TWO GREAT REPUBLICS

RUINS OF THE ROMAN FORUM

THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS
ROME AND THE
UNITED STATES

By

JAMES HAMILTON LEWIS

RAND McNALLY & COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK

Copyright, 1913,
By Rand, McNally & Company
The Rand-McNally Press
Chicago

PREFACE

In this book I have proposed to compare conditions recorded in Roman history with those existing in America that should warn, by reason of the results at Rome. It is not the purpose of this volume to offer a mere textbook or a scholastic essay on historical events. It is not the purpose merely to record those events which led to the destruction of the Roman republic, and with this end our work. The main purpose of this book is to compare events as they transpired in the one republic and in the other.

The political history of the Roman republic is throughout its whole course a continuous contest between radicals and conservatives. The striking resemblances between the basis of the political controversies of Ancient Rome and the modern political and economic problems render it almost impossible for any historian to approach the political history of Rome entirely free from prejudice. The bias of the historian, whether toward the liberal or the conservative side in politics, is sure to affect to a greater or less degree the pictures which he paints of the events and actors in Roman history. To indicate to some extent these varying views, and to present to the reader some of the ideas of prominent writers on Roman history, a number of extracts from the works of other authors have been inserted, as occasion demanded, in this work. In the majority of cases such an insertion should be understood as an attempt to present all sides of some controverted historical question rather than as indicating the approval by the author of the views expressed therein.

In arranging the perspective of this book, its main object has been kept constantly in mind. The importance of events has been weighed from the standpoint of their effect upon the decay and collapse of the free political institutions of Rome; with the result that many subjects, to which considerable space would be devoted in a general Roman history, have been passed over with a mere notice, while other events, perhaps of less popular interest, have been treated at length.

I would be false to the first sense of justice did I not here acknowledge the aid I have obtained from Professor Albert H. Putney, dean of the Webster College of Law, Chicago, and a lawyer of the state of Illinois at the city of Chicago (my home), who has been the principal contributor from whom I have received assistance, and much that can be found in this book in the nature of real historical data, and of the philosophy of reasoning from this data, is due to him, and I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness and to give full credit for the value of this work.

James Hamilton Lewis

United States Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C.
September 1913.

CONTENTS

THE TWO GREAT REPUBLICS

ROME
AND
THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER I

The Two Republics

"How like, how unlike, as we view them together."—Holmes.

It is now nearly two thousand years since the curtain fell upon the last act in the history of the Roman republic. During these twenty centuries many other republics have flourished and passed away, while, in turn, new republics have arisen to take the place of the earlier ones; but no other fallen republic in the whole course of history has attained to the same degree of importance, has possessed the same degree of interest, or has exerted the same influence on the history of the world, as did that of Rome. The five centuries of republican institutions on the banks of the Tiber still remain the richest quarry to which the student or historian of republican governments is able to resort for his material.

"History," says Lord Macaulay, "is philosophy teaching by examples." The most practical value of the study of history arises from the aid which it can give us in understanding the present and in forecasting the future. Bolingbroke, on the "Uses of History," commands its study as a protection against the unexpected. The main purpose of any American, who to-day studies the history of the greatest republic of the ancient world, should be to discover whether or not the story of the rise and fall of that government teaches any lessons which might be of value to the American of to-day; whether the evils which were the causes of the overthrow of the Roman republic find any counterpart in the problems which agitate our own country.

One of the greatest of American orators, in urging Americans to draw their historical lessons from the history of their own country, says that "when we go back into ancient history, we are bewildered by the differences of manners and institutions"; but sometimes it is with the earliest of nations that the most striking comparisons may be made, and from their history that the greatest lessons may be learned.

The truth is that the progress of mankind, during that small fragment of the period of its existence upon this earth which we are permitted to see by the light of history, has been very uneven in the extent of its advances along the different lines of human progress. In the fields of scientific discovery and of material results human achievements, especially during the past century, have reached almost into the realm of the marvelous; but in many other fields—those relating to human reason, to knowledge of the human mind, to the relation between man and man, and to the science of government—human progress has been so slight that man's efforts in these directions must still receive the verdict of failure.

The reason for this great discrepancy is perhaps not difficult to discover. It is easy for the mass of mankind to accept and receive the benefits which come to them from the struggles and mental efforts of the few intellectual giants whom the human race from time to time produces; but all this takes place with very little change in the minds or emotions of the mass of humanity.

As, for example, the pages of Homer are studied, it is hard to say whether the strongest impression left upon the mind of the reader is that of the vast difference between the external life of that period and of the twentieth century, or that of the striking similarity between the qualities and emotions of the characters in these epics and of the men and women of to-day.

In the field of the material world any comparison between the existing conditions in the United States to-day and the conditions in any ancient country could hardly be of any particular value; except, perhaps, to indicate the great distance which has been traveled. In the field of government and politics, however, the most valuable comparison which it is possible to make with existing conditions in the United States is not with the present conditions in any modern country, nor is it with conditions of an earlier age in any Anglo-Saxon or even Teutonic country. The greatest resemblance to the existing conditions in the United States, both as to the character of her politics and the nature of the problems which confront her, is to be found in the great Roman republic of two thousand years ago.

In studying the decline and fall of the Roman republic it will appear that this result was most directly brought about by the three following causes:

1. Long before the time when Rome had attained to the height of her power, great inequalities of wealth had arisen between the different strata of the Roman citizens; the prosperity which came to Rome as a result of her conquests was not distributed among her whole citizen body. Indeed, while the wealth of the community as a whole was rapidly increasing, the wealth of the great mass of the citizens was rapidly decreasing, not only relatively but even absolutely. The acute stage of the contest between the rich and the poor arose immediately after the conclusion of the long contest between patricians and plebeians, and at the time when, theoretically, all political distinctions and privileges between citizens had disappeared. Yet, in fact, the suffrage was then limited to the free citizen—the smallest class of the humble or toiling numbers.

2. The influence of a large and constantly increasing class of demagogues, possessed of knowledge of human nature and endowed with skill in the management of men, yet entirely lacking in principle, patriotism, or any sense of public obligation. These wrought upon a mob of unqualified and reckless voters, who had nothing to lose and were more anxious for immediate personal benefit than for the gradual but permanent amelioration of the hardships of the class to which they belonged.

3. The absence of any system of representative organization in the Roman government.

The first two of these evils are to be found in the American republic of to-day as well as in the Roman republic of the past; the last of the three was a disadvantage suffered by Rome but outgrown by the modern republics. This last evil will be treated by itself in the succeeding chapter, while the two former will be shown in the remainder of the volume as the political history of Rome is outlined.

CHAPTER II

Roman Legislative Assemblies

In one important respect in the management of their political affairs, the citizens of the Roman republic occupied a most disadvantageous position in comparison with the citizens of any modern republic. The greatest defect in the political organization of Rome, as of all other ancient republics, lay in the utter absence of representative legislative assemblies. The want of such institutions, in the absence of all the other causes of disruption, might of itself have been sufficient to have caused the downfall of the Roman republic.

The invention and development of such representative assemblies has been the greatest contribution which the Anglo-Saxon race has made to the political progress of the world. It is largely the existence of such bodies which renders practical the continued existence of modern republics, with jurisdiction over extended areas.

The Roman legislative bodies were, throughout the whole period of Roman history, popular assemblies,—bodies of a character well adapted for the government of the community when Rome was a mere city-republic on the Tiber, but entirely inadequate to meet existing conditions when the Roman territories had been extended far beyond the confines of Latium and even beyond the shores of the Italian peninsula.

The system of Roman popular assemblies was so complicated, and these assemblies were so closely connected with every phase and every important epoch in Roman political history, that it seems advisable to stop at the outset and give a brief description of each of these assemblies; of the manner in which they were constituted; of their origin; and of the scope of their respective powers.

The oldest of these popular assemblies was the comitia curiata, which for a considerable period was the only body in Rome with the power to enact laws. This assembly was based upon the original division of the people into gentes and curiæ, and was throughout its history a distinctively patrician body. The force of the contest for a share in political power, waged by the plebeians, took in the main the direction of stripping the comitia curiata of its power instead of securing for the plebeians the right of membership in this assembly.

After the creation of the comitia centuriata the powers of the older comitia rapidly declined, and were in the main limited to the control of certain portions of the state religion; particularly those religious formalities connected with elections, legislation, or the investure of military leaders with the imperium. At a still later time, the comitia curiata ceased to meet at all, and was merely considered as being represented by the lictors.

The two important assemblies of the people during the period of the history of the Roman republic were the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa. The comitia centuriata came into existence during the period which lies on the border line between mythology and history. In the legendary history of the Roman kingdom the creation of this assembly is given as one of the reforms of Servius Tullius. However this may be, it was undoubtedly in existence (although not in the exact form which it later acquired) as early as the sixth century before Christ. This assembly was reorganized some time before the Punic Wars. In its final form the tribal division was taken as the primary division of the people; each tribe was divided into five classes, according to the wealth of the citizens, and each class into two centuries, one century in each class consisting of seniores, or men above forty-five years of age, and one consisting of juniores, or men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. The ten centuries from each of the tribes made a total of three hundred fifty centuries, to whom were added eighteen centuries of knights, making a total of three hundred sixty-eight centuries. Every question submitted to the comitia centuriata was decided by the vote of a majority of centuries. Although all freemen had the right to vote in this assembly, the power of the richer classes was disproportionately great. This was secured by assigning to the five classes, into which each tribe was divided, a very disproportionate number of citizens. The first class, to which only the richest citizens were admitted, was very small in size, while the fifth (and lowest) class was probably more numerous than the other four classes combined.

The comitia centuriata was originally an assembly of the Roman citizens in the form of an army, and the divisions into classes was based upon the kind of equipment with which each soldier was able to provide himself. The eighteen centuries of knights represented the cavalry of the army. These centuries of knights possessed the right of having their votes taken first, which constituted another advantage for the wealthy classes. In 241 B.C. the knights were deprived of their right of voting first, but this privilege was given to the centuries of the first rank, assigned by lot.

The comitia tributa, or assembly of the tribes, first met in 489 B.C., it being convened by the Senate at that time to sit in judgment upon a patrician, Coriolanus, the responsibility for whose fate the Senate desired to throw upon the plebeians. This assembly was originally a strictly plebeian body, and its original authority was limited to the administration of the business of the plebeian order. The class character of the comitia tributa is indicated by its original name—concilium tributum plebis, the word concilium indicating a conference of a certain part of the people rather than a legislative assembly of the whole people.

It would be hard to say whether it was the increased power of the tribunes which developed the authority of the comitia tributa, or whether it was the increased power of the comitia tributa which first gave to the tribunes the vast power which they were ultimately able to exercise in Rome. However this may be, the fact is evident that the power of the comitia tributa and of the tribunes rose together. At a later date, membership in the comitia tributa was not limited to the plebeians, but the influence of the patricians in this assembly was always inconsiderable and they generally absented themselves from its meetings. Although the wealthy classes had no predominating influence in the comitia tributa, its decision upon any question was far from being, necessarily, the decision of the majority. Measures submitted to the comitia tributa were carried or defeated by the vote of the majority of the tribes, and the numbers enrolled in each tribe were very unequal, all the inhabitants of the city of Rome being enrolled into four tribes, and a very disproportionate power being thus given to the rural voters.

The meetings of the comitia tributa were generally presided over by a tribune, although sometimes by one of the consuls. At first the laws passed by the comitia tributa were required to be confirmed by a vote of the comitia centuriata, but this requirement was abolished in 339 B.C. by the Publilian and Horatian laws. The provisions of these laws were reaffirmed by the Hortensian laws in 286 B.C.; and it is certain that at least from this date the full validity of a law passed by the comitia tributa was never questioned.

In the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa we see the anomalous condition of two independent law-making assemblies; and as there was no division between them of the field of legislation, it is hard to see how, even with the controlling influence of the Senate, conflicts between the two were so generally avoided. So completely were the two comitiæ on an equality as to the validity of the laws enacted by each that the records generally fail to show by which assembly any particular law was passed, but this can generally be ascertained by looking at the name of the proposer of the law. If a tribune appears as the proposer of the law it was passed by the comitia tributa; but if the proposer was a consul, prætor, or dictator, the law was the work of the comitia centuriata.

The powers of the two comitiæ as to the election of officers were differentiated. The comitia centuriata, at all stages in the history of the Roman republic, possessed the right of electing the highest officers of the republic—the consuls, prætors, and censors. The comitia tributa originally possessed the right of electing only the tribunes and the plebeian ædiles; at a later period they elected also the curule ædiles, the quæstors, the majority of the legionary tribunes, and all the inferior officers of state. The comitia tributa, in the later days of the republic, secured an indirect control over the election of the higher officers also, since the adoption of the legal principle that all Romans who sought the highest honors of the state must pass through a regular gradation of offices rendered it necessary for the comitia centuriata to choose as consuls and prætors men who had previously been chosen by the comitia tributa as quæstors and ædiles. It must be remembered, however, that the law relative to the order in which the various offices must be held was of a directory rather than a mandatory character; while in the main obeyed, it was, nevertheless, frequently violated.

The various public offices here referred to will be discussed in the later chapters as each office first comes into existence in Roman history. It remains at this time to speak of the organization, powers, and authority of the Roman Senate, particularly as to its control over the work of the popular assemblies.

The extent of the power of the Senate over legislation varied greatly in different periods of Roman history, and these differences were caused more by the existing political conditions, and by the relative strength of the aristocratic and popular parties in Rome, than by any express changes by legislation.

At the very outset of Roman history we see the Senate existing as an aristocratic body, embodying in itself both the oligarchical principles upon which the Roman government was based, and also the patriarchal basis upon which the Roman family organization and later the organization of the Roman state itself had been built.

Originally, each of the three Roman tribes was divided into ten gentes, each gens into ten curiæ, and each curia, besides constituting one of the units in the comitia curiata, furnished one member of the Roman Senate. The Senate continued after the organization by curiæ had become obsolete. Membership in the Senate was at all periods for life, but did not descend from father to son. Vacancies in the Senate were filled by appointment, these appointments being made first by the kings, later by the consuls, and finally by the censors. As the censors were chosen only once in five years, vacancies in the Senate were filled only at such intervals. The aristocratic party in Rome, by keeping control of the office of censor, was able to perpetuate their majority in the Senate. In filling such vacancies, preference was given to those who had held some of the higher offices during the preceding five-year-period. Many members of the Senate had held the office of consul; many more hoped to hold it in the future. All members of the Senate, with few exceptions, had held some civic office, and were men of property and of mature age.

All the dignity of Rome and of the Roman government centered in the Roman Senate. The minister of Pyrrhus described this body as "an assembly of kings," and it might well have aroused the surprise and admiration of a foreign ambassador, as nowhere else in the world at that time was it possible to find such an assembly, either from the standpoint of the character of the body itself or of the qualifications of its members.

