The Comic History of Rome

The new bill for distributing the soil became at once the law of the land, and the two Gracchi – Tib. and Caius – with Appius Claudius, the father-in-law of the former, became a permanent triumvirate. This desire of the temporary holders of power to change their tenancy at will to a life estate, has been in all ages conspicuous. The stability of authority is so desirable, that a fixed executive seems to be everywhere a natural want; but the mushroom might as well seek to substitute itself for the oak, whose roots have struck deep into the soil, as the mere chief of a revolution might hope, without any hold on the affections of a nation, to become the founder of a dynasty.

Tib. Gracchus, in the true spirit of a patriot by profession, proposed limiting every power but his own, which he sought to render as extensive as possible. When his term of office had legally expired, he declared that the safety of the republic required his re-election, and he accordingly forced himself on the attention of the electors as the only desirable candidate. On the day previous to the election, he spent all the afternoon in the mourning he had already bought, and leading his children by the hand, he exhibited himself and them as the "un-happy family," in the public thoroughfares. The election had already commenced, on the following day, when the Conservative party objected to it on the ground of illegality. The proceedings were already opened, when Tib. Gracchus set out on a canvass, expecting that his canvass would enable him to reach the desired point with a wet sail and flying colours. Not content with going alone to solicit the electors, he took one of his own boys in his hand, and he got all the mothers on his side, by introducing what may be termed child's play into his electioneering movements. In the afternoon, the candidate doubted whether he would go personally to the poll, when his friends – some of them from whom he would have been glad to have been saved – assured him that he had better go, for there was no danger. Taking their advice, he had got as far as the area in front of the Capitol, when he was seized with the irresolution of an area-sneak, and hanging about the spot, he refused to go further. A debate was in progress among the senators, when one of them, P. Scipio Nasica, called upon the house to come to the door, and save the republic by sacrificing Tiberius. The whole assembly rushed upon its legs and its crutches; some of the members seized hold of sticks, others snatched up their clubs, and declared that the vengeance of the clubs should fall on Tiberius. In this spirit they sallied forth, and looking for Gracchus, they soon knocked dissension on the head, by one of those blows which disposed of any pretensions he might have had to a crown when they first encountered him. His brother, Caius Gracchus, fell politically with his relative; but without resigning his office, he abandoned his post, and he withdrew to a little place he had in the country, though neglecting to give up his place in the triumvirate.

Scipio Æmilianus was on his return from Spain to Rome when he heard of the death of his brother-in-law; and, quoting a line from Homer, to the effect that

"All thus perish who such deeds perform,"

he declared that his relative Tib. had met with such a fate as his antecedents warranted. Scipio at once assumed the leadership of the Conservatives, or rather of the destructives; for their Conservatism consisted merely in a desire to keep all they had unfairly got, while their policy tended to break all the bonds of mutual interest and goodwill, which can alone permanently bind society.

The plebeian party became quite as unreasonable on one side of the question, as the patricians had been on the other; and C. Papirius Carbo, a demagogue, who had got the place of tribune, proposed that the people should have the right of re-electing the same person to the tribuneship over and over again, – a suggestion designed to render his own position permanent. Scipio Æmilianus opposed the measure to the utmost; and after going home one night, he had no sooner finished his supper, than he began to cram himself for a speech, with which he contemplated coming out on the day following. He was, however, found dead in his bed; and, though probability points to apoplexy as the cause, the historians have – without much, indeed, of evidence – returned a verdict of Wilful Murder against C. P. Carbo. We have no hesitation in acquitting him of this dreadful crime; but we cannot say that we shall be able to allow him to quit these pages without a stain on his character. It is to be regretted that the Senate had not the courage to institute an inquiry at the time when the occurrence took place, and when only the real facts could have been ascertained; for such a course would have saved considerable trouble to those chroniclers who are always ready to frame an entirely new set of circumstances of their own, to replace those which contemporaneous investigation has omitted to supply us with.

Caius Sempronius Gracchus was getting daily more tired of his thoroughly retired life; and, being an excellent spokesman, he began to flatter himself that the commonweal might profit by his services. He is said to have been urged on by his brother's ghost; but there is reason to believe that he was impelled by a more commendable spirit. This fraternal shade is stated to have appeared to him in his dreams; but the matters he now began to take in hand were not those which he could afford to go to sleep over.

In republics, where he who is the humble servant of the people to-day, may be, to-morrow, the people's master, talent is looked upon with jealousy by the governing power, which, while ostensibly employing an able instrument, may be, in fact, promoting a dangerous rival. Thus, when the head of a nation is removable, it is reluctant to employ the best men, lest they prove better than the head itself, and aspire to the very highest position.

Where the form of government is monarchical, it is to the interest of the ruler to avail himself of the ablest assistance he can obtain; for, being himself irremovable, he becomes the fixed centre towards which the glories and successes of his ministers and servants continually gravitate.

