+danger which he was running; it is possible that, like so many other
+potentates who had relations with the imperial city, he made the mistake
+of imagining that the senate was in the fullest sense the government of
+Rome, and had no cognisance of the subtle forces whose equilibrium was
+expressed in a formal control by the nobility; but even what he saw was
+sufficient to alarm him and to lead him, in a moment of panic or
+prudence, to think of the possibility of obeying the commission. At the
+next moment the new man, which the deliberate but almost frenzied
+pursuit of a single object had made of Jugurtha, was fully
+reasserted.[914] But his passion was not blind; his recklessness still
+veiled a plan; his one absorbing desire was to see Adherbal in his hands
+before he should himself be forced to meet the envoys. He gave orders
+for his whole force to encircle the walls of Cirta; a simultaneous
+assault was directed against every vulnerable point; the attention of
+the defenders was to be distracted by the ubiquitous nature of the
+attack; a failure of vigilance at any point might give him the desired
+entry by force or fraud. But nothing came of the enterprise; the
+assailants were beaten back, and Jugurtha had another moment for cool
+reflection. He soon decided that further delay would not strengthen his
+position. The name of Scaurus weighed heavily on his mind.[915] He was
+an untried element with respect to the details of the Numidian affair;
+but all that Jugurtha knew of him--his influence with the senate, his
+uncompromising respectability, his earlier attitude on the
+question--inspired a feeling of fear. Obedience to the demand which the
+commissioners had made for his presence might be the wiser course;
+whatever the result of the interview, such obedience might prolong the
+period of negotiation and delay armed intervention until his own great
+object was fulfilled. With a few of his knights Jugurtha crossed into
+the Roman province and presented himself before the commissioners. We
+have no record of the discussion which ensued. The senate's message was
+almost an ultimatum; it threatened extreme measures if Jugurtha did not
+desist from the siege of Cirta; but the peremptory nature of the missive
+did not prevent close and lengthy discussions between the envoys and the
+king. The plausible personality of Jugurtha may have told in his favour
+and may have led to the hopes of a compromise; for it is not probable
+that he ventured on a summary rejection of their orders or advice. But
+the commissioners could merely threaten or advise; they had no power to
+wring promises from the king or to keep him to them when they were made.
+Thus when, at the close of the debates, Jugurtha returned to Numidia and
+the envoys embarked at Utica, it was felt on all sides that nothing had
+been accomplished.[916] The commissioners may have believed that they
+had made Jugurtha sensible of his true relations to Rome; they had
+perhaps threatened open war as the result of disobedience; but they had
+neither checked his progress nor stayed his hand; and the taint with
+which all dealings with the wealthy potentate infected his environment,
+clung even to this select body of distinguished men.
+
+The immediate effect of the fruitless negotiations was the disaster
+which every one must have foreseen. Cirta and her king had been utterly
+betrayed by their protectress; and when the news of the departure of the
+envoys and the return of Jugurtha penetrated within the walls, despair
+of further resistance gave substance to the hope of the possibility of
+surrender on tolerable terms. The hope was never present to the mind of
+Adherbal; he knew his enemy too well. Nor could it have been entertained
+in a very lively form by the king's Numidian councillors and subjects.
+But the Numidian was not the strongest element in Cirta. There the
+merchant class held sway. In the defence of their property and commerce,
+the organised business and the homes which they had established in the
+civilised state, they had taken the lead in repelling the hordes of
+Western Numidians which Jugurtha led; and amongst the merchant class
+those of Italian race had been the most active and efficient in
+repelling the assaults of the besiegers. To these men the choice was not
+between famine and the sword; but merely between famine and the loss of
+property or comfort. For what Roman or Italian could doubt that the most
+perfect security for his life and person was still implicit in the magic
+name of Rome? Confident in their safety they advised Adherbal to hand
+over the town to Jugurtha; the only condition which he needed to make
+was the preservation of his own life and that of the besieged; all else
+was of less importance, for their future fortunes rested not with
+Jugurtha but with the senate.[917] It is questionable whether the
+Italians were really inspired with this blind confidence in the senate's
+power to restore as well as to save; even their ability to save was more
+than doubtful to Adherbal; still more worthless was a promise made by
+his enemy. The unhappy king would have preferred the most desperate
+resistance to a trust in Jugurtha's honour; but the advice of the
+Italians was equivalent to a command; and a gleam of hope, sufficient at
+least to prevent him from taking his own life, may have buoyed him up
+when he yielded to their wishes and made the formal surrender. The hope,
+if it existed, was immediately dispelled. Adherbal was put to death with
+cruel tortures.[918] The Italians then had their proof of the present
+value of the majesty of the name of Rome. Their calculations had been
+vitiated by one fatal blunder. They forgot that they were letting into
+their stronghold an exasperated people drawn from the rudest parts of
+Numidia--a people to whom the name of Rome was as nothing, to whom the
+name of merchant or foreigner was contemptible and hateful. As the
+surging crowd of Jugurtha's soldiery swept over the doomed city,
+massacring every Numidian of adult age, the claim of nationality made by
+the protesting merchants was not unnaturally met by a thrust from the
+sword. If even the assailants could distinguish them in the frenzy of
+victory, they knew them for men who had occupied the fighting line; and
+this fact was alone sufficient to doom them to destruction. Jugurtha may
+also have made his blunder. Unless we suppose that his penetrating mind
+had been, suddenly clouded by the senseless rage which prompts the
+half-savage man to a momentary act of demoniacal folly, he could never
+have willed the slaughter of the Roman and Italian merchants.[919] If he
+willed it in cold blood, he was consciously making war on Rome and
+declaring the independence of Numidia. For, even with his limited
+knowledge of the balance of interests in the capital, he must have seen
+that the act was inexpiable. His true policy, now as before, was not to
+cross swords with Rome, but merely to wring from her indifference a
+recognition of a purely national crime. His wits had failed him if he
+had ordered a deed which put indifference and recognition out of the
+question. It is probable that he did not calculate on the fury of his
+troops; it is possible that he had ceased to lead and was a mere unit
+swept along in the avalanche which sated its wrath at the prolonged
+resistance, and avenged the real or fancied crimes committed by the
+merchant class.
+
+The massacre of the merchants caused a complete change in the attitude
+with which Numidian events were viewed at Rome. It cut the commercial
+classes to the quick, and this third party which moulded the policy of
+Rome began closing up its ranks. The balance of power on which the
+nobility had rested its presidency since the fall of Caius Gracchus,
+began to be disturbed. It was possible again for a leader of the people
+to make his voice heard; not, however, because he was the leader of the
+people, but because he was the head of a coalition. The man of the hour
+was Caius Memmius, who was tribune elect for the following year. He was
+an orator, vehement rather than eloquent, of a mordant utterance, and
+famed in the courts for his power of attack.[920] His critical
+temperament and keen eye for abuses had already led him to join the
+sparse ranks of politicians who tried still to keep alive the healthy
+flame of discontent, and to utter an occasional protest against the
+manner in which the nobility exercised their trust.[921] His influence
+must have been increased by the growing suspicion of the last few years
+and the scandal that fed on tales of bribery in high places; it was
+assured by the latest news which, through the illogical process of
+reasoning out of which great causes grow, seemed to make rumour a
+certainty and to justify suspicion by the increased numbers and
+respectability of the suspecting. A pretext for action was found in the
+shifty and dilatory proceedings of the senate. Even the latest phase of
+the Numidian affair was not powerful or horrible enough to crush all
+attempts at a temporising policy.[922] Men were still found to interrupt
+the course of a debate which promised to issue in some strong and speedy
+resolution, by raising counter-motions which the great names of the
+movers forced on the attention of the house; every artifice which
+influence could command was employed to dull the pain of a wounded
+self-respect; and when this method failed, idle recrimination took the
+place of argument as a means of consuming the time for action and
+passing the point at which anger would have cooled into indifference, or
+at least into an emotion not stronger than regret. It was plain that the
+stimulus must be supplied from without; and Memmius provided it by going
+straight to the people and embodying their floating suspicions in a bald
+and uncompromising form. He told them[923] that the prolonged
+proceedings in the senate meant simply that the crime of Jugurtha was
+likely to be condoned through the influence of a few ardent partisans of
+the king; and it is probable that he dealt frankly and in the true Roman
+manner with the motives for this partisanship. The pressure was
+effectual in bringing to a head the deliberations of the senate. The
+council as a whole did not need conversion on the main question at
+issue, for most of its members must have felt that it had exhausted the
+resources of peaceful diplomacy, and it showed its characteristic
+aversion to the provocation of a constitutional crisis, which might
+easily arise if the people chose to declare war on the motion of a
+magistrate without waiting for the advice of the fathers; while the
+obstructive minority may have been alarmed by the distant vision of a
+trial before the Assembly or before a commission of inquiry composed of
+judges taken from the angry Equites. The senate took the lead in a
+formal declaration of war; Numidia was named as one of the provinces
+which were to be assigned to the future consuls in accordance with the
+provisions of the Sempronian law. The choice of the people fell on
+Publius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia as consuls for the
+following year.[924] The lot assigned the home government and the
+guardianship of Italy to Nasica, while Bestia gained the command in the
+impending war. Military preparations were pushed on with all haste; an
+army was levied for service in Africa; pay and supplies were voted on an
+adequate scale.
+
+The news is said to have surprised Jugurtha.[925] Perhaps earlier
+messages of a more cheerful import had reached him from Rome during the
+days when successful obstruction seemed to be achieving its end, and had
+dulled the fears which the massacre of Cirta most have aroused even in a
+mind so familiar with the acquiescent policy of the senate. Yet even now
+he did not lose heart, nor did his courage take the form, prevalent
+amongst the lower types of mind, of a mere reliance on brute force, on
+the resources of that Numidia of which he was now the undisputed lord.
+With a persistence born of successful experience he still attempted the
+methods of diplomacy-methods which prove a lack of insight only in the
+sense that Rome was an impossible sphere for their present exercise. The
+king had not gauged the situation in the capital; but subsequent events
+proved that he still possessed a correct estimate of the real
+inclinations of the men who were chiefly responsible for Roman policy.
+The Numidian envoy was no less a person than the king's own son, and he
+was supported by two trusty counsellors of Jugurtha.[926] As was usual
+in the case of a diplomatic mission arriving from a country which had no
+treaty relations, or was actually in a state of war, with Rome, the
+envoys were not permitted to pass the gates until the will of the senate
+was known. An excellent opportunity was given for proving the conversion
+of the senate. When the consul Bestia put the question "Is it the
+pleasure of the house that the envoys of Jugurtha be received within the
+walls?" the firm answer was returned that "Unless these envoys had come
+to surrender Numidia and its king to the absolute discretion of the
+Roman people, they must cross the borders of Italy within ten
+days".[927] The consul had this message conveyed to the prince, and he
+and his colleagues returned from their fruitless mission.
+
+Bestia meanwhile was consumed with military zeal. His army was ready,
+his staff was chosen, and he was evidently bent on an earnest
+prosecution of the war. He was in many respects as fit a man as could
+have been selected for the task. His powers of physical endurance and
+the vigour of his intellect had already been tested in war; he possessed
+the resolution and the foresight of a true general. But the canker of
+the age was supposed to have infected Bestia and neutralised his
+splendid qualities.[928] The proof that he allowed greed to dominate his
+public conduct is indeed lacking; but he would have departed widely from
+the spirit of his time if he had allowed no thought of private gain to
+add its quota to the joy of the soldier who finds himself for the first
+time in the untrammelled conduct of a war. To the commanders of the age
+foreign service was as a matter of course a source of profit as well as
+a sphere of duty or of glory. To Bestia it was also to be a sphere for
+diplomacy; and diplomacy and profit present an awkward combination,
+which gives room for much misinterpretation. Although the war was in
+some sense a concession to outside influences, the consul did not
+represent the spirit to which the senate had yielded. Nine years earlier
+he had served the cause of the nobility by effecting the recall of
+Popillius from exile, and was now a member of that inner circle of the
+government whose cautious manipulation of foreign affairs was veiled in
+a secrecy which might easily rouse the suspicion, because it did not
+appeal to the intelligence, of the masses. How vital a part diplomacy
+was to play in the coming war, was shown by Bestia's selection of his
+staff. It was practically a committee of the inner ring of governing
+nobles,[929] and the importance attached to the purely political aspect
+of the African war was proved by the fact that Scaurus himself deigned
+to occupy a position amongst the legates of the commander. It was a
+difficult task which Bestia and his assistants had to perform. They were
+to carry out the mandate of the people and pursue Jugurtha as a
+criminal; they were to follow out their own conviction as to the best
+means of saving Rome from a prolonged and burdensome war with a whole
+nation-a conviction which might, force them to recognise Jugurtha as a
+king. To avenge honour and at the same time to secure peace was, in the
+present condition of the public mind, an almost impossible task. Its
+gravity was increased by the fact that, through the method of selection
+employed for composing the general's council, a certain section of the
+nobility, already marked out for suspicion, would be held wholly
+responsible for its failure. It was a gravity that was probably
+undervalued by the leaders of the expedition, who could scarcely have
+looked forward to the day when it might be said that Bestia had selected
+his legates with a view of hiding the misdeeds which, he meant to commit
+under the authority of their names.[930]
+
+When the time for departure had arrived, the legions were marched
+through Italy to Rhegium, were shipped thence to Sicily and from Sicily
+were transferred to the African province. This was to be Bestia's basis
+of operations; and when he had gathered adequate supplies and organised
+his lines of communication, he entered Numidia. His march was from a
+superficial point of view a complete success; large numbers of prisoners
+were taken and several cities were carried by assault.[931] But the
+nature of the war in hand was soon made painfully manifest. It was a war
+with a nation, not a mere hunting expedition for the purpose of tracking
+down Jugurtha. The latter object could be successfully accomplished only
+if some assistance were secured from friendly portions of Numidia or
+from neighbouring powers. But there was no friendly portion of Numidia.
+The mercantile class had been wiped out, and though the Romans seem to
+have regained possession of Cirta at an early period of the war,[932] it
+is not likely that it ever resumed the industrial life, which might have
+supplied money and provisions, if not men; while the position of the
+town rendered it useless as a basis of operations for expeditions into
+that western portion of Numidia, from which the chief military strength
+of Jugurtha was drawn. In these regions a possible ally was to be found
+in Bocchus King of Mauretania; but his recent overtures to Rome had been
+deliberately rejected by the senate. Nothing but the name of this great
+King of the Moors, who ruled over the territory stretching from the
+Muluccha to Tingis, had hitherto been known to the Roman people; even
+the proximity of a portion of his kingdom to the coast of Spain had
+brought him into no relations, either friendly or hostile, to the
+imperial government.[933]
+
+Bocchus had secured peace with his eastern neighbour by giving his
+daughter in marriage to Jugurtha; but he never allowed this family
+connection to disturb his ideas of political convenience and, as soon as
+he heard that war had been declared against Jugurtha, he sent an embassy
+to Rome praying for a treaty with the Roman people and a recognition as
+one of the friends of the Republic.[934] This conduct may have been due
+to the belief that a victory of the Romans over Jugurtha would entail
+the destruction of the Numidian monarchy and the reduction of at least a
+portion of the territory to the condition of a province. In this case
+Mauretania would itself be the frontier kingdom, playing the part now
+taken by Numidia; and Bocchus may have wished to have some claim on Rome
+before his eastern frontier was bordered, as his northern was commanded,
+by a Roman province. He may even have hoped to benefit by the spoils of
+war, as Masinissa had once benefited by those which fell from Syphax and
+from Carthage, and to increase his territories at the expense of his
+son-in-law. There can be no better proof of the real intentions of the
+government as regards Numidia, even after war had been declared, than
+the senate's rejection of the offer made by Bocchus. His aid would be
+invaluable from a strategic point of view, if the aim of the expedition
+were to make Numidia a province or even to crush Jugurtha. But the most
+constant maxim of senatorial policy was to avoid an extension of the
+frontiers, and this principle was accompanied by a strong objection to
+enter into close relations with any power that was not a frontier state.
+Such relations might involve awkward obligations, and were inconsistent
+with the policy which devolved the whole obligation for frontier defence
+and frontier relations on a friendly client prince. Whether the
+maintenance of the traditional scheme of administration in Africa
+demanded the renewed recognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia, was a
+subordinate question; its answer depended entirely on the possibility of
+the Numidians being induced to accept any other monarch.
+
+It must have required but a brief experience of the war to convince
+Bestia and his council that a Numidian kingdom without the recognition
+of Jugurtha as king was almost unthinkable, unless Rome was prepared to
+enter on an arduous and harassing war for the piecemeal conquest of the
+land or (a task equally difficult) for the purpose of securing the
+person of an elusive monarch, who could take every advantage of the
+natural difficulties of his country and could find a refuge and ready
+assistance in every part of his dominions. The tentative approaches of
+Jugurtha, who negotiated while he fought, were therefore admitted both
+by the consul and by Scaurus, who inevitably dominated the diplomatic
+relations of the war. That Jugurtha sent money as well as proposals at
+the hands of his envoys, was a fact subsequently approved by a Roman
+court of law, and deserves such credence as can be attached to a verdict
+which was the final phase of a political agitation. That Bestia was
+blinded by avarice and lost all sense of his own and his country's
+honour, that Scaurus's sense of respectability and distrust of Jugurtha
+went down before the golden promises of the king,[935] were beliefs
+widely held, and perhaps universally, professed, by the democrats who
+were soon thundering at the doors of the Curia--by men, that is, who did
+not understand, or whose policy led them to profess misunderstanding of,
+the problem in statecraft, as dishonouring in some of its aspects as
+such problems usually are, which was being faced by a general and a
+statesman who were pursuing a narrow and traditional but very
+intelligible line of policy. The policy was indeed sufficiently ugly
+even had there been no suspicion of personal corruption; its ugliness
+could be tested by the fact that even the sanguine and cynical Jugurtha
+could hardly credit the extent of the good fortune revealed to him by
+the progress of the negotiations. At first his diplomatic manoeuvres had
+been adopted simply as a means of staying the progress of hostilities,
+of gaining a breathing space while he renewed his efforts at influencing
+opinion in the imperial city. But when he saw that the very agents of
+war were willing to be missionaries of peace, that the avengers sent out
+by an injured people were ready for conciliation before they had
+inflicted punishment, he concentrated his efforts on an immediate
+settlement of the question.[936] It was necessary for the enemy of the
+Roman people to pass through a preliminary stage of humiliation before
+he could be recognised as a friend; it was all the more imperative in
+this case since a number of angry people in Rome were clamouring for
+Jugurtha's punishment. It was also necessary to arrange a plan by which
+the humiliation might be effected with the least inconvenience to both
+parties. An armistice had already been declared as a necessary
+preliminary to effective negotiations for a surrender. This condition of
+peace rendered it possible for Jugurtha to be interviewed in person by a
+responsible representative of the consul.[937] Both the king and the
+consul were in close touch with one another near the north-western part
+of the Roman province, and Jugurtha was actually in possession of Vaga,
+a town only sixty miles south-west of Utica. The town, in spite of its
+geographical position, was an appanage[938] of the Numidian kingdom, and
+the pretext under which Bestia sent his quaestor to the spot, was the
+acceptance of a supply of corn which had been demanded of the king as a
+condition of the truce granted by the consul. The presence of the
+quaestor at Vaga was really meant as a guarantee of good faith, and
+perhaps he was regarded as a hostage for the personal security of
+Jugurtha.[939] Shortly afterwards the king rode into the Roman camp and
+was introduced to the consul and his council. He said a few words in
+extenuation of the hostile feeling with which his recent course of
+action had been received at Rome, and after this brief apology asked
+that his surrender should be accepted. The conditions, it appeared, were
+not for the full council; they were for the private ear of Bestia and
+Scauras alone.[940] With these Jugurtha was soon closeted, and the final
+programme was definitely arranged, On the following day the king
+appeared again before the council of war; the consul pretended to take
+the opinion of his advisers, but no clear issue for debate could
+possibly be put before the board; for the gist of the whole proceedings,
+the recognition of the right of Jugurtha to retain Numidia, was the
+result of a secret understanding, not of a definite admission that could
+be blazoned to the world. There was some formal and desultory
+discussion, opinions on the question of surrender were elicited without
+any differentiation of the many issues that it might involve, and the
+consul was able to announce in the end that his council sanctioned the
+acceptance of Jugurtha's submission.[941] The council, however, had
+deemed it necessary that some visible proof, however slight, should be
+given that a surrender had been effected; for it was necessary to convey
+to the minds of critics at home the impression that some material
+advantage had been won and that Jugurtha had been humiliated. With this
+object in view the king was required to hand over something to the Roman
+authorities. He kept his army, but solemnly transferred thirty
+elephants, some large droves of cattle and horses, and a small sum of
+money--the possessions, presumably, which he had ready at hand in his
+city of Vaga--to the custody of the quaestor of the Roman army.[942] The
+year meanwhile was drawing to a close, and the consul, now that peace
+had been restored, quitted his province for Rome to preside at the
+magisterial elections.[943] The army still remained in the Roman
+province or in Numidia, but the cessation of hostilities reduced it to a
+state of inaction which augured ill for its future discipline should it
+again be called upon to serve.
+
+The agreement itself must have seemed to its authors a triumph of
+diplomacy. They had secured peace with but an inconsiderable loss of
+honour; they had saved Rome from a long, difficult and costly war,
+whilst a modicum of punishment might with some ingenuity be held to have
+been inflicted on Jugurtha. They must have been astounded by the chorus
+of execration with which the news of the compact was received at
+Rome.[944] Nor indeed can any single reason, adequate in itself and
+without reference to others, be assigned for this feeling of hostility.
+First, there was the idle gossip of the public places and the
+clubs--gossip which, in the unhealthy atmosphere of the time, loved to
+unveil the interested motives which were supposed to underlie the public
+actions of all men of mark, and which exhibited moderation to an enemy
+as the crowning proof of its suspicions. Secondly there was the feeling
+that had been stirred in the proletariate at Rome. The question of
+Jugurtha, little as they understood its merits, was still to them the
+great question of the hour, a matter of absorbing interest and
+expectation. Their feelings had been harrowed by the story of his
+cruelties, their fears excited by rumours of his power and intentions.
+They had roused the senate from its lethargy and forced that illustrious
+body to pursue the great criminal; they had seen a great army quitting
+the gates of Rome to execute the work of justice; their relatives and
+friends had been subjected to the irksome duties of the conscription.
+Everywhere there had been a fervid blaze of patriotism, and this blaze
+had now ended in the thinnest curl of smoke. But to the masses the
+imagined shame of the Jugurthine War had now become but a single count
+in an indictment. The origin of the movement was now but its stimulus;
+as is the case with most of such popular awakenings, the agitation was
+now of a wholly illimitable character. The one vivid element in its
+composition was the memory of the recent past. It was easy to arouse the
+train of thought that centred round the two Gracchan movements and the
+terrible moments of their catastrophe. The new movement against the
+senate was in fact but the old movement in another form. The senate had
+betrayed the interests of the people; now it was betraying the interests
+of the empire; but to imagine that the form of the indictment as it
+appealed to the popular mind was even so definite as this, is to credit
+the average mind with a power of analysis which it does not, and
+probably would not wish to, possess. It is less easy to gauge the
+attitude of the commercial classes in this crisis. Their indignation at
+the impunity given to Jugurtha after the massacre of the merchants at
+Cirta is easily understood; but with this class sentiment was wont to be
+outweighed by considerations of interest, and the preservation of peace
+in Numidia, and consequently of facilities for trade, must have been the
+end which they most desired. But perhaps they felt that the only peace
+which would serve their purposes was one based on a full reassertion of
+Roman prestige, and perhaps they knew that Jugurtha, the reawakener of
+the national spirit of the Numidians, would show no friendship to the
+foreign trader. They must also have seen that, whatever the prospects of
+the mercantile class under Jugurtha's rule might be, the convention just
+concluded could not be lasting. Their own previous action had determined
+its transitory character. By their support of the agitation awakened by
+Memmius they had created a condition of feeling which could not rest
+satisfied with the present suspected compromise. But if satisfaction was
+impossible, a continuance of the war was inevitable. They had before
+them the prospect of continued unsettlement and insecurity in a fruitful
+sphere of profit; and they intended to support the present agitation by
+their influence in the Comitia and, if necessary, by their verdicts in
+the courts, until a strong policy had been asserted and a decisive
+settlement attained.
+
+Even before the storm of criticism had again gathered strength, there
+was great anxiety in the senate over the recent action in Numidia. That
+body could doubtless read between the lines and see the real motives of
+policy which had led up to the present compact; they could see that the
+agreement was a compromise between the views of two opposing sections of
+their own house; and they must have approved of it in their hearts in so
+far as it expressed the characteristic objection of the senate as a
+whole to imperil the security of their imperial system, perhaps even to
+expose the frontiers of their northern possessions now threatened by
+barbarian hordes, through undertaking an unnecessary war in a southern
+protectorate. But none the less they saw clearly the invidious elements
+in the recent stroke of diplomacy, the combination of inconsistency and
+dishonesty exhibited in the comparison between the magnificent
+preparations and the futile result--a result which, as interpreted by
+the ordinary mind, made its authors seem corrupt and the senate look
+ridiculous. Their anxiety was increased by the fact that an immediate
+decision on their part was imperative. Were they to sanction what had
+been done, or to refuse to ratify the decision of the consul?[945]
+
+The latter was of itself an extreme step, but it was rendered still more
+difficult by the fact that every one knew that Bestia would never have
+ventured on such a course had he not possessed the support of
+Scaurus.[946] To frame a decision which must be interpreted to mean a
+vote of lack of confidence in Scaurus, was to unseat the head of the
+administration, to abandon their ablest champion, perhaps to invite the
+successful attacks of the leaders of the other camp who were lying in
+wait for the first false step of the powerful and crafty organiser.
+Again, as in the discussion which had followed the fall of Cirta, the
+debates in the senate dragged on and there was a prospect of the
+question being indefinitely shelved--a result which, when the popular
+agitation had cooled, would have meant the acceptance of the existing
+state of things. Again the stimulus to greater rapidity of decision was
+supplied by Memmius. The leader of the agitation was now invested with
+the tribunate, and his position gave him the opportunity of unfettered
+intercourse with the people. His _Contiones_ were the feature of the
+day,[947] and these popular addresses culminated in the exhortation
+which he addressed to the crowd after the return of the unhappy Bestia.
+His speech[948] shows Memmius to be both the product and the author of
+the general character which had now been assumed by this long continued
+agitation on a special point. The golden opportunity had been gained of
+emphasising anew the fundamental differences of interest between the
+nobility and the people, of reviewing the conduct of the governing class
+in its continuous development during the last twenty years,[949] of
+pointing out the miserable consequences of uncontrolled power,
+irresponsibility and impunity. For the purpose of investing an address
+with the dignity and authority which spring from distant historical
+allusion, of brightening the prosaic present with something of the
+glamour of the half-mythical past, even of flattering his auditors with
+the suggestion that they were the descendants and heirs of the men who
+had seceded to the Aventine, it was necessary for a popular orator to
+touch on the great epoch of the struggle between the orders. But
+Memmius, while satisfying the conditions of his art by the introduction
+of the subject, uses it only to point the contrast between the epoch
+when liberty had been won and that wherein it had been lost, or to
+illustrate the uselessness of such heroic methods as the old secessions
+as weapons against a nobility such as the present which was rushing
+headlong to its own destruction. More important was the memory of those
+recent years which had seen the life of the people and of their
+champions become the plaything of a narrow oligarchy. The judicial
+murders that had followed the overthrow of the Gracchi, the spirit of
+abject patience with which they had been accepted and endured, were the
+symbol of the absolute impunity of the oligarchy, the source of their
+knowledge that they might use their power as they pleased. And how had
+they used it? A general category of their crimes would be misleading; it
+was possible to exhibit an ascending scale of guilt. They had always
+preyed on the commonwealth; but their earlier depredations might be
+borne in silence. Their earlier victims had been the allies and
+dependants of Rome; they had drawn revenues from kings and free peoples,
+they had pillaged the public treasury. But they had not yet begun to put
+up for sale the security of the empire and of Rome itself. Now this last
+and monstrous stage had been reached. The authority of the senate, the
+power which the people had delegated to its magistrate, had been
+betrayed to the most dangerous of foes; not satisfied with treating the
+allies of Rome as her enemies, the nobility were now treating her
+enemies as allies.[950] And what was the secret of the uncontrolled
+power, the shameless indifference to opinion that made such misdeeds
+possible? It was to be found partly in the tolerance of the people--a
+tolerance which was the result of the imposture which made ill-gained
+objects of plunder--consulships, priesthoods, triumphs--seem the proof
+of merit. But it was to be found chiefly in the fact that co-operation
+in crime had been raised to the dignity of a system which made for the
+security of the criminal. The solidarity of the nobility, its very
+detachment from the popular interest, was its main source of strength.
+It had ceased even to be a party; it had become a clique--a mere faction
+whose community of hope, interest and fear had given it its present
+position of overweening strength.[951] This strength, which sprang from
+perfect unity of design and action, could only be met and broken
+successfully by a people fired with a common enthusiasm. But what form
+should this enthusiasm assume? Should an adviser of the people advocate
+a violent resumption of its rights, the employment of force to punish
+the men who have betrayed their country? No! Acts of violence might
+indeed be the fitting reward for their conduct, but they are unworthy
+instruments for the just vengeance of an outraged people. All that we
+demand is full inquiry and publicity. The secrets of the recent
+negotiations shall be probed. Jugurtha himself shall be the witness. If
+he has surrendered to the Roman people, as we are told, he will
+immediately obey your orders; if he despises your commands, you will
+have an opportunity of knowing the true nature of that peace and that
+submission which have brought to Jugurtha impunity for his crimes, to a
+narrow ring of oligarchs a large increase in their wealth, to the state
+a legacy of loss and shame.
+
+It was on this happily constructed dilemma that Memmius acted when he
+brought his positive proposal before the people. It was to the effect
+that the praetor Lucius Cassius Longinus should be sent to Jugurtha and
+bring him to Rome on the faith of a safe conduct granted by the State;
+Jugurtha's revelations were to be the key by which the secret chamber of
+the recent negotiations was to be unlocked, with the desired hope of
+convicting Scaurus and all others whose contact with the Numidian king,
+whether in the late or in past transactions,[952] had suggested their
+corruption. The object of this mission had been rapidly regaining the
+complete control of Numidia, which had been momentarily shaken by the
+Roman invasion. The presence of the Roman army, some portion of which
+was still quartered in a part of his dominions, was no check on his
+activity; for the absence of the commander, the incapacity and
+dishonesty of the delegates whom he had left in his place, and the
+demoralising indolence of the rank and file, had reduced the forces to a
+condition lower than that of mere ineffectiveness or lack of discipline.
+The desire of making a profit out of the situation pervaded every grade.
+The elephants which had been handed over by Jugurtha, were mysteriously
+restored; Numidians who had espoused the cause of Rome and deserted from
+the army of the king--loyalists whom, whatever their motives and
+character, Rome was bound to protect--were handed back to the king in
+exchange for a price;[953] districts already pacified were plundered by
+desultory bands of soldiers. The Roman power in Numidia was completely
+broken when Cassius arrived and revealed his mission to the king. The
+strange request would have alarmed a timid or ignorant ruler; Jugurtha
+himself wavered for a moment as to whether he should put himself
+unreservedly into the power of a hostile people; but he had sufficient
+imagination and familiarity with Roman life to realise that the
+principles of international honour that prevailed amongst despotic
+monarchies were not those of the great Republic even at its present
+stage, and he professed himself encouraged by the words of the amiable
+praetor that "since he had thrown himself on the mercy of the Roman
+people, he would do better to appeal to their pity than to challenge
+their might".[954] His guide added his own word of honour to that of the
+Republic, and such was the repute of Cassius that this assurance helped
+to remove the momentary scruples of the king. Once he was assured of
+personal safety, Jugurtha's visit to Rome became merely a matter of
+policy, and his rapid mind must have surveyed every issue depending on
+his acceptance or refusal before he committed himself to so doubtful a
+step. His real plan of action is unfortunately unknown; for we possess
+but the barest outline of these incidents, and we have no information on
+the really vital point whether communications had reached him from his
+supporters in the capital, which enabled him to predict the course
+events would take if he obeyed the summons of Cassius. Had such
+communications reached him, he might have known that the projected
+investigation would be nugatory. But a failure in the purpose for which
+he was summoned could convey no benefit to Jugurtha or his supporters;
+it would simply incense the people and place both the king, and his
+friends amongst the nobility, in a worse position than before. The
+course of action, by turns sullen, shifty and impudent, which he pursued
+at Rome, must have been due to the exigencies of the moment and the
+frantic promptings of his frightened friends; for it could scarcely have
+appealed to a calculating mind as a procedure likely to lead to fruitful
+results. Its certain issue was war; but war could be had without the
+trouble of a journey to Rome. He had but to stay where he was and
+decline the people's request, and this policy of passive resistance
+would have the further merit of saving his dignity as a king. It may
+seem strange that he never adopted the bold but simple plan of standing
+up in Rome and telling the whole truth, or at least such portions of the
+truth as might have satisfied the people. It was a course of action that
+might have secured him his crown. Doubtless if his transactions with
+Roman officials had been innocent, the truth, if he adhered to it, might
+not have been believed; but, if his evidence was damning, the people
+might well have been turned from the insignificant question "Who was to
+be King of Numidia?" to the supreme task of punishing the traitors whom
+he denounced. But we have no right to read Jugurtha's character by the
+light of the single motive of a self-interest which knew no scruples. He
+may have had his own ideas of honour and of the protection due to a
+benefactor or a trusty agent. Self-interest too might in this matter
+come to the aid of sentiment; for it was at least possible that the
+popular storm might spend its fury and leave the nobility still holding
+their ground. So far as we with our imperfect knowledge can discern,
+Jugurtha could have had no definite plan of action when he consented to
+take the journey to Rome. But he had abundant prospects, if even he
+possessed no plan. His presence in the capital was a decided advantage,
+in so far as it enabled him to confer with his leading supporters, and
+to attend to a matter affecting his dynastic interests which we shall
+soon find arousing the destructive energy which was becoming habitual to
+his jealous and impatient mind.
+
+When Jugurtha appeared in Rome under the guidance of Cassius, he had
+laid aside all the emblems of sovereignty and assumed the sordid garb
+that befitted a suppliant for the mercy of the sovereign people.[955] He
+seemed to have come, not as a witness for the prosecution, but as a
+suspected criminal who appeared in his own defence. He was still keeping
+up the part of one whom the fortune of war had thrown absolutely into
+the power of the conquering state--a part perhaps suggested by the
+friendly Cassius, but one that was perfectly in harmony with the
+pretensions of Bestia and Scaurus. But the heart beneath that miserable
+dress beat high with hope, and he was soon cheered by messages from the
+circle of his friends at Rome and apprised of the means which had been
+taken to baffle the threatened investigation,[956] The senate had, as
+usual, a tribune at its service. Caius Baebius was the name of the man
+who was willing to play the part, so familiar to the practice of the
+constitution, of supporter of the government against undue encroachments
+on its power and dignity, or against over-hasty action by the leaders of
+the people. The government undoubtedly had a case. It was contrary to
+all accepted notions of order and decency that a protected king should
+be used as a political instrument by a turbulent tribune. Memmius had
+impeached no one and had given no notice of a public trial; yet he
+intended to bring Jugurtha before a gathering of the rabble and ask him
+to blacken the names of the foremost men in Rome. It was exceedingly
+probable that the grotesque proceeding would lead to a breach of the
+peace; the sooner it was stopped, the better; and, although it was
+unfortunately impossible to prevent Memmius from initiating the drama by
+bringing forward his protagonist, the law had luckily provided means for
+ending the performance before the climax had been reached. It was
+believed that the sound constitutional views of Baebius were
+strengthened by a great price paid by Jugurtha,[957] and, if we care to
+believe one more of those charges of corruption, the multitude of which
+had not palled even on the easily wearied mind of the lively Roman, it
+is possible to imagine that the implicated members of the senate, in
+whose interest far more than in that of Jugurtha Baebius was acting, had
+persuaded the king that it was to his advantage to make the gift.
+
+The eagerly awaited day arrived, on which the scandal-loving ears of the
+people were to be filled to the full with the iniquities of their
+rulers, on which their long-cherished suspicions should be changed to a
+pleasantly anticipated certainty. Memmius summoned his Contio and
+produced the king. Even the suppliant garb of Jugurtha did not save him
+from a howl of execration. From the tribunal, to which he had been led
+by the tribune, he looked over a sea of angry faces and threatening
+hands, while his ears were deafened by the roar of fierce voices, some
+crying that he should be put in bonds, others that he should suffer the
+death of the traitor if he failed to reveal the partners of his
+crimes.[958] Memmius, anxious for the dignity of his unusual proceedings
+which were being marred by this frantic outburst, used all his efforts
+to secure order and a patient hearing, and succeeded at length in
+imposing silence on the crowd--a silence which perhaps marked that
+psychological moment when pent up feeling had found its full expression
+and passion had given way to curiosity. The tribune also vehemently
+asserted his intention of preserving inviolate the safe conduct which
+had been granted by the State. He then led the king forward[959] and
+began a recital of the catalogue of his deeds. He spared him nothing;
+his criminal activity at Rome and in Numidia, his outrages on his
+family--the whole history of that career, as it continued to live in the
+minds of democrats, was fully rehearsed. He concluded the story, which
+he assumed to be true, by a request for the important details of which
+full confirmation was lacking. "Although the Roman people understood by
+whose assistance and ministry all this had been done, yet they wished to
+have their suspicions finally attested by the king. If he revealed the
+truth, he could repose abundant hope on the honour and clemency of the
+Roman people; if he refused to speak, he would not help the partners of
+his guilt, but his silence would ruin both himself and his future."
+Memmius ceased and asked the king for a reply; Baebius stepped forward
+and ordered the king to be silent.[960] The voice of Jugurtha could
+legally find utterance only through the will of the magistrate who
+commanded; it was stifled by the prohibition of the colleague who
+forbade. The people were in the presence of one of those galling
+restraints on their own liberty to which the jealousy of the magistracy,
+expressed in the constitutional creations of their ancestors, so often
+led. Baebius was immediately subjected to the terrorism which Octavius,
+his forerunner in tribunician constancy, had once withstood. The frantic
+mob scowled, shouted, made rushes for the tribunal, and used every
+effort short of personal assault which anger could suggest, to break the
+spirit of the man who balked their will. But the resolution--or, as his
+enemies said, the shamelessness[961]--of Baebius prevailed. The
+multitude, tricked of its hopes, melted from the Forum in gloomy
+discontent. It is said that the hopes of Bestia and his friends rose
+high.[962] Perhaps they had lived too long in security to realise the
+danger threatened by a disappointed crowd that might meet to better
+purpose some future day; that had gained from the insulting scene itself
+an embittered confirmation of its views, with none of the softening
+influence which springs from a curiosity completely satiated; that, as
+an assembly of the sovereign people, might at any moment avenge the
+latest outrage which had been inflicted on its dignity.
+
+Jugurtha had, perhaps through no fault of his own, sorely tried the
+patience of the people on the one occasion on which, as a professed
+suppliant, he had come into contact with his sovereign. He was now, on
+his own initiative, to try it yet further, and to test it in a manner
+which aroused the horror and resentment of many who did not share the
+views of Memmius. The king was not the only representative of
+Masinissa's house at present to be found in Rome. There resided in the
+city, as a fugitive from his power, his cousin Massiva, son of Gulussa
+and grandson of Masinissa. It is not known why this scion of the royal
+house had been passed over in the regulation of the succession, although
+it is easily intelligible that Micipsa, with two sons of his own, might
+not have wished to increase the number of co-regents of Numidia by
+recognising his brother's heirs, and would not have done so had he not
+been forced by circumstances to adopt Jugurtha. During the early
+struggles between the three kings, Massiva had attached himself to the
+party of Hiempsal and Adherbal, and had thus incurred Jugurtha's enmity;
+but he had continued to live in Numidia as long as there was any hope of
+the continuance of the dual kingship. The fall of Cirta and the death of
+Adherbal had forced him to find a refuge at Rome, where he continued to
+reside in peace until fate suddenly made him a pawn in the political
+game. At last there had arisen a definite section amongst the nobility
+which found it to its interest to offer an active opposition to
+Jugurtha's claims. The consuls who succeeded Bestia and Nasica, were
+Spurius Albinus and Quintus Minucius Rufus. The latter had won the
+province of Macedonia and the protection of the north-eastern frontier;
+to the former had fallen Numidia and the conduct of affairs in Africa.
+The fact that the senate had declared Numidia a consular province before
+the close of the previous year, was the ostensible proof that they had
+yielded to the pressure applied by Memmius and nominally at least
+repudiated the pacification effected by Bestia and Scaurus. But the
+rejection of this arrangement seems never to have been officially
+declared; there was still a chance of the recognition of Jugurtha's
+claims, and of the governor of Numidia being assigned the inglorious
+function of seeing to the restoration of the king and then evacuating
+his territory. Such a modest _rôle_ did not at all harmonise with the
+views of Albinus. He wished a real command and a genuine war; but it was
+not easy to wage such a war as long as Jugurtha was the only candidate
+in the field. Even if his surrender were regarded as fictitious and the
+war were resumed on that ground, it was difficult to assign it an
+ultimate object, since the senate had no intention of making Numidia a
+province. But the object which would make the war a living reality could
+be secured, if a pretender were put forward for the Numidian crown; and
+such a pretender Albinus sought in the scion of Masinissa's race now
+resident in Rome, whose birth gave him a better hereditary claim than
+Jugurtha himself. The consul approached Massiva and urged him to make a
+case out of the odium excited and the fears inspired by Jugurtha's
+crimes, and to approach the senate with a request for the kingdom of
+Numidia.[963] The prince caught at the suggestion, the petition was
+prepared, and this new and unexpected movement began to make itself
+felt. Jugurtha's fear and anger were increased by the sudden discovery
+that his friends at Rome were almost powerless to help him. They could
+not parade a question of principle when it came to persons; a kingdom in
+Numidia was more easily defended than its king; every act of assistance
+which they rendered plunged them deeper in the mire of suspicion; it was
+a time to walk warily, for those who had no judge in their own
+conscience found one in the keen scrutiny of a hostile world. But the
+danger was too great to permit Jugurtha to relax his efforts through the
+failure of his friends. He appealed to his own resources, which
+consisted of the passive obedience of his immediate attendants and the
+power of his purse. To Bomilcar his most trusted servant he gave the
+mission of making one final effort with the gold which had already done
+so much. Men might be hired who would lie in wait for Massiva. If
+possible, the matter was to be effected secretly. If secrecy was
+impossible, the Numidian must yet be slain. His death was deserving of
+any risk. Bomilcar was prompt in carrying out his mission. A band of
+hired spies watched every movement of Massiva. They learnt the hours at
+which he left and returned to his home; the places he visited, the times
+at which his visits were paid. When the seasonable hour arrived, the
+ambush was set by Bomilcar. The elaborate precautions which had been
+taken proved to have been thrown away; the assassin who struck the fatal
+blow was no adept in the art of secret killing. Hardly had Massiva
+fallen when the alarm was given and the murderer seized.[964] The men
+who had an interest in Massiva's life were too numerous and too great to
+make it possible for the act to sink to the level of ordinary street
+outrages, or for the assassin caught red-handed to be regarded as the
+sole author of the crime. The consul Albinus amongst others pressed the
+murderer to reveal the instigator of the deed, and the senate must have
+promised the immunity that was sometimes given to the criminal who named
+his accomplices. The man named Bomilcar, who was thereupon formally
+arraigned of the murder and bound over to stand his trial before a
+criminal court. Even this step was taken with considerable hesitation,
+for it was admitted that the safe-conduct which protected Jugurtha
+extended to his retinue.[965] The king and his court were strictly
+speaking extra-territorial, and the strict letter of international law
+would have handed Bomilcar over for trial by his sovereign. But it was
+felt that a departure from custom was a less evil than to allow such an
+outrage to remain unpunished, and it was easier to satisfy the popular
+conscience by finding Bomilcar guilty than to fix the crime on the man
+whom every one named as its ultimate author. Jugurtha himself was
+inclined for a time to acquiesce in this view; he regarded the trial of
+his favourite as inevitable and furnished fifty of his own acquaintances
+who were willing to give bail for the appearance of the accused. But
+reflection convinced him that the sacrifice was unnecessary; his name
+could not be saved by Bomilcar's doom, and no influence or wealth could
+create even a pretence at belief in his own innocence. His standing in
+Rome was gone, and this made him the more eager to consider his standing
+as King of Numidia. If Bomilcar were sacrificed, his powerlessness to
+protect the chief member of his retinue might shake the allegiance of
+his own subjects.[966] He therefore smuggled his accused henchman from
+Rome and had him conveyed secretly to Numidia. This, of all Jugurtha's
+acts of perfidy perhaps the mildest and most excusable, in spite of the
+awkward predicament in which it left the fifty securities, was the last
+of the baffling incidents that had been crowded into his short sojourn
+at Rome. His presence must have been an annoyance to every one. He had
+exhausted his friends, had failed to serve the purposes of the
+opposition leader, and had inspired in the senate memories and
+anticipations which they were willing to forget. When that body ordered
+him to quit Italy--it must have expressed the wish of every class.
+Within a few days of Bomilcar's disappearance the king himself was
+leaving the gates. It is said that he often turned and took a long and
+silent look at the distant town, and that at last the words broke from
+him "A city for sale and ripe for ruin, if only a purchaser can be
+found!" [967]
+
+The departure of Jugurtha implied the renewal of the war. The compact
+made with Bestia and Scaurus had been tacitly, if not formally,
+repudiated by the senate, and the fiction that Jugurtha had surrendered,
+although it had played its part in the negotiations which brought him to
+Rome, disappeared with the compact. Since, however, the right of
+Jugurtha to retain Numidia, which was the objectionable element in the
+late agreement, seems to have been implied rather than expressed, it may
+have seemed possible to take the view that Jugurtha's surrender was
+unconditional, and that the war was now the pursuit of an escaped
+prisoner of Rome. Such a conception was absolutely worthless so far as
+most of the practical difficulties of the task were concerned; for,
+whether Jugurtha was an enemy or a rebel, he was equally difficult to
+secure; but it may have had a considerable influence on the principles
+on which the Numidian war was now to be conducted, and we shall find on
+the part of Rome a growing disinclination to give Jugurtha the benefits
+of those rules of civilised warfare of which she generally professed a
+scrupulous observance in the letter if not in the spirit. The object of
+the war was, through its very simplicity, extraordinarily difficult of
+attainment. It was neither more nor less than the seizure of the person
+of Jugurtha. Numidia had no common government and no unity but those
+personified in its king, and the conquest of fragments of the country
+would be almost useless until the king was secured. The hope of setting
+up a rival pretender, whose recognition by Rome might have enabled
+organisation to keep pace with conquest, had perished with the murder of
+Massiva,[968] although it is very questionable whether the name even of
+the son of the warlike Gulussa would have detached any of the military
+strength of Numidia from a monarch who had stirred the fighting spirit
+of the nation and was regarded as the embodiment of its manliest
+traditions. The outlook of the consul Albinus, the new organiser of the
+war on the Roman side, was indeed a poor one, and it was made still
+poorer by the fact that a considerable portion of his year of office had
+already lapsed, and the events of his campaign must of necessity be
+crowded into the few remaining months of the summer and the early
+autumn. Had there been any spirit of self-sacrifice in Roman commanders,
+or any true continuity in Roman military policies, Albinus might have
+set himself the useful task of organising victory for his successors;
+yet he cannot be wholly blamed for the hope, wild and foolish as it
+seems, of striking some decisive blow in the narrow time allowed
+him.[969] The military operations of the war at this stage become almost
+wholly subordinate to political considerations. Senate and consuls were
+being swept off their feet and forced into a disastrous celerity or
+superficiality of action by the growing tide of indignation which
+animated commons and capitalists alike; and the feeling that something
+decisive must be accomplished for the satisfaction of public opinion,
+was supplemented by the lower but very human consideration that a
+general must seem to have attained some success if he hoped to have his
+command prolonged for another year. The senate, it is true, might have
+insight enough to see that success in a war such as that in Numidia
+could not be gauged by the brilliance of the results obtained; but how
+were they to defend their verdict to the people unless they could point
+to exploits such as would dazzle the popular eye? But although a
+feverish policy seemed the readiest mode of escape from public suspicion
+or inglorious retirement, it had its own particular nemesis, of which
+Albinus seemed for the moment to be oblivious. To finish the war in a
+short time meant to finish it by any means that came to hand. But, if a
+striking victory did not surrender Jugurtha into the hands of his
+conqueror--and even the most glorious victory did not under the
+circumstances of the war imply the capture of the vanquished--what means
+remained except negotiation and the voluntary surrender of the
+king?[970] Such means had been employed by Bestia, and every one knew
+now with what result. The policy of haste might breed more suspicion and
+bitterness than the most desultory conduct of the campaign.
+
+Albinus made rapid but ample preparation of supplies, money and
+munitions of war, and hurried off to the scene of his intended
+successes. The army which he found must have been in a miserable
+condition, if we may judge by the state which the last glimpse of it
+revealed; but his fixed intention of accomplishing something, no matter
+what, must have rendered adequate re-organisation impossible, and he
+took the field against Jugurtha with forces whose utter demoralisation
+was soon to be put to a frightful test. The war immediately assumed that
+character of an unsuccessful hunt, varied by indecisive engagements and
+fruitless victories, which it was to retain even under the guidance of
+the ablest that Rome could furnish. Jugurtha adhered to his inevitable
+plan of a prolonged and desultory campaign over a vast area of country;
+the size and physical character of his kingdom, the extraordinary
+mobility of his troops, the credulity and anxious ambition of his
+opponent, were all elements of strength which he used with consummate
+skill. He retired before the threatening column; then, that his men
+might not lose heart, he threw himself with startling suddenness on the
+foe; at other times he mocked the consul with hopes of peace, entered
+into negotiations for a surrender and, when he had disarmed his
+adversary by hopes, suddenly drew back in a pretended access of
+distrust. The futility of Albinus's efforts was so pronounced--a
+futility all the more impressive from the intensity of his preparations
+and his excessive eagerness to reach the field of action--that people
+ignorant of the conditions of the campaign began again to whisper the
+perpetual suspicion of collusion with the king.[971] The suspicion might
+not have been avoided even by a commander who declined negotiation; but
+Albinus's case had been rendered worse by his unsuccessful efforts to
+play with a master of craft, and it was with a reputation greatly
+weakened from a military, and slightly damaged from a moral, point of
+view that he brought the campaign to a close, sent his army into winter
+quarters, and left for Rome to preside at the electoral meetings of the
+people.[972] The Comitia for the appointment of the consuls and the
+praetors were at this time held during the latter half of the year, but
+at no regular date, the time for their summons depending on the
+convenience of the presiding consul and on his freedom from other and
+more pressing engagements.[973] Albinus may have arrived in Rome during
+the late autumn. Had he been able to get the business over and return to
+Africa for the last month or two of the year, his conduct of the war
+might have been considered ineffective but not disastrous, and the
+senate might have been spared a problem more terrible than any that had
+yet arisen out of its relations with Jugurtha. For Albinus, though
+sanguine and unpractical, seems to have been reasonably prudent, and he
+might have handed over an army, unsuccessful but not disgraced, and
+recruited in strength by its long winter quarters, to the care of a more
+fortunate successor. But, as it happened, every public department in
+Rome was feeling the strain caused by a minor constitutional crisis
+which had arisen amongst the magistrates of the Plebs. The sudden
+revival of the people's aspirations had doubtless led to a certain
+amount of misguided ambition on the part of some of its leaders, and the
+tribunate was now the centre of an agitation which was a faint
+counterpart of the closing scenes in the Gracchan struggles. Two
+occupants of the office, Publius Lucullus and Lucius Annius, were
+attempting to secure re-election for another year. Their colleagues
+resisted their effort, probably on the ground that the conditions
+requisite for re-election were not in existence, and this conflict not
+merely prevented the appointment of plebeian magistrates from being
+completed, but stayed the progress of the other elective Comitia as
+well.[974] The tribunes, whether those who aimed at re-election or those
+who attempted to prevent it, had either declared a _justitium_ or
+threatened to veto every attempt made by a magistrate of the people to
+hold an electoral assembly; and the consequence of this impasse was
+that, when the year drew to a close,[975] no new magistrates were in
+existence and the consul Albinus was still absent from his
+African command.
+
+Unfortunately the absence of the proconsul, as Albinus had now become in
+default of the appointment of a successor, did not have the effect of
+checking the enterprise of the army. It was now under the authority of
+Aulus Albinus, to whom his brother had delegated the command of the
+province and the forces during his stay at Rome. The stimulus which
+moved Aulus to action is not known. The unexpected duration of his
+temporary command may have familiarised him with power, stimulated his
+undoubted confidence in himself, and suggested the hope that by one of
+those unexpected blows, with which the annals of strategic genius were
+filled, he might redeem his brother's reputation and win lasting glory
+for himself. Others believed that the perpetually suspected motive of
+cupidity was the basis of his enterprise, that he had no definitely
+conceived plan of conquest, but intended by the terror of a military
+demonstration to exact money from Jugurtha.[976] If the latter view was
+correct, it is possible that Aulus imagined himself to be acting in the
+interest of his army as well as of himself. The long winter quarters may
+have betrayed a deficiency in pay and provisions, and if Jugurtha
+purchased the security of a district, its immunity would be too public
+an event to make it possible for the commander of the attacking forces
+to pocket the whole of the ransom.
+
+It was in the month of January, in the very heart of a severe winter,
+that Aulus summoned his troops from the security of their quarters to a
+long and fatiguing march. His aim was Suthul, a strongly fortified post
+on the river Ubus, nearly forty miles south of Hippo Regius and the sea,
+and so short a distance from the larger and better-known town of Calama,
+the modern Gelma, that the latter name was sometimes used to describe
+the scene of the incidents that followed.[977] We are not told the site
+of the winter quarters from which the march began; but the
+ineffectiveness of the former campaign and the caution of Albinus, who
+did not mean his legions to fight during his absence, might lead us to
+suppose that the troops had been quartered in or near the Roman
+province; and in this case Aulus might have marched along the valley of
+the Bagradas to reach his destined goal, which would finally have been
+approached from the south through a narrow space between two ranges of
+hills, the westernmost of which was crowned at its northern end by the
+fortifications of Suthul. This was reported to be the chief
+treasure-city of Jugurtha; could Aulus capture it, or even bargain for
+its security with the king, he might cripple the resources of the
+Numidian monarch and win great wealth for himself and his army. By long
+and fatiguing marches he reached the object of his attack, only to
+discover at the first glance that it was impregnable--nay even, as a
+soldier's eye would have seen, that an investment of the place was
+utterly impossible.[978] The rigour of the season had aggravated the
+difficulties presented by the site. Above towered the city walls perched
+on their precipitous rock; below was the alluvial plain which the
+deluging rains of a Numidian winter had turned into a swamp of liquid
+mud. Yet Aulus, either dazzled by the vision of the gold concealed
+within the fortress which it had caused him such labour to reach, or
+with some vague idea that a pretence at an investment might alarm the
+king into coming to terms for the protection of his hoard, began to make
+formal preparations for a siege, to bring up mantlets, to mark out his
+lines of circumvallation,[979] to deceive his enemy, if he could not
+deceive himself, into a belief that the conditions rendered an attack on
+Suthul possible.
+
+It is needless to say that Jugurtha knew the possibilities of his
+treasure-city far better than its assailant. But the simple device of
+Aulus was admirably suited to his plans. Humble messages soon reached
+the camp of the legate; the missives of every successive envoy augmented
+his illusion and stirred his idle hopes to a higher pitch. Jugurtha's
+own movements began to give proof of a state of abject terror. So far
+from coming to the relief of his threatened city, he drew his forces
+farther away into the most difficult country he could find, everywhere
+quitting the open ground for sheltered spots and mountain paths. At last
+from a distance he began to hold out definite hopes of an agreement with
+Aulus. But it was one that must be transacted personally and in private.
+The plain round Suthul was much too public a spot; let the legate follow
+the king into the fastnesses of the desert and all would be arranged.
+The legate advanced as the king retired; but at every point of the
+difficult march Numidian spies were hovering around the Roman column.
+The disgust of the soldiers at the hardships to which they had been
+submitted in the pursuit of this phantom gold, the last evidence of
+which had vanished when their commander turned his back on the walls of
+Suthul, now resulted in a frightful state of demoralisation. The lower
+officers in authority, centurions and commanders of squadrons of horse,
+stole from the camp to hold converse with Jugurtha's spies; some sold
+themselves to desert to the Numidian army, others to quit their posts at
+a given signal. The mesh was at last prepared. On one dark night, at the
+hour of the first sleep when attack is least suspected, the camp of
+Aulus was suddenly surrounded by the Numidian host. The surprise was
+complete. The Roman soldiers, in the shock of the sudden din, were
+utterly unnerved. Some groped for their arms; others cowered in their
+tents; a few tried to create some order amongst their terror-stricken
+comrades. But nowhere could a real stand be made or real discipline
+observed. The blackness of the night and the heavy driving clouds
+prevented the numbers of the enemy from being seen, and the size of the
+Numidian host, large in itself, was perhaps increased by a terrified
+imagination. It was difficult to say on which side the greater danger
+lay. Was it safer to fly into darkness and some unknown ambush or to
+keep one's ground and meet the approaching enemy? The evils of
+preconcerted treachery were soon added to those of surprise. The
+defections were greatest amongst the auxiliary forces. A cohort of
+Ligurian infantry with two squadrons of Thracian cavalry deserted to the
+king. Their example was followed by but a handful of the legionaries;
+but the fatal act of treason was committed by a Roman centurion of the
+first rank. He let the Numidians through the post which he had been
+given to defend, and through this ingress they poured to every part of
+the camp. The panic was now complete; most of the Romans threw their
+arms away and fled from slaughter to the temporary safety of a
+neighbouring hill. The early hour at which the attack had been made,
+prevented an effective pursuit, for there was much of the night yet to
+run; and the Numidians were also busied with the plunder of the camp.
+The dawn of day revealed the hopelessness of the Roman position and
+forced Aulus into any terms that Jugurtha cared to grant. The latter
+adopted the language of humane condescension. He said that, although he
+held the Roman army at his mercy, certain victims of famine or the
+sword, yet he was not unmindful of the mutability of human fortune, and
+would spare the lives of all his prisoners, if the Roman commander would
+make a treaty with him.[980] The army was to pass under the yoke; the
+Romans were to evacuate Numidia within ten days. The degrading terms
+were accepted: an army that before its defeat had numbered forty
+thousand men,[981] passed under the spear that symbolised their
+submission and disgrace, and peace reigned in Numidia--a peace which
+lacked no element of shame, dictated by a client king to the sovereign
+that had decreed his chastisement.
+
+The Roman public had become so familiar with discredit as to be in the
+habit of imagining it even when it did not exist; but humiliation
+exhibited in an actual disaster on this colossal scale was sufficiently
+novel to stir the people to the profoundest depths of grief and
+fear.[982] To men who thought only of the empire, its glory seemed to be
+extinguished by the fearful blow; but many of the masses, who knew
+nothing of war or of Rome's relations with peoples beyond the seas, were
+filled with a fear too personal to permit their thoughts to dwell solely
+on the loss of honour. To yet another class, whose knowledge exempted
+them from such idle terror, the army seemed more than the empire. Rome
+had not yet learnt to fight with mercenary forces; and the men who had
+seen service formed a considerable element in the Roman proletariate.
+Such veterans, especially those whose repute in war could give their
+words an added point, were unmeasured in their condemnation of the
+conduct of Aulus. The general had had a sword in his hand; yet he had
+thought a disgraceful capitulation his only means of deliverance. On no
+side could a word be heard in defence of the action of the unhappy
+commander. The blessings of the wives and children of the men whom
+Aulus's treaty had saved were, if breathed, apparently smothered under a
+weight of patriotic execration.
+
+The feeling of insecurity must have been rendered greater by the fact
+that the State still lacked an official head, and the African
+dependencies possessed no governor in whom any confidence could be
+reposed. The year must have opened with a series of _interregna_, since
+no consuls had been elected to assume the government on the 1st of
+January; Numidia had again been made by senatorial decree a consular
+province; but since no consul existed to assume the administration,
+Albinus was still in command of the African army.[983] It was the
+painful duty of the ex-consul to raise in the senate the question of the
+ratification of his brother's treaty. Even he could never have attempted
+to defend it; his dominant feeling was an overwhelming sense of the
+weight of undeserved ignominy under which he lay, tempered by an
+undercurrent of fear as to the danger that might follow in the track of
+the universal disfavour with which he and his brother were regarded. The
+action that he took even before the senate's opinion was known, was a
+proof that he regarded the continuance of the war as inevitable. He
+relieved his mind and sought to restore his credit by pushing on
+military preparations with a fevered energy; supplementary drafts for
+the African army were raised from the citizens; auxiliary cohorts were
+demanded of the Latins and Italian allies. While these measures were in
+progress, the judgment of the senate was given to the world. It was a
+judgment based on the often-repeated maxim that no legitimate treaty
+could be concluded without the consent of the senate and people.[984] It
+was a decision that recalled the days of Numantia or the more distant
+history of the Caudine Forks; but the formal sacrifice that followed and
+was thought to justify those famous instances of breach of contract, was
+no longer deemed worthy of observance, and Aulus was not surrendered to
+the vengeance or mercy of the foe with whom he had involuntarily broken
+faith. This summary invalidation of the treaty may have been the result
+of a deduction drawn from the peculiar circumstances which had preceded
+the renewal of the war--circumstances which, as we have seen, might be
+twisted to support the view that Jugurtha was not an independent enemy
+of Rome and was, therefore, not entitled to the full rights of a
+belligerent.