At an early period no law could be presented before the comitia centuriata or the comitia tributa without having been previously approved by the Senate, and after the passage of the act, either by the comitia centuriata or the comitia tributa, it must be promulgated by the Senate before it went into effect. The Senate, therefore, was never possessed of a direct general power of legislation, but had in the fullest degree both the power of initiating legislation and of vetoing it. At a later period the control of the Senate over legislation became theoretically less, but practically greater.

By the Publilian Law (339 B.C.) the control of the Senate over the comitia centuriata was reduced to a mere formality. By this time, however, the officers of the state, the tribunes as well as the consuls, had fallen completely under the control of the Senate, while the comitia tributa, in turn, fell more and more under the control of the consuls and tribunes respectively. During the latter period of the republic the Senate practically legislated, and gave the bill to one of the tribunes (the tribunes were at this time far more completely under the control of the Senate than were the consuls) to secure the mere formality of its passage by the comitia tributa.

The management of foreign affairs was at all times exclusively in the hands of the Senate, except that the question of declaring war or concluding peace must be submitted to the vote of the people in one of the popular assemblies. The Senate also regulated the religious affairs of the Roman state (after this power fell from the hands of the comitia curiata); assigned consuls and prætors their provinces of administration and command; fixed the amount of troops to be raised both from the Roman citizens and from the Italian allies; sent and received ambassadors; controlled the calendar, adding to or taking away from a year so as to lengthen the term of a favorite official or to shorten the term of an unpopular one; decreed or refused triumphs to Roman generals, and possessed a general control over the financial affairs of the state.

CHAPTER III

The First Great Melting Pot

The variety of things which are able to serve as a basis for human vanity are almost unlimited. This holds true as well in the case of national vanity as in the case of the vanity of the individual. The most backward and least attractive of human races generally consider themselves superior to the rest of mankind, and too often on account of the peculiarities which, in the minds of others, are the most convincing proofs of their inferiority. Even among the more advanced races of mankind great pride is often manifested in attributes which, properly viewed, are rather a disgrace, or at least a detriment to the race.

Few things in the world are held in greater respect, by the great masses of men, than a long line of ancestry of unmixed blood. It seems to be generally felt that the purity of any race, that is, its freedom from interbreeding with outsiders, is a matter of credit. The lesson of history, however, shows that purity of blood in any nation is an evidence of, or perhaps rather cause of, degeneracy and decay, and that the great nations of history have been the cosmopolitan races, the races of mixed descent and hybrid ancestry. If it be thought that the Jewish people are an exception to this, let it be recalled that the Jews are a mixed people, originally of many conflicting tribes, and later continually mixed with other races.

In the pages of ancient history Rome stands out as the first great cosmopolitan race, or at least the first mixed race, in the creation of which we are able to watch the melting pot in full operation.

Three thousand years ago the Italian peninsula presented a veritable medley of races. In the south and along the eastern coast were found the cities and colonies founded by the two streams of immigration from the neighboring peninsula across the Adriatic—the Pelasgian and the Greek. In the center of Italy were to be found the various branches of the Oscan, Umbrian, and Sabellian races. Farther to the north was the country of the Latins. Etruscans and Gauls dwelt between Latium and the Alps. It was only at a much later time that Cisalpine Gaul began to be considered a part of Italy.

In its earliest days Rome, while possessing many features in common with the other Italian cities, presented at the same time many differences.

"The unfavorable character of the site renders it hard to understand how the city could so early attain its prominent position in Latium. The soil is unfavorable to the growth of fig or vine, and in addition to the want of good water-springs, swamps are caused by the frequent inundations of the Tiber. Moreover, it was confined in all land directions by powerful cities. But all these disadvantages were more than compensated by the unfettered command it had of both banks of the Tiber down to the mouth of the river. The fact that the clan of the Romilii was settled on the right bank from time immemorial, and that there lay the grove of the creative goddess Dea Dia, and the primitive seat of the Arval festival and Arval brotherhood, proves that the original territory of Rome comprehended Janiculum and Ostia, which afterwards fell into the hands of the Etruscans. Not only did this position on both banks of the Tiber place in Rome's hands all the traffic of Latium, but, as the Tiber was the natural barrier against northern invaders, Rome became the maritime frontier fortress of Latium. Again, the situation acted in two ways: Firstly, it brought Rome into commercial relations with the outer world, cemented her alliance with Cære, and taught her the importance of building bridges. Secondly, it caused the Roman canton to become united in the city itself far earlier than was the case with other Latin communities. And thus, though Latium was a strictly agricultural country, Rome was a center of commerce; and this commercial position stamped its peculiar mark on the Roman character, distinguishing them from the rest of the Latins and Italians, as the citizen is distinguished from the rustic. Not, indeed, that the Roman neglected his farm, or ceased to regard it as his home; but the unwholesome air of the Campagna tended to make him withdraw to the more healthful city hills; and from early times by the side of the Roman farmer arose a non-agricultural population, composed partly of foreigners and partly of natives, which tended to develop urban life." (Mommsen's History of Rome.)

It was, therefore, as a cosmopolitan, commercial city that the Romans first came into prominence. The early population was composed of mixed Etruscan and Latin stock, to which representatives of every Italian tribe and of the Greeks were soon added. By the beginning of the truly historical times the Romans had become merged into one race, representing the combined product of the races of Italy. It was this fact, very largely, which contributed to her success over the purer (ethnologically) races which surrounded her.

There were two great divisions of the melting-pot process at Rome; the first, that existing during the days of the kingdom and of the early republic; the second, that of the later republic and the empire. During the first period the process of intermixture, as has been said, was between the different races of Italy; within the second period Rome became the center of the civilized world, and her population included representatives of all the known races of mankind.

In no other despotism in the history of the world is there to be found so little racial or class distinction as in the Roman empire. Such distinctions were never able to exist at Rome during any portion of her history. The permanent privileged classes were those possessed of wealth, or of military power, and the descendants of both the conquerors and the conquered of one epoch would be found in the next indiscriminately divided among the exploiters and the exploited of the times.

The patricians, the descendants of the early settlers of Rome, were unable to maintain their special caste privileges, and were compelled to admit the plebeians to equal political rights and privileges. Class distinction remained in as marked a degree as ever at Rome, but the distinction was now between rich and poor, and the rich plebeian took equal rank with the rich patrician. Nor were the united Roman orders strong enough to preserve a monopoly of political privileges for Romans when the territory of Rome was extended over the Italian peninsula. It was found necessary to extend the franchise first to the residents of Latium and later to those of the other portions of Italy.

More remarkable still were the conditions which we find after the establishment of the empire and the extension of Roman territory around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. There were no royal house, no hereditary nobility, and few special privileges left for the inhabitants of Rome. The distinctions between rich and poor were never more galling; but high birth conferred no great advantage, and the lowest born could rise to the highest posts of honor. The ponderous weight of the empire ground out racial and caste distinctions and welded together all the heterogeneous mass. The provinces became Romanized, and the population of Rome became a mixture of all the races of the provinces. Of how little importance Rome was to the later empire is shown by the removal of the seat of the empire by Constantine to Constantinople, and the continued existence of an empire calling itself Roman for more than a thousand years after Rome had ceased to constitute a part of such empire.

CHAPTER IV

The Early Republic

The first epoch of the Roman republic is that extending from the overthrow of the kings, about 509 B.C., to the passage of the Licinian Laws in 367 B.C. The history of this century and a half at Rome is primarily the history of internal strife and class antagonisms. During these early days the progress made by the republic toward the expansion of its territories or the extension of its foreign influence was inappreciable.

Rome, during these days, was contending on a position of near equality with the neighboring cities of Latium and Etruria. Twice during this period the independence, perhaps the very existence, of the city was seriously threatened.

The war against the Etruscans, which followed immediately upon the expulsion of the last of the Tarquin kings, resulted so unfavorably to Rome that not only was her territory considerably reduced in size but even the subjugation of Rome itself might probably have been accomplished but for the forbearance of her victorious opponents.

Later, in 390 B.C., the capture and sack of Rome by the Gauls nearly proved the death-blow of the Roman republic. The internal dissensions of this period were mainly responsible for the lack of military success. Although it is true that the history of early Rome, unlike the histories of the various early Grecian states, records few instances where hatred or bitterness arising from political defeat induced a citizen to turn traitor to his country, and although the approach of a foreign foe was generally sufficient to bring about a truce in Roman political hostilities and the union of all factions in the city against the common national enemy, still it must be remembered that the amount of energy possessed by a community is limited. When the all-absorbing questions agitating a people are those relative to internal political contests, the energies of the ablest men of each generation are spent mainly in political contests instead of being exerted for the common welfare of the community.

The influence which the internal dissensions at Rome must have exerted on her military success is shown by a comparison of the military history of the Roman republic prior to 367 B.C. with the wonderful career of conquest which the Roman republic entered into immediately after the passage of the Licinian Act. This act, although producing a partial and temporary cessation of class contests at Rome, nevertheless sufficiently healed the internal wounds of the state to enable it to rapidly advance from a city-republic to a world power.

"The results of this great change were singularly happy and glorious. Two centuries of prosperity, harmony, and victory followed the reconciliation of the orders. Men who remembered Rome engaged in waging petty wars almost within sight of the Capitol lived to see her the mistress of Italy. While the disabilities of the plebeians continued, she was scarcely able to maintain her ground against the Volscians and Hernicans. When those disabilities were removed, she rapidly became more than a match for Carthage and Macedon." (Macaulay.)

The republic created at Rome in the course of the sixth century before Christ was distinctively an undemocratic republic. The benefits to the plebeians resulting from the overthrow of the kingdom were of slight, if any importance. The political power of the state remained almost entirely in the hands of the patricians, and the right to hold office was restricted to the members of this caste. At this time the members of the patrician order were perhaps not very much inferior in numbers to the plebeian order; but the discrepancy between the numbers of the two orders so rapidly increased that by the beginning of the fourth century before Christ the government of Rome had become practically that of an oligarchy.

In the latter days of the republic, in the contest which resulted in the overthrow of the republic, the basic reasons for the struggle were of an economic rather than a political character. In the period now under discussion the political element predominated in the class contests, although various elements of disagreement were to be found existing side by side.

"Three distinct movements agitated the community. The first proceeded from the body of full citizens, and was confined to it; its object was to limit and lessen the life-power of the single president or king; in all such movements at Rome, from the time of the Tarquins to that of the Gracchi, there was no attempt to assert the rights of the individual at the expense of the state, nor to limit the power of the state, but only that of its magistrates. The second was the demand for equality of political privileges, and was the cause of bitter struggles between the full burgesses and those, whether plebeians, freedmen, Latins, or Italians, who keenly resented their political inequality. The third movement was an equally prolific source of trouble in Roman history; it arose from the embittered relations between landholders and those who had either lost possession of their farms, or, as was the case with many small farmers, held possession at the mercy of the capitalist or landlord. These three movements must be clearly grasped, as upon them hinges the internal history of Rome. Although often intertwined and confused with one another, they were, nevertheless, essentially and fundamentally distinct. The natural outcome of the first was the abolition of the monarchy—a result which we find everywhere, alike in Greek and Italian states, and which seems to have been a certain evolution of the form of constitution peculiar to both peoples." (Mommsen.)

The overthrow of the monarchy was accomplished quickly and effectively. Unlike the case in most countries, the monarchy once overthrown, there was no attempt for nearly five centuries to reëstablish it. The word "king" was regarded with such hatred that the mere accusation made against any public leader that he was seeking to make himself king was generally sufficient to utterly destroy his influence, even when such charges were unfounded and unsupported by evidence.

The men who established the new form of government created after the expulsion of Tarquinius adopted the theory of political checks and balances which we afterwards find exerting such a strong influence upon the framers of our American Constitution. It was necessary that at least a part of the powers formerly exercised by the king should be intrusted to some official under the new régime. The greatest efforts, however, were made to render it impossible for any Roman official to use the governmental powers granted him in such a manner as to secure for himself the kingly office. The mere provision that the highest official in the government should be elected, rather than succeed to the office by right of descent, was rightly judged to be by itself an insufficient protection against the seizure of supreme power by some Roman tyrant.

A stronger safeguard was found in the division of the highest power in the state between two officials, who later came to be known as consuls. (The officers afterwards known as consuls were for a considerable period known as prætors; after the term consul came into use the name prætor at a still later period was given to the possessor of a new office created shortly after the passage of the Licinian Act.) The kingly power, or that part of it not absolutely abolished or given to the religious officials, was vested jointly in the two consuls, each possessing the full right to exercise all the functions of the office. Under this division of power each consul was considered a most effective check upon any ambition for a crown which might be possessed by the other.

Another safeguard, a safeguard which unfortunately has recently been too much disregarded in the United States, consisted in the short term of office prescribed by the new law, the consuls and other Roman officials being elected for a term of one year only.

While, as has been said, the consuls retained in general all the former powers of the king, still in some respects these powers were curtailed:

1. By the Valerian Law of 509 B.C. each person condemned by the consul to capital or corporal punishment was entitled to an appeal as a matter of right. It had previously been optional with the king whether to grant an appeal.

2. The consuls never possessed the various pecuniary rights of the kings, such as that of having the fields cultivated by the citizens.

3. The quæstors, who had previously been appointed or not by the king himself, as he saw fit, now became regular state officials.

4. The religious duties and powers of the king did not pass to the consul. The highest religious officer of the state, the pontifex maximus, was from this time on elected by the Pontifical College. The various colleges of priests (all of whom had formerly been appointed by the king) now filled up vacancies in their own numbers. Other religious officers were appointed by the pontifex maximus. On account of the close connection between the Roman religion and the Roman government, the pontifex maximus became a strong political power in the city. By the power of this officer and his associates to hold the auspices and regulate the calendar, they were enabled to prevent or permit the holding of the public assemblies, extend or decrease the term of office of public officials, and exercise a greater or less influence on almost every public question or proceeding.

5. The insignia and marks of dignity permitted to the consul were of a less imposing character than those previously granted to the king. While the king had been accompanied by twenty-four lictors, the consul was permitted only twelve, and the axes were taken away. While the king had worn the purple robe, the consul wore merely the ordinary Roman toga with a purple border. The royal chariot of the king did not descend to the consul, who was obliged to travel on foot within the limits of the city.

6. There had been no provision in the Roman law for any redress for a wrong done by the king, but the consul, upon the termination of his year of office, stepped down at once into the mass of the citizens and could at any time be punished for any malfeasance during his official life.