It was on the principle of getting rid of a dangerous rival, that the republican government had sent away Caius Gracchus from Rome, – where he might have been everything – to Sardinia, where he would almost inevitably sink to nothing. He was himself apprehensive of this result, and he consequently returned to Rome, leaving Sardinia without the leave of any one. His duty should have kept him abroad, but ambition urged him home; and, in a republic, there is little to insure the fidelity of one who, though the servant of the Government to-day, may be its master to-morrow. Leaving the interests of his country in Sardinia to take care of themselves, this professed patriot came to look after his own interests in Rome, and took his talents into the political market. He immediately stood for the tribuneship; and though he had abandoned one post – that of Quæstor in Sardinia – he was elected to the more important post, which might, indeed, be termed the chief pillar of popular liberty.

Though he had, of course, solicited and obtained his high office on purely public grounds, he at once endeavoured to use it for the gratification of personal animosities. His first two measures were proposed with a view to avenging his brother's death; and he sought to give the intended new laws a retrospective effect, for the purpose of gratifying his private enmity. He introduced a law to prevent a person deprived by the people of any office, from being appointed to the public service again; but this exalted patriot withdrew the bill to please his mother. He carried various measures of more or less value, and among them was a law for the establishment of granaries for supplying the poor with corn at a very low price; but though this might have been very attractive to buyers, and insured a brisk demand, it does not seem calculated to encourage growers and sellers to such an extent that a supply could always be relied upon. Of course, the deficiency had to be made good from the pockets of the public; and therefore the process amounted to little more than receiving with one hand what had been paid by the other.

The privilege of purchasing cheap corn was not limited, as some66 have supposed, to the poor; but every citizen could claim his share; and even Piso, a Consul – though perhaps he was one of the greatly reduced Consuls – had been shabby enough to demand the privilege. Piso had been an opponent of the law; and Gracchus, seeing him among the crowd receiving a bushel of the cheap grain, taunted him with his inconsistency in taking advantage of a corn measure which he had set his face against. The answer of Piso was sensible and just; for, said he, "though I had a strong objection to your giving away my property, I think I have a right to try to get my share of it." Another of his enactments vested the right of putting a Roman citizen to death, in the people themselves, a measure that was no doubt theoretically attractive, though practically inconvenient. To vest in the public at large the privilege of applying the sentences to the highest offences, would really be giving a nation so much rope, that business would be suspended very often, instead of the criminals.

Caius Gracchus next applied himself to Law Reform with considerable zeal; but it was not so much the law itself, as those who administered it, that required amendment. Those who held the scales of justice, used to weigh only the gold of the suitors; and the judges were so far impartial, that they had no bias towards any particular side, but favoured that which was the most liberal in bribing them. Many of the defendants had been guilty of extortion, which was a common practice with the judges themselves; and therefore a rude sort of honour, commonly known as honour among thieves, was not altogether banished from the judgment-seat. Caius Gracchus, however, caused a law to be passed, in which we trace the origin of that glorious institution, familiarly known as "twelve men in a box," so dear to the hearts, and sometimes, also, to the pockets of Englishmen. The law alluded to, provided for the trial of causes by a middle class of equites or knights, who were, literally speaking, men who could keep a horse, and who, on the same principle adopted in modern times as to the keepers of gigs,67 were considered to be respectable.

The Senators had made a practice of acquitting all criminals of their own class, and, by acquitting themselves thus shamefully, they had become guilty of the grossest corruption; but the equites were frequently regardless of equity, and were found leaning with undue leniency towards offenders of their own order. Gracchus had now become the popular idol, but he never had an idle hour, and was always busy in building up a reputation for himself by the construction of works of permanent utility. He knew that general occupation is necessary to public content, and he felt that as long as he could keep the hands of the multitude employed on bricks and mortar, he was, in reality, cementing his own power. This policy placed considerable patronage at his command, and he rallied round him a crowd of contractors and artificers, who, but for his power of giving them something better to do, would, perhaps, have been contracting the bad habit of political agitation, or resorting to every kind of revolutionary artifice.

The greatest political work of Caius was that in which he did the least; and his legislative successes sink into insignificance by the side of the real grandeur of his extensive failure. This was his attempt to extend the franchise to all the Italians, and the other allies; but Rome refused to aid him in the grand design, and determined to rivet upon Italy those Italian irons with which Rome at a future period was destined to burn her fingers. So popular was Caius Gracchus, that, upon his re-election to office, the people, who could not get near enough to the Campus Martius on account of the crowd, voted for him from the tops of houses or unfinished buildings; and many came up to the poll by climbing an adjacent scaffold.