+
+The senate's decision left Albinus free to act and to make use of the
+new military forces that he had so strenuously prepared. But a sudden
+hindrance came from another quarter. Some tribunes expressed the not
+unreasonable view that a commander of Albinus's record should not be
+allowed to expose Rome's last resources to destruction. Had they meant
+him to remain in command, their attitude would have been indefensible;
+but, when they forbade him to take the new recruits to Africa,[985] they
+were merely reserving them for a more worthy successor. Albinus,
+however, meant to make the most of his limited tenure. He had his own
+and his brother's honour to avenge, and within a few days of the
+senate's decree permitting a renewal of the war, he had taken ship for
+the African province, where the whole army, withdrawn from Numidia in
+accordance with the compact, was now stationed in winter quarters. For a
+time his burning desire to clear his name made him blind to the defects
+of his forces; he thought only of the pursuit of Jugurtha, of some
+vigorous stroke that might erase the stain from the honour of his
+family. But hard facts soon restored the equilibrium of his naturally
+prudent soul. The worst feature of the army was not that it had been
+beaten, but that it had not been commanded. The reins of discipline had
+been so slack that licence and indulgence had sapped its fighting
+strength. The tyranny of circumstances demanded a peaceful sojourn in
+the province, and Albinus resigned himself to the inevitable.
+
+At Rome meanwhile the movement for inquiry that had been stayed for the
+moment by the co-operation of Jugurtha and his senatorial friends, and
+by the obstructive attitude of Baebius, had been resumed with greater
+intensity and promise of success. It did not need the disaster of Aulus
+to re-awaken it to new life. That disaster no doubt accelerated its
+course and invested it with an unscrupulous thoroughness of character
+that it might otherwise have lacked; but the movement itself had perhaps
+taken a definite shape a month before the result of Aulus's experiment
+in Numidia was known, and was the natural result of the feeling of
+resentment which the conspiracy of silence had created. It now assumed
+the exact and legal form of the demand for a commission which should
+investigate, adjudicate and punish. The leaders of the people had
+conceived the bold and original design of wresting from the hands, and
+directing against the person, of the senate the powerful weapon with
+which that body had so often visited epidemics of crime or turbulence
+that were supposed to have fastened on the helpless proletariate. Down
+to this time special commissions had either been set up by the
+co-operation of senate and people, or had, with questionable legality,
+been established by the senate alone. The commissioners, who were
+sometimes consuls, sometimes praetors, had, perhaps always but certainly
+in recent history, judged without appeal; and in the judicial
+investigations which followed the fall of the Gracchi, the people had
+had no voice either in the appointment of the judge or in the
+ratification of the sentence which he pronounced. Now the senate as a
+whole was to be equally voiceless; it was not to be asked to take the
+initiative in the creation of the court, the penalties were to be
+determined without reference to its advice, and although the presidents
+would naturally be selected from members of the senatorial order, if
+they were to be chosen from men of eminence at all, these presidents
+were to be merely formal guides of the proceedings, like the praetor who
+sat in the court which tried cases of extortion, and the verdict was to
+be pronounced by judges inspired by the prevailing feeling of hostility
+to the crimes of the official class.
+
+Caius Mamilius Limetanus, who proposed and probably aided in drafting
+this bill, was a tribune who belonged to the college which perhaps came
+into office towards the close of the month of December which had
+preceded the recent disaster in Numidia. The bill, the promulgation of
+which was probably one of the first acts of his tribunate, proposed
+"that an inquiry should be directed into the conduct of all those
+individuals, whose counsel had led Jugurtha to neglect the decrees of
+the senate, who had taken money from the king whether as members of
+commissions or as holders of military commands, who had handed over to
+him elephants of war and deserters from his army; lastly, all who had
+made agreements with enemies of the State on matters of peace or
+war".[986] The comprehensive nature of the threatened inquiry spread
+terror amongst the ranks of the suspected. The panic was no sign of
+guilt; a party warfare was to be waged with the most undisguised party
+weapons: and mere membership of the suspected faction aroused fears
+almost as acute as those which were excited by the consciousness of
+guilt, There was a prospect of rough and ready justice, where proof
+might rest on prepossession and verdicts be considered preordained. The
+bitterness of the situation was increased by the impossibility of open
+resistance to the measure; for such a resistance would imply an
+unwillingness to submit to inquiry, and such a refusal, invidious in
+itself, would fix suspicion and be accepted as a confession of misdeeds
+which could not bear the light of investigation. With the city
+proletariate against them, the threatened members of the aristocracy
+could look merely to secret opposition by their own supporters, and to
+such moderate assistance as was secured by the friendly attitude which
+their recent agrarian measures had awakened in the Latins and Italian
+allies.[987] But the latter support was moral rather than material, or
+if it became effective, could only secure this character by fraud. The
+allies, whom the senate had driven from Rome by Pennus's law, were
+apparently to be invited to flood the _contiones_ and raise cries of
+protest against the threatened indictment. But this device could only be
+successful in the preliminary stages of the agitation. The Latins
+possessed but few votes, the Italians none, and personation, if resorted
+to, was not likely to elude the vigilance of the hostile presidents of
+the tribunician assembly, or, if undetected, to be powerful enough to
+turn the scale in favour of the aristocracy. For the unanimity of
+opposition which the nobility now encountered in the citizen body, was
+almost unexampled. The differences of interest which sometimes separated
+the country from the city voters, seem now to have been forgotten. The
+tribunes found no difficulty in keeping the agitation up to fever-heat,
+and its permanence was as marked as its intensity. The crowds that
+acclaimed the proposal, were sufficiently in earnest to remain at Rome
+and vote for it; the emphasis with which the masses assembled at the
+final meeting, "ordered, decreed and willed" the measure submitted for
+their approval, was interpreted (perhaps rightly) as a shout of
+triumphant defiance of the nobility, not as a vehement expression of
+disinterested affection for the State.[988] The two emotions were indeed
+blended; but the imperial sentiment is oftenest aroused by danger; and
+the individuals who have worked the mischief are the concrete element in
+a situation, the reaction against which has roused the exaltation which
+veils vengeance and hatred under the names of patriotism and justice.
+
+When the measure had been passed, it still remained to appoint the
+commissioners. This also was to be effected by the people's vote, and
+never perhaps was the effect of habit on the popular mind more
+strikingly exhibited than when Scaurus, who was thought to be trembling
+as a criminal, was chosen as a judge.[989] The large personal following,
+which he doubtless possessed amongst the people, must have remained
+unshaken by the scandals against his name; but the reflection amongst
+all classes that any business would be incomplete which did not secure
+the co-operation of the head of the State, was perhaps a still more
+potent factor in his election. Never was a more splendid testimonial
+given to a public man, and it accompanied, or prepared the way for, the
+greatest of all honours that it was in the power of the Comitia to
+bestow--the control of morals which Scaurus was in that very year to
+exercise as censor.[990] The presence of the venerable statesman amongst
+the three commissioners created under the Mamilian law, could not,
+however, exercise a controlling influence on the judgments of the
+special tribunal. Such an influence was provided against by the very
+structure of the new courts. The three commissioners were not to judge
+but merely to preside; for in the constitution of this commission the
+new departure was taken of modelling it on the pattern of the newly
+established standing courts, and the judges who gave an uncontrolled and
+final verdict were men selected on the same qualifications as those
+which produced the Gracchan jurors, and were perhaps taken from the list
+already in existence for the trial of cases of extortion. The knights
+were, therefore, chosen as the vehicle for the popular indignation, and
+the result justified the choice. The impatience of a hampered commerce,
+and perhaps of an outraged feeling of respectability, spent itself
+without mercy on the devoted heads of some of the proudest leaders of
+the faction that had so long controlled the destinies of the State.
+Expedition in judgment was probably secured by dividing the
+commissioners into three courts, each with his panel of _judices_ and
+all acting concurrently. It was still more effectually secured by the
+mode in which evidence was heard, tested and accepted, and by the
+scandalous rapidity with which judgment was pronounced. The courts were
+influenced by every chance rumour and swayed by the wild caprices of
+public opinion. No sane democrat could in the future pretend to regard
+the Mamilian commission as other than an outrage on the name of justice;
+to the philosophic mind it seemed that a sudden turn in fortune's wheel
+had brought to the masses the same intoxication in the sense of
+unbridled power that had but a moment before been the disgrace of the
+nobility.[991] An old score was wiped off when Lucius Opimius, the
+author of the downfall of Caius Gracchus, was condemned. Three other
+names completed the tale of victims who had been rendered illustrious by
+the possession of the consular _fasces_. Lucius Bestia was convicted for
+the conclusion of that dark treaty with Jugurtha, although his
+counsellor Scaurus had been elevated to the Bench. Spurius Albinus fell
+a victim to his own caution and the blunder of his too-enterprising
+brother; the caution was supposed to have been purchased by Jugurtha's
+gold, and the absent pro-consul was perhaps held responsible for the
+rashness or cupidity of his incompetent legate, who does not seem to
+have been himself assailed. Caius Porcius Cato was emerging from the
+cloud of a recent conviction for extortion only to feel the weight of a
+more crushing judgment which drove him to seek a refuge on Spanish soil.
+Caius Sulpicius Galba, although he had held no dominant position in the
+secular life of the State, was a distinguished member of the religious
+hierarchy; but even the memorable speech which he made in his defence
+did not save him from being the first occupant of a priestly office to
+be condemned in a criminal court at Rome.[992]
+
+We do not know the number of criminals discovered by the Mamilian
+courts, and perhaps only the names of their more prominent victims have
+been preserved. The worldly position of these victims may, however, have
+saved others of lesser note, and the dignity of the sacrifice may have
+been regarded in the fortunate light of a compensation for its limited
+extent. The object of the people and of their present agents, the
+knights, so far as a rational object can be discerned in such a carnival
+of rage and vengeance, was to teach a severe lesson to the governing
+class. Their full purpose had been attained when the lesson had been
+taught. It was not their intention, any more than it had been that of
+Caius Gracchus, to usurp the administrative functions of government or
+to attempt to wrest the direction of foreign administration out of the
+senate's hands. The time for that further step might not be long in
+coming; but for the present both the lower and middle classes halted
+just at the point where destructive might have given place to
+constructive energy. The leaders of the people may have felt the entire
+lack of the organisation requisite for detailed administration, and the
+right man who might replace the machine had not yet been found; while
+the knights may, in addition to these convictions, have been influenced
+by their characteristic dislike of pushing a popular movement to an
+extreme which would remove it from the guidance of the middle class.
+
+The senate had indeed learnt a lesson, and from this time onward the
+history of the Numidian war is simplified by the fact that its progress
+was determined by strategic, not by political, considerations. There is
+no thought of temporising with the enemy; the one idea is to reduce him
+to a condition of absolute submission--a submission which it was known
+could be secured only by the possession of his person. It is true that
+the conduct of the campaign became more than ever a party question; but
+the party struggle turned almost wholly on the military merit of the
+commander sent to the scene of action, and although there was a
+suspicion that the war was being needlessly prolonged for the purpose of
+gratifying personal ambition, there was no hint of the secret operation
+of influences that were wholly corrupt. Such a suspicion was rendered
+impossible by the personality of the man who now took over the conduct
+of the campaign. The tardily elected consuls for the year were Quintus
+Caecilius Metellus and Marcus Junius Silanus. Of these Metellus was to
+hold Numidia and Silanus Gaul.[993] It is possible that, in the counsels
+of the previous year, considerations of the Numidian campaign may to
+some extent have determined the election of Metellus; the senate may
+have welcomed the candidature of a man of approved probity, although not
+of approved military skill, for the purpose of obviating the chance of
+another scandal; and the people may in the same spirit have now ratified
+his election. But, when we remember the almost mechanical system of
+advancement to the higher offices which prevailed at this time, it is
+equally possible that Metellus's day had come, that the senate was
+fortunate rather than prescient in its choice of a servant, and that,
+although the people in their present temper would probably have rejected
+a suspicious character, they accepted rather than chose Metellus. The
+existing system did not even make it possible to elect a man who would
+certainly have the conduct of the African war; and if we suppose that in
+this particular case the division of the consular provinces did not
+depend on the unadulterated use of the lot, but was settled by agreement
+or by a mock sortition,[994] the probity rather than the genius of
+Metellus must have determined the choice, for Silanus was assigned a
+task of far more vital importance to the welfare of Rome and Italy.
+
+The repute of Metellus was based on the fact that, although an
+aristocrat and a staunch upholder of the privileges of his order, he was
+honest in his motives and, so far at least as civic politics were
+concerned, straightforward in his methods. Rome was reaching a stage at
+which the dramatic probity of Hellenic annals, as exemplified by the
+names of an Aristeides or a Xenocrates, could be employed as a measure
+to exalt one member of a government among his fellows; the
+incorruptibility which had so lately been the common property of
+all,[995] had become the monopoly of a few, and Metellus was a witness
+to the folly of a caste which had not recognised the policy of honesty.
+The completeness with which the prize for character might be won, was
+shown by the attitude of a jury before which he had been impeached on a
+charge of extortion. Even the jealous _Equites_ did not deign to glance
+at the account-books which were handed in, but pronounced an immediate
+verdict of acquittal.[996] But the merely negative virtue of
+unassailability by grossly corrupting influences could not have been the
+only source of the equable repute which Metellus enjoyed amongst the
+masses. It was but one of the signs of the self-sufficient directness,
+repose and courtesy, which marked the better type of the new nobility,
+of a life that held so much that it needed not to grasp at more, of the
+protecting impulse and the generosity which, in the purer type of minds
+constricted by conservative prejudices, is an outcome of the conviction
+of the unbridgeable gulf that separates the classes. The nobility of
+Metellus was wholly in his favour; it justified the senate while it
+hypnotised the people. The man who was now consul and would probably
+within a short space of time attach the name of a conquered nationality
+to his own, was but fulfilling the accepted destiny of his family.
+Metellus could show a father, a brother, an uncle and four cousins, all
+of whom had held the consulship. Since the middle of the second century
+titles drawn from three conquered peoples had become appellatives of
+branches of his race. His uncle had derived a name from Macedon, a
+cousin from the Baliares, his own elder brother from the Dalmatians. It
+remained to see whether the best-loved member of this favoured race
+would be in a position to add to the family names the imposing
+designation of Numidicus.
+
+Metellus was a man of intellect and energy as well as of character,[997]
+and he showed himself sufficiently exempt from the prejudices of his
+caste, and sufficiently conscious of the seriousness of the work in
+hand, to choose real soldiers, not diplomatists or ornamental warriors,
+as his lieutenants. If the restiveness of Marius had left a disturbing
+memory behind, it was judiciously forgotten by the consul, who drew the
+_protégé_ of his family from the uncongenial atmosphere of the city to
+render services in the field, and to teach an ambitious and somewhat
+embittered man that each act of skill and gallantry was performed for
+the glory of his superior. Another of his legates was Publius Rutilius
+Rufus, who like Marius had held the praetorship, and was not only a man
+of known probity and firmness of character, but a scientific student of
+tactics with original ideas which were soon to be put to the test in the
+reorganisation of the army which followed the Numidian war. For the
+present it was necessary to create rather than reorganise an army, and
+Metellus in his haste had no time for the indulgence of original views.
+The reports of the forces at present quartered in the African province
+were not encouraging; and every means had to be taken to find new
+soldiers and fresh supplies. A vigorous levy was cheerfully tolerated by
+the enthusiasm of the community; the senate showed its earnestness by
+voting ample sums for the purchase of arms, horses, siege implements and
+stores. Renewed assistance was sought from, and voluntarily rendered by,
+the Latins and Italian allies, while subject kings proved their loyalty
+by sending auxiliary forces of their own free will.[998] When Metellus
+deemed his preparations complete, he sailed for his province amidst the
+highest hopes. They were hopes based on the probity of a single man; for
+the impression still prevailed that Roman arms were invincible and had
+been vanquished only by the new vices of the Roman character. Such hopes
+are not always the best omen for a commander to take with him; a joy in
+the present, they are likely to prove an embarrassment in the
+immediate future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The delay in his own appointment to the consulship, and the length of
+time required for collecting his supplementary forces and their
+supplies, had robbed Metellus of some of the best months of the year
+when he set foot on African soil; but his patience was to be put to a
+further test, for the most casual survey of what had been the army of
+the proconsul Albinus showed the impossibility of taking the field for
+some considerable time.[999] What he had heard was nothing to what he
+saw. The military spirit had vanished with discipline, and its sole
+survivals were a tendency to plunder the peaceful subjects of the
+province and a habit of bandying words with superior officers. The camp
+established by Aulus for his beaten army had hardly ever been moved,
+except when sanitary reasons or a lack of forage rendered a short
+migration unavoidable. It had developed the character of a highly
+disorderly town, the citizens of which had nothing to do except to
+traffic for the small luxuries of life, to enjoy them when they were
+secured, and, in times when money and good things were scarce, to spread
+in bands over the surrounding country, make predatory raids on the
+fields and villas of the neighbourhood, and return with the spoils of
+war, whether beasts or slaves, driven in flocks before them. The trader
+who haunts the footsteps of the bandit was a familiar figure in the
+camp; he could be found everywhere exchanging his foreign wine and the
+other amenities in which he dealt for the booty wrung from the
+provincials. Since discipline was dead and there was no enemy to fear,
+even the most ordinary military precautions had ceased to be observed.
+The ramparts were falling to pieces, the regular appointment and relief
+of sentries had been abandoned, and the common soldier absented himself
+from his company as often and for as long a period as he pleased.
+
+Metellus had to face the task which had confronted Scipio at Numantia.
+He performed it as effectually and perhaps with greater gentleness; for
+the most singular feature in the methods by which he restored discipline
+was his avoidance of all attempts at terrorism.[1000] The moderation and
+restraint, which had won the hearts of the citizens, worked their magic
+even in the disorganised rabble which he was remodelling into an army.
+The habits of obedience were readily resumed when the tones of a true
+commander were heard, and the way for their resumption was prepared by
+the regulations which abolished all the incentives to the luxurious
+indolence which he had found prevalent in the camp. The sale of cooked
+food was forbidden, the camp followers were swept away, and no private
+soldier was allowed the use of a slave or beast of burden, whether in
+quarters or on the march. Other edicts of the same kind followed, and
+then the work of active training began. Every day the camp was broken up
+and pitched again after a cross-country march; rampart and ditch were
+formed and pickets set as though the enemy was hovering near, and the
+general and staff went their rounds to see that every precaution of real
+warfare was observed. On the line of march Metellus was everywhere, now
+in the van, now with The rearguard, now with the central column. His eye
+criticised every disposition and detected every departure from the
+rules; he saw that each soldier kept his line, that he filled his due
+place in the serried ranks that gathered round a standard, that he bore
+the appropriate burden of his food and weapons. Metellus preferred the
+removal of the opportunities for vice to the vindictive chastisement of
+the vicious; his wise and temperate measures produced a healthy state of
+mind and body with no loss of self-respect, and in a short time he
+possessed an army, strong in physique as in morale, which he might now
+venture to move against the foe.
+
+Jugurtha had shown no inclination to follow up his success by active
+measures against the defeated Roman army, even after he had learnt the
+repudiation of his treaty with Aulus and knew that the state of war had
+been resumed. The miserable condition of the forces in the African
+province, of which he must have been fully aware, must have offered an
+inviting object of attack, and a sudden raid across the borders might
+have enabled him to dissipate the last relics of Roman military power in
+Africa. But he was now, as ever, averse to pushing matters to extremes,
+he declined to figure as an aggressive enemy of the Roman power; and to
+give a pretext for a war which could have no issue but his own
+extinction, would be to surrender the chances of compromise which his
+own position as a client king and the possibilities, however lessened,
+of working on the fears or cupidity of members of the Roman
+administration still afforded him. His strength lay in defensive
+operations of an elusive kind, not in attack; the less cultivated and
+accessible portions of his own country furnished the best field for a
+desultory and protracted war, and he seems still to have looked forward
+to a compromise to which weariness of the wasteful struggle might in the
+course of time invite his enemies. He may even have had some knowledge
+of the embarrassments of the Republic in other quarters of the world,
+and believed that both the unwillingness of Rome to enter into the
+struggle, and her eagerness, when she had entered, to see it brought to
+a rapid close, were to some extent due to a feeling that an African war
+would divert resources that were sorely needed for the defence of her
+European possessions.
+
+The king's confidence in the weakness and half-heartedness of the Roman
+administration is said to have been considerably shaken by the news that
+Metellus was in command.[1001] During his own residence in Rome he may
+have heard of him as the prospective consul; he had at any rate learnt
+the very unusual foundations on which Metellus's influence with his
+peers and with the people was based, and knew to his chagrin that these
+were unshakable. The later news from the province was equally
+depressing. The new commander was not only honest but efficient, and the
+shattered forces of Rome were regaining the stability that had so often
+replaced or worn out the efforts of genius. Delicate measures were
+necessary to resist this combination of innocence and strength, and
+Jugurtha began to throw out the tentacles of diplomacy. The impression
+which he meant to produce, and actually did produce on the mind of the
+historian who has left us the fullest record of the war, was that of a
+genuine desire to effect a surrender of himself which should no longer
+be fictitious, and to throw himself almost unreservedly on the mercy of
+the Roman people.[1002] But Jugurtha was in the habit of exhibiting the
+most expansive trust, based on a feeling of his own utter helplessness,
+at the beginning of his negotiations, and of then seeming to permit his
+fears to get the better of his confidence. He was an experimental
+psychologist who held out vivid hopes in the belief that the craving
+once excited would be ultimately satisfied with less than the original
+offer, while the physical and mental retreat would meanwhile divert his
+victim from military preparations or lead him to incautious advances. It
+must have been in some such spirit that he assailed Metellus with offers
+so extreme in their humility that their good faith must have aroused
+suspicion in any mind where innocence did not imply simplicity of
+character, as Jugurtha perhaps hoped that it did in the case of this
+novel type of Roman official. The Numidian envoys promised absolute
+submission; even the crown was to be surrendered, and they stipulated
+only for the bare life of the king and his children.[1003] Metellus,
+convinced of the unreality of the promise, matched his own treachery
+against that of the king. He had not the least scruple in following the
+lead which the senate had given, and regarding Jugurtha as unworthy of
+the most rudimentary rights of a belligerent. Believing that he had seen
+enough of the Numidian type to be sure that its conduct was guided by no
+principles of honour or constancy, and that its shifty imagination could
+be influenced by the newest project that held out a hope of excitement
+or of gain,[1004] he began in secret interviews with each individual
+envoy, to tamper with his fidelity to the king. The subjects of his
+interviews did not repudiate the suggestion, and adopted an attitude of
+ready attention which invited further confidences. It might have been an
+attitude which in these subtle minds denoted unswerving loyalty to their
+master; but Metellus interpreted it in the light of his own desires, and
+proceeded to hold out hopes of great reward to each of the envoys if
+Jugurtha was handed over into his power; he would prefer to have the
+king alive; but, if that was impossible, the surrender of his dead body
+would be rewarded. He then gave in public a message which he thought
+might be acceptable to their master. It is sufficiently probable that
+the private dialogues no less than the public message were imparted to
+Jugurtha's ear by messengers who now had unexampled means of proving
+their fidelity and each of whom may have attempted to show that his
+loyalty was superior to that of his fellows; incentives to frankness had
+certainly been supplied by Metellus; but this frankness may have been
+itself of value to the Roman commander. It would prove to Jugurtha the
+presence of a resolute and unscrupulous man who aimed at nothing less
+than his capture and with whom further parleyings would be waste
+of time.
+
+A few days later Metellus entered Numidia with an army marching with all
+the vigilance which a hostile territory demands, and prepared in the
+perfected carefulness of its organisation to meet the surprises which
+the enemy had in store. The surprise that did await it was of a novel
+character.[1005] The grimly arrayed column found itself forging through
+a land which presented the undisturbed appearance of peace, security and
+comfort. The confident peasant was found in his homestead or tilling his
+lands, the cattle grazed on the meadows; when an open village or a
+fortified town was reached, the army was met by the headman or governor
+representing the king. This obliging official was wholly at the disposal
+of the Roman general; he was ready to supply corn to the army or to
+accumulate supplies at any base that might be chosen by the commander;
+any order that he gave would be faithfully carried out. But Metellus's
+vigilance was not for a moment shaken by this bloodless triumph. He
+interpreted the ostentatious submission as the first stage of an
+intended ambush, and he continued his cautious progress as though the
+enemy were hovering on his flank. His line of march was as jealously
+guarded as before, his scouts still rode abroad to examine and report on
+the safety of the route. The general himself led the van, which was
+formed of cohorts in light marching order and a select force of slingers
+and archers; Marius with the main body of cavalry brought up the rear,
+and either flank was protected by squadrons of auxiliary horse that had
+been placed at the disposal of the tribunes in charge of the legions and
+the prefects who commanded the divisions of the contingents from the
+allies. With these squadrons were mingled light-armed troops, their
+joint function being to repel any sudden assault from the mobile
+Numidian cavalry. Every forward step inspired new fears of Jugurtha's
+strategic craft and knowledge of the ground; wherever the king might be,
+his subtle influence oppressed the trespasser on any part of his
+domains, and the most peaceful scene appeared to the anxious eyes of the
+Roman commander to be fraught with the most terrible perils of war.
+
+The route taken by Metellus may have been the familiar line of advance
+from the Roman province, down the valley of the Bagradas. But before
+following the upper course of that river into the heart of Numidia, he
+deemed it necessary to make a deflection to the north, and secure his
+communications by seizing and garrisoning the town of Vaga, the most
+important of the Eastern cities of Jugurtha. Its position near the
+borders of the Roman province had made it the greatest of Numidian
+market towns, and it had once been the home, and the seat of the
+industry, of a great number of Italian traders.[1006] We may suppose
+that by this time the merchants had fled from the insecure locality and
+that the foreign trade of the town had passed away; but both the site of
+the city and the character of its inhabitants attracted the attention of
+Metellus. The latter, like the Eastern Numidians generally, were a
+receptive and industrious folk, who knew the benefits that peace and
+contact with Rome conferred on commerce, and might therefore be induced
+to throw off their allegiance to Jugurtha. The site suggested a suitable
+basis for supplies and, if adequately protected, might again invite the
+merchant. Metellus, therefore, placed a garrison in the town, ordered
+corn and other necessaries to be stored within its walls, and saw in the
+concourse of the merchant class a promise of constant supplies for his
+forces and a tower of strength for the maintenance of Roman influence in
+Numidia when the work of pacification had been done. The slight delay
+was utilised by Jugurtha in his characteristic manner. The seizure of
+one of his most important cities offered an occasion or pretext for
+fresh terrors. Metellus was beset by grovelling envoys with renewed
+entreaties; peace was sought at any price short of the life of the king
+and his children; all else was to be surrendered. The consul still
+pursued his cherished plan of tampering with the fidelity of the
+messengers and sending them home with vague promises. He would not cut
+off Jugurtha from all hope of a compromise. He may have believed that he
+was paralysing the king's efforts while he continued his steady advance,
+and turning his enemy's favourite weapon against that enemy himself.
+Perhaps he even let his thoughts dally with the hope that the envoys who
+had proved such facile traitors might find some means of redeeming their
+promises.[1007] But, unless he committed the cardinal mistake of
+misreading or undervaluing his opponent, these could have been but
+secondary hopes. He must have known that to penetrate into Western
+Numidia without a serious battle, or at least without an effort of
+Jugurtha to harass his march or to cut his communications, was an event
+beyond the reach of purely human aspiration.
+
+Jugurtha had on his part framed a plan of resistance complete in every
+detail. The site in which the attempt was to be made was visited and its
+military features were appraised in all their bearings; the events which
+would succeed each other in a few short hours could be predicted as
+surely as one could foretell the regular movements of a machine; the
+Roman general was walking into a trap from which there should be no
+escape but death. The framing of Jugurtha's scheme necessarily depended
+on his knowledge of Metellus's line of march. We do not know how soon
+the requisite data came to hand; but there is little reason for
+believing that his plan was a resolution of despair or forced on him as
+a last resort, except in the sense that he would always rather treat
+than fight, and that to inflict disaster on a Roman army was no part of
+the policy which he deemed most desirable. But, since his ideal plan had
+stumbled on the temperament of Metellus, a check to the invading army
+became imperative.[1008] The sacrifice of Vaga could scarcely have
+weighed heavily on his mind, for it was an integral element in any
+rational scheme of defence; but, even apart from the obvious
+consideration that a king must fight if he cannot treat for his crown,
+the thought of his own prestige may now have urged him to combat.
+Unbounded as the faith of his Numidian subjects was, it might not
+everywhere survive the impression made by the unimpeded and triumphant
+march of the Roman legions.
+
+Metellus when he quitted Vaga had continued to operate in the eastern
+part of Numidia. The theatre of his campaign was probably to be the
+territory about the plateau of Vaga and the Great Plains, its ultimate
+prizes perhaps were to be the important Numidian towns of Sicca Veneria
+and Zama Regia to the south. The nature of the country rendered it
+impossible for him to enter the defiles of the Bagradas from the
+north-west, while it was equally impossible for him to march direct from
+Vaga to Sicca, for the road was blocked by the mountains which
+intervened on his south-eastern side. To reach the neighbourhood of
+Sicca it was necessary to turn to the south-west and follow for a time
+the upward course of the river Muthul (the Wäd Mellag). By this route he
+would reach the high plateaux, which command on the south-east the
+plains of Sicca and Zama, on the north-west those of Naraggara and
+Thagaste, on the south those of Thala and Theveste.[1009] Metellus's
+march led him over a mountain height which was some miles from the
+river.[1010] The western side of this height, down which the Roman army
+must descend, although of some steepness at the beginning of its
+declivity, did not terminate in a plain, but was continued by a swelling
+rise, of vast and even slope, which found its eastern termination on the
+river's bank. The greater portion of this great hill, and especially
+that part of it which lay nearest to the mountain, was covered by a
+sparse and low vegetation, such as the wild olive and the myrtle, which
+was all that the parched and sandy soil would yield. There was no water
+nearer than the river, and this had made the hill a desert so far as
+human habitation was concerned. It was only on its eastern slope which
+touched the stream that the presence of man was again revealed by
+thick-set orchards and cattle grazing in the fields. [1011]
+
+Jugurtha's plan was based on the necessity which would confront the
+Romans of crossing this arid slope to reach the river. Could he spring
+on them as they left the mountain chain and detain them in this torrid
+wilderness, nature might do even more than the Numidian arms to secure a
+victory; meanwhile measures might be taken to close the passage to the
+river, and to bring up fresh forces from the east to block the desired
+route while the ambushed army was harassed by attacks from the flank
+and rear.
+
+Jugurtha himself occupied the portion of the slope which lay just
+beneath the mountain. He kept under his own command the whole of the
+cavalry and a select body of foot-soldiers, probably of a light and
+mobile character such as would assist the operations of the horse. These
+he placed in an extended line on the flank of the route that must be
+followed by an army descending from the mountain. The line was continued
+by the forces which he had placed under the command of Bomilcar. These
+consisted of the heavier elements of the Numidian army, the elephants of
+war and the major part of the foot soldiers. It is, however, probable
+that there was a considerable interval between the end of Jugurtha's and
+the beginning of Bomilcar's line.[1012] The latter on its eastern side
+extended to a point at no great distance from the river; and according
+to the original scheme of the ambush the function assigned to Bomilcar
+must have been that of executing a turning movement which would prevent
+the Roman forces from gaining the stream. As it was expected that the
+impact of the heavy Roman troops would be chiefly felt in this
+direction, the sturdier and less mobile portions of the Numidian army
+had been placed under Bomilcar's command.
+
+Metellus was soon seen descending the mountain slope,[1013] and there
+seemed at first a chance that the Roman column might be surprised along
+its length by the sudden onset of Jugurtha's horse. But the vigilant
+precautions which Metellus observed during his whole line of march,
+although they could not in this case avert a serious danger, possibly
+lessened the peril of the moment. His scouts seem to have done their
+work and spied the half-concealed Numidians amongst the low trees and
+brushwood. The superior position of the Roman army must in any case soon
+have made this knowledge the common property of all, unless we consider
+that some ridge of the chain concealed Jugurtha's ambush from the view
+of the Roman army until they should have almost left the mountain for
+the lower hill beneath it. Jugurtha must in any case have calculated on
+the probability of the forces under his own command soon becoming
+visible to the enemy, for perfect concealment was impossible amidst the
+stunted trees which formed the only cover for his men.[1014] The
+efficacy of his plan did not depend on the completeness or suddenness of
+the surprise; it depended still more on Jugurtha's knowledge of the
+needs of a Roman army, and on the state of perplexity into which all
+that was visible of the ambush would throw the commander. For the little
+that was seen made it difficult to interpret the size, equipment and
+intentions of the expectant force. Glimpses of horses and men could just
+be caught over the crests of the low trees or between the interlacing
+boughs. Both men and horses were motionless, and the eye that strove to
+see more was baffled by the scrub which concealed more than it revealed,
+and by the absence of the standards of war which might have afforded
+some estimate of the nature and size of the force and had for this
+reason been carefully hidden by Jugurtha.
+
+But enough was visible to prove the intended ambush. Metellus called a
+short halt and rapidly changed his marching column to a battle formation
+capable of resistance or attack. His right flank was the one immediately
+threatened. It was here accordingly that he formed the front of his
+order of battle, when he changed his marching column into a fighting
+line.[1015] The three ranks were formed in the traditional manner; the
+spaces between the maniples were filled by slingers and archers; the
+whole of the cavalry was placed on the flanks. It is possible that at
+this point the line of descent from the mountain would cause the Roman
+army to present an oblique front to the slope and the distant
+river,[1016] and the cavalry on the left wing would be at the head of
+the marching column, if it descended into the lower ground.[1017] Such a
+descent was immediately resolved on by Metellus. To halt on the heights
+was impossible, for the land was waterless; an orderly retreat was
+perhaps discountenanced by the difficulties of the country over which he
+had just passed and the distance of the last watering-place which he had
+left, while to retire at the first sight of the longed-for foe would not
+have inspired his newly remodelled army with much confidence in
+themselves or their general.
+
+When the army had quitted the foot of the mountain, a new problem faced
+its general. The Numidians remained motionless,[1018] and it became
+clear that no rapid attack that could be as suddenly repulsed was
+contemplated by their leader. Metellus saw instead the prospect of a
+series of harassing assaults that would delay his progress, and he
+dreaded the fierceness of the season more than the weapons of the enemy.
+The day was still young, for Jugurtha had meant to call in the alliance
+of a torrid sun, and Metellus saw in his mind's eye his army, worn by
+thirst, heat and seven miles of harassing combat, still struggling with
+the Numidian cavalry while they strove to form a camp at the river which
+was the bourne of their desires. It was all important that the extreme
+end of the slope which touched the river should be seized at once, and a
+camp be formed, or be in process of formation, by the time that his
+tired army arrived. With this object in view he sent on his legate
+Rutilius with some cohorts of foot soldiers in light marching order and
+a portion of the cavalry. The movement was well planned, for by the
+nature of the case it could not be disturbed by Jugurtha. His object was
+to harry the main body of the army and especially the heavy infantry,
+and his refusal to detach any part of his force in pursuit of the
+swiftly moving Rutilius is easily understood, especially when it is
+remembered that Bomilcar was stationed near to the ground which the
+Roman legate was to seize. An attack on the flying column would also
+have led to the general engagement which Metellus wished to provoke. The
+presence of Bomilcar and his force was probably unknown to the Romans.
+He in his turn must have been surprised, and may have been somewhat
+embarrassed, by Rutilius's advance; but the movement did not induce him
+to abandon his position. To oppose Rutilius would have been to surrender
+the part assigned him in the intended operations against the main Roman
+force; and, if this part was now rendered difficult or impossible by the
+presence of the Romans in his rear, he might yet divide the forces of
+the enemy, and assist Jugurtha by keeping Rutilius and his valuable
+contingents of cavalry in check. He therefore permitted the legate to
+pass him[1019] and waited for the events which were to issue from the
+combat farther up the field.
+
+Metellus meanwhile continued his slow advance, keeping the marching
+order which had been observed in the descent from the mountain. He
+himself headed the column, riding with the cavalry that covered the left
+wing, while Marius, in command of the horsemen on the right, brought up
+the rear.[1020] Jugurtha waited until the last man of the Roman column
+had crossed the beginning of his line, and then suddenly threw about two
+thousand of his infantry up the slope of the mountain at the point where
+Metellus had made his descent. His idea was to cut off the retreat of
+the Romans and prevent their regaining the most commanding position in
+the field. He then gave the signal for a general attack. The battle
+which followed had all the characteristic features of all such contests
+between a light and active cavalry force and an army composed mainly of
+heavy infantry, inferior in mobility but unshakable in its compact
+strength. There was no possibility of the Numidians piercing the Roman
+ranks, but there was more than a possibility of their wearing down the
+strength of every Roman soldier before that weary march to the river had
+even neared its completion. The Roman defence must have been hampered by
+the absence of that portion of the cavalry which had accompanied
+Rutilius; it was more sorely tried by the dazzling sun, the floating
+dust and the intolerable heat. The Numidians hung on the rear and either
+flank, cutting down the stragglers and essaying to break the order of
+the Roman ranks on every side. It was of the utmost difficulty to
+preserve this order, and the braver spirits who preferred the security
+of their ranks to reckless and indiscriminate assault, were maddened by
+blows, inflicted by the missiles of their adversaries, which they were
+powerless to return. Nor could the repulse of the enemy be followed by
+an effective pursuit. Jugurtha had taught his cavalry to scatter in
+their retreat when pursued by a hostile band; and thus, when unable to
+hold their ground in the first quarter which they had selected for
+attack, they melted away only to gather like clouds on the flank and
+rear of pursuers who had now severed themselves from the protecting
+structure of their ranks. Even the difficulties of the ground favoured
+the mobile tactics of the assailants; for the horses of the Numidians,
+accustomed to the hill forests, could thread their way through the
+undergrowth at points which offered an effective check to the
+pursuing Romans.
+
+It seemed as though Jugurtha's plan was nearing its fulfilment. The
+symmetry of the Roman column was giving place to a straggling line
+showing perceptible gaps through which the enemy had pierced. The
+resistance was becoming individual; small companies pursued or retreated
+in obedience to the dictates of their immediate danger; no single head
+could grasp the varied situation nor, if it had had power to do so,
+could it have issued commands capable of giving uniformity to the
+sporadic combats in which attack and resistance seemed to be directed by
+the blind chances of the moment. But every minute of effectual
+resistance had been a gain to the Romans. The ceaseless toil in the
+cruel heat was wearing down the powers even of the natives; the
+exertions of the latter, as the attacking force, must have been far
+greater than those of the mass of the Roman infantry; and the Numidian
+foot soldiers in particular, who were probably always of an inferior
+quality to the cavalry and had been obliged to strain their physical
+endurance to the utmost by emulating the horsemen in their lightning
+methods of attack and retreat, had become so utterly exhausted that a
+considerable portion of them had practically retired from the field.
+They had climbed to the higher ground, perhaps to join the forces which
+Jugurtha had already placed near the foot of the mountain, and were
+resting their weary limbs, probably not with any view of shirking their
+arduous service but with a resolution of renewing the attack when their
+vigour had been restored. This withdrawal of a large portion of the
+infantry was a cause, or a part, of a general slackening of the Numidian
+attack; and it was the breathing space thus afforded which gave Metellus
+his great chance. Gradually he drew his straggling line together and
+restored some order in the ranks; and then with the instinct of a true
+general he took active measures to assail his enemy's weakest point.
+This point was represented by the Numidian infantry perched on the
+height. Some of these were exhausted and perhaps dispirited, others it
+is true were as yet untouched by the toil of battle; but as a body
+Metellus believed them wholly incapable of standing the shock of a Roman
+charge. The confidence was almost forced on him by his despair of any
+other solution of the intolerable situation. The evening was closing in,
+his army had no camp or shelter; even if it were possible to guard
+against the dangers of the night, morning would bring but a renewal of
+the same miserable toil to an army worn by thirst, sleeplessness and
+anxiety. He, therefore, massed four legionary cohorts against the
+Numidian infantry,[1021] and tried to revive their shattered confidence
+by appealing at once to their courage and to their despair, by pointing
+to the enemy in retreat and by showing that their own safety rested
+wholly on the weapons in their hands. For some time the Roman soldiers
+surveyed their dangerous task and looked expectantly at the height that
+they were asked to storm. The vague hope that the enemy would come down
+finally disappeared; the growing darkness filled them with resolute
+despair; and, closing their ranks, they rushed for the higher ground. In
+a moment the Numidians were scattered and the height was gained. So
+rapidly did the enemy vanish that but few of them were slain; their
+lightness of armour and knowledge of the ground saved them from the
+swords of the pursuing legionaries.
+
+The conquest of the height was the decisive incident of the battle, and
+it was clearly a success that, considered in itself, was due far more to
+radical and permanent military qualities than to tactical skill. It may
+seem wholly a victory of the soldiers, in which the general played no
+part, until we remember that strategic and tactical considerations are
+dependent on a knowledge of such permanent conditions, and that Metellus
+was as right in forcing his Romans up the height as Jugurtha was wrong
+in believing that his Numidians could hold it. With respect to the
+events occurring in this quarter of the field, Metellus had saved
+himself from a strategic disadvantage by a tactical success; but even
+the strategic situation could not be estimated wholly by reference to
+the events which had just occurred or to the position in which the two
+armies were now left. Had Bomilcar still been free to bar the passage to
+the river and to join Jugurtha's forces during the night, the position
+of the Romans would still have been exceedingly dangerous. But the
+mission of Rutilius had successfully diverted that general's attention
+from what had been the main purpose of the original plan. His leading
+idea was now merely to separate the two divisions of the Roman army, and
+the thought of blocking the passage of Metellus, although not
+necessarily abandoned, must have become secondary to that of checking
+the advance of Rutilius when the legate should have become alarmed at
+the delay in the progress of his commander. Bomilcar, after he had
+permitted the Roman force to pass him, slowly left the hill where he had
+been posted and brought his men into more level ground,[1022] while
+Rutilius was making all speed for the river. Quietly he changed his
+column into a line of battle stretching across the slope which at this
+point melted into the plain, while he learnt by constant scouting every
+movement of the enemy beyond. He heard at length that Rutilius had
+reached his bourne and halted, and at the same time the din of the
+battle between Jugurtha and Metellus came in louder volumes to his ear.
+The thought that Rutilius's attention was disengaged now that his main
+object had been accomplished, the fear that he might seek to bring help
+to his labouring commander, led Bomilcar to take more active measures.
+His mind was now absorbed with the problem of preventing a junction of
+the Roman forces. His mistrust of the quality of the infantry under his
+command had originally led him to form a line of considerable depth;
+this he now thought fit to extend with the idea of outflanking and
+cutting off all chance of egress from the enemy. When all was ready he
+advanced on Rutilius's camp.[1023]
+
+The Romans were suddenly aware of a great cloud of dust which hung over
+the plantations on their landward side; but the intervening trees hid
+all prospect of the slope beyond: and for a time they looked on the
+pillar of dust as one of the strange sights of the desert, a mere
+sand-cloud driven by the wind. Then they thought that it betrayed a
+peculiar steadiness in its advance; instead of sweeping down in a wild
+storm it moved with the pace and regularity of an army on the march;
+and, in spite of its slow progress, it could be seen to be drawing
+nearer and nearer. The truth burst upon their minds; they seized their
+weapons and, in obedience to the order of their commander, drew up in
+battle formation before the camp. As Bomilcar's force approached, the
+Romans shouted and charged; the Numidians raised a counter cheer and met
+the assault half-way. There was scarcely a moment when the issue seemed
+in doubt. The Romans, strong in cavalry, swept the untrained Numidian
+infantry before them, and Bomilcar had by his incautious advance thrown
+away the utility of that division of his army on which he and his men
+placed their chief reliance. His elephants, which were capable of
+manoeuvring only on open ground, had now been advanced to the midst of
+wooded plantations, and the huge animals were soon mixed up with the
+trees, struggling through the branches and separated from their
+fellows.[1024] The Numidians made a show of resistance until they saw
+the line of elephants broken and the Roman soldiers in the rear of the
+protecting beasts; then they threw away their heavy armour and vanished
+from the spot, most of them seeking the cover of the hills and nearly
+all secure in the shelter of the coming night. The elephants were the
+chief victims of the Roman pursuit; four were captured and the forty
+that remained were killed.
+
+It had been a hard day's work for the victorious division. A forced
+march had been followed by the labour of forming a camp and this in turn
+by the toil of battle. But it was impossible to think of rest. The delay
+of Metellus filled them with misgivings, and they advanced through the
+darkness to seek news of the main division with a caution that bespoke
+the prudent view that their recent victory had not banished the evil
+possibilities of Numidian guile.[1025] Metellus was advancing from the
+opposite direction and the two armies met. Each division was suddenly
+aware of a force moving against it under cover of the night; with nerves
+so highly strung as to catch at any fear each fancied an enemy in the
+other. There was a shout and a clash of arms, as swords were drawn and
+shields unstrung. It was fortunate that mounted scouts were riding in
+advance of either army. These soon saw the welcome truth and bore it to
+their companions. Panic gave place to joy; as the combined forces moved
+into camp, the soldiers' tongues were loosed, and pent up feelings found
+expression in wonderful stories of individual valour.
+
+Metellus, as in duty bound, gave the name of victory to his salvation
+from destruction. He was right in so far as an army that has vanished
+may be held to have been beaten; and his compliments to his soldiers
+were certainly well deserved; for the triumph, such as it was, had been
+mainly that of the rank and file, and the Roman legionary had not merely
+given evidence of the old qualities of stubborn endurance which
+Metellus's training had restored, but had proved himself vastly superior
+to anything in the shape of a soldier of the line that Jugurtha could
+put into the field. The commendation and thanks which the general
+expressed in his public address to the whole army, the individual
+distinctions which he conferred on those whose peculiar merit in the
+recent combats was attested, were at once an apology for hardship, a
+recognition of desert and a means of inspiring self-respect and future
+efficiency. If it is true that Metellus added that glory was now
+satisfied, and plunder should be their reward in future,[1026] he was at
+once indulging in a pardonable hyperbole and veiling the unpleasant
+truth that combats with Jugurtha were somewhat too expensive to attract
+his future attention. His own private opinion of the recent events was
+perhaps as carefully concealed in his despatches to the senate. It was
+inevitable that a populace which had learnt to look on news from Numidia
+as a record of compromise or disaster, should welcome and exaggerate the
+cheering intelligence; should not only glory in the indisputable fact of
+the renewed excellence of their army, but should regard Jugurtha as a
+fugitive and Metellus as master of his land.[1027] It was equally
+natural that the senate should embrace the chance of shaking off the
+last relics of suspicion which clung to its honour and competency by
+exalting the success of its general. It decreed supplications to the
+immortal gods, and thus produced the impression that a decisive victory
+had been won. Everywhere the State displayed a pardonable joy mingled
+with a less justifiable expectation that this was the beginning of
+the end.
+
+The man who raises extravagant hopes is only less happy than the man who
+dashes them to the ground. The days that followed the battle of the
+Muthul must have been an anxious time for Metellus; for he had been
+taught that it was necessary to change his plan of campaign into a shape
+which was not likely to secure a speedy termination of the war. For four
+days he did not leave his camp--a delay which may have had the
+ostensible justification of the necessity of caring for his wounded
+soldiers,[1028] and may even have been based on the hope that
+negotiations for surrender might reach him from the king, but which also
+proved his view that the pursuit of Jugurtha was wholly impracticable,
+and that in the case of a Numidian army capture or destruction was not a
+necessary consequence of defeat. He contented himself with making
+inquiries of fugitives and others as to the present position and
+proceedings of the king, and received replies which may have contained
+some elements of truth. He learnt that the Numidian army which had
+fought at the Muthul had wholly broken up in accordance with the custom
+of the race, that Jugurtha had left the field with his body-guard alone,
+that he had fled to wild and difficult country and was there raising a
+second army--an army that promised to be larger than the first, but was
+likely to be less efficient, composed as it was of shepherds and
+peasants with little training in war.[1029] We cannot say whether
+Metellus accepted the strange view that the vanished army, which had now
+probably returned to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture and pasturage,
+would not be reproduced in the new one; but certainly the news of the
+future weakness of Jugurtha's forces did not seem to him to justify an
+advance into Western Numidia, then as ever the stronghold of the king
+and the seat of that treasure of human life which was of more value than
+gold and silver. The Roman general, while recognising that the
+belligerent aspect of the king made a renewal of the war inevitable, was
+fully convinced that pitched battles were not the means of wearing down
+Numidian constancy. The pursuit of Jugurtha was impossible without
+conflicts, from which the vanquished emerged less scathed than the
+victors,[1030] and even this primary object of the expedition was for
+the time abandoned. He was forced to adopt the circuitous device of
+attracting the presence of the king, and weakening the loyalty of his
+subjects, by a series of mere plundering raids on the wealthiest
+portions of the country. It was a plan that in default of a really
+effective occupation of the whole country, especially of some occupation
+of Western Numidia, implied a certain amount of self-contradiction and
+inconsistency. The plunder of the land was intended to secure the end
+which Metellus wished to avoid--a conflict with the king; and the
+mobility which he so much dreaded could find no fairer field for its
+exercise than the rapid marches across country which might secure a town
+from attack, undo the work of conquest which had just been effected in
+some other stronghold, or harass the route of the Roman forces as they
+moved from point to point. Metellus was making himself into an admirable
+target for the most effective type of guerilla warfare; but the whole
+history of the struggle down to its close proves that this helplessness
+was due to the situation rather than to the man. The Roman forces were
+wholly inadequate to an effective occupation of Numidia; and a general
+who despaired of pushing on in an aimless and dangerous pursuit, had to
+be content with the chances that might result from the capture of towns,
+the plunder of territories, and secret negotiations which might bring
+about the death or surrender of the king.
+
+Neither the movements which followed the battle of the Muthul nor the
+site of the winter quarters into which Metellus led his men, have been
+recorded. The campaign of the next year seems still to have been
+confined to the eastern portion of Numidia, its object being the
+security of the country between Vaga and Zama. This rich country was
+cruelly ravaged, every fortified post that was taken was burnt, all
+Numidians of fighting age who offered resistance were put to the sword.
+This policy of terrorism produced some immediate results. The army was
+well provisioned, the frightened natives bringing in corn and other
+necessaries in abundance; towns and districts yielded hostages for their
+good behaviour; strong places were surrendered in which garrisons were
+left.[1031] But the presence of Jugurtha soon made itself felt. The
+king, if he had collected an army, had left the major part of it behind.
+He was now at the head of a select body of light horse, and with this
+mobile force he followed in Metellus's tracks. The Romans felt
+themselves haunted by a phantom enemy who passed with incredible
+rapidity from point to point, whose stealthy advances were made under
+cover of the darkness and over trackless wastes, and whose proximity was
+only known by some sudden and terrible blow dealt at the stragglers from
+the camp. The death or capture of those who left the lines could neither
+be hindered nor avenged; for before reinforcements could be hurried up,
+the Numidians had vanished into the nearest range of hills. The most
+ordinary operations of the army were now being seriously hindered.
+Supply and foraging parties had to be protected by cohorts of infantry
+and the whole force of cavalry; plundering was impossible; and fire was
+found the readiest means of wasting country which could no longer be
+ravaged for the benefit of the men. It was thought unsafe for the whole
+army to operate in two independent columns. Such columns were indeed
+formed, Metellus heading one and Marius the other; but it was necessary
+for them to keep the closest touch. Although they sometimes divided to
+extend the sphere of their work of terror and devastation, they often
+united through the pressure of fear, and the two camps were never at a
+great distance from each other.[1032] The king meanwhile followed them
+along the hills, destroying the fodder and ruining the water supply on
+the line of march; now he would swoop on Metellus, now on Marius, harass
+the rear of the column and vanish again into his hiding places.
+
+The painful experiences of the later portion of this march convinced
+Metellus that some decisive effort should be made, which would crown his
+earlier successes, give him some sort of command of the line of country
+through which he had so perilously passed, and might, by the importance
+of the attempt, force Jugurtha to a battle. The hilly country through
+which he had just conducted his legions, was that which lay between the
+great towns of Sicca and Zama.[1033] The possession of both these places
+was absolutely essential if the southern district which he had terrified
+and garrisoned was to be kept permanently from the king. Sicca was
+already his, for it had been the first of the towns to throw off its
+allegiance to Jugurtha after the battle on the Muthul had dissipated the
+Numidian army.[1034] He now turned his attention to the still more
+important town of Zama, the true capital and stronghold of this southern
+district, and prepared to master the position by assault or siege.
+Jugurtha was soon cognisant of his plan, and by long forced marches
+crossed Metellus's line and entered Zama.[1035] He urged the citizens to
+a vigorous defence and promised that at the right moment he would come
+to their aid with all his forces; he strengthened their garrison by
+drafting into it a body of Roman deserters, whose circumstances
+guaranteed their loyalty, and disappeared again from the vision of
+friends and foes. Shortly afterwards he learnt that Marius had left the
+line of march for Sicca, and that he had with him but a few cohorts
+intended to convoy to the army the corn which he hoped to acquire in the
+town. In a moment Jugurtha was at the head of his chosen cavalry and
+moving under cover of the night. He had hoped perhaps to find the
+division in the town, to turn the tide of feeling in Sicca by his
+presence, and to see the ablest of his opponents trapped within the
+walls. But, as he reached the gate, the Romans were leaving it. He
+immediately hurled his men upon them and shouted to the curious folk who
+were watching the departure of the cohorts, to take the division in the
+rear. Chance, he cried, had lent them the occasion of a glorious deed of
+arms. Now was the time for them to recover freedom, for him to regain
+his kingdom. The magic of the presence of the national hero had nearly
+worked conversion to the Siccans and destruction to the Romans. The
+friendly city would have proved a hornets' nest, had not Marius bent all
+his efforts to thrusting a passage through Jugurtha's men and getting
+clear of the dangerous walls. In the more open ground the fighting was
+sharp but short. A few Numidians fell, the rest vanished from the field,
+and Marius came in safety to Zama, where he found Metellus contemplating
+his attack.
+
+The city lay in a plain and nature had contributed but little to its
+defence,[1036] but it was strong in all the means that art could supply
+and well prepared to stand a siege. Metellus planned a general assault
+and arranged his forces around the whole line of wall. The attack began
+at every point at once; in the rear were the light-armed troops,
+shooting stones and metal balls at the defenders and covering the
+efforts of the active assailants, who pressed up to the walls and strove
+to effect an entry by scaling ladders and by mines. The defending force
+betrayed no sign of terror or disordered haste. They calmly distributed
+their duties, and each party kept a watchful eye on the enemy whom it
+was its function to repel; while some transfixed those farther from the
+wall with javelins thrown by the hand or shot from an engine, others
+dealt destruction on those immediately beneath them, rolling heavy
+stones upon their heads and showering down pointed stakes, heavy
+missiles and vessels full of blazing pine fed with pitch and
+sulphur.[1037]
+
+The battle raging round the walls may have absorbed the thoughts even of
+that section of the Roman army which had been left to guard the camp.
+Certainly they and their sentries were completely off their guard when
+Jugurtha with a large force dashed at the entrenchments and, so complete
+was the surprise, swept unhindered through the gate.[1038] The usual
+scene of panic followed with its flight, its hasty arming, the groans of
+the wounded, the silent falling of the slain. But the unusual degree of
+the recklessness of the garrison was witnessed by the fact that not more
+than forty men were making a collective stand against the Numidian
+onset. The little band had seized a bit of high ground and no effort of
+the enemy could dislodge them. The missiles which had been aimed against
+them they hurled back with terrible effect into the dense masses around;
+and when the assailants essayed a closer combat, they struck them down
+or drove them back with the fury of their blows. Their resistance may
+have detained Jugurtha in the camp longer than he had intended; but the
+immediate escape from the emergency was due to the cowards rather than
+to the brave. Metellus was wrapt in contemplation of the efforts of his
+men before the walls of Zama when he suddenly heard the roar of battle
+repeated from another quarter. As he wheeled his horse, he saw a crowd
+of fugitives hurrying over the plain; since they made for him, he judged
+that they were his own men. It seems that the cavalry had been drawn up
+near the walls, probably as a result of the impression that Jugurtha, if
+he attacked at all, would attempt to take the besiegers in the rear.
+Metellus now hastily sent the whole of this force to the camp, and bade
+Marius follow with all speed at the head of some cohorts of the allies.
+His anguish at the sullied honour of his troops was greater than his
+fear. With tears streaming down his face he besought his legate to wipe
+out the stain which blurred the recent victory and not to permit the
+enemy to escape unpunished.
+
+Jugurtha had no intention of being caught in the Roman camp; but it was
+not so easy to get out as it had been to come in. Some of his men were
+jammed in the exits, while others threw themselves over the ramparts;
+Marius took full advantage of the rout, and it was with many losses that
+Jugurtha shook himself free of his pursuers and retreated to his own
+fastnesses. Soon the approach of night brought the siege operations to
+an end. Metellus drew off his men and led them back to camp after a
+day's experience that did not leave a pleasant retrospect behind it.
+Warned by its incidents that the cavalry should be posted nearer to the
+camp, he began the work of the following day by disposing the whole of
+this force over that quarter of the ground on which the king had made
+his appearance;[1039] more definite arrangements were also made for the
+detailed defence of the Roman lines, and the assault of the previous day
+was renewed on the walls of Zama. Yet in spite of these elaborate
+precautions Jugurtha's coming was in the nature of a surprise. The
+silence and swiftness of his onset threw the first contingents of Romans
+whom he met into momentary panic and confusion; but reserves were soon
+moved up and restored the fortune of the day. They might have turned it
+rapidly and wholly, but for a tactical device which Jugurtha had adopted
+as a means of neutralising the superior stability of the Romans--a means
+which permitted him to show a persistence of frontal attack unusual with
+the Numidians. He had mingled light infantry with his cavalry; the
+latter charged instead of merely skirmishing, and before the breaches
+which they had made in the enemy's ranks could be refilled, the foot
+soldiers made their attack on the disordered lines.[1040]
+
+Jugurtha's object was being fulfilled as long as he could remain in the
+field to effect this type of diversion and draw off considerable forces
+from the walls of Zama. But his ingenious efforts attracted the
+attention of the besieged as well as of the besiegers. It is true that,
+when the assault was hottest, the citizens of Zama did not permit their
+minds or eyes to stray; but there were moments following the repulse of
+some great effort when the energy of the assailants flagged and there
+was a lull in the storm of sound made by human voices and the clatter of
+arms. Then the men on the walls would look with strained attention on
+the cavalry battle in the plain, would follow the fortunes of the king
+with every alternation of joy or fear, and shout advice or exhortation
+as though their voices could reach their distant friends.[1041] Marius,
+who conducted the assault at that portion of the wall which commanded
+this absorbing view, formed the idea of encouraging this distraction of
+attention by a feint and seizing the momentary advantage which it
+afforded. A remissness and lack of confidence was soon visible in the
+efforts of his men, and the undisturbed interest of the Numidians was
+speedily directed to the manoeuvres of their monarch in the plain.
+Suddenly the assault burst on them in its fullest force; before they
+could brace themselves to the surprise, the foremost Romans were more
+than half-way up the scaling ladders. But the height was too great and
+the time too short. Stones and fire were again poured on the heads of
+the assailants. It was some time before their confidence was shaken; but
+when one or two ladders had been shattered into fragments and their
+occupants dashed down, the rest--most of them already covered with
+wounds--glided to the ground and hastened from the walls. This was the
+last effort. The night soon fell and brought with it, not merely the
+close of the day's work, but the end of the siege of Zama.
+
+Metellus saw that neither of his objects could be fulfilled. The town
+could not be taken nor would Jugurtha permit himself to be brought to
+the test of a regular battle.[1042] The fighting season was now drawing
+to its close and he must think of winter quarters for his army. He
+determined, not only to abandon the siege, but to quit Numidia and to
+winter in the Roman province. The sole relic of the fact that he had
+marched an army through the territory between Vaga and Zama were a few
+garrisons left in such of the surrendered cities as seemed capable of
+defence. The despatches of this winter would not cheer the people or
+encourage the senate. The policy of invasion had failed; and, if success
+was to be won, it could be accomplished by intrigue alone. Metellus,
+when the leisure of winter quarters gave him time to think over the
+situation, decided that scattered negotiations with lesser Numidian
+magnates would prove as delusive in the future as they had in the past.
+The king's mind must be mastered if his body was to be enslaved; but it
+was a mind that could be conquered only by confidence, and to secure
+this influence it was necessary to approach the monarch's right-hand
+man. This man was Bomilcar, the most trusted general and adviser of
+Jugurtha--trusted all the more perhaps in consequence of the delusion,
+into which even a Numidian king might fall, that the man who owes his
+life to another will owe him his life-long service as well. A more
+reasonable ground for Bomilcar's attachment might have been found in the
+consideration that, in the eyes of Rome, he was as deeply compromised as
+Jugurtha himself--from an official point of view, indeed, even more
+deeply compromised; for to the Roman law he was an escaped criminal over
+whose head still hung a capital charge of murder.[1043] But might not
+that very fact urge the minister to make his own compact with Rome? His
+life depended on the king's success, or on the king's refusal to
+surrender him if peace were made with Rome; it depended therefore on a
+double element of doubt. Make that life a certainty, and would any
+Numidian longer balance the doubt against the certainty? Such was the
+thought of Metellus when he opened correspondence with Bomilcar. The
+minister wished to hear more, and Metellus arranged a secret interview.
+In this he gave his word of honour that, if Bomilcar handed over
+Jugurtha to him living or dead, the senate would grant him impunity and
+the continued possession of all that belonged to him. The Numidian
+accepted the promise and the condition it involved; his mind was chiefly
+swayed by the fear that a continuance of the even struggle might result
+in a compromise with Rome, and that his own death at the hands of the
+executioner would be one of the conditions of that compromise.
+
+What passed between Bomilcar and Jugurtha can never have been known. The
+king had no reason to regret the exploits of the year, and an appeal to
+the desperate nature of his position would have been somewhat out of
+place. But some of the reflections of Bomilcar, preserved or invented by
+tradition,[1044] which pointed to weakness and danger in the future, may
+conceivably have been expressed. It was true that the war was wasting
+the material strength of the kingdom; it might be true that it would
+wear out the constancy of the Numidians themselves and induce them to
+put their own interests before those of their king. Such arguments could
+never have weighed with Jugurtha had not his recent success suggested
+the hope of a compromise; as a beaten fugitive he would have had nothing
+to hope for; as a man who still held his own he might win much by a
+ready compact with a Roman general in worse plight than himself. It
+seems certain that Jugurtha was for the first time thoroughly deceived.
+His judgment, sound enough in its estimate of the general situation,
+must have been led astray by Bomilcar's representation of Metellus's
+attitude, although the minister could not have hinted at a personal
+knowledge of the Roman's views; and his confidence in his adviser led to
+this rare and signal instance of a total misconception of the character
+and powers of his adversary.