7. An indirect restriction of the powers of the consuls arose from the increased dignity and authority of the Senate. The change in this respect, however, was practical rather than theoretical. According to the strict form of the law the Senate still bore the same relation to the consuls that they had previously borne to the king. The Senate was still nothing more than an advisory body, and all vacancies among the senators were filled by appointments made by the consuls. The increased importance of the Senate arose out of the advantage which an official holding office for life always possesses over a superior officer holding office for only a brief term. In the present day it frequently happens that a political appointee at the head of a department or bureau, with the workings of which he is not familiar, finds himself compelled to rely almost implicitly upon some subordinate official whose working life has been spent in that office.

The short term of a consul and the life term of the members of the Senate thus tended to secure to this body an ever increasing influence. It was seldom that any serious conflict arose between the consul and the Senate. The consuls were men who were already senators or who expected to become such, while of the senators, many had held the office of consul and many more hoped to hold it in the future.

This curtailment of the kingly power and the division of the powers which remained between two consuls of equal rank, while it secured the protection of the citizens from the danger of a new monarchy, strongly hindered vigor and unity of action in the prosecution of any enterprise. There were times, therefore, during the succeeding centuries in the life of Rome, when to meet temporary emergencies a stronger and undivided rule was necessary. To meet this need a new official was created—the dictator—who might be nominated by one of the consuls upon the authorization of the Senate and who, during the term of his office, which could not exceed six months, possessed and exercised almost absolute authority at Rome, and superseded all the other officials in their duties.

The original intention was that such an official should be appointed only in cases of military necessity, but later this office was frequently created to aid the patricians in their contests with the plebeians. Only the patricians were eligible for any of the newly created offices. The Senate was composed exclusively of this order, and it has already been explained, in Chapter II, how, through the expedient of putting more Roman citizens in some centuries than in the others, the patricians were able to control the vote of the majority of the centuries in the comitia centuriata.

It is thus apparent that the mere overthrow of the kings at Rome had accomplished little for the ordinary Roman citizen. In fact, the rule of a single monarch is often more beneficial to the poorer classes of a community than the rule of a favored class. The establishment of a republic, however, had eliminated one political element, and cleared the stage for the contest between the patricians and plebeians.

That the economic condition of the poorer classes in Rome changed for the worse after the institution of the republic is certain. It was for the interest of the early Roman kings to favor and protect the small Roman farmers, both for military and economic reasons. While the permanent interests of the patricians would have been promoted by the encouragement of this class, their temporary selfish interests called for the destruction of the Roman middle class, primarily the middle agricultural class, and the division of all Roman inhabitants into a small aristocracy on the one hand and a large proletariat on the other.

The two forms of exactions which fell the heaviest upon the Roman poorer classes were the barbarous laws against debtors and the dishonest administration of the public leaders. The desperate condition of the debtors at Rome at this time was a result of a number of different causes, including the high rate of interest, the right of the creditor to sell the debtor into slavery if the debt were not paid, the policy of the patrician creditors to demand the last pound of flesh in all their transactions, and the conditions which existed in Rome at this time which compelled many small landowners, against their wish and without any fault of their own, to become borrowers of money.

One harsh feature of this condition was the fact that it was the military service, which as Roman citizens they were compelled to render to the state, that more often than any other cause compelled the plebeians to borrow money and thus ultimately drove them to their ruin. For example, a small Roman farmer, through absence from his home on military service for the state, might lose his crop for the year. To support himself and his family until the next harvest, and to supply the means for the planting of the next year's crop, he would be obliged to borrow money, which, under the exorbitant rates of interest, soon reached an amount out of proportion to the original loan. Perhaps a second campaign would deprive him of the means of returning the loan, and his lands would be taken from him and he himself sold into slavery. As a final blow, the unfortunate plebeian saw the lands which had been won for the state by armies composed of his fellow plebeians reserved entirely for the use of the favored patrician order.

No more pernicious and unfair system could have been evolved than that which governed the management of the Roman public lands in the very first years of the republic. The earlier policy, under the kings, had been to divide the public land of the state into small allotments and to distribute it among those citizens of the state who most needed it. With the republic this policy ceased, and the public lands were nominally retained in the public ownership, but in reality were let out on leases to the patricians and a few favored men among the plebeians.

In theory the state retained the right to take back the land at any time and to receive a rent from the lessee; but in practice both these rights were disregarded. The lands held in this manner by the patricians were soon considered by them as much their own property as those to which they held the legal title, and were devised and pledged by their owners in substantially the same manner as any other land. The collection of the rent was soon abandoned; and not only this, but the land being in theory state land, the lessee (who was supposed to, but did not, pay rent) was not liable to pay taxes on this land.

The final working out of this matter may be summed up by saying that the poorer class of the plebeians furnished most of the soldiers for the campaign, stood most of the expense, suffered nearly all the losses both of life and property, were excluded from any share in the land captured in the war, and as a culmination saw their taxes yearly increased on account of the fact that the patricians, who monopolized the public land, succeeded in dodging the payment of rent and in evading the payment of taxes.

It was these conditions which brought about the remarkable spectacle of what may be well designated the first recorded strike in history—a strike in the Roman army. In 495 B.C. the Roman citizens were summoned to take the field for another military campaign. They refused to obey. One of the consuls, Publius Servilius, however, induced them to make the campaign by suspending some of the laws bearing most heavily upon the poor and by releasing all persons in prison for debt. But hardly had the army returned from a victorious campaign than the other consul, Appius Claudius, as a reward for their victory began to enforce the debtor laws with extraordinary severity.

Once more, in the following year, the plebeians were induced to take the field, mainly on account of the popularity of the dictator appointed for the management of this campaign, Marius Valerius, and his promise that upon the termination of the campaign permanent reforms would be made in the law. Again the Roman army was victorious, and again the patricians broke faith with the plebeians and refused to carry out their promised reforms.

The next scene in this conflict is one almost without parallel, either in ancient or modern history. The plebeians, disgusted by the selfishness and perfidy of the patricians, determined to abandon Rome to the patrician order and to found a new city for themselves upon the "Sacred Mount," a hill situated between the Tiber and the Anio. The patricians, thunderstruck by this unexpected movement, and being far more in need of the plebeians than the plebeians were of them, immediately made sufficient concessions to the plebeians to induce them to return to Rome.

Some of the concessions made at this time related to temporary provisions for relief of debtors; but the great innovation was that which established the office of tribune. The character of the office of tribune is absolutely unique in the political history of the world. The tribunes, elected by the people in the comitia tributa, were plebeian officers who were at first without any constructive part in the carrying on of the Roman government and whose sole duty at the outset was to protect the members of the plebeian order from the oppression of the patrician officials. This protection was exercised mainly through the use of the veto power given to the tribunes. Under this power the tribunes had the right at any time to put a stop to any act either by any of the public assemblies, by the Senate, or by any of the magistrates. It was a power which, if exercised to its fullest extent, could put a stop to the very carrying on of the government.

It speaks much for the moderation of the Roman tribunes that through all the centuries of the Roman republic little serious inconvenience was experienced from the use of this power. With few and unimportant exceptions, it was exercised only in cases where the welfare of the plebeians as a class, or of some particular plebeian, demanded it.

The creation of the office of tribune was merely one more example of that system of checks and balances which played so prominent a part in the framing of the government after the expulsion of the king—a system of checks and balances so strikingly resembling that in our Federal Constitution. The tribunes were introduced as a protection for the plebeians and an additional restraint upon the magistrates.

While at first the power and duties of the tribunes were entirely of a negative nature, they gradually acquired an authority of a positive character. The tribunes generally presided over the comitia tributa and took the lead in securing the passage of laws by that body. In addition they acquired judicial powers, and in cases where a plebeian had been wronged they could summon any citizen, even the consuls, before them, and might impose even the death penalty. The persons of the tribunes were declared inviolable, and any one who attacked them was thought to be accursed. The number of the tribunes was at first two, but was later increased to five and still later to ten.

The second great victory won by the plebeians was in the passage of the Publilian Law in 471 B.C. This law was proposed by the tribune Valerius Publilius, and was brought about by the murder of the tribune Gnæus Genucius. The main object of this law was the protection of the plebeian assembly and the plebeian officers, but its exact details are unknown. It is believed by some that the comitia tributa really came into existence with this law, and that previously the plebeians had voted by curies. The law limited to plebeian freeholders the right to vote in a plebeian assembly, and excluded nearly all the freedmen and clients who were under the influence of the patricians as well as the patricians themselves. It is possible also that the increase in the number of the tribunes from two to five was made by this law. In 462 B.C. an unsuccessful attempt was made to abolish the office of tribune; in 457 B.C. came the increase from five tribunes to ten.

From 451 to 450 B.C. the regular system of government at Rome was interrupted by the election and rule of the decemvirs. The episode of these decemvirs has an important place in Roman history; but (as is the case with all events in Roman history in the fifth century before Christ) our knowledge of these men, of their work, and of their overthrow is very uncertain. The election of these officials was primarily brought about by the recognized necessity for a reform and codification of the Roman laws. If the duties of these men had been limited to the preparation of such code, its character and position would not have been unsimilar to that of numerous other bodies of men appointed for a similar purpose in many countries and in all ages. But the peculiarity about the work of the decemvirs lies in the fact that upon their appointment all the ordinary Roman offices were discontinued and the entire judicial and executive administration of the state passed into the hands of the decemvirs.

During their first year of office the decemvirs drew up ten tables of laws, so called because the laws were engraved upon tables of copper and stood up in the Forum on the rostra in front of the Senate house.

According to the legends (for the Roman historical records of this century are little more than such), it had originally been intended to intrust the decemvirs with power only for a single year, but their work being incomplete at the expiration of the first year, they were chosen for a second year. It is uncertain whether the decemvirs for the second year were exactly the same men as those for the first year. According to some reports some of the decemvirs of the second year were plebeians, while none of those originally elected belonged to that order.

During their second year of office the decemvirs prepared two more tables of laws, and these, with the ten tables prepared during the preceding year, constituted the famous "Law of the Twelve Tables," the first Roman code of which we have any knowledge. Only fragmentary extracts from these tables have come down to us, but these fragments furnish us with such an insight into early Roman laws, institutions, and customs that they are here inserted:

THE TWELVE TABLES

Table I

THE SUMMONS BEFORE THE MAGISTRATE

1. If the plaintiff summon a man to appear before the magistrate and he refuse to go, the plaintiff shall first call witnesses and arrest him.

2. If the defendant attempt evasion or flight, the plaintiff shall take him by force.

3. If the defendant be prevented by illness or old age, let him who summons him before the magistrate furnish a beast of burden, but he need not send a covered carriage for him unless he choose.

4. For a wealthy defendant only a wealthy man may go bail; any one who chooses may go bail for a poor citizen of the lowest class.

5. In case the contestants come to an agreement, the magistrate shall announce the fact.

6. In case they come to no agreement, they shall before noon enter the case in the comitium or forum.

7. To the party present in the afternoon the magistrate shall award the suit.

9. Sunset shall terminate the proceedings.

10. ... sureties and sub-sureties....

Table II

JUDICIAL PROCEDURE

2. A serious illness or a legal appointment with an alien ... should one of these occur to the judge, arbiter, or either party to the suit, the appointed trial must be postponed.

3. If the witnesses of either party fail to appear, that party shall go and serve a verbal notice at his door on three days.

Table III

EXECUTION FOLLOWING CONFESSION OR JUDGMENT

1. A debtor, either by confession or judgment, shall have thirty days' grace.

2. At the expiration of this period the plaintiff shall serve a formal summons upon the defendant, and bring him before the magistrate.

3. If the debt be not paid, or if no one become surety, the plaintiff shall lead him away, and bind him with shackles and fetters of not less than fifteen pounds' weight, and heavier at his discretion.

4. If the debtor wish, he may live at his own expense; if not, he in whose custody he may be shall furnish him a pound of meal a day, more at his discretion.

6. On the third market day the creditors, if there are several, shall divide the property. If one take more or less, no guilt shall attach to him.

Table IV

PATERNAL RIGHTS

3. If a father shall thrice sell his son, the son shall be free from the paternal authority.

Table V

INHERITANCE AND TUTELAGE

3. What has been appointed in regard to the property or tutelage shall be binding in law.

4. If a man die intestate, having no natural heirs, his property shall pass to the nearest agnate.

5. If there be no agnate, the gentiles shall succeed.

7. ... if one be hopelessly insane, his agnates and gentiles shall have authority over him and his property ... in case there be none to take charge....

8. ... from that estate ... into that estate.

Table VI

OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION

1. Whenever a party shall negotiate a nexum or transfer by mancipatio, according to the formal statement so let the law be.

5. Whoever in presence of the magistrates shall join issue by manuum consertio....

7. A beam built into a house or vine trellis shall not be removed.

9. When the vines have been pruned, until the grapes are removed....

Table VII

LAW CONCERNING REAL PROPERTY

5. If parties get into dispute about boundaries....

7. They shall pave the way. If they do not pave the way with stones a man may drive where he pleases.

8. If water from rain gutters cause damage....

Table VIII

ON TORTS

1. Whoever shall chant a magic spell....

2. If a man maim another, and does not compromise with him, there shall be retaliation in kind.

3. If with the fist or club a man break a bone of a freeman, the penalty shall be three hundred asses; if of a slave, one hundred and fifty asses.

4. If he does any injury to another, twenty-five asses; if he sing a satirical song let him be beaten.

5. ... if he shall have inflicted a loss ... he shall make it good.

6. Whoever shall blight the crops of another by incantation ... nor shalt thou win over to thyself another's grain....

12. If a thief be caught stealing by night and he be slain, the homicide shall be lawful.

13. If in the daytime the thief defend himself with a weapon, one may kill him.

15. ... with a leather girdle about his naked body, and a platter in his hand....

16. If a man contend at law about a theft not detected in the act....

21. If a patron cheat his client, he shall become infamous.

22. He who has been summoned as a witness or acts as libripens, and shall refuse to give his testimony, shall be accounted infamous, and shall be incapable of acting subsequently as witness.

24. If a weapon slip from a man's hand without his intention of hurling it....

Table IX

(No fragments of this table are extant.)

Table X

SACRED LAW

1. They shall not inter or burn a dead man within the city.

2. ... more than this a man shall not do ... ; a man shall not smooth the wood for the funeral pyre with an ax.

4. Women shall not lacerate their faces, nor indulge in immoderate wailing for the dead.

5. They shall not collect the bones of a dead man for a second interment.

7. Whoever wins a crown, either in person or by his slaves or animals, or has received it for valor....

8. ... he shall not add gold ... ; but gold used in joining the teeth.... This may be burned or buried with the dead without incurring any penalty.

Table XI

(No fragments of this table are extant.)

Table XII

SUPPLEMENTARY LAWS

2. If a slave has committed theft, or has done damage....

3. If either party shall have won a suit concerning property by foul means, at the discretion of the opponent ... the magistrate shall fix the damage at twice the profits arising from the interim possession.