He who would keep himself constantly sailing before the wind raised by the breath of public applause, must be for ever on some new tack; for no airs are more variable than those which the people are apt to give themselves. Caius Gracchus was soon destined to discover the fact that, amid the storms of political life, the highest point can be safely occupied by none but the political weathercock. He had too much rigid inflexibility to turn with every breeze; and instead of being moved by each passing gust, he was simply dis-gusted by the vacillation exhibited.

The aristocratic party, perceiving this, resolved to beat him with his own weapons; and they prevailed upon M. Livius Drusus, his colleague in the tribuneship, to outbid him by all sorts of extravagances for the prize of popularity. When Gracchus proposed to distribute land among the poor at a small fixed rental, Drusus moved, by way of amendment, that they should have it for nothing at all; and as to the corn in the public granaries, if Gracchus said the people ought to have it at half price, Drusus would insist upon their right to be paid for the trouble of walking away with it. The people, as a matter of course, followed the man who was most profuse in his promises, rather than him who had been the most liberal in his performances. Caius Gracchus was, in the mean time, induced to go to Africa to mark out the ground for a new city. The reporters of the period – who were, no doubt, in the pay of his opponents – circulated all kinds of ill-natured stories, in which it was alleged that the omens had been unfavourable; that the flags had been blown down, or the pavement blown up; and that the wolves had eaten up every flag-staff – a thing not very easy to swallow. On his return to Rome, from which he had been absent only seventy days, he found Drusus amazingly popular, and every nose turned up at himself, which induced him to recognise a general snub in the faces of many of his old followers. He offered himself a third time for the tribuneship, but he was at the bottom of the poll, and an election row commenced, when an officious lictor lost, first, his fasces; secondly, his securis – which he had done his utmost to secure; and ultimately his life, in the scuffle. Caius Gracchus, who had mainly endeavoured to keep the peace, knew he would be accused of breaking it, and he accordingly ran as fast as he could; but in scaling a wall to get into another street, he unfortunately sprained his ankle. His friends continued to carry him until, moved by a sudden instinct of self-preservation, they dropped an acquaintance it would have been no longer safe to keep up, and poor Caius was left alone with a single manservant. His pursuers being at his heels, the ex-tribune desired the faithful attendant to stab him, and the man was too much in the habit of obeying his master's orders to hesitate. Having respectfully run his employer through, he found himself so terribly out of place in the world, that, apologising for the liberty, he finished himself off with the same dagger.

A reward of its weight in gold had already been offered for the head of Caius Gracchus, when one Septimulcius, having picked it up, carried it home, and plumbed it with lead before he took it to the authorities. Opimius, the Consul, weighed it, and exclaiming, "Bless me! seven pounds and a half!" threw down in exchange for the head, the same quantity of the precious metal. His customer having gone away, Opimius proceeded at his leisure to examine his bargain. "Well!" said he, "I don't know that it's worth its weight in gold, but the offer was my own, and I must make the best of it." On a minuter inspection, he detected the trick that had been played, and though he had looked upon Caius as somewhat leaden-headed, he at once perceived that nature had not been the only plumber employed in this disgraceful transaction.

All the friends of Gracchus were cast into prison and slain; but it was astonishing to observe how contracted his circle became when it was known that ruin awaited every member of it. They who had been his intimates made the sudden discovery that they had never known him at all, and others, who had been too frequently in his company to repudiate the acquaintance, declared that they had been grievously mistaken in his character. Several of his radical associates joined the aristocratic party, and his friend Carbo was so severely bantered on his having gone over to the other side, that after trying both sides, he took refuge in suicide as the only side left for him.

Rome owed much to the Gracchi; but it paid them both off in a most unsatisfactory manner. Tiberius was an orator of such power, that, to prevent his voice from being too loud, he took with him a piper – paying the piper out of his own pocket – to prevent him from pitching it too strong when he was addressing the multitude. Tiberius Gracchus was the first orator who introduced the graces of action into the art of public speaking; and he was in the habit of rolling, as it were, from side to side, which gave him great sway with his audience.

Caius Gracchus was a man of action, rather than of words, and was the first to divide distance into portions of one thousand paces, each of which he called a mile, and which was one of his really useful measures. He was also the inventor of milestones, and of those stations for awkward equestrians, which enabled many to ride the high horse, who would otherwise have been placed on their own humble footing.