+
+Some preliminary correspondence probably passed between Jugurtha and
+Metellus before the king sent his final message.[1045] It was to the
+effect that all the demands would be complied with, and that the kingdom
+and its monarch would be surrendered unconditionally to the
+representative of Rome. Metellus immediately summoned a council, to
+which he gave as representative a character as was possible under the
+circumstances. The transaction of delicate business by a clique of
+friends had cast grave suspicions on the compact concluded by Bestia;
+and it was important that the witnesses to the fact that the transaction
+with Jugurtha contained no secret clause or understanding, should be as
+numerous and weighty as possible. This result could be easily secured by
+the general's power to summon all the men of mark available; and thus
+Metellus called to the board not only every member of the senatorial
+order whom he could find, but a certain number of distinguished
+individuals who did not belong to the governing class.[1046] The policy
+of the board was to make tentative and gradually increasing demands such
+as had once tried the patience of the Carthaginians.[1047] Jugurtha
+should give a pledge of his good faith; and, if it was unredeemed, Rome
+would have the gain and he the loss. The king was now ordered to
+surrender two hundred thousand pounds of silver, all his elephants and a
+certain quantity of horses and weapons.[1048] He was also required to
+furnish three hundred hostages.[1049] The request, at least as regards
+the money and the materials for war, was immediately complied with. Then
+the demands increased. The deserters from the Roman army must be handed
+over. A few of these had fled from Jugurtha at the very first sign that
+a genuine submission was being made, and had sought refuge with Bocchus
+King of Mauretania;[1050] but the greater part, to the number of three
+thousand,[1051] were surrendered to Metellus. Most of these were
+auxiliaries, Thracians and Ligurians such as had abandoned Aulus at
+Suthul; and the sense of the danger threatened by the treachery of
+allies, who must form a vital element in all Roman armies, may have been
+the motive for the awful example now given to the empire of Rome's
+punishment for breach of faith. Some of these prisoners had their hands
+cut off; others were buried in the earth up to their waists, were then
+made a target for arrows and darts, and were finally burnt with fire
+before the breath had left their bodies.[1052] The final order concerned
+Jugurtha himself, He was required to repair to a place named
+Tisidium,[1053] there to wait for orders. The confidence of the king now
+began to waver. He may have hoped to the last moment for some sign that
+his cause was being viewed with a friendly eye; but none had come.
+Surrender to Rome was a thinkable position, while he was in a position
+to bargain. It would be the counsel of a madman, if he put himself
+wholly in the power of his enemy. He had sacrificed much; but the loss,
+except in money, was not irremediable. Elephants were of no avail in
+guerilla warfare, and Numidia, which was still his own, had horses and
+men in abundance. He waited some days longer, probably more in
+expectancy of a move by Metellus and in preparation of the step he
+himself meant to take, than in doubt as to what that step should be;
+when no modification of the demand came from the Roman side, he broke
+off negotiations and continued the war. Metellus was still to be his
+opponent; for earlier in the year the proconsulate of the commander had
+been renewed.[1054]
+
+The events of the summer and the peace of winter-quarters had given food
+for reflection to others besides Metellus. We shall soon see what the
+merchant classes in Africa thought of the progress of the war; more
+formidable still were the emotions that had lately been excited in the
+rugged breast of the great legate Marius. There are probably few
+lieutenants who do not think that they could do better than their
+commanders. Whether Marius held this view is immaterial; he soon came to
+believe that he did, and expressed this belief with vigour. The really
+important fact was that a man who had been praetor seven years before
+and probably regarded himself as the greatest soldier of the age, was
+carrying out the behests and correcting the blunders of a general who
+owed his command to his aristocratic connections and blameless record in
+civil life. The subordination in this particular form seemed likely to
+be perpetuated in Numidia, for Metellus was entering on his second
+proconsulate and his third year of power; in other forms and in every
+sphere it was likely to be eternal, for it was an accepted axiom of the
+existing regime that no "new man" could attain the consulship.[1055] The
+craving for this office was the new blight that had fallen on Marius's
+life; for it is the ambition which is legitimate that spreads the most
+morbid influence on heart and brain. But the healthier part of his soul,
+which was to be found in that old-fashioned piety so often maligned by
+the question-begging name of superstition, soon came to the help of the
+worldly impulse which the strong man might have doubted and crushed. On
+one eventful day in Utica Marius was engaged in seeking the favour of
+the gods by means of sacrificial victims. The seer who was interpreting
+the signs looked and exclaimed that great and wonderful things were
+portended. Let the worshipper do whatsoever was in his mind; he had the
+support of the gods. Let him test fortune never so often, his heart's
+desire would be fulfilled.[1056]
+
+The gods had given a marvellous response in the only way in which the
+gods could answer. They did not suggest, but they could confirm, and
+never was confirmation more emphatic. Marius's last doubts were removed,
+and he went straightway to his commander and asked for leave of absence
+that he might canvass for the consulship in that very year. Metellus was
+a good patron; that is, he was a bad friend. The aristocratic bristles
+rose on the skin that had seemed so smooth. At first he expressed mild
+wonder at Marius's resolution--the wonder that is more contemptuous than
+a gibe--and exhorted him in words, the professedly friendly tone of
+which must have been peculiarly irritating, not to let a distorted
+ambition get the better of him; every one should see that his desires
+were appropriate and limit them when they passed this stage; Marius had
+reason to be satisfied with his position; he should be on his guard
+against asking the Roman people for a gift which they would have a right
+to refuse. There was no suspicion of personal jealousy in these
+utterances; they reflected the standard of a caste, not of a man. But
+Marius had measured the situation, and was not to be deterred by its
+being presented again in a galling but not novel form. A further request
+was met by the easy assumption that the matter was not so pressing as to
+brook no delay; as soon as public business admitted of Marius's
+departure, Metellus would grant his request. Still further entreaties
+are said to have wrung from the impatient proconsul, whose good advice
+had been wasted on a boor who did not know his place and could take no
+hints, the retort that Marius need not hurry; it would be time enough
+for him to canvass for the consulship when Metellus's own son should be
+his colleague.[1057] The boy was about twenty, Marius forty-nine. The
+prospective consulship would come to the latter when he had reached the
+mature age of seventy-two. The jest was a blessing, for anything that
+justified the whole-hearted renunciation of patronage, the dissolution
+of the sense of obligation, was an avenue to freedom. Marius was now at
+liberty to go his own way, and he soon showed that there was enough
+inflammable material in the African province to burn up the credit of a
+greater general than Metellus.
+
+It is said that the division of the army, commanded by Marius, soon
+found itself enjoying a much easier time than before;[1058] the stern
+legate had become placable, if not forgetful--a circumstance which may
+be explained either by the view that a care greater than that of
+military discipline sat upon his mind, or by a belief that the new-born
+graciousness was meant to offer a pleasing contrast to the rigour of
+Metellus. But in this case the civilian element in the province was of
+more importance than the army. The merchant-princes of Utica, groaning
+over the vanished capital which they had invested in Numidian concerns,
+heard a criticism and a boast which appealed strongly to their impatient
+minds. Marius had said, or was believed to have said, that if but one
+half of the army were entrusted to him, he would have Jugurtha in chains
+in a few days;[1059] that the war was being purposely prolonged to
+satisfy the empty-headed pride which the commander felt in his position.
+The merchants had long been reflecting on the causes of the prolongation
+of the war with all the ignorance and impatience that greed supplies;
+now these causes seemed to be revealed in a simple and convincing light.
+
+The unfortunate house of Masinissa was also made to play its part in the
+movement. It was represented in the Roman camp by Gauda son of
+Mastanabal, a prince weak both in body and mind, but the legitimate heir
+to the Numidian crown, if it was taken from Jugurtha and Micipsa's last
+wishes were fulfilled. For the old king in framing his testament had
+named Gauda as heir in remainder to the kingdom, if his two sons and
+Jugurtha should die without issue.[1060] The nearness of the succession,
+now that the reigning king of Numidia was an enemy of the Roman people,
+had prompted the prince to ask Metellus for the distinctions that he
+deemed suited to his rank, a seat next that of the commander-in-chief, a
+guard of Roman knights[1061] for his person. Both requests had been
+refused--the place of honour because it belonged only to those whom the
+Roman people had addressed as kings, the guard, because it was
+derogatory to the knights of Rome to act as escort to a Numidian. The
+prince may have taken the refusal, not merely as an insult in itself,
+but as a hint that Metellus did not recognise him as a probable
+successor to Jugurtha. He was in an anxious and moody frame of mind when
+he was approached by Marius and urged to lean on him, if he would gain
+satisfaction for the commander's contumely. The glowing words of his new
+friend made hope appeal to his weak mind almost with the strength of
+certainty. He was the grandson of Masinissa, the immediate occupant of
+the Numidian throne, should Jugurtha be captured or slain; the crown
+might be his at no distant date, should Marius be made consul and sent
+to the war. He should make appeal to his friends in Rome to secure the
+means which would lead to the desired end. The ship that bore the
+prince's letter to Rome took many other missives from far more important
+men--all of them with a strange unanimity breathing the same purport,
+"Metellus was mismanaging the war, Marius should be made commander".
+They were written by knights in the province--some of them officers in
+the army, others heads of commercial houses[1062]--to their friends and
+agents in Rome. All of these correspondents had not been directly
+solicited by Marius, but in some mysterious way the hope of peace in
+Africa had become indissolubly associated with his name. The central
+bureau of the great mercantile system would soon be working in his
+favour. Who would withstand it? Certainly not the senate still shaken by
+the Mamilian law; still less the people who wanted but a new suggestion
+to change the character of their attack. All things seemed working
+for Marius.
+
+It was soon shown that, whoever the future commander of Numidia was to
+be, he would have a real war on his hands; for the struggle had suddenly
+sprung into new and vigorous life, and one of the few permanent
+successes of Rome was annihilated in a moment by the craft of the
+reawakened Jugurtha. The preparations of the king must have been
+conjectured from their results; their first issue was a complete
+surprise; for few could have dreamed that the personal influence of the
+monarch, who had given away so much for an elusive hope of safety and
+had almost been a prisoner in the Roman lines, should assert itself in
+the very heart of the country believed to be pacified and now held by
+Roman garrisons. The town of Vaga, the intended basis of supplies for an
+army advancing to the south or west, the seat of an active commerce and
+the home of merchants from many lands who traded under the aegis of the
+Roman peace and a Roman garrison perched on the citadel, was suddenly
+thrilled by a message from the king, and answered to the appeal with a
+burst of heartfelt loyalty--a loyalty perhaps quickened by the native
+hatred of the ways of the foreign trader. The self-restraint of the
+patriotic plotters was as admirable as their devotion to a cause so
+nearly lost. Many hundreds must have been cognisant of the scheme, yet
+not a word reached the ears of those responsible for the security of the
+town. Even the poorest conspirator did not dream of the fortune that
+might be reaped from the sale of so vast a secret, and the Roman was as
+ignorant of the hidden significance of native demeanour as he was of the
+subtleties of the native tongue. In eye and gesture he could read
+nothing but feelings of friendliness to himself, and he readily accepted
+the invitation to the social gathering which was to place him at the
+mercy of his host.[1063] The third day from the date at which the plot
+was first conceived offered a golden opportunity for an attack which
+should be unsuspected and resistless. It was the day of a great national
+festival, on which leisured enjoyment took the place of work and every
+one strove to banish for the time the promptings of anxiety and fear.
+The officers of the garrison had been invited by their acquaintances
+within the town to share in their domestic celebrations. They and their
+commandant, Titus Turpilius Silanus, were reclining at the feast in the
+houses of their several hosts when the signal was given. The tribunes
+and centurions were massacred to a man; Turpilius alone was spared; then
+the conspirators turned on the rank and file of the Roman troops. The
+position of these was pitiable. Scattered in the streets, without
+weapons and without a leader, they saw the holiday throng around them
+suddenly transformed into a ferocious mob. Even such of the meaner
+classes as had up to this time been innocent of the murderous plot, were
+soon baying at their heels; some of these were hounded on by the
+conspirators; others saw only that disturbance was on foot, and the
+welcome knowledge of this fact alone served to spur them to a senseless
+frenzy of assault. The Roman soldiers were merely victims; there was
+never a chance of a struggle which would make the sacrifice costly, or
+even difficult.[1064] The citadel, in which their shields and standards
+hung, was in the occupation of the foe; when they sought the city gates,
+they found the portals closed; when they turned back upon the streets,
+the line of fury was deeper than before, for the women and the very
+children on the level housetops were hurling stones or any missiles that
+came to hand on the hated foreigners below. Strength and skill were of
+no avail; such qualities could not even prolong the agony; the veteran
+and the tyro, the brave and the shrinking, were struck or cut down with
+equal ease and swiftness. Only one man succeeded in slipping through the
+gates. This was the commandant Turpilius himself. Even the lenient view
+that a lucky chance or the pity of his host had given him his freedom,
+did not clear him of the stain which the tyrannical tradition of Roman
+arms stamped on every commander who elected to survive the massacre of
+the division entrusted to his charge.[1065]
+
+When the news was brought to Metellus, the heart-sick general buried
+himself in his tent.[1066] But his first grief was soon spent, and his
+thoughts turned to a scheme of vengeance on the treacherous town.
+Rapidly and carefully the scheme was unfolded in his mind, and by the
+setting of the sun the first steps towards the recovery of Vaga had been
+taken. In the dusk he left his camp with the legion which had been
+stationed in his own quarters and as large a force of Numidian cavalry
+as he could collect. Both horse and foot were slenderly equipped, for he
+was bent on a surprise and a long and hard night's march lay before him.
+He was still speeding on three hours after the sun had risen on the
+following day. The tired soldiers cried a halt, but Metellus spurred
+them on by pointing to the nearness of their goal (Vaga, he showed, was
+but a mile distant, just beyond the line of hills which shut out their
+view), the sanctity of the work of vengeance, the certainty of a rich
+reward in plunder. He paused but to reform his men. The cavalry were
+deployed in open order in the van; the infantry followed in a column so
+dense that nothing distinctive in their equipment or organisation could
+be discerned from afar, and the standards were carefully
+concealed.[1067] When the men of Vaga saw the force bearing down upon
+their town, their first and right impression led them to close the
+gates; but two facts soon served to convince them of their error. The
+supposed enemy was not attempting to ravage their land, and the horsemen
+who rode near the walls were clearly men of Numidian blood. It was the
+king himself, they cried, and with enthusiastic joy they poured from the
+gates to meet him. The Romans watched them come; then at a given signal
+the closed ranks opened, as each division rushed to its appointed task.
+Some charged and cut in pieces the helpless multitude that had poured
+upon the plain; others seized the gates, others again the now undefended
+towers on the walls. All sense of weariness had suddenly vanished from
+limbs now stimulated by the lust of vengeance and of plunder. The
+slaughter was pitiless, the search for plunder as thorough as the
+slaughter. The war had not yet given such a prize as this great trading
+town. Its ruin was the general's loss as it was the soldiers' gain; but
+the need for rapid vengeance vanquished every other sentiment in
+Metellus's mind. Roman punishment was as swift as it was sure, if but
+two days could elapse between the sin and the suffering of the men of
+Vaga. A gloomy task still remained. Inquiry must be made as to the mode
+in which Turpilius the commandant had escaped unharmed from the
+massacre. The investigation was a bitter trial to Metellus; for the
+accused was bound to him by close ties of hereditary friendship, and had
+been accredited by him with the command of the corps of engineers.[1068]
+The command at Vaga had been a further mark of favour, and it was
+believed by some that Turpilius had justified his commander's hopes only
+too well, and that it was his very humanity and consideration for the
+townsfolk under his command which had offered him means of escape such
+as only the most resolute would have refused.[1069] But the scandal was
+too grave to admit of a private inquiry, in which the honour of the army
+might seem to be sacrificed to the caprice of the friendly judgment of
+Metellus. His very familiarity with the accused entailed the duty of a
+cold impartiality, and Turpilius found little credence or excuse for the
+tale that he unfolded before the members of the court which adjudicated
+on his case. The harsh view of Marius was particularly recalled in the
+light of subsequent events. The fact or fancy that it was Marius who had
+himself condemned and had urged his brother judges to deliver an adverse
+vote, was seized by the gatherers of gossip, ever ready to discover a
+sinister motive in the actions of the man who never forgot, was embedded
+in that prose epic of the "Wrath of Marius" which subsequently adorned
+the memoirs of the great, and became a story of how the relentless
+lieutenant had, in malignant disregard of his own convictions, caused
+Metellus to commit the inexpiable wrong of dooming a guest-friend to an
+unworthy death.[1070] The death was inflicted with all the barbarity of
+Roman military law; Turpilius was scourged and beheaded,[1071] and
+through this final expiation the episode of Vaga remained to many minds
+a still darker horror than before.
+
+But much had been gained by the recovery of the revolted town. It is
+true that in its present condition it was almost useless to its
+possessors; but its fate must have stayed the progress of revolt in
+other cities, and the rapidity of Metellus's movements had hampered
+Jugurtha's immediate plans. The king had probably intended that Vaga
+should be a second Zama, and that the Romans should be kept at bay by
+its strong walls while he himself harassed their rear or attacked their
+camp. Now the scene of a successful guerilla warfare must be sought
+elsewhere. Its choice depended on the movements of the Roman army; but
+the time for the commencement of the new struggle was postponed longer
+than it might have been by a domestic danger which, while it confirmed
+the king in his resolution to struggle to the bitter end, absorbed his
+attention for the moment and hampered his operations in the field.
+Bomilcar's negotiations with Rome were bearing their deadly fruit.[1072]
+The minister was a victim of that expectant anguish, which springs from
+the failure of a treacherous scheme, when the cause of that failure is
+unknown. Why had the king broken off the negotiations? Was he himself
+suspected? Would the danger be lessened, if he remained quiescent? It
+might be increased, for the peril from Rome still existed, and there was
+the new terror from the vengeance of a master, whose suspicion seemed to
+his affrighted soul to be revealing itself in a cold neglect. Bomilcar
+determined that he would face but a single peril, and plunged into a
+course of intrigue far more dangerous than any which he had yet essayed.
+He no longer worked through underlings or appealed to the emissaries of
+Rome. He aimed at internal revolution, at the fall of the king by the
+hands of his servants--a stroke which he might exhibit to the suzerain
+power as his own meritorious work--and he adopted as a confidant a man
+of his own rank and at the moment of greater influence than himself.
+Nabdalsa was the new favourite of Jugurtha. He was a man of high birth,
+of vast wealth, of great and good repute in the district of Numidia
+which he ruled. His fame and power had been increased by his appointment
+to the command of such forces as the king could not lead in person, and
+he was now operating with an army in the territory between the
+head-quarters of Jugurtha and the Roman winter camp, his mission being
+to prevent the country being overrun with complete impunity by the
+invaders. His reason for listening to the overtures of Bomilcar is
+unknown; perhaps he knew too much of the military situation to believe
+in his master's ultimate success, and aimed at securing his own
+territorial power by an appeal to the gratitude of Rome. But he had not
+his associate's motive for hasty execution; and when Bomilcar warned him
+that the time had come, his mind was appalled by the magnitude of a deed
+that had only been prefigured in an ambiguous and uncertain shape. The
+time for meeting came and passed. Bomilcar was in an agony of impatient
+fear. The doubtful attitude of his associate opened new possibilities of
+danger; a new terror had been added to the old, and the motive for
+despatch was doubled. His alarm found vent in a brief but frantic letter
+which mingled gloomy predictions of the consequences of delay with
+fierce protestations and appeals. Jugurtha, he urged, was doomed, the
+promises of Metellus might at any moment work the ruin of them both, and
+Nabdalsa's choice lay between reward and torture.[1073]
+
+When this missive was delivered by a faithful hand, the general, tired
+in mind and body, had stretched himself upon a couch. The fiery words
+did not stimulate his ardour; they plunged him still deeper in a train
+of anxious thought, until utter weariness gave way to sleep. The letter
+rested on his pillow. Suddenly the covering of the tent door was
+noiselessly raised. His faithful secretary, who believed that he knew
+all his master's secrets, had heard of the arrival of a courier. His
+help and skill would be needed, and he had anticipated Nabdalsa's demand
+for his presence. The letter caught his eye; he lightly picked it up and
+read it, as in duty bound--for did he not deal with all letters, and
+could there be aught of secrecy in a paper so carelessly laid down? The
+plot now flashed across his eyes for the first time, and he slipped from
+the tent to hasten with the precious missive to the king. When Nabdalsa
+awoke, his thoughts turned to the letter which had harassed his last
+waking moments. It was gone, and he soon found that his secretary had
+disappeared as well. A fruitless attempt to pursue the fugitive
+convinced him that his only hope lay in the clemency, prudence or
+credulity of Jugurtha. Hastening to his master, he assured him that the
+service which he had been on the eve of rendering had been anticipated
+by the treachery of his dependent; let not the king forget their close
+friendship, his proved fidelity; these should exempt him from suspicion
+of participation in such a horrid crime.
+
+Jugurtha replied in a conciliatory tone.[1074] Neither then nor
+afterwards did he betray any trace of violent emotion. Bomilcar and many
+of his accomplices were put to death swiftly and secretly; but it was
+not well that rumours of a widely spread treason should be noised
+abroad. The pretence of security was a means of ensuring safety, and he
+had to ask too much of his Numidians to indulge even the severity that
+he held to be his due. Yet it was believed that the tenor of Jugurtha's
+life was altered from that moment. It was whispered that the bold
+soldier and intrepid ruler searched dark corners with his eyes and
+started at sudden sounds, that he would exchange his sleeping chamber
+for some strange and often humble resting place at night, and that
+sometimes in the darkness he would start from sleep, seize his sword and
+cry aloud, as though maddened by the terror of his dreams.
+
+The news of the fall of Bomilcar swept from Metellus's mind the last
+faint hope that the war might be brought to a speedy close by the
+immediate surrender of Jugurtha,[1075] and he began to make earnest
+preparations for a fresh campaign. In the new struggle he was to be
+deprived of the services of his ablest officer, for Marius had at length
+gained his end and had won from his commander a tardy permit to speed to
+Rome and seek the prize, which was doubtless still believed in the
+uninformed circles of the camp to be utterly beyond his grasp. The
+consent, though tardy, was finally given with a good will, for Metellus
+had begun to doubt the wisdom of keeping by his side a lieutenant whose
+restless discontent and growing resentment to his superior were beyond
+all concealment. Marius must have wished that his general's choler had
+been stirred at an earlier date, for the leave had been deferred to a
+season which would have deterred a less strenuous mind, from all
+thoughts of a political campaign during the current year. Delay,
+however, might be fatal; the war might be brought to a dazzling close
+before the consular elections again came round; the political balance at
+Rome might alter; it was necessary to reap at once the harvest of
+mercantile greed and popular distrust that had been so carefully
+prepared. It is possible that the usual date for the elections had
+already been passed and that It was only the postponement of the Comitia
+that gave Marius a chance of success.[1076] Even then it was a slender
+one, for it was believed in later times that his leave had been won only
+twelve days before the day fixed for the declaration of the
+consuls.[1077] In two days and a night he had covered the ground that
+lay between the camp and Utica. Here he paused to sacrifice before
+taking ship to Italy. The cheering words of the priest who read the
+omens[1078] seemed to be approved by the good fortune of his voyage. A
+favourable wind bore him in four days across the sea, and he reached
+Rome to find men craving for his presence as the crowning factor in a
+popular movement, delightful in its novelty and entered into with a
+genuine enthusiasm by the masses, who were fully conscious that there
+was a wrong of some undefined kind to be set right, and were as a whole
+perhaps blissfully ignorant of the intrigues by which they were being
+moved. Yet the thinking portion of the community had some grounds for
+resentment and alarm. The Numidian was not merely injuring those
+interested in African finance, but was engaging an army that was sadly
+needed elsewhere. The struggle in the North was going badly for Rome,
+and despatches had lately brought the news of the defeat of the consul
+Silanus by a vast and wandering horde known as the Cimbri,[1079] who
+hovered like a threatening cloud on the farther side of the Alps and
+might at no distant date sweep past the barrier of Italy. The senatorial
+government, although its position had not been formally assailed, had
+been sufficiently shaken by the Mamilian commission to distrust its
+power of stemming an adverse tide; and Scaurus, its chief bulwark, had
+lately been so ill-advised as to force a conflict with constitutional
+procedure in a way which could not be approved by a class of men to
+which the smallest precedent of political life that had once been
+stereotyped, appealed as a vital element in administration. He had
+spoilt a magnificent display of energy during his tenure of the
+censorship--an energy that issued in the rebuilding of the Mulvian
+bridge[1080] and in the continuance of the great coast road[1081] from
+Etruria past Genua to Dertona in the basin of the Po--by an
+unconstitutional attempt to continue in his office after the death of
+his colleague. His resignation had been enforced by some of the
+tribunes;[1082] and the great man seems still to have been under the
+passing cloud engendered by his own obstinate ambition, when the
+intrigues of the ever-dreaded coalition of the mercantile classes and
+the popular leaders were completed by the arrival of Marius.
+
+This new figurehead of the democracy had a comparatively easy part
+assigned him. Had it been necessary for him to persuade, he would
+probably have failed, for he lacked the gifts of the orator and the
+suppleness of the intriguer; but he was expected only to confirm, and
+better confirmation was to be gained from his martial bearing and his
+rugged manner than from his halting words. The speaking might be done by
+others more practised in the art; a few words of harsh verification from
+this living exemplar of the virtues of the people were all that was
+demanded. His censure of Metellus was followed by a promise that he
+would take Jugurtha alive or dead.[1083] The censure and the promise
+gave the text for a fiery stream of opposition oratory. Threats of
+prosecuting Metellus on a capital charge were mingled with passionate
+assertions of confidence in the true soldier who could vindicate the
+honour of Rome. The excitement spread even beyond the lazier rabble of
+the city. Honest artisans, who were usually untouched by the delirious
+forms of politics, and even thrifty country farmers,[1084] to whom time
+meant money at this busy season of the year, were drawn into the throng
+that gazed at Marius and listened to the burning words of his
+supporters. Against such a concourse the nobility and its dependents
+could make no head. The people who had come to listen stayed to vote,
+and the suffrage of the centuries gave the "new man" as a colleague to
+Lucius Cassius Longinus. But this triumph was but the prelude to
+another. The people, now assembled in the plebeian gathering of the
+tribes, were asked by the tribune Titus Manlius Mancinus whom they
+willed to conduct the war against Jugurtha. The answer "Marius" was
+given by overwhelming numbers, and the decision already reached by the
+senate was brushed aside. That body had, in the exercise of its legal
+authority, determined the provinces which should be administered by the
+consuls of the coming year.[1085] Numidia had not been one of these, for
+it had unquestionably been destined for Metellus. Gaul, on the other
+hand, called for the presence of a consul and a soldier; and the senate,
+although it had no power to make a definite appointment to this
+province, had perhaps intended that Marius, if elected, should be
+entrusted with its defence. Had this resolution been adopted, the paths
+of Marius and Metellus would have ceased to cross; the Numidian war,
+which demanded patience and diplomacy but not genius, might have
+dwindled gradually away; and the barbarians of the North might have
+yielded to their future victor before they had established their gloomy
+record of triumphs over the arms of Rome. But this was not to be. The
+party triumph would be incomplete if the senate's nominee was not ousted
+from his command. We cannot say whether Marius shared in the blindness
+which saw a more glorious field for military energy in Numidia than in
+Gaul; personal rivalry and political passion may have already blunted
+the instincts of the soldier. But, whatever his thoughts may have been,
+his actions were determined by a superior force. He was but a pawn in
+the hands of tribunes and capitalists; he had made promises which had
+raised hopes, definitely commercial and vaguely political. These hopes
+it must be his mission to fulfil. Before quitting Rome he found
+words[1086] which vented all the spleen of the classes screened out of
+office by the close-drawn ring of the nobility. The platitudes of merit,
+tested by honest service and approved by distinctions won in war, were
+advanced against the claims of birth; the luxurious life of the nobility
+was gibbeted on the ground that sensuality was a bar to energy and
+efficiency; even the elegant and conscientious taste of the cultured
+commander, who supplied the defects of experience by the perusal of
+Greek works on military tactics during his journey to the scene of war,
+was held up to criticism as a sign that the vain and ignorant amateur
+was usurping the tasks that belonged to the tried and hardy
+expert.[1087] Fortunately the energy of Marius was better expended on
+deeds than words. Whether the African war really required a more
+vigorous army than that serving under Metellus, might be an open
+question. Marius pretended that the need was patent, and exhibited the
+greatest energy in beating up veteran legionaries and attracting to his
+standard such of the Latin allies as had already approved their skill in
+service.[1088] The senate lent a ready hand. Nothing was more unpopular
+than a drastic levy, and the favourite might fail when he called for a
+fulfilment of the brave language that had been heard on every side. But
+the confidence in the new commander baffled its hopes; the conscripts
+were marching to glory not to danger, and the supplementary army, that
+was to avert a phantom peril and save an imaginary situation, was soon
+enrolled. Such a demonstration had often been seen before in Rome; the
+energy of an ambitious commander had with lamentable frequency rebuked
+the indolence or confidence of his predecessor, and Marius was but
+following in the footsteps of Bestia and Albinus. The real merits of his
+labours were due to his freedom from a strange superstition which had
+hitherto clung to the minds even of the best commanders that the later
+Republic had produced. They had continued to hold the theory that the
+effective soldier must be a man of means--a belief inherited from the
+simple days of border warfare, when each conscript supplied his panoply
+and the landless man could serve only as a half-armed skirmisher. For
+ages past the principle had been breaking down. The vast forces required
+for foreign wars demanded a wider area for the conscription; but this
+area, as defined by the old conditions of service, so far from
+increasing, was ever becoming less. In the age of Polybius the minimum
+qualification requisite for service in the legions had sunk from eleven
+thousand to four thousand asses;[1089] later it had been reduced to a
+yet lower level;[1090] but, in spite of these concessions to necessity,
+the senate had refused to accept the lesson, taught by the military
+needs of the State and the social condition of Italy, that an empire
+cannot be garrisoned by an army of conscripts. The legal power to effect
+a radical alteration had long been in their hands; for the poorer
+proletariate of Rome whom the law described as the men assessed "on
+their heads," not on their holdings, had probably been liable to
+military service of any kind in time of need.[1091] Perhaps it was mere
+conservatism, perhaps it was a faint perception of the truth that an
+armed rabble is fonder of men than institutions, and an appreciation of
+the fact that the hold of the nobility over the capital would be
+weakened if their clients were allowed to don the armour which made them
+men, that had kept the senate within the strait limits of the antiquated
+rules. Fortunately, however, the methods of raising an army depended
+almost entirely on the discretion of the general engaged on the task.
+Did he employ the conscription in a manner not justified by convention,
+he might be met by resistance and appeals; but, if he chose to invite to
+service, there was no power which could prescribe the particular modes
+in which he should employ the units that flocked to his standard. It was
+this latter method that was adopted by Marius. He did not strain his
+popularity, and invite a conflict with senatorial tribunes, by forcing
+foreign service on the ragged freemen who had hailed him as the saviour
+of the State; but he invited their assistance in the glorious work and
+asked them to be his comrades in the triumphal progress that lay before
+him.[1092] The spirit of adventure, if not of patriotism, was touched:
+the call was readily answered, and the stalwart limbs that had lounged
+idly on the streets or striven vainly to secure the subsistence of the
+favoured slave, became the instruments by which the State was to be
+first protected and finally controlled. The conscription still remained
+as the resort of necessity; but the creation of the first mercenary army
+of Rome pointed to the mode in which any future commander could avoid
+the friction and unpopularity which often attended the enforcement of
+liability to service. The innovation of Marius was sufficiently
+startling to attract comment and invite conjecture. Some held that the
+army had been democratised to suit the consulship, and that the masses
+who had seen in Marius's elevation the realisation of the vague and
+detached ambitions of the poor, would continue to furnish a sure support
+to the power which they had created.[1093] It is not unlikely that
+Marius, with his knowledge of the tone of the army of Metellus, may have
+wished to create for himself an environment that would mould the temper
+of his future officers; but those more friendly critics who held that
+efficiency was his immediate aim, and that "the bad" were chosen only
+because "the good" were scarce,[1094] suggested the reason that was
+probably dominant as a motive and was certainly adequate as a defence.
+No thought of the ultimate triumph of the individual over the State by
+the help of a devoted soldiery could have crossed the mind either of the
+consul or of his critics. The Republic was as yet sacred, however
+unhealthy its chief organs might be deemed; and although Marius was to
+live to see the sinister fruit of his own reform, the harvest was to be
+reaped by a rival, and the first fruits enjoyed by the senate whom that
+rival served.
+
+While the election of Marius, his appointment to Numidia, and his
+preparations for the campaign were in progress, the war had been passing
+through its usual phases of skirmishes and sieges. For a time no certain
+news could be had of the king; he was reported at one moment to be near
+the Roman lines, at another to be buried in the solitude of the
+desert;[1095] the annoyance caused by his baffling changes of plan was
+avenged by the interpretation that they were symptoms of a disordered
+mind; his old counsellors were said to have been dispersed, his new ones
+to be distrusted; it was believed that he changed his route and his
+officers from day to day, and that he retreated or retraced his steps as
+the terrors of suspicion and despair alternated with the faintly
+surviving hope that a stand might yet be made. Only once did he come
+into conflict with Metellus.[1096] The site of the skirmish is unknown,
+and its result was indecisive. The Numidian army is said to have been
+surprised and to have formed hastily for battle. The division led by the
+king offered a brief resistance; the rest of the line yielded at once to
+the Roman onset. A few standards and arms, a handful of prisoners, were
+all that the victors had to show for their triumph. The nimble enemy had
+disappeared beyond all hope of capture or pursuit.
+
+After a time news was brought that the king had made for the southern
+desert with a fraction of his mounted troops and the Roman deserters,
+whose despair ensured their loyalty. He had shut himself up in
+Thala,[1097] a large and wealthy town to which his treasures and his
+children had already been transferred. This city lay some thirteen miles
+east of the oasis of Capsa, and a dismal and waterless desert stretched
+between the Romans and the refuge of the king. No Roman army had at any
+part of the campaign attempted to penetrate such trackless regions, and
+the court at Thala may have believed even this foretaste of the desert
+to be an adequate protection against an enemy which clung to towns and
+cultivated lands and relied, in the cumbrous manner of civilised
+warfare, on organised lines of communication. But the news that Jugurtha
+had at last occupied a position, the strength of which, together with
+the presence of his family and treasures within its walls, might supply
+a motive for a lengthy residence within the town and even suggest the
+resolution of holding it against every hazard, fired Metellus with a
+hope which the awkward political situation at Rome must have made more
+real than it deserved to be. The end of the war might be in sight, if he
+could only cross that belt of burning land. His plan was rapidly formed.
+The burden of the baggage animals was reduced to ten days' supply of
+corn; skins of water were laid upon their backs; the domestic cattle
+from the fields were driven in, and they were laden with every kind of
+vessel that could be gathered from the Numidian homesteads. The
+villagers in the neighbourhood of the recent victory, whom the flight of
+the king had made for the moment the humble servants of Rome, were
+bidden to bring water to a certain spot, and the day was named on which
+this mission was to be fulfilled. Metellus's own vessels were filled
+from the river, and the rapid march to Thala was begun. The resting
+place was reached and the camp was entrenched; water was there in
+greater abundance than had been asked or hoped, for a sharp downpour of
+rain made the plethoric skins presented by the punctual Numidians almost
+a superfluous luxury and, as a happy omen, cheered the souls of the
+soldiers as much as it refreshed their bodies.[1098] The devoted
+villagers had also brought an unexpectedly large supply of corn, so
+eager were they to give emphatic proof of their newly acquired loyalty.
+But one day more and the walls of Thala came in sight. Its citizens were
+surprised but not dismayed; they made preparations for the siege, while
+their king vanished into the desert with his children and a large
+portion of his hoarded wealth. It was too much to hope that Jugurtha
+would be caught in such a trap. The alternative prospects at Thala were
+immediate capture or a siege as protracted as the nature of the
+territory would permit. In the latter case a cordon would be drawn round
+the town and a price would probably be put upon the rebel's head. It is
+strange that the desperate band of deserters did not accompany the king
+in his flight. There may have been no time for the retreat of so large a
+force, or the strength and desolation of the site may have filled them
+with confidence of success. But, if things came to the worst, they had a
+surprise in store for their former comrades who were now battering
+against the walls.
+
+Metellus, in spite of the fact that he had lightened his baggage animals
+of all the superfluities of the camp, must have brought his siege train
+with him; it would, indeed, have been madness to attempt an assault on a
+fortified town without the necessary instruments of attack. He seems in
+his lines round Thala to have had all that he needed for a blockade;
+even the planks for the great moving turrets were ready to his
+hand.[1099] The engines were soon in place on an artificial mound raised
+by the labour of the troops, the soldiers advanced under cover of the
+mantlets, and the rams began to batter against the walls. For forty days
+the courage of the besieged tried the patience of assailants already
+wearied with the toils of a long forced march. Had human endurance been
+the deciding factor, Metellus might have been forced to retire. But the
+wall of Thala was weaker than the spirit of its defenders; a portion of
+the rampart crumbled beneath the blows of the ram, and the victorious
+Romans rushed in to seize the plunder of the treasure-city. They found
+instead a holocaust of wealth and human victims. The royal palace had
+been invaded by the deserters from the Roman army whom Jugurtha had left
+behind. Thither they had borne the gold, the silver and the precious
+stuffs which formed the glory of the town. A feast was spread and
+continued until the banqueters were heavy with meat and wine. The palace
+was then fired, and when the plundering mob of Romans had made their way
+to the centre of the city's wealth, they found but the smouldering
+traces of a baffled vengeance and a disappointed greed.
+
+The capture of Thala was one of those successes which might have been
+important, had it been possible to limit the area of the war or to check
+the disaffection which was now spreading throughout almost the whole of
+Northern Africa. The fringe of the desert had but been reached; the king
+had fled beyond it; the south and west were soon to be in a blaze; we
+shall soon see Metellus forced to take up his position in the north; and
+a slight incident which occurred while Metellus was at Thala showed that
+even cities of the distant east, which had never been under the
+immediate sway of the Numidian power, were wavering in their attachment
+to Rome. The Greater Leptis, situate in the territory of the Three
+Cities between the gulfs which separated Roman Africa from the territory
+of Cyrene, had sought the friendship and alliance of Rome from the very
+commencement of the war. A Sidonian settlement,[1100] it had, like most
+commercial towns which sought a life of peace, preferred the
+protectorate of Rome to that of the neighbouring dynasties, and had
+readily responded to the calls made on it by Bestia, Albinus and
+Metellus.[1101] Such assistance as it furnished must have been supplied
+by sea, for it was more than four hundred miles by land from the usual
+sphere of Roman operations; but the commissariat of the Roman army was
+so serious a problem that the ships of the men of Leptis must always
+have been a welcome sight at the port of Utica. Now the stability of
+their constitution, and their service to Rome, were threatened by the
+ambition of a powerful noble. This Hamilcar was defying the authority
+both of laws and magistrates, and Leptis, they wrote, would be lost, if
+Metellus did not send timely help. Four cohorts of Ligurians with a
+praefect at their head were sent to the faithful state, and the Roman
+general turned to meet the graver dangers which were threatening in
+the west.
+
+Jugurtha had crossed the desert with a handful of his men and was now
+amongst the Gaetulian tribes,[1102] who stretched from the limits of his
+own dominions far across the southern frontier of his brother king of
+Mauretania. His eyes were now turned to the west; the men of the desert,
+the King of the Moors, would be infallible means of prolonging the war
+with Rome, if their help could be secured. No Roman army had yet dared
+to penetrate even into Western Numidia, and such a venture would be more
+hopeless than ever, if the nomad tribes of the desert frontier and
+Bocchus of Mauretania enclosed that district with myriads of mounted men
+that might sweep it at any time from point to point, and destroy in a
+moment the laborious efforts at occupation that might be made by Rome.
+The Gaetulians, although perhaps a nomad, were not a barbarian people.
+They plied with Mediterranean cities a trade in purple dye, the material
+for which was gathered on the Atlantic coast; and their merchants were
+sometimes seen in the marketplace at Cirta;[1103] but as fighting men
+they lacked even the organisation to which the Numidians had attained,
+and Jugurtha, while he sought or purchased their help, was obliged to
+teach them the rudiments of disciplined warfare. Gradually they learnt
+to keep the line, to follow the standards, to wait for the word of
+command before they threw themselves upon the foe;[1104] these untrained
+warriors must have been fired mainly by the love of adventure, of pay or
+of plunder, or have been impressed by the greatness of the fugitive who
+had suddenly appeared amongst their tribes; they had no hatred or
+previous fear of the power of Rome, for most of the Gaetulian chiefs
+were ignorant even of the name of the imperial city.[1105]
+
+This name, however, had long been in the mind of the king who governed
+the northern neighbours of the Gaetulians, and it was to the fears or
+hopes of Bocchus of Mauretania that Jugurtha now appealed with the
+design of gaining an auxiliary force greater than any which he himself
+could put into the field. He had a claim on the Mauretanian king which
+might have been valid in a land in which polygamy did not prevail, for
+he was the husband of that monarch's daughter; but the dissipation of
+affection amongst a multitude of wives and their respective progeny did
+not permit the connection with a son-in-law to be a particularly binding
+tie.[1106] There were, however, other motives which might spur the king
+to action. His early overtures to Rome had been rejected, and this
+neglect must have aroused in his mind a feeling of anxiety as well as of
+wounded pride. If Rome conquered Numidia, she might become his
+neighbour. What in that case would be the position of Mauretania,
+connected as it would be by no previous ties of friendship or alliance
+with the conquering state? If Bacchus joined Jugurtha, he would
+immediately become a power with whom Rome would be forced to deal. An
+ally detached from her enemies had often become her most trusted friend;
+it was thus that the power of Masinissa had been secured and his kingdom
+had been increased. If Jugurtha were victorious, the Romans would be
+kept at bay; if he showed signs of failure, the defection of Bocchus
+might be bought at a great price. The game on which he had entered was
+absolutely safe; he could only be the loser if at the critical moment
+chivalry or national sentiment interfered with the designs of a
+calculating prudence. The great necessity of his position was to force
+the hand of the Roman general and the Roman senate; but meanwhile he
+would keep an open mind and see whether the power which he dreaded might
+not be permanently kept at bay.
+
+It may have been with thoughts like these that Bocchus bowed to the
+teaching of his counsellors when they urged a meeting with
+Jugurtha.[1107] The meeting was that of equals, not of a suppliant and
+his protector. The Numidian king again headed an army of his own, and,
+after the oath of alliance had been given and received, exhorted his
+father-in-law in his own interest to join in a war that was as necessary
+as it was just. The Romans, he pointed out, had been made by their lust
+for conquest the common enemies of the human race. One had only to look
+at their treatment of Perseus of Macedon, of Carthage, of himself. Who
+was Bocchus that he alone should be immune from such a danger? The mood
+of the king responded to Jugurtha's words, and without an instant's
+delay they took the field together. Jugurtha was insistent on despatch,
+for he knew the varying temper of his relative and feared that even a
+slight delay would cool his resolve for decisive action.
+
+The scene of the war now shifts with amazing suddenness to the north and
+centres for the first time round the walls of Cirta.[1108] Metellus had
+evidently been drawn from the south by the news of the threatened
+coalition; for, if the territories near the coast were undefended, the
+Mauretanians might sweep like a devastating storm over the land that
+might have been held with some show of justice to be in the possession
+of Rome. Cirta now appears as within the pacified territory and,
+although we have no record as to the time when it was lost by
+Jugurtha,[1109] its possession by the Romans need excite no surprise. It
+may have been lost at an early period of the war, for there is no sign
+that it was employed by Jugurtha either as a military or political
+capital, and if, in spite of the massacre that had followed its capture
+from Adherbal, its cosmopolitan mercantile life had been revived, the
+attachment of the town to Rome would be assured on the news of the
+waning fortunes of its king. Its surrender was certainly peaceful, and
+the strength which might have defied the arms of Rome had rendered it
+incapable of recovery by its former owner. To Cirta Metellus had
+transferred his prisoners, his booty and his baggage,[1110] and it was
+against Cirta that the two kings moved with their formidable force.
+Jugurtha was the moving spirit in the enterprise, his idea being that,
+even if the town could not be taken, the Romans would be forced to come
+to its support and a battle would be fought beneath its walls. A battle
+was now an issue to be courted, for never had he faced the enemy with
+greater numbers on his side.
+
+Metellus was as fully conscious of the change in the situation. Lately
+he had been forcing himself on Jugurtha at every point; now he held back
+and waited for the favourable chance. He wished above all to learn
+something of the fighting spirit and methods of the Moors;[1111] they
+were an untried foe, and Roman success was usually the fruit of
+knowledge and not of experiment. He waited in his fortified camp near
+Cirta to watch events, when news was brought from Rome which proved to
+his mind that cautious inaction was now not merely the wiser but the
+only policy. The news that came by letter was of stunning force.
+Metellus had already learnt of Marius's election to the consulship. This
+knowledge should have prepared him for the worst; but a proud man,
+conscious of his deserts, will not meet in anticipation an event that,
+however probable, seems incredible. Yet here it was before him in black
+and white. He had been superseded in his command and the province of
+Numidia belonged to Marius.[1112] There was no pretence of
+self-restraint; tears rose to his eyes, as bitter language flowed from
+his lips. It was disputed whether natural pride or the sense of
+unmerited wrong was the secret of his wrath, or whether he held (as many
+thought) that a victory already won was being wrested from his grasp.
+But it was safely conjectured that his grief would not have been so
+violent had any man but Marius been his successor.
+
+To risk a defeat at the moment when the command was slipping from his
+grasp seemed to Metellus the height of folly; but, even had he not
+possessed this additional motive for inaction, the situation would
+probably have forced him to temporise and to attempt to dissolve the
+hostile coalition by diplomacy. He therefore sent a message to Bocchus
+urging him to think seriously of the course of action which he had
+adopted.[1113] An opportunity was still open to him of becoming the
+friend and ally of Rome; why should he adopt this motiveless attitude of
+hostility? The cause of Jugurtha was desperate; did the King of
+Mauretania wish to bring his own country into the same miserable plight?
+These were the first words that Bocchus had heard of a possible
+convention with Rome; he had scored the first point, but was much too
+wise to give away the game. Definite offers must be made and securely
+guaranteed before he would withdraw the terror of his presence. Firmness
+and conciliation must be blended in his answer, which, when delivered,
+was both gracious and chivalrous. He longed, he said, for peace, but was
+stirred to pity for the fortunes of Jugurtha. If the latter were also
+given the chance of making terms with Rome, all might be arranged.
+Metellus replied with another message framed to meet the position taken
+up by the king; the answer of Bocchus was a cautious mixture of assent
+and protest. As he showed no unwillingness to continue the discussion,
+Metellus occupied the remainder of his own tenure of the command in
+further parleyings. Envoys came and went, and the war was practically
+suspended. A delicate and promising negotiation was on foot; it remained
+to be seen whether it would be patiently continued or rudely interrupted
+by the new governor of Numidia.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The summer must have been well advanced when Marius landed at Utica with
+his untried forces. The veterans were handed over to his care by the
+legate Rutilius[1114] for Metellus had fled the sight of the man, whose
+success had been based on a slanderous attack on his own reputation. It
+must have been with a heavy heart that he accomplished the voyage to
+Rome; for the greatest expert in the moods of the people could scarcely
+have foretold the surprise that awaited him there. The popular passion
+was spent; it was a feverish force that had burnt itself out; the
+country voters had at last bethought themselves of their work and
+returned to their farms; many of the most active and disorderly spirits,
+the restless loud-voiced men who are the potent minority in an
+agitation, had been removed by the levy of Marius; with the city mob
+docility generally alternated with revolution, and it was now inclined
+to look to the verdict of the recognised heads of the State. In this
+moment of reaction, too, many must have been inclined to wonder what
+after all could be said against this general who had never lost a
+battle, who had conquered cities and pitilessly revenged the one
+disaster which was not his fault, who had constantly swept the terrible
+King of Numidia as a helpless fugitive before him. The presence of
+Metellus completed the work by giving stability to these half-formed
+views. The common folk are the true idealists. They love a hero rather
+better than a victim, although it often depends on the turn of a hair
+which part the object of their attentions is to play. Now they followed
+the lead of the senate; the returned commander was the man of the
+day[1115] he had exalted the glory of the Roman name; and if there was
+no fault, there could only have been misfortune; but misfortune might be
+compensated by honour. There was the prospect of a triumph in store,
+that mixed source of sensuous satisfaction and national
+self-congratulation. Thus Metellus won his prizes from the Numidian war,
+a parade through the streets to the Capitol and the addition of the
+surname "Numidicus" to the already lengthy nomenclature of his
+house[1116]
+
+The war itself, under the guidance of Marius, soon assumed the character
+which it had possessed under that of all his predecessors. The
+originality of the new commander seemed to have spent itself in the
+selection of his troops; no new idea seems to have been introduced into
+the conduct of operations, which resumed their old shapes of precautions
+against surprise, weary marches from end to end of Numidia, and the
+siege of strongholds which were no sooner taken than they proved to be
+beyond the area of actual hostilities. Perhaps no new idea was possible
+except one that exchanged the weapons of war for those of diplomacy; but
+even the final attempt that had been made in this direction by Metellus
+was not continued by Marius. Bocchus, unwilling to lose the chance which
+had been presented of a definite convention with Home, sent repeated
+messages to her new representative to the effect that he desired the
+friendship of the Roman people, and that no acts of hostility on his
+part need be feared[1117] but his protestations were received with
+distrust, and Marius, accustomed to the duplicity of the African mind
+and rejecting the view that the king might really be wavering between
+war and peace, chose to regard them as the treacherous cover for a
+sudden attack. The desultory campaign which followed seems to have been
+directed by two motives. The first was the training of the raw levies
+which had just been brought from Rome; the second the supposed necessity
+of cutting Jugurtha off from the strongholds which he still held at the
+extremities of his kingdom. As these extremities were now threatened or
+commanded, on the south by the Gaetulians and on the west by the
+Mauretanians, the area of the war was no less than that of Numidia
+itself; and, as the occupation of such an area was impossible, the
+destruction of these strongholds, which was little loss to a mobile
+self-supporting force such as that which Jugurtha had at his command,
+was the utmost end which could be secured.
+
+The practice of the untrained Roman levies was rendered easy by the fact
+that Jugurtha had resumed the offensive. He no longer had the help of
+his Mauretanian auxiliaries, for Bocchus had retired to his own kingdom,
+and he had therefore lost his desire for a pitched battle; but his
+swarms of Gaetulian horse had enabled him to resume his old style of
+guerilla fighting, and he had taken advantage of the practical
+suspension of hostilities which had accompanied the change in the Roman
+command, to set on foot a series of raids against the friends of Rome
+and even to penetrate the borders of the Roman province itself.[1118]
+For some time the attention of Marius was absorbed in following his
+difficult tracks, in striving to anticipate his rapidly shifting plans,
+in creating in his own men the habits of endurance, the mobility and the
+strained attention, which even a brief period of such a chase will
+rapidly engender in the rawest of recruits. The pursuit gradually
+shifted to the west, and a series of sharp conflicts on the road ended
+finally in the rout of the king in the neighbourhood of Cirta. With
+troops now seasoned to the toils of long marches and deliberate attack,
+Marius turned to the more definite, if not more effective, enterprise of
+beleaguering such fortified positions as were still strongly held, and
+by their position seemed to give a strategic advantage to the enemy. His
+object was either to strip Jugurtha of these last garrisons or to force
+him to a battle if he came to their defence. At first he confined his
+operations within a narrow area; the best part of the summer months
+seems to have been spent in the territory lying east and south of Cirta,
+and within this region several fortresses and castles still adhering to
+the king were reduced by persuasion or by force.[1119] Yet Jugurtha made
+no move, and Marius gained a full experience of the helpless irritation
+of the commander who hears that his enemy is far away, neglectful of his
+efforts and wholly absorbed in some deep-laid scheme the very rudiments
+of which are beyond the reach of conjecture. His operations seem to have
+brought him to a point somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sicca, and this
+proximity to the southern regions of Numidia suggested the thought of an
+enterprise that might rival and even surpass Metellus's storm of Thala.
+About thirteen miles west of that town[1120] lay the strong city of
+Capsa.[1121] It marked almost the extremest limit of Jugurtha's empire
+in this direction, placed as it was just north of the great lakes and
+west of the deepest curve of the Lesser Syrtis. The town was the gift of
+an oasis, which here broke the monotony of the desert with pleasant
+groves of dates and olives and a perennial stream of water. The sources
+of this stream, which was formed by the union of two fountains, had been
+enclosed within the walls, and supplied drinking water for the city
+before it passed beyond it to irrigate the land. Even this supply hardly
+sufficed for the moderate needs of the Numidians, who supplemented it by
+rain water[1122] which they caught and stored in cisterns. A siege of
+Capsa in the dry season might therefore prove irksome to the
+inhabitants; but the invading army might be even less well supplied, for
+although four other springs outside the walls fed the canals which
+served the work of irrigation, they tended to run low when the season of
+rain was past. The security of the city, although its defences and its
+garrison were strong, was thought to reside mainly in its desert
+barrier. The waste through which an invading army would have to pass was
+waterless and barren, while the multitude of snakes and scorpions that
+found a congenial home on the arid soil increased the horror, if not the
+danger, of the route.[1123] Jugurtha had dealt kindly by the lonely
+citizens of Capsa; they were free from taxes and had seldom to answer to
+any demand of the king: and this favour, which was perhaps as much the
+product of necessity as of policy, had strengthened their loyalty to the
+Numidian throne. It is probable that some strategic, or at least
+military, motive was mingled in the mind of Marius with the mere desire
+of excelling his predecessor and creating a deep impression in the minds
+of the proletariate in his army and at home. Although Capsa, with its
+limited resources, could hardly ever have served as the point of
+departure for a large Numidian or Gaetulian host, it might have been of
+value as a refuge for the king when he wished to vanish from the eyes of
+his enemies, and perhaps as a means of communication with friendly
+cities or peoples situated between the two Syrtes. To vanquish the
+difficulties of such an enterprise might also strike terror into the
+Numidian garrisons of other towns, and the subjects of Jugurtha might
+feel that no stronghold was safe when the unapproachable Capsa had been
+taken or destroyed. But the difficulties of the task were great. The
+Numidians of these regions were more attached to a pastoral life than to
+agriculture; the stores of corn to be found along the route were
+therefore scanty, and their scarcity was increased by the fact that the
+king, who seems but lately to have passed through these regions, had
+ordered that large supplies of grain should be conveyed from the
+district and stored in the fortresses which his garrisons still
+held.[1124] Nothing could be got from the fields, which at this late
+period of the autumn showed nothing but arid stubble. It was fortunate
+that some stores still lay at Lares (Lorbeus), a town at a short
+distance to the south-east of his present base;[1125] these were to be
+supplemented by the cattle that the foraging parties had driven in, and
+the Roman soldier would at least have his unwelcome supply of meat
+tempered by a moderate allowance of meal. Yet the terrors of the journey
+were so great that Marius thought it wise to conceal the object of his
+enterprise even from his own men, and even when, after a six days' march
+to the south, he had reached a stream called the Tana,[1126] the motive
+of the expedition was still in all probability unknown. Here, as in
+Metellus's march on Thala, a large supply of water was drawn from the
+river and stored in skins, all heavy baggage was discarded, and the
+lightened column prepared for its march across the desert. By day the
+soldiers kept their camp and every stage of the journey was accomplished
+between night-fall and dawn. On the morning of the third day they had
+reached some rising ground not more than two miles from Capsa.[1127] The
+sun had not yet risen when Marius halted his men in a hollow of the
+dunes, and watched the town to see whether his cautious plans had really
+effected a surprise. Evidently they had; for, when day broke, the gates
+were seen to open and large numbers of Numidians could be observed
+leaving the city for the business of the fields. The word was given, and
+in a moment the whole of the cavalry and the lightest of the infantry
+were dashing on the town. They were meant to block the gates; while
+Marius and the heavier troops followed as speedily as they could,
+driving the straggling Numidians before them. It was the possession of
+these hostages that decided the fate of the town. The commandant
+parleyed and agreed to admit the Romans within the walls, the condition,
+whether tacit or expressed, of this surrender being that the lives of
+the citizens should be spared. The condition was immediately broken. The
+town was given over to the flames, all the Numidians of full age were
+put to the sword, the rest were sold into slavery, and the movable
+property which had been seized was divided amongst the soldiers. The
+breach of international custom was not denied; the only attempt at
+palliation was drawn from the reflection that it was due neither to
+motiveless treachery nor to greed; a position like Capsa, it was
+urged,--difficult of approach, open to the enemy, the home of a race
+notorious for its mobile cunning-could be held neither by leniency nor
+by fear.[1128] The expedition had miscarried, if the town was not
+destroyed; and, as frequently happens in the pursuit of wars with
+peoples to whom the convenient epithet of "barbarian" can be applied,
+the successful fruit of cruelty and treachery was perhaps defended on
+the ground that the obligations of international law must be either
+reciprocal or non-existent.
+
+The destruction of Capsa was followed by other successes of a similar
+though less arduous kind. The event had served the purpose of Marius
+well in so far as it spread before him a name of terror which caused
+some of the Numidian garrisons to flee their strong places without a
+struggle. In the few cases where resistance was met, it was beaten down,
+and the fortified places which Jugurtha's soldiers were not rash enough
+to defend, were utterly destroyed by fire.[1129] Marius left a
+wilderness behind him on his return march to winter quarters,[1130] and
+perhaps renewed his devastating course in the south-eastern parts of
+Numidia during the spring of the following year, before his attention
+was suddenly called to another point in the vast area of the war. This
+easy triumph which cost little Roman blood and enriched the soldiers
+with the spoils of war, created in his men a belief in his foresight and
+prowess which seemed sufficient to stand the severest strain.[1131] A
+great effort had now to be made in a quarter of Numidia which lay not
+less than seven hundred miles from the recent scene of operations. As
+neither the site of Marius's recent winter quarters nor the base which
+he chose for his spring campaign are known to us, we cannot say whether
+the expedition which he now directed to the extreme west of Numidia was
+an unpleasant diversion from a scheme already in operation, or whether
+it was the result of a plan matured in the winter camp; but in either
+case this conviction of the necessity for sweeping the country in such
+utterly diverse directions proves the full success of the plan which
+Jugurtha was pursuing. It is more difficult to determine whether Marius
+increased the success of this plan by a political blunder of his own.
+The point at which he is now found operating was near the river Muluccha
+or Molocath,[1132] the dividing line between the kingdoms of Numidia and
+Mauretania. If the incursion which he made into this region was
+unprovoked, it was a challenge to King Bocchus and an impolitic
+disturbance of the recent attitude of quiescence that had been assumed
+by that hesitating monarch; but it is possible that news had reached
+Marius that a Mauretanian attack was impending, and that the same motive
+which had impelled Metellus to hasten from the south to the defence of
+Cirta, now urged his successor to push his army more than five hundred
+miles farther to the west up to the very borders of Mauretania. The
+movement seems to have been defensive, for at the moment when we catch
+sight of his efforts he had not attempted to cross the admitted
+frontier,[1133] but was endeavouring to secure a strong position that
+lay within what he conceived to be the Numidian territory. A giant rock
+rose sheer out of the plain, tapering into the narrow fortress which
+continued by its walls an ascent so smoothly precipitous that it seemed
+as though the work of nature had been improved by the hand of man.[1134]
+But one narrow path led to the summit and was believed to be the only
+way, not merely to a position of supreme value for defensive purposes,
+but also to one of those rich deposits which the many-treasured king was
+held to have laid up in the strongest parts of his dominions. The
+difficulties of a siege were almost insurmountable. The garrison was
+strong and well supplied with food and water; the only avenue for a
+direct assault upon the walls was narrow and dangerous; the site was as
+ill-suited as it could be for the movement of the heavier engines of
+war. When the attack was made, the mantlets of the besiegers were easily
+destroyed by fire and stones hurled from above; yet the soldiers could
+not leave cover, nor get a firm hold on the steeply sloping ground; the
+foremost amongst the storming party fell stricken with wounds, and a
+panic seemed likely to prevail amidst the ever-victorious army if it
+were again urged to the attack. While Marius was brooding over this
+unexpected check, and his mind was divided between the wisdom of a
+retreat and the chances that might be offered by delay, an accident
+supplied the defects of strength and counsel.[1135] A Ligurian in quest
+of snails was tempted to pursue his search from ridge to ridge on that
+side of the hill which lay away from the avenue of attack and had
+hitherto been deemed inaccessible. He suddenly found that he had nearly
+reached the summit; a spirit of emulation urged him to complete the work
+which he had unconsciously begun, and the branches of a giant holmoak,
+which twisted amongst the rocks, gave him a hold and footing when the
+perpendicular walls of the last ascent seemed to deny all chance of
+further progress. When at length he craned over the edge of the highest
+ridge, the interior of the fort lay spread before him. No member of the
+garrison was to be seen, for every man was engaged in repelling the
+assault which had been renewed on the opposite side. A prolonged survey
+was therefore possible, and all the important details of the fortress
+were imprinted on the mind of the Ligurian before he began his leisurely
+descent. The features of the slope he traversed were also more
+cautiously observed; the next ascent would be attempted by more than
+one, and every irregularity that might give a foothold must be noted by
+the man who would have to prove and illustrate his tale. When the story
+was told to Marius he sent some of his retinue to view the spot; their
+reports differed according to the character of their minds; some of the
+investigators were sanguine, others more than doubtful; but the consul
+eventually determined to make the experiment. The escalade was to be
+attempted by a band of ten; five of the trumpeters and buglemen were
+selected and four centurions, the Ligurian was to be their guide. With
+head and feet bare, their only armour a sword and light leathern shield
+slung across their backs, the soldiers painfully imitated the daring
+movements of their active leader. But he was considerate as well as
+daring. Sometimes he would weave a scaling ladder of the trailing
+creepers; at others he would lend a helping hand; at others again he
+would gather up their armour and send them on before him, then step
+rapidly aside and pass with his burden up and down their struggling
+line. His cheery boldness kept them to their painful task until every
+man had reached the level of the fort. It was as desolate as when first
+seen by the Ligurian, for Marius had taken care that a frontal attack
+should engage the attention of the garrison. The climb had been a long
+one, and the battle had now been raging many hours when news was brought
+to the anxious commander that his men had gained the summit.[1136] The
+assault was now renewed with a force that astonished the besieged, and
+soon with a recklessness that led them to think the besiegers mad. They
+could see the Roman commander himself leaving the cover of the mantlets
+and advancing in the midst of his men up the perilous ascent under a
+tortoise fence of uplifted shields. Over the heads of the advancing
+party came a storm of missiles from the Roman lines below. Confident as
+the Numidians were in the strength of their position, scornful as were
+the gibes which a moment earlier they had been hurling against the foe,
+they could not think lightly of the serried mass that was moving up the
+hill and the rain of bullets that heralded its advance. Every hand was
+busy and every mind alert when suddenly the Roman trumpet call was heard
+upon their rear. The women and boys, who had crept out to watch the
+fight, were the first to take the alarm and to rush back to the shelter
+of the fort; most of the men were fighting in advance of their outer
+walls; those nearest to the ramparts were the first to be seized with
+the panic; but soon the whole garrison was surging backwards, while
+through and over it pressed the long and narrow wedge of Romans, cutting
+their way through the now defenceless mass until they had seized the
+outworks of the fort.