The decemvirs were forcibly overthrown before the close of their second year in office. The stories as to the cause are not only conflicting but diametrically so. According to one historical theory, the rebellion against the decemvirs began among the plebeians on account of the oppression which they suffered from the hands of these men; while, on the other hand, it is believed by many historians that the decemvirs were overthrown by the patricians because they were giving too many concessions to the plebeians. Whatever the cause, the power of the decemvirs was taken from them and all the former Roman officials and assemblies were reëstablished, with the old powers and jurisdictions. The "Law of the Twelve Tables," which the decemvirs had drawn up, however, remained for centuries as the great basis of Roman law.

Five years after the deposition of the decemvirs the tribune Canuleius secured the passage by the comitia tributa of the Canuleian Law, which marked another milestone passed by the plebeians in their march toward equality before the law.

Two great concessions were given by this act, one in the field of private and the other in the field of public law. The law which had existed from the earliest days in Rome, and which had been incorporated in the "Law of the Twelve Tables," prohibiting intermarriage between plebeians and patricians, was abolished. It was also provided that any year the people, instead of electing consuls, might elect military tribunes, who should possess all the powers, although not all the dignities, of the consuls. Either patricians or plebeians could be elected to the office of military tribunes.

The election of military tribunes was authorized by law many years before any such officials were elected in Rome; but the fear that the consular power might sometime fall into the hands of a plebeian induced the patricians in 443 B.C. to secure the passage of a law for the creation of new officials who should possess some of the powers previously held by the consul and who must be chosen from the patrician order.

These new officials, called censors, were to be two in number and were to be elected every five years. At first these officials held office until the time arrived for the election of their successors, but later their term of office was limited to one year and a half, there thus being three and one half years out of every five-year period when this office was in abeyance.

The most important duty given to the censors at the outset seems to have been the authority of filling vacancies in the Senate as it became necessary to keep the number up to the required three hundred. Up to this time this power of appointing senators had been exercised by the consul. As time went on, however, the powers of this office rapidly increased until at length it became the highest post of honor at Rome, the men elected censors being almost invariably former consuls or military tribunes.

The arbitrary power of inquisition over all the public affairs of Rome and the private conduct of the Roman citizens was so astonishingly great that we wonder how it could have existed without constant and gross abuses. In the later days of the republic the censors had the right to make a so-called "censorial note" of all Roman citizens, who, without having gone to the point of violating the criminal law, or at least without having been convicted of a crime, had been guilty of dishonorable or immoral conduct. All persons thus named suffered severe civic penalties. If the person were a senator he lost his seat in the Senate; if a knight, he lost the peculiar privileges belonging to this rank. In every case the person lost his membership in the association of his tribe and was subject to increased taxation.

The exclusive right to serve as censors was one of the last exclusive privileges retained by the patricians, the plebeians not being made eligible to this office until 339 B.C.

Although Rome was in an almost constant state of warfare during the fifth century before Christ, the conflicts were neither on a large scale nor decisive in their results. The chief enemies of Rome were the neighboring Latin and Etruscan cities, with one or another of whom Rome was almost constantly engaged in hostilities. At the beginning of the fourth century before Christ Rome was attacked by a new and more terrible enemy from the north, who very nearly changed the whole course of the world's history by wiping the city of Rome out of existence before its career of greatness had begun.

This enemy was the Gauls, who captured and burned Rome in the year 390 B.C., but who failed to take the citadel of the city and finally withdrew, either being driven away or bribed to depart. Not only are the details of the capture of Rome by the Gauls very uncertain, but by destroying all the old Roman records and many of the Roman monuments in their sack of Rome, the Gauls are responsible for much of the uncertainty which exists as to the truth of the details of the history of Rome prior to their invasion. In fact, it is generally considered that the authentic history of Rome begins only after 390 B.C., the history of the Roman kingdom being little more than mythology; while what we know of the Roman republic prior to 390 B.C. consists of an inseparable mixture of true history and legendary tales.

After the departure of the Gauls the question arose whether Rome should be rebuilt on its old site or whether all the Romans should migrate in a body to Veii. It was only after a long discussion that it was finally decided to remain at Rome.

The rebuilding of Rome was immediately followed by another period of conflict between the patricians and plebeians. Two causes of discontent brought about the renewal of this contest. The first was the financial condition of the poorer classes, who had been rendered more desperate through the losses occasioned by the Gallic invasion; and second, the desire of the richer plebeians to share in the political honors reserved exclusively for the patricians.

In this contest the leaders of the plebeians were the tribunes Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius, who were, year after year, reëlected to this office by the people.

The so-called Licinian Laws, first introduced by these tribunes in 376 B.C., were adopted only after the most bitter political contest which up to this time had ever been fought in Rome. Time and again, the tribunes resorted to their veto power to put a stop to the carrying on of every function of the Roman government. These laws were finally passed in 367 B.C., their three great provisions being as follows:

1. That of all debts on which interest had been paid, the sum of the interest paid should be deducted from the principal, and the remainder paid off in three successive years.

2. That no citizen should hold more than five hundred jugera (nearly 320 acres) of the public land, or should feed on the public pastures more than one hundred head of larger cattle and five hundred of smaller, under penalty of a heavy fine.

3. That henceforth consuls, not consular tribunes, should always be elected, and that one of the two consuls must be a plebeian.

Although the Licinian Laws are generally held to have equalized the different orders at Rome, to have terminated forever the bitter jealousy between patricians and plebeians, to have put a stop for a time to class controversies of all kinds, and to have rendered possible the great career of foreign conquest upon which Rome soon entered, the fact remains that the benefit of these laws was experienced far more by the small class of wealthy plebeians than by the great mass of this order.

Henceforth, with very few exceptions, one consul was always a plebeian, Lucius Sextius being the first plebeian consul and Gaius Licinius the third; but the chance of being elected consul was in reality limited to a small class of plebeians and conferred little practical benefit upon the ordinary member of the order.

The laws for the relief of the poorer classes were not so fully enforced. In particular, the wealthy citizens holding large allotments of the public land found methods by which to evade the carrying out of the provisions of this new law, and we are surprised to find Licinius himself as one of the offenders in this respect.

It was in the period following the passage of the Licinian Laws that the greatest inequalities in wealth began to appear at Rome, and the numbers of free small landowners to decrease.

The history of the Licinian Laws and of the following period show conclusively how mere political equality is never sufficient to secure the welfare of the mass of the community, and that the power held by a class possessed of great wealth, but without special political privileges, is greater than that of a recognized nobility, and far more apt to be abused, on account of the absence of any feeling of class honor.

Two slight efforts were made by the patricians to counteract the political provisions of the Licinian Laws. For the first eleven years after the passage of the Licinian Laws one consul was a plebeian and one a patrician. In the thirteen years beginning with 355 B.C., two patricians were elected consuls in eight of the years; after this, violations of the law ceased, and one consul belonged to each order down to the year 172 B.C., when both consulships were open to the plebeians. The wealthy class of both orders had been so mingled by this time that thereafter consuls were elected indiscriminately from either order, although this election was almost invariably restricted to the members of the great families.

Immediately after the passage of the Licinian Laws the patricians secured the creation of a new office. The man holding this office was called prætor, and was given the judicial powers formerly belonging to the consuls. At a later period the number of prætors was increased to two, one of whom, known as the prætor urbanus, had jurisdiction over controversies between Roman citizens, and the other, the prætor peregrinus, who had jurisdiction over controversies between foreigners residing at Rome and between Romans and foreigners.

CHAPTER V

The Period of Foreign Conquest

The most glorious period of Roman history, from the military standpoint, followed closely upon the cessation of fierce national contests in the fourth century before Christ. The united efforts of patricians and plebeians, devoted to the task of foreign conquest, proved sufficient in a few generations to win for Rome her world empire.

"The fifth century is the most beautiful century of Rome. The plebeians had conquered the consulship and are succeeding in conquering their admission to other magistracies which the patricians wished to reserve; they free themselves from the servitude which, under the name of Nexus, weighed on the debtors. They arrive at political equality and individual independence; at the same time the old aristocracy still dominates in the Senate and maintains there the inflexibility of its resolves and the persistence of its designs. It was thanks to this interior condition that the Roman people was able to survive the strongest tests from without over which it had triumphed, and to make that progress which cost it most dear. We see the peoples fight, one by one, and often all together; the Latin people, the Etruscans, the Goths, the Samnites, the other Sabellic peoples of the Apennines; and the end is always victory. The beginnings of this history were somber. Rome was afflicted by one of those pestilences which one finds in all the epochs of the history of this unsanitary city. Thence was the origin of those scenic pieces imported by the Etruscans and giving origin to comedy—a means devised to appease the gods; so that Roman comedy had an origin religious and dismal. The fifth century is for Rome the age of great devotions and of grand sacrifices." (J. J. Ampère in L'empire romaine à Rome.)

A full description of the various military campaigns of Rome would tend to obscure rather than to illumine the political and economic history of the city. An enumeration of the foreign conquests of Rome during this period, however, is necessary to indicate the rapid increase in the territorial possessions of Rome, with their inevitable reaction upon the domestic conditions of the republic.

The first wars of Rome after the passage of the Licinian Laws were renewed contests with her neighboring enemies. In 361 B.C. Rome was again threatened by a new invasion of the Gauls. The following year the Roman records mention a victory over the Hernicans by one Roman consul, and over the Gauls, and the Latins of Tibur, by the other. This alliance of the Gauls with a portion of the Latins so alarmed the majority of the Latin cities that a new league between the Romans and Latins was formed in 358 B.C. The Gauls soon after retired from the neighborhood of Latium, and their allies, Tibur and Privernum, were compelled to enter the new Latin League.

A war waged against Rome by the Etruscan city of Tarquinii and its allies so seriously threatened Rome that the Roman political factions forgot their differences so far as to agree to the appointment (for the first time in the history of the city) of a plebeian, in the person of C. Marcius Rutilus, to the office of dictator. The old jealousy of the patricians, however, was soon manifested again in the opposition of the Senate to the granting of a triumph to this plebeian for the great military victory which he soon won.

In 350 B.C. a third invasion of the Gauls was repulsed by the Romans.

The next great contest in which Rome was engaged was that with the Samnites. This race was both the most worthy and the most bitter of the enemies of Rome within Italy, and the long warfare between Rome and the Samnites was terminated only by the practical extermination of the latter race. The First Samnite War extended from 343 to 341 B.C. and was indecisive in its results, the Samnites at its close agreeing to give a year's pay and three months' provisions to the Roman army, and being permitted to make war on the Sidicini.

The close of the First Samnite War was followed closely by the Latin War (340-338 B.C.). This war was brought about by the jealousy felt by the other Latin towns toward Rome. Rome had been abusing her position as the capital of the Latin League, and desired to acquire an acknowledged supremacy over Latium. The war was an effort on the part of the other Latin cities to restrain the too rapidly increasing power of Rome and to reëstablish the balance of power in Latium. In this war was seen the extraordinary spectacle of the Samnites appearing as allies of Rome. The Hernicans also aided the Romans, and the Sidicini and Campanians aided the Latins. The war resulted in the complete overthrow of the Latins; but the Romans showed great generosity and good judgment in their treatment of the conquered cities after the war, and thus did much toward binding the Latins to Rome for the future.

The main provisions of the peace agreements were as follows: Roman citizenships, in different degrees, were conferred upon the inhabitants of the various Latin towns, who were, however, forbidden to form any leagues among themselves or to hold diets; intermarriage and commerce between the different Latin towns were prohibited; the municipium such as the Latins had previously possessed was given to the citizens of Capua, Cumæ, Formiæ, Fundi, and Suessula; the Latin contingents in the Roman army were henceforth to be permitted to serve apart from the legions under their own officers; and the Latin public land, two thirds of that of Privernum, and the lands in the Falernian district of Campania were taken by Rome, as were also the lands of the principal families of Velitræ, who were compelled to emigrate beyond the Tiber.

Ten years of peace followed, and then came the second and greatest of the Samnite wars (327-304 B.C.). The Samnites were aided during part of the war by the Etruscans and the Hernicans, but at the end the Samnites were compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome and give up their independence. The Hernicans were completely overthrown in 307 B.C., and were united to Rome on conditions very similar to those possessed by the Latins.

In the Third Samnite War (298-290 B.C.) the Romans were again victorious, although a league of Samnites, Etruscans, Gauls, and Umbrians was formed against them. The exact terms of the treaty of peace at the conclusion of this war are not recorded, but undoubtedly riveted Roman control still more strongly upon Samnium.

It was the final result of the Roman-Samnite wars which finally determined the question of the overlordship of Italy. Of all the numerous races of Italy, two and only two possessed the stamina which rendered them possible unifiers of the whole peninsula. Rome's defeat of Samnium left her without a rival in Italy and ready for contests with her later and greater rivals. The close of the Third Samnite War, however, did not end the resistance of the Samnites to Roman rule. Even down to the time of the contests of Marius and Sulla we find this race grasping every opportunity to strike a blow against Roman dominion.

In 284 B.C. the Tarentines succeeded in bringing about a union of the Samnites, Lucanians, Umbrians, Bruttians, Etruscans, and Gauls against Rome. This war was a series of victories for the Romans. By the year 282 B.C. all of the Roman enemies were subdued except the Etruscans, with whom the war continued until 280 B.C. In this last-named year the Romans, alarmed by the danger of war with Pyrrhus, concluded a peace with the Etruscans on such terms as changed these people from bitterest enemies into most faithful allies.

The time had now arrived when Rome was called upon for the first time to cross arms with enemies from beyond the Italian peninsula. The first of these contests with a foreign power was fought out entirely within the confines of Italy.

The year 280 B.C. saw the beginning of the contest between Rome and Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who had been summoned to Italy as an ally of the Greek city of Tarentum. At the outset the Romans suffered two great defeats, at Heraclea and on the plain of Apulian Asculum, largely through their inability to meet the attacks of the phalanxes and of the war elephants. In the end, however, Pyrrhus, although aided by all the enemies of Rome in southern and central Italy, ended his campaign in failure and returned to Epirus in 275 B.C., his dream of a great western empire forever shattered.

In the ten years following the departure of Pyrrhus the subjugation of all Italy was completed, followed by a reorganization of the government of the Roman colonies and subject cities.

The second foreign enemy of Rome was Carthage, and the most dramatic pages in the whole history of Roman conquest are those which relate the story of the contest between these two titanic rivals for world supremacy. The immediate cause of the First Punic War arose over the possession of Messana, a city in Sicily separated from Italy by only a narrow strait; but war between Rome and Carthage was inevitable; and if Messana had not become the bone of contention, another would have been found. The First Punic War lasted from 264 to 241 B.C. and resulted in victory for Rome. By the terms of peace Carthage gave up Sicily and all the small islands between Sicily and Italy, and paid a heavy war indemnity to Rome. Shortly after the close of the war the Romans, by threats, compelled the Carthaginians to surrender also the islands of Sardinia and Corsica.