+
+It is difficult to gauge the positive advantages secured by this feat of
+arms; but it is probable that the capture of this particular
+hill-fortress, although its difficulty gave it undue prominence in the
+annals of the war, was not an isolated fact, but one of a series of
+successful attempts to establish a chain of posts upon the Mauretanian
+border, which might bring King Bocchus to better counsels and interrupt
+his communications with Jugurtha. The enterprise may have been followed
+by a tolerably long campaign in these regions. This campaign has not
+been recorded, but that it was contemplated is proved by the fact that
+Marius had ordered an enormous force of cavalry to meet him near the
+Muluccha.[1137] The force thus summoned actually served the purpose of
+covering a retirement that was practically a retreat; but this could not
+have been the object which it was intended to fulfil when its presence
+was commanded. A large force of horse was essential, if Bocchus was to
+be paralysed and the border country swept clear of the enemy. The cloud
+that was to burst from Mauretania was not the only chance that could be
+foretold; it was the issue to be dreaded, if all plans at prevention
+failed; but it was one that might possibly be averted by the presence of
+a commanding force in the border regions.
+
+It had taken nearly a year to collect and transport from Italy the
+cavalry force that now entered the camp of Marius. The reason why Italy
+and not Africa was chosen as the recruiting ground is probably to be
+found in the lack of confidence which the Romans felt even in those
+Numidians who professed a friendly attitude; otherwise cheapness and
+even efficiency might seem to have dictated the choice of native
+contingents, although it is possible that, as a defensive force, the
+tactical solidarity of the Italians gave them an advantage even over the
+Numidian horse. The Latins and Italian allies had furnished the troopers
+that had lately landed on African soil,[1138] perhaps not at the port of
+Utica, but at some harbour on the west, for the time consumed by Marius
+in the march to his present position, even had not his campaign been
+planned in winter quarters, would have given him an opportunity to send
+notice of his whereabouts to the leader of the auxiliary force. This
+leader was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who had spent nearly the whole of the
+first year of his quaestorship in beating up on Italian soil the troops
+of horsemen which he now led into the camp. In comparison with the
+arrival of the force that of the quaestor was as nothing; yet the advent
+of such a subordinate was always a matter of interest to a general.
+Tradition had determined that the ties between a commander and his
+quaestor should be peculiarly close; the superior was responsible for
+every act of the minor official whom the chance of the lot might thrust
+upon him; if his subordinate were capable, he was the chosen delegate
+for every delicate operation in finance, diplomacy, jurisdiction, or
+even war: if he were incapable, he might be dismissed,[1139] but could
+not be neglected, for he was besides the general the only man in the
+province holding the position of a magistrate, and was in titular rank
+superior even to the oldest and most distinguished of the legates.[1140]
+It was a matter of chance whether a government or a campaign was to be
+helped or hindered by the arrival of a new quaestor; and Marius, when he
+first heard of the man whom destiny had brought to his side, was
+inclined to be sceptical as to the amount of assistance which was
+promised by the new appointment.[1141] Apart from a remarkable personal
+appearance--an impression due to the keen blueness of the eyes, the
+clear pallor of the face, the sudden flush that spread at moments over
+the cheeks as though the vigour of the mind could be seen pulsing
+beneath the delicate skin[1142]--there was little to recommend Sulla to
+the mind of a hard and stern man engaged in an arduous and disappointing
+task. The new lieutenant had no military experience, he was the scion of
+a ruined patrician family, and, if the gossip of Rome were true, his
+previous life suggested the light-hearted adventurer rather than the
+student of politics or war. In his early youth he seemed destined to
+continue the later traditions of his family--those of an unaspiring
+temper or a careless indolence, which had allowed the consulship to
+become extinct in the annals of the race and had been long content with
+the minor prize of the praetorship. Even this honour had been beyond the
+reach of the father of Sulla; the hereditary claim to office had been
+completely broken, and the family fortune had sunk so low that there
+seemed little chance of the renewal of this claim. The present bearer of
+the name, the elder son of the house, had lived in hired rooms, and such
+slender means as he could command seemed to be employed in gratifying a
+passion for the stage.[1143] Yet this taste was but one expression of a
+genuine thirst for culture;[1144] and, whatever the opinion of men might
+be, this youth whose most strenuous endeavours were strangely mingled
+with a careless geniality and an appetite that never dulled for the
+pleasures of the senses and the flesh, had a wonderful faculty for
+winning the love of women. His father had made a second marriage with a
+lady of considerable means; and the affection of the step-mother, who
+seems to have been herself childless, was soon centred on her husband's
+elder son.[1145] At her death he was found to be her heir, and the
+fortune thus acquired was added to or increased by another that had also
+come by way of legacy from a woman. This benefactress was Nicopolis, a
+woman of Greek birth, whose transitory loves, which had Brought her
+wealth, were closed by a lasting passion for the man to Whom this wealth
+was given.[1146] The possession of this competence, which might have
+completed the wreck of the nerveless pleasure-seeker that Sulla seemed
+to be, proved the true steel of which the man was made. The first steps
+in his political career gave the immediate lie to any theory of wasted
+opportunities. He had but exceeded by a year or two the minimum age for
+office when he was elected to the quaestorship; he was but thirty-one
+when he was scouring Italy for recruits;[1147] a year later he had
+entered Marius's camp near the Muluccha with his host of cavalry. A very
+brief experience was sufficient to convert the general's prejudice into
+the heartiest approval of his new officer. Any spirit of emulation which
+Sulla possessed was but shown in action and counsel; none could outstrip
+him in prowess and forethought, yet all that he did seemed to be the
+easy outcome either of opportunity or of a ready wit which charmed
+without startling: and he was never heard to breathe a word which
+reflected on the conduct of the pro-consul or his staff. Over the petty
+officers and the soldiers he attained the immediate triumph which
+attends supreme capacity combined with a facile temper and a sense of
+humour. His old companions of the stage had been perhaps his best
+instructors in the art of moulding the will of the common man. He had
+the right address for every one; a grumble was met by a few kind words;
+a roar of laughter was awakened by a ready jest, and its recipient was
+the happier for the day. When help was wanted, his resources seemed
+boundless; yet he never gave as though he expected a return, and the
+idea of obligation was dismissed with a shrug and a smile.[1148] Sulla
+was not one of the clumsy intriguers who laboriously lay up a store of
+favour and are easily detected in the attempt. He was a terrible man
+because his insight and his charm were a part of his very nature, as
+were also the dark current of ambition, scarcely acknowledged even by
+its possessor, and the surging tides of passion, carefully dammed by an
+exquisitely balanced intellect into a level stream, on which crowds
+might float and believe themselves to be victims or agents of an
+overmastering principle, not of a single man's caprice.
+
+The capacity of every officer in Marius's army was soon to be put to an
+effective test; for the coalition of Jugurtha and Bocchus, which the
+campaign might have been meant to prevent, turned out to be its
+immediate result. The Moor was still hesitating between peace and
+war--looking still, it may be, for another bid from the representative
+of Rome, and waiting for the moment when he might compel the attention
+of Metellus's rude successor, who preferred the precautions of war to
+those of diplomacy--when the Numidian king, in despair at this ruinous
+passivity and at the loss of the magnificent strategic chance that was
+being offered by the enemy, approached his father-in-law with the
+proposal that the cession of one-third of Numidia should be the price of
+his assistance. The cession was to take effect, either if the Romans
+were driven out of Africa, or if a settlement was reached with Rome
+which left the boundaries of Numidia intact.[1149] Bocchus may not have
+credited the likelihood of the realisation of the first alternative; but
+combined action might render the second possible, and even if that
+failed, his chances of a bargain with Rome were not decreased by
+entering on a policy of hostility which might be closed at the opportune
+moment. For the time, however, he played vigorously for Jugurtha's
+success. His troops of horsemen poured over the border to join the
+Numidian force, and the combined armies moved rapidly to the east to
+encompass the columns of Marius, that had just begun their long march to
+the site which had been chosen for winter quarters.
+
+The object of the Roman general was to keep in touch with the sea for
+the purpose of facilitating the supply of his army. But we cannot say
+whether his original choice was a station so distant as the
+neighbourhood of Cirta,[1150] or whether his movement in this direction,
+which severed him by some hundreds of miles from the region which he had
+lately commanded, was a measure forced on him by the danger to which his
+army was exposed in the distant west from the overwhelming forces of the
+enemy. He had at any rate covered a great stretch of territory before he
+actually came into touch with the combined forces of Bocchus and
+Jugurtha; for the almost continuous fighting that ensued, when once the
+armies had come into contact, seems all to have been confined to the
+last few days before Cirta was reached and to a period of time which
+could have formed but a small fraction of the whole duration of the
+march. The first attack was planned for the closing hours of the
+day.[1151] The advent of night would be of advantage to the native force
+whether they were victorious or defeated. In the first case their
+knowledge of the ground would enable them to follow up their success, in
+the second their retreat would be secured. Under all circumstances a
+struggle in the darkness must increase the difficulties of the Romans. A
+complete surprise was impossible, for Marius's scouting was good, and
+from all directions horsemen dashed up to tell him the enemy was at
+hand. But the quarter from which such an attack would be aimed could not
+be determined, and so incredibly rapid were the movements of the Moorish
+and Gaetulian horse that scarcely had the last messenger ridden up when
+the Roman column was assailed on every side. The Roman army had no time
+to form in line, and anything approaching battle array was scorned by
+the enemy. They charged in separate squadrons, the formation of which
+seemed to be due to chance as much as to design; this desultory mode of
+attack enabled them to assail the Roman forces at every point and to
+prevent any portion of the men from acquiring the stability that might
+save the helplessness of the others; they harried the legionaries as
+they shifted their heavy baggage, drew their swords and hurried into
+line, and the cavalry soldiers as they strove to mount their frightened
+horses. Horse and foot were inextricably mixed, and no one could tell
+which was the van and which the rear of the surrounded army. The general
+fought like a common soldier, but he did not forget the duties of a
+commander. With his chosen troop of horse he rode up and down the field,
+detecting the weak points of his own men, the strong points of the
+enemy, lending a timely succour to the first and throwing his weight
+against the second.[1152] But it was the experience of the well-trained
+legionaries that saved the day. Schooled in such surprises, they began
+to form small solid squares, and against these barriers the impact of
+the light horsemen beat in vain.[1153] But night was drawing on--the
+hour which the allied kings had chosen as the crowning moment of their
+attack--and Marius was as fully conscious as his enemies how helpless
+the Roman force would be if such a struggle were protracted into the
+darkness. Fortunately the place of the attack had been badly chosen; the
+neighbouring ground did not present a wholly level expanse on which
+cavalry could operate at will. But a short distance from the scene of
+the fight two neighbouring hills could be seen to rise above the plain;
+the smaller possessed an abundant spring of water, the larger by its
+rugged aspect seemed to promise an admirable rampart for defence.[1154]
+It was impossible to withdraw the whole army to the elevation which
+contained the welcome stream, for its space did not permit of an
+encampment; but Marius instructed Sulla to seize it with the cavalry. He
+then began to draw his scattered infantry together, taking advantage of
+the disorder in the enemy which the last sturdy stand of the veterans
+had produced, and when the divisions were at last in touch with one
+another, he led the whole force at a quick march to the place which he
+had chosen for its retreat. The kings soon recognised that this retreat
+was unassailable; their plan of a night attack had failed; but they did
+not lose the hope that they held the Romans at their mercy. The fight
+had become a blockade; they would coop the Romans within their narrow
+limits, or force them to straggle on their way under a renewal of the
+same merciless assault. To have withstood the legions and occupied their
+ground, was itself a triumph for Gaetulians and Moors. They spread their
+long lines round either hill and lighted a great ring of watchfires; but
+their minds were set on passing the night in a manner conducive neither
+to sleep nor vigilance. They threw away their victory in a manner common
+to barbarism, which often lacks neither courage nor skill, but finds its
+nemesis in an utter lack of self-restraint. From the silent darkness of
+the ridge above the Romans could see, in the circles of red light thrown
+by the blazing watch-fires, the forms of their enemies in every attitude
+of careless and reckless joy; while the delirious howls of triumph which
+reached their ears, were a source, not of terror, but of hope. In the
+Roman camp no sound was heard; even the call of the patrol was hushed by
+the general's command.[1155] As the night wore on, the silence spread to
+the Plain below, but here it was the silence of the deep and profound
+sleep that comes on men wearied by the excesses of the night. Suddenly
+there was a terrific uproar. Every horn and trumpet in the Roman lines
+seemed to be alive, every throat to be swelling the clamour with
+ear-piercing yells. The Moors and Gaetulians, springing from the ground,
+found the enemy in their very midst. Where the slaughter ended, the
+pursuit began. No battle in the war had shown a larger amount of slain;
+for flight, which was the Numidian's salvation and the mockery of his
+foe, had been less possible in this conflict than in any which had
+gone before.
+
+Marius continued his march, but with precautions even greater than those
+which he had previously observed. He formed his whole army into a
+"hollow square" [1156]--in fact, a great oblong, arranged equally for
+defence on front, flanks, and rear, while the baggage occupied the
+centre. Sulla with the cavalry rode on the extreme right; on the left
+was Aulus Manlius with the slingers and archers and some cohorts of
+Ligurians; the front and rear were covered by light infantry selected
+from the legions under the command of military tribunes. Numidian
+refugees scoured the country around, their knowledge of the land giving
+them a peculiar value as a scouting force. The camp was formed with the
+same scrupulous care; whole cohorts formed from legionaries kept watch
+against the gates, fortified posts were manned at short distances along
+the enclosing mound, and squadrons of auxiliary cavalry moved all night
+before the ramparts. Marius was to be seen at all points and at all
+hours, a living example of vigilance not of distrust, a master in the
+art of controlling men, not by terror but by sharing in their toils.
+Four days had the march progressed and Cirta was reported to be not far
+distant, when suddenly an ominous but now familiar sight was seen.
+Scouts were riding in on every hand; all reported an enemy, but none
+could say with certainty the quarter from which he might appear.[1157]
+The present disposition of the Roman troops had made the direction of
+the attack a matter of comparatively little moment, and Marius called a
+halt without making any change in the order of his march. Soon the enemy
+came down, and Jugurtha, when he saw the hollow square, knew that his
+plan had been partly foiled. He had divided his own forces into four
+divisions; some of these were to engage the Roman van; but some at least
+might be able to throw themselves at the critical moment on the
+undefended rear of the Roman column, when its attention was fully
+engaged by a frontal attack.[1158]
+
+As things were, the Roman army presented no one point that seemed more
+assailable than another, and Jugurtha determined to engage with the
+Roman cavalry on the right, probably with the idea that by diverting
+that portion of the Roman force which was under the circumstances its
+strongest protecting arm, he might give an opportunity to his ally to
+lead that attack upon the rear which was to be the crowning movement of
+the day. His assault, which was directed near to the angle which the
+right flank made with the van, was anticipated rather than received by
+Sulla, who rapidly formed his force into two divisions, one for attack,
+the other for defence. The first he massed in dense squadrons, and at
+the head of these he charged the Moorish horse; the second stood their
+ground, covering themselves as best they could from the clouds of
+missiles that rose from the enemy's ranks, and slaughtering the daring
+horsemen that rode too near their lines. For a time it seemed as if the
+right flank and the van were to bear the brunt of the battle; the king
+was known to be there in person: and Marius, knowing what Jugurtha's
+presence meant, himself hastened to the front.
+
+But suddenly the chief point of the attack was changed. Bocchus had been
+joined by a force of native infantry, which his son Volux had just
+brought upon the field. It was a force that had not yet known defeat,
+for some delay upon the route had prevented it from taking part in the
+former battle. With this infantry, and probably with a considerable body
+of Moorish horse,[1159] Bocchus threw himself upon the Roman rear.
+Neither the general nor his chief officers were present with the
+division that was thus attacked; Marius and Sulla were both engrossed
+with the struggle at the other end of the right wing, and Manlius seems
+still to have kept his position on the left flank; the absence of an
+inspiring mind amongst the troops assailed, their ignorance of the fate
+of their distant comrades, moved Jugurtha to lend the weight of his
+presence and his words to the efforts of his fellow king. With a handful
+of horsemen he quitted the main force under his command and galloped
+down the whole length of the right wing, until he wheeled his horse
+amidst the front ranks of the struggling infantry. He raised a sword
+streaming with blood and shouted in the Latin tongue that Marius had
+already fallen by his hand, that the Romans might now give up the
+struggle. The suggestion conveyed by his words shook the nerves even of
+those who did not credit the horrifying news,[1160] while the presence
+of the king, here as everywhere, stirred the Africans to their highest
+pitch of daring. They pressed the wavering Romans harder than before,
+the battle at this point had almost become a rout, when suddenly a large
+body of Roman horse was seen to be bearing down on the right flank of
+the Moorish infantry. They were led by Sulla, whose vigorous attacks had
+scattered the enemy on the right wing; he could now employ his cavalry
+for other purposes, and the Moorish infantry shook beneath the flank
+attack, Jugurtha refused to see that the tide of victory had turned;
+with a reckless courage he still strove to weld together the shattered
+forces of the Moors and to urge them against the Roman lines; his own
+escape was a miracle; men fell to left and right of him, he was pressed
+on both sides by the Roman horse; at times he seemed almost alone amidst
+his foes; yet at the last moment he vanished, and the capture which
+would have ended the war was still beyond the reach of Roman skill and
+prowess.[1161] Sulla had saved the day, the advent of Marius was but
+needed to put the final touches to the victory. He had seen the cavalry
+on the right scatter beneath the charges of the Roman horse, and almost
+at the same moment news was brought him that his men were being driven
+back upon the rear. His succour was scarcely needed, but his presence
+gave an impulse to pursuit. The sight of the field when that pursuit was
+at its height, lived ever in the minds of those who shared in its glory
+and its horror. The sickening spectacle which a hard fought battle
+yields, was protracted in this instance by the vast vista of the plains.
+Wherever the eye could reach there were prostrate bodies of men and
+horses, whose only claim to life was the writhing agony of their wounds;
+on a stage dyed red with blood and strewn with the furniture of
+shattered weapons little moving groups could be seen. The figures of
+these puppets showed all the phases of helpless flight, violent pursuit,
+and pitiless slaughter.
+
+In spite of the carnage of this battlefield, victory here, as elsewhere
+throughout the war, meant little more than driving off the foe. We
+possess but a fragmentary record of this terrible retreat to Cirta, but
+it is certain that its dangers and losses were by no means exhausted in
+two pitched battles. A chance notice torn from its context[1162] tells
+of a third great contest which closed a long period of harassing
+attacks. Close to the walls of Cirta the Roman army was met by the two
+kings at the head of sixty thousand horse. The combatants were swathed
+in a cloud raised by the dust of battle, the Roman soldiers massed in a
+narrow space were such helpless victims of the missiles of the enemy
+that the Numidian and Moorish horsemen ceased to single out their
+targets, and threw their javelins at random into the crowded ranks with
+the certainty that each would find its mark. For three days was the
+running fight continued. A charge was impossible against the volleys of
+the foe, and retreat was cut off by the multitude of light horsemen that
+hemmed the army in on every side. In the last desperate effort which
+Marius made to free himself from the meshes of the kings, even the
+centre of his column shook under the hail of missiles that assailed it,
+and to the weapons of the enemy were soon added the terrors of blinding
+heat and intolerable thirst. Suddenly a storm broke over the warring
+hosts. It cooled the throats of the Romans and refreshed their limbs,
+while it lessened the power of their foes. The strapless javelins[1163]
+of the Numidians could not be hurled when wet, for they slipped from the
+hands of the thrower; their shields of elephants' hide absorbed water
+like a sponge and weighed down the arms on which they hung. The Moors
+and Numidians, seeing that even their means of defence had failed them,
+took to flight: but only to appear on another day with their army raised
+to ninety thousand and to repeat the attempt to surround the Roman host.
+This last effort ended in a signal victory for Marius. The forces of the
+two kings were not only defeated but almost destroyed.
+
+The events thus recorded can scarcely be regarded as mere variants of
+the two battles which we have previously described. Vague and rhetorical
+as is the account which sets them forth, it shows that there were
+traditions of suffering and loss endured by the army of Marius such as
+found no parallel in the campaign of his predecessor. Marius had
+attempted what Metellus had never dared--a campaign in the far west of
+Numidia. Its results were fruitless successes of the paladin type
+followed by a burdensome and disastrous retreat. The west was lost, the
+east was threatened, yet the lesson was not without its fruit. The
+general when he reached the walls of Cirta had lost something of his
+hardy faith in the use of blood and iron; he was more ready to appeal to
+the motives which make for peace, to pretend a trust he did not feel, to
+make promises which might induce the fluid treachery of Bocchus to
+harden into a definite act of treason to his brother king, above all, to
+lean on some other man who could play the delicate game of diplomatic
+fence with a cunning which his own straightforward methods could not
+attain. Everything depended on the attitude of the King of Mauretania;
+and here again the campaign had not been without some healthful
+consequences. If the Romans had gained no material advantage, Bocchus
+had suffered some very material losses. His forces had been cut up, the
+stigma of failure attached (perhaps for the first time) to their leader,
+the first contact with the Romans had not been encouraging to his
+subjects. And the campaign may also have revealed the difficulty, if not
+the hopelessness, of Jugurtha's cause. The plan of driving the Romans
+from Africa could not be perfected even with the combined forces of the
+two kingdoms at their fullest strength; however much they might harass,
+they had proved themselves utterly unable to attain such a success as
+even the most complacent patriotism could name a victory; while the
+sturdiness of the resistance of Rome seemed to banish the hypothesis
+that Jugurtha would be included in any terms that might be made. Yet the
+campaign had left Bocchus in an excellent position for negotiation. He
+had shown that Mauretania was a great make-weight in the scale against
+Rome; he had advertised his power as an enemy, his value as an ally; now
+was the time to see whether the power and the value, so long ignored,
+would be appreciated by Rome.
+
+But five days are said to have elapsed since the last great conflict
+with the Moors when envoys from Bocchus waited on Marius in his winter
+quarters at Cirta.[1164] The request which they brought was that "two of
+the Roman general's most trusty friends should wait on the king, who
+desired to speak with them on a matter of interest to himself and the
+Roman people".[1165] Marius forthwith singled out Sulla and Manlius, who
+followed the envoys to the place of meeting that had been arranged. On
+the way it was agreed by the representatives of Rome that they should
+not wait for the king to open the discussion. Hitherto every proposal
+had come from Bocchus; he had been played with, but never given a
+straightforward answer, still less a sign of real encouragement. Yet no
+good could be gained by expecting the king to assume a grovelling
+attitude, by forcing him to begin proposals for peace with a confession
+of his own humiliation. It would be far wiser if the commissioners
+opened with a few spontaneous remarks which might restore rest and
+dignity to the royal mind. Manlius the elder readily yielded the place
+of first speaker to the more facile Sulla. If the words which history
+has attributed to the quaestor[1166] were really used by him, they are a
+record of one of those rare instances in which a diplomatist is able to
+tell the naked truth. Sulla began by dwelling on the joy which he and
+his friends derived from the change in Bocchus's mind--from the
+heaven-sent inspiration which had taught the king that peace was
+preferable to war. He then dwelt on the fact, which he might have
+adduced the whole of his country's history to prove, that Rome had been
+ever keener in the search for friends than subjects, that the Republic
+had ever deemed voluntary allegiance safer than that compelled by force.
+He showed that Roman friendship might be a boon, not a burden, to
+Bocchus; the distance of his kingdom from the capital would obviate a
+conflict of interests, but no distance was too great to be traversed by
+the gratitude of Rome. Bocchus had already seen what Rome could do in
+war; all that he needed to learn was the still greater lesson that her
+generosity was as unconquerable as her arms. Sulla's words were a
+genuine statement of the whole theory of the Protectorate, as it was
+held and even acted on at this period of history. As a proof of the
+ruinous lengths to which Roman generosity might proceed, he could have
+pointed to the Numidian war now in the sixth year of its disastrous
+course. The darker side of the Protectorate--the rapacity of the
+individual adventurer--was no creation of the government, and needed not
+to be reproduced on the canvas of the bright picture which he drew. The
+hopes held out to Bocchus were genuine enough; the burden of his
+alliance was but slight, its security immense.
+
+The king seemed impressed by the gracious overtures of the
+commissioners. His answer was not only friendly, but apologetic.[1167]
+He urged that he had not taken up arms in any spirit of hostility to
+Rome, but simply for the purpose of defending his own frontiers. He
+claimed that the territory near the Muluccha, which had been harried by
+Marius, did not belong to Jugurtha at all. He had expelled the Numidian
+king from this region and it was his by the right of war. He appealed
+finally to the fact of his own former embassy to Rome: he had made a
+genuine effort to secure her friendship, but this had been
+repulsed.[1168] He was, however, willing to forget the past; and, if
+Marius permitted, he would like to send a fresh embassy to the senate.
+This last request was provisionally granted by the commissioners;
+Bocchus, in making it, showed a wise and, in consideration of some of
+the events of this very war, a natural sense of the insecurity of the
+promises made by Roman commanders, at the same time as he exhibited a
+justifiable faith in a word once given by the great organ of the
+Republic. Yet, when the commissioners had taken their departure, his old
+hesitancy seemed to revive. He consented at least to listen to those of
+his advisers who still urged the claims of Jugurtha.[1169] They had
+raised their voices again, either at the time when the Roman
+commissioners were waiting on Bocchus, or immediately after their
+departure; for Jugurtha had no sooner learnt of his father-in-law's
+renewed negotiations with Rome than he had used every means (amongst
+others, we are told, that of costly gifts) to induce his Mauretanian
+supporters to advocate his cause.
+
+A further stage in the negotiations was reached before the winter season
+was over, although it is probable that, at the time when this next step
+was taken by the Mauretanian king, the new year had been passed and the
+advent of spring was not far off. Marius, who was not fettered in his
+operations by respect for the traditional seasons which were deemed
+suitable to a campaign, had started with some flying columns of infantry
+and a portion of the cavalry to some desert spot, with a view to besiege
+a fortress still held by Jugurtha, and garrisoned by all the deserters
+from the Roman army who were now in the king's service. Sulla had been
+left with the usual title of pro-praetor to represent his absent
+commander. To the headquarters of the winter camp[1170] Bocchus now sent
+five of his closest friends, men chosen for their approved loyalty and
+ability.[1171] His last access of hesitancy, if it were more than a
+semblance, had certainly been shortlived, and the envoys were given full
+powers to arrange the terms of peace. They had set out with all speed to
+reach the Roman winter camp, but their journey had been long and
+painful. They had been seized and plundered on the route by Gaetulian
+brigands, and now appeared panic-stricken and in miserable plight before
+the representative of Rome. Stripped of their credentials and the
+symbols of their high office, they expected to be treated as vagrant
+impostors from a hostile state; Sulla received them with the lavish
+dignity that might be the due of princes. The simple nomads felt the
+charm and the surprise of this first glimpse of the public manners of
+Rome. Was it possible that these kindly and courteous men were the
+spoilers of the world? The rumour must be the false invention of the
+enemies of the bounteous Republic. The untrained mind rapidly argues
+from the part to the whole, and Sulla's tact had done a great service to
+his country. He had also established a claim on the Mauretanian
+king,[1172] and this personal tie was not to be without its
+consequences.
+
+The envoys revealed to the quaestor the instructions of their master,
+and asked his help and advice in the mission that lay before them. They
+dwelt with pardonable pride on the wealth, the magnificence, and the
+honour of their king, and dilated on every point in which the alliance
+with such a potentate was likely to serve the cause of Rome.[1173] Sulla
+promised them the plenitude of his help; he instructed them in the mode
+in which they should address Marius, in which they should approach the
+senate, and continued to be their host for forty days, until his
+commander was ready to listen to their proposals and forward them on
+their way. When Marius returned to Cirta after the successful completion
+of his brief campaign, and heard of the arrival of the envoys, he asked
+Sulla to bring them[1174] to his quarters, and made preparations for
+assembling as formal a council as the resources of the province
+permitted. A praetor happened to be within its limits and several men of
+senatorial rank. All these sat to listen to the proposals made by
+Bocchus. The verdict of the council was in favour of the genuineness of
+the king's appeal, and the proconsul granted the envoys permission to
+make their way to Rome. They asked an armistice for their king[1175]
+until the mission should be completed. Loud and angry voices were heard
+in protest--the voices of the narrow and suspicious men who are haunted
+by the fixed conviction that a request for a cessation of hostilities is
+always a treacherous attempt at renewed preparations for war. But Sulla
+and the majority of the board supported the request of the envoys, and
+the wiser counsel at length prevailed. The embassy now divided; two of
+its members returned to their king, while three were escorted to Rome by
+Cnaeus Octavius Ruso, a quaestor who had brought the last instalment of
+pay for the army and was ready for his return homewards. The language of
+the envoys before the Roman senate assumed the apologetic tone which had
+been suggested by Sulla. Their king, they said, had erred; Jugurtha had
+been the cause of this error. Their master asked that Rome should admit
+him to treaty relations with herself, that she should call him her
+friend. It is not impossible that these negotiations had a secret
+history; that Bocchus was told of some very material reward that he
+might expect, if Jugurtha were surrendered. But the assumption is not
+necessary. The magic of the name of Rome had fired the imagination of
+the African king at the commencement of the struggle; now that his fears
+were quieted, the end, in whatever form it was attained, may have seemed
+supremely desirable in itself. His envoys had been schooled by Sulla to
+expect much more than was promised and to read the senate's words
+aright. Certainly, if a prize had been offered for Bocchus's fidelity,
+the offer was carefully concealed. The official form in which the
+government accepted the petitioner's request, granted a free pardon and
+expressed a cold probation. "The senate and Roman people (so ran the
+resolution) are used to be mindful of good service and of wrongs. Since
+Bocchus is penitent for the past, they excuse his fault. He will be
+granted a treaty and the name of friend, when he has proved that he
+deserves the grant." [1176]
+
+When Bocchus received this answer, he despatched a letter to Marius
+asking that Sulla should be sent to advise with him on the matters that
+touched the common interests of himself and Rome.[1177] It was tolerably
+clear what the subject of interest was. If it could be made "common,"
+the end of the war had been reached. Sulla was despatched, and the final
+triumph, if attained, would be that of the diplomatist, not of the
+soldier. The quaestor was accompanied by an escort of cavalry, slingers,
+and archers, and a cohort of Italians bearing the weapons of a
+skirmishing force; for the adventures of Bocchus's envoys had shown the
+insecurity of the route. On the fifth day of the march, a large body of
+horse was seen approaching from a distance--a force that looked larger
+and more threatening than it afterwards proved to be; for it rode in
+open order, and the wild evolutions of the horsemen seemed to be the
+preliminary to an attack. Sulla's escort sprang to their arms; but the
+returning scouts soon removed all sense of fear. The approaching band of
+cavalry proved to be but a thousand strong and their leader to be Volux
+the son of Bocchus. The prince saluted Sulla and told him that he had
+been sent to meet and escort him to the presence of the king. For two
+days the combined forces advanced together, and there were no adventures
+by the road; but on the evening of the second day, when their resting
+place had been already chosen, the Moorish prince came hastily to Sulla
+with a look of perplexity on his face. He said that his scouts had just
+informed him that Jugurtha was close at hand, he entreated Sulla to join
+him in flight from the camp while it was yet night.[1178] The request
+was met by an indignant refusal; Sulla pointed to his men, whose lives
+might be sacrificed by the disgraceful disappearance of their leader.
+But, when Volux shifted his ground and merely insisted on the utility of
+a march by night from the dangerous neighbourhood, the quaestor yielded
+assent. He ordered that the soldiers should take their evening meal, and
+that a large number of fires should be lit which were to be left burning
+in the deserted camp. At the first watch the Moors and Romans stole
+silently from the lines. The dawn found them jaded, heavy with sleep,
+and longing for rest. Sulla was supervising the measurement of a camp,
+when some Moorish horsemen galloped up with the news that Jugurtha was
+but two miles in advance of their position. It was clear that the
+anxious Numidian was watching their every movement; the question to be
+answered was "Was Prince Volux in the plot?" The facts seemed dark
+enough to justify any suspicion. The nerves of the Romans had been
+shaken by the unknown danger which had forced them to leave their camp,
+by the night of sleepless watchfulness which had followed its
+abandonment. A panic was the inevitable result, and panic leads to fury.
+Voices were raised that the Moorish traitor should be slain, and that,
+if the fruit of his treason was reaped, he at least should not be
+allowed to see it. Sulla himself was weighed down with the same
+suspicion that animated his men, but he would not allow them to lay
+violent hands on the Moor.[1179] He encouraged them as best he might,
+then he turned with a passionate protest on his dubious companion. He
+called the protecting god of his own race, the guardian of its
+international honour, Jupiter Maximus, to witness the crime and perfidy
+of Bocchus, and he ordered Volux to leave his camp. The unhappy prince
+was probably in a state of genuine terror of Jugurtha, of complete
+uncertainty as to the intentions of that jealous kinsman and ally. Even
+had Volux known that his father Bocchus wished to play a double game, to
+balance the helplessness of Sulla against that of Jugurtha, to hold two
+valuable hostages in his hands at once, how could he be certain that
+Jugurtha would be content to play the part of a mere pawn in the king's
+game, to be dependent for his safety on the passing whim of a man whom
+he distrusted? Jugurtha might have everything to gain by massacring the
+Romans and seizing Sulla. The act would compromise Bocchus hopelessly in
+the eyes of the Roman government. There was hardly a man that would not
+believe in his treason, and from that time forth Bocchus would have no
+choice but to be the firm ally of Numidia against the vengeance of Rome.
+Yet, if Volux acted or spoke as though he believed in the possibility of
+this issue, he might seem to be incriminating his father and himself, he
+might seem to deserve the stern rebuke of Sulla and the order of
+expulsion from the Roman camp. His fears must therefore be concealed and
+he must profess a confidence which he did not feel. With tears which may
+have expressed a genuine emotion, he entreated Sulla not to harbour the
+unworthy suspicion. There had been no preconcerted treachery; the danger
+was at the most the product of the cunning of Jugurtha, who had
+discovered their route. Volux implied that the object of the Numidian's
+movement was to compromise the Moorish government in the eyes of Sulla;
+but he stated his emphatic belief that Jugurtha would, or could, do no
+positive hurt to the Roman envoy or his retinue. He pointed out that the
+king had no great force at his command, and (what was more important
+still) that he was now wholly dependent on the favour of his
+father-in-law. It was incredible, he maintained, that Jugurtha would
+attempt any overt act of hostility, when the son of Bocchus was present
+to be a witness to the crime. Their best plan would be to show their
+indifference to his schemes, to ride in broad daylight through the
+middle of his camp. If Sulla wished, he would send on the Moorish
+escort, or leave it where it was and ride with him alone.
+
+It was one of those situations which are the supreme tests of the
+qualities of a man. Sulla knew that his life depended on the caprice, or
+the momentary sense of self-interest, of a barbarian who was believed to
+have shrunk from no crime and on whose head Rome had put a price. Yet he
+did not hesitate. He passed with Volux through the lines of Jugurtha's
+camp, and the desperate Numidian never stirred. What motive held his
+hand was never known; it may have been that Jugurtha never intended
+violence; yet the failure of his plan of compromising Bocchus might well
+have stirred such a ready man to action; it may have been that he still
+relied on his influence with the Mauretanian king, which was perpetuated
+by his agents at the court. But some believed that his inaction was due
+to surprise, and that the transit of Sulla through the hostile camp was
+one of those actions which are rendered safe by their very
+boldness.[1180]
+
+In a few days the travellers had reached the spot where Bocchus held his
+court. The secret advocates of Numidia and Rome were already in
+possession of the king.[1181] Jugurtha's representative was Aspar, a
+Numidian subject who had been sent by his master as soon as the news had
+been brought of Bocchus's demand for the presence of Sulla. He had been
+sent to watch the negotiations and, if possible, to plead his monarch's
+cause. The advocate of Rome was Dabar, also a Numidian but of the royal
+line and therefore hostile to Jugurtha. He was a grandson of Masinissa,
+but not by legitimate descent, for his father had been born of a
+concubine of the king.[1182] His great parts had long recommended him to
+Bocchus, and his known loyalty to Rome made him a useful intermediary
+with the representative of that power. He was now sent to Sulla with the
+intimation that Bocchus was ready to meet the wishes of the Roman
+people; that he asked Sulla himself to choose a day, an hour and a place
+for a conference; that the understanding, which already existed between
+them, remained wholly unimpaired. The presence of a representative of
+Jugurtha at the court should cause no uneasiness. This representative
+was only tolerated because there was no other means of lulling the
+suspicion of the Numidian king. We do not know what Sulla made of this
+presentment of the case; but somewhere in the annals of the time there
+was to be found an emphatic conviction that Bocchus was still playing a
+double game, that he was still revolving in his mind the respective
+merits of a surrender of Jugurtha to the Romans and of Sulla to
+Jugurtha;[1183] that his fears prompted the first step, his inclinations
+the second, and that this internal struggle was waged throughout the
+whole of the tortuous negotiations which ensued.
+
+Sulla, in accepting the promised interview, replied that he did not
+object to the presence of Jugurtha's legate at the preliminaries; but
+that most of what he wished to say was for the king's ear alone, or at
+least for those of a very few of his most trusted counsellors. He
+suggested the reply that he expected from the king, and after a short
+interval was led into Bocchus's presence. At this meeting he gave the
+barest intimation of his mission; he had been sent, he said, by the
+proconsul[1184] to ask the king whether he intended peace or war. It had
+been arranged that Bocchus should make no immediate answer to this
+question, but should reserve his reply for another date. The king now
+adjourned the audience to the tenth day, intimating that on that day his
+intention would be decided and his reply prepared. Sulla and Bocchus
+both retired to their respective camps; but the king was restless, and
+at a late hour of that very night a message reached Sulla entreating an
+immediate and secret interview. No one was present but Dabar, the trusty
+go-between, and interpreters whose secrecy was assured. The narrative of
+this momentous meeting[1185] is therefore due to Sulla, whose fortunate
+possession of literary tastes has revealed a bit of secret history to
+the world. The king began with some complimentary references to his
+visitor, an acknowledgment of the great debt that he owed him, a hope
+that his benefactor would never be weary of attempting to exhaust his
+boundless gratitude. He then passed to the question of his own future
+relations with Rome. He repeated the assertion, which he had made on the
+occasion of Sulla's earlier visit, that he had never made, or even
+wished for, war with the people of Rome, that he had merely protected
+his frontiers against armed aggression. But he was willing to waive the
+point. He would impose no hindrance to the Romans waging war with
+Jugurtha in any way they pleased. He would not press his claim to the
+disputed territory east of the Muluccha. He would be content to regard
+that river, which had been the boundary between his own kingdom and that
+of Micipsa, as his future frontier. He would not cross it himself nor
+permit Jugurtha to pass within it. If Sulla had any further request to
+urge, which could be fairly made by the petitioner and honourably
+granted by himself, he would not refuse it.
+
+A strict and safe neutrality was the tentacle put out by Bocchus. The
+only shadow of a positive service by which he proposed to deserve the
+alliance of Rome, was the abandonment of a highly disputable claim to a
+part of Jugurtha's possessions. It was certainly time to bring the
+monarch to the real point at issue, and Sulla pressed it home. He began
+by a brief acknowledgment of the complimentary references which the king
+had made to himself, and then indulged in some plain speaking as to the
+expectations which the Roman government had formed of their would-be
+ally.[1186] He pointed out that the offers made by Bocchus were scarcely
+needed by Rome. A power that possessed her military strength would not
+be likely to regard them in the light of favours. Something was expected
+which could be seen to subserve the interests of Rome far more than
+those of the king himself. The service was patent. He had Jugurtha in
+his power; if he handed him over to Rome, her debt would certainly be
+great, and it would be paid. The recognition of friendship, the treaty
+which he sought, and the portion of Numidia which he claimed--all these
+would be his for the asking. The king drew back; he urged the sacred
+bonds of relationship, the scarce less sacred tie of the treaty which
+bound him to his son-in-law; he emphasised the danger to himself of such
+a flagrant breach of faith. It might alienate the hearts of his
+subjects, who loved Jugurtha and hated the name of Rome.[1187] But Sulla
+continued to press the point; the king's resistance seemed to give way,
+and at last he promised to do everything that his persistent visitor
+demanded. It was agreed, however, between the two conspirators that it
+was necessary to preserve a semblance of peaceful relations with
+Jugurtha. A pretence must be made of admitting him to the terms of the
+convention; this would be a ready bait, for he was thoroughly tired of
+the war. Sulla agreed to this arrangement as the only means of
+entrapping his victim; to Bocchus it may have had another significance
+as well; it still left his hands free.
+
+The next day witnessed the beginning of the machinations that were to
+end in the sacrifice of a Numidian king or a Roman magistrate. Bocchus
+summoned Aspar, the agent of Jugurtha, and told him that a communication
+had been received from Sulla to the effect that terms might be
+considered for bringing the war to a close; he therefore asked the
+legate to ascertain the views of his sovereign.[1188] Aspar departed
+joyfully to the headquarters of Jugurtha, who was now at a considerable
+distance from the scene of the negotiations. Eight days later he
+returned with all speed, bearing a message for the ear of Bocchus.
+Jugurtha, it appeared, was willing to submit to any conditions. But he
+had little confidence in Marius. It had often happened that terms of
+peace sanctioned by Roman generals had been declared invalid. But there
+was a way of obtaining a guarantee. If Bocchus wished to secure their
+common interests and to enjoy an undisputed peace, he should arrange a
+meeting of all the principals to the agreement, on the pretext of
+discussing its terms. At that meeting Sulla should be handed over to
+Jugurtha. There could be no doubt that the possession of such a hostage
+would wring the consent of the senate and people to the terms of the
+treaty; for it was incredible that the Roman government would leave a
+member of the nobility, who had been captured while performing a public
+duty, in the power of his foes.
+
+Bocchus after some reflection consented to this course. Then, as later,
+it was a disputed question whether the king had even at this stage made
+up his mind as to his final course of action.[1189] When the time and
+place for the meeting had been arranged, the nature of the treachery was
+still uncertain. At one moment the king was holding smiling converse
+with Sulla, at another with the envoy of Jugurtha. Precisely the same
+promises were made to both; both were satisfied and eager for the
+appointed day. On the evening before the meeting Bocchus summoned a
+council of his friends; then the whim took him that they should be
+dismissed, and he passed some time in silent thought. Before the night
+was out he had sent for Sulla, and it was the cunning of the Roman that
+set the final toils for the Numidian. At break of day the news was
+brought that Jugurtha was at hand. Bocchus, attended by a few friends
+and the Roman quaestor, advanced as though to do him honour, and halted
+on some rising ground which put the chief actors in the drama in full
+view of the men who lay in ambush. Jugurtha proceeded to the same spot
+amidst a large retinue of his friends; it had been agreed that all the
+partners to the conference should come unarmed.[1190] A sign was given,
+and the men of the ambuscade had sprung from every side upon the mound.
+Jugurtha's retinue was cut down to a man; the king himself was seized,
+bound and handed over to Sulla. In a short while he was the prisoner
+of Marius.
+
+Every one had long known that the war would be closed with the capture
+of the king. Marius could leave for other fields and dream other dreams
+of glory. But even the utter collapse of resistance in Numidia did not
+obviate the necessity for a considerable amount of detailed labour,
+which absorbed the energy of the commander during the closing months of
+the year. Even when news had been brought from Rome that a grateful
+people had raised him to the consulship for the second time, and that a
+task greater than that of the Numidian war had been entrusted to his
+hand,[1191] he did not immediately quit the African province, and it is
+probable that at least the initial steps of the new settlement of
+Numidia determined by the senate, were taken by him. The settlement was
+characteristic of the imperialism of the time. The government declined
+to extend the evils of empire westward and southward, to make of
+Mauretania another Numidia, and to enter on a course of border warfare
+with the tribes that fringed the desert. It therefore refused to
+recognise Numidia as a province. In default of an abler ruler, Gauda was
+set upon the throne of his ancestors;[1192] he had long had the support
+of Marius, and seems indeed to have been the only legitimate claimant.
+But he was not given the whole of the realm which had been swayed by
+Masinissa and Micipsa. The aspirations of Bocchus for an extension of
+the limits of Mauretania had to be satisfied, partly because it would
+have been ungenerous and impolitic to deprive of a reward that had been
+more than hinted at, a man who had violated his own personal
+inclinations and the national traditions of the subjects over whom he
+ruled, for the purpose of performing a signal service to Rome; partly
+because it would have been dangerous to the future peace of Numidia, and
+therefore of Rome, to leave the question of Bocchus's claims to
+territory east of the Muluccha unsettled, especially with such a ruler
+as Gauda on the throne. The western part of Numidia was therefore
+attached to the kingdom of Mauretania; nearly five hundred miles of
+coast line may have been transferred, and the future boundary between
+the two dominions may have been the port of Saldae on the west of the
+Numidian gulf.[1193] The wisdom of this settlement is proved by its
+success. Until Rome herself becomes a victim to civil strife, and her
+exiles or conquerors play for the help of her own subjects, Numidia
+ceases to be a factor in Roman politics. The mischief of interfering in
+dynastic questions had been made too patent to permit of the rash
+repetition of the dangerous experiment.
+
+In comparison with the settlement of Numidia, the ultimate fate of its
+late king was a matter of little concern. But Jugurtha had played too
+large a part in history to permit either the historian, or the lounger
+of the streets who jostled his neighbour for the privilege of gazing
+with hungry eyes at the visage and bearing of the terrible warrior, to
+be wholly indifferent to his end. The prisoner was foredoomed. Had he
+not for years been treated as an escaped criminal, not as a hostile
+king? If one ignored his outrages on his own race, had he not massacred
+Roman merchants, prompted the treacherous slaughter of a Roman garrison,
+and devised the murder of a client of the Roman people in the very
+streets of Rome? In truth, a formidable indictment might be brought
+against Jugurtha, nor was it the care of any one to discriminate which
+of the counts referred to acts of war, and which must be classed in the
+category of merely private crimes. It was sufficient that he was an
+enemy (which to the Roman mind meant traitor) who had brought death to
+citizens and humiliation to the State, and it is probable that, had the
+Numidian been the purest knight whose chivalrous warfare had shaken the
+power of Rome, he would have taken that last journey to the Capitol. It
+was the custom of Rome, and any derogation of the iron rule was an act
+of singular grace. The stupidity of the mob, which is closely akin to
+its brutality, was utterly unable to distinguish between the differences
+in conduct which are the result of the varying ethical standards of the
+races of the world, or even to balance the enormities committed by their
+own commanders against those which could be fastened on the enemy whom
+they had seized. And this lack of imagination was reflected in a
+cultured government, partly because their culture was superficial and
+they were still the products of the grim old school which had produced
+their ferocious ancestors, partly for reasons that were purely politic.
+The light hold which Rome held over her dependants, could only be
+rendered light by acts of occasional severity; the world must be made to
+see the consequences of rebellion against a sovereign. But the true
+justification for Roman rigour was not dependent on such considerations,
+which are often of a highly disputable kind, nearly so much as on the
+normal attitude of the Roman mind itself. Cruelty was but an expression
+of Roman patriotism; with characteristic consistency they applied much
+the same views to their citizens and their subjects, and their treatment
+of captured enemies was but one expression of the spirit which found
+utterance in their own terrible law of treason.
+
+When Marius celebrated his triumph on the 1st of January in the year
+which followed the close of the Numidian war,[1194] Jugurtha and his two
+sons walked before his chariot. While the pageant lasted, the king still
+wore his royal robes in mockery of his former state; when it had reached
+its bourne on the Capitol, the degradation and the punishment were
+begun. But it was believed by some that neither could now be felt, and
+that it was a madman that was pushed down the narrow stair which leads
+to the rock-hewn dungeon below the hill.[1195] His tunic was stripped
+from him, the golden rings wrested from his ears, and, as the son of the
+south[1196] stepped shivering into the well-like cavern, the cry "Oh!
+what a cold bath!" burst from his lips. Of the stories as to how the end
+was reached, the more detailed speaks of a protracted agony of six days
+until the prisoner had starved to death, his weakened mind clinging ever
+to the hope that his life might yet be spared.[1197]
+
+The minor prize of the Numidian war was a quantity of treasure including
+more than three thousand pounds' weight of gold and over five thousand
+of silver[1198]--which was shown in the triumph of Marius before it was
+deposited in the treasury. It was indeed the only permanent prize of the
+war which could be exhibited to the people; if one excepted two triumphs
+and the recognition of the merit of three officials, there was nothing
+else to show. It was difficult to justify the war even on defensive
+grounds, for it would have required a courageous advocate to maintain
+that the mere recognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia would have
+imperilled the Roman possessions in Africa; and, if the struggle had
+assumed an anti-Roman character, this result had been assisted, if not
+secured, by the tactics of the opposition which had systematically
+foiled every attempt at compromise. But a war, which it is difficult to
+justify and still more difficult to remember with satisfaction, may be
+the necessary result of a radically unsound system of administration:
+and the disasters which it entails may be equally the consequence of a
+military system, excellent in itself but ill-adapted to the
+circumstances of the country in which the struggle is waged. These are
+the only two points of view from which the Numidian war is remarkable on
+strategic or administrative grounds. The strategic difficulties of the
+task do nothing more than exhibit the wisdom of the majority of the
+senate, and of the earlier generals engaged in the campaign, in seeking
+to avoid a struggle at almost any cost. A military system is conditioned
+by the necessities of its growth; even that of an empire is seldom
+sufficiently elastic to be equally adapted to every country and equally
+capable of beating down every form of armed resistance. The Roman system
+had been evolved for the type of warfare which was common to the
+civilised nations around the Mediterranean basin--nations which employed
+heavily armed and fully equipped soldiers as the main source of their
+fighting strength, and which were forced to operate within a narrow
+area, on account of the possession of great centres of civilisation
+which it was imperative to defend. Its mobility was simply the mobility
+of a heavy force of infantry with a circumscribed range of action; in
+the days of its highest development it was still strikingly weak in
+cavalry. It had already shown itself an imperfect instrument for putting
+down the guerilla warfare of Spain; it had never been intended for the
+purposes of desert warfare, or to effect the pacification of nomad
+tribes extending over a vast and desolate territory. Even as the
+Parthian war of Trajan required the formation of what was practically a
+new army developed on unfamiliar lines, so the complete reorganisation
+of the Republican system would have been essential to the effective
+conquest of Numidia. The slight successes of this war, such as the
+taking of Thala and of Capsa and the victories near Cirta, were attained
+by judicious adaptations to the new conditions, by the employment of
+light infantry and the increased use of cavalry; but even these
+improvements were of little avail, for effective pursuit was still
+impossible, and without pursuit the conflict could not be brought to a
+close. The unkindness of the conditions almost exonerates the generals
+who blundered during the struggle, and to an unprejudiced observer the
+record of incompetence is slight. The fact that the inconclusive
+proceedings of Metellus and Marius were deemed successes, almost
+justifies the exploits of a Bestia, and even the crowning disaster of
+the war--the surprise of the army of Aulus Albinus--might have been the
+lot of a better commander opposed to an enemy so far superior in
+mobility and knowledge of the land. Most wars of this type are
+destructive of military reputations; the general is fortunate who can
+emerge as the least incapable of the host of blunderers. If we adopt
+this relative standard, one fortunate issue of the campaign may be held
+to be the discovery that Marius was not unworthy of his military
+reputation. The verdict, it is true, was not justified by positive
+results; but it was the verdict of the army that he led and as incapable
+of being ignored as all such judgments are. His leadership had been
+characterised at least by efficiency in detail, and this efficiency had
+been secured by gentle measures, by unceasing vigilance, by the
+cultivation of a true soldierly spirit, and by the untiring example of
+the commander. The courage of the innovator--a courage at once political
+and military--had also given Rome, in the mass of the unpropertied
+classes, a fathomless source from which she could draw an army of
+professional soldiers, if she possessed the capacity to use her
+opportunities.
+
+The political issues of the war were bound up with those which were
+strategic, both in so far as the hesitancy of the senate to enter on
+hostilities was based on a just estimate of the difficulties of the
+campaign, and in so far as the policy of smoothing over difficulties in
+a client state by diplomatic means, in preference to stirring up a
+hornet's nest by the thrust of the sword, was one of the traditional
+maxims of the Roman protectorate. But this second issue raised the whole
+of the great administrative question of the limits of the duties which
+Rome owed to her client kings. Such a question not infrequently suggests
+a conflict of duty with interest. The claims of Adherbal for protection
+against his aggressive cousin might be just, but even to many moderate
+men, not wholly vitiated by the maxims of a Machiavellian policy, they
+may have appeared intolerable. Was Rome to waste her own strength and
+stake the peace of the empire on a mere question of dynastic succession?
+Might it not be better to allow the rivals to fight out the question
+amongst themselves, and then to see whether the man who emerged
+victorious from the contest was likely to prove a client acceptable and
+obedient to Rome? There was danger in the course, no doubt: the danger
+inherent in a vicious example which might spread to other protected
+states; but might it not be a slighter peril than that involved in
+dethroning a ruler, who had proved his energy and ability, his
+familiarity with Roman ways, and his knowledge of Roman methods, above
+all, his possession of the confidence of the great mass of the Numidian
+people? Nay, it might be argued that Adherbal had by his weakness proved
+his unfitness to be an efficient agent of Rome. It might be asked
+whether such a man was likely to be an adequate representative of Roman
+interests in Africa, an adequate protector of the frontiers of the
+province. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the advocates of
+interference had something more than the claim of justice and the claim
+of prestige on their side. It was an undisputed fact that the division
+of power in Numidia, at the time when the question was presented to
+Rome, showed that Adherbal stood for civilisation and Jugurtha for
+barbarism. This was an issue that might not have been manifest at first,
+although any one who knew Numidia must have been aware that the military
+spirit of the country which was embodied in Jugurtha, was not
+represented in the coast cities with their trading populations drawn
+from many towns, but in the remote agricultural districts and the
+deserts of the west and south; but it was an issue recognised by the
+commissioners when they assigned the more civilised portion of the
+kingdom to Adherbal, and the territories, whose strength was the natural
+wealth and the manhood which they yielded, to his energetic rival; and
+it was one that became painfully apparent when Jugurtha led his
+barbarous hordes against Cirta, and when these hordes in the hour of
+victory slew every merchant and money-lender whom they could find in the
+town. It was this aspect of the question that ultimately proved the
+decisive factor in bringing on the war; for the claims of justice could
+now be reinforced by those of interest, and the interest which was at
+stake was that of the powerful moneyed class at Rome. It was this class
+that not only forced the government to war, but insisted on seeing the
+war through to its bitter end. It was this class that systematically
+hindered all attempts at compromise, that brandished its control of the
+courts in the face of every one who strove to temper war with hopes of
+peace, that tolerated Metellus until he proved too dilatory, and sent
+out Marius in the vain hope that he might show greater expedition. The
+close of the war was a singular satire on their policy, a remarkable
+proof of the justice of the official view. The end came through
+diplomacy, not through battle, through an unknown quaestor who belonged
+to the old nobility and possessed its best gifts of facile speech and
+suppleness in intrigue, not through the great "new man" who was to be a
+living example of what might be done, if the middle class had the making
+of the ministers of the State.
+
+But the moneyed class could hardly have developed the power to force the
+hand of the council of state, had it not been in union with the third
+great factor in the commonwealth, that disorganised mass of fluctuating
+opinion and dissipated voting power which was known as "the people." How
+came the Populus Romanus to be stirred to action in this cause, with the
+result that the balance of power projected by Caius Gracchus was again
+restored? Much of their excitement may have been the result of
+misrepresentation, of the persistent efforts made by the opposition to
+prove that all parleying with the enemy was tantamount to treason; more
+must have been due to the dishonouring news of positive disaster which
+marked a later stage of the war; but the mingled attitude of resentment
+and suspicion with which the people was taught to regard its council and
+its ministers, seems to have been due to the genuine belief that many of
+the former and nearly all of the latter were hopelessly corrupt. This
+darkest aspect of the Numidian war is none the less a reality if we
+believe that the individual charges of corruption were not well founded,
+and that they were mere party devices meant to mask a policy which would
+have been impossible without them. The proceedings of the Mamilian
+commission certainly commanded little respect even from the democrat of
+a later day; but it is with the suspicion of corruption, rather than
+with the justice of that suspicion in individual cases, that we are most
+intimately concerned. A political society must be tainted to the core,
+if bribery can be given and accepted as a serious and adequate
+explanation of the proceedings of its leading members. The suspicion was
+a condemnation of the State rather than of a class. It might be tempting
+to suppose that the disease was confined to a narrow circle (by a
+curious accident to the circle actually in power); but of what proof did
+such a supposition admit? The leaders of the people were themselves
+members of the senatorial order and scions of the nobility of office.
+Marius the "new man" might thunder his appeal for a purer atmosphere and
+a wider field; but it would be long, if ever, before the councils of the
+State would be administered by men who might be deemed virtuous because
+their ancestors were unknown.
+
+But for a time the view prevailed that the interests of the State could
+best be served by a combination of powerful directors of financial
+corporations with patriotic reformers, invested with the tribunate,
+struggling for higher office, and expressing their views of statecraft
+chiefly in the form of denunciations of the government. Such a coalition
+might form a powerful and healthy organ of criticism; but it could only
+become more by serving as a mere basis for a new executive power. As
+regards the nature of this power and even the necessity for its
+existence, the views of the discontented elements of the time were
+probably as indefinite as those of the adherents of Caius Gracchus. The
+Republican constitution was an accepted fact, and the senate must at
+least be tolerated as a necessary element in that constitution; for no
+one could dream of finding a coherent administration either in the
+Comitia or in the aggregate of the magistrates of the people. Now, as at
+all times since the Roman constitution had attained its full
+development, the only mode of breaking with tradition in order to secure
+a given end which the senate was supposed to have neglected, was to
+employ the services of an individual. There was no danger in this
+employment if the individual could be overthrown when his work had been
+completed, or when the senate had regained its old prestige. The leader
+elevated to a purely civil magistracy by the suffrages of the people was
+ever subject to this risk; if his personal influence outgrew the
+necessities of his task, if he ceased to be an agent and threatened to
+be a master, the mere suspicion of an aspiration after monarchy would
+send a shudder of reaction through the mass of men which had given him
+his greatness. As long as the cry for reform was based on the existence
+of purely internal evils, which the temporary power of a domestic
+magistracy such as the tribunate might heal, the breast even of the most
+timid constitutionalist did not deserve to be agitated by alarm for the
+security of the Republican government. But what if external dangers
+called for settlement, if the eyes of the mercantile classes and the
+proletariate were turned on the spectacle of a foreign commerce in decay
+and an empire in disorder, if the grand justification for the senate's
+authority--its government of the foreign dependencies of Rome--were
+first questioned, then tossed aside? Would not the Individual makeshift
+have in such a case as this to be invested with military authority?
+Might not his power be defended and perpetuated by a weapon mightier
+than the voting tablet? Might not his supporters be a class of men, to
+whom the charms of civil life are few, whose habits have trained them to
+look for inspiration to an individual, not to a corporation, still less
+to that abstraction called a constitution--of men not subjected to the
+dividing influences, or swayed by the momentary passions, of their
+fellows of the streets? In such a case might not the power of the
+individual be made secure, and what was this but monarchy?
+
+Such were the reflections suggested to posterity by the power which
+popularly-elected generals began to hold from the time of the Numidian
+war. But such were not the reflections of Marius and his contemporaries.
+There was no precedent and no contemporary circumstance which could
+suggest a belief in any danger arising from the military power. The
+experiment of bearding the senate by entrusting the conduct of a
+campaign to a popular favourite had been tried before, and, whether its
+immediate results were beneficial or the reverse, it had produced no
+ulterior effects. Whether the people had pinned its faith on men of the
+nobility such as the two Scipios, or on a man of the people like Varro,
+such agents had either retired from public life, confessed their
+incapacity, or returned to serve the State. The armies which such
+generals had led were composed of well-to-do men who, apart from the
+annoyance of the levy, had no ground of complaint against the
+commonwealth: and the change in the recruiting system which had been
+introduced by Marius, was much too novel and too partial for its
+consequences to be forecast. Nor could any one be expected to see the
+fundamental difference between the Rome of but two generations past and
+the Rome of the day--the difference which sprang from the increasing
+divergence of the interests of classes, and the consequent weakening of
+confidence in the one class which had "weathered the storm and been
+wrecked in a calm". Aristocracy is the true leveller of merit, but, if
+it lose that magic power by ceasing to be an aristocracy, then the turn
+of the individual has come.
+
+The fact that it was already coming may justify us in descending from
+the general to the particular and remarking that the question "Who
+deserved the credit of bringing the war with Jugurtha to an end?" soon
+excited an interest which appealed equally to the two parties in the
+State and the two personalities whom the close of the episode had
+revealed. It was natural that the success of Sulla should be exploited
+by resentful members of the nobility as the triumph of the aristocrat
+over the parvenu, of the old diplomacy and the old bureaucracy over the
+coarse and childish methods of the opposition; it was tempting to
+circulate the view that the humiliation of Metellus had been avenged,
+that the man who had slandered and superseded him had found an immediate
+nemesis in a youthful member of the aristocracy.[1199] Such a version,
+if it ever reached the ears of the masses, was heard only to be
+rejected; the man who had brought Jugurtha in chains to Rome must be his
+conqueror, and, even had this evidence been lacking, they did not intend
+to surrender the glory which was reflected from the champion whom they
+had created. Nor even in the circles of the governing class could this
+controversy be for the moment more than a matter for idle or malicious
+speculation. Hard fighting had to be done against the barbarians of the
+north, a reorganisation of the army was essential, and for both these
+purposes even they admitted that Marius was the necessary man. Even the
+two men who were most interested in the verdict were content to stifle
+for the time, the one the ambitious claim which was strengthened by a
+belief in its justice, the other the resentful repudiation, which would
+have been rendered all the more emphatic from the galling sense that it
+could not be absolute. In the coming campaigns against the Germans Sulla
+served first as legate and afterwards as military tribune in the army of
+his old commander.[1200] But his own conviction of the part which he had
+played in the Numidian war was expressed in a manner not the less
+irritating because it gave no reasonable ground for offence. He began
+wearing a signet ring, the seal of which showed Bocchus delivering
+Jugurtha into his hand.[1201] This emblem was destined to grate on the
+nerves of Marius in a still more offensive form, for thirteen years
+later, when his work had been done and his glory had begun to wane, Rome
+was given an unexpected confirmation of the truthfulness of the scene
+which it depicted. The King of Mauretania, eager to conciliate the
+people of Rome while he showed his gratitude to Sulla, sent as a
+dedicatory offering to the Capitol a group of trophy-bearing Victories
+who guarded a device wrought in gold, which showed Bocchus surrendering
+to Sulla the person of the Numidian king. Marius would have had it
+removed, but Sulla's supporters could now loudly assert the claim, which
+had been only whispered when the dark cloud of barbaric invasion hung
+over the State and the loyal belief of the people in Marius was
+quickened by their fears.[1202]
+
+Yet, although at the close of the Numidian war an appalling danger to
+the empire tended to perpetuate the coalition that had been formed
+between the mercantile classes and the proletariate, and to wring from
+the senate an acceptance of the new military genius with his plans for
+reform, there are clear indications which prove that an ebb of political
+feeling had been witnessed, even during the last three years--a turn of
+the tide which shows how utterly unstable the coalition against the
+senate would have been, had it not been reinforced by the continuance of
+disasters abroad. The first sign of the reaction was the flattering
+reception and the triumph of Metellus; and it may have been this current
+of feeling which decided the consular elections for the following year.
+The successful candidates were Caius Atilius Serranus and Quintus
+Servilius Caepio. Of these Serranus could trace his name back to the
+great Reguli of Carthaginian fame;[1203] the family to which he
+belonged, although plebeian, had figured amongst the ranks of the
+official nobility since the close of the fourth century, although it is
+known to have furnished the State with but five consuls since the time
+of Caius Regulus. The merit which Serranus possessed in the eyes of the
+voters who elevated him to his high office, was a puzzle to posterity;
+for such nobility as he could boast seemed the only compensation for the
+lack of intelligence which was supposed to characterise his utterances
+and his conduct.[1204] But, if we may judge from the resolution which he
+subsequently displayed in combating revolution at Rome,[1205] he was
+known to be a supporter of the authority of the senate, and his
+aristocratic proclivities may have led to his association with his more
+distinguished colleague Caepio. The latter belonged to a patrician clan,
+and to a branch of that clan which had lately clung to the highest
+political prizes with a tenacity second only to that of the Metelli.
+Caepio's great-grandfather, his grandfather, his father and his two
+uncles had all filled the consulship; and his own hereditary claim to
+that office had been rendered more secure by some good service in
+Lusitania, which had secured him a military reputation and the triumph
+which he enjoyed in the very year that preceded his candidature.[1206]
+His political sentiments may have been known before his election; but
+the very fact of his elevation to the consulship, and his appreciation
+of the direction in which the tide of public feeling seemed to be
+running, gave a definiteness to his views and a courage to his reforming
+conservatism, which must have surprised his supporters as well as his
+opponents, and may not have been altogether pleasing to the extreme
+members of the former party. It must have been believed that a rift was
+opening between the moneyed classes and the people, and that the latter,
+satisfied with their recent political triumph and reconciled by the
+honest passivity of the senate, were content to resume their old
+allegiance to the governing class. It must even have been held that a
+spirit of repentance and indignation could be awakened at the reckless
+and selfish use which the knights had made of the judicial power
+entrusted to their keeping, that the Mamilian commission could be
+represented as an outrage on the public conscience, and the ordinary
+cognisance of public crimes as a reign of terror intended merely to
+ensure the security of investments.[1207] The knights were to be
+attacked in their stronghold, and Caepio came forward with a new
+judiciary law. Two accounts of the scope of this measure have come down
+to us. According to the one, the bill proposed that jurisdiction in the
+standing criminal courts should be shared between the senators and the
+equites;[1208] according to the other, this jurisdiction was to be given
+to the senate.[1209] That the latter result was meant to be attained in
+some way by the law, is perhaps shown by the intense dislike which the
+equestrian order entertained in later times to any laudatory reference
+to the hated Servilian proposal:[1210] and, although a class which has
+possessed and perhaps abused a monopoly of jurisdiction, may object to
+seeing even a share of it given to their enemies and their victims, yet
+this resentment would be still more natural if the threatened
+transference of jurisdiction from their order was to be complete. But,
+in any case, we cannot afford to neglect the express testimony to the
+fact that the senate was to have possession of the courts; and the only
+method of reconciling this view with the other tradition of a partition
+of jurisdiction between the orders, is to suppose that Caepio attempted
+the effort suggested by Tiberius Gracchus, once advocated by his brother
+Caius,[1211] and subsequently taken up by the younger Livius Drusus, of
+increasing the senate by admitting a certain number of knights into that
+body, and giving the control of the courts to the members of this
+enlarged council. It may seem a strange and revolutionary step to
+attempt such a reform of the governing body of the State, whose
+membership and whose privileges were so jealously guarded, for the
+purpose of securing a single political end; it may seem at first sight
+as though the admission of a considerable number of the upper middle
+class to the power and prizes possessed by the privileged few, would be
+a shock even to a mildly conservative mind that had fed upon the
+traditions of the past. Yet a closer examination will reveal the truth
+that such a change would have meant a very slight modification in the
+temper and tendencies of the senate, and would have insured a very great
+increase in its security, whether it meant to govern well or ill, to
+secure its own advantages or those of its suffering subjects. In reality
+a very thin line parted the interests of the senators from those of the
+more distinguished members of the equestrian order. It was only when
+official probity or official selfishness came into conflict with
+capitalistic greed, that recrimination was aroused between the two heads
+of the body politic. But what if official power, under either of its
+aspects, could make a compromise with greed? The rough features of both
+might be softened; but, at the worst, a stronger, more permanent and, in
+the long run, more profitable monopoly of the good things of the empire
+would be the result of the union. The admission of wealthy capitalists
+could not be considered a very marked social detraction to the dignity
+of the order. The question of pedigree might be sunk in an amiable
+community of taste. In point of lavish expenditure and exotic
+refinement, in the taste that displayed itself in the patronage of
+literature, the collection of objects of art, the adornment of country
+villas, there was little to choose between the capitalist and the noble.
+And community of taste is an easy passage to community of political
+sentiment. Any one acquainted with the history of the past must have
+known that all efforts to temper the exclusiveness of the senatorial
+order had but resulted in an increase of the spirit of exclusiveness.
+The patrician council had in old days been stormed by a horde of
+plebeian chiefs; but these chiefs, when they had once stepped within the
+magic circle, had shown not the least inclination to permit their poorer
+followers to do the same. The successful Roman, practical, grasping,
+commercial and magnificently beneficent, ranking the glory of patronage
+as second only in point of worth to the possession and selfish use of
+power, scarcely attached a value even to the highest birth when deprived
+of its brilliant accessories, and had always found his bond of
+fellowship in a close community of interest with others, who helped him
+to hold a position which he might keep against the world. How much more
+secure would this position be, if the front rank of the assailants were
+enticed within the fortress and given strong positions upon the walls!
+They would soon drink into their lungs the strong air of possession,
+they would soon be stiffened by that electric rigidity which falls on a
+man when he becomes possessed of a vested interest. There was little
+probability that the knights admitted to the senate would continue to be
+in any real sense members of the equestrian order.
+
+But even to a senator who reckoned the increase of profit-sharers,
+whatever their present or future sentiments might be, as a loss to
+himself, the sacrifice involved in the proposed increase of the members
+of his order may have seemed well worthy of the cost. For how could
+power be exercised or enjoyed in the face of a hostile judicature? The
+knights had recently made foreign administration on the accepted lines
+not only impossible in itself, but positively dangerous to the
+administrator, and in all the details of provincial policy they could,
+if they chose, enforce their views by means of the terrible instrument
+which Caius Gracchus had committed to their hands. Even if the business
+men, shorn of their most distinguished members, might still have the
+power to offer transitory opposition to the senate by coalition with the
+mob, the more dangerous, because more permanent, possibilities of harm
+which the control of the courts afforded them, would be wholly
+swept away.
+
+The attraction of Caepio's proposal to the senatorial mind is,
+therefore, perfectly intelligible; but it is very probable that there
+were many members of the nobility who were wholly insensible to this
+attraction. The men who would descend a few steps in order to secure a
+profitable concord between the orders, may have been in the majority;
+but there must have been a considerable number of stiff-backed nobles
+who, even if they believed that concord could be secured by a measure
+which gave away privileges and did not conciliate hostility, were
+exceedingly unwilling to descend at all. Caepio is the first exponent of
+a fresh phase of the new conservatism which had animated the elder
+Drusus. That statesman had sought to win the people over to the side of
+the senate by a series of beneficent laws, which should be as attractive
+as those of the demagogue and perhaps of more permanent utility than the
+blessings showered on them by the irresponsible favourite of the moment;
+but he had done nothing for the mercantile class; and his greater son
+was left to combine the scheme of conciliation transmitted to him by his
+father with that enunciated by Caepio.
+
+The moderation and the tactical utility of the new proposal fired the
+imagination of a man, whose support was of the utmost importance for the
+success of a measure which was to be submitted to a popular body that
+was divided in its allegiance, uncertain in its views, and therefore
+open to conviction by rhetoric if not by argument. It was characteristic
+of the past career of the young orator Lucius Crassus that he should now
+have thrown himself wholly on the side of Caepio and the progressive
+members of the senate.[1212] His past career had committed him to no
+extremes. He had impeached Carbo, known to have been a radical and
+believed to be a renegade, and he had championed the policy of
+provincial colonisation as illustrated by the settlement of Narbo
+Martius. His action in the former case might have been equally pleasing
+to either side; his action in the latter might have been construed as
+the work, less of an advanced liberal, than of an imperialist more
+enlightened than his peers. He had evidently not compromised his chances
+of political success; he was still but thirty-four and had just
+concluded his tenure of the tribunate. In the opposite camp stood
+Memmius, striving with all his might to keep alive the coalition, which
+he had done so much to form, between the popular party and the merchant
+class. The knights mustered readily under his banner, for they had no
+illusions as to the meaning of the bill; it was impossible to conciliate
+an order by the bribery of a few hundreds of its members, whose very
+names were as yet unknown. To keep the people faithful to the coalition
+was a much more difficult task. It was soon patent to all that the
+agitators had not been wrong in supposing that a serious cleft had
+opened between the late allies, and in the war of words with which the
+Forum was soon filled, Memmius seems to have been no match for his
+opponent. Crassus surpassed himself, and the keen but humorous invective
+with which he held Memmius up to the ridicule of his former
+followers,[1213] was balanced by the grand periods in which he
+formulated his detailed indictment of the methods pursued by the
+existing courts of justice, and of the terrible dangers to the public
+security produced by their methods of administration. He did not merely
+impugn the verdicts which were the issue of a jury system so degraded as
+to have become the sport of a political "faction," but he dwelt on the
+public danger which sprang from the parasites of the courts, the gloomy
+brood of public accusers which is hatched by a rotten system, feeds on
+the impurities of a diseased judicature, and terrifies the commonwealth
+by the peril that lurks in its poisonous sting. This speech was to be
+studied by eager students for years to come as a master work in the art
+of declamatory argument.[1214] But its momentary efficacy seems to have
+been as great as its permanent value. Caepio's bill was acclaimed and
+carried.[1215] Then began the turn of the tide. It is practically
+certain that the authors of the measure never had the courage, or
+perhaps the time, to carry a single one of its proposals Into effect.
+The senate was not enlarged, nor was the right of judicature wrested
+from the hands of its existing holders.[1216] The bill may have been
+repealed within a few months of its acceptance by the people. Caepio
+went to Gaul to stake his military reputation on a conflict with the
+German hordes; he was to return as the best hated man in Rome, to
+receive no mercy from an indignant people. There was probably more than
+one cause for this sudden change in political sentiment. The knights may
+have been thrown off their guard by the suddenness of Caepio's attack
+upon their privileges, and a few months of organisation and canvassing
+may have been all that they needed to restore the majority required for
+effacing the blot upon their name. But the chief reason is doubtless to
+be sought in the external circumstances of the moment, and can only be
+fully illustrated by the description which we shall soon be giving of
+the great events that were taking place on the northern frontiers of the
+empire. It is sufficient for the present to remember that, in the very
+year in which Caepio's measure had received the ratification of the
+people, Caius Popillius Laenas, a legate of one of the consuls of the
+previous year, had been put on his trial before that very people for
+making a treaty which was considered still more disgraceful than the
+defeat which had preceded it.[1217] The Comitia now heard the whole
+story of the conduct of the Roman arms against the barbarians of the
+North. The story immediately revived the coalition of the early days of
+the Numidian war, and there was no longer any hope for the success of
+even moderate counsels proceeding from the senate. Popillius was a
+second Aulus Albinus, and a new Marius was required to restore the
+fortunes of the day. It was, however, certain that the only Marius could
+not be withdrawn from Africa, and men looked eagerly to see what the
+consular elections for the next year would produce. We hear of no
+candidate belonging to the highest ranks of the nobility who was deemed
+to have been defrauded of his birthright on this occasion; but the
+disappointment of Quintus Lutatius Catulus was deemed wholly legitimate,
+when Cnaeus Mallius Maximus defeated him at the poll. Catulus belonged
+to a plebeian family that had been ennobled by the possession of the
+consulship at least as early as the First Punic War; but the distinction
+had not been perpetuated in the later annals of the house, and if
+Catulus received the support of the official nobility, it was because
+his tastes and temperament harmonised with theirs, and because it may
+have seemed impolitic to advance a man of better birth and more
+pronounced opinions in view of the prevailing temper of the people.
+Catulus was a man of elegant taste and polished learning, one of the
+most perfect Hellenists of the day, and distinguished for the grace and
+purity of the Latin style that was exhibited in his writings and
+orations.[1218] He was one day to write the history of his own momentous
+consulship and of the final struggle with the Cimbri, in which he played
+a not ignoble part. Much of our knowledge of those days is due to his
+pen, and the modern historian is perhaps likely to congratulate himself
+on the blindness of the people, which thrice refused Catulus the
+consulship and reserved him to be an actor and a witness in the crowning
+victory of the great year of deliverance. He had already been defeated
+by Serranus; he was now subordinated to the claims of Maximus. But what
+were those claims? Posterity found it difficult to give an answer,[1219]
+and the reason for that difficulty was that this second experiment in
+the virtues of a "new man" was anything but successful. The family to
+which Maximus belonged seems to have been wholly undistinguished, and he
+himself is the only member of his clan who is known to have attained the
+consulship. An explanation of his present prominence could only be
+gathered from a knowledge of his past career, and of this knowledge we
+are wholly deprived; but it is manifest that he must have done much,
+either in the way of positive service to the State in subordinate
+capacities, or in the way of invective against its late administrators,
+which caused him to be regarded as a discovery by the leaders of the
+multitude. The colleague given to Maximus was a man such as the people
+in the present emergency could not well refuse. Publius Rutilius Rufus
+was a kind of Cato with a deeper philosophy, a higher culture, and a far
+less bewildering activity. As a soldier he had been trained by Scipio in
+Spain, and he possessed a theoretical interest in military matters which
+issued in practical results of the most important kind.[1220] His tenure
+of the urban praetorship seems to have been marked by reforms which
+materially improved the condition of the freedmen in matters of private
+law, and limited the right of patrons to impose burdensome conditions of
+personal service as the price of manumission.[1221] It was he too who
+may have introduced the humane system of granting the possession of a
+debtor's goods to a creditor, if that creditor was willing to waive his
+claim to the debtor's person.[1222] Rutilius, therefore, may have had
+strong claims on the gratitude of the lower orders; and his personality
+was one that could more readily command a grateful respect than a warm
+affection. He was a learned adherent of the Stoic system, the cold and
+stern philosophy of which imbued his speeches, already rendered somewhat
+unattractive by their author's devotion to the forms of the civil
+law.[1223] He was much in request as an advocate, his learning commanded
+deep respect, but he lacked or would not condescend to the charm which
+would have made him a great personal force with the people at a time
+when there was a sore need of men who were at the same time great
+and honest.
+
+By a singular irony of fortune it chanced that the province of Gaul fell
+to Maximus and not to Rutilius. The strong-headed soldier was left at
+home to indulge his schemes of army reform while the new man went to his
+post in the north, to quarrel with the aristocratic Caepio, who was now
+serving as proconsul in those regions, and to share in the crushing
+disaster which this dissension drew upon their heads. The search for
+genius had to be renewed at the close of this melancholy year.[1224]
+Another "new man" was found in Caius Flavius Fimbria, a product of the
+forensic activity of the age, a clever lawyer, a bitter and vehement
+speaker, but with a power that secured his efforts a transitory
+circulation as types of literary oratory.[1225] He is not known to have
+shown any previous ability as a soldier, and his election, so far as it
+was not due to his own unquestioned merit, may have been but a symbol of
+the continued prevalence of the distrust of the people in aristocratic
+influence and qualifications. His competitor was Catulus who was for the
+third time defeated. For the other place in the consulship there could
+be no competition. The close of the Numidian war had freed the hands of
+the man who was still believed to be the greatest soldier of the day.
+There was, it is true, a legal difficulty in the way of the appointment
+of Marius to the command in the north. Such a command should belong to a
+consul, but nearly fifty years before this date a law had been passed
+absolutely prohibiting re-election to the consulship.[1226] Yet the
+dispensation granted to the younger Africanus could be quoted as a
+precedent, and indeed the danger that now threatened the very frontiers
+of Italy was an infinitely better argument for the suspension of the law
+than the reverses of the Numantine war.[1227] The people were in no mood
+to listen to legal quibbles. They drove the protestant minority from the
+assembly, and raised Marius to the position which they deemed necessary
+for the salvation of the State.[1228] The formal act of dispensation may
+have been passed by the Comitia either before or after the election, but
+the senate must have been easily coerced into giving its assent, if its
+adherence were thought requisite to the validity of the act. The
+province of Gaul was assigned him as a matter of course,[1229] whether
+by the senate or the people is a matter of indifference. For the Roman
+constitution was again throwing off the mask of custom and uncovering
+the bold lineaments which spoke of the undisputed sovereignty of the
+people. Certainly, if a sovereign has a right to assert himself, it is
+one who is _in extremis_, who stands between death and revolution.
+Personality had again triumphed in spite of the meshes of Roman law and
+custom. It remained to be seen whether the net could be woven again with
+as much cunning as before, or whether the rent made by Marius was
+greater than that which had been torn by the Gracchi.
+
+
+
+
+TITLES OF MODERN WORKS REFERRED TO IN THE NOTES
+
+
+L'ANNÉE ÉPIGRAPHIQUE; revue des publications épigraphiques relatives a
+    l'antiquité Romaine (1896, pp. 30, 31, _Fragmentum Tarentinum_).
+
+BARDEY, E.--_Das sechste Consulat des Marius oder das Jahr 100 in der
+    römischen Verfassungsgeschichte_. Brandenburg-a.-d.-H., 1884.
+
+BEESLY, A.H.--_The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla_. 3rd ed. London, 1882.
+
+BELOCH, J.--_Der Italische Bund unter Roms Hegemonie; staatsrechtliche
+    und statistische Forschungen_. Leipzig, 1880.
+
+BERGMANN, R.--_De Asiae Romanorum provinciae praesidibus_ (Philologus,
+    ii., 1847, p. 641).
+
+BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, M.A. VON.--_Der römische Civilprozess_ (Der
+    Civilprozess des gemeinen Rechts, Bde. i., ii.). Bonn, 1864-5.
+
+BIEREYE, J.--_Res Numidarum et Maurorum annis inde ab a. DCXLVIII.
+    usque ad a. DCCVIII. ab u.c. perscribuntur_. Halis Saxonum, 1885.
+
+BOISSIER, GASTON.--_L'Afrique Romaine; promenades archéologiques en
+    Algérie et en Tunisie_. Paris, 1895.
+
+BOISSIÈRE, GUSTAVE.--_Esquisse d'une histoire de la conquête et de
+    l'administration Romaines dans le Nord de l'Afrique et
+    particulièrement dans la province de Numidie_. Paris, 1878.
+
+BOOR, C. DE.--_Fasti censorii, quos composuit et commentariis instruxit
+    C. de Boor_. Berolini, 1873.
+
+BRUNS, C.G.--_Fontes juris Romani antiqui_. Ed. 6ta. Friburgi, 1893.
+
+BUECHER, K.--_Die Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter 143-129 v. Chr_.
+    Frankfurt-a.-M., 1874.
+
+CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM GRAECARUM. Ed. A. Böckh. Vol. ii. Berlin, 1843.
+
+CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM LATINARUM. Berolini. Vol. i. (ed. Th. Mommsen,
+    1863; ed. ii., pars i., ed. Th. Mommsen, G. Henzen, C. Hülsen,
+    1893). Vol. ii. (ed. A. Hübner, 1869). Vol. viii. (coll. G.
+    Wilmanns, 1881).
+
+CUNNINGHAM, W.--_An Essay on Western Civilisation in its _Economic
+    Aspects_. Cambridge, 1898-1900.
+
+DELOUME, A.--_Les manieurs d'argent à Rome jusqu'à l'Empire_. Paris,
+    1892.
+
+DREYFUS, R.--_Essai sur les lois agraires sous la République Romaine_.
+    Paris, 1898.
+
+DRUMANN, W.--_Geschichte Roms in seinem Uebergange von der
+    republikanischen zur monarchisen Verfassung_. 2te Aufl., herausg.
+    von P. Groebe. Berlin. Bd. i., 1899. Bd. ii., 1902.
+
+DUREAU DE LA MALLE, A.--_Économie politique des Romains_. Paris, 1840.
+
+FORBIGER, A.--_Handbuch der alten Geographie_. Leipzig, 1842-8.
+
+FOWLER, W. WARDE.--_The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic_.
+    London and New York, 1899.
+
+FRAENKEL, M.--_Die Inschriften von Pergamon_ (Altertümer von Pergamon.
+    Berlin, 1890. Bd. viii.).
+
+GOEBEL, E.--_Die Westküste Afrikas im Altertum und die Geschichte
+    Mauretaniens_. Leipzig, 1887.
+
+GREENIDGE, A.-H. J.--_The Legal Procedure of Cicero's Time_. Oxford,
+    1901.
+----_Roman Public Life_. London, 1901.
+
+GUADET, J.--_Basilica_ (Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités
+    Grecques et Romaines).
+
+HERZOG, E.--_Geschichte und System der römischen Staatsverfassung_.
+    Leipzig, 1884-91.
+
+HUEBNER, E.--_Baliares_ (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der
+    classischen Altertumswissenschaft, p. 2823).
+----_Römische Heerschaft in Westeuropa_, Berlin, 1890.
+
+IHNE, W.--_Römische Geschichte_. Leipzig, 1868-79. 2te Aufl. 1893.
+
+KIENE, A.--_Der römische Bundesgenossenkrieg nach den Quellen
+    bearbeitet_. Leipzig, 1845.
+
+KLEES, E.--_Atilius Saranus oder Serranus_ (Pauly-Wissowa,
+    Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, p. 2094).
+
+KOEPP, F.--_De Attali III. patre_ (Rheinisches Museum für Philologie.
+    N. F. Bd. xlviii., 1893, p. 154).
+
+KRAUSE, J. H.--_Deinokrates oder Hütte, Haus und Palast, Dorf, Stadt
+    und Residenz der alten Welt_. Jena, 1863.
+
+LAU, T.--_Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Eine Biografie_, Hamburg, 1855.
+
+LONG, G.--_The Decline of the Roman Republic_. London, 1864-74.
+
+MAHAFFY, J. P.--_The Slave Wars against Rome_ (Hermathena, 1890).
+----_The Work of Mago on Agriculture (ibid.)_.
+
+MARQUARDT, J.--_Das Privatleben der Römer_. Leipzig, 1879. 2te Aufl.,
+    besorgt von A. Mau. Leipzig, 1886.
+----_Römische Staatsverwaltung_. Bd. i., 2te Aufl., 1881. Bd. ii.,
+    2te Aufl., besorgt von H. Dessau und A. von Domaszewski, 1884.
+    Leipzig.
+
+MEINEL, G.--_Zur Chronologie des Jugurthinischen Krieges_. Augsburg,
+    1883.
+
+MERCIER, E.--_La population indigène de l'Afrique sous la domination
+    Romaine, Vandale et Byzantine_ (Recueil des notices et mémoires de
+    la société archéologique du département de Constantine, vol. xxx.;
+    3e série, vol. ix., p, 127. 1895-6. Constantine, 1897).
+
+MEYER, P.--_Der römische Konkubinat, nach den Rechtsquellen und den
+    Inschriften_. Leipzig, 1895.
+
+MIDDLETON, J. H., and SMITH, W.--_Domus_ (Smith, Dictionary of Greek
+    and Roman Antiquities, 3rd ed., i., p. 604. London, 1890).
+
+MITTEIS, L.--_Zur Geschichte der Erbpacht im Alterthum_ (Abhandlungen
+    der philologisch-historischen Classe der Königl. Sächsischen
+    Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. Bd. xx., No. iv. Leipzig, 1901).
+
+MOMMSEN, TH.--_Festi codicis quaternionem decimum sextum denuo edidit
+    Th. Mommsen_ (Abhandlungen der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften
+    zu Berlin. Philologische und historische Abhandlungen, 1864, p,
+    57).
+----_Geschichte des römischen Münzwesens_. Berlin, 1860.
+----_The History of Rome_, translated by W. P. Dickson, London
+    (Edinburgh.), 1894.
+----_Römische Forschungen_, Bde. i, ii. (Bd. i., 2te Aufl.). Berlin,
+    1864, 1879.
+----_Römisches Staatsrecht_. Leipzig, 1887-8.
+----_Die römischen Tribus in administrativer Beziehung_. Altona, 1844.
+----_Zama_ (Hermes, xx., 1885, p, 144).
+
+MOVERS, F. C.--_Die Phönizier_. Bonn und Berlin, 1841-56.
+
+MUELLER, L. _Numismatique de l'ancienne Afrique_. Copenhague, 1860-2.
+    Supplément, 1874.
+
+NEUMANN, C.--_Geschichte Roms während des Verfalles der Republik_,
+    Breslau, 1881-4.
+
+NIESE, B.--_Das sogenannte Licinisch-sextische Ackergesetz_ (Hermes,
+    xxiii., 1888).
+
+NITZSCH, K. W.--_Die Gracchen und ihre nächsten Vorgänger, vier Bücher
+    römischer Geschichte_. Berlin, 1847.
+
+OVERBECK, J.--_Pompeii in seinen Gebäuden, Alterthümern und
+    Kunstwerken ... dargestellt_. Leipzig, 1856. 2te Aufl. 2 Bde.,
+    1866. 4te im Vereine mit A. Man durchgearbeitete und vermehrte
+    Aufl., 1884.
+
+PETER, C. _Geschichte Roms_. 4te verbesserte Aufl. Halle-a.-S., 1881.
+
+POEHLMANN, R.--_Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und Sozialismus_.
+    München, 1893-1900.
+
+RAMSAY, W. M.--_The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_. Oxford, 1895-7.
+
+REIN, W.--_Das Criminalrecht der Römer von Romulus bis auf
+    Justinianus_, Leipzig, 1844.
+
+REINACH, TH.--_Mithridate Eupator, roi du Pont_. Paris, 1890.
+
+RICHTER, O.--_Topographie der Stadt Rom_. 2te Aufl. München, 1901.
+
+RUDORFF, A.A.F.--_Das Ackergesetz des Sp. Thorius wiederhergestellt und
+    erläutert_ (Zeitschr. für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft. Bd. x.
+    Berlin, 1839).
+
+SCHAEFER, A.--On Orosius, v., 9, 6 (_Mamertium oppidum_) (Jahrbücher für
+    classische Philologie, 1873, p. 71).
+----On Plutarch, _Ti. Gracch_. II ([Greek: _Mallios kai phoulbios_])
+    (ibid.).
+
+SCHMIDT, J.--_Zama_ (Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. N. F. Bd.
+    xliv., 1889, p. 397).
+
+SMITH, W. and WILKINS, A.S.--_Frumentariae Leges_ (Smith, Dictionary of
+    Greek and Roman Antiquities, 3rd. ed., i. p. 877. London, 1890).
+
+SOLTAU, W.--_Das Aechtheit des licinischen Ackergesetzes von 367 v.
+    Chr_. (Hermes, xxx., 1895),
+---- _Roms Kultur_ (Kulturgeschichte des klassischen Altertums, p.
+    190. Leipzig, 1897).
+
+STEINWENDER, TH.--_Die Römische Bürgerschaft in ihrem Verhältniss zum
+    Heere_. Danzig, 1888.
+
+STRACHAN-DAVIDSON, J.L.--_Appian, Civil Wars_. Book i., edited with
+    notes and map. Oxford, 1902.
+
+SUMMERS, W.C.--_C. Sallusti Crispi Jugurtha_, edited with introduction,
+    notes and index. Cambridge, 1902.
+
+THÉDENAT, H.--_Ergastulum_ (Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des
+    Antiquités Grecques et Romaines).
+
+TISSOT, C.--_Géographie comparée de la province Romaine d'Afrique_.
+    Tome i., Paris, 1884. Tome ii. (ouvrage publié d'après le manuscrit
+    de l'auteur avec des notes, des additions et un atlas par Salomon
+    Reinach), 1888.
+
+UNDERHILL, G.E.--_Plutarch's Lives of the Gracchi_, edited, with
+    introduction, notes and indices. Oxford, 1892.
+
+USSING, J.L.--_Pergamos, seine Geschichte und Monumente_, nach der
+    dänischen Ausgabe neu bearbeitet. Berlin, 1899.
+
+VOIGT, M.--_Ueber die Bankiers, die Buchführung und die
+    Litteralobligation der Römer_ (Abhandlungen der
+    philologisch-historischen Classe der Königl. Sächsischen
+    Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften. Bd. x. Leipzig, 1887).
+---- _Ueber die staatsrechtliche Possessio und den Ager Compascuus der
+    römischen Republik_ (ibid.).
+---- _Privataltertümer und Kulturgeschichte_ (Handbuch der klassischen
+    Altertumswissenschaft, herausg. von Iwan von Mueller. Bd. iv., abt.
+    ii., 2te Aufl. München, 1893).
+
+WADDINGTON, W.H.--_Fastes des provinces Asiatiques de l'Empire Romain
+    depuis leur origine jusqu'au règne de Dioclétien. Ch. ii., Province
+    d'Asie_ (Voyage Archéologique en Grèce et en Asie Mineure, par P.
+    Le Bas et W.H. Waddington. Vol. iii., p. 661. Paris, 1870).
+
+WALLON, H.--_Histoire de l'esclavage dans l'antiquité_. 2nd edit.
+    Paris, 1879.
+
+WALTZING, J.P.--_Étude historique sur les corporations professionnelles
+    chez les Romains depuis les origines jusqu'à la chute de l'Empire
+    d'Occident_. Louvain, 1899-1900.
+
+WILCKEN, U.--_Attalos III_. (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der
+    classischen Altertumswissenschaft, p. 2168).
+
+ZUMPT, A.W.--_Das Criminalrecht der römischen Republik_. Berlin, 1865-9.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[1] The average, or at least the most powerful, type of a race is
+stamped on its history. It is perhaps needless to say that no
+generalisations on character apply to all its individual members.
+
+[2] Even the Hellenes of the West are only a partial exception. It is
+true that their cities clung to the coast; but the vast inland
+possessions of states like Sybaris are scarcely paralleled elsewhere in
+the history of Greek colonisation.
+
+[3] The Latin colony of Aquileia was settled in the former year (Liv.
+xl. 34 Vellei. 1. 15), the Roman colony of Auximum in the latter
+(Vellei. l.c.).
+
+[4] Cic. _de Leg. Agr_. ii. 27. 73 Est operae pretium diligentiam
+majorum recordari, qui colonias sic idoneis in locis contra suspicionem
+periculi collocarunt, ut esse non oppida Italiae, sed propugnacula
+imperii viderentur.
+
+[5] Liv. xxvii. 38; xxxvi. 3; cf. Marquardt _Staatsverwaltung_ 1. p. 51.
+
+[6] The Roman citizen, who entered his name for a Latin colony, suffered
+the derogation of _caput_ which was known to the later jurists as
+_capitis deminutio minor_ and expressed the loss of _civitas_ (Gaius i.
+161; iii. 56). That a fine was the alternative of enrolment, hence
+conceived as voluntary, we are told by Cicero (_pro Caec_. 33. 98 Aut
+sua voluntate aut legis multa profecti sunt: quam multam si sufferre
+voluissent, manere in civitate potuissent. Cf. _pro Domo_ 30. 78 Qui
+cives Romani in colonias Latinas proficiscebantur, fieri non poterant
+Latini, nisi erant auctores acti nomenque dederant).
+
+[7] Liv. xxxix. 23.
+
+[8] Liv. xxxvii. 4.
+
+[9] Liv. xlii. 32 Multi voluntate nomina dabant, quia locupletes
+videbant, qui priore Macedonico bello, aut adversus Antiochum in Asia,
+stipendia fecerant.
+
+[10] For the assignations _viritim_ in the times of the Kings see Varro
+_R.R_. i. 10 (Romulus); Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 14. 26 (Numa); Liv. 1. 46
+(Servius Tullius). That the Cassian distribution was to be [Greek: _kat
+andra_] is stated by Dionysius (viii. 72, 73). On the whole subject see
+Mommsen in C.I.L. i. p. 75. He has made out a good case for the land
+thus assigned being known by the technical name of _viritanus ager_. See
+Festus p. 373; Siculus Flaccus p. 154 Lachm. We shall find that this was
+the form of distribution effected by the Gracchi.
+
+[11] For the settlement in the land of the Volsci see Liv. v. 24; for
+that made by M. Curius in the Sabine territory, Colum. i. praef. 14;
+[Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 33.
+
+[12] Cato ap. Varr. _R.R_. i. 2. 7 Ager Gallicus Romanus vocatur, qui
+viritim cis Ariminum datus est ultra agrum Picentium; cf. Cic. _Brut_.
+14. 57; _de Senect_. 4. 11; Val. Max. v. 4. 5.
+
+[13] Liv. xlii. 4 (173 B.C.); cf. xli. 16.
+
+[14] The other sources were the _portoria_ and the _vicesima libertatis_.
+Even at a period when the revenues from the provinces were infinitely
+larger than they were at the present time Cicero could write, with
+reference to Caesar's proposal for distributing the Campanian land,
+Portoriis Italiae sublatis, agro Campano divisor, quid vectigal superest
+domesticum praeter vicensimam? (Cic. _ad Att_. ii. 16. i).
+
+[15] See the map attempted by Beloch in his work _Der Italische Bund
+unter Roms Hegemonie_.
+
+[16] Vellei. ii. 7. See ch. iv., where the attitude of the senate
+towards the proposals for transmarine settlement made by Caius Gracchus
+is described.
+
+[17] Polyb. xxxii. 11.
+
+[18] Besides the continued war in Spain from 145 to 133 there were
+troubles in Macedonia (in 142) and in Sicily during this period of
+comparative peace. _Circa_ 140-135 commences the great slave rising in
+that island, and in the latter year the long series of campaigns against
+the free Illyrian and Thracian peoples begins.
+
+[19] The _officia_ of the _villicus_ have become very extensive even in
+Cato's time (Cato _R.R_. 5). Their extent implies the assumption of
+very prolonged absences on the part of the master.
+
+[20] Lucullus paid 500,200 drachmae for the house at Misenum which had
+once belonged to Cornelia. She had purchased it for 75,000 (Plut. _Mar_.
+34). Marius had been its intermediate owner. Even during his occupancy
+it is described as [Greek: _polytelaes oikia tryphas echousa kai diaitas
+thaelyteras hae kat andra polemon tosouton kai strateion autourgon_.]
+
+[21] Diod. xxxvii. 3.
+
+[22] Sulla rented one of the lower floors for 3000 sesterces (Plut.
+_Sulla_ 1).
+
+[23] The _coenaculum_ is mentioned by Livy (xxxix. 14) in connection
+with the year 186 B.C. It is known both to Ennius (ap. Tertull. _adv_.
+Valent. 7) and to Plautus (_Amph_. iii. 1. 3).
+
+[24] Festus p. 171. The _insula_ resembled a large hotel, with one or
+more courts, and bounded on all sides by streets. See Smith _Dict. of
+Antiq_. (3rd ed.) i. p. 665.
+
+[25] Val. Max. viii. 1. damn. 7 Admodum severae notae et illud populi
+judicium, cum M. Aemilium Porcinam (consul 137 B.C.) a L. Cassio (censor
+125 B.C.) accusatum crimine nimis sublime extructae villae in Alsiensi
+agro gravi multa affecit. The author does not sufficiently distinguish
+between the censorian initiative and the operation of the law. The
+passage is important as showing the existence of an enactment on the
+height of buildings. See Voigt in Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2, p.
+394, and cf. Vellei. ii. 10. Augustus limited the height of houses to
+70 feet (Strabo v. p. 235).
+
+[26] Diodor. v. 40 (The Etruscans) [Greek: _en ... tais oikiais ta
+peristoa pros tas ton therapeuonton ochlon tarachas exeuron
+euchraestian_.] See Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 528.
+
+[27] In spite of the plural form _fauces_ (Vitruv. vi. 3. 6) may denote
+only a single passage. See Marquardt _Privatl_. p. 240; Smith and
+Middleton in Smith _Dict. of Antiq_. i. p. 671.
+
+[28] For this _atriensis_, the English butler, the continental porter,
+see the frequent references in Plautus (e.g., _Asin_. ii. 2. 80 and 101;
+_Pseud_. ii. 2. 15), Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 534 and Marquardt
+_Privatl_. p. 140.
+
+[29] Plin. _H.N_. xxxv. 6 Stemmata vero lineis discurrebant ad imagines
+pictas. It is not known at what period the _imagines_ were transferred
+from the Atrium to the Alae.
+
+[30] Overbeck _Pompeii_ p. 192; Krause _Deinokrates_ p. 539.
+
+[31] For the practice started, or developed, by Caius Gracchus of
+receiving visitors, some singly, others in smaller or larger groups, see
+Seneca _de Ben_. vi. 34. 2 and the description of Gracchus' tribunate in
+chapter iv.
+
+[32] Festus p. 357 (according to Mommsen, Abh. der Berl. Akad.
+Phil.-hist. Classe, 1864 p. 68). Tablinum proxime atrium locus dicitur,
+quod antiqui magistratus in suo imperio tabulis rationum ibi habebant
+publicarum rationum causa factum locum; Plin. _H.N_. xxxv. 7 Tabulina
+codicibus implebantur et monimentis rerum in magistratu gestarum.
+Marquardt, however (_Privatl_. p. 215) thinks that the name _tablinum_
+is derived from the fact that this chamber was originally made of planks
+(_tablinum_ from _tabula_, as _figlinum_ from _figulus_).
+
+[33] The earliest instances of extreme extravagance in the use of
+building material--of the use, for instance, of Hymettian and Numidian
+marble--are furnished by the houses of the orator Lucius Licinius
+Crassus (built about 92 B.C.) and of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, consul in
+78 B.C. This growth of luxury will be treated when we come to deal with
+the civilisation of the Ciceronian period.
+
+[34] As Krause expresses it (_Deinokrates_ p. 542), at the final stage
+we find a Greek "Hinterhaus" standing behind an old Italian
+"Vorderhaus".
+
+[35] The case mentioned by Juvenal (xi. 151)
+
+    Pastoris duri hic est filius, ille bubulci.
+    Suspirat longo non visam tempore matrem,
+    Et casulam, et notos tristis desiderat haedos,
+
+must have been of frequent occurrence as soon as the urban and rustic
+_familiae_ had been kept distinct.
+
+[36] Suetonius says (_de Rhet_. 3) of L. Voltacilius Pilutus, one of the
+teachers of Pompeius, Servisse dicitur atque etiam ostiarius vetere more
+in catena fuisse.
+
+[37] For these _atrienses, atriarii, admissionales, velarii_ see Wallon
+_Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 108.
+
+[38] Diod. xxxvii. 3; Sallust (_Jug_. 85) makes Marius say (107 B.C.)
+Neque pluris pretii coquum quam villicum habeo. Livy (xxxix. 6) remarks
+with reference to the consequences of the return of Manlius' army from
+Asia in 187 B.C. Tum coquus, vilissimum antiquis mancipium et
+aestimatione et usu, in pretio esse; et, quod ministerium fuerat, ars
+haberi coepta.
+
+[39] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 108 Nec coquos vero habebant in servitiis
+eosque ex macello conducebant. The practice is mentioned by Plautus
+(_Aul_. ii. 4. 1; iii. 2. 15).
+
+[40] _Condus promus_ (Plaut. _Pseud_. ii. 2. 14).
+
+[41] Wallon op. cit. ii. p. 111.
+
+[42] C. Gracchus ap. Gell. x. 3. 5.
+
+[43] Polyb. xxxii. 11; Diodor. xxxvii. 3.
+
+[44] Diod. l.c.
+
+[45] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 143 Invenimus legatos Carthaginiensium
+dixisse nullos hominum inter se benignius vivere quam Romanos. Eodem
+enim argento apud omnes cenitavisse ipsos.
+
+[46] Val. Max. ii. 9, 3.
+
+[47] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 141.
+
+[48] Vellei. i. 13.
+
+[49] Polyb. xl. 7.
+
+[50] Liv. xxxix. 6 Lectos aeratos ... plagulas ... monopodia et abacos
+Romam advexerunt. Tunc psaltriae sambucistriaeque et convivalia ludionum
+oblectamenta addita epulis. Cf. Plin, _H.N_. xxxiv. 14.
+
+[51] Polyb. ix. 10 [Greek: _Rhomaioi de metakomisantes ta proeiraemena
+tais men idiotikais kataskenais tous auton ekosmaesan bious, tais de
+daemosiais ta koina taes poleos_.] Another great raid was that made by
+Fulvius Nobilior in 189 B.C. on the art treasures of the Ambraciots
+(Signa aenea marmoreaque et tabulae pictae, Liv. xxxviii. 9).
+
+[52] Plin. _H.N_. xv. 19 Graeci vitiorum omnium genitores.
+
+[53] Cic. _pro Arch_. 3. 5 Erat Italia tum plena Graecarum artium ac
+disciplinarum ... Itaque hunc (Archiam) et Tarentini et Regini et
+Neapolitani civitate ceterisque praemiis donarunt: et omnes, qui aliquid
+de ingeniis poterant judicare, cognitione atque hospitio dignum
+existimarunt.
+
+[54] Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 19. 34 Videtur insitiva quadam disciplina
+doctior facta esse civitas. Influxit enim non tenuis quidam e Graecia
+rivulus in hanc urbem, sed abundantissimus amnis illarum disciplinarum
+et artium. Cicero is speaking of the very earliest Hellenic influences
+on Rome, but his description is just as appropriate to the period which
+we are considering.
+
+[55] Plut. _Paul_. 28.
+
+[56] Sulla brought back the library of Apellicon of Teos, Lucullus the
+very large one of the kings of Pontus (Plut. _Sulla_ 26; _Luc_. 42;
+Isid. _Orig_. vi. 5). Lucullus allowed free access to his books. Here we
+get the germ of the public library. The first that was genuinely public
+belongs to the close of the Republican era. It was founded by Asinius
+Pollio in the Atrium Libertatis on the Aventine (Plin. _H.N_. vii. 45;
+Isid. _Orig_. vi. 5).
+
+[57] Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 14. 7.
+
+[58] Dionys. vii. 71.
+
+[59] They had made contributions in 186 B.C. towards the games of Scipio
+Asiaticus (Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 138).
+
+[60] Livy (xl. 44) after describing the _senatus consultum_, in which
+occur the words Neve quid ad eos ludos arcesseret, cogeret, acciperet,
+faceret adversus id senatus consultum, quod L. Aemilio Cn. Baebio
+consulibus de ludis factum esset, adds Decreverat id senatus propter
+effusos sumptus, factos in ludos Ti. Sempronii aedilis, qui graves non
+modo Italiae ac sociis Latini nominis sed etiam provinciis
+externis fuerant.
+
+[61] The effect was still worse when a rich man avoided it. Cic. _de
+Off_. ii. 17. 58. Vitanda tamen suspicio est avaritiae. Mamerco, homini
+divitissimo, praetermissio aedilitatis consulatus repulsam attulit.
+Sulla said that the people would not give him the praetorship because
+they wished him to be aedile first. They knew that he could obtain
+African animals for exhibition (Plut. _Sulla_ 5).
+
+[62] Cic. _in Verr_. v. 14. 36.
+
+[63] Liv. x. 47; xxvii. 6.
+
+[64] Liv. xxiii. 30.
+
+[65] Liv. xxx. 39.
+
+[66] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 286.
+
+[67] Mommsen _Röm. Münzw_. p. 645.
+
+[68] Liv. xxxvi. 36. On these festivals see Warde Fowler _The Roman
+Festivals_ pp. 72. 91. 70. The _Megalesia_ seem to have fallen to the
+lot of the curule aediles (Dio. Cass. xliii. 48), the others to have
+been given indifferently by either pair.
+
+[69] Val. Max. ii. 4-7; Liv. _Ep_. xvi. It was exhibited in the Forum
+Boarium by Marcus and Decimus Brutus at the funeral of their father.
+
+[70] Compare Livy's description (xli. 20) of the adoption of Roman
+gladiatorial shows by Antiochus Epiphanes--Armorum studium plerisque
+juvenum accendit.
+
+[71] Polyb. xxx. 13.
+
+[72] Liv. xxxix. 22.
+
+[73] Liv. xliv. 18.
+
+[74] Dig. 21. 1. 40-42 (from the edict of the curule aediles) Ne quis
+canem, verrem vel minorem aprum, lupum, ursum, pantheram, leonem ... qua
+vulgo iter fiet, ita habuisse velit, ut cuiquam nocere damnumve
+dare possit.
+
+[75] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 17. 60 Tota igitur ratio talium largitionum
+genere vitiosa est, temporibus necessaria. He adds the pious but
+unattainable wish Tamen ipsa et ad facultates accomodanda et
+mediocritate moderanda est. Compare the remarks of Pöhlmann on the
+subject in his _Geschichte des antiken Communismus und Sozialismus_ ii.
+2. p. 471.
+
+[76] Mommsen _Staatsr_. ii., p. 382.
+
+[77] Plut, _Ti. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[78] Liv. xxxix. 44; Plut, _Cat. Maj_. 18.
+
+[79] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_, p. 128.
+
+[80] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 22. 76 (Paullus) tantum in aerarium pecuniae
+invexit, ut unius imperatoris praeda finem attulerit tributorum. A
+deterrent to luxury could still have been created by imposing heavy
+harbour-dues on articles of value; but this would have required
+legislation. Nothing is known about the Republican tariff at Italian
+ports. The percentage may have been uniform for all articles.
+
+[81] Liv. xxxiv. cc. 1-8; Val. Max. ix. 1. 3; Tac. _Ann_. iii. 33.
+
+[82] Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 17; Festus pp. 201, 242; Schol. Bob. p. 310;
+Meyer _Orat. Rom. Fragm_. p. 91.
+
+[83] This date (161) is given by Pliny (_H.N_. x. 139); Macrobius
+(_Sat_. iii. 17. 3) places the law in 159.
+
+[84] Gell. ii. 24; Macrob. _Sat_. iii. 17; Plin. _H.N_. x. 139;
+Tertull. _Apol_. vi. The ten asses of this law are the Fanni centussis
+misellus of Lucilius.
+
+[85] It seems that we must assume formal acceptance on the part of the
+allies in accordance with the principle that Rome could not legislate
+for her confederacy, a principle analogous to that which forbade her to
+force her franchise on its members (Cic. _pro Balbo_ 8, 20 and 21).
+
+[86] We may compare the enactment of 193 B.C., which was produced by the
+discovery that Roman creditors escaped the usury laws by using Italians
+as their agents (Liv. xxxv. 7 M. Sempronius tribunus plebis ... plebem
+rogavit plebesque scivit ut cum sociis ac nomine Latino creditae
+pecuniae jus idem quod cum civibus Romanis esset).
+
+[87] The _Lex Licinia_, which is attributed by Macrobius (l.c.) to P.
+Licinius Crassus Dives, perhaps belongs either to his praetorship (104
+B.C.) or to his consulship (97 B.C.).
+
+[88] Gellius (ii. 24), in speaking of Sulla's experiments, says of the
+older laws Legibus istis situ atque senio obliteratis.
+
+[89] _Exaequatio_ (Liv. xxxiv. 4).
+
+[90] Cic. _de Rep_. iii. g. 16; see p. 80.
+
+[91] Compare Tac. _Ann_. iii. 53. The Emperor Tiberius here speaks of
+Illa feminarum propria, quis lapidum causa pecuniae nostrae ad externas
+aut hostilis gentes transferuntur.
+
+[92] The prohibition belongs to the year 229 B.C. (Zonar. viii. 19). For
+other prohibitions of the same kind dating from, a period later than
+that which we are considering see Voigt in Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv.
+2, p. 376 n. 95.
+
+[93] Earlier enactments had been directed against canvassing, but not
+against bribery. The simplicity of the fifth century B.C. was
+illustrated by the law that a candidate should not whiten his toga with
+chalk (Liv. iv. 25; 433 B.C.). The _Lex Poetelia_ of 358 B.C. (Liv. vii.
+16) was directed against personal solicitation by _novi homines_. Some
+law of _ambitus_ is known to Plautus (_Amph. prol. 73; cf. Trinumm_. iv.
+3. 26), See Rein _Criminalrecht_ p. 706
+
+[94] Liv. xl. 19 Leges de ambitu consules ex auctoritate senatus ad
+populum tulerunt. This was the _lex Cornelia Baebia_ and that it
+referred to pecuniary corruption is known from a fragment of Cato (ap.
+_Non_. vii. 19, s.v. largi, Cato lege Baebia: pecuniam inlargibo tibi).
+
+[95] Obsequens lxxi.
+
+[96] Liv. _Ep_. xlvii.
+
+[97] Polyb. vi. 56 [Greek: _para men Karchaedoniois dora phaneros
+didontes lambanousi tas archas, para de Rhomaiois thanatos esti peri
+touto prostimon_.]
+
+[98] The position of the ruined patrician will be fully illustrated in
+the following pages when we deal with the careers of Scaurus and
+of Sulla.
+
+[99] Liv. xxxiv. 52.
+
+[100] Liv. xxxix. 7.
+
+[101] Liv. xxxviii. 9.
+
+[102] For the later history of the _aurum coronarium_ see Marquardt
+_Staatsverw_. ii. p. 295. It was developed from the _triumphales
+coronae_ (Festus p. 367) and is described as gold Quod triumphantibus
+... a victis gentibus datur and as imposed by commanders Propter
+concessam vitam (_al_. immunitatem) (Serv. _Ad. Aen_. viii. 721).
+
+[103] Liv. xxi. 63 (218 B.C.) Id satis habitum ad fructus ex agris
+vectandos; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus.
+
+[104] It was antiqua et mortua (Cic. _in Verr_. v. 18. 45).
+
+[105] Cicero (_Parad_. 6. 46) speaks of those Qui honeste rem quaerunt
+mercaturis faciendis, operis dandis, publicis sumendis. Compare the
+category of banausic trades in _de Off_, 1. 42. 150, although in the
+_Paradoxa_ the contrast is rather that between honest and vicious
+methods of money-making. Deloume (_Les manieurs d'argent à Rome_
+pp. 58 ff.) believes that the fortune of Cicero swelled through
+participation in _publica_.
+
+[106] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21.
+
+[107] Plut. _Crass_. 2.
+
+[108] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21. Cato employed this method of training as a
+means of increasing the _peculium_ of his own slaves. But even the
+_peculium_ technically belonged to the master, and it is obvious that
+the slave-trainer might have been used by others as a mere instrument
+for the master's gain.
+
+[109] Plat. l.c. [Greek: _haptomenos de syntonoteron porismou taen men
+georgian mallon haegeito diagogaen hae prosodon_.]
+
+[110] Plaut. _Trinumm. Prol_. 8:
+
+    Primum mihi Plautus nomen Luxuriae indidit:
+    Tum hanc mihi gnatam esse voluit Inopiam.
+
+[111] Liv. xxxiv. 4 (Cato's speech in defence of the Oppian law) Saepe
+me querentem de feminarum, saepe de virorum, nec de privatorum modo, sed
+etiam magistratuum sumptibus audistis; diversisque duobus vitiis,
+avaritia et luxuria, civitatem laborare. Compare Sallust's impressions
+of a later age (_Cat_. 3) Pro pudore, pro abstinentia, pro virtute,
+audacia, largitio, avaritia vigebant.
+
+[112] Polyb. vi. 56.
+
+[113] Polyb. xxiv. 9.
+
+[114] Cato ap. Gell. xi. 18. 18. The speech was one De praeda
+militibus dividenda.
+
+[115] We first hear of a standing court for _peculatus_ in 66 B.C. (Cic.
+_pro Cluent_. 53. 147). It was probably established by Sulla.
+
+[116] Rein _Criminalr_. pp. 680 ff.; Mommsen _Röm. Forsch_. ii.
+pp. 437 ff.
+
+[117] Liv. xxxvii. 57 and 58 (190 B.C.).
+
+[118] See especially the case of Pleminius, Scipio's lieutenant at Locri
+(204 B.C.), who, after a committee had reported on the charge, was
+conveyed to Rome but died in bonds before the popular court had
+pronounced judgment (Liv. xxix. 16-22).
+
+[119] Liv. xlii. 1 (173 B.C.) Silentium, nimis aut modestum aut timidum
+Praenestinorum, jus, velut probato exemplo, magistratibus fecit
+graviorum in dies talis generis imperiorum.
+
+[120] For such requisitions see Plut. _Cato Maj_ 6 (of Cato's government
+of Sardinia) [Greek: _ton pro autou strataegon eiothoton chraesthai kai
+skaenomasi daemosiois kai klinais kai himatiois, pollae de therapeia kai
+philon plaethei kai peri deipna dapanais kai paraskeuais barhynonton_.]
+
+[121] Liv. xxxii. 27 Sumptus, quos in cultum praetorum socii facere
+soliti erant, circumcisi aut sublati (198 B.C.).
+
+[122] The _Lex de Termessibus_ (a charter of freedom given to Termessus
+in Pisidia in 71 B.C.) enjoins (ii. l. 15) Nei ... quis magistratus ...
+inperato, quo quid magis iei dent praebeant ab ieisve auferatur nisei
+quod eos ex lege Porcia dare praebere oportet oportebit. This Porcian
+law was probably the work of Cato (Rein _Criminalr_. p. 607).
+
+[123] Liv. xxxviii. 43; xxxix. 3; Rein, l.c.
+
+[124] Liv. xliii. 2.
+
+[125] Cic. _Brut_. 27. 106; _de Off_. ii. 21. 75; cf. _in Verr_.
+iii. 84. 195; iv. 25. 56.
+
+[126] Liv. xli. 15. (176 B.C.) Duo (praetores) deprecati sunt ne in
+provincias irent, M. Popillius in Sardiniam: Gracchum eam provinciam
+pacare &c.... Probata Popillii excusatio est. P. Licinius Crassus
+sacrificiis se impediri sollemnibus excusabat, ne in provinciam iret.
+Citerior Hispania obvenerat. Ceterum aut ire jussus aut jurare pro
+contione sollemni sacrificio se prohiberi.... Praetores ambo in eadem
+verba jurarunt. I have seen the passage cited as a proof that governors
+would not go to unproductive provinces; but Sardinia was a fruitful
+sphere for plunder, and the excuses may have been genuine. That of
+Popillius seems to have been positively patriotic.
+
+[127] Liv. xlii. 45 Decimius unus sine ullo effectu, captarum etiam
+pecuniarum ab regibus Illyriorum suspicione infamis, Romam rediit.
+
+[128] Cic. _in Verr_. v. 48. 126 (70 B.C.) Patimur ... multos jam annos
+et silemus cum videamus ad paucos homines omnes omnium nationum pecunias
+pervenisse.
+
+[129] For the principle see Gaius iii. 151-153.
+
+[130] Polybius (vi. 17), after speaking of various kinds of property
+belonging to the state, adds [Greek: _panta cheirizesthai symbainei ta
+proeiraemena dia tou plaethous, kai schedon hos epos eipein pantas
+endedesthai tais onais kai tais ergasiais tais ek touton_].
+
+[131] Polyb. vi. 17. The senate can [Greek: _symptomatos genomenou
+kouphisai kai to parapan adynatou tinos symbantos apolysai taes
+ergonias_]. Thus the senate invalidated the _locationes_ of the censors
+of 184 B.C. (Liv. xxxix. 44 Locationes cum senatus precibus et lacrimis
+publicanorum victus induci et de integro locari jussisset.)
+
+[132] In 169 B.C. it was the people that released from an oppressive
+regulation (Liv. xliii. 16). In this case a tribune answered the
+censor's intimation, that none of the former state-contractors should
+appear at the auction, by promulgating the resolution Quae publica
+vectigalia, ultro tributa C. Claudius et Ti. Sempronius locassent, ea
+rata locatio ne esset. Ab integro locarentur, et ut omnibus redimendi et
+conducendi promiscue jus esset.
+
+[133] Deloume op. cit. pp. 119 ff. Polybius (vi. 17) has been quoted
+as an authority for the distinction between these two classes. He says
+[Greek: _oi men gar agorazousi para ton timaeton autoi tas ekdoseis, oi
+de koinonousi toutois, oi d' enguontai tous aegorakotas, oi de tas
+ousias didoasi peri touton eis to daemosion_.] The first three classes
+are the _mancipes, socii and praedes_. In the fourth the shareholders
+(_participes_ or perhaps _adfines_, cf. Liv. xliii. 16) are found by
+Deloume (p. 120); but the identification is very uncertain. The words
+may denote either real as opposed to formal security or the final
+payment of the _vectigal_ into the treasury. A better evidence for the
+distinction between _socii_ and shareholders is found in the
+Pseudo-Asconius (in Cic. _in Verr_. p. 197 Or.) Aliud enim socius, Aliud
+particeps qui certam habet partem et non _in_divise agit ut socius. The
+_magnas partes_ (Cic. _pro Rab_. Post. 2. 4) and the _particulam_ (Val.
+Max. vi. 9. 7) of a _publicum_, need only denote large or small shares
+held by the _socii_. _Dare partes_ (Cic. l.c.) is to "allot shares," but
+not necessarily to outside members. Apart from the testimony of the
+Pseudo-Asconius and the mention of _adfines_ in Livy the evidence for
+the ordinary shareholder is slight but by no means fatal to his
+existence.
+
+[134] E.g. by loan to a _socius_ at a rate of interest dependent on his
+returns, perhaps with a _pactum de non petendo_ in certain
+contingencies.
+
+[135] These are, in strict legal language, the true _publicani_; the
+lessees of state property are _publicanorum loco_ (Dig. 39. 4, 12
+and 13).
+
+[136] Later legal theory assimilated the third with the first class.
+Gaius says (ii. 7) In eo (provinciali) solo dominium populi Romani est
+vel Caesaris, nos autem possessionem tantum vel usumfructum habere
+videmur. But the theory is not ancient-perhaps not older than the
+Gracchan period. See Greenidge _Roman Public Life_ p. 320. From a broad
+standpoint the first and second classes may be assimilated, since the
+payment of harbour dues (_portoria_) is based on the idea of the use of
+public ground by a private occupant.
+
+[137] _Cic. de Leg. Agr_. ii. 31. 84.
+
+[138] Thédenat in Daremberg-Saglio _Dict. des Antiq. s.v_. Ergastulum.
+
+[139] Compare Cunningham _Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects_
+vol. i. p. 162.
+
+[140] Cic. _in Verr_. ii. 55. 137; iii. 33. 77; ii. 13. 32; 26. 63.
+
+[141] Ibid. ii. 13. 32.
+
+[142] Liv. xxv. 3.
+
+[143] Liv. xxiii. 49.
+
+[144] Liv. xxiv. 18; Val. Max. v. 6. 8.
+
+[145] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 19.
+
+[146] Liv. xliii. 16.
+
+[147] Cic. _Brut_. 22. 85 Cum in silva Sila facta caedes esset notique
+homines interfecti insimulareturque familia, partim etiam liberi,
+societatis ejus, quae picarias de P. Cornelio, L. Mummio censoribus
+redemisset, decrevisse senatum ut de ea re cognoscerent et statuerent
+consules. For the value of the pine-woods of Sila see Strabo vi. 1. 9.
+
+[148] Liv. xlv. 18 Metalli quoque Macedonici, quod ingens vectigal erat,
+locationesque praediorum rusticorum tolli placebat. Nam neque sine
+publicano exerceri posse, et, ubi publicanus esset, ibi aut jus publicum
+vanum aut libertatem sociis nullam esse. The _praedia rustica_ were
+probably public domains, that might have formed part of the crown lands
+of the Macedonian Kings and would now, in the natural course of events,
+have been leased to _publicani_.
+
+[149] It might happen that the interest of the _negotiator_ was opposed
+to that of the _publicanus_. The former, for instance, might wish
+_portoria_ to be lessened, the latter to be increased (Cic. _ad Att_.
+ii. 16. 4). But such a conflict was unusual.
+
+[150] Cato _R.R_. pr. 1. Est interdum praestare mercaturis rem
+quaerere, nisi tam periculosum sit, et item fenerari, si tam honestum
+sit. Majores nostri sic habuerunt et ita in legibus posiverunt, furem
+dupli condemnari, feneratorem quadrupli. Quanto pejorem civem
+existimarint feneratorem quam furem, hinc licet existimare. Cf. Cic.