In 230 B.C. the Romans were engaged in war with the Illyrian pirates; and from 226 to 221 B.C. with the Insubrian Gauls, both of which conflicts resulted in easy victories for the Roman arms.

In the meantime Hamilcar, his son Hannibal, and his son-in-law Hasdrubal had been busy in Spain, reducing it under Carthaginian rule and preparing it to be used as a base of operation from which an invasion of Italy might be attempted whenever a favorable opportunity should present itself.

In 227 B.C. the Romans, becoming alarmed at the spread of the Carthaginian empire in Spain, insisted on a treaty by which the river Ebro was fixed as the northern boundary beyond which the control of Carthage should never extend. In 219 B.C. Hannibal (whose father and brother-in-law had by this time both fallen in the war) attacked the city of Saguntum, which, though south of the Ebro, was an ally of Rome. No heed being taken of the Roman remonstrances, war was again declared.

The Second Punic War lasted from 218 to 202 B.C. The early years of this war saw a long series of Carthaginian victories, and their great general, Hannibal, has ever since ranked as one of the greatest military geniuses in history. This war, however, has been well described as that of a man against a nation; and in the end the nation conquered. The final battle was that of Zama, fought in Africa in 202 B.C.

By the terms of the treaty of peace made at the close of this war Carthage surrendered to Rome all her territorial possessions outside of Africa, all her elephants, and all her war ships except three triremes, and also bound herself to pay a heavy annual tribute for fifty years. In addition, Carthage was prohibited from making war, under any circumstances, outside of Africa, nor within Africa except with the consent of Rome; and was compelled to return to the ally of the Romans, Masinissa, king of Numidia, all the territory and property which had been taken from him or his predecessors by Carthage. In many respects, however, the treaty was favorable to Carthage, who was permitted to keep her African territory practically intact, who was also permitted to keep her independence, and was not required to receive any Roman garrison.

The Second Punic War was the decisive contest between Rome and Carthage, the First Punic War being indecisive and the third being merely the destruction of an already conquered people. This Second Punic War, however, was something more than the decisive contest between Rome and Carthage; it was the decisive contest between two continents, two races, two systems of institutions. The battle of Metaurus has justly been classed as one of the decisive battles of the world. The capture of Rome by Hannibal could not have failed to have entirely altered the whole future course of history. If Hannibal had been able to carry back to Carthage the spoils of a conquered Rome he would also have carried with them to Africa the scepter of world empire. He would have wrested race supremacy and the leading place in civilization from the Aryan for the Hamitic races. For many centuries, at least, the center of power and civilization would have been upon the southern instead of the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and it is at least doubtful whether, even to-day, the northern races could have completely eradicated the effects of such an event.

In spite of the earlier triumphs of Persia and Greece, it was not until the Roman victory over the Carthaginians that the position of the Aryan races became definitely assured.

Mommsen writes on the results of the Second Punic War as follows:

"It remains for us to sum up the results of this terrible war, which for seventeen years had devastated the lands and islands from the Hellespont to the Pillars of Hercules. Rome was henceforth compelled by the force of circumstances to assume a position at which she had not directly aimed, and to exercise sovereignty over all the lands of the Mediterranean. Outside Italy there arose the two new provinces in Spain, where the natives lived in a state of perpetual insurrection; the kingdom of Syracuse was now included in the Roman province of Sicily; a Roman instead of a Carthaginian protectorate was now established over the most important Numidian chiefs; Carthage was changed from a powerful commercial state into a defenseless mercantile town. Thus all the western Mediterranean passed under the supremacy of Rome. In Italy itself, the destruction of the Celts became a mere question of time: the ruling Latin people had been exalted by the struggle to a position of still greater eminence over the heads of the non-Latin or Latinized Italians such as the Etruscans and Sabellians in lower Italy. A terrible punishment was inflicted on the allies of Hannibal. Capua was reduced from the position of second city to that of first village in Italy; the whole soil, with a few exceptions, was declared to be public domain-land, and was leased out to small occupiers. The same fate befell the Picentes on the Silarus. The Bruttians became in a manner bondsmen to the Romans and were forbidden to carry arms. All the Greek cities which had supported Hannibal were treated with great severity; and in the case of a number of Apulian, Lucanian, and Samnite communities a loss of territory was inflicted, and new colonies were planted. Throughout Italy the non-Latin allies were made to feel their utter subjection to Rome, and the comedies of the period testify to the scorn of the victorious Romans.

"It seems probable that not less than three hundred thousand Italians perished in this war, the brunt of which loss fell chiefly on Rome. After the battle of Cannæ it was found necessary to fill up the hideous gap in the Senate by an extraordinary nomination of 177 senators; the ordinary burgesses suffered hardly less severely. Further, the terrible strain on the resources of the state had shaken the national economy to its very foundations. Four hundred flourishing townships had been utterly ruined. The blows inflicted on the simple morality of the citizens and farmers by a camp life worked no less mischief. Gangs of robbers and desperadoes plundered Italy in dangerous numbers. Home agriculture saw its existence endangered by the proof, first given in war, that the Roman people could be supported by foreign grain from Sicily and Egypt. Still, at the close and happy issue of so terrible a struggle, Rome might justly point with pride to the past and with confidence to the future. In spite of many errors she had survived all danger, and the only question now was whether she would have the wisdom to make right use of her victory, to bind still more closely to herself the Latin people, to gradually Latinize all her Italian subjects, and to rule her foreign dependents as subjects, not as slaves—whether she would reform her constitution and infuse new vigor into the unsound and fast-decaying portion of her state."

Up to the close of the third century before Christ the wars of Rome had been mainly forced upon her by the aggressions of others, or had grown out of disputes which had arisen in the natural course of events; but after the battle of Zama, Rome entered deliberately upon a career of foreign conquest.

In 200 B.C. a Roman army invaded Macedon, and Philip, the king of this country, was completely defeated at the battle of Cynoscephalæ in 197 B.C., but the Romans consented to easy terms of peace at this time on account of the expectation of a war with Syria. The first war between Rome and Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, began in 191 B.C. and ended in 187 B.C. By the terms of peace Antiochus gave up all his claims in Europe, and in Asia west of the Taurus.

The Second Macedonian War began in 172 B.C. and was concluded by the great Roman victory at Pydna in 168 B.C. Macedon was at first divided into four republics, between which the rights of connubium and commercium were prohibited, but soon sank into the condition of a Roman province. Roman influence and interference were also rapidly increasing in Greece during this period, although no formal annexation of territory was made at this time.

The Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.), forced by Rome upon an almost helpless antagonist, resulted in the complete overthrow of the greatest of Rome's rivals. Carthage was completely destroyed, and Africa became a Roman province.

The Achæan War (147-146 B.C.) resulted in the practical subjection of all Greece to Rome; and between the years 143 and 133 B.C. the conquest of Spain was completed.

The interest in Roman history during the period from 367 to 133 B.C. is mainly centered in the military achievements of the republic, but certain events in the political history of Rome during this period must be noted before passing to a consideration of the violent political conflicts which arose over the proposed reforms of the Gracchi.

By the Lex Horatia and the Lex Publilia (339 B.C.) it was provided that the plebiscita (that is, the decrees of the comitia tributa) should be binding as laws; that one of the censors must be a plebeian; and that the subsequent ratification by the Senate should not be necessary to render valid the laws passed by the comitia centuriata.

In 326 B.C. the Lex Pœtelia Papiria prohibited debtors from assigning themselves as security for debts. This did not interfere with the selling of a debtor into slavery by means of the legis actio per manus injectionem; it merely prohibited the debtor from using himself as a special pledge to secure the payment of the debt.

In 304 B.C. the plebeians secured the publication of a manual containing full information as to the proper steps in the proceedings in the various legis actiones, and also as to the dies fasti. In the early days at Rome all legal knowledge had belonged to the patricians, who had always strenuously resisted any movement toward making such information open to all. An exclusive knowledge of the law is of great advantage to any special class in any community, and one eagerly sought under different disguises in many countries. The present attempt to monopolize legal education in the United States, and to attack all movements which might tend to a general diffusion of legal knowledge among the mass of the community, is merely another manifestation of the same spirit which animated the Roman patricians in their long contests to keep all legal knowledge away from the plebeians. While the study of all professions which have no political signification, such as that of medicine, may safely be regulated by the government, and while the government may without injustice impose proper qualifications upon those who desire to practice law as their profession, any attempt of the government to restrict the teaching or study of the law, or to impose upon those desiring to take bar examinations restrictions intended merely to keep out of the profession those not fortunate enough to belong to the wealthy classes, can be intended only as an attack on democratic principles and as an attempt to create a monopoly of legal learning for improper purposes.

In 286 B.C. was passed the Hortensian Law, which brought about the complete political equality of plebeians and patricians, whatever slight distinctions still remained being removed by this law.

CHAPTER VI

The Tribes, the Colonies, and the Provinces

Complete equality of political and civil rights has never existed, in any republic, among those subject to the laws; and throughout the whole history of the Roman republic the most striking discriminations existed between different strata in the political and economic organizations.

The contests arising from caste distinctions among the Romans themselves are discussed in other chapters of this volume; it is here proposed to treat of the distinctions existing between Roman citizens, allies, and subjects and to describe briefly the status of each class.

Just as in the days of the Roman kingdom the test of Roman citizenship was membership in one of the curiæ, so in the time of the republic the test became membership in one of the tribes.

In the early days of the republic the number of tribes was twenty-one. Four new tribes were established in 387 B.C. in the conquered territories of Veii, Capena, and Falerii. Other tribes were from time to time created, until by the time of the close of the war with Pyrrhus the total number of tribes was thirty-three. The twelve new tribes occupied a district beyond the Tiber extending a little farther than Veii, a portion of the Sabine and Aequian territory beyond the Anio, part of Latium, part of the Volscian territory, and the coast lands as far as the Liris. The last addition to the number of tribes at Rome took place in 235 B.C., when the number was increased to thirty-five.

The struggles in Rome for the extension of political rights and privileges were always of a concrete, never of an abstract character. We find none of the philosophy of Montesquieu among the Romans; no discussion of natural rights, no effort for the securing of political equality in the abstract. The Roman contests for liberty were always of a strictly practical and, it might perhaps be added, of a strictly selfish character. We find a series of conflicts, in each of which a certain class of the citizens (or subjects) of Rome fought for the right to be enrolled among those possessed of Roman political rights.

At first the contests were all between the actual inhabitants of Rome itself. The political controversies, however, did not terminate upon the admission of the plebeians to full political rights. After the plebeians had won their contests there came the Latins, and after the Latins the Italians.

The relation between early Rome and the other cities of Latium was of the closest character. From the remotest times, long before the foundation of Rome, a league of Latin cities was in existence. At the head of this league stood Alba Longa (the long white city). Rome in an early period in her history overthrew Alba Longa and succeeded to her place at the head of the confederacy. While, however, the primary of Alba Longa had never extended beyond giving to that city the honorary presidency of the league, making it the religious center of Latium, the leadership of Rome was of a real and substantial character. By the terms of agreement between the members of the new Latin League, Rome was tacitly ranked as the equal of the other cities combined, it being agreed that all territory won by the league in war should be divided, one half to Rome and one half among the other cities. The rights of intermarriage and of trade existed between all the cities of the league.

In 384 B.C. Rome was strong enough to compel the league to agree to the closing of its membership. At that time there were in the league thirty towns with full Latin rights and seventeen towns without the right of voting. Towns which in the future should become connected with the league were to have the rights of intermarriage and of trade only with Rome.

The Latin League came to an end in 338 B.C. The extension of the rights of Roman citizenship, either complete or qualified, to other races in Italy is referred to in other chapters of this book. The history of this subject is thus summarized by Mommsen:

"It remains for us to consider the political effect of the mighty changes consequent upon the establishment of Roman supremacy in Italy. We do not know with exactness what privileges Rome reserved for herself as sovereign state. It is certain that she alone could make war, conclude treaties, and coin money; and that, further, any war or treaty resolved upon by the Roman people was legally binding on all Italian communities, and that the silver money of Rome was current everywhere in Italy.

"The relations of the Italians to Rome cannot in all cases be precisely defined, but the main features are as follows. In the first place, the full Roman franchise was extended as far as was compatible with the preservation of the urban character of the Roman community. Those who received this franchise may be divided into three classes. First, all the occupants of the various allotments of state lands, now embracing a considerable portion of Etruria and Campania, were included. Second, all the communities which, after the method first adopted in the case of Tusculum, were incorporated and completely merged in the Roman state.... Finally, full Roman citizenship was possessed by the maritime or burgess colonies which had been instituted for the protection of the coast....

"Thus the title of Roman citizen in its fullest sense was possessed by men dwelling as far north as Lake Sabatinus, as far east as the Apennines, and as far south as Formiæ. But within those limits isolated communities such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and Norba, were without the Roman franchise; while beyond them other communities, such as Sena, possessed it.

"In the next place, we must distinguish the various grades of subjection which marked all the communities not honored with the full Roman franchise. As in the case of the recipients of full citizenship, so here we may make a threefold division. To the first division belong the Latin towns: these retained their Latin rights; that is, they were self-governing and stood on an equal footing with Roman citizens as regards the right of trading and inheritance. But it is important to observe that the Latins of the later times of the republic were no longer for the most part members of the old Latin towns, which had participated in the Alban festival, but were colonists planted in Latium by Rome, who honored Rome as their capital and parent city, and formed the main supports of Roman rule in Latium. Indeed, the old Latin communities, with the exception of Tibur and Præneste, had sunk into insignificance. It was but natural that the Latin colonies, issuing as they did from the burgess-body of Rome, should not rest content with mere Latin rights, but should aim at the full rights of Roman citizens. Rome, on the other hand, now that Italy was subjugated, no longer felt her former need of these colonies; nor did she deem it prudent to extend the full franchise with the same freedom as she hitherto had done....

"To the second division belong those towns whose inhabitants were passive citizens of Rome (cives sine suffragio). They were liable to service in the Roman legions and to taxation, and were included in the Roman census. A deputy or prefect appointed annually by the Roman prætor administered justice according to laws which were subjected to Roman revision.

"In the third and last division we may include all allied communities which were not Latin states; the relation of these towns to Rome was defined by separate treaties, and therefore varied in accordance with the terms imposed by such agreements....

"It had taken Rome 120 years to complete the union of the Italian peninsula, broken up as it was by mountain ranges and naturally favoring the formation and preservation of various isolated states. But union it was, rather than a subjugation, and each nation was left to the practical management of its own affairs. Content with self-government, the various communities, for the most part, easily bore the yoke of Roman supremacy. Eventually all the municipal towns received the full Roman franchise (90 B.C.), and thus established the municipal principle of government which endures to the present day."