+_de Off_. i. 42. 150. Improbantur ii quaestus, qui in odia hominum
+incurrunt, ut portitorum, ut feneratorum.
+
+[151] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 25. 89. Cum ille ... dixisset "Quid fenerari?"
+tum Cato "Quid hominem," inquit, "occidere?"
+
+[152] For such professional money-lenders see Plaut. _Most_. iii. 1. 2
+ff.; _Curc_. iv. 1. 19.
+
+[153] Liv. xxxii. 27.
+
+[154] On the history and functions of the bankers see Voigt _Ueber die
+Bankiers, die Buchführung und die Litteralobligation der Römer_ (Abh. d.
+Königl. Sächs. Gesell. d. Wissench.; Phil. hist. Classe, Bd. x);
+Marquardt Staatsverw, ii. pp. 64 ff.; Deloume _Les manieurs d'argent à
+Rome_, pp. 146 ff.
+
+[155] Plin. _H.N_. xxi. 3. 8.
+
+[156] Cf. Cic. _de Off_, iii. 14. 58. Pythius, qui esset ut
+argentarius apud omnes ordines gratiosus....
+
+[157] Yet the two never became thoroughly assimilated. The
+_argentarius_, for instance, was not an official tester of money, and
+the _nummularii_ appear not to have performed certain functions usual to
+the banker, e.g. sales by auction. See Voigt op. cit. pp. 521. 522.
+
+[158] Plaut. _Cure_. iv. 1. 6 ff.
+
+    Commonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco.
+       *       *       *       *       *
+    Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito.
+    Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta, quique stipulari solent.
+       *       *       *       *       *
+    In foro infumo boni homines, atque dites ambulant.
+    Sub veteribus, ibi sunt qui dant quique accipiunt faenore.
+
+[159] To be bankrupt is _foro mergi_ (Plaut. _Ep_. i. 2. 16), _a foro
+fugere, abire_ (Plaut. _Pers_. iii. 3. 31 and 38).
+
+[160] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 24. 87. Toto hoc de genere, de quaerenda, de
+collocanda pecunia, vellem etiam de utenda, commodius a quibusdam
+optumis viris ad Janum medium sedentibus ... disputatur. For _Janus
+medius_ and the question whether it means an arch or a street see
+Richter _Topogr. der Stadt Rom_. pp. 106. 107.
+
+[161] Liv. xxxix. 44; xliv. 16. The Porcian was followed by the Fulvian
+Basilica (Liv. xl. 51). The dates of the three were 184, 179, 169 B.C.
+respectively.
+
+[162] Deloume op. cit. pp. 320 ff.; Guadet in Daremberg-Saglio _Dict.
+des Antiq. s.v_. Basilicae.
+
+[163] Large transport ships could themselves come to Rome if their build
+was suited to river navigation. In 167 B.C. Aemilius Paulus astonished
+the city with the size of a ship (once belonging to the Macedonian King)
+on which he arrived (Liv. xlv. 35). On the whole question of this
+foreign trade see Voigt in Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2, pp. 373-378.
+
+[164] Voigt op. cit. p. 377 n. 99.
+
+[165] Compare Cunningham _Western Civilisation in its Economic Aspects_
+vol. i. p. 165, "It is only under very special conditions, including the
+existence of a strong government to exercise a constant control, that
+free play for the formation of associations of capitalists bent on
+securing profit, is anything but a public danger. The landed interest in
+England has hitherto been strong enough to bring legislative control to
+bear on the moneyed men from time to time.... The problem of leaving
+sufficient liberty for the formation of capital and for enterprise in
+the use of it, without allowing it licence to exhaust the national
+resources, has not been solved."
+
+[166] Plut. Numa 17. On the history of these gilds see Waltzing
+_Corporations professionelles chez les Remains_ pp. 61-78.
+
+[167] The praetor was Rutilius (Ulpian in Dig. 38. 2. 1. 1), perhaps P.
+Rutilius Rufus, the consul of 105 B.C. (Mommsen Staatsr. in. p. 433).
+See the last chapter of this volume. For the principle on which such
+_operae_ were exacted from freedmen see Mommsen l.c.
+
+[168] Inliberales ac sordidi quaestus (Cic. _de Off_. i. 42. 150).
+
+[169] Gell. vii. (vi.) 9; Liv. ix. 46; Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 497.
+
+[170] Cf. Cic. _de Off_. i. 42. 151 Omnium autem rerum, ex quibus
+aliquid adquiritur, nihil est agricultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil
+dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius.
+
+[171] See de Boor _Fasti Censorii_. A disturbing element in this
+enumeration is the uncertainty of numerals in ancient manuscripts. But
+the fact of the progressive decline is beyond all question. No
+accidental errors of transcription could have produced this result in
+the text of Livy's epitome.
+
+[172] Liv. _Ep_. xvi.
+
+[173] Ibid. lvi.
+
+[174] Ibid. xlvi. xlviii.
+
+[175] Euseb. Arm. a. Abr. 1870 Ol. 158.3 (Hieron. Ol. 158.2 = 608
+A.U.C.).
+
+[176] Liv. _Ep_. lvi.
+
+[177] Eorum qui arma ferre possent (Liv. i. 44); [Greek: _ton echonton
+taen strateusimon haelikian] (Dionys. xi. 63); [Greek: ton en tais
+haelikiais_] (Polyb. ii. 23).
+
+[178] Besides the _proletarii_ all under military age would be excluded
+from these lists. Mommsen (_Staatsr_. ii. p. 411) goes further and
+thinks that the _seniores_ are not included in our lists.
+
+[179] The limit to the incidence of taxation was a property of 1500
+asses (Cic. _de Rep_. ii. 22. 40), the limit of census for military
+service was by the time of Polybius reduced to 4000 asses (Polyb. vi.
+19). Gellius (xvi. 10. 10) gives a reduction to 375 asses at a date
+unknown but preceding the Marian reform. Perhaps the numerals are
+incorrect and should be 3,750.
+
+[180] Liv. xl. 38.
+
+[181] Gell. i. 6. Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix.
+
+[182] See Wallon _Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 276.
+
+[183] _Concubinatus_ could not, by the nature of the case, become a
+legal conception until the Emperor Augustus had devised penalties for
+_stuprum_. It was then necessary to determine what kind of _stuprum_ was
+not punishable. But the social institution and its ethical
+characteristics, although they may have been made more definite by legal
+regulations, could not have originated in the time of the Principate.
+For the meaning of _paelex_ in Republican times see Meyer _Der römische
+Konkubinat_ and a notice of that work in the _English Historical Review_
+for July 1896.
+
+[184] Cunningham _Western Civilisation_ p. 156. Cf. Soltau in
+_Kulturgesch. des klass. Altertums_ p. 318.
+
+[185] Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 3. 22; Varro _R.R_. i. 1. 10.
+
+[186] Colum. 1. 1. 18. The Latin translation was probably made shortly
+after the destruction of Carthage, _circa_ 140 B.C. (Mahaffy _The Work
+of Mago on Agriculture_ in _Hermathena_ vol. vii. 1890). Mahaffy
+believes that the Greek translation by Cassius Dionysius (Varro _R.R_.
+i. 1. 10) was later, and he associates it with the colonies planted by
+C. Gracchus in Southern Italy.
+
+[187] Saturnia in 183 (Liv. xxxix. 55), Graviscae in 181 (Liv. xl. 29),
+Luna in 180 and again in 177 (Liv. xli. 13; Mommsen in C.I.L. i. n.
+539). See Marquardt _Staatsverw_, i. p. 39.
+
+[188] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8; Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 198.
+
+[189] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 198.
+
+[190] Liv. xxxix. 29.
+
+[191] Varro _R.R_. ii. 5. II Pascuntur armenta commodissime in
+nemoribus, ubi virgulta et frons multa. Hieme secundum mare, aestu
+abiguntur in montes frondosos.
+
+[192] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 16.
+
+[193] Nitzsch op. cit. p. 17.
+
+[194] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 25. 89. So in Cato's more reasoned estimate
+(_R.R_. i. 7) of the relative degrees of productivity, although _vinea_
+comes first (cf. p. 80) yet _pratum_ precedes _campus frumentarius_.
+
+[195] App. _Hannib_. 61.
+
+[196] App. l.c.; Gell. x. 3. 19.
+
+[197] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 193 So zerfiel denn Mittelitalien in
+zwei scharf-getheilte Hälften, den ackerbauenden Westen und den
+viehzuchttreibenden Osten; jener reich an Häfen, von Landstrassen
+durchschnitten, in einer Menge von Colonien oder einzelnen Gehöften von
+Römischen Ackerbürgern bewohnt; dieser fast ohne Häfen, nur von einer
+Küstenstrasse durchschnitten, für den grossen Römer der rechte Sitz
+seiner Sclaven und Heerden. Cf. p. 21. For the pasturage in Calabria
+and Apulia see op. cit. pp. 13 and 193.
+
+[198] Liv. xxviii. II; cf. Luc. _Phars_. i. 30.
+
+[199] Dureau de la Malle (Économie Politique ii. p. 38) compares the
+precept of the Roman "Quid est agrum bene colere? bene arare. Quid
+secundum? arare. Tertio stercorare" with the adage of the French farmer
+"Fumez bien, labourez mal, vous recueillerez plus qu'en fumant mal et en
+labourant bien".
+
+[200] See Dreyfus _Les lois agraires_ p. 97. Varro (_R.R_. i. 12. 2) is
+singularly correct in his account of the nature of the disease that
+arose from the _loca palustria_:--Crescunt animalia quaedam minuta, quae
+non possunt oculi consequi, et per aera intus in corpus per os ac nares
+perveniunt atque efficiunt difficilis morbos. The passage is cited by
+Voigt (Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2. p. 358) who gives a good sketch
+of the evils consequent on neglect of drainage.
+
+[201] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 228.
+
+[202] Polyb. xxxvii. 4.
+
+[203] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 237.
+
+[204] Polyb. xxxvii. 3.
+
+[205] Polyb. ii. 15.
+
+[206] For such purchases from Sardinia see Liv. xxxvi. 2, from Sicily
+(at a period later than that which we are considering) Cic. _in Verr_.
+iii. 70, 163.
+
+[207] Cf. Cato _R.R_. i. 3 (In choosing the situation of one's
+estate) oppidum validum prope siet aut mare aut amnis, qua naves
+ambulant, aut via bona celebrisque.
+
+[208] For the traditions which assign a very early date for laws dealing
+with the _ager publicus_ see the following chapter, which treats of the
+legislation of Tiberius Gracchus.
+
+[209] App, _Bell. Civ_. i. 7 [Greek: _taes de gaes taes doriktaetou
+sphisin ekastote gignomenaes taen men exeirgasmenaen autika tois
+oikizomenois epidiaeroun hae epipraskon hae exemisthoun, taen d' argon
+ek tou polemou tote ousan, hae dae kai malista eplaethyen, ouk agontes po
+scholaen dialachein, epekaerytton en tosode tois ethelousin ekponein epi
+telei ton etaesion karpon_].
+
+[210] For the evidence for this and other statements connected with the
+_ager publicus_ see the citations in the next chapter.
+
+[211] In consequence of the doubtfulness of the traditions concerning
+early agrarian laws this time cannot even be approximately specified.
+See the next chapter.
+
+[212] Tradition represents the first laws dealing with the _ager
+publicus (e. g_. the supposed _lex Licinia_) as earlier than the _lex
+Poetelia_ of 326 B.C., which abolished the contract of _nexum_.
+
+[213] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8 [Greek: _hysteron de ton geitnionton plousion
+hypoblaetois prosopois metapheronton tas misthoseis eis eautous_.]
+
+[214] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 7 [Greek: _oi gar plousioi ... ta ... anchou
+sphisin, osa te haen alla brachea penaeton, ta men onoumenoi peithoi ta
+de bia lambanontes, pedia makra anti chorion egeorgoun_.] Cf. Seneca
+_Ep_. xiv. 2 (90). 39 Licet agros agris adjiciat vicinum vel pretio
+pellens vel injuria.
+
+[215] [Greek: _pedia makra_] (App. l.c.), Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 6. 35
+Verumque confitentibus latifundia perdidere Italiam. (For the expression
+_lati fundi_ see Siculus Flaccus pp. 157, 161). Frontinus p. 53 Per
+longum enim tempus attigui possessores vacantia loca quasi invitante
+otiosi soli opportunitate invaserunt, et per longum tempus inpune
+commalleaverunt. For the invasion of pasturage see Frontinus p. 48 Haec
+fere pascua certis personis data sunt depascenda tunc cum agri adsignati
+sunt. Haec pascua multi per inpotentiam invaserunt et colunt.
+
+[216] In spite of the fertility of the land, the native Gallic
+population had vanished from most of the districts of this region as
+early as Polybius' time (Polyb. ii. 35). Cf. Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_
+p. 60.
+
+[217] Val. Max. iv. 4. 6.
+
+[218] Steinwender _Die römische Bürgerschaft in ihrem Verhältnis zum
+Heere_ p. 28.
+
+[219] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 7.
+
+[220] Polyb. vi. 39.
+
+[221] Liv. xxvii. 9 (209 B.C.) Fremitus enim inter Latinos sociosque in
+conciliis ortus:--Decimum annum dilectibus, stipendiis se exhaustos esse
+... Duodecim (coloniae) ... negaverunt consulibus esse unde milites
+pecuniamque darent.
+
+[222] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 194.
+
+[223] Cato _R.R_. 144 etc.
+
+[224] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 187.
+
+[225] Cato _R.R_. 5. 136.
+
+[226] Cato _R.R_. 136 Politionem quo pacto _partiario_ dari oporteat.
+In agro Casinate et Venafro in loco bono parti octava corbi dividat,
+satis bono septima, tertio loco sexta; si granum modio dividet, parti
+quinta. In Venafro ager optimus nona parti corbi dividat ... Hordeum
+quinta modio, fabam quinta modio dividat.
+
+[227] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 188.
+
+[228] Dureau de la Malle _Économie Politique_ ii. pp. 225, 226.
+
+[229] Cato _R.R_. i. 7 Vinea est prima,... secundo loco hortus
+inriguus, tertio salictum, quarto oletum, quinto pratum, sexto campus
+frumentarius, septimo silva caedua, octavo arbustum, nono glandaria
+silva.
+
+[230] Cic. _de Rep_. iii. 9. 16 Nos vero justissimi homines, qui
+Transalpinas gentis oleam et vitem serere non sinimus, quo pluris sint
+nostra oliveta nostraeque vineae. Cf. Colum. iii. 3. 11.
+
+[231] See Cato _R.R_. 7, 8 for the produce of the _fundus suburbanus_.
+Cf. c. 1 (note 2) for the value of the _hortus inriguus_.
+
+[232] See the citations in Voigt (Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2 p.
+370). Communities and corporations employed _coloni_ on their _agri
+vectigales_ (Cic. _ad Fam_. xiii. 11, 1; Hygin. _de Cond. Agr_.
+p. 117. 11; Voigt l.c.).
+
+[233] Liv. xlv. 34.
+
+[234] Mahaffy ("The Slave Wars against Rome" in _Hermathena_ no. xvi.
+1890) believes that the majority of these were shipped to Sicily.
+
+[235] Strabo xiv. 5. 2.
+
+[236] Cf. Arist. _Pol_. i. 8. 12 [Greek: _hae polemikae physei ktaetikae
+pos estai; hae gar thaereutikae meros autaes, hae dei chraesthai pros te
+ta thaeria kai ton anthropon hosoi pephykotes archesthai mae thelousin,
+hos physei dikaion touton onta ton polemon_.]
+
+[237] Mahaffy (l.c.) thinks that the Syrians and Cilicians of the
+first slave war in Sicily, whom he believes to have been transferred
+from Carthage, had been secured by that state in a trade with the
+East--the trade which perhaps took the Southern Mediterranean route from
+Malta past Crete and Cyprus.
+
+[238] Wallon _Histoire de l'Esclavage_ ii. p, 45.
+
+[239] Strabo xiv, 3. 2 [Greek: _en Sidae goun polei taes Pamphylias ta
+naupaegia synistato tois Kilixin, hypo kaeruka te epoloun ekei tous
+halontas eleutherous homologountes_.]
+
+[240] Strabo (xiv. 5. 2), after describing the slave market at Delos,
+continues [Greek: _hoste kai paroimian genesthai dia touto; hempore,
+katapleuson, exelou, panta pepratai_.]
+
+[241] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 4.
+
+[242] If we make the denarius a rough equivalent of the drachma, some of
+the prices given in Plautus are as follows:--A child, 600 denarii, a
+nurse and two female children, 1800, a young girl, 2000, another 3000.
+Here we seem to get the average prices for valuable and refined
+domestics. Elsewhere special circumstances might increase the value; a
+female lyrist fetches 5000 denarii, a girl of remarkable attractions
+6000. See Wallon _Hist. de l'Esclavage ii. pp. 160 ff.
+
+[243] Ter. _Andria_ ii. 6. 26.
+
+[244] It is probable, however, that in the case of superintendents
+(_villici, villicae, procuratores_) experience may have been an element
+in the prices which they fetched.
+
+[245] Festus p. 332 Sardi venales, alius alio nequior.
+
+[246] Plut. _Cato Maj_. 21.
+
+[247] Cato _R.R_. 56, 57.
+
+[248] Ibid. 2.
+
+[249] At the close of this period a division took place between the
+functions of _villicus_ and those of _procurator_. The former still
+controlled the economy of the estate and administered its goods; the
+latter was the business agent and entered into legal relations with
+other parties. See Voigt in Iwan-Müller's _Handbuch_ iv. 2 p. 368.
+
+[250] Colum. i. 6.
+
+[251] An inspection of all the _ergastula_ of Italy was ordered by
+Augustus (Suet. _Aug_. 32) and Tiberius (Suet. _Tib_. 8). Columella (i.
+8) recommends inspection by the master.
+
+[252] Kidnapping became very frequent after the civil wars. It was to
+prevent this evil that inspection was ordered by the Emperors (note 3).
+See Thédenat in Daremberg-Saglio _Dict. des Antiq. s.v_. Ergastulum.
+
+[253] Plaut. _Most_. i. 1. 18; Florus iii. 19.
+
+[254] For the distinction between the _vincti_ and _soluti_ see Colum.
+i. 7.
+
+[255] Varro _R.R_. ii. 2 10 The proportion is larger than would be
+demanded in modern times, but Mahaffy (l.c.) remarks that we do not
+hear of the work of guardianship being shared by trained dogs, and that
+the danger from wild beasts and lawless classes was considerable. As
+regards the first point, however, we do hear of packs of hounds which
+followed the Sicilian shepherds (Diod. xxxiv. 2), and it is difficult to
+believe that these had not developed some kind of training.
+
+[256] Varro _R.R_. ii. 10. 7.
+
+[257] Diod, xxxiv. 2. 38.
+
+[258] Val. Max. ii. 10. 2.
+
+[259] Livy (xxxii. 26) speaks of them as _nationis eius_. He has just
+mentioned the slaves of the Carthaginian hostages. But it does not
+follow that either class was composed of native Africans. They may have
+been imported Asiatics, as in Sicily.
+
+[260] Liv. xxxii. 26.
+
+[261] Liv. xxxiii. 36 Etruriam infestam prope conjuratio servorum fecit.
+
+[262] Liv. xxxix. 29.
+
+[263] Bücher _Die Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter_ p. 34. Cf. Soltau
+in _Kulturgesch. des klass. Altertums_ p. 326.
+
+[264] Oros. v. 9 Diodor. xxxiv. 2. 19.
+
+[265] Mahaffy l.c.
+
+[266] Cf. Bücher op. cit. p. 79.
+
+[267] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 27. For the large number of Roman proprietors in
+Sicily see Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19) 3--(Sicilia) terra frugum ferax et
+quodam modo suburbana provincia latifundis civium Romanorum tenebatur.
+
+[268] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 32. 36.
+
+[269] Diod. l.c.
+
+[270] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 31. This may have been true of the time of which
+we are speaking; for the influence of the Roman residents in Sicily on
+the administration of the island must always have been great. But
+Diodorus assigns an incorrect reason when he states that the Roman
+knights of Sicily were judges of the governors of the provinces. This is
+true only of the period preceding the second servile war.
+
+[271] Historians profess to tell the mechanism by which this device was
+secured. A spark of fire was placed with inflammable material in a
+hollow nut or some similar small object, which was perforated. The
+receptacle was placed in the mouth, and judicious breathing did the
+rest. See Diodorus xxxiv, 2. 7; Floras ii. 7 (iii. 19).
+
+[272] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 228.
+
+[273] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 24 [Greek: _hypo gar taes pepromenaes autois
+kekyrosthai taen patrida taen Ennan, ousan akropolin holaes
+taes naesou_.]
+
+[274] Ibid. 2. 12 [Greek: _oud estin eipein ... hosa enybrizon te kai
+enaeselgainon_.]
+
+[275] [Greek: _planon te apekaloun_] (Diod. xxxiv. 2. 14).
+
+[276] Diodor. xxxiv. 3. 41.
+
+[277] Ibid. 2. 39.
+
+[278] Ibid., 2, 24.
+
+[279] Liv. _Ep_. lv.; App. _Syr_. 68. Cf. Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 288.
+
+[280] Diodorus describes him as an Achaean. Mahaffy (l.c.) suspects
+that he came from Eastern Asia Minor or Syria, where Achaeus occurs as a
+royal name. But the name also occurs in old Greece. One may instance the
+tragic poet of Eretria.
+
+[281] [Greek: _kai boulae kai cheiri diapheron_] (Diod. xxxiv. 2. 16).
+
+[282] Ibid. 2. 42.
+
+[283] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 6.
+
+[284] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 43.
+
+[285] Ibid. 2. 18; Florus l.c.
+
+[286] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 7 Quin illud quoque ultimum dedecus belli,
+capta sunt castra praetorum--nec nominare ipsos pudebit--castra Manli
+Lentuli, Pisonis Hypsaei. Itaque qui per fugitivarios abstrahi
+debuissent praetorios duces profugos praelio ipsi sequebantur. P.
+Popillius Laenas, the consul of 132 B.C., was praetor in Sicily either
+immediately before, or during the revolt (C.I.L. i. n. 351. l. g).
+
+[287] Strabo vi. 2. 6. For the question whether they held Messana
+see p. 98.
+
+[288] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 2 Quis crederet Siciliam multo cruentius
+servili quam Punico bello esse vastatam?
+
+[289] [Greek: _epi tae prophasei ton drapeton_] (Diodor. xxxiv. 2. 48).
+Wallon (_Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 307) takes these words to mean
+that the peasantry professed to be marching against the slaves.
+
+[290] Mahaffy (l.c.) has raised and discussed this question. His
+conclusions are (i) that the pirates may have been influenced by a sense
+of business honour to the effect that the man-stealer should abide by
+his bargain, (ii) that these pirates may have received some large bribe,
+direct or indirect, from Rome, (iii) that the natural enmity between the
+slaves and the pirates may have hindered an agreement for transport,
+(iv) that the Cilician slaves, accustomed to permanent robber-bands, may
+have not held it impossible that Rome would acquiesce in such a creation
+in Sicily, (v) that the Syrian towns would not have troubled about the
+restoration of such of their members as had become slaves, even had they
+not feared to offend Rome. He remarks that the return of even free
+exiles to a Hellenistic city was a cause of great disturbance.
+
+[291] Liv. _Ep_. lvi.; Oros. v. 9.
+
+[292] C.I.L. i. nn. 642, 643.
+
+[293] Oros. v. 9. This _Mamertium oppidum_ of Orosius has often been
+interpreted as Messana (_Mamertinorum oppidum_, Bücher, p. 68); for,
+although the slaves of this town had not revolted (Oros. v. 6. 4), it
+might have been captured by the rebels. Schäfer, however (_Jahrb. f.
+Class. Philol_. 1873 p. 71) explains Mamertium as Morgantia
+(_Murgentinum oppidum_).
+
+[294] Val. Max. ix. 12 _ext_. 1. Diodorus (xxxiv. 2. 20) calls him
+Comanus and speaks of his being captured during the siege of
+Tauromenium.
+
+[295] Oros. v. 9.
+
+[296] Wallon _Hist. de l'Esclavage_ ii. p. 308.
+
+[297] Florus ii. 7 (iii. 19). 8.
+
+[298] For the _lex Rupilia_ see Cic. _in Verr_. ii. 13. 32; 15. 37; 16.
+39; 24. 59.
+
+[299] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8. Plutarch speaks of an "attempt" ([Greek:
+_epecheiraese men oun tae diorthosei_]); but the effort perhaps went no
+further than the testing of opinion to discover the probability of
+support. The enterprise may have belonged to the praetorship of Laelius
+(145 B.C.).
+
+[300] Polyb. vi. 11.
+
+[301] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 203.
+
+[302] Cic. _Brut_. 27. 104 Fuit Gracchus diligentia Corneliae matris a
+puero doctus et Graecis litteris eruditus. Id. Ib. 58. 211 Legimus
+epistulas Corneliae matris Gracchorum: apparet filios non tam in gremio
+educatos quam in sermone matris. Cf. Quinctil. _Inst. Or_. i. 1. 6;
+Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 1.
+
+[303] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 1. The King referred to in this story is
+perhaps Ptolemy Euergetes, who reigned from 146 to 117 B.C.
+
+[304] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[305] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ pp. 208 foll., 258.
+
+[306] Polyb. vi. 14 [Greek: _krinei men oun ho daemos kai diaphorou_]
+(money penalties) [Greek: _pollakis ... thanatou de krinei monos_].
+
+[307] Polyb. vi. 16 [Greek: _opheilousi d' aei poiein oi daemarchoi to
+dokoun to daemo kai malista stochazesthai taes toutou boulaeseos_].
+
+[308] Polyb. vi. 57.
+
+[309] Polyb. xxxvii. 4.
+
+[310] Ibid.
+
+[311] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[312] Ibid., 4 [Greek: _outos haen periboaetos hoste taes ton Augouron
+legomenaes hierosonaes axiothaenai di' aretaen mallon hae dia taen
+eugeneian_.] Tiberius may have filled the place vacated by the death of
+his father (_circa_ 148 B.C.). He would have been barely sixteen; and
+Plutarch says (l.c.) that he had but just emerged from boyhood.
+Election to the augural college at this time was effected by
+co-optation. See Underhill in loc.
+
+[313] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 4.
+
+[314] Cic. _pro Cael_. 14. 34; Suet. _Tib_. 2.
+
+[315] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 4. The story is also told of the betrothal of
+Cornelia herself to the elder Gracchus (Liv. xxxviii. 57; Val. Max. iv.
+2. 3; Gell. xii. 8); but Plutarch records a statement of Polybius that
+Cornelia was not betrothed until after her father's death, and Livy
+(l.c.) is conscious of this version.
+
+[316] Fannius ap. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 4 [Greek: _tou ge teichous
+epebae ton polemion protos_]. As the context seems to show that Tiberius
+did not remain until the end of the siege, the _teichos_ was probably
+that of Megara, the suburb of Carthage (Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 244);
+cf. App. _Lib_. 117.
+
+[317] Plut. l.c.
+
+[318] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 7; cf. App. _Iber_. 83; Nitzsch _Die
+Gracchen_ p. 280; Long _Decline of Rom. Rep_. i. p. 83.
+
+[319] Plut. l.c.
+
+[320] Vellei. ii. 1 Mancinum verecundia, poenam non recusando, perduxit
+huc, ut per fetialis nudus ac post tergam religatis manibus dederetur
+hostibus. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 7 [Greek: _ton men gar hypaton
+epsaephisanto gymnon kai dedemenon paradounai tois Nomantinois, ton d'
+allon epheisanto panton dia Tiberion_.] Cf. Cic. _de Off_. iii.
+30. 109.
+
+[321] Cic. _Brut_. 27. 103 (Ti. Gracchus) propter turbulentissimum
+tribunatum, ad quem ex invidia foederis Numantini bonis iratus
+accesserat, ab ipsa re publica est interfectus. Id. _de Har. Resp_. 20.
+43 Ti. Graccho invidia Numantini foederis, cui feriendo, quaestor C.
+Mancini consulis cum esset, interfuerat, et in eo foedere improbando
+senatus severitas dolori et timori fuit, eaque res illum fortem et
+clarum virum a gravitate patrum desciscere coegit. The same motive is
+suggested by Vellei. ii. 2; Quinctil. _Inst. Or_. vii. 4. 13; Dio Cass.
+_frg_. 82; Oros. v. 8. 3; Florus ii. 2 (iii. 14).
+
+[322] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[323] Plut. l.c.
+
+[324] Plut. l.c.
+
+[325] Gell. i. 13. 10 Is Crassas a Sempronio Asellione et plerisque
+aliis historiae Romanae scriptoribus traditur habuisse quinque rerum
+bonarum maxima et praecipua: quod esset ditissimus, quod nobilissimus,
+quod eloquentissimus, quod jurisconsultissimus, quod pontifex maximus.
+
+[326] Cic. _Acad. Prior_. ii. 5. 13 Duo ... sapientissimos et
+clarissimos fratres, P. Crassum et P. Scaevolam, aiunt Ti. Graccho
+auctores legum fuisse, alterum quidem, ut videmus, palam; alterum, ut
+suspicantur, obscurius.
+
+[327] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[328] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 9 [Greek: _esemnologaese peri tou Italikou
+genous_]. The expression suggests the further question whether Gracchus
+intended Italians, as well as Romans, to benefit by his law. On this
+question see p. 115. But, whatever our opinion on this point, the
+widening of the issue by an appeal to Italian interests was natural, if
+not inevitable.
+
+[329] App. l.c.
+
+[330] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[331] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 9; cf. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[332] The most respectable of the authorities for the Licinian law
+having dealt with the land question is Varro (_R.R_. 1. 2. 9 Stolonis
+illa lex, quae vetat plus D jugera habere civem R). A similar account is
+found in many other authors (Liv. vi. 35; Vellei. ii. 6; Plut. _Cam_.
+39; Gell. vi. 3. 40; Val. Max. viii. 6. 3). A variant in the maximum
+amount permitted to a single holder is given by [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_.
+20 [(Licinius Stolo) legem scivit, ne cui plebeio plus centum jugera
+agri habere liceret]; or the word "plebeio," if not a mistake, may
+suggest another clause in the supposed law.
+
+[333] Cato ap. Gell. vi. (vii.) 3. 37. Cato asks whether any enactment
+punishes _intent_ (for the Rhodians were charged with having _intended_
+hostility to Rome), and points his argument by the following _reductio
+ad absurdum_ of legislation conceived in this spirit, Si quis plus
+quingenta jugera habere voluerit, tanta poena esto: si quis majorem
+pecuum numerum habere voluerit, tantum damnas esto.
+
+[334] On this subject see Niese _Das sogenannte Licinisch-sextische
+Ackergesetz_ (Hermes xxiii. 1888), Soltau _Das Aechtheit des licinischen
+Ackergesetzes von_ 367 v. Chr. (Hermes xxx. 1895).
+
+[335] Mommsen in C.I.L. i. pp. 75 ff.
+
+[336] Cic. _de Leg. Agr_. ii. 29. 81 Nec duo Gracchi, qui de plebis
+Romanae commodis plurimum cogitaverunt, nec L. Sulla ... agrum Campanum
+attingere ausus est. Cf. i. 7. 21.
+
+[337] Exemptions were specified in the agrarian law of C. Gracchus,
+which must have appeared in that of his elder brother. They are noticed
+in the extant _Lex agraria_ (C.I.L. 1. n. 200; Bruns _Fontes_ 1. 3.
+11) l. 6 Extra eum agrum, quei ager ex lege plebive scito, quod C.
+Sempronius Ti. f. tr. pl. rog(avit), exceptum cavitumve est nei
+divideretur.... The law of C. Gracchus is here mentioned as being the
+later enactment. Cicero, when he writes (_ad Att_. 1. 19. 4) of his own
+attitude to the Flavian agrarian law of 60 B.C. Liberabam agrum eum, qui
+P. Mucio L. Calpurnio consulibus publicus fuisset, is probably referring
+to land that, public in 133 B.C., still remained public in his own day.
+
+[338] See Voigt _Ueber die staatsrechtliche Possessio und den Ager
+Compascuus_ p. 229.
+
+[339] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 9 [Greek: _anekainize ton nomon maedena ton
+pentakosion plethron pleon hechein, paisi d' auton hyper ton palaion
+nomon prosetithei ta haemisea touton_]. Liv. _Ep_. lviii. Ne quis ex
+publico agro plus quam mille jugera possideret, cf. [Victor] _de Vir.
+Ill_. 64. The conclusion stated in the text, which is gained by a
+combination of these passages, is, however, somewhat hazardous.
+
+[340] App, _Bell, Civ_. 1. 11 [Greek: _ekeleue tous plousious ... mae,
+en ho peri mikron diapherontai, ton pleonon hyperidein, misthon hama
+taes peponaemenaes exergasias autarkae pheromenous taen exaireton aneu
+timaes ktaesin es aei bebaion hekasto pentakosion plethron, kai paisin,
+ois eisi paides, ekasto kai touton ta haemisea_]. If [Greek: _aneu
+timaes_] means "without paying for it," the phrase has no relation to
+the _timae_ mentioned by Plutarch (see the next note) which was a
+valuation to be _received_ by the dispossessed. It can scarcely mean
+"without further compensation"; but, if interpreted in this way, the two
+accounts can be brought into some relation with each other.
+
+[341] Plut, _Ti. Gracch_. 9 [Greek: _ekeleuse timaen proslambanontas
+ekbainein hon adikos ekektaento_].
+
+[342] Siculus Flaccus (p. 136 Lachm.); cf. Mommsen l.c.
+
+[343] There is a reference to this limit in the extant _Lex Agraria_ (C.
+I. L. i. n. 200; Bruns _Fontes_ 1. 3. 11) l. 14 Sei quis ... agri jugra
+Non amplius xxx possidebit habebitve, but there is no direct evidence to
+connect it with the Gracchan legislation.
+
+[344] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 10.
+
+[345] Cf. p. 110.
+
+[346] Mommsen l.c.
+
+[347] App, _Bell. Civ_. i. 10
+
+[348] Cic. _de Leg. Agr_. ii. 12. 31 Audes etiam, Rulle, mentionem
+facere legis Semproniae, nec te ea lex ipsa commonet III viros illos
+XXXV tribuum suffragio creatos esse? App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 9 [Greek:
+_prosetithei ... taen loipaen treis airetous andras, henallassomenous
+kat' hetos, dianemein tois penaesin_]. Strachan-Davidson (in loc.)
+doubts this latter characteristic of the magistracy. The history of the
+land-commission proves at least that the occupants of the post were
+perpetually re-eligible and could be chosen in their absence. Thus
+Gracchus, in spite of his two years' quaestorship in Sardinia, was still
+a commissioner in 124 B.C. (App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 21). See Mommsen
+_Staatsr_. ii. i. p. 632. The electing body was doubtless the _plebeian_
+assembly of the tribes under the guidance of a tribune. This was the
+mode prescribed by Rullus's law of 63 B.C. (Cic. _de Leg. Agr_, ii.
+7. 16).
+
+[349] App. _Bell, Civ_. i. 11.
+
+[350] Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 10.
+
+[351] App. l.c. [Greek: _daneistai te chrea kai tautaes epedeiknuon_.]
+
+[352] App. l.c. [Greek: _plaethos hallo hoson en tais apoikois polesin
+hae tais isopolitisin hae hallos ekoinonei taesde taes gaes, dediotes
+homoios epaeesan kai es hekaterous auton diemerizonto. isopolitides_]
+would naturally be the _municipia (c.f. Lex Agraria_ l. 31); but
+Strachan-Davidson (in loc.) thinks that the _civitates foederatae_ are
+here intended. There is a possibility that Appian has used the term
+vaguely: but there is no real difficulty in conceiving the _municipia_
+to be meant. Even the majority, that had received Roman citizenship,
+still continued to bear the name, and they may have continued to enjoy
+municipal rights in public land. The wealthier classes in these towns
+were therefore alarmed; the poorer classes (possessed of Roman
+citizenship) hoped for a share in the assignment.
+
+[353] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[354] Plut. l.c.
+
+[355] Plut. l.c.
+
+[356] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _ouden eipein legontai peri allaelon phlauron,
+oude rhaema prospesein thaterou pros ton heteron di' horgaen
+anepitaedeion_.]
+
+[357] Diod. xxxiv 6 [Greek: _synerreon eis taen Rhomaen oi hochloi apo
+taes choras hosperei potamoi tines eis taen panta dynamenaen dechesthai
+thalattan_.]
+
+[358] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 12.
+
+[359] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 10 [Greek: _paroxyntheis ho Tiberios ton men
+philanthropon epaneileto nomon, ton d' haedio te tois pollois kai
+sphodroteron epi tous adikountas eisepheren haedae, keleuon existasthai
+taes choras haen ekektaento para tous proterous nomous_]. Plutarch is
+apparently thinking of the abolition of what he calls the _timae_
+(c. 9.); but his words do not necessarily imply that the original
+concessions mentioned by Appian (p. 114) were removed.
+
+[360] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[361] Plut. l.c.
+
+[362] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 12. Plutarch (_Ti. Gracch_. 11) preserves a
+tradition that the meeting was practically broken up by the adherents of
+the _possessores_ who, to prevent the passing of an illegal decree,
+carried off the voting urns.
+
+[363] [Greek: _Mallios kai phoulbios_] (Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 11). Schäfer
+(_Jahrb. f. Class. Philol_. 1873 p. 71) thinks that the first name is a
+mistake for that of Manilius the jurist, consul in 149 B.C., and that
+the second refers to Ser. Fulvius Flaccus, consul in 135 B.C.
+
+[364] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 12 _oi dunatoi tous daemarchous aexioun
+hepitrepsai tae boulae peri hon diapherontai_.
+
+[365] App. _l. c_.
+
+[366] App. _l. c_.
+
+[367] Or in _contio_ held before the meeting. The scene is described in
+Plut. _Ti. Gracch_, 11.
+
+[368] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _hypeipon ho Tiberios hos ouk estin archontas
+amphoterous kai peri pragmaton megalon ap' isaes exousias diapheromenous
+aneu polemou diexelthein ton chronon_.]
+
+[369] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[370] Cf. Mommsen _Staatsr_. iii. p. 409, note 1.
+
+[371] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[372] This is the name given by Appian (_Bell. Civ_. 1. 13); Plutarch
+(_Ti. Gracch_. 13) calls him Mucius; Orosius (v. 8. 3) Minucius.
+
+[373] App. _Iber_. 83. Cf. Liv. xxvii. 20, xxix. 19. See Mommsen
+_Staatsr_. i. p. 629.
+
+[374] Mommsen l.c.
+
+[375] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 13; Plut. _Ti. Gracch. 13.
+
+[376] Liv. _Ep_. lviii Promulgavit et aliam legem agrariam, qua sibi
+latius agrum patefaceret, ut iidem triumviri judicarent qua publicus
+ager, qua privatus esset. The titles borne by the commissioners appear
+as III vir a. d. a. (_Lex Latina Tabulae Bantinae_, C.I.L. 1. 197;
+Bruns _Fontes_ i. 3. 9; cf. _Lex Acilia Repetundarum_ 1. 13, C.I.L.
+i. 198; Bruns _Fontes_ i. 3. 10): III vir a. i. a. (C.I.L. i. nn.
+552-555); III vir a.d.a. i. (C.I.L. i. n. 583).
+
+[377] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 13.
+
+[378] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 13.
+
+[379] Plut. l.c.
+
+[380] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[381] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 315.
+
+[382] Liv. _Ep_. lviii Deinde, cum minus agri esset quam quod dividi
+posset sine offensa etiam plebis, quoniam eos ad cupiditatem amplum
+modum sperandi incitaverat, legem se promulgaturum ostendit, ut iis, qui
+Sempronia lege agrum accipere deberent, pecunia quae regia Attali
+fuisset divideretur. [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 64 Tulit ut ea familia quae
+ex Attali hereditate erat ageretur et populo divideretur, Cf. Plut.
+_Ti. Gracch_. 14; Oros. v. 8. 4.
+
+[383] Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14.
+
+[384] Ibid.; Oros. v. 8. 4.
+
+[385] Plut. l.c.. Cicero (_Brut_. 21. 81) speaks of a speech of
+Metellus "contra Ti. Gracchum". Plutarch's citation may be from
+this speech.
+
+[386] Cicero regarded Octavius's deposition as the ruin of Gracchus.
+_Brut_. 25. 95 Injuria accepta fregit Ti. Gracchum patientia civis in
+rebus optimis constantissimus M. Octavius. _De Leg_. iii. 10. 24 Ipsum
+Ti. Gracchum non solum neglectus sed etiam sublatus intercessor evertit;
+quid enim illum aliud perculit, nisi quod potestatem intercedenti
+collegae abrogavit? The deposition was an act of "seditio" (_pro
+Mil_. 27. 72).
+
+[387] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. Section 81.
+
+[388] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[389] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 15.
+
+[390] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 14.
+
+[391] Plut. Ti. Gracch. 16 [Greek: _authis allois nomois anelambane to
+plaethos, tou te chronou ton strateion aphairon, kai didous
+epikaleisthai ton daepon apo ton dikaston kai tois krinousi tote
+synklaetikois ousi [triakosiois] katamignus ek ton hippeon ton ison
+arithmon_.] Dio Cass. _Frg_. 88 [Greek: _ta dikastaeria apo taes boulaes
+epi tous hippeas metaege_] (Cf. Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 34).
+
+[392] Polyb. vi. 19.
+
+[393] There was already such a maximum according to Polybius (vi. 19).
+What it precisely was, is uncertain, as the passage is corrupt.
+According to Lipsius's reading, it was twenty years, according to
+Casaubon's, sixteen under ordinary conditions, twenty in emergencies.
+The knights were required to serve ten campaigns. See Marquardt
+_Staatsverw_. ii. p. 381. The nature of the reduction proposed by
+Gracchus is unknown.
+
+[394] _Lex Acilia_ ll. 23 and 74.
+
+[395] Cic. _de Fin_. ii. 16. 54.
+
+[396] No mention is made of the appeal in five cases in which criminal
+commissions had been established by the senate. The dates of these
+commissions are B.C. 331 (Liv. viii. 18; Val. Max. ii. 5. 3), 314 (Liv.
+ix. 26), 186 (Liv. xxxix. 8-19), 184 (Liv. xxxix. 41) and 180 (Liv.
+xl. 37).
+
+[397] Vellei. ii. 2 (Tiberius Gracchus) pollicitus toti Italiae
+civitatem.
+
+[398] Cicero is perhaps stating the result, rather than the intention,
+of the Gracchan legislation when he says (_de Rep_. iii. 29. 41) Ti.
+Gracchus perseveravit in civibus, sociorum nominisque Latini jura
+neglexit ac foedera. No point in the Gracchan agrarian law is more
+remarkable than its strict, perhaps inequitable, legality. That its
+author consciously violated treaty relations is improbable.
+
+[399] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 14.
+
+[400] For the qualifications at this period see Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p.
+505.
+
+[401] Dio Cass. _frg_. 88 [Greek: _epecheiraese kai es to epion etos meta
+tou adelphou daemarchaesai kai ton pentheron hypaton apodeixai_].
+
+[402] App. l.c.
+
+[403] Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 523. Dio Cassius indeed says (_fr_. 22)
+[Greek: _koluphen to tina dis taen archaen lambanein_]; but tradition held
+that the proviso had been violated in the early plebeian agitations.
+
+[404] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 14.
+
+[405] App. l.c.; Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 13. The scene is thus described
+by Asellio (a contemporary):--Orare coepit, id quidem ut se defenderent
+liberosque suos, eumque, quem virile secus tum in eo tempore habebat,
+produci jussit populoque commendavit prope flens (Gell. ii. 13. 5).
+Appian also speaks of a son, Plutarch of children.
+
+[406] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_., 16.
+
+[407] App. _Bell. Civ_. 1. 15.
+
+[408] [Greek: _prostataes de tou Rhomaion daemou_] (Plut. _Ti. Gracch_.
+17).
+
+[409] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16.
+
+[410] Richter _Topographie_ p. 128.
+
+[411] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 18.
+
+[412] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19.
+
+[413] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 15.
+
+[414] Ibid. 16.
+
+[415] The dictator was usually nominated by the consul between midnight
+and morning (Liv. viii. 23), for the purpose of the avoidance of
+unfavourable omens.
+
+[416] Tradition ultimately carried it back to the fourth century B.C. In
+the revolution threatened by Manlius Capitolinus (384 B.C., Liv. vi. 19)
+the phrase Ut videant magistrates ne quid ... res publica detrimenti
+capiat was believed to have been employed.
+
+[417] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19 [Greek: _epei ... prodidosin ho archon
+taen polin, oi boulomenoi tois nomois boaethein akoloutheite_.] The
+most specific and juristically exact account of these proceedings (one
+probably drawn from Livy) is preserved by Valerius Maximus (iii. 2. l7):
+--In aedem Fidei publicae convocati patres conscripti a consule Mucio
+Scaevola quidnam in tali tempestate faciendum esset deliberabant,
+cunctisque censentibus ut consul armis rem publicam tueretur, Scaevola
+negavit se quicquam vi esse acturum. Tum Scipio Nasica Quoniam, inquit,
+consul dum juris ordinem sequitur id agit ut cum omnibus legibus Romanum
+imperium corruat, egomet me privatus voluntati vestrae ducem offero....
+Qui rem publicam salvam esse volunt me sequantur.
+
+[418] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16; Plut. l.c. Appian speculates as to the
+meaning of the act. It may have been meant to attract the attention of
+his supporters, it may have been a signal of war, it may have been
+intended to veil the impending deed of horror from the eyes of the gods.
+Cf. Vellei. ii. 3.
+
+[419] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19.
+
+[420] [Cic.] _ad Herenn_, iv. 55. 68.
+
+[421] In the highly rhetorical exercise contained in [Cic.] _ad Herenn_.
+iv. 55. 68 is to be found the following picture:--Iste spumans ex ore
+scelus, anhelans ex infirmo pectore crudelitatem, contorquet brachium et
+dubitanti Graccho quid esset, neque tamen locum, in quo constiterat,
+relinquenti, percutit tempus.
+
+[422] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16.
+
+[423] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 19.
+
+[424] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16 [Greek: _kai pantas autous nyktos
+exerripsan es to rheuma ton potamou_]. [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 64
+(Gracchi) corpus Lucretii aedilis manu in Tiberim missum; unde ille
+Vespillo dictus.
+
+[425] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 1.
+
+[426] Vellei. ii. 3. 3 Hoc initium in urbe Roma civilis sanguinis
+gladiorumque impunitatis fuit. Inde jus vi obrutum potentiorque habitus
+prior, discordiaeque civium antea condicionibus sanari solitae ferro
+dijudicatae (cf. Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 17).
+Cic. _de Rep_. i. 19. 31 Mors Tiberii Gracchi et jam ante tota illius
+ratio tribunatus divisit populum unum in duas partes.
+
+[427] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20 [Greek: _tautaen protaen historousin en
+Rhomae stasin, aph' ou to basileuesthai katelysan, aimati kai phono
+politon diakrithaenai_.]
+
+[428] Sall. _Jug_. 31. 7 Occiso Ti. Graccho, quem regnum parare aiebant,
+in plebem Romanam quaestiones habitae sunt. Val. Max. iv. 7, 1 Cum
+senatus Rupilio et Laenati consulibus mandasset ut in eos, qui cum
+Graccho consenserant, more majorum animadverterent ... Cf. Vellei.
+ii. 7. 4.
+
+[429] Cic. _de Amic_. 11. 37.
+
+[430] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20.
+
+[431] Cic. _de Amic_. ii. 37; Val. Max. iv. 7. 1.
+
+[432] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 20.
+
+[433] Ibid. 21.
+
+[434] Val Max. v. 3. 2 e Is quoque (Scipio Nasica) propter iniquissimam
+virtutum suarum apud cives aestimationem sub titulo legationis Pergamum
+secessit et quod vitae superfuit ibi sine ullo ingratae patriae
+desiderio peregit. Cf. Plut. l.c.; Strabo xiv. 1. 38. See Waddington
+_Fastes_ p. 662.
+
+[435] Vellei. ii. 3. 1 P. Scipio Nasica ... ob eas virtutes primus
+omnium absens pontifex maximus factus est. The other view, that Nasica
+was already pontifex maximus before his exile, was widely prevalent and
+is stated by nearly all our authorities (Cic. _in Cat_. i. 1. 3; Val.
+Max. 1. 4. 1; Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 21; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 16).
+
+[436] Plut. l.c.
+
+[437] Val. Max. vii. 2, 6 Par illa sapientia senatus. Ti. Gracchum
+tribunum pl. agrariam legem promulgare ausum morte multavit. Idem ut
+secundum legem ejus per triumviros ager populo viritim divideretur
+egregie censuit.
+
+[438] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 21, C.I.L. i. n. 552 C. Sempronius _Ti. F.
+Grac_., Ap. Claudius C. F. Pulc., P. Licinius P. F. Crass. III vir. A.
+I. A. (Cf. nn. 553. 1504), n. 583 (82-81 B.C.) M. Terentius M. F.
+Varro Lucullus Pro Pr. terminos restituendos ex s. c. coeravit qua P.
+Licinius Ap. Claudius C. Graccus III vir A. D. A. I. statuerunt. These
+_termini_ suggest the _limites Graccani_ of the _Liber Coloniarum
+(Gromatici_ ed. Lachmann, pp. 209. 210) which may refer to the agrarian
+assignments under the _leges Semproniae_ (of Ti. and C. Gracchus) rather
+than to the colonial foundations of the younger brother.
+
+[439] Liv. _Ep_. lix. Seditiones a triumviris Fulvio Flacco et
+C. Graccho et C. Papirio Carbone agro dividendo creatis excitatae.
+App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 18. C.I.L. i. n. 554 M. Folvios M.F. Flac.,
+C. Sempronius Ti. F. Grac., C. Paperius C.F. Carb. III vire. A.I.A.
+(cf. n. 555).
+
+[440] C.I.L. i. 551 (Wilmanns 797) Primus fecei ut de agro poplico
+aratoribus cederent pastores.
+
+[441] Liv. _Ep_. lix. (131 B.C.) Censa sunt civium capita CCCXVIII milia
+DCCCXXIII praeter pupillos et viduas. Ib. lx. (125 B.C.) Censa sunt
+civium capita CCCLXXXXIIII milia DCCXXVI. See de Boor _Fasti Censorii_.
+
+[442] Mommsen _Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 3.
+
+[443] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 18 [Greek: _amelounton de ton kektaemenon
+autaen (sc. taen gaen) apographesthai, kataegorous ekaerytton
+endeiknynai; kai tachy plaethos haen dikon chalepon_].
+
+[444] App. l.c.
+
+[445] Unless we take such to be the meaning of Hyginus (_de Condic.
+Agr_. p. 116) Vectigales autem agri sunt obligati, quidam r. p. P. R.,
+quidam coloniarum aut municipiorum aut civitatium aliquarum. Qui et ipsi
+plerique ad populum Romanum pertinentes.... The passage seems to state
+that some _agri_ which owed _vectigal_ to communities belonged to the
+Roman people. There might therefore be a fear of their resumption,
+although it should have been remote, since these lands, as the context
+shows, were dealt with by a system of lease (for its nature see Mitteis
+_Zur Gesch. der Erbpacht im Alterthum_ pp. 13 foll.), and leaseholds do
+not seem to have been threatened by Gracchus.
+
+[446] App. _Bell. Civ_. i 19.
+
+[447] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 21. Hom. _Od_. i. 47.
+
+[448] Cic. _Phil_. xi. 8. 18; Liv. _Ep_. lix.; Eutrop. iv. 19.
+
+[449] Liv. _Ep_. lix. Cum Carbo tribunus plebis rogationem tulisset, ut
+eundem tribunum plebi, quoties vellet, creare liceret, rogationem ejus
+P. Africanus gravissima oratione dissuasit. Cic. _de Amic_. 25. 95
+Dissuasimus nos (Laelius), sed nihil de me: de Scipione dicam libentius.
+Quanta illi, dii immortales! fuit gravitas! quanta in oratione majestas!
+... Itaque lex popularis suffragiis populi repudiata est. Cf. Cic. _de
+Or_. ii. 40. 170.
+
+[450] Vellei. ii. 4. 4 Hic, eum interrogante tribuno Carbone quid de Ti.
+Gracchi caede sentiret, respondit, si is occupandae rei publicae animum
+habuisset, jure caesum. Et cum omnis contio adclamasset, "Hostium,"
+inquit, "armatorum totiens clamore non territus, qui possum vestro
+moveri, quorum noverca est Italia?" Val. Max. vi. 2. 3 Orto deinde
+murmure "Non efficietis," ait, "ut solutos verear quos alligatos
+adduxi." Cf. Cic, _pro Mil_. 3. 8; Liv. _Ep_. lix; Plut. _Ti.
+Gracch_. 21.
+
+[451] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 19 [Greek: _ho d' es tous polemous autois
+kechraemenos prothymotatois hyperidein ... oknaese_.]
+
+[452] Liv. _Ep_. lvii.
+
+[453] App. _Bell. Civ_. i 19.
+
+[454] Liv. _Ep_. lviii (p. 127).
+
+[455] App. l.c.
+
+[456] App. l.c.
+
+[457] App. l.c.
+
+[458] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[459] Oros. v. 10. 9; Cic. _de Amic_. 3. 12.
+
+[460] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20.
+
+[461] Plut. _Rom_. 27 [Greek: _oi men automatos onta physei nosodae
+kamein legousin_.]
+
+[462] Villei. ii. 4 Mane in lectulo repertus est mortuus, ita ut quaedam
+elisarum faucium in cervice reperirentur notae.
+
+[463] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10 [Greek: _kai deinon outos ergon ep' andri
+to proto kai megisto Rhomaion tolmaethen ouk etyche dikaes oud' eis
+elenchon proaelthen; enestaesan gar oi polloi kai katelysan taen krisin
+hyper tou Gaiou phobaethentes, mae peripetaes tae aitia tou phonou
+zaetoumenou genaetai_.] Vellei. ii. 4 De tanti viri morte nulla habita
+est quaestio. Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix.
+
+[464] Schol. Bob. _ad Cic. Milon_. 7. p. 383.
+
+[465] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20.
+
+[466] Schol. Bob. l.c.; cf. Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[467] Plut. l.c.
+
+[468] Cic. _ad Fam_. ix. 21. 3, _ad Q. fr_. ii 3. 3, _de Or_. ii. 40.
+170. Cf. _de Amic_. 12. 41.
+
+[469] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20.
+
+[470] App. l.c.
+
+[471] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 20 [Greek: _hos enioi dokousin, ekon apethane
+synidon hoti ouk esoito dynatos kataschein hon hyposchoito_.] For the
+theory of suicide cf. Plut. _Rom_. 27 [Greek: _oi d' auton hyph' eautou
+pharmakois apothanein (legousin)_.]
+
+[472] Schol. Bob. _in Milon_, l.c.
+
+[473] Val. Max. iv. 1. 12.
+
+[474] Cic. _de Leg_. iii. 16. 35 Carbonis est tertia (lex tabellaria) de
+jubendis legibus ac vetandis.
+
+[475] Liv. _Ep_. lvi.
+
+[476] App. Bell. _Civ_. i. 21 [Greek: _kai gar tis haedae nomos
+ekekyroto, ei daemarchos endeoi tais parangeliais, ton daemon ek
+panton epilegesthai_.] It is possible that Appian has misconstrued
+the provision that, if enough candidates did not receive the absolute
+majority required for election (_explere tribus_), any one--even a
+tribune already in office--should be eligible. See Strachan-Davidson
+in loc.
+
+[477] Or possibly by securing that some of its candidates should not
+receive the number of votes requisite for election. See the last note.
+
+[478] App. _Bell. Civ_. i 21 [Greek: _kai tines esaegounto tous
+symmachous hapantas, oi dae teri taes gaes malista antelegon, es taen
+Rhomaion politeian anagrapsai, os meizoni chariti peri taes gaes ou
+dioisomenous; kai edechonto hasmenoi touth' oi Italiotai, protithentes
+ton chorion taen politeian_.]
+
+[479] Cic. _de Off_. iii. 11. 47 Male etiam qui peregrinos urbibus uti
+prohibent eosque exterminant, ut Pennus apud patres nostros.... Nam esse
+pro cive qui civis non sit rectum est non licere; quam legem tulerunt
+sapientissimi consules Crassus et Scaevola (95 B.C.); usu vero urbis
+prohibere peregrinos sane inhumanum est. For the date of Pennus's law
+see Cic. _Brut_. 28. 109:--Fuit ... M. Lepido et L. Oreste consulibus
+quaestor Gracchus, tribunus Pennus.
+
+[480] Festus p. 286 Resp. multarum civitatum pluraliter dixit C.
+Gracchus in ea, quam conscripsit de lege p. Enni (Penni _Müller_) et
+peregrinis, cum ait: "eae nationes, cum aliis rebus, per avaritiam atque
+stultitiam res publicas suas amiserunt".
+
+[481] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 34 [Greek: _Phoulouios phlakkos hypateion
+malista dae protos ode es to phanerotaton haerethize tous Italiotas
+epithymein taes Rhomaion politeias hos koinonous taes haegemonias anti
+hypaekoon esomenous_]. (Cf. i. 21), Val. Max. ix. 5. 1 M. Fulvius
+Flaccus consul, ... cum perniciosissimas rei publicae leges introduceret
+de civitate Italiae danda et de provocatione ad populum eorum, qui
+civitatem mutare noluissent, aegre compulsus est ut in Curiam veniret.
+
+[482] Liv. xxxviii. 36. Four tribunes vetoed a _rogatio_ to grant voting
+rights to the _municipia_ of Formiae, Fundi and Arpinum in 188 B.C. on
+the ground that the senate's judgment had not been taken, but Edocti
+populi esse, non senatus jus, suffragium quibus velit impertire,
+destiterunt incepto.
+
+[483] Val. Max. ix. 5, 1 Deinde partim monenti, partim oranti senatui ut
+incepto desisteret, responsum non dedit ... Flaccus in totius amplissimi
+ordinis contemnenda majestate versatus est. Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_.
+i. 21.
+
+[484] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 34 [Greek: _esaegoumenos de taen gnomaen
+kai epimenon autae karteros, upa taes boulaes epi tina strateian
+exepemphthae dia tode_].
+
+[485] Liv. _Ep_. lx; Ammian, xv. 12. 5.
+
+[486] An isolated notice speaks of a rising at Asculum. [Victor] _de
+Vir. Ill_. 65 (C. Gracchus) Asculanae et Fregellanae defectionis
+invidiam sustinuit.
+
+[487] Liv. viii. 22.
+
+[488] Liv. xxvii. 10.
+
+[489] Liv. _Ep_. lx L. Opimius praetor Fregellanos, qui defecerant, in
+deditionem accepit; Fregellas diruit. Cf. Vellei. ii. 6; Obsequens 90;
+Plut. _C. Gracch_. 3; [Cic.] _ad Herenn_. iv. 15. 22.
+
+[490] Vellei. i. 15 Cassio autem Longino et Sextio Calvino ...
+consulibus Fabrateria deducta est.
+
+[491] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 3.
+
+[492] It has been supposed that this boy may really have been the son of
+Attalus brother of Eumenes, a fruit of the transitory connection between
+this prince and Stratonice, which followed the false news of Eumenes's
+death in 172 B.C. See F. Köpp _De Attali III patre_ in _Rhein. Mus_.
+xlviii. pp. 154 ff.; Wilcken in Pauly-Wissowa _Real, Enc_. p. 2170, and
+for the temporary marriage of Attalus with Stratonice Plut. _de Frat.
+Amor_. 18; Polyb. xxx. 2. 6. Livy (xlii. 16) and perhaps Diodorus (xxix.
+34) speak only of Attalus's wooing, not of his marriage. If Attalus the
+Third was not the son of Eumenes, he was at least adopted by the king
+and was clearly recognised as his heir. The official view made the
+relationship between the Attali that of uncle and nephew.
+
+[493] For the guardianship of the younger Attalus see Strabo xiii. 4. 2.
+The recognition of the regent as king is clearly attested by
+inscriptions (Fränkel _Inschriften von Pergamon_ nn. 214 ff., 224, 225,
+248. In n. 248.) the future Attalus the Third is called by the king
+[Greek: _ho tadelphon nios_] (l. 18, cf. l. 32 [Greek: _ho theios
+mon_] used by Attalus the Third) and has some power of appointment to
+the priesthood. There is no sign that the nephew was in any other
+respect a co-regent of the uncle. See Fränkel op. cit. p. 169.
+
+[494] Liv. xxxviii. cc. 12, 23, 25; Polyb. xxi. 39.
+
+[495] Liv. xliv. 36; xlv. 19.
+
+[496] Wilcken in Pauly-Wissowa _Real. Enc_. p. 2168 foll.
+
+[497] Polyb. xxxii. 22; Diod. xxxi. 32 b.
+
+[498] For the details of this struggle see Wilcken l.c. p. 2172;
+Ussing _Pergamos_ p. 50.
+
+[499] Ussing op. cit. p. 51.
+
+[500] Strabo xiii. 4. 2.
+
+[501] Strabo l.c.; Lucian. _Macrob_. 12. He was sixty-one years old at
+his accession and eighty-two years old at the time of his death.
+
+[502] Justin. xxxvi. 4; Diod. xxxiv. 3.
+
+[503] Once, indeed, he seems to have taken the field with some success,
+as is proved by a decree in honour of a victory (Fränkel _Inschr. von
+Pergamon_ n. 246). A vote of the town of Elaea honours the king [Greek:
+_aretaes heneken kai andragathias taes kata polemon, krataesanta ton
+hupenantion_] (l. 22). The victory is also mentioned in n. 249.
+
+[504] Liv. _Ep_. lviii. Heredem autem populum Romanum reliquerat
+Attalus, rex Pergami, Eumenis filius. Cf. ib. lix; Strabo xiii. 4. 2;
+Vellei. ii. 4; Val. Max. v. 2, ext. 3; Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 14; Eutrop.
+iv. 18; Justin. xxxvi. 4. 5; Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15); Oros. v. 8; App.
+_Mithr_. 62.