The rights of Roman citizenship were never generally given outside of the Italian peninsula, although such rights were granted to a few favored individuals in all portions of the Roman world. The possession of these rights was the greatest privilege which could be acquired by any subject of Rome. Even when the strictly political rights of such citizen disappeared under the empire, the personal distinction and protection connected with this citizenship remained. As striking an evidence of the dignity and privileges of a Roman citizen as could be desired is found in the Bible in the twenty-second chapter of Acts:

"The chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle, and bade that he should be examined by scourging; that he might know wherefore they cried so against him.

"And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?

"When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman.

"Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea.

"And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born.

"Then straightway they departed from him which should have examined him: and the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him."

At the close of the Second Punic War Rome was in possession of five provinces—Sicily, Sardinia, Hither Spain, Farther Spain, and the Gallic coast of Umbria. This latter province soon became an integral part of Italy, but the number of Roman provinces was kept at five by the creation of the province of Cisalpine Gaul. From this time on the number of Roman provinces rapidly increased. The existence of the provinces perpetuated the existence of various classes of political rights.

We will close this account with a description by Gibbon of the relations between Rome and the provinces as they existed during the closing years of the republic and the early days of the empire:

"Till the privileges of Romans had been progressively extended to all the inhabitants of the empire, an important distinction was preserved between Italy and the provinces. The former was esteemed the centre of public unity, and the firm basis of the constitution. Italy claimed the birth, or at least the residence, of the emperors and the senate. The estates of the Italians were exempt from taxes, their persons from the arbitrary jurisdiction of governors. Their municipal corporations, formed after the perfect model of the capital, were intrusted, under the immediate eye of the supreme power, with the execution of the laws. From the foot of the Alps to the extremity of Calabria, all the natives of Italy were born citizens of Rome. Their partial distinctions were obliterated, and they insensibly coalesced into one great nation, united by language, manners, and civil institutions, and equal to the weight of a powerful empire. The republic gloried in her generous policy, and was frequently rewarded by the merit and services of her adopted sons. Had she always confined the distinction of Romans to the ancient families within the walls of the city, that immortal name would have been deprived of some of its noblest ornaments. Virgil was a native of Mantua; Horace was inclined to doubt whether he should call himself an Apulian or a Lucanian; it was in Padua that an historian was found worthy to record the majestic series of Roman victories. The patriot family of the Catos emerged from Tusculum; and the little town of Arpinum claimed the double honor of producing Marius and Cicero, the former of whom deserved, after Romulus and Camillus, to be styled the Third Founder of Rome; and the latter, after saving his country from the designs of Catiline, enabled her to contend with Athens for the palm of eloquence.

"The provinces of the empire (as they have been described in the preceding chapter) were destitute of any public force, or constitutional freedom. In Etruria, in Greece, and in Gaul, it was the first care of the senate to dissolve those dangerous confederacies, which taught mankind that, as the Roman arms prevailed by division, they might be resisted by union. Those princes whom the ostentation of gratitude or generosity permitted for a while to hold a precarious sceptre were dismissed from their thrones as soon as they had performed their appointed task of fashioning to the yoke the vanquished nations. The free states and cities which had embraced the cause of Rome were rewarded with a nominal alliance, and insensibly sunk into real servitude. The public authority was everywhere exercised by the ministers of the senate and of the emperors, and that authority was absolute and without control. But the same salutary maxims of government, which had secured the peace and obedience of Italy, were extended to the most distant conquests. A nation of Romans was gradually formed in the provinces, by the double expedient of introducing colonies, and of admitting the most faithful and deserving of the provincials to the freedom of Rome."

CHAPTER VII

The Crisis—The Attempted Reforms of the Gracchi

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

"Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

—Lowell's The Present Crisis.

The critical days of any contest are seldom those of its final culmination. The end has generally been long foreshadowed. The time at which the last stand for the Roman liberties was made was not during the civil wars of the last century before Christ, but at the time of the attempted reforms of the previous century. The years in which the great crisis of the Roman republic was reached were those from 134 to 121 B.C., the years marked by the activities of the Gracchi.

The story of the Gracchi constitutes one of the strangest, grandest, and saddest stories in the whole course of history. It is a double story of sacrifice, suffering, and untiring labor; of temporary success, of ultimate death and failure—but a failure which stands forth more glorious in the pages of history than the greatest successes of others. It is the story of two brothers, possessed of wealth and of high rank and connections, in the richest and most powerful country of the world—men to whom was open either an easy path along the old established road to the highest honors of the Roman state or the life of luxurious ease so eagerly embraced by the majority of the rich young Romans of that day. Casting aside both these choices, and recognizing the dangers of their native state, these brothers sacrificed all in an attempt to restore to Rome those conditions which in the past had built up her greatness, and to secure a redress of those conditions which had made the status of the great mass of the citizens of the "Mistress of the World" hardly superior to that of the very serfs. It is a story of the most aggravated selfishness and relentless hatred on the part of those favored few whose special and illegal interests were threatened by the attacks of the young reformers. It is also, unfortunately, to too great an extent a story of ingratitude and cowardice on the part of those for whose interest Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus sacrificed themselves in vain.

The Gracchi were fortunate in having as father one of those Romans who still retained the Roman virtues of an earlier age,—patriotism, bravery, and honor. Not only had the administration of the elder Gracchus of the offices of consul and censor at Rome been free from corruption, but his administration of the governorship of the Province of Ebro had been of great service to his native country and had, furthermore, endeared his memory to the Spaniards themselves.

The mother of the Gracchi was Cornelia, daughter of Africanus Scipio, the greatest Roman hero of the previous generation. Of the twelve sons and one daughter born of this union, only the daughter and two sons lived to maturity. The two surviving sons were the first born, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, born about 166 B.C., and his brother Gaius, nine years younger.

Few young Romans were afforded the opportunity of such close relations and intercourse with the leading men of Rome as was Tiberius Gracchus in his early years. Even in boyhood his mind seems to have been of a serious cast, more interested in study and speculation than in the pleasures customary in youth.

In his father's house, which was to a large extent a common meeting place for all that was best in Roman society, he frequently heard the leading men of the city lament the disappearance from the country districts of the free citizens, and the attendant evils which seemed to be hovering over the Roman state. But what to his elders appeared lamentable principally on account of its effect upon the recruiting of the Roman legions, and consequently upon the control of Rome over her provinces and her foreign influence, was to young Tiberius an evil of a very different and more serious character. To him alone of this group did this condition appear as a great moral and social wrong—a wrong, moreover, whose effect would not be limited to the character of the soldiers in the Roman army, but which, if not remedied, would, like a cancer, eat out the very life of the Roman republic. Another difference was that those evils which brought forth from others languid, pessimistic, speculative reflections roused in Tiberius Gracchus the determination to action.

Hardly was the boyhood of Tiberius over when his public life began.

"Scarcely had Tiberius assumed the garb of manhood when he was elected into the college of augurs. At the banquet given to celebrate his installation, App. Claudius, the chief of the senate, offered him his daughter's hand in marriage. When the proud senator returned home, he told his wife that he had that day betrothed their daughter. 'Ah,' she cried, 'she is too young; it had been well to wait a while—unless, indeed, young Gracchus is the man.' Soon after his marriage he accompanied Scipio to Carthage, where he was the first to scale the walls.

"The personal importance of Gracchus was strengthened by the marriage of Scipio with his only sister. But this marriage proved unhappy. Sempronia had no charms of person, and her temper was not good; Scipio's austere manners were little pleasing to a bride; nor were children born to form a bond of union between them." (Liddell's History of Rome.)

A brief taste of military life was added to the experience and training of Tiberius Gracchus when he served, while a mere youth, in the capture of Carthage.

His thirtieth year was spent as a quæstor in Spain. While traveling to and from this province he was forcibly impressed by the industrial and economic conditions in Etruria. Throughout this rich and extensive territory the small freeholder seemed to have entirely disappeared, and the land was now occupied by large estates cultivated by slaves. Tiberius returned to Rome just as the so-called "slave war" in Sicily broke out. This war not only called attention to the vast number and the depths of wretchedness of the slaves already in Italy and the adjoining island, but it also served to emphasize the perilous condition of a state whose foundation rested upon such a smoldering volcano.

In this servile war the slaves throughout large portions of the island of Sicily arose in a body, murdered those of their masters who were not fortunate enough to escape, and selected a Syrian juggler as their king. A Greek slave, named Achæus, proved not only a skillful commander in the field but also a capable organizer, and he soon mustered a large army containing both slaves and free laborers. Another leader, Cleon, a Sicilian slave, captured the important city of Agrigentum. The united forces defeated the Roman prætor Lucius Hypsæus, and temporarily drove the Romans out of Sicily.

It was not until after three years of continued warfare, after the Romans had suffered numerous defeats and great armies had been sent under three different Roman consuls, that the rebellion in Sicily was finally put down.

Upon his return from Spain, and at the breaking out of the servile war, Tiberius Gracchus had not hesitated to freely express his feelings as to the cause of the existing evils, and as to the necessary remedies for their amelioration, and it was not long before that part of the Roman people who were dissatisfied with existing conditions turned to Gracchus as the only logical leader for the reform movement. As his views on the cause of the evils and the general character of the remedies which he proposed had been shown to the people by his speeches, Tiberius was elected tribune in 134 B.C., taking office on December 10 of that year.

The reforms proposed by Tiberius Gracchus in the bill presented before the comitia tributa, almost immediately after his installation as tribune, were entirely of an economic character. In the field of mere political rights nothing more remained to be asked by the lowest of the Roman citizens; their pitiable condition was the result of the existing agrarian situation. The agrarian bill proposed by Tiberius Gracchus, while a radical departure from existing conditions, was neither illegal, confiscatory, nor unjust; it merely provided for a reassumption on the part of the state of land long held illegally by the "special interests" of the place and age.

The agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus was in its main features merely a revival of the Licinian agrarian law of 367 B.C. By the original law (which for more than two centuries had been so flagrantly violated) it had been provided that no head of a family should hold more than five hundred jugera (a jugera being a little more than three fifths of an acre) of the public land. Tiberius proposed to reënact this law, but with the concession added that adult sons might hold each an additional two hundred and fifty jugera; but not more than one thousand jugera, in all, were to be held by any single family. Whoever was unlawfully in possession of the public land was required to return the same, above the permitted maximum, to the state; fair compensation, however, was to be allowed for improvements made by the holder of the land while it was in his possession.

The law further provided that all public lands were to be placed under the control of three commissioners. This commission was to allot the public land, in small parcels, to such poor citizens as might apply for it. These new occupiers of the land were to hold it in perpetuity as tenants of the state, paying a small annual rental. These estates were to descend to the children of the holders, but were not to be alienated, thus preventing the possibility of the land being once again gathered together into large estates.

No valid objection could be made to the proposals of Tiberius Gracchus, which were merely the righting of one of the worst of the existing scandals of the Roman administration; a reform, moreover, which was to be carried out in such a manner as to give to the wrongdoers far greater consideration than that to which they were entitled. The law, however, dealt a heavy blow against the richest and most powerful class in Rome. The greater Roman capitalists had so long held possession, in utter defiance of the law, of the great bulk of the public lands of the state that their wrongful possessions had, in their eyes, ripened into a rightfully vested interest.

An indirect method of attack has always been used by the opponents of Gracchus, both by the opponents of his own day and by those historians who have attempted to assail his memory. A recent historian, unfriendly both to Gracchus and to his democratic reforms (Ferrero), refers to this bill as follows:

"The bill was very favorably received by the peasants and the small proprietors. It appears also to have given great satisfaction to the clients, freemen, and artisans, who made up the proletariat of the metropolis; they fell into the not unnatural mistake—often made by the poor before and since—of regarding the greed of the rich, and the indifference of the government, as a sufficient explanation of their own distress."

The ancient historian Plutarch thus refers to this contest:

"Tiberius defending the matter, which of itself was good and just, with such eloquence as might have justified an evil cause, was invincible; and no man was able to argue against him to confute him, when, speaking in the behalf of the poor citizens of Rome (the people being gathered round about the pulpit for orations), he told them, that the wild beasts through Italy had their dens and caves of abode, and the men that fought, and were slain for their country, had nothing else but air and light, and so were compelled to wander up and down with their wives and children, having no resting-place nor house to put their heads in. And that the captains do but mock their soldiers when they encourage them in battle to fight valiantly for the graves, the temples, their own houses, and their predecessors. For, said he, of such a number of poor citizens as there be, there cannot a man of them show any ancient house or tomb of their ancestors, because the poor men go to the wars, and are slain for the rich men's pleasures and wealth; besides, they falsely call them lords of the earth, where they have not a handful of ground that is theirs. These and such other like words being uttered before all of the people with such vehemency and truth, so moved the common people withal, and put them in such a rage, that there was no adversary of his able to withstand him. Therefore, leaving to contradict and deny the law by argument, the rich men put all their trust in Marcus Octavius, colleague and fellow-tribune in office, who was a grave and wise young man, and Tiberius' very familiar friend. That the first time they came to him, to oppose him against the confirmation of this law, he prayed them to hold him excused, because Tiberius was his very friend. But, in the end, being compelled to it through the great number of the rich men that were importunate with him, he withstood Tiberius' law, which was enough to overthrow it."

A more deep-dyed treachery than that to which Marcus Octavius at length consented is, fortunately, but seldom met with in history. It was a treachery not only to one of his closest friends, not only to the class which he represented and the voters who had elected him, but also to the character and traditions of the very office which he held. The creation of the office of tribune had been the first great victory won by the plebeians; the duties of those holding this office had been to protect the lives and property, the rights and the liberties, of the weaker class in the community—the plebeians.

To make it possible for the tribunes to give such protection, the veto had been granted to them. From the time when this power had first been secured by the tribunes down to the day when the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus came before the comitia tributa for its final decision, the veto power of the Roman tribune had been the greatest bulwark of the poor man of Rome. Now, in the greatest crisis of the long contest in Roman history of human rights against class privileges, this power was to be the weapon by which a traitor was to secure the victory of the rich landowners over the great body of the Roman citizens.

The day upon which the bill was to come before the comitia tributa found the Forum crowded with what was probably the largest number of citizens who, up to this time, had ever attended a meeting of this assembly. Tiberius Gracchus made his speech in favor of the law, which speech was received with great applause. The moment of his great triumph was apparently just at hand. The clerk was about to read the words of the bill, before it was voted upon, when the renegade tribune Marcus Octavius stood up and forbade the clerk to read the bill. Gracchus was surprised and, for the time, helpless. After much bitter discussion, the meeting was adjourned; but Gracchus gave notice that he would take up his bill again upon the next regular meeting day of the comitia tributa.