+
+[505] Sall. _Hist_. iv. 69 Maur. (Epistula Mithridatis) Eumenen, cujus
+amicitiam gloriose ostentant, initio prodidere (Romani) Antiocho, pacis
+mercedem; post habitum custodiae agri captivi sumptibus et contumeliis
+ex rege miserrimum servorum effecere, simulatoque impio testamento
+filium ejus Aristonicum, quia patrium regnum petiverat, hostium more per
+triumphum duxere.
+
+[506] The reality of the will is attested by a Pergamene inscription
+(Fränkel _Inschr. von Pergamon_ n. 249). The inscription records a
+resolution taken by the [Greek: _daemos_] on the proposal of the [Greek:
+_strataegoi_]. The resolution is elicited after the will has become
+known and in view of its ratification by Rome (l. 7 [_Greek: dei de
+epicurothaenai taen diathaekaen hupo Rhomaion_]). Pergamon has by the
+death of the king, and perhaps in accordance with the will (see p. 177),
+been left "free" (l. 5 Attalus by passing away [Greek: _apoleloipen taen
+patrida haemon eleutheran_)]. The first result of this freedom is that
+the people extends the privileges of its citizenship. Full civic rights
+are given to Paroeci (i.e. _incolae_) and (mercenary) soldiers; the
+rights of Paroeci are given to other classes:--freedmen, royal and
+public slaves. The motive assigned for the conferment is public
+security, and the extension of rights seems to be justified (l. 6) by
+the liberal spirit shown by the late king in the organisation of his
+conquests (see p. 175 note 2). The ruling idea seems to be that, if
+Pergamon was to be free, she must be strong. See Frankel in loc.,
+Ussing _Pergamos_ p. 55.
+
+[507] At the same time the self-governing character of the civic
+corporation might be recognised: and Attalus, if he made the will, may
+have been courteous enough to recognise the "freedom" of the city from
+this point of view. See p. 177.
+
+[508] Liv. _Ep_. lix. Cum testamento Attali regis legata populo Romano
+libera esse deberet (Asia). Cf. pp. 175, 176, notes 5 and 1.
+
+[509] Justin. xxxvi. 4. 6 Sed erat ex Eumene Aristonicus, non justo
+matrimonio, sed ex paelice Ephesia, citharistae cujusdam filia, genitus,
+qui post mortem Attali velut paternum regnum Asiam invasit. The
+epitomator of Livy (lix.) speaks of him as "Eumenis filius". Strabo
+(xiv. 1. 38) describes him as [Greek: _dokon tou genous einai tou ton
+basileon_].
+
+[510] Florus i. 35 (ii. 20).
+
+[511] Strabo xiv. 1. 38.
+
+[512] Diod. xxxiv. 2. 26 [Greek: _to paraplaesion de_] (to the slave
+revolt in Sicily) [Greek: _gegone kai kata taen Asian kata tous autous
+kairous, Aristonikou men antipoiaesamenou taes mae prosaekousaes
+basileias, ton de doulon dia tas ek ton despoton kakouchias
+synaponoaesamenon ekeino kai megalois atychaemasi pollas poleis
+peribalonton_].
+
+[513] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _eis de taen mesogaian anion haethroise
+dia tacheon plaethos aporon te anthropon kai doulon ep' eleutheria
+katakeklaemenon, ous Haeliopolitas ekalese_]. For the view that
+Heliopolis was a merely ideal city deriving its name from the sun-god
+of Syria, see Mommsen _Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 1; Bücher op. cit.
+pp. 105 foll. For the hopes of divine deliverance which pervade the
+slave revolts, see Mahaffy in _Hermathena_ xvi. 1890, and cf. p. 89.
+
+[514] Strabo l.c.
+
+[515] Florus i. 35 (ii. 20).
+
+[516] Val. Max. iii. 2. 12.
+
+[517] Strabo xiv. i. 38.
+
+[518] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _euthus ai te poleis hepempsan plaethos, kai
+Nikomaedaes ho Bithynos epekouraese kai oi ton Kappadokon basileis_].
+Eutrop. iv. 20 P. Licinius Crassus infinita regum habuit auxilia. Nam et
+Bithyniae rex Nicomedes Romanos juvit et Mithridates Ponticus, cum quo
+bellum postea gravissimum fuit, et Ariarathes Cappadox et Pylaemenes
+Paphlagon. The Pontic king was Mithradates Euergetes, not Eupator.
+
+[519] Cic. _Phil_. xi. 8. 18 Populus Romanus consuli potius Crasso quam
+privato Africano bellum gerendum dedit.
+
+[520] In B.C. 189 (Liv. xxxvii. 51) and 180 (Liv. xi. 42).
+
+[521] Cic. l.c. Rogatus est populus quem id bellum gerere placeret.
+Crassus consul, pontifex maximus, Flacco collegae, flamini Martiali,
+multam dixit si a sacris discessisset; quam multam populus remisit,
+pontifici tamen flaminem parere jussit.
+
+[522] Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix. Adversus eum (Aristonicum) P. Licinius
+Crassus consul, cum idem pontifex maximus esset, quod numquam antea
+factum erat, extra Italiam profectus....
+
+[523] Quinctil, _Inst. Or_. xi. 2. 50.
+
+[524] Gell. i. 13.
+
+[525] Intentior Attalicae praedae quam bello (Justin. xxxvi. 4. 8).
+
+[526] Cf. Eutrop. iv. 20 Perperna, consul Romanus (130 B.C.) qui
+successor Crasso veniebat.
+
+[527] Val. Max. iii. 2. 12; Strabo xiv. i. 38.
+
+[528] Val. Max. _l.c. Cf_. Oros. v. 10; Florus i. 34 (ii. 20). Eutropius
+(iv. 20) states that Crassus's head was taken to Aristonicus, his body
+buried at Smyrna.
+
+[529] Justin. xxxvi. 4 Prima congressione Aristonicum superatum in
+potestatem suam redegit.
+
+[530] Eutrop. iv. 20. Cf. Liv. _Ep_. lix.
+
+[531] Justin. l.c.
+
+[532] Justin. xxxvi. 4 M. Aquilius consul ad eripiendum Aristonicum
+Perpernae, veluti sui potius triumphi munus esse deberet, festinata
+velocitate contendit.
+
+[533] Eutrop. iv. 20; Justin. xxxvi. 4.
+
+[534] Vellei. ii. 4.
+
+[535] Eutrop. l.c. Aristonicus jussu senatus Romae in carcere
+strangulatus est. According to Strabo (xiv. i. 38) he had been sent to
+Rome by Perperna.
+
+[536] Florus i. 35 (ii. 20) Aquillius Asiatici belli reliquias confecit,
+mixtis-nefas-veneno fontibus ad deditionem quarundam urbium. Quae res ut
+maturam ita infamem fecit victoriam, quippe cum contra fas deum moresque
+majorum medicaminibus impuris in id tempus sacrosancta Romana arma
+violasset.
+
+[537] Strabo xiv. 1. 38 [Greek: _Manion d' Akyllios, epelthon hypatos
+meta deka presbeuton, dietaxe taen eparchian eis to nyn eti symmenon
+taes politeias schaema_.]
+
+[538] An inscription with the words [Greek: _Man(i)os Aky(l)ios Man(i)ou
+hypato(s) Rhomaion_] has been found near Tralles. It probably belongs to
+a milestone (C.I.L. i. n. 557 = C.I.Gr. n. 2920).
+
+[539] Where the rights of _city-states_ were in question the lines of
+demarcation between "province" and "protectorate" were necessarily
+vague. Even a protectorate over small political units would demand
+organisation and justify the appointment of a commission.
+
+[540] The evidence is furnished by a Cistophorus of 77 B.C. struck at
+Ephesus. See Waddington _Fastes_ p. 674.
+
+[541] His triumph is dated to 126 B.C. (628 A. U. C., 627 according to
+the reckoning of the _Fasti_). See _Fasti triumph_, in C.I.L. i.
+
+[542] Waddington _Fastes_ pp. 662 foll. Caria belongs to the province of
+Asia in 76 B.C. (Le Bas-Waddington, no. 409).
+
+[543] It is dependent on this province in the time of Cicero (_in Pis_.
+35. 86).
+
+[544] Strabo xiv. 3. 4.
+
+[545] Justin. xxxvii. i. Cf. Bergmann in _Philologus_ 1847 p. 642.
+
+[546] Forbiger _Handb. der All. Geogr_. ii. p. 338.
+
+[547] Reinach _Mithridate Eupator_ p. 43.
+
+[548] Justin. xxxviii. 5.
+
+[549] C. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi. 10. Cf. Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. ii.
+148 Asia primum devicta luxuriam misit in Italiam.... At eadem Asia
+donata multo etiam gravius adflixit mores, inutiliorque victoria illa
+hereditas Attalo rege mortuo fuit. Tum enim haec emendi Romae in
+auctionibus regiis verecundia exempta est.
+
+[550] Ramsay, _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_ i. 2, pp. 423, 762;
+Reinach. _Mithridate Eupator_ p. 457.
+
+[551] For the evidence as to the islands, see Waddington _Fastes l. c_.
+
+[552] Regni attalici opes (Justin. xxxviii. 7. 7); Attalicae conditiones
+(Hor, _Od_. i. 1. 12); Attalicae vestes (Prop. iii. 18. 19) etc. (from
+Ihne _Rom. Gesch_. v., p. 76).
+
+[553] Liv. _Ep_. lix; App. _Illyr_. 10, _Bell. Civ_. i. 19; Plin. _H.N_.
+iii. 19. 129; _Fasti triumph_. C. Sempronius C.F.C.N. Tuditan. a. dcxxiv
+cos. de Iapudibus k. Oct.
+
+[554] Liv. _Ep_. lx; Florus i. 37 (iii. 2); Obsequens 90 (28); Ammian.
+xv. 12. 5.
+
+[555] Liv. _Ep_. lx; Plut. _C. Gracch_. 1. 2.
+
+[556] _Fasti Triumph_. L. Aurelius L.F.L.N. Orestes pro an. dcxxi cos.
+ex Sardinia vi Idus Dec. (123 B.C.)
+
+[557] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[558] Diod. v. 17, 2.
+
+[559] Besides Mago (Mahon), Bocchori and Guiuntum on Majorca, Iamo on
+Minorca are supposed to be Punic names. See Hübner in Pauly-Wissowa
+_Real. Enc_. p. 2823. On the islands generally (Baliares, later Baleares
+of the Romans, [Greek: _Gymnaesiai, Baliareis_] of the Greeks) see the
+same author's _Römische Heerschaft in Westeuropa_ 208 ff.
+
+[560] Strabo iii. v. 1.
+
+[561] Diod. v. 17. 4.
+
+[562] Hübner in Pauly-Wissowa _Real. Enc. l. c_.
+
+[563] They also purchased wine. They were so [Greek: _philogynai_] that
+they would give pirates three or four men as a ransom for one woman
+(Diod. v. 17).
+
+[564] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _oi katoikountes eiraenaioi ... kakourgon de
+tinon oligon koinonias systaesamenon pros tous en tois pelagesi laestas,
+dieblaethaesan hapantes, kai diebae Metellos ep' autous ho Baliarikos
+prosagoreutheis_.]
+
+[565] Strabo l.c.
+
+[566] Strabo l.c. [Greek: _eisaegage de (Metellos) epoikous trischilious
+ton ek taes Ibaerias Rhomaion_.]
+
+[567] _Fasti Triumph_. (121 B.C.) Q. Caecilius Q.F.Q.N. Metellus
+a. dcxxxii Baliaric. procos. de Baliarib.
+
+[568] Plut. _Ti. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[569] Quae sic ab illo acta esse constabat oculis, voce, gestu, inimici
+ut lacrimas tenere non possent (Cic. _de Or_, iii. 56. 214).
+
+[570] Plut. l.c.
+
+[571] Plut. l.c.
+
+[572] Cic. _Brut_, 33. 125 Sed ecce in manibus vir et praestantissimo
+ingenio et flagranti studio et doctus a puero, C. Gracchus.... Grandis
+est verbis, sapiens sententiis, genere toto gravis. His "impetus" is
+dwelt on in Tac. _de Orat_. 26.
+
+[573] Cic. _Brut_. 33. 126 Manus extrema non accessit operibus ejus:
+praeclare inchoata multa, perfecta non plane. Cf. Tac. _de Orat_. 18
+Sic Catoni seni comparatus C. Gracchus plenior et uberior; sic Graccho
+politior et ornatior Crassus.
+
+[574] Cic, _de Or_. iii. 56. 214.
+
+[575] P. 127
+
+[576] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 1.
+
+[577] C. Gracchus ap. Charis. ii. p. 177 Qui sapientem eum faciet? Qui
+et vobis et rei publicae et sibi communiter prospiciat, non qui pro
+suilla humanam trucidet.
+
+[578] Plut. l.c.
+
+[579] Ibid. Cf. [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65 Pestilentem Sardiniam
+quaestor sortitus.
+
+[580] Plut. l.c.
+
+[581] Cic. _de Div_. i. 26. 56 C. vero Gracchus multis dixit, ut
+scriptum apud eundem Coelium est, sibi in somniis quaesturam petere
+dubitanti Ti. fratrem visum esse dicere, quam vellet cunctaretur, tamen
+eodem sibi leto quo ipse interisset esse pereundum. Hoc, ante quam
+tribunus plebi C. Gracchus factus esset, et se audisse scribit Coelius
+et dixisse eum multis. Cf. Plut. l.c.
+
+[582] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 2.
+
+[583] Plut. l.c.
+
+[584] Plut. l.c.
+
+[585] Ibid. [Greek: _alla kai pollois allokotom edokei to tamian onta
+proapostaenai tou archontos_].
+
+[586] Cic. _Div. in Caec_. 19. 61 Sic enim a majoribus nostris accepimus
+praetorem quaestori suo parentis loco esse oportere: nullam neque
+justiorem neque graviorem causam necessitudinis posse reperiri quam
+conjunctionem sortis, quam provinciae, quam officii, quam publici
+muneris societatem.
+
+[587] A passage from Caius's speech "apud censores" is quoted by Cicero
+_Orat_. 70.233.
+
+[588] Plutarch says (C. _Gracch_. 2) that Caius [Greek: _aitaesamenos
+logon outo metestaese tas gnomes ton akousanton, hos apelthein
+haedikaesthai ta megista doxas_]. The passage seems to imply acquittal
+by the censors, although [Greek: _ton akousanton_] suggests the larger
+audience. The arguments cited by Plutarch as developed by Caius
+appeared, or were repeated, in the speech that he subsequently made
+before the people.
+
+[589] Gell. xv. 12.
+
+[590] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 3; [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65.
+
+[591] Plut. l.c.
+
+[592] Plut. l.c.
+
+[593] Cic. _pro Rab_. 4. 12 C. Gracchus legem tulit ne de capite civium
+Romanorum injussu vestro (sc. populi) judicaretur. Plut. _C. Gracch. 4
+[Greek: _(nomon eisepheren) ei tis archon akriton ekpekaerychoi politaen,
+kat' auton didonta krisin to daemo_.] Schol. Ambros. p. 370 Quia
+sententiam tulerat Gracchus, ut ne quis in civem Romanum capitalem
+sententiam diceret. Cic. _in Cat_. iv. 5. 10; _in Verr_. v. 63. 163.
+Cf. Cic. _pro Sest_. 28. 61; Dio Cass. xxxviii. 14.
+
+[594] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 4.
+
+[595] Schol. Ambros. p. 370. Cf. Cic. _pro Sest_. 28, 61 Consule me,
+cum esset designatus (Cato) tribunus plebis (63 B.C.), obtulit in
+discrimen vitam suam: dixit eam sententiam cujus invidiam capitis
+periculo sibi praestandam videbat. Dio Cass. xxxviii. 14.
+
+[596] Cic. _pro Domo_ 31. 82 Ubi enim tuleras ut mihi aqua et igni
+interdiceretur? quod C. Gracchus de P. Popilio ... tulit. _de Leg_.
+iii. 11. 26 Si nos multitudinis furentis inflammata invidia pepulisset
+tribuniciaque vis in me populum, sicut Gracchus in Laenatem ...
+incitasset, ferremus. Cf. _pro Cluent_. 35. 95; _de Rep_. i. 3.6. For
+the speeches of Caius Gracchus on Popillius see Gell. 1.7.7; xi. 13.1.5.
+
+[597] Cic. _post Red. in Sen_. 15. 37 Pro me non ut pro P. Popilio,
+nobilissimo homine, adulescentes filii, non propinquorum multitudo
+populum Romanum est deprecata.
+
+[598] Diod. xxxv. 26 [Greek: _ho Popillios meta dakruon hypo ton ochlon
+proepemphthae ekballomenos ek taes poleos_.] Cf. Plut. _C. Gracch_. 4.
+
+[599] Vellei. ii. 7 Rupilium Popiliumque, qui consules asperrime in
+Tiberii Gracchi amicos saevierant, postea judiciorum publicorum merito
+oppressit invidia. It is a little difficult to harmonise Fannius's
+account of Rupilius's death (ap. Cic. _Tusc_. iv. 17.40) with this
+condemnation. Here Rupilius is said to have died of grief at his
+brother's failure to obtain the consulship, and this failure happened
+before Scipio's death (Cic. _de Am_ 20.73). But his brother may have
+continued his unsuccessful efforts up to the time of Rupilius's
+condemnation.
+
+[600] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 4 [Greek: _(nomon) eisephere ... ei tinos
+archontos aphaeraeto ton archaen ho daemos, ouk eonta touto deuteras
+archaes metousian einai_.] Cf. Diod. xxxv. 25. Magistrates who had been
+deposed, or compelled to abdicate, were known as _abacti_ (Festus p. 23
+Abacti magistratus dicebantur, qui coacti deposuerant imperium).
+
+[601] Plut. l.c.
+
+[602] Diod. xxxv. 25 [Greek: _ho Grakchos daemaegoraesas peri tou
+katalysai aristokratian, daemokratian de systaesai, kai ephikomenos taes
+hapanton euchraestias ton meron, ouketi synagonistas alla kathaper
+authentas eiche toutous hyper taes idias tolmaes; dedekasmenos gar
+hekastos tais idiais elpisin hos hyper idion agathon ton eispheromenon
+nomon hetoimos haen panta kindynon hypomenein_.]
+
+[603] Liv. _Ep_. xlviii (155 B.C.) Cum locatum a censoribus theatrum
+exstrueretur; P. Cornelio Nasica auctore, tanquam inutile et nociturum
+publicis moribus, ex senatus consulto destructum est, populusque
+aliquamdiu stans ludos spectavit.
+
+[604] Liv. _Ep_. lx.; Oros. v. II; Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 393.
+
+[605] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 5 [Greek: _ho de sitikos (nomos) epeuonizon
+tois penaesi taen agoran_.] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 21 [Greek:
+_sitaeresion hemmaenon horisas hekasto ton daemoton apo ton koinon
+chraematon, ou proteron eiothos diadidosthai_.] Vellei. ii. 6 Frumentum
+plebi dari instituerat. Liv. _Ep_. lx Leges tulit, inter quas
+frumentariam, ut senis et triente frumentum plebi daretur. Schol. Bob.
+p. 303 Ut senis aeris et trientibus modios singulos populus acciperet.
+Cf. Mommsen _Die römischen Tribus_ pp. 179 and 182.
+
+[606] Mommsen (_Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 3) considers it rather less
+than half. The average market-price of the _modius_ is difficult to fix.
+A low price seems to have been about 12 asses the _modius_. See Smith
+and Wilkins in Smith _Dict. of _Antiq_. i. p. 877. For occasional sales
+below the market-price at an earlier period see Plin. _H.N_. xviii. 3.
+17 M. Varro auctor est, cum L. Metellus (cos. 251 B.C.) in triumpho
+plurimos duxit elephantos, assibus singulis farris modios fuisse.
+
+[607] Cic. _Tusc. Disp_. iii. 20. 48 C. Gracchus, cum largitiones
+maximas fecisset et effudisset aerarium, verbis ramen defendebat
+aerarium.
+
+[608] Cic. _Tusc. Disp_. iii. 20. 48.
+
+[609] Cic. _de Off_. ii. 21. 72 C. Gracchi frumentaria magna largitio;
+exhauriebat igitur aerarium: _pro Sest_. 48. 103 Frumentariam legem C.
+Gracchus ferebat. Jucunda res plebei; victus enim suppeditabatur large
+sine labore. Cf. _Brut_. 62. 222. Diod. xxxv. 25 [Greek: _to koinon
+tamieion eis aischras kai akairous dapanas kai charitas analiskon eis
+heauton pantas apoblepein epoiaese_.] Cf. Oros. v. 12.
+
+[610] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6 [Greek: _egrapse de kai ... kataskeuazesthai
+sitobolia_.] Festus p. 290 Sempronia horrea qui locus dicitur, in eo
+fuerunt lege Gracchi, ad custodiam frumenti publici.
+
+[611] This view is represented in a criticism preserved by Diodorus
+xxxv. 25 [Greek: _tois stratiotais dia ton nomon ta taes archaias agogaes
+austaera katacharisamenos apeithian kai anarchian eisaegagen eis taen
+politeian_].
+
+[612] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 5 [Greek: _ho de stratiotikos (nomos) esthaeta
+te keleuon daemosia choraegeisthai kai maeden eis touto taes
+misthophoras hyphaireisthai ton stratenomenon_].
+
+[613] [Greek: _kai neoteron eton heptakaideka mae katalegesthai
+stratiotaen_] (Plut. l.c.).
+
+[614] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _ton de nomon ... ho men haen klaerouchikos
+hama nemon tois penaesi taen daemosian_.] Liv. _Ep_. lx Tulit ... legem
+agrariam, quam et frater ejus tulerat. Vellei. ii. 6 (C. Gracchus)
+dividebat agros, vetabat quemquam civem plus quingentis jugeribus
+habere, quod aliquando lege Licinia cautum erat. Cf. Cic. _de Leg. Agr_.
+i. 7. 21; ii. 5. 10; Oros. v. 12; Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15).
+
+[615] _Lex Agraria_ (C.I.L. i. n. 200; Bruns _Fontes_ 1. 3. 11) 1. 6.
+See p. 113, note 2.
+
+[616] In 125 B.C. the census had been 394, 726 (Liv. _Ep_. lx), in 115
+it was 394, 336 (Liv. _Ep_. lxiii). See de Boor _Fasti Censorii_.
+
+[617] Herzog _Staatsverf_. i. p. 466.
+
+[618] In 142 B.C. (Cic. _de Fin_. ii. 16. 54).
+
+[619] Polyb. vi. 14.
+
+[620] Cic. _pro Mur_. 28. 58; _pro Font_. 13. 38; _Brut_. 21. 81; _Div.
+in Caec_. 21. 69; Tac_. Ann_ 111. 66. Valerius Maximus (viii. 1. 11) can
+scarcely be correct in saying that the trial took place _apud populum_.
+It seems to have been a trial for extortion.
+
+[621] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 22. Cf. Cic. _Div. in Caec_. 21. 69
+[Ascon.] in loc.; App. _Mithr_. 57.
+
+[622] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 22 [Greek: _oi te presbeis oi kat auton eti
+parontes syn phthono tauta permontes ekekragesan_.]
+
+[623] Plut, _C. Gracch_. 5 [Greek: _ho de dikastikos (nomos) ho to
+pleiston apekopse taes ton synklaetikon dynameos ... ho de priakosious
+ton hippeon proskatelexen antois ousi triakosiois kai tas kriseis koinas
+ton hexakosion epoiaese_]. Cf. _Compar_. 2. Liv. _Ep_. lx Tertiam (legem
+tulit) qua equestrem ordinem, tunc cum senatu consentientem,
+corrumperet: "ut sexcenti ex equitibus in curiam sublegerentur: et quia
+illis temporibus trecenti tantum senatores erant, sexcenti equites
+trecentis senatoribus admiscerentur": id est, ut equester ordo bis
+tantum virium in senatu haberet.
+
+[624] Vellei. ii. 6 C. Gracchus ... judicia a senatu transferebat ad
+equites. (Cf. ii. 13. 32). Tac. _Ann_. xii. 60 Cum Semproniis
+rogationibus equester ordo in possessione judiciorum locaretur. Plin.
+_H.N_. xxxiii. 34 Judicum autem appellatione separare eum (equestrem)
+ordinem primi omnium instituere Gracchi, discordi popularitate in
+contumeliam senatus. Cf. Diod. xxxv. 25; xxxvii. 9; App. _Bell.
+Civ_. 1. 22.
+
+[625] The qualifications of the Gracchan jurors were probably identical
+with those required for jurors under the extant _lex Repetundarum_ (C.I.
+L. i. n. 198; Bruns _Fontes_ i. 3. 10) which is probably the _lex
+Acilia_ (Cic. _in Verr_. Act. i. 17. 51; cf. Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.).
+The conditions fixed by this law are as follows (ll. 12, l3):--Praetor
+quei inter peregrinos jous deicet, is in diebus x proxumeis, quibus h. l.
+populus plebesve jouserit, facito utei CDL viros legat, quei in hac
+civit[ate ... dum nei quem eorum legat, quei tr. pl., q., iii vir cap.,
+tr. mil. l. iv primis aliqua earum, iii vi]rum a. d. a. siet fueri[tve,
+queive mercede conductus depugnavit depugnaverit, queive quaestione
+joudicioque puplico conde]mnatus siet quod circa eum in senatum legei
+non liceat, queive minor anneis xxx majorve annos lx gnatus siet, queive
+in u[rbem Romam propiusve urbem Romam passus M domicilium non habeat,
+queive ejus magistratus, quei supra scriptus est, pater frater filiusve
+siet, queive ejus, quei in senatu siet fueritve, pater frater filiusve
+siet, queive trans mar]e erit. (Cf. ll. 16, 17). Unfortunately the main
+qualification for the jurors, which was stated after the words "in hac
+civitate," has been lost.
+
+[626] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6 [Greek: _kakeino tous krinountas ek ton
+hippeon hedoken (ho daemos) katalexai_].
+
+[627] The _lex Acilia_ says "within ten days of its becoming law" (p.
+214, note 2). If Plutarch _(l.c.)_ is right about Gracchus selecting the
+original judices, the provision of this _lex_ shows that it cannot be,
+as some have thought, the law which first _created_ the Gracchan jurors.
+It must have been passed subsequently to Gracchus's own _lex
+judiciaria_.
+
+[628] In the Ciceronian period we find a knight as a _judex_ in a civil
+case (Cic. _pro Rosc. Com_. 14. 42), but it is not probable that
+senators were ever excluded from the civil bench. See Greenidge _Legal
+Procedure of Cicero's Time_ p. 265.
+
+[629] Cic. _in Verr_. Act. i. 13. 38.
+
+[630] Cic. _pro Cluent_. 56. 154 Lege ... quae tum erat Sempronia, nunc
+est Cornelia (i.e. the law mentioned in note 4) ... intellegebant ...
+ea lege equestrem ordinem non teneri. Livius Drusus in 91 B.C. attempted
+to fix a retrospective liability on the equestrian jurors (Cic. _pro
+Rab. Post_ 7. 16). Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 35. Yet Appian elsewhere
+(_Bell. Civ_. i. 22) says that the equites obviated trials for bribery
+[Greek: _synistamenoi sphisin autois kai biazomenoi_]. It is possible
+that prosecutions for corruption before the _judicia populi_ are meant.
+See Strachan-Davidson in loc.
+
+[631] Cic. _pro Cluent_. 55. 151 Hanc ipsam legem NE QUIS JUDICIO
+CIRCUMVENIRETUR C. Gracchus tulit; eam legem pro plebe, non in plebem
+tulit. Postea L. Sulla ... cum ejus rei quaestionem hac ipsa lege
+constitueret, ... populum Romanum ... alligare novo quaestionis genere
+ausus non est. 56. 154 Illi non hoc recusabant, ea ne lege accusarentur
+... quae tum erat Sempronia, nunc est Cornelia ... intellegebant enim ea
+lege equestrem ordinem non teneri.
+
+[632] Gell. 1. xx. 7; Justin. _Inst_. iv. 5. 2.
+
+[633] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 22.
+
+[634] App. l.c. [Greek: _kataegorous te enetous epi tois plousiois
+epaegonto_].
+
+[635] C. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi. 10 Ego ipse, qui aput vos verba facio,
+uti vectigalia vestra augeatis, quo facilius vestra commoda et rem
+publicam administrare possitis, non gratis prodeo.
+
+[636] Vellei. ii. 6. 3 Nova constituebat portoria.
+
+[637] Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. v. 4 (M. Antonius to the Asiatics) [Greek:
+_ous ... eteleite phorous Attalo, methaekamen hymin, mechri, daemokopon
+andron kai par' haemin genomenon, edeaese phoron, epei de edeaesen ...
+merae pherein ton ekastote karpon epetazamen_].
+
+[638] Fronto _ad Verum_ p. 125 (Naber) Gracchus locabat Asiam. Cic.
+_in Verr_. iii. 6. 12 Inter Siciliam ceterasque provincias, judices, in
+agrorum vectigalium ratione hoc interest, quod ceteris aut impositum
+vectigal est certum ... aut censoria locatio constituta est, ut Asiae
+lege Sempronia.
+
+[639] Decumani, hoc est, principes et quasi senatores publicanorum (Cic.
+_in Verr_. ii. 71. 175).
+
+[640] Polyb. vi. 17.
+
+[641] Schol. Bob. p. 259 Cum princeps esset publicanorum Cn. Plancii
+pater, et societas eadem in exercendis vectigalibus gravissimo damno
+videretur adfecta, desideratum est in senatu nomine publicanorum ut cum
+iis ratio putaretur lege Sempronia, et remissionis tantum fieret de
+summa pecunia, quantum aequitas postularet, pro quantitate damnorum
+quibus fuerant hostili incursione vexati (60 B.C.; cf. Cic. _ad Att_.
+i. 17. 9).
+
+[642] Varro ap. Non. p. 308 G. Equestri ordini judicia tradidit ac
+bicipitem civitatem fecit discordiarum civilium fontem. Cf. Florus ii. 5
+(iii. 17).
+
+[643] Diod. xxxvii. 9 [Greek: _apeilousaes taes synklaetou polemon to
+Grakcho dia taen metathesin ton kritaerion, tetharraekotos outos eipen
+hoti kan apothano, ou dialeipso to eiphos apo taes pleuras ton
+synklaetikon diaeraemenos_.] Diodorus has preserved the utterance in a
+more intelligible form than Cicero (_de Leg_. iii. 9. 20 C. vero
+Gracchus ... sicis iis, quas ipse se projecisse in forum dixit, quibus
+digladiarentur inter se cives, nonne omnem rei publicae statum
+permutavit?).
+
+[644] Cic. _pro Domo_ 9, 24 Tu provincias consulares, quas C. Gracchus,
+qui unus maxime popularis fuit, non modo non abstulit a senatu, sed
+etiam, ut necesse esset quotannis constitui per senatum decretas lege
+sanxit, eas lege Sempronia per senatum decretas rescidisti. Sall, _Fug_.
+27 Lege Sempronia provinciae futuris consulibus Numidia atque Italia
+decretae. Cic. _de Prov. Cons_. 2. 3 Decernendae nobis sunt lege
+Sempronia duae (provinciae). Cf. _ad Fam_. i. 7. 10; _pro Balbo_ 27. 61.
+
+[645] Cic. _de Prov. Cons_. 7. 17.
+
+[646] The colonists were to be [Greek: _oi chariestatoi ton politon_]
+(Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9).
+
+[647] Liv. _Ep_. lx Legibus agrariis latis effecit ut complures coloniae
+in Italia deducerentur. Cf. Plut. _C. Gracch_, 6. App. _Bell. Civ_. 1.
+23; Foundations at Abellinum, Cadatia, Suessa Aurunca etc. are
+attributed to a _lex Sempronia_ or _lex Graccana_ in _Liber Coloniarum_
+(_Gromatici_ Lachmann) pp. 229, 233, 237, 238; cf. pp. 216, 219, 228,
+255. It is difficult to say whether they were products of the Gracchan
+agrarian or colonial law. In either case, these foundations may have
+been subsequent to his death, as neither law was repealed.
+
+[648] Vellei. 1. 15 Et post annum (i.e. a year after the foundation
+of Fabrateria, see p. 171) Scolacium Minervium, Tarentum Neptunia
+(coloniae conditae sunt).
+
+[649] Forbiger _Handb. der Alt. Geogr_. ii. p. 503.
+
+[650] L'Année _Epigraphique_, 1896, pp. 30, 31.
+
+[651] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[652] Vellei. ii. 6 Novis coloniis replebat provincias. This may be
+wrong as a fact but true as an intention.
+
+[653] Vellei. ii. 7.
+
+[654] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10 [Greek: _Rhoubrion ton synarchonton henos
+oikizesthai Karchaedona grapsantos anaeraemenaen hypo Skaepionos_]....
+_Lex Acilia_ 1. 22 Queive 1. Rubria in. vir col. ded. creatus siet
+fueritve. Cf. _Lex Agraria_ 1. 59. Oros. v. 12 L. Caecilio Metello et Q.
+Titio (_Scr_. T. Quinctio) Flaminino coss. Carthago in Africa restitui
+jussa vicensimo secundo demum anno quam fuerat eversa deductis civium
+Romanorum familiis, quae eam incolerent, restituta et repleta est. Cf.
+Eutrop. iv. 21.
+
+[655] Mommsen in C.I.L. i. pp. 75 ff.
+
+[656] Mommsen l.c. This was the tenure afterwards called that of the
+_jus Italicum_.
+
+[657] Liv. _Ep_. ix; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 24.
+
+[658] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6; App, _Bell. Civ_, i. 23.
+
+[659] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 7.
+
+[660] Nitzsch _Die Gracchen_ p. 402.
+
+[661] These are apparently the _Viasii vicani_ of the _lex Agraria_.
+Sometimes the service was performed by personal labour (_operae_), at
+other times a _vectigal_ was demanded. See Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.
+
+[662] Cic. _ad Fam_. viii. 6. 5; cf. Mommsen l.c.
+
+[663] This was prohibited by a _lex Licinia_ and a _lex Aebutia_ which
+Cicero (_de Leg. Agr_. ii. 8. 21) calls _veteres tribuniciae_. But it is
+possible that they were post-Gracchan. See Mommsen _Staatsr_. ii.
+p. 630.
+
+[664] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23 [Greek: _ho de Grakchos kai hodous etemnen
+ana ten Italian makras, plaethos ergolabon kai cheirotechnon hyph' eauto
+poionmenos, hetoimon es ho ti keleuoi_]
+
+[665] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[666] Cic. _Brut_. 26, 100.
+
+[667] Mommsen in C.I.L. i. p. 158.
+
+[668] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 6.
+
+[669] Seneca _de Ben_, vi. 34. 2 Apud nos primi omnium Gracchus et mox
+Livius Drusus instituerunt segregate turbam suam et alios in secretum
+recipere, alios cum pluribus, alios universos. Habuerunt itaque isti
+amicos primos, habuerunt secundos, numquam veros.
+
+[670] The name of the law was probably _lex de sociis et nomine Latino_.
+See Cic. _Brut_. 26. 99.
+
+[671] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23 [Greek: _kai tous Latinous epi panta
+ekalei ta Rhomaion, hos ouk euprepos sygnenesi taes boulaes antistaenai
+dynamenaes; ton de heteron symmachon hois ouk ezaen psaephon en tais
+Rhomaion cheirotoniais pherein, edidous pherein apo toude, epi to echein
+kai tousde en tais cherotioniais ton nomon auto syntelountas_]. The
+words [Greek: _psaephon k.t.l._] refer to the limited suffrage granted to
+Latin _incolae_ (Liv. xxv. 3. 16); but the voting power of his new
+Latins would be so small that the motive attributed to this measure by
+Appian is improbable. See Strachan-Davidson in loc. Other accounts of
+Gracchus's proposal ignore this distinction between Latins and Italians,
+e.g. Plutarch (_C. Gracch_. 5) describes his law as [Greek: _isopsaephous
+toion tois politais tous Italiotas_] and Velleius says (ii. 6) Dabat
+civitatem omnibus Italicis.
+
+[672] If we may trust Velleius (ii. 6) Dabat civitatem omnibus Italicis,
+extendebat eam paene usque Alpis. Cisalpine Gaul was not yet a separate
+province, but it was not regarded as a part of Italy. The Latin colonies
+between the Padus and the Rubicon would certainly have received Roman
+rights, and this may have been the case with a Latin township north of
+the Padus such as Aquileia. But it is doubtful whether Latin rights
+would have been given to the towns between the Padus and the Alps. These
+_Transpadani_ received _Latinitas_ in 89 B.C. (Ascon. _in Pisonian_.
+P. 3).
+
+[673] C. Gracch. ap, Gell. x. 3. 3.
+
+[674] Fann. ap. Jul. Victor 6. 6. A speech of Fannius as consul against
+Caius Gracchus is also mentioned by Charisius p. 143 Keil.
+
+[675] Cic. Brut. 26. 99.
+
+[676] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23.
+
+[677] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 12 [Greek: _antexethaeken ho Gaios diagramma
+kataegoron ton hypaton, kai tois symmachois, an menosi, boaethaesein
+epangellomenos_.] The invective may have been directed against Fannius,
+According to Appian (l.c.) both consuls had been instructed by the
+senate to issue the edict.
+
+[678] If it had been hampered in this way, the judicial protection of
+_peregrini_ against the judgments of the Praetor Peregrinus would have
+been impossible.
+
+[679] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[680] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 23.
+
+[681] [Sall.] _de Rep. Ord_. ii. 8 Magistratibus creandis haud mihi
+quidem apsurde placet lex quam C. Gracchus in tribunatu promulgaverat,
+ut ex confusis quinque classibus sorte centuriae vocarentur. Ita
+coaequatus dignitate pecunia, virtute anteire alius alium properabit.
+
+[682] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8.
+
+[683] Vir et oratione gravis et auctoritate (Cic. _Brut_. 28. 109)
+[Greek: _haethei de kai logo kai plouto tois malista timomenois kai
+dynamenois apo touton enamillos_] (Plut. _C. Gracch_. 8).
+
+[684] Suet. _Tib_. 3 Ob eximiam adversus Gracchos operam "patronus
+senatus" dictus.
+
+[685] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[686] App. _Bell. Civ_ i. 35.
+
+[687] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[688] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9 [Greek: _Libios de kai taen apophoran
+tautaen_] (which had been imposed by the Gracchan laws) [Greek: _ton
+neimamenon aphairon haeresken autois_]. The tense of _neimamenon_ seems
+to show that the Gracchan as well as the Livian settlers are meant. See
+Underhill in loc. In any case, the reimposition of the _vectigal_ on
+the allotments by the law of 119 (App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 27) proves that
+it had been remitted before this date.
+
+[689] [Greek: _hopos maed' epi strateias exae tina Latinon rhabdois
+aikisasthai_] (Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9).
+
+[690] The _lex Acilia Repetundarum_ grants them the right of appeal as
+an alternative to citizenship as a reward for successful prosecution.
+Cf. the similar provision in the franchise law of Flaccus (p. 168).
+
+[691] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 9.
+
+[692] Appian (_Bell. Civ_. i. 24) says that Gracchus was accompanied by
+Fulvius Flaccus. Plutarch (_C. Gracch_. 10) implies that the latter
+stayed at Rome.
+
+[693] App. l.c. Appian represents this measure as having been proposed
+after the return of the commissioners to Rome. The words of Plutarch
+(_C. Gracch_. 8) [Greek: _apaertaesato to plaethos ... kakon ... epi
+koinoniai politeias tous Latinous_] probably refer to an invitation of
+the Latins to share in these citizen colonies.
+
+[694] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 10.
+
+[695] Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.
+
+[696] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 11.
+
+[697] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 24. According to Appian, the wolf event
+occurred after Gracchus had quitted Africa.
+
+[698] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 11.
+
+[699] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 12.
+
+[700] Ibid. [Greek: _synetyche d' auto kai pros tous synarchontas en
+orgae genesthai. synarchontas_] here is not limited to his colleagues
+in the tribunate.
+
+[701] [Greek: _exemisthoun_] (Plut. l.c.), probably to contractors who
+would sublet the seats.
+
+[702] Beesly _The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla_ p. 53.
+
+[703] [Greek: _psaephon men auto pleiston genomenon, adikos de kai
+kakourgos ton synarchonton poiaesamenon taen anagoreusin kai anadeixin_].
+(Plut. l.c.)
+
+[704] Cic. _in Pis_. 15. 36; Varro _R.R_. iii. 5. 18.
+
+[705] [Greek: _hos Sardonion gelota gelosin, ou gignoskontes hoson
+autois skotos ek ton auton perikechytai politeumaton_.] (Plut. l.c.)
+
+[706] Cic. _pro Caec_. 33. 95; _pro Domo_ 40. 106.
+
+[707] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65.
+
+[708] Cornelia ap. Corn. Nep. fr. 16 Ne id quidem tam breve spatium
+(sc. vitae) potest opitulari quin et mihi adversere et rem publicam
+profliges? Denique quae pausa erit? Ecquando desinet familia nostra
+insanire? Ecquando modus ei rei haberi poterit? Ecquando desinemus et
+habentes et praebentes molestiis insistere? Ecquando perpudescet
+miscenda atque perturbanda re publica?
+
+[709] [Greek: _hos dae theristas_] (Plut. _C. Gracch_. 13).
+
+[710] Plutarch (l.c.) says that the consul had "sacrificed" [Greek:
+(_thysantos_)] and, if this is correct, Opimius must have summoned
+the meeting.
+
+[711] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25.
+
+[712] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 13; App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25; [Victor] _de Vir.
+III_. 65. The last author calls the slain man Attilius and describes him
+as "praeco Opimii consulis". Cf. Ihne _Röm. Gesch_. v. p. 103.
+
+[713] [Victor] l.c. Imprudens contionem a tribuno plebis avocavit.
+Cf. App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25.
+
+[714] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[715] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 25.
+
+[716] App. l.c.
+
+[717] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[718] Cic. _Phil_. viii. 4. 14 Quod L. Opimius consul verba fecit de re
+publica, de ea re ita censuerunt, uti L. Opimius consul rem publicam
+defenderet. Senatus haec verbis, Opimius armis. Cf. _in Cat_. i. 2. 4;
+iv. 5. 10. Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14 [Greek: _eis to bouleutaerion
+apelthontes epsaephisanto kai prosetaxan Opimio to hypato sozein taen
+polin hopos dynaito kai katalyein tous tyrannous_.]
+
+[719] Plut. l.c.
+
+[720] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 26.
+
+[721] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 14.
+
+[722] Ibid. 15.
+
+[723] App. _Bell. Civ. i_. 26.
+
+[724] Cf. Bardey _Das sechste Consulat des Marius_ p. 61.
+
+[725] Plut. l.c.
+
+[726] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 16; App. l.c.
+
+[727] Plut. l.c.
+
+[728] Plut. l.c.
+
+[729] Cic. _in Cat_. iv. 6. 13.
+
+[730] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 26. Plut. (_C. Gracch_. 16) states that
+Flaccus fled to a bathroom ([Greek: _eis ti balaneion_]).
+
+[731] Dionys. viii. 80.
+
+[732] Plut. l.c.
+
+[733] Val. Max. iv. 7. 2; [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 65; Oros, v. 12.
+Plutarch (l.c.) gives he second name as Licinius.
+
+[734] Plut. l.c.
+
+[735] [Victor] l.c.
+
+[736] Translated "Grove of the Furies" by Plutarch; cf. Cic. _de Nat.
+Deor_. iii. 18. 46. The true name of the grove was Lucus Furrinae, named
+after some goddess, whose significance was forgotten (Varro _L. L_. vi.
+19 Nunc vix nomen notum paucis). See Richter _Topographie_ p. 271.
+
+[737] Plut. _C. Gracch_. 17. Cf. Val. Max. vi. 8. 3.
+
+[738] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiii. 3. 48. Cf. Plut. l.c.; [Victor] l.c.;
+Florus ii. 3 (iii. 15).
+
+[739] Oros. v. 12.
+
+[740] Oros. l.c. Opimius consul sicut in bello fortis fuit ita in
+quaestione crudelis. Nam amplius tria milia hominum suppliciis necavit,
+ex quibus plurimi ne dicta quidem causa innocentes interfecti sunt.
+Plutarch (l.c.) gives three thousand as the number actually slain in
+the tumult. Orosius (l.c.) gives the number slain on the Aventine as
+two hundred and fifty. For the severity with which Opimius conducted the
+_quaestio_ see Sall. _Jug_. 16. 2, 31. 7; Vellei. ii. 7.
+
+[741] Plut. l.c.
+
+[742] Dig. xxiv. 3. 66. The passage speaks of Licinia's dowry; yet
+Plutarch (l.c.) says that this was confiscated.
+
+[743] In Plutarch's Greek version (C. Gracch, 17) [Greek: _ergon
+aponoias_] (vecordiae) [Greek: _naon homonoias_] (concordiae)
+[Greek: _poiei_].
+
+[744] Cf. Neumann _Geschichte Roms_. p. 259.
+
+[745] Plut, _C. Gracch_, 18.
+
+[746] Plut. _C, Gracch_, 19.
+
+[747] Plin. _H.N_. xxxiv. 6. 31.
+
+[748] Hence the establishment of the _praefecti jure dicundo_, sent to
+the burgess colonies and _municipia_.
+
+[749] Arist. _Pol_. iv. 6, p. 1292 b.
+
+[750] The choice of the month of July as the date for elections seems to
+be post-Sullan. See Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 583. During the Jugurthine
+War consular elections took place, as we shall see, in the late autumn
+or even in the winter.
+
+[751] Suet. _Caes_. 42.
+
+[752] If some of the Gracchan assignments were thirty _jugera_ each (p.
+115). The larger assignments of earlier times had been from seven to ten
+_jugera_. See Mommsen in C.I. L. i. pp. 75 foll.
+
+[753] Liv. _Ep_. lxi L. Opimius accusatus apud populum a Q. Decio
+tribuno plebis quod indemnatos cives in carcerem conjecisset, absolutus
+est. "In carcerem conjicere" does not express the whole truth. A
+magistrate could imprison in preparation for a trial. The words must
+imply imprisonment preparatory to execution and probably refer to death
+in the Tullianum.
+
+[754] Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 30. 132; _Part. Orat_. 30, 104. In the latter
+passage Opimius is supposed to say "Jure feci, salutis omnium et
+conservandae rei publicae causa." Decius is supposed to answer "Ne
+sceleratissimum quidem civem sine judicio jure ullo necare potuisti."
+The cardinal question therefore is "Potueritne recte salutis rei
+publicae causa civem eversorem civitatis indemnatum necare?" Cf. Cic.
+_de Orat_. ii. 39. 165 Si ex vocabulo, ut Carbo: Sei consul est qui
+consuluit patriae, quid aliud fecit Opimius?
+
+[755] Cf. Cic. _pro Sest_. 67. 140 (Opimium) flagrantem invidia
+propter interitum C. Gracchi semper ipse populus Romanus periculo
+liberavit.
+
+[756] Cic. _Brut_. 34. 128 L. Bestia ... P. Popillium vi C. Gracchi
+expulsum sua rogatione restituit. Cf. _post Red. in Sen_. 15. 38; _post
+Red. ad Quir_. 4.10.
+
+[757] Cic. _in Cat_. iv. 6, 13; _Phil_. viii. 4. 14.
+
+[758] Val. Max. v. 3. 2. The colouring of the story is doubted by Ihne
+(_Rom. Gesch_. v. p. 111). He thinks that perhaps Lentulus went to
+Sicily to restore his shattered health.
+
+[759] Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 25. 106; 39. 165; 40. 170.
+
+[760] Ibid. ii. 39. 165.
+
+[761] Cic. _Brut_. 43. 159 Crassus ... accusavit C. Carbonem,
+eloquentissimum hominem, admodum adulescens. Cf. _de Orat_. i. 10. 39.
+
+[762] Valerius Maximus (vi. 5. 6) tells the story that a slave of
+Carbo's brought Crassus a letter-case (_scrinium_) full of compromising
+papers. Crassus sent back the case still sealed and the slave in
+chains to Carbo.
+
+[763] Mommsen, _Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 4.
+
+[764] Cic. _in Verr_. iii. i. 3 Itaque hoc, judices, ex ... L. Crasso
+saepe auditum est, cum se nullius rei tam paenitere diceret quam quod
+C. Carbonem unquam in judicium vocavisset.
+
+[765] Cic. _ad Fam_. ix. 21. 3 (C. Carbo) accusante L. Crasso
+cantharidas sumpsisse dicitur. Valerius Maximus (iii. 7. 6) implies that
+Carbo was sent into exile. But the two stories are not necessarily
+inconsistent.
+
+[766] Appian (_Bell. Civ_. i. 35) says that the younger Livius Drusus
+(91 B.C.) [Greek: _ton daemon ... hypaegeto apoikiais pollais es te taen
+Italian kai Sikelian epsaephismenais men ek pollou, gegonuiais de oupo_].
+These colonies could only have been those proposed by his father.
+
+[767] Mommsen in C.I.L. 1 pp. 75 ff. Cf. p. 227. We have no record
+of the tenure by which Romans held their lands in such settlements as
+Palma and Pollentia (p. 189). They too may have been illustrations of
+what was known later as the _jus Italicum_.
+
+[768] We know that the corn law of C. Gracchus was repealed or modified
+by a _lex Octavia_. Cic. _Brut_. 62. 222 (M. Octavius) tantum
+auctoritate dicendoque valuit, ut legem Semproniam frumentariam populi
+frequentis suffragiis abrogaverit. Cf. _de Off_. ii. 21. 72. But the
+date of this alteration is unknown and it may not have been immediate.
+If it was a consequence of Gracchus's fall, as is thought by Peter
+(_Gesch. Roms_. ii. p. 41), the distributions may have been restored
+_circa_ 119 B.C. (see p. 287). We shall see that in the tribunate of
+Marius during this year some proposal about corn was before the people
+(Plut. _Mar_. 4).
+
+[769] App. _Bell. Civ_. i. 27 [Greek: _nomos te ou poly hysteron
+ekyrhothae, taen gaen, hyper haes dietheronto, exeinai pipraskein tois
+echousin_.]
+
+[770] App. l.c. [Greek: _kai euthus oi plousioi para ton penaeton
+eonounto, hae taisde tais prophasesin ebiazonto_.]
+
+[771] The law permitting alienation may have been in 121 B.C. The year
+119 or 118 B.C. ([Greek: _pentekaideka maliosta etesin apo taes Grakchou
+nomothesias_]) is given by Appian (l.c.) for one of the two subsequent
+laws which he speaks of. It is probably the date of the first of these,
+the one which we are now considering.
+
+[772] App. l.c. [Greek: _Sporios Thorios daemarchon esaegaesato nomon,
+taen men gaen maeketi sianemein, all' einai ton echonton, kai phorous
+hyper autaes to daemo katatithesthai, kai tade ta chrhaemata chorein es
+dianomas_.]
+
+[773] If Gracchus's corn law was abolished or modified immediately after
+his fall, the corn largesses may now have been restored or extended.
+Cf. p. 306.
+
+[774] Some such guarantee may be inferred from a passage in the _lex
+Agraria_ (l. 29) Item Latino peregrinoque, quibus M. Livio L. Calpurnio
+[cos. in eis agris id facere ... ex lege plebeive sc(ito) exve
+foedere licuit.]
+
+[775] Cic. _Brut_. 36. 136 Sp. Thorius satis valuit in populari genere
+dicendi, is qui agrum publicum vitiosa et inutili lege vectigali
+levavit. Cf. _de Orat_. ii. 70. 284. Appian, on the other hand; makes
+Sp. Thorius the author of the law preceding this (p. 285). It is
+possible that Cicero may be mistaken, but, if he is correct, the
+fragments of the agrarian law which we possess may be those of the _lex
+Thoria_, the name given to it by its earlier editors. For a different
+view see Mommsen in C.I.L. i. pp. 75 ff.
+
+[776] App. _Bell Civ_. i. 27 [Greek: _tous phorous ou poly hysteron
+dielyse daemarchos heteros_.]
+
+[777] The latest years to which it refers are those of the censors of
+115 and the consuls of 113, 112 and 111. The harvest and future vintage
+of 111 are referred to (1. 95), and it has, therefore, been assigned to
+some period between January 1 and the summer of this year. See Rudorff
+_Das Ackergesetz des Sp. Thorius_ and cf. Mommsen l.c. It is a
+curious fact, however, that a law dealing with African land amongst
+others should have been passed in the first year of active hostilities
+with Jugurtha. From this point of view the date which marks the close of
+the Jugurthine war, suggested by Kiene (_Bundesgenossenkrieg_ p. 125),
+i.e., 106 or 105 B.C., is more probable. But the objection to this
+view is that the law contains no reference to the censors of 109. See
+Mommsen l.c.
+
+[778] _Ager compascuus_. See Mommsen l.c. and Voigt _Ueber die
+staatsrechtliche possessio und den ager compascuus der röm. Republik_.
+
+[779] The _pastores_ also must often have been too indefinite a body to
+make it possible to treat them as joint owners.
+
+[780] The tribune L. Marcius Philippus, when introducing an agrarian law
+in 104 B.C., made the startling statement "Non esse in civitate duo
+milia hominum, qui rem haberent" (Cic. _de Off_. ii. 21, 73). If there
+was even a minimum of truth in his words, the expression "qui rem
+haberent" must mean "moneyed men," "people comfortably off."
+
+[781] Mommsen in C.I.L. l.c.
+
+[782] Kiene also thinks (_Bundesgenossenkrieg_ p. 146) that the right
+given by the law of exchanging a bit of one's own land for an equivalent
+bit of the public domain, which became private property, was reserved
+solely for the citizen.
+
+[783] Cic. _Brut_. 26. 102; _de Orat_. ii. 70. 281; _de Fin_. i. 3. 8.
+
+[784] Vellei. ii. 8; Cic. _in Verr_. iii 80. 184; iv. 10. 22.
+
+[785] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72 Consul legem de sumptibus et
+libertinorum suffragiis tulit.
+
+[786] Liv. xlv, 15.
+
+[787] [Victor] l.c..
+
+[788] Plin. _H.N_. viii. 57. 223.
+
+[789] Cassiodor. _Chron_. L. Metellus et Cn. Domitius censores artem
+ludicram ex urbe removerunt praeter Latinum tibicinem cum cantore et
+ludum talarium. The _ludus talarius_ in its chief form was a game of
+skill, not of chance. The reference here may be to juggling with the
+_tali_ on the stage, not to the pursuit of the game in domestic life.
+
+[790] Liv. _Ep_. lxiii.
+
+[791] _Fast. triumph_.; [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72.
+
+[792] Val. Max. vii. 1. 1.
+
+[793] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72.
+
+[794] [Victor] l.c. Ipse primo dubitavit honores peteret an
+argentariam faceret.
+
+[795] [Victor] l.c. Aedilis juri reddendo magis quam muneri edendo
+studuit.
+
+[796] Sallust (_Jug_. 15) gives the following somewhat unkind sketch of
+the great senatorial champion, "Aemilius Scaurus, homo nobilis, inpiger,
+factiosus, avidus potentiae, honoris, divitiarum, ceterum vitia sua
+callide occultans". "Inpiger, factiosus" are testimonies of his value to
+his party. The last words of the sketch are a confession that his
+reputation may have been blemished by suspicion, but never by proof.
+
+[797] [Victor] l.c. Consul Ligures et Gantiscos domuit, atque de his
+triumphavit. Cf. _Fast. triumph_.
+
+[798] [Victor] l.c.
+
+[799] Plut. _Mar_. 3.
+
+[800] In Velleius ii. 11 the manuscript reading _natus equestri loco_
+(corrected into _agresti_) may be correct.
+
+[801] Plut. _Mar_. 3.
+
+[802] Plut. _Mar_. 5.
+
+[803] Ibid. 4.
+
+[804] His military reputation amongst old soldiers had led to his easy
+attainment of the military tribunate. Sall. _Jug_. 63 Ubi primum
+tribunatum militarem a populo petit, plerisque faciem ejus ignorantibus,
+facile notus per omnis tribus declaratur. Deinde ab eo magistratu alium
+post alium sibi peperit.
+
+[805] Plut. _Mar_. 4.
+
+[806] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _nomon tina peri psaephophorias graphontos
+autou dokounta ton dynaton aphaireisthai taen peri tas kriseis ischyn_].
+It is possible, however, that _kriseis_ may simply mean "decisions".
+
+[807] Cic. _de Leg_. iii. 17. 38 Pontes ... lex Maria fecit angustos.
+
+[808] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _ei me diagrapseie to dogma_.]
+
+[809] Plut. l.c. [Greek: _nomou ... eispheromenou peri sitou
+dianomaes_]. See p. 284.
+
+[810] Plut. _Mar_ 5. Cf. Cic. _pro Planc_. 21, 51; Val. Max.
+vi. 9. 14.
+
+[811] Val. Max. vi. 9. 14.
+
+[812] Plut. _Mar_. 5.
+
+[813] [Greek: _dikastai_] (Plut. l.c.). It seems, therefore, that a
+special _quaestio de ambitu_ existed at this time. Otherwise, the case
+would naturally have gone before the Comitia. We can hardly think of a
+Special Commission.
+
+[814] Plut. _Mar_. 6 [Greek: _en men oun tae strataegia metrios
+epainoumenon heauton paresche_].
+
+[815] Plut. l.c.
+
+[816] Plut. l.c.
+
+[817] Vellei. ii. 7 Porcio Marcioque consulibus deducta colonia Narbo
+Martius. Cf. i. 15.
+
+[818] This was but a [Greek: _phroura Rhomaion_] (Strabo iv. 1. 5). It
+had been established in 122 B.C.
+
+[819] Cic. _pro Font_. 5. 13 Narbo Martius, colonia nostrorum civium,
+specula populi Romani ac propugnaculum istis ipsis nationibus oppositum
+et objectum.
+
+[820] This fact appears from Cic. _pro Cluent_. 51. 140 (Crassus) in
+dissuasione rogationis ejus quae contra coloniam Narbonensem ferebatur,
+quantum potest, de auctoritate senatus detrahit. A _rogatio_ against a
+project implies something more than opposition to a bill.
+
+[821] Cic. _Brut_. 43. 160 Exstat in eam legem senior ut ita dicam quam
+illa aetas ferebat oratio.
+
+[822] Cic. _Brut. l.c. Cf. pro Cluent_. 51. 140; _de Orat_. ii. 55. 223;
+Quinctil. _Inst. Or_. vi. 3. 44.
+
+[823] The date is unknown, but the _lex Servilia repetundarum_ was
+probably a product of this tribunate. An approximate date can be
+assigned to this law, if we believe that it immediately superseded the
+_lex Acilia_ as the law of extortion, and that the _lex Acilia_ is the
+_lex repetundarum_ which has come down to us on a bronze tablet (see p.
+214); for the latter law must have been abrogated by 111 B.C., since the
+back of the tablet on which it is inscribed is used for the _lex
+agraria_ of this year. The side containing the _lex Acilia_ must have
+been turned to the wall, and this fact seems to prove the supersession
+of this law by a later one on the same subject. See Mommsen in C.I.L.
+i. p. 56.
+
+[824] Peracutus et callidus cum primisque ridiculus (Cic. _Brut_.
+62. 224).
+
+[825] Cic. _pro Rab. Post, 6, 14.
+
+[826] Stercus Curiae (Cic. _de Orat_. iii. 41. 164).
+
+[827] Cic. _Brut_. 62. 224 Is ... equestrem ordinem beneficio legis
+devinxerat. Cf. _pro Scauro_ 1. 2. But the law of Glaucia was a _lex
+repetundarum_ (Ascon. _in Scaurian_. p. 21; Val. Max. viii. 1. 8; cf.
+notes 4 and 5), not a _lex judiciaria_.
+
+[828] Cic. _in Verr_. i. 9. 26.
+
+[829] Cic. _pro Rab. Post_. 4. 8. The granting of the _civitas_ to
+Latins, as a reward for successful prosecution (Cic. _pro Balbo_ 24.
+54), was not an innovation due to Glaucia. It appears already in the
+_lex Acilia_.
+
+[830] Liv. _Ep_. lxiii; Florus i. 39 (iii. 4); Eutrop. iv. 24.
+
+[831] Oros. v. 15.
+
+[832] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 83.
+
+[833] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 83. The manuscript reading is [Greek:
+_barbarou tinos hippikou therapon_]. I have adopted Ihne's suggestion
+of _Barrou_, which he supports by a reference to Porphyrio _ad Hor.
+Sat_. 1. 6. 30--Hic Barrus vilisimmae libidinosaeque admodum vitae fuit,
+adeo ut Aemiliam virginem Vestae incestasse dictus sit.
+
+[834] Dio Cass. _fr_. 92.
+
+[835] Macrob. _Sat_. i. 10. 5.
+
+[836] Ascon. _in Milonian_. p. 46. Cf. Cic. _de Nat. Deor_. iii. 30.
+74.
+
+[837] Scopulus reorum (Val. Max. iii. 7. 9).
+
+[838] Ascon. l.c.
+
+[839] Val. Max. l.c. Cum id vitare beneficio legis Memmiae liceret,
+quae eorum, qui rei publicae causa abessent, recipi nomina vetabat.
+
+[840] Val. Max. vi. 8. 1.
+
+[841] Ascon. l.c. Nimia etiam, ut existimatio est, asperitate usus.
+
+[842] Zumpt _Criminalrecht_ i. p. 117.
+
+[843] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_., 83 [Greek: _duo en andras duo de gynaikas en
+tae boon agorai legomenae tous men Hellaenas, tous de Galatas, zontas
+katorhyxan_].
+
+[844] Plin. _H.N_. xxx. 1. 12 DCLVII demum anno urbis Cn. Cornelia
+Lentulo P. Licinio Crasso consulibus (97 B.C.) senatus consultum factum
+est ne homo immolaretur.
+
+[845] Plut. l.c.
+
+[846] Obsequens 99 (37) (111 B.C.) Maxima pars urbis exusta cum aede
+Matris Magnae; lacte per triduum pluit, hostiisque expiatum majoribus,
+Jugurthinum bellum exortum. The war had been determined on the
+year before.
+
+[847] Boissière _Esquisse d'une histoire de la conquête et de
+l'administration Romaines dans le Nord de l'Afrique_ p. 41.
+
+[848] App. _Lib_. [Greek: _apo Maurousion ton okeanoi mechri taes
+Kyraenaion archaes es ta mesogeia_.]
+
+[849] Boissière l.c.
+
+[850] [Greek: _ton legomenon Megalon Pedion_] (App. _Lib_. 68).