The cowardly treachery of his colleague, instead of discouraging Tiberius Gracchus, merely spurred him on to greater efforts. His policy, formerly in the main a conciliatory one, now became militant. In retaliation for the veto of Octavius he too made use of this power. Indeed, a more thorough and effective use of this power than that made by Gracchus at this time can hardly be imagined. A veto was put upon the exercise of any of his functions by any of the Roman officials; even the treasury was shut up and the courts of justice discontinued. As the great landowners had now forfeited all claims to consideration on account of the methods which they had adopted, the compensation clauses were struck out of the bill, which in its amended form simply provided that the state should resume possession of all lands held in contravention of the Licinian Law. Even in this amended form there was nothing revolutionary about the bill; it was merely the reënactment of a law which already existed, and should have been in operation.

On the second day when the bill came before the comitia an attempt was again made to read the law, and this was again prevented by the veto of the tribune Octavius. Party feeling by this time ran so high that a riot seemed inevitable. Trouble was for the time averted by an agreement to refer the matter to the Senate.

A few months before, Gracchus' name would have possessed great influence in the Senate, and, furthermore, a number of the senators—the most patriotic and clear sighted, who saw the dangers with which Rome was confronted—had in the beginning sympathized with Gracchus in the objects which he sought. By this time, however, Gracchus had lost all the sympathy and support which he had ever possessed in this direction. This is sometimes explained by saying that Tiberius Gracchus had alienated all the conservative elements in his support by the intemperance of his actions. Such an explanation cannot stand the scrutiny of history. The proposals and objects of Gracchus were never anything but moderate—never anything more than the claim that the existing laws must be enforced. The methods of Gracchus were not only strictly legal but also strictly conventional and usual, until the disgraceful tactics of his opponents constrained him to more forcible action.

At this time Tiberius Gracchus, meeting only reproaches from the senators, who were enraged at him because he had called attention to and made an issue of a state of political corruption from which their class had benefited for generations, returned to the comitia. Upon his return the meeting was again dissolved; but before it had adjourned Gracchus gave notice that he would still again bring up his measure before the comitia tributa, on its next regular meeting day, and that if Marcus Octavius again interposed the veto power to prevent a vote being taken upon the bill, he would move the people that Octavius be deposed as tribune.

Before the day for the next meeting of the comitia tributa arrived, Gracchus appears to have made every effort to induce his colleague and former friend to recede from his position. All efforts in this direction, however, proving ineffectual, Gracchus immediately upon the assembling of the comitia moved that the tribune Marcus Octavius be removed from office. Of the first seventeen tribes to vote, each, by a unanimous or practically unanimous vote, was in favor of the deposition of Octavius. Before the vote of the eighteenth tribe was taken, Gracchus made a final appeal to Octavius to withdraw his opposition. After some hesitation Octavius refused, and the vote of the next tribe furnished the required majority for his deposition.

For the first time in a popular government the principle of the right of the people to recall an unworthy public official had been put into practical operation. A more fitting occasion for this action can hardly be imagined.

The action of Tiberius Gracchus in adopting this innovation has been bitterly denounced, and as strongly defended. One of the liberal historians refers to this action as follows:

"These acts of Tiberius Gracchus are commonly said to have been the beginning of revolution at Rome; and the guilt of it is accordingly laid at his door. And there can be no doubt that he was guilty in the sense that a man is guilty who introduces a light into some chamber filled with explosive vapour, which the stupidity or malice of others has suffered to accumulate. But, after all, too much is made of this violation of constitutional forms and the sanctity of the tribunate. The first were effete, and all regular means of renovating the republic seemed to be closed to the despairing patriot, by stolid obstinacy sheltering itself under the garb of law and order. The second was no longer what it had been—the recognised refuge and defence of the poor. The rich, as Tiberius in effect argued, had found out how to use it also. If all men who set the example of forcible infringement of law are criminals, Gracchus was a criminal. But in the world's annals he sins in good company; and when men condemn him, they should condemn Washington also. Perhaps his failure has had most to do with his condemnation. But if ever a revolution was excusable this was; for it was carried not by a small party for small aims, but by national acclamations, by the voices of Italians who flocked to Rome to vote. How far Gracchus saw the inevitable effects of his acts is open to dispute. But probably he saw it as clearly as any man can see the future. Because he was generous and enthusiastic, it is assumed that he was sentimental and weak, and that his policy was guided by impulse rather than reason. There seems little to sustain such a judgment other than the desire of writers to emphasise a comparison between him and his brother." (A. H. Beesly, in The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla.)

The procedure adopted by Gracchus on this occasion was unknown to the law, but it is hard to say that it was against the law. If this action was unconstitutional, and revolutionary, so had been every change which had ever been made in the fundamental principles of Roman public law. The truth of the matter was that Rome had neither a written constitution nor any law governing the method by which its fundamental law might be changed. Rome, in this respect, was constantly in a position similar to that in which the state of Rhode Island found herself in 1841. The old colonial charter, which after the separation from England had been continued in force as a state constitution, was no longer suitable for existing conditions, and there was a general feeling among the inhabitants of the state that the old charter must give way to a new state constitution. A difficulty, however, here presented itself in the fact that the old colonial charter, having been granted by royal authority, contained no provision as to its amendment by act of the people. In this situation the people of the state were compelled to go outside of their organic law, and, disregarding the old charter, to adopt a new constitution and form of government. All this was not accomplished, however, without much confusion and an incipient civil war.

Similarly situated, Tiberius Gracchus was now obliged to go beyond the letter of the existing law, and to vindicate the underlying principle of Roman law that the duty of the tribune was the protection of the rights of the people, by introducing a new political expedient into the scheme of Roman government.

Upon the deposition of Octavius the agrarian law of Gracchus was immediately passed by acclamation. Three commissioners were appointed to carry out the provisions of the bill—Tiberius Gracchus, his brother Gaius, and Appius Claudius, the father-in-law of Tiberius Gracchus.

For a time the success and popularity of Gracchus was at its zenith; the commissioners, appointed to allot the land, energetically prosecuted the work, and the great landowners became more and more bitter as they saw their illegal gains about to be wrested from them.

One difficulty in the carrying out of the agrarian law was due to the fact that the poverty of the mass of the Roman citizens was such that very few who desired to secure an allotment of land were possessed of, or could secure, the necessary money to stock the new farms and to erect the necessary buildings. When, therefore, at this crisis, it was learned that Attalus Philometor, the recently deceased king of Pergamus, in Asia Minor, had made the Roman people his heirs, bequeathing to them both his kingdom and all his private lands and treasures, Gracchus grasped at this opportunity to overcome the difficulty experienced by the agrarian commission. He proposed a law providing that all the money so received should be used to furnish the necessary stock for those to whom the public land was assigned. About the same time another law was enacted, apparently not proposed by Tiberius Gracchus, providing that the Agrarian Commission (called the triumviri) should have final jurisdiction in all controversies over the question as to whether any particular piece of land was public or private land. The capitalistic party, setting an example which has been so often followed in our own country and in our own day, now attempted to divert the issue from the reforms being put into operation through the energy of Gracchus, by personal attacks upon the tribune himself; he was accused of having received a purple robe and diadem from the envoy of the late king of Pergamus; of having violated the Roman constitution; of desiring to make himself king over Rome. Only vindictive partisanship could find any basis upon which to allege the truth of any of these charges except perhaps that of a technical violation of the Roman constitution in the deposition of Octavius. The extreme party in the Senate, led by Publius Scipio Nasica, were openly plotting the death of Tiberius Gracchus, either by assassination or by judicial proceedings, as soon as his term of office should expire.

The violent position taken by his opponents clearly showed to Tiberius Gracchus that both his reforms and his life were in danger. It was evident that neither the agrarian reforms nor the life of Gracchus would be safe after he had ceased to hold the office of tribune, and the course of events finally drove Tiberius into becoming a candidate for reëlection. To strengthen his hold upon the people he prepared three new laws. The first law diminished the required period of military service; the second law changed the procedure in the higher courts of law, and permitted the jurors to be selected from all persons possessing a certain amount of property, instead of (as previously) restricting the selection to members of the Senate; the third law created the right of appeal from the courts of law to the assembly of the people in all cases.

The scenes at the election in June, 133 B.C., when Tiberius Gracchus for the second time came before the comitia tributa as a candidate for election as tribune, were among the most tumultuous in all Roman political history. Upon the first day of voting the first tribe gave its vote for the reëlection of Tiberius Gracchus; upon this, his opponents immediately raised a protest, declaring that no one could be twice, in succession, elected to the office of tribune. The debate on this question developed into such a tumult that any further business became an impossibility, and the meeting was adjourned until the next day.

The friends of Tiberius were now thoroughly alarmed for his safety. A large throng accompanied him to his home, and kept watch before his doors all night. Before going to the comitia tributa in the morning Tiberius is reported to have told his friends that if he considered himself in danger, during the day's proceedings, and thought it necessary for his friends to repel force by force, he would raise his hand to his head. No means seems to have been adopted, however, for any concerted or effectual resistance, and none of his friends who attended the meeting of the comitia tributa went armed.

On the morning of the second meeting of the comitia tributa the Senate also met close by in the temple of Faith. Nasica demanded of the consul Scævola, who presided, to take steps to prevent the reëlection of Tiberius Gracchus. The consul refused to interfere. At this stage one of the senators, Fulvius Flaccus, who was friendly to Tiberius, hastened from the temple to inform him that his death was about to be resolved upon by the Senate. Upon hearing this news the friends of Gracchus began hastily to arm themselves with staves, for the protection of their leader, and Gracchus gave the agreed signal by raising his hand to his head.

Seizing every opportunity to attack the motives of Gracchus, his opponents raised the cry that he was asking for a crown, and this report was carried into the Senate. Nasica, the bitterest of the enemies of Gracchus and of his reforms, shouted, "The consul is betraying the republic! Those who would save their country, follow me!" and rushed out from the meeting of the Senate. He was followed by many of the senators, and by their slaves and adherents, those who were not already armed breaking up the benches to make clubs for themselves. The followers of Gracchus, without any organization among themselves, were unable to offer effectual resistance to the attack, and soon fled in all directions. Tiberius Gracchus attempted to take refuge in the temple of Jupiter, but the priests closed the doors against him, and, stumbling over a bench, he was killed by repeated blows on the head before he could rise. In this riot more than three hundred of the followers of Gracchus were killed by clubs, or by being driven over the wall at the edge of the Tarpeian rock. The hatred toward Tiberius Gracchus, on the part of the special interests of the time, did not end with his murder. Gaius Gracchus was refused permission, which he sought, to bury his brother, and it was decreed by the Senate that the bodies of Tiberius Gracchus and his followers should be thrown into the Tiber before daybreak on the following morning.

Very divergent views have been taken of the conduct of Tiberius Gracchus and that of his opponents by different classes of historians. Historians, equally with politicians, inevitably fall into one of the two classes into which mankind is divided, the class of the radicals on the one hand, or of the conservatives on the other; into the class of those who favor progress and the recognition of the supreme right of manhood, or into the class of those who wish to keep things as they are, and worship before the shrine of vested interests. No single incident in history better serves to bring out the bias of the historian than does that of the efforts of Tiberius Gracchus in behalf of his agrarian law. No historian can write this page of Roman history without throwing open for the inspection of the world the inmost workings of his mind and sympathies. That class of historians who can see more pathos in the execution of King Louis XVI than in the combined misery of the downtrodden millions who lived and died in France under the two centuries of Bourbon misrule, have attempted to cast upon Tiberius Gracchus the stigma of a demagogue, of a reckless leader, of a violator of his country's most fundamental laws; while the conduct of the leaders of the conservative party, who did not hesitate at the crisis to resort even to murder rather than surrender their unlawful profits, is excused as being rendered necessary by the violence of Tiberius Gracchus.

Yet there are few prominent characters in whose public actions the impartial critic can find so little to criticize as in that of the greatest of all Roman tribunes—Tiberius Gracchus. At the outset the whole policy of Gracchus was moderate and even conciliatory, and it was only the unyielding selfishness of the great landowners which forced him into a position where he must either surrender all for which he was fighting or adopt a more vigorous plan of campaign; which, finally, against his will, compelled him to adopt those tactics for which he has been so severely censured by certain historians.

The legality of the deposition of Octavius has already been discussed. It only remains to consider the action of Tiberius Gracchus in presenting himself as a candidate for reëlection as tribune. Of the vital necessity for this action, both to secure the enforcement of the agrarian law and the personal safety of Tiberius himself, there can be no doubt. It must be admitted, however, that this by itself is not a sufficient defense of the action of Gracchus on this occasion. The fundamental principles of government in any country cannot, generally, be safely violated merely to meet a temporary exigency. The worst possible government is generally better, for those who are to live under it, than anarchy; and the condition of a country where laws can be habitually broken with impunity is but one step from that of a country where no laws exist. The breaking of a law with good motives is often more disastrous than the breaking of it with bad intentions; because in a former case an example is set which, being looked upon with approval by a large class of the best people in the community, is apt to furnish a precedent for future violations of the law, with the worst motives and for the most dangerous purposes. No true republic can long continue to exist unless a sense of reverence for and obedience to law is bred into the mass of its citizens. The right of overthrowing a corrupt government and of establishing a new civic system must ever reside with the people; but such a right must be resorted to only as an extreme, exceptional, and desperate remedy, and the frequent recurrence of revolutions and rebellions in a republic results in a substitution of the rule of force for the peaceful rule of the majority, and is inconsistent with any true idea of democracy.

If, then, Tiberius Gracchus had attempted to override the fundamental law of Rome for the purpose of obtaining some temporary personal or partisan advantage he might well have deserved the attacks which have been made upon his memory. Tiberius Gracchus, however, violated no provision of the Roman constitution. No evidence exists that there was ever any law making a Roman tribune ineligible for reëlection.

The prohibition would seem to have arisen from long-continued custom rather than from law, and to have been of a character not unsimilar to the so-called "conventions of the English Constitution," or to the rule in this country that no man shall be elected for a third term as President. If a law declaring a tribune to be ineligible for reëlection was ever enacted in Rome (and with the absence of a full list of Roman laws this is a point on which absolute certainty is impossible) it was, in all probability, of a directory rather than a mandatory character. Such was the character of all Roman laws relative to the qualification of officers. Thus, the Roman laws provided a regular order in which the principal offices at Rome should be held, and prohibited any person holding any office until he had held all those named before it on the list, and until he had reached a certain specified age.