+
+[851] Tissot _Géographie comparée de la province Romaine d'Afrique_ ii.
+p. 5.
+
+[852] Plin. _H.N_. v. 3. 22; v. 4. 25; Ptol. iv. 3. 7.
+
+[853] Tissot op. cit. ii. pp. 1-20.
+
+[854] Ibid. ii. p. 20.
+
+[855] Mercier _La population indigène de L'Afrique_ pp. 129, 130;
+Boissière op. cit. p. 39.
+
+[856] Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 400 foll. For the extension of the native
+Libyan language cf. Boissière, _L'Afrique Romaine_ p. 6.
+
+[857] Tissot op. cit. pp. 403, 404.
+
+[858] Hence the [Greek: _Melanogatouloi_] and the [Greek: _Lenkaithiopes_]
+of Ptolemy (iv. 6. 5 and 6.) See Tissot op. cit. p. 447.
+
+[859] Mercier op. cit. p. 136.
+
+[860] Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 414-17.
+
+[861] Boissière (op. cit. p. 101) cites an interesting description of
+the Kabyle from _Le capitaine Rinn_. In it occur the following
+words:--La guerre pour lui (le Kabyle) est une affaire de devoir, de
+nécessité, de point d'honneur ou de vengeance; ce n'est jamais ni un
+plaisir, ni une distraction, ni même un état normal; il ne la fait
+qu'après prévenu son ennemi, et, dans le combat ou après la victoire, il
+n'a pas de cruauté inutile.
+
+[862] Tissot op. cit. i. pp. 417-18.
+
+[863] Polyb. xxxvii. 3; Diod. xxxii. 17.
+
+[864] Plin. _H.N_. v. 3 22.
+
+[865] Strabo xvii. 3. 13.
+
+[866] Livy says (xxix. 29) that this was the admitted order of
+succession (ita mos apud Numidas est). The brother of a late king was
+probably considered to be the most capable successor. An immature son
+would be passed over. Cf. Biereye _Res Numidarum et Maurorum_ p. 18.
+
+[867] Liv. _Ep_. 1.; Val. Max. v. 2, ext. 4; Oros. iv. 22.
+
+[868] App. _Lib_. 106.
+
+[869] App. _Hisp_. 67; Sall. _Jug_. 7.
+
+[870] Strabo. xvii. 3. 13; Diod. xxxiv. 35.
+
+[871] Oros. v, 11.
+
+[872] Strabo l.c.
+
+[873] Sall. _Jug_. 65. 1 Morbis confectus et ob eam causam mente paulum
+inminuta. We are not told that he was in this condition before Micipsa's
+death; but it is perhaps the reason why the king left him only "heir in
+remainder" (secundum heredem) to the crown. Another aspirant appears
+later on in the person of Massiva son of Gulussa (Sall. _Jug_. 35. i),
+but this prince may not have been born, or may have been an infant, at
+the time when Jugurtha was recognised as a possible successor. It is
+possible that Massiva may have been mentioned as one of the
+supplementary heirs in Micipsa's will, although Sallust does not inform
+us of the fact.
+
+[874] Sall. _Jug_. 6. 1.
+
+[875] Sall. _Jug_. 6. 2.
+
+[876] Ibid. 7. 6.
+
+[877] Sall. _Jug_. 8. 1.
+
+[878] Ibid. 8. 2.
+
+[879] Sall. _Jug_. 9. 1.
+
+[880] Statimque eum adoptavit et testamento pariter cum filiis heredem
+instituit (Ibid. 9. 3).
+
+[881] Ibid. 10.
+
+[882] Sall. _Jug_. 11.
+
+[883] Ibid. 12. 3. The site of Thirmida is unknown.
+
+[884] Sallust, using Roman phraseology, says that he had been "proxumus
+lictor Jugurthae" (_l c_.). Such a lictor would stand nearest the
+magistrate, receive his immediate orders and be, therefore, presumably a
+more trusted and intimate servant.
+
+[885] Sall. _Jug_. 12.
+
+[886] In duas partis discedunt Numidae; plures Adherbalem secuntur, sed
+illum alterum bello meliores (Ibid. 13. 1).
+
+[887] Sall. _Jug_. 13. 4.
+
+[888] Ibid. 13. 6.
+
+[889] Ibid. 14.
+
+[890] Sallust (l.c.) makes Adherbal say "Micipsa pater meus moriens
+mihi praecepit, ut regni Numidiae tantum modo procurationem existumarem
+meam, ceterum jus et imperium ejus penes vos esse". The "jus et
+imperium" have no true application to a protectorate.
+
+[891] Sall. _Jug_. 15. 1.
+
+[892] Ibid. 15. 2.
+
+[893] Sall. _Jug_. 16. 2.
+
+[894] Ibid. 16. 3.
+
+[895] Sall. _Jug_. 16. 5.
+
+[896] Sall. _Jug_. 20. 4.
+
+[897] Ibid. 20. 7 Itaque non uti antea cum praedatoria manu, sed magno
+exercitu conparato bellum gerere coepit et aperte totius Numidiae
+imperium petere.
+
+[898] Ibid. 21. 3.
+
+[899] Sallust says (_Jug_. 21. 2): Haud longe a mari prope Cirtam
+oppidum utriusque exercitus consedit. He apparently underestimates the
+distance of Cirta from the sea.
+
+[900] Ibid. 21. 2 Ni multitude togatorum fuisset, quae Numidas
+insequentis moenibus prohibuit, uno die inter duos reges coeptum atque
+patratum bellum foret.
+
+[901] The bridge described by Shaw, constructed on one of the natural
+arches which connect the two sides of the river bed and presenting two
+ranges of superposed arcades, is no longer in existence. This bridge
+attached the south-eastern angle of the town to the heights of Mansoura.
+See Tissot _Géographie comparée_ ii. p. 393.
+
+[902] Sall. _Jug_. 21. 3.
+
+[903] Sall. _Jug_. 21. 4 Postquam senatus de bello eorum accepit, tres
+adulescentes in Africam legantur, qui ambos reges adeant, senatus
+populique Romani verbis nuntient velle et censere eos ab armis
+discedere, de controvorsiis suis jure potius quam bello disceptare: ita
+seque illisque dignum esse.
+
+[904] Is rumor clemens erat (Ibid. 22. 1).
+
+[905] Adherbalis adpellandi copia non fuit (Ibid. 22. 5).
+
+[906] Si ab jure gentium sese prohibuerit (Sail. _Jug_. 22.4).
+
+[907] Ibid, 23. 2 Adherbal ... intellegit ... penuria rerum
+necessariarum bellum trahi non posse.
+
+[908] Sall. _Jug_. 23. 2.
+
+[909] Ibid. 24.
+
+[910] Sall. _Jug_. 25. 1.
+
+[911] Ibid. 25. 3 Ita bonum publicum, ut in plerisque negotiis solet,
+privata gratia devictum.
+
+[912] Ibid. 25. 4 Legantur tamen in Africam majores natu nobiles,
+amplis honoribus usi.
+
+[913] Cujus ... nutu prope terrarum orbis regebatur (Cic. _pro Font_. 7,
+24).
+
+[914] Sall. _Jug_. 25. 6 Primo commotus metu atque lubidine divorsus
+agitabatur. Timebat iram senatus, ni paruisset legatis: porro animus
+cupidine caecus ad inceptum scelus rapiebatur.
+
+[915] Sall, _Jug_. 25. 10.
+
+[916] Ibid. 25. 11.
+
+[917] Sall. _Jug_. 26. 1 Italici, quorum virtute moenia defensabantur,
+confisi deditione facta propter magnitudinem populi Romani inviolatos
+sese fore, Adherbali suadent uti seque et oppidum Jugurthae tradat,
+tantum ab eo vitam paciscatur: de ceteris senatui curae fore.
+
+[918] Ibid. 26. 3 Jugurtha in primis Adherbalem excruciatum necat.
+
+[919] Sallust (l.c.) represents him as the author of this massacre;
+(Jugurtha) omnis puberes Numidas atque negotiatores promiscue, uti
+quisque armatus obvius fuerat, interficit. But the attribution may be
+due to the brevity of the narrative. The leader of a murderous host may
+easily be credited with the outrages which it commits.
+
+[920] Cic. _Brut_. 36. 136 Tum etiam C. L. Memmii fuerunt oratores
+mediocres, accusatores acres atque acerbi. Itaque in judicium capitis
+multos vocaverunt, pro reis non saepe dixerunt. For his mordant style
+see Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 59, 240. The lofty opinion which he was supposed
+to hold of himself is illustrated in Cic. _de Orat_. ii. 66, 267 Velut
+tu, Crasse, in contione "ita sibi ipsum magnum videri Memmium ut in
+forum descendens caput ad fornicem Fabianum demitteret".
+
+[921] He was already "vir acer et infestus potentiae nobilitatis" (Sall.
+_Jug_. 27. 2).
+
+[922] Ibid. 27. 1.
+
+[923] Ibid. 27. 2.
+
+[924] Sall. _Jug_. 27. 3 Lege Sempronia provinciae futuris consulibus
+Numidia atque Italia decretae. Consules declarati P. Scipio Nasica, L.
+Bestia: Calpurnio Numidia, Scipioni Italia obvenit.
+
+[925] Jugurtha, contra spem nuntio accepto, quippe cui Romae omnia venum
+ire in animo haeserat (Ibid, 28. 1).
+
+[926] Ibid.
+
+[927] Sall. _Jug_. 28. 2.
+
+[928] In consule nostro multae bonaeque artes animi et corporis erant,
+quas omnis avaritia praepediebat: patiens laborum, acri ingenio, satis
+providens, belli haud ignarus, firmissumus contra pericula et insidias
+(Ibid. 28. 5).
+
+[929] Sall. _Jug_. 28. 4 Calpurnius parato exercitu legal sibi homines
+nobilis, factiosos, quorum auctoritate quae deliquisset munita
+fore sperabat.
+
+[930] Sall. _l. c_.
+
+[931] The only record of this campaign is contained in the few words of
+Sallust (Ibid, 28. 7) Acriter Numidiam ingressus est multosque
+mortalis et urbis aliquot pugnando cepit.
+
+[932] Possibly not at this time, but the date of its recovery is
+unknown. The town is in the hands of Metellus during the closing months
+of his campaign (Sall. _Jug_. 81. 2). Cf. p. 431.
+
+[933] Sall. _Jug_. 19. 7 Mauris omnibus rex Bocchus imperitabat, praeter
+nomen cetera ignarus populi Romani, itemque nobis neque bello neque pace
+antea cognitus. Practically nothing is known of the predecessors of this
+king. Livy (xxix. 30) mentions an earlier Baga of Mauretania, and
+perhaps this name is identical with that of Bocchus or [Greek: _Bogos_].
+See Biereye _Res Numidarum et Maurorum_. For the earlier history of
+Mauretania see also Göbel _Die Westküste Afrikas im Altertum_. The
+boundaries of the kingdom were the Atlantic and the Muluccha on the west
+and east respectively (Liv. xxiv. 49, xxi. 22; Sall. _Jug_. 110). The
+southern boundary naturally shifted. At times the Mauretanian kings
+ruled over some of the Gaetulian tribes, and Strabo (ii. 3.4) makes the
+kingdom extend at one time to tribes akin to the Aethiopians--presumably
+to the Atlas range. Elsewhere (xvii. 3. 2) he speaks of it as extending
+over the Rif to the Gaetulians. See Göbel op. cit. pp. 79-82.
+
+[934] Ibid. 80. 4 Bocchus initio hujusce belli legatos Romam miserat
+foedus et amicitiam petitum.
+
+[935] Sall. _Jug_. 29. 2 Scaurus ... tametsi a principio, plerisque ex
+factione ejus conruptis, acerrume regem inpugnaverat, tamen magnitudine
+pecuniae a bono honestoque in pravom abstractus est.
+
+[936] Sall. _Jug_. 29. 3.
+
+[937] Ibid. 29. 4 Interea fidei causa mittitur a consule Sextius
+quaestor in oppidum Jugurthae Vagam.
+
+[938] Vaga (Bêdja) marks the frontier between the Numidian kingdom and
+the Roman province--the frontier created in 172 B.C. by the invasions of
+Masinissa and finally fixed in 146 B.C. The town lay on the west of the
+Wad Bédja, which joins the Medjerda, and on the right of the road from
+Carthage to Bulla Regia. There was another Vaga in the heart of Numidia,
+between the Ampsaga and Thabraca. See Tissot _Géographie comparée_
+ii. pp. 6, 302; Wilmanns in C.I.L. viii. p. 154.
+
+[939] Long _Decline of the Rom. Republic_ i. p. 400.
+
+[940] Sall. _Jug_, 29, 5 Rex ... pauca praesenti consilio locutus de
+invidia fact! sui atque uti in deditionem acciperetur, reliqua cum
+Bestia et Scauro secreta transigit.
+
+[941] Ibid. (Rex) quasi per saturam sententiis exquisitis in
+deditionem accipitur.
+
+[942] Ibid. 29. 6.
+
+[943] Bestia's presence was necessary at Rome as his colleague Nasica
+had died during his tenure of the consulship (Cic. _Brut_. 34. 128).
+
+[944] Sall. _Jug_. 30. I Postquam res in Africa gestas, quoque modo
+actae forent fama divolgavit, Romae per omnis locos et conventus de
+facto consulis agitari. Apud plebem gravis invidia.
+
+[945] Sall. _Jug_. 30. 1 Patres solliciti erant: probarentne tantum
+flagitium an decretum consulis subvorterent parum constabat.
+
+[946] Ibid. 30. 2 Maxume eos potentia Scauri, quod is auctor et socius
+Bestiae ferebatur, a vero bonoque inpediebat.
+
+[947] Ibid. 30. 3.
+
+[948] Ibid. 31.
+
+[949] The best manuscripts read _his annis xv_ in Sall, _Jug_ 31. 2, but
+xv may be a mistake for xx, which is the reading of some good ones.
+Twenty years would carry us back to 131 B.C., approximately the date of
+the fall of Tiberius Gracchus. The year 126 B.C. which the reading xv
+gives, can hardly be said to mark an epoch in the decline of the
+liberties of the people.
+
+[950] Sociis nostris veluti hostibus, hostibus pro sociis utuntur (Sall.
+_Jug_. 31. 23).
+
+[951] Metum ab scelere suo ad ignaviam vostram transtulere, quos omnis
+eadem cupere, eadem odisse, eadem metuere in unum coegit. Sed haec inter
+bonos amicitia, inter malos factio est (Sall_. Jug_. 31. 14.)
+
+[952] Quo facilius indicio regis Scauri et reliquorum, quos pecuniae
+captae accersebat (Memmius), delicta patefierent (Ibid. 33. i).
+
+[953] Alii perfugas vendere (Sall, _Jug_, 32.3). Long (_Decline of the
+Rom. Rep. i. p_. 406) thinks that this means that they were sold as
+slaves. But the words are probably to be brought into connection with
+the terms of the Mamilian commission (Sall. _Jug_. 40.1) "qui elephantos
+quique perfugas tradidissent". Ihne (_Röm. Gesch. v. p_. 131) seems to
+regard these _perfugae_ as Roman subjects who had been handed over
+by Jugurtha.
+
+[954] Quoniam se populo Romano dedisset, ne vim quam misericordiam ejus
+experiri mallet (Sall. _Jug_. 32. 5).
+
+[955] Sall. _Jug_, 33.7.
+
+[956] Confirmatus ab omnibus, quorum potentia aut scelere cuncta ea
+gesserat quae supra diximus (Ibid. 33. 2).
+
+[957] Ibid. 33. 2 (Jugurtha) C. Baebium tribunum plebis magna mercede
+parat, cujus inpudentia contra jus et injurias omnis munitus foret.
+
+[958] Sall. _Jug_. 33. 3.
+
+[959] Producto Jugurtha (Ibid, 33. 4) i.e. led him to the front of
+the tribunal, or the Rostra if the scene took place in the Forum.
+
+[960] Regem tacere jubet (Sall. _Jug_. 34.1).
+
+[961] Vicit tamen inpudentia (Ibid.).
+
+[962] Ibid. 34. 2.
+
+[963] Sall. _Jug_. 35. 2. It is not impossible that he may have been
+mentioned as one of the supplementary heirs in Micipsa's will. See
+p. 323.
+
+[964] Sall. _Jug_. 35. 6.
+
+[965] Ibid. 35. 7 Fit reus magis ex aequo bonoque quam ex jure gentium
+Bomilcar, comes ejus qui Romam fide publica venerat.
+
+[966] Sall. _Jug_. 35. 9.
+
+[967] Urbem venalem et mature perituram, si emptorem invenerit! (Ibid.
+35. 10).
+
+[968] There was still an heir in Gauda--one too who had been recognised
+in the testament of Micipsa (p. 323); but he may not have been regarded
+as a suitable candidate.
+
+[969] Sall. _Jug_. 36. 1 Albinus renovato bello commeatum, stipendium,
+aliaque, quae militibus usui forent, maturat in Africam portare, ac
+statim ipse profectus, uti ante comitia, quod tempus haud longe aberat,
+armis aut deditione aut quovis modo bellum conficeret.
+
+[970] Cf. Sall. _Jug_. 36. 1 Armis aut deditione aut quovis modo.
+
+[971] Sall. _Jug_. 36. 3 Ac fuere qui tum Albinum haud ignarum consili
+regis existumarent, neque ex tanta properantia tam facile tractum bellum
+socordia magis quam dolo crederent.
+
+[972] His colleague Quintus Minucius Rufus was making war with the
+barbarians of Thrace (Liv. _Ep_. lxv; Vellei. ii. 8; Florus i. 39 (iii.
+4); Eutrop. iv. 27).
+
+[973] See cf. Meinel _Zur Chronologie des Jug. Krieges_ p. 11.
+
+[974] Quae dissensio totius anni comitia inpediebat (Sall. _Jug_. 37.
+2).
+
+[975] The tribunician year ended with 9th December, but it is not likely
+that the consuls of 109, Metellus and Silanus, were elected between this
+date and 1st January of 109. Had they been, Metellus would have held
+Numidia and Sp. Albinus would not have been allowed to return there.
+
+[976] Sall. _Jug_. 37. 3.
+
+[977] There is little probability that the Calama (Gelma) of Orosius (v.
+15) and the Suthul of Sallust are identical. Those who have visited the
+site of Gelma deny that Sallust's description suits this region and
+think that Suthul was a place near by. Grellois (_Ghelma_ pp. 263 foll.)
+thinks that Suthul may be placed on a site where now stands the village
+of Henschir Ain Neschma, one hour's distance from Gelma. See Wilmanns in
+C.I. L. viii. p. 521.
+
+[978] Sall. _Jug_. 37. 4.
+
+[979] Vineas agere, aggerem jacere, aliaque quae incepto usui forent
+properare (Sall. _Jug_. 37. 4).
+
+[980] Sall. _Jug. 38. 9. The treaty perhaps gave to Jugurtha a specific
+guarantee of the undisturbed possession of Numidia.
+
+[981] Oros. v. 15.
+
+[982] Sail. _Jug_. 39. 1.
+
+[983] Sallust (_Jug_. 39. 2) improperly calls him _consul_. The only
+position which he held now was that of proconsul of Numidia.
+
+[984] Senatus ita uti par fuerat decernit, suo atque populi injussu
+nullum potuisse foedus fieri (Sall. _Jug_. 39. 3).
+
+[985] Sall. _Jug_. 39. 4.
+
+[986] Sall. _Jug_. 40. 1.
+
+[987] Occulte per amicos ac maxume per homines nominis Latini et socios
+Italicos inpedimenta parabant (Ibid. 40. 2). For the later relations
+of the government with the Latins and allies see p. 288.
+
+[988] Sed plebes incredibile memoratu est quam intenta fuerit quantaque
+vi rogationem jusserit, magis odio nobilitatis cui mala illa parabantur,
+quam cura rei publicae: tanta lubido in partibus erat (Sall. _Jug_.
+40. 3).
+
+[989] Ibid. 40. 4.
+
+[990] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72; Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 50.
+
+[991] Sall. _Jug_. 40. 5 Sed quaestio exercita aspere violenterque ex
+rumore et lubidine plebis. Ut saepe nobilitatem, sic ea tempestate
+plebem ex secundis rebus insolentia ceperat.
+
+[992] Cic. _Brut_. 34. 128 Invidiosa lege Mamilia quaestio C. Galbam
+sacerdotem et quattuor consulates, L. Bestiam, C. Catonem, Sp. Albinum
+civemque praestantissimum L. Opimium, Gracchi interfectorem, a populo
+absolutum, cum is contra populi studium stetisset. Gracchani judices
+sustulerunt. For the condemnation of Opimius cf. _pro Sest_. 67, 140;
+for that of Galba, _Brut_. 33. 127. Here honour is paid to Galba's
+speech in his defence (Extat ejus peroratio, qui epilogus dicitur: qui
+tanto in honore pueris nobis erat, ut eum etiam edisceremus). Of Galba
+it is said (l.c.) Hic, qui in collegio sacerdotum esset, primus post
+Romam conditam judicio publico est condemnatus. He was perhaps a member
+of the college of pontiffs (Long _Decline of the Rom. Rep_. i. p. 415).
+(For the exile of Cato at Tarraco see _pro Balbo_ 11. 28).
+
+[993] Sall. _Jug_. 43. I; Liv. _Ep_. lxv.
+
+[994] Sallust's language (_Jug_. 43. 1) is indeterminate, but suggests
+the use of the lot--Metellus et Silanus consules designati provincias
+inter se partiverant, Metelloque Numidia evenerat. There are instances
+in later times of a manipulation of the _sortitio_. See Cic. _ad Fam_.
+v. 2. 3; _ad Att_. i. 16. 8. This assignment of the provinces followed
+the treaty of Aulus (l.c.), i.e. it took place early in 109, but not
+in the very first months of that year, as Spurius Albinus had gone back
+to Africa as proconsul (p. 373). As we have seen (p. 369) there is no
+probability that the consuls of 109 were elected in 110. Sallust's words
+(l.c.) "consules designati" simply mean "appointed consuls" and have
+no reference to the usual status of "consuls designate".
+
+[995] Polyb. vi. 56.
+
+[996] Cic. _pro Balbo_ 5. 11; _ad Att_. i. 16. 4; Val. Max. ii. 10. 1.
+It is supposed that Sicily may have been the province, which he had
+governed as propraetor, and from which he had returned when he was
+subjected to this trial. See Drumann _Gesch. Roms_. ii. p. 31.
+
+[997] Acri viro et, quamquam advorso populi partium, fama tamen
+aequabili et inviolata (Sall. _Jug_. 43. 1).
+
+[998] Ibid. 43. 4.
+
+[999] Sall. _Jug_. 44. Cf. Val. Max. ii. 7. 2; Frontin. _Strat_.
+iv. 1. 2.
+
+[1000] Sed in ea difficultate Metellum non minus quam in rebus
+hostilibus magnum et sapientem virum fuisse conperior: tanta temperantia
+inter ambitionem saevitiamque moderatum.... Ita prohibendo a delictis
+magis quam vindicando exercitum brevi confirmavit (Sall. _Jug_. 45).
+
+[1001] Sall. _Jug_. 46. 1.
+
+[1002] Jugurtha ... diffidere suis rebus ac tum demum veram deditionem
+facere conatus est (Ibid.).
+
+[1003] Sall. _Jug_. 46. 2.
+
+[1004] Sed Metello jam antea experimentis cognitum erat genus Numidarum
+infidum, ingenio mobili, novarum rerum avidum esse (Ibid. 46. 3).
+
+[1005] Sall. _Jug_. 46. 5.
+
+[1006] Sall. _Jug_. 47. 1 Oppidum Numidarum nomine Vaga, forum rerum
+venalium totius regni maxume celebratum, ubi et incolere et mercari
+consueverant Italici generis multi mortales. Sallust does not say that
+Italian merchants were still in the town. Their presence in Numidian
+cities since the massacre at Cirta may be doubted, although the fact
+that the town was so near the province may have mastered the fears of
+some of the traders.
+
+[1007] Sall. _Jug_. 47. 4.
+
+[1008] Ibid. 48. 1 Coactus rerum necessitudine statuit armis certare.
+
+[1009] Tissot _Géographie comparée_ 1. pp. 67-68. I have followed Tissot
+in his identification of the Muthul with the Wäd Mellag. This view makes
+Metellus's efforts concentrate for the time on S.E. Numidia. He intended
+to secure his communications before proceeding farther, whether south or
+west. The older view, which identified the Muthul with the Ubus (Mannert
+and Forbiger) would represent Metellus as opening his campaign in the
+direction of Hippo Regius--Western Numidia would thus be his object and
+the subsequent campaign about Zama would indicate a change of plan. This
+is not an impossible view; but there are other indications which favour
+the hypothesis that the Muthul is the Wäd Mellag. One is that Sicca in
+its neighbourhood veered round to the Romans after the battle (Sall.
+_Jug_. 56. 3). The other is the alleged suitability of this region to
+the topographical description given by Sallust. Tissot believed that
+every step in the great battle could be traced on the ground. The "mons
+tractu pari" is the Djebel Hemeur mta Ouargha, parallel to the course of
+the Wäd Mellag and extending from the Djebel Sara to the Wäd Zouatin.
+The hill projected by this chain perpendicularly to the river is the
+Koudiat Abd Allah, which detaches itself from the central block of the
+Djebel Hemeur and the direction of which is perpendicular both to the
+mountain and to the Wäd Mellag. The plain, waterless and desert in the
+angle formed by the hill and the mountain but inhabited and cultivated
+in the neighbourhood of the Muthul, is the Fëid-es-Smar, watered in its
+lower part by two streams which empty into the Wäd Mellag. The distance,
+however, which separates Djebel Hemeur from the left bank of the Wäd
+Mellag, is not twenty (the number given by the MSS. of Sallust) but
+about seven miles. S. Reinach in his edition of Tissot has not
+reproduced the author's own sketch of the battle of the Muthul, but a
+map of the district will be found in the Atlas appended to the work (Map
+xviii., Medjerda supérieure). This map forms the basis of the one which
+I have given.
+
+[1010] See note 1. One must agree with Tissot that the "ferme milia
+passuum viginti" of Sallust (_Jug_. 48. 3) cannot be accepted. Such a
+distance is impossible from a strategic point of view, as Metellus could
+never have sent his vanguard such a distance in advance, when he himself
+was engaged with the enemy. It is also inconsistent with the account of
+the battle, the details of which obviously show that it took place in a
+much smaller area. The actual distance between the conjectured sites is
+about seven Roman miles (note 1. See Tissot op. cit. i. p. 71).
+
+[1011] Sall. _Jug_. 48.
+
+[1012] This appears from the narrative in Ibid. 52. 5. Even when
+Jugurtha had advanced some distance to the river, Bomilcar was not
+actually in touch with the king's forces.
+
+[1013] Sall. _Jug_. 49. 4.
+
+[1014] Sall. _Jug_. 49. 4.
+
+[1015] Ibid. 49. 6 Ibi conmutatis ordinibus in dextero latere, quod
+proxumum hostis erat, triplicibus subsidies aciem instruxit.
+
+[1016] Sall. _Jug_. 49. 6 Sicuti instruxerat, transvorsis principiis in
+planum deducit. The word "transvorsis" here probably refers to the
+direction in which the front rank faced the enemy, and the position may
+be described in another way by saying that Metellus marched with his
+front rank sideways to Jugurtha. See Summers in loc.
+
+[1017] Ibid. 50. 2.
+
+[1018] Ibid. 50. 1.
+
+[1019] Sall. _Jug_. 52. 5.
+
+[1020] Ibid. 50. 2.
+
+[1021] Sall. _Jug_. 51. 3.
+
+[1022] Sall. _Jug_. 52.5.
+
+[1023] Aciem quam diffidens virtuti militum arte statuerat, quo hostium
+itineri officeret, latius porrigit eoque modo ad Rutili castra procedit
+(Ibid. 52. 6).
+
+[1024] Sall. _Jug_. 53. 3.
+
+[1025] Ibid. 53. 5 Instructi intentique obviam procedunt. Nam dolus
+Numidarum nihil languidi neque remissi patiebatur.
+
+[1026] Pro victoria satis jam pugnatum, reliquos labores pro praeda fore
+(Sall. _Jug_. 54. 1).
+
+[1027] Interim Romae gaudium ingens ortum cognitis Metelli rebus, ut
+seque et exercitum more majorum gereret, in advorso loco victor tamen
+virtute fuisset, hostium agro potiretur, Jugurtham magnificum ex Albini
+socordia spem salutis in solitudine aut fuga coegisset habere
+(Ibid. 55. 1).
+
+[1028] Sall. _Jug_. 54. 1.
+
+[1029] Ibid. 54. 3.
+
+[1030] Metellus, ubi videt ... minore detrimento illos vinci quam suos
+vincere, statuit non proeliis neque in acie, sed alio more bellum
+gerundum (Ibid. 54. 5).
+
+[1031] Sall. _Jug_. 54. 6.
+
+[1032] Sall. _Jug_. 55. 5.
+
+[1033] Sicca is the modern El Kef, but is still called by its
+inhabitants by its old name of Sicca Veneria (Schak Benar), The name
+_Veneria_ was derived from a temple of the Punic Aphrodite (cf. Val.
+Max. ii. 6. 15). Of its strategic importance Tissot says "El Kef is
+still regarded as the strongest place in Tunis.... The town dominates
+the great plains of Es-sers, Zanfour, Lorbeus and of the Wäd Mellag, at
+the same time that it commands one of the principal ways of
+communication leading from Tunis to Algiers." See Wilmanns in C.I.L.
+viii. p. 197; Tissot _Géogr. comp_. ii. p. 378. Zama Regia is now
+identified, not with the place called Lehs, El-Lehs or Eliès (Wilmanns
+op. cit. p. 210), but with Djiâma. See Tissot op. cit. ii. pp. 571,
+577-79; Mommsen in _Hermes_ xx. pp. 144-56; Schmidt in _Rhein. Mus_.
+1889 (N. F. 44) pp. 397 foll.
+
+[1034] Sall. _Jug_. 56. 3.
+
+[1035] Ibid. 56. 2.
+
+[1036] Id oppidum in campo situm magis opere quam natura munitum erat
+(Ibid. 57. 1).
+
+[1037] Contra ea oppidani in proxumos saxa volvere, sudes, pila,
+praeterea picem sulphure et taeda mixtam ardentia mittere (Sall. _Jug_.
+57. 5). If _ardentia_ is correct, the _sudes_ and _pila_ must also have
+been winged with fire. I have interpreted the passage as though
+_ardenti_ (suggested by Herzog) were the true reading. Summers suggests
+"picem sulphure mixtam et tela ardentia."
+
+[1038] Ibid. 58. 1.
+
+[1039] Sall. _Jug_. 59. 1.
+
+[1040] Ibid. 59. 3.
+
+[1041] Sall. _Jug_. 60. 4.
+
+[1042] Ibid. 61. 1.
+
+[1043] Sall. _Jug_. 61. 4.
+
+[1044] Sall. _Jug_. 62, 1.
+
+[1045] Mittuntur ad imperatorem legati, qui Jugurtham imperata facturum
+dice rent (Ibid. 62. 3). The word _imperata_ implies previous
+negotiations.
+
+[1046] Metellus proper cantos senatorial ordinis ex Hibernia accurse
+jubet; eorum et variorum, quos ironers defeat, console habet
+(Ibid. 62. 4).
+
+[1047] Ihne _Röm. Gesch_. v. p. 146.
+
+[1048] Sall. _Jug_. 62. 5. Orosius (v. 15. 7) adds that Jugurtha
+promised corn and other supplies.
+
+[1049] Oros. l.c.
+
+[1050] Sall. _Jug_. 62. 7.
+
+[1051] Oros. l.c.
+
+[1052] App. _Num_. 3.
+
+[1053] Its site is unknown.
+
+[1054] Romae senatus de provinciis consults Numidiam Metello decelerare
+(Sall. _Jug_. 62. 10). It is possible that the senate merely abstained
+from making Numidia a consular province. See Summers in loc. and cf.
+p. 222.
+
+[1055] Etiam tum alios magistratus plebs, consulate nobilities inter se
+per manus trade bat. Novas memo tam claries neque tam egregious facts
+erat, quin is indigenous illo honore et quasi pollutes aerator
+(Ibid. 63. 6).
+
+[1056] Ibid. 63. 1.
+
+[1057] Sall. _Jug_. 64. 4.
+
+[1058] Milites quibus in Hibernia preheat lax ore imperio quam antea
+habere (Ibid. 64. 5).
+
+[1059] Sall. _Jug_. 64. 5.
+
+[1060] Ibid. 65. 1 Erat praeterea in exercitu nostro Unmade quidam
+nomine Gauda, Mastanabalis filius, Masinissae nepos, quem Micipsa
+testamento secundum heredem scripserat, morbis confectus et ob eam
+causam mente paulum inminuta.
+
+[1061] Turmam equitum Romanorum (Ibid. 65. 2). It appears, therefore,
+that _equites equo publico_, although seldom (if ever) used as cavalry
+at this time, still formed the escort of generals or princes.
+
+[1062] Equites Romanos, milites et negotiatores (Sall. _Jug_. 65. 4).
+
+[1063] Sall. _Jug_. 66. 3.
+
+[1064] Ibid. 67.
+
+[1065] Sall. _Jug_. 67. 3 Turpilius praefectus unus ex omnibus Italicis
+intactus profugit. Id misericordiane hospitis an pactione an casu ita
+evenerit, parum comperimus: nisi, quia illi in tanto malo turpis vita
+integra fama potior fuit, inprobus intestabilisque videtur.
+
+[1066] Ibid. 68. 1.
+
+[1067] Ibid. 68. 4 Equites in primo late, pedites quam artissume ire
+et signa occultare jubet.
+
+[1068] Plut. _Mar_. 8 outos gar ho anaer aen men ek poteron xenos toi
+Metello kai tote taen epi ton tektonon echon archaen synestrateue.
+
+[1069] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1070] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1071] Sall. _Jug_. 69. 4 Turpilius ... condemnatus verberatusque capite
+poenas solvit: nam is civis e Latio erat. If the last words mean that
+Turpilius was a Latin, they may show that the law of Drusus (p. 242), if
+passed, was no longer respected. If they mean that he was a Roman
+citizen from a Latin town, they illustrate this law. Appian (_Num_. 3)
+says that Turpilius was a Roman ([Greek: _andra Rhomaion_]).
+
+[1072] Sall. _Jug_. 70.
+
+[1073] Proinde reputaret cum animo suo, praemia an cruciatum mallet
+(Sall. _Jug_. 70. 6).
+
+[1074] Sall. _Jug_. 72.
+
+[1075] Ibid. 73.
+
+[1076] Meinel (_Zur Chronologie des Jugurth. Krieges p. 13_) thinks that
+the consular elections of 108 did not take place before the winter, and
+that they may even have drifted over into the following year.
+
+[1077] Plut, _Mar_. 8.
+
+[1078] Plut. l.c. It is possible that this story and that of Sallust
+(_Jug_. 63 see p. 410) about the sacrifice at Utica belong to the same
+incident. But it is not probable. A man such as Marius would often
+approach a favourite shrine.
+
+[1079] Liv. _Ep_. lxv.
+
+[1080] [Victor] _de Vir. Ill_. 72; Ammian. xxvii. 3. 9.
+
+[1081] The _via Aemilia_ ([Victor] l.c.; Strabo v. 1. 11).
+
+[1082] Plut. _Quaest. Rom_. 50.
+
+[1083] Plut. _Mar_. 8.
+
+[1084] Sall. _Jug_. 73. 6 Denique plebes sic accensa, uti opifices
+agrestesque omnes, quorum res fidesque in manibus sitae erant, relictis
+operibus frequentarent Marium et sua necessaria post illius honorem
+ducerent. The labours, from which the _agrestes_ were drawn, may have
+been those of early spring, if the elections were delayed until the
+early part of 107 B.C. (See p. 420, Meinel l.c.)
+
+[1085] Ibid. 73. 7 Sed paulo _ante senatus Metello Numidiam_
+decreverat: ea res frustra fuit. The words in italics are not given by
+the good manuscripts; they are perhaps an interpolation drawn from ch.
+62. See Summers in loc. It is possible that some mention of the
+provinces which the senate had decreed to the new consuls stood here.
+Mommsen (_Hist. of Rome_ bk. iv. c. 4) thinks that the passage may have
+contained a statement that the senate had destined Gaul and Italy for
+the consuls.
+
+[1086] Sall. _Fug_. 85.
+
+[1087] Ibid. 85. 12 Atque ego scio, Quirites, qui, postquam consules
+facti sunt, et acta majorum et Graecorum militaria praecepta legere
+coeperint--praeposteri homines: nam gerere quam fieri tempore posterius,
+re atque usu prius est.
+
+[1088] Ibid. 84. 2.
+
+[1089] Polyb. vi. 19.2.
+
+[1090] According to Gellius (xvi. 10, 10) 375 asses:--Qui ... nullo aut
+perquam parvo aere censebantur, "capite censi" vocabantur, extremus
+autem census capite censorum aeris fuit trecentis septuaginta quinque.
+But this decline from the Polybian census seems incredibly rapid.
+Perhaps the figure should be 3,750--one closely resembling that given by
+Polybius. Cf. p. 61.
+
+[1091] Cf. Liv. x. 21 (cited by Ihne _Röm. Gesch_. v. p. 154)
+Senatus ... delectum omnis generis hominum haberi jussit. See also Gell.
+l.c. 13. Polybius vi. 19. 3, according to Casaubon's reading (p. 135),
+cannot be cited in illustration of this point.
+
+[1092] Sall. _Jug_. 86 2 Ipse interea milites scribere, non more majorum
+neque ex classibus, sed uti cujusque lubido erat, capite censos
+plerosque. Val. Max. ii. 3. 1 Fastidiosum dilectus genus in exercitibus
+Romanis oblitterandum duxit. Cf. Florus i. 36 (iii. 1). 13. The
+tradition preserved by Plutarch (_Mar. 9_) that Marius enrolled slaves
+as well ([Greek: _polyn ton aporon kai doulon katagraphon_]), is
+apparently an echo from the time of the civil wars. Plutarch may mean
+men of servile birth and, though it is noted that freedmen were not
+employed even on occasional service until 90 B.C. (App. _Bell. Civ_. i.
+49), yet it is possible that Marius's hasty levy may have swept in some
+men of this standing. But after, as before the time of Marius,
+free-birth (_ingenuitas_) continued to be a necessary qualification for
+service in the legions.
+
+[1093] Sall. _Jug_. 86. 3.
+
+[1094] Sall. _Jug_. 86. 3.
+
+[1095] Sall. _Jug_. 74. 1.
+
+[1096] Ibid. 74. 2.
+
+[1097] Ibid. 75. 1. There are two Thalas in Numidia. The one with
+which we are here concerned is believed to be that lying east of Capsa
+(Khafsa), not that near Ammaedara (the latter is probably the Thala of
+Tac. _Ann_. iii. 21). Its identification was due to Pelissier who
+visited the site. It has one of the characteristics mentioned by
+Sallust, for the existing ruins are situated in a region destitute of
+water except for one neighbouring fountain. The river from which the
+Romans drew water and filled their vessels might be the one now called
+the Wäd Lebem or Leben--the only one in this part of Tunis which does
+not run dry even in summer. The ruins are of small extent and
+unimposing, but this feature agrees with the statement of Strabo (xvii.
+3. 12) that Thala was one of the towns blotted out by continuous wars in
+Africa. It was, therefore, not restored by the Romans. It has been
+doubted whether the name Thala is a proof of the identity of the site
+with that described by Sallust, since Pelissier says (_Rev. Arch_. 1847,
+p. 399) that the place is surrounded by a grove of trees, of the kind
+known as _mimosa gummifera_ and called _thala_ by the Arabs. The ruins
+may have drawn their name from these trees. See Wilmanns in C.I.L.
+viii. p. 28 and cf. Tissot _Géogr. comp_. ii. p. 635.
+
+[1098] Sall. _Jug_. 75. 9.
+
+[1099] Sall. _Jug_. 76. 3 Deinde locis ex copia maxume idoneis vineas
+agere, aggerem jacere et super aggerem inpositis turribus opus et
+administros tutari.
+
+[1102] The name appears on coins in Punic letters as L B Q I (Movers
+_Die Phönizer_ II 2. p. 486; Müller _Numismatique de l'Afrique_ II p.
+10). Greek writers also call it Neapolis, probably because it was not
+far from an older town at the mouth of the Cinyps (the Wäd
+Mghar-el-Ghrin), although others hold that this name designated a
+particular quarter of the town. The three cities of the Syrtis--Sabrata,
+Oea and Leptis--were called Tripolis, but do not seem to have been
+politically connected with one another. Leptis had been stipendiary to
+Carthage (Liv. xxxiv. 62) and had subsequently been occupied by
+Masinissa (Liv. l.c.; cf. App. _Lib_. 106). But the occupation was
+not permanent or effective. Sallust notes (_Jug_. 78) that its situation
+had enabled it to escape Numidian influence.
+
+[1101] Sall. _Jug_. 77. 3.
+
+[1102] Ibid. 80. 1.
+
+[1103] Forbiger _Handb. der alt. Geogr_. ii. p. 885.
+
+[1104] Sall. _Jug_. 80. 2.
+
+[1105] Ibid. 80. 1.
+
+[1106] Ibid. 80. 6 Ea necessitudo apud Numidas Maurosque levis
+ducitur, quia singuli pro opibus quisque quam plurumas uxores, denas
+alii, alii pluris habent, sed reges eo amplius. Ita animus multitudine
+distrahitur: nulla pro socia optinet, pariter omnes viles sunt.
+
+[1107] Sall. _Jug_. 81. 1.
+
+[1108] Ibid. 82. 1.
+
+[1109] Cf. p. 349.
+
+[1110] Sall. _Jug_. 81. 2.
+
+[1111] Ibid. 82. 1.
+
+[1112] Ibid. 82. 2.
+
+[1113] Sall. _Jug_. 83. 1.
+
+[1114] Sall, _Jug_. 86. 5.
+
+[1115] Ibid. 88. 1.
+
+[1116] Vellei. ii. II Metelli ... et triumphus fuit clarissimus et
+meritum ex virtute ei cognomen Numidici inditum. Cf. Eutrop. iv. 27.
+
+[1117] Sall. _Jug_. 88. 5.
+
+[1118] Sall. _Jug_. 88. 3.
+
+[1119] Sallust uses the historic infinitive (Ibid, 89. 1 Consul, uti
+statuerat, oppida castellaque munita adire, partim vi, alia metu aut
+praemia ostentando avortere ab hostibus), but the reduction of some of
+these places may perhaps be assumed.
+
+[1120] Cf. p. 426.
+
+[1121] Capsa (Kafsa or Gafsa) may have been once subject to Carthage and
+have been added to the kingdom of Masinissa after the Hannibalic war.
+Strabo (xvii. 3. 12) mentions it amongst the ruined towns of Africa, but
+it revived later on, received a Latin form of constitution under
+Hadrian, and was ultimately the seat of a bishopric. See Wilmanns in C.
+I. L. viii. p. 22. Its commercial importance was very great. It was, as
+Tissot says (_Géogr. comp_. ii. p. 664), placed on the threshold of the
+desert at the head of the three great valleys which lead, the one to the
+bottom of the Gulf of Kabes, the other to Tebessa, the third to the
+centre of the regency of Tunis. He describes it as one of the gates of
+the Sahara and one of the keys of Tell, the necessary point of transit
+of the caravans of the Soudan and the advanced post of the high plateau
+against the incursions of the nomads. Strabo (l.c.) describes Capsa as
+a treasure-house of Jugurtha, but it has been questioned whether this
+description is not due to a confusion with Thala (Wilmanns l.c.).
+
+[1122] Sall. _Jug_. 89. 6.
+
+[1123] Ibid. 89. 5 Nam, praeter oppido propinqua, alia omnia vasta,
+inculta, egentia aquae, infesta serpentibus, quarum vis sicuti omnium
+ferarum inopia cibi acrior. Ad hoc natura serpentium, ipsa perniciosa,
+siti magis quam alia re accenditur. Tissot says (op. cit. ii. p. 669)
+that the solitudes which surround the oasis make a veritable "belt of
+sands and snakes" (cf. Florus iii. 1. 14 Anguibus harenisque
+vallatam).
+
+[1124] Sal. _Jug_. 90. 1.
+
+[1125] Aulus Manlius was sent with some light cohorts to protect the
+stores at Lares (Ibid. 90. 2). These stores were, therefore, not
+exhausted.
+
+[1126] The Tana has often been identified with the Wäd Tina, but this
+identification would take Marius along the coast by Thenae--a course
+which he almost certainly did not follow. Tissot holds (_Géogr. comp_.
+i. p. 85) that Tana is only a generic Libyan name for a water-course. He
+thinks that the river in question is the Wäd-ed-Derb. (Ibid. p. 86).
+
+[1127] This _locus tumulosus_ (Sall. _Jug_. 91. 3) is identified by
+Tissot (op. cit. ii. p 669) with a spur of the Djebel Beni-Younès
+which dominates Kafsa on the northeast at the distance indicated
+by Sallust.
+
+[1128] Ibid. 91. 7.
+
+[1129] Sall. _Jug_. 92. 3.
+
+[1130] Sallust omits all mention of these winter quarters. Such an
+omission does not prove that he is a bad military historian, but simply
+that he never meant his sketch to be a military history. But he has
+perhaps freed himself too completely from the annalistic methods of most
+Roman historians.
+
+[1131] Sall. _Jug_. 92. 2.
+
+[1132] The Wäd Muluja. It is called Muluccha by Sallust, [Greek:
+_Molochath_] by Strabo (xvii. 3, 9). Other names given to it by
+ancient authorities are Malvane, [Greek: _Maloua_], Malva. See Göbel
+_Die Westküste Afrikas im Altertum_ pp. 79, 80.
+
+[1133] Bocchus, however, claimed the territory within which Marius was
+operating (Sall. _Jug_. 102).
+
+[1134] Ibid. 92. 5.
+
+[1135] Ibid. 93.
+
+[1136] Sall. _Jug_. 94. 3.
+
+[1137] Sall. _Jug_. 95. 1.
+
+[1138] Sall, _Jug_. 95. 1 L. Sulla quaestor cum magno equitatu in castra
+venit, quos uti ex Latio et a sociis cogeret Romae relictus erat.
+
+[1139] Cic. _in Verr_. iii. 58. 134.
+
+[1140] Cf. Cic. _ad Att_. vi. 6. 3 and 4.
+
+[1141] Val. Max. vi. 9. 6 C. Marius consul moleste tulisse traditur quod
+sibi asperrimum in Africa bellum gerenti tam delicatus quaestor sorte
+obvenisset.
+
+[1142] Plut. _Sulla_ 2.
+
+[1143] Val. Max. l.c.; Plut. _Sulla_ 2.
+
+[1144] Litteris Graecis atque Latinis juxta, atque doctissume, eruditus
+(Sall. _Jug_. 95. 3).
+
+[1145] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1146] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1147] He was born in 138 B.C. He was entering on his sixtieth year at
+the time of his death in 78 B.C. (Val. Max. ix. 3. 8). Cf. Vellei. ii.
+17 and see Lau _Lucius Cornelius Sulla_ p. 25.
+
+[1148] Sall. _Jug_. 96.
+
+[1149] Sall. _Jug_. 97. 2.
+
+[1150] Sallust states later that Cirta was his original aim (Ibid. 102.
+1 Pervenit in oppidum Cirtam, quo initio profectus intenderat); but
+Marius's plans may have been modified by intervening events.
+
+[1151] Vix decuma parte die reliqua (Ibid. 97. 3).
+
+[1152] Sall, _Jug_. 98. 1.
+
+[1153] Ibid. 97. 5 Denique Romani ... orbis facere, atque ita ab
+omnibus partibus simul tecti et instructi hostium vim sustentabant.
+
+[1154] Ibid. 98. 3.
+
+[1155] Sall. _Jug_. 99. 1.
+
+[1156] Pariter atque in conspectu hostium quadrato agmine incedere
+(Ibid. 100. 1). For the nature and growth of this tactical formation
+amongst the Romans see Marquardt _Staatsverw. ii. p. 423.
+
+[1157] Sall. _Jug_. 101. 2.
+
+[1158] It is possible that Jugurtha intentionally let his approach be
+known, so that the Romans might form in their usual battle order.
+
+[1159] This force is not mentioned by Sallust (Sall. _Jug_. 101. 5), but
+it seems implied in the junction of Bocchus with Volux.
+
+[1160] Quod ubi milites accepere, magis atrocitate rei quam fide nuntii
+terrentur (Ibid. 101. 7).
+
+[1161] Sall. _Jug_. 101. 9.
+
+[1162] Oros. v. 15. 9 foll. This account in Orosius corresponds to
+nothing in Sallust and is clearly drawn from other sources. The attempt
+of the Romans to storm Cirta (Section 10) must be a mistake, unless it
+refers to some earlier and unrecorded operation of the war. Some details
+of Section 14 bear a shadowy resemblance to points in the first of the
+recent battles described by Sallust; but there are other details which
+make the identification impossible.
+
+[1163] Hastilia telorum, quae manu intorquere sine ammentis solent
+(Oros. v. 15. 16).
+
+[1164] According to Sallust (_Jug_. 102. 2.); but the fight which he
+describes may not have been the final battle. See p. 452.
+
+[1165] Ibid. 102. 2.
+
+[1166] Sall. _Jug_. 102. 5.
+
+[1167] Ibid. 102. 12.
+
+[1168] Cf. Sall. _Jug_. 80. 4. See p. 349.
+
+[1169] Sall. _Jug_. 102. 15.
+
+[1170] The headquarters were doubtless Cirta, to which we find Marius
+returning (Ibid. 104. 1); but shortly afterwards we find Sulla and the
+envoys coming to Cirta from a place which, according to one reading, is
+called Tucca (see p. 457). All the troops were probably not concentrated
+at Cirta, as Marius meant to quarter them in the coast-towns
+(Ibid. 100. 1).
+
+[1171] Ibid. 103. 2.
+
+[1172] Sall. _Jug_. 104. 3.
+
+[1173] Ibid. 103. 7.
+
+[1174] Sulla and the envoys were now at a place which variant readings
+make either Tucca or Utica (Ibid. 104. 1 Illosque et Sullam [ab Tucca
+_or_ Utica] venire jubet, item L. Bellienum praetorem Utica). Utica is
+rendered improbable by its mention a few words later, although it is
+possible that the name of this town has been duplicated in the sentence.
+If we keep Tucca, it cannot be Thugga (Dugga) in Numidia, which is some
+distance from the coast. It may be the town which Pliny (_Hist. Nat_. v.
+2. 21) calls "oppidum Tucca inpositum mari et flumini Ampsagae".
+
+[1175] It is possible that this armistice included Jugurtha as well,
+although this is not stated by Sallust (Sall. _Jug_. 104. 2).
+
+[1176] Ibid. 104. 5.
+
+[1177] Sall. _Jug_. 105. 1.
+
+[1178] Ibid. 106. 2.
+
+[1179] Sall. _Jug_. 107, 1.
+
+[1180] Sall. _Jug_. 107. 6. Cf. Plut. _Sulla_ 3.
+
+[1181] Ibid. 108.
+
+[1182] This is apparently the meaning of Sallust (Ibid. 108. 1) when
+he describes Dabar as Massugradae filius, ex gente Masinissae, ceterum
+materno genere inpar (nam pater ejus ex concubina ortus erat).
+
+[1183] Sall. _Jug_. 108. 3 Sed ego conperior Bocchum magis Punica fide
+quam ob ea, quae praedicabat, simul Romanos et Numidam spe pacis
+attinuisse, multumque cum animo suo volvere solitum, Jugurtham Romanis
+an illi Sullam traderet; lubidinem advorsum nos, metum pro
+nobis suasisse.
+
+[1184] Ibid. 109, 2 Dicit se missum a consule. Marius was really
+proconsul.
+
+[1185] Ibid. 110.
+
+[1186] Sall. _Jug_. 111.
+
+[1187] Sall. _Jug_. 111. 2
+
+[1188] Ibid. 112. 1.
+
+[1189] Haec Maurus secum ipse diu volvens tandem promisit, ceterum dolo
+an vere cunctatus parum comperimus (Ibid. 113. 1).
+
+[1190] This must have been the agreement, although Sallust says only
+Eodem Numida cum plerisque necessariis inermis, uti dictum erat, adcedit
+(Sall. _Jug_. 113. 6).
+
+[1191] Ibid. 114. 3.
+
+[1192] Gauda is called king in an inscription which gives the whole
+house of Juba II. The inscription (C.I.L. II. n. 3417) runs:--Regi
+Jubae reg(is) Jubae filio regi(s) Iempsalis n. regis Gau(dae) pronepoti
+regis Masiniss(ae) pronepotis nepoti IIvir quinq. patrono coloni (the
+_coloni_, who set up the inscription, having made Juba II IIvir
+quinquennalis _honoris causa_). The only doubt which affects the belief
+in Gauda's succession arises from a passage in Cic. _post Red. ad Quir_.
+8. 20. Cicero here says (Marius) cum parva navicula pervectus in
+Africam, quibus regna ipse dederat, ad eos inops supplexque venisset.
+There can be no doubt that Marius fled to Hiempsal, not to Gauda. But it
+has been pointed out that Cicero's expression is "ad eos," not "ad eum."
+The plural probably refers to the whole "domus" of the monarch and would
+include both Gauda and Hiempsal. See Biereye _Res Numidarum et
+Maurorum_ p. 7.
+
+[1193] Mauretania subsequently includes the region of Caesariensis, but
+it has been thought probable that the territory of Sitifis on the east
+was not added until the new settlement in 46 B.C. (Mommsen _Hist. of
+Rome_ bk. iv. c. 4). The territory between the Muluccha and Saldae
+might, therefore, have been added after the close of the war with
+Jugurtha. See Müller _Numismatique de l'Afrique_. p. 4; Mommsen l.c.;
+Göbel _Die Westküste Afrikas im Altertum_ p. 93; Biereye op. cit. p. 6.
+It is very questionable whether the limits of the Roman province were
+in any way extended at the expense of Numidia. Such additions as Vaga
+and Sicca probably belong to the settlement of 46 B.C. See Tissot
+_Géogr. comp_. ii. pp. 21 foll. It has sometimes been thought that the
+attachment of Leptis Magna to Rome (p. 429) was permanent (Wilmanns in
+C.I.L. viii. p. 2) and that Tripolis became a part of the Roman
+province (Marquardt _Staatsverw_. i. p. 465), but Tissot (op. cit. ii.
+p. 22) believes that Leptis remained a free city.
+
+[1194] Sall. _Jug_. 114. 3; Liv. _Ep_. lxvii; C.I.L. i. n. xxxiii p. 290
+Eum (Jugurtham) cepit et triumphans in secundo consulatu ante currum
+suum duci jussit ... veste triumphali calceis patriciis [? _in senatum
+venit_]. It is questionable, however, whether the last words of this
+Arretine inscription (words which do not immediately follow the account
+of the Numidian triumph) can be brought into connection with the story
+told by Plutarch (_Mar_. 12) that Marius, either through forgetfulness
+or clumsiness, entered the senate in his triumphal dress. They seem to
+refer to some special honours conferred after the defeat of the Germanic
+tribes. It is possible that the conferment of this honour gave rise to
+the malicious story, which became not only distorted but misplaced.
+
+[1195] Plut. _Mar_. 12.
+
+[1196] Ihne _Röm. Gesch_. v. p. 164 Wo dem Sohn des Südens der
+Schmerzenschrei entfuhr.
+
+[1197] Plut. _Mar_. 12. The epitomator of Livy (lxvii.) says in carcere
+necatus est. The word _necatus_ is quite consistent with a death such as
+that described by Plutarch. See Festus, pp. 162, 178.
+
+[1198] Plut. l.c.
+
+[1199] Plut. _Mar_. 10.
+
+[1200] Plut. _Sulla_ 4.
+
+[1201] Plut. _Mar_. 10; _Sulla_ 3.
+
+[1202] Plut. _Sulla_ 6.
+
+[1203] Ancient writers derive the name from _serere_ and connect it with
+a story of the family of the Reguli (Plin. _Hist. Nat_. xviii. 3, 20;
+Verg. _Aen_. vi. 844; Val. Max. iv. 4. 5). But the name appears on coins
+as "Saranus" (Eckhel v. p. 146). It seems, however, to be true that the
+name was borne by, or applied to, C. Atilius Regulus, the consul of 257
+B.C. See Klebs in Pauly-Wissowa R. E. p. 2095.
+
+[1204] Cic. _pro Planc_. 5. 12.
+
+[1205] In the movement connected with the proceedings of Saturninus in
+100 B.C. (Cic. _pro Rab_. 7. 21).
+
+[1206] Eutrop. iv. 27; Val. Max. vi. 9. 13; _Fast. triumph_.
+
+[1207] Yet no very recent cases _repetundarum_ are known. The last seems
+to have been the accusation of M. Valerius Messala (Gell. xv. 14). About
+this time C. Flavius Fimbria was accused by M. Gratidius and acquitted
+in spite of the hostile evidence of M. Aemilius Scaurus (Cic. _pro
+Font_. 11. 24; _Brut_. 45. 168; Val. Max. viii. 5. 2; Rein
+_Criminalrecht_ p. 649); but even if, with Rein, we assign this case to
+106 and not to a time later than Fimbria's consulship, the judiciary law
+must have been prepared before the trial.
+
+[1208] Cassiodor. _Chron_. Per Servilium Caepionem consulem judicia
+equitibus et senatoribus communicata. Obsequens 101 (39) Per Caepionem
+cos. senatorum et equitum judicia communicata.
+
+[1209] Tac. _Ann_. xii. 60 Cum ... Serviliae leges senatui judicia
+redderent.
+
+[1210] Cic. _de Inv_. i. 49. 92 Offensum est quod corum qui audiunt
+voluntatem laedit: ut si quis apud equites Romanos cupidos judicandi
+Caepionis legem judiciariam laudet.
+
+[1211] Pp. 135, 213.
+
+[1212] Cic. _Brut_. 43, 161; _pro Cluent_. 51, 140.
+
+[1213] Cic. _de Or_. ii. 59. 240, 66. 264. It is very probable that this
+attack on Memmius belongs to the speech on the Servilian law.
+
+[1214] Cic. _Brut_. 44. 164 Mihi (Ciceroni) quidem a pueritia quasi
+magistra fuit, inquam, illa in legem Caepionis oratio.
+
+[1215] Cassiod. _Chron_.; Obsequens 101 (39) (quoted p, 478).
+
+[1216] Cicero, speaking in 70 B.C., says that the Equites had held the
+courts for nearly fifty years, i.e. up to the date of the _lex
+Cornelia_ of 81 B.C. (Cic. _in Verr_. Act. i. 13. 38).
+
+[1217] [Cic.] _ad Herenn_. i. 15, 25, iv. 24. 34; _de Rep_. i. 3. 6;
+_pro Balbo_ II. 28.
+
+[1218] Cic. _de Orat_. iii. 8. 29; _Brut_. 35. 132.
+
+[1219] Cicero, in speaking of the successive defeats of Catulus at the
+polls, says Praeposuisse (populum Romanum) Q. Catulo, summa in familia
+nato, sapientissimo et sanctissimo viro, non dico C. Serranum,
+stultissimum hominem, (fuit enim tamen nobilis,) non C. Fimbriam, novum
+hominem, (fuit enim et animi satis magni et consilii,) sed Cn. Mallium,
+non solum ignobilem, verum sine virtute, sine ingenio, vita etiam
+contempta ac sordida (_pro Planc_. 5. 12).
+
+[1220] Val. Max. ii. 3. 2. The changes introduced into the military
+system by Rutilius will be explained in the next chapter.
+
+[1221] Ulp. in _Dig_. xxxviii. 2, i. i. Mommsen (_Staatsr_. iii. p. 433)
+thinks that the consul of 105 is the "praetor Rutilius" of
+Ulpian's account.
+
+[1222] Gaius iv, 35 (Praetor Publius Rutilius), qui et bonorum
+venditionem introduxisse dicitur. See Bethmann-Hollweg _Civilprozess_
+ii. p. 671. Here again the consul of 105 is probably meant.
+
+[1223] Cic. _Brut_. 30. 113, 114.
+
+[1224] The disaster at Arausio took place on 6th October (Plut. _Luc_.
+27). The consuls for the next year may not yet have been elected, as
+there was at this time no fixed date for the consular Comitia. Cf.
+p. 364 and see Sall. _Jug_. 114.
+
+[1225] Cic. _Brut_. 34. 129; _de Orat_. ii. 22. 91.
+
+[1226] Liv. _Ep_. lvi. (see the next note). For the probable date of
+this enactment (151 B.C.) see Mommsen _Staatsrecht_ i. p. 521.
+
+[1227] Liv. _Ep_. lvi Cum bellum Numantinum vitio ducum non sine pudore
+publico duraret, delatus est ultro Scipioni Africano a senatu populoque
+Romano consulatus; quem cum illi capere ob legem, quae vetabat quemquam
+iterum consulem fieri, non liceret, sicut priori consulatu, legibus
+solutus est.
+
+[1228] Plut. _Mar_. 12 [Greek: _kai to deuteron hypatos apedeichthae,
+tou men nomou koluontos aponta kai mae dialiponta chronon horismenon
+authis aireisthai, tou de daemou tous antilegontas ekbalontos_.]
+Plutarch adds that the people recalled the dispensation granted to
+Scipio when the annihilation of the Carthaginian power was planned.
+This is perhaps a mistaken reference to the dispensation granted to
+Scipio in the Numantine war. See Liv. _Ep_. lvi. (quoted in the last
+note); Cic. _pro Leg. Man_. 20. 60 and Mommsen _Staatsr_. l.c. As to
+the irregularity involved in Marius's absence, it is questionable
+whether Plutarch is right in supposing that a personal _professio_ was
+required at this time. See Mommsen _Staatsr_. i. p. 504. Possibly the
+irregularity consisted in the fact that there had been no formal
+candidature at all. Other references to this election of Marius are to
+be found in Sall. _Jug_. 114; Vellei. ii. 12; Liv. _Ep_. lxvii.
+
+[1229] Sall. _Jug_. 114, Marius consul absens factus est, et ei decreta
+provincia Gallia.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A History of Rome, Vol 1, by A H.J. Greenidge
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