This law, while in the main followed, was frequently disregarded. The violations were in the main chargeable to the very class at Rome that was most bitter in the denunciation of Tiberius Gracchus for offering himself as a candidate for reëlection as tribune. Under the existing political conditions at Rome no great blame could be attached to an occasional disregard either of the law regulating the qualifications for office or the law, or custom, relative to the reëlection of a tribune. It is only on this one occasion in Roman history that the violation of either of these laws was denounced as an attack on the Roman constitution. Even in the exciting days preceding the passage of the Licinian Laws the tribunes Licinius and Sextius were reëlected year after year, without the legality of their election being questioned. Only ten years after the death of Tiberius Gracchus the reëlection to the office of tribune of his brother, Gaius Gracchus, was permitted. It is a striking comment upon the fairness of some of the historians who attack Tiberius Gracchus for his alleged violation of the law that they are able to find excuses for the action of that branch of the senatorial party whose members were so unwilling to surrender to the state their illegal profits that they resorted to force to break up a meeting of the comitia tributa and to murder Gracchus and three hundred of his adherents.

The years which intervened between the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus and that of his brother Gaius were filled with internal factional discord at Rome, but without any decisive results. Each party, in turn, was able to secure revenge upon its opponents, in the conflict connected with the death of Tiberius Gracchus. First, the popular party was successful in compelling Nasica to retire from Italy. Next, in 132 B.C., the Senate gave to the consuls a commission to inquire into the actions of those who had supported Tiberius Gracchus. By means of this commission the aristocratic party was enabled to bring about the execution of some of the partisans of Gracchus and the exile of others.

For the time the leadership of the popular party had passed to C. Papirius Carbo, a man possessed both of the ability and the vices of the successful demagogue. He was one of those politicians who are always to be found in the forefront of every movement for liberty or reform, and who, by their hypocrisy and selfishness, do more to bring discredit upon the principles they champion than can possibly be done by the ablest of the opponents of such principles. No greater contrast can be imagined than is to be found in a comparison between Tiberius Gracchus and Carbo. In the case of the former we see a devotion to principle and to humanity which not even the fear of death could alter; in the case of Carbo, on the contrary, we can discover nothing but a striving for selfish ends and personal advancement. He appeared as a radical among radicals when this attitude seemed to offer the shortest road to fame and fortune; and with equal facility he became the most abject tool of the senatorial party when such a change of position seemed most likely to result to his personal benefit.

Being elected a tribune, Carbo set himself to win the favor of the people by new popular legislation. He introduced and secured the passage of a bill extending the use of the ballot into the legislative assemblies of the people. His next measure, one to formally authorize the reëlection of tribunes, was defeated. Gaius Gracchus made his first public speech in support of this measure.

The work of the Agrarian Commission, in the meantime, had been progressing in spite of the murder of Tiberius Gracchus and the obstacles which the great landowners were constantly throwing in the way of the commission. The Roman census shows that in the six years from 131 to 125 B.C. the number of burgesses was increased by seventy-six thousand; this increase was almost entirely due to the operation of the agrarian law, and the work of the commission.

The vacancy in the Agrarian Commission made by the murder of Tiberius Gracchus had been first filled by the election of P. Licinius Crassus, father-in-law of Gaius Gracchus. Upon the death of Crassus, and of Appius Claudius a few years later, these commissioners were succeeded by Carbo and Fulvius Flaccus, the latter being the senator who had attempted to warn Tiberius Gracchus of his danger, on the day of his death.

Carbo, for the time the guiding spirit of the commission, attempted to win additional popularity by a vigorous policy in carrying out the agrarian law. Energetic action along this line was undoubtedly needed, as the great landowners had in many ways succeeded in blocking the work of the commission. The policy of Carbo, however, was that of the demagogue rather than that of the statesman, and the result of the methods which he adopted was a reaction which, for a time, completely put a stop to the work of the commission, split the popular party, and created a new political party or faction whose existence had an important influence upon the course of Roman political history during the next two generations.

The first step taken by Carbo was the publication of a proclamation calling for information against owners of public land who had not voluntarily registered themselves as such. In theory such a proceeding was undoubtedly a proper mode of procedure against the large holders of public lands who were endeavoring to evade the agrarian law; but in practice it resulted in a great deal of hardship. Many of the good land titles throughout all Italy were without sufficient documentary proof; and many landowners, whose land was private, were yet at a loss for evidence to prove that their land was of this character when information against them was filed with the commission.

The situation was a most delicate one, and one requiring the exercise of the highest degree of honesty, tact, good judgment, and diligence. None of these qualities was possessed by Carbo. The commission acted in the most arbitrary manner and apparently declared a great deal of private land to belong to the public. The injustice seems to have been practiced not so much against the great landowners (Carbo appears even as early as this to have been falling under the influence of the aristocratic party) as against the small Latin and Italian landowners. The result was that the Latins and Italians, who had been among the truest of the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, now became alienated from the Roman popular party under the leadership of Carbo, and began to come under the influence of the senatorial party.

Politics made strange bedfellows two thousand years ago as well as now, and the new turn of the wheel of Roman politics brought in Scipio Africanus as the head of the Latins and Italians, and working in harmony with the Senate.

The first action taken by Scipio was to introduce and secure the passage of a law taking away from the Agrarian Commission the judicial power by which it was enabled to decide questions as to the public or private character of lands and vesting such power in the consuls. This judicial power was then vested in the consul C. Sempronius Tuditanus; but he being soon sent to Illyria to conduct a military campaign against the Iapydes, no person was left in Rome with the power to settle questions of this character. The work of the Agrarian Commission was now brought to a stop, and no further reassumption or allotting of public lands could take place. Thus the great landowners were finally successful in destroying the effect of the agrarian legislation of Tiberius Gracchus.

As this result began to make itself manifest, so great criticism arose against the action of Scipio that he felt called upon to announce that he would explain and defend his actions both before the Senate and before the people. In his speech before the Senate he carefully evaded all reference to the case of the great landowners who still continued illegally to hold large tracts of the public lands, and proclaimed his purpose to be to protect the Latin and Italian farmers whose small holdings of land were being wrongfully taken from them by the actions of the Agrarian Commission. These small farmers, sympathy for whom Scipio thus attempted to arouse, thus occupied the position held by those widows and orphans who to-day appear so prominently among the stockholders of all law-breaking corporations.

The speech of Scipio was naturally well received in the Senate; what its reception would have been on the second day, before the people in the Forum, is problematical. On the morning following his speech in the Senate Scipio was found dead in his bed. It is one of the unsolved mysteries of history whether Scipio died from natural causes or was murdered. Nor is it more certain, if he was murdered, as to who his murderers were. Strong suspicion was directed against Carbo, and that hypocritical demagogue was driven into a temporary political retirement, from which he emerged a few years later as one of the most serviceable tools of the senatorial party.

The importance, ability, and character of Scipio Africanus have been greatly over-praised by most historians. A. H. Beesly, however, in his work The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla, gives a discriminating criticism of this Roman general and statesman:

"He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once stepped into the arena as their champion. In reality he was a reactionist who, when the inevitable results of those liberal ideas which had been broached in his own circle stared him in the face, seized the first available means of stifling them. The world had moved too fast for him. As censor, instead of beseeching the gods to increase the glory of the State, he begged them to preserve it. Brave as a man, he was a pusillanimous statesman. It was well for his reputation that he died just then. Without Sulla's personal vices he might have played Sulla's part as a politician, and his atrocities in Spain as well as his remark on the death of Tiberius Gracchus—words breathing the very essence of a narrow swordsman's nature—showed that from bloodshed at all events he would not have shrunk. It is hard to respect such a man in spite of all his good qualities. Fortune gave him the opportunity of playing a great part, and he shrank from it. When the crop sprang up which he had himself helped to sow, he blighted it. But because he was personally respectable, and because he held a middle course between contemporary parties, he has found favour with historians, who are too apt to forget that there is in politics, as in other things, a right course and a wrong, and that to attempt to walk along both at once proves a man to be a weak statesman, and does not prove him to be a great or good man."

The fillers in, who had occupied the stage of Roman politics for the years following the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, were now removed, and the stage was being rapidly set for the second and final act of the great historical tragedy of the Gracchi.

The political problems which confronted Rome at the time of the death of Scipio rapidly reached such an acute state that it became evident the solution of these problems, and the preservation of the Roman republic, must be the work of a Man, not of a manikin or a demagogue. At this crisis Rome was blessed with the best of fortune, only to be immediately thereafter cursed with the worst of misfortune. The good fortune consisted in the fact that at this time the man presented himself for the work; the bad fortune arose from the refusal of Rome to avail herself of his work.

The agitation of Carbo had added to the bitter contest between rich and poor, and one perhaps still more bitter, at least temporarily, between Romans and Italians. An attempt was made to reconcile the differences between the Romans and Italians by means of a compromise, by the terms of which the Italians were to consent to the carrying out of the Agrarian Law, and in return were to be admitted to Roman citizenship. This last proposal was viewed with great alarm by the Roman proletariat, most of whom were by this time possessed of nothing in the world except the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship, and who saw that the value of such rights and privileges would be greatly diminished by the great increase now proposed in the number of those by whom such rights and privileges were to be enjoyed.

The Italians, on their side, delighted at the prospect of obtaining these rights, began to come to Rome in great numbers. This migration added fuel to the flame, and in 126 B.C. the tribune, Junius Pennus, proposed an alien act by which foreigners were compelled to leave Rome. The law was passed, with unpleasant consequences at a later date. For the second time in his life Gaius Gracchus made a public speech, on this occasion appearing on the losing side.

The following year Gaius Gracchus served as quæstor and was sent to Sardinia under the consul Aurelius Orestes. The Senate, and the oligarchical party in general, had by this time come to regard the young Gaius Gracchus with mingled fear and suspicion, and in disregard of the laws he was first ordered to remain a second year in Sardinia, and later to remain a third year.

In the meantime, at Rome, events had been moving rapidly. Fulvius Flaccus, the old friend of Tiberius Gracchus, had been elected consul and had brought in a bill extending the franchise to all the Latin and Italian allies. Shortly thereafter, before the bill had been voted upon, Flaccus had been sent by the Senate upon foreign service, and the bill was sidetracked. The disappointment at such a result on the part of those who were denied the right of suffrage, after they had believed it won, culminated in the rebellion of the Latin city of Fregellæ. The force with which the city was reduced to submission, and the severity with which the outbreak was punished, destroyed any further thought on the part of the Latins and Italians of attempting to secure their rights by force, but increased the silent discontent of these people.

It was with these conditions existing at Rome that Gaius Gracchus returned to the city after two and one-half years' absence in Sardinia, defying the Senate by disobeying its order to finish out his third year in the island.

The censors were in office at the time of the return of Gaius Gracchus to Rome, and his enemies succeeded in having him summoned before them immediately to answer for his alleged misconduct in leaving the post to which he had been assigned by the Senate. It was hoped that the censors could be induced to denounce him, which action would have rendered him ineligible to hold public office. Gracchus, however, so strongly defended himself in a speech to the people that the censors did not dare take any action against him. In his speech he relied on the well-established principle of the Roman law at that time, that the Senate had no authority to compel him to serve as quæstor for a longer period than one year. As to his own conduct in the exercise of the office of quæstor he said, "No one can say that I have received a penny in presents, or have put any one to charges on my own account. The purse which I took out full I have brought back empty; though I could name persons who took out casks filled with wine and brought them home charged with money."

Upon his acquittal Gaius Gracchus became a candidate for the office of tribune, and was elected, in spite of the most strenuous opposition of the senatorial party and of the great landowners. However, the opposition to him was so strong that, in the number of votes received, he stood only fourth in the list of successful candidates.

Before entering upon the work of Gaius Gracchus as Roman tribune it is admissible to stop for a moment to compare the characters, natures, and abilities of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. The general judgment of history seems to assign a far higher place to Gaius Gracchus than to his elder brother. How far such a view is correct is certainly questionable. It is a view based largely upon the longer term of office, the more spectacular reforms, and the more dramatic death of the younger brother. Without detracting in any degree from the high character and motives, and the wonderful ability, of Gaius Gracchus, it may still be said that the higher niche in the temple of history more properly belongs to Tiberius.

To Tiberius belongs that special honor which properly attaches itself to the pioneer; perhaps, most of all, to the pioneer in the field of political, social, or economic reforms. In the case of Tiberius, his career was deliberately entered upon, as the result of his profound study and keen observation, acting upon his naturally strong Roman patriotism, hatred of wrong and oppression, and sympathy for humanity. Whether the career of Gaius would have taken the direction which it did but for the memory and influence of his brother, is problematical. It is certain that the strongest motive which urged him onward in his career as tribune was the all-mastering desire and determination to avenge the murder of his brother, and to vindicate his memory by carrying his measures through to a triumphant conclusion. It might almost be said that the mainspring of the career of Tiberius was his love for Rome, while the mainspring of the career of Gaius was his love for his brother.

Tiberius Gracchus was the greater statesman; Gaius Gracchus the better politician. Tiberius could see more clearly the great outlines of what lay at a distance; Gaius could discern more exactly the details of what was close at hand. If the political activities of the two brothers could have been at the same time, each would have supplemented the other, and it is possible that their combined efforts might have been sufficient to secure the accomplishment of their purposes.

In many respects Gaius Gracchus surpassed his brother in ability. The younger brother is generally conceded to have been the greatest orator who, up to that time, had ever lived in Rome; while Cicero, unfriendly both to Gaius Gracchus personally and to his measures, lamented his early death as a loss to Roman literature. It is also probable that Gaius was superior to his brother in executive ability and in his wonderful capacity for hard work. Against that must be set the greater vision displayed by Tiberius Gracchus, in the character and details of his proposed reforms. There was nothing in the measure proposed by the elder Gracchus which conflicts with either justice, the soundest principles of statesmanship, or of political economy; nor was there any feature which seemed to have been inserted in those measures merely as a bid for popularity or for votes.

Unfortunately, as much cannot be said for the reforms of Gaius Gracchus; some of the provisions of the laws which he proposed were unsound in theory and dangerous in practice, and were probably brought forward merely as a bid for popularity. Provisions of this character were not numerous enough, or important enough, to detract from the general merit of the reforms proposed by Gaius Gracchus, but their presence in his bills would seem to indicate on his part a less comprehensive grasp of political principles than that possessed by his brother.

It is a striking illustration of the irony which fate sometimes makes use of, that the only part of the measures brought forward by the Gracchi which were permitted to have a permanent influence upon Roman life and history were the questionable measures of Gaius Gracchus.

In their temperaments Tiberius appears the calmer, Gaius possessing the more fiery disposition. Tiberius, throughout his career, continued to exercise the highest degree of control over both his feelings and his actions. While fighting for principles which he believed essential to the safety and welfare of Rome he manifested surprisingly little animosity toward his opponents. Even in the deposition of Octavius he seems to have been free from personal malice, as is indicated by his attempt to secure a reconciliation with his brother tribune after seventeen out of the necessary eighteen tribunes had voted in favor of the deposition of the latter.

Gaius, embittered by the murder of his brother Tiberius, developed a hatred toward his opponents which time never healed. Patience and judgment led him to bide his time and prepare for the contest which he considered as fated, and for the revenge upon which he was determined.