The two Gracchi owed, no doubt, to the teaching of their mother, much of their success – if, at least, that can be called success which ended in the violent death of both of them. Cornelia was, however, a little too much addicted to making prodigies of her sons; and it is said of her, that, on one occasion, when receiving a visit from a Campanian lady, who came to display her jewels, the mother of the Gracchi, having privately sent for the children, exclaimed, as they stole gently in with their nurse, "These are my jewels: what do you think of them?" So maudlin was her maternal sensibility, that she never spoke of her sons without tears, which were always responded to by the infants themselves, with sympathetic, but uncomfortable, moisture. Nothing, however, can damp parental love; and, to a fond mother's feelings, childhood has no unpleasant features; though it is different to him who, if approaching them at all, prefers looking at them in a drier aspect.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

THE JUGURTHINE WAR. WAR AGAINST THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONI

While Rome had been making the numerous conquests already described, self-conquest – the most important conquest of all – had been altogether lost sight of, and she had failed in obtaining the victory over her own vices. Though she possessed, nominally, a constituted body of rulers, money was actually the governing power; and so debasing is its influence, that it is more fatal to the liberty of a people to be ruled with a rod of gold, than with a rod of iron. No consideration but pecuniary consideration had any weight, corruption presided in the courts of law, the people were bought by the Senate, and the Senate sold the people. In the army there was a system of shameless plunder on the part of the commanders, and the soldiers followed their leaders with avidity.

Numidia had, since the death of Masinissa, been ruled over by his son Micipsa, who, by his will, put his kingdom, as it were, into commission, by giving it to his two sons, Hiempsal and Adherbal, conjointly with a lad whom he had adopted, and whose name was Jugurtha. Jugurtha was a person of excellent manners and genteel address, an excellent horseman, the first to strike the lion68 in the field, and himself a lion much run after in society.

On the death of Micipsa, when the three rulers came to the throne of Numidia, they found the accommodation rather insufficient, and Jugurtha insolently threw himself down in the middle of it. By this act the two sons of Micipsa were practically set aside, and Jugurtha assumed that in himself alone the monarchy was centered. His next act was to propose the abolition of the acts of the last five years of Micipsa's reign, declaring that they ought all to be dotted out, on the ground of the old man's dotage. Hiempsal, with a touch of sarcasm, assented to the proposal, observing – "We shall then get rid of you, as your adoption was an act performed within the prescribed period." This attempt to be funny was a serious matter to Hiempsal, for Jugurtha caused the would-be wag to be murdered in the palace.

After this instance of sharp practice, on the part of Jugurtha, Adherbal began to tremble in his shoes lest he might be made to walk in his brother's footsteps. This fear was so nearly on the point of being realised, that Adherbal took to flight, and ran all the way to Rome, to ask for aid; upon which a commission of inquiry, consisting of ten members, was despatched to Numidia.

To refer any matter to a commission, has always been considered equivalent to laying it permanently on the shelf; and such might have been the result of the quarrel of the Numidian princes, had it not been for the fact that Jugurtha had settled the dispute in his own way, before the commissioners had even opened their inquiry. By the time they had arrived on the spot to which they had been sent, they found one of the parties dead, and the other in possession of all that he desired. Jugurtha was, of course, the survivor in this affair; and when the ambassadors, on their arrival, expressed their astonishment at their services having been dispensed with, he, by offering them something for their trouble, sent them home fully and shame-fully satisfied.

Every spark of honour was not, however, extinct in Rome; for the tribune, C. Memmius, who had not received, or, indeed, had not been offered, any of Jugurtha's gold, became virtuously indignant at the disgraceful harvest made by the ten commissioners. His agitation was so far successful, that war was declared, and the Consul, L. Calpurnius Bestia, with his legate, M. Æmilius Scaurus, were sent to invade Africa. Bestia immediately made the best bargain he could for himself, by concluding a peace with Jugurtha, on certain terms, for which the Roman Consul's own terms were most exorbitant. He and his legate, Scaurus, accepted a nominal surrender of all Jugurtha's tents, horses, and elephants; but he was allowed to reserve nearly the whole of his canvas booths and his menagerie.

When the tribune Memmius heard of the venality of the ambassadors, and of the money they had corruptly made by their services abroad, he, whose duties kept him at home, became more indignant than ever. He denounced, in abusive language, the abuse of which they had been guilty, and succeeded at last in carrying a motion that Jugurtha should appear to answer for his offences of bribery and corruption before the Senate. The summons was carried to Africa, by the stern and incorruptible Cassius, who refused every offer of cash, and insisted on the personal appearance of Jugurtha at the time and place appointed. The artful Numidian came with a very small retinue and a very long purse; for he knew that in meeting such an antagonist as Rome, he should not have to draw the steel from the scabbard, but the gold from the treasury. He threw purses in all directions; and so extensive was his bribery, that the criminals who had accepted his money were a strong majority over the few who were qualified, by not having participated in the offence, to sit in judgment over it. Memmius, who had seen none of Jugurtha's gold, insisted on his giving up the names of those who had received it; but there was such a vehement and general shout of "No," that any further inquiry as to who were the culprits, would have been quite superfluous.

The only punishment the Senate ventured to inflict upon Jugurtha, was a sentence of banishment; and it was indeed quite natural that the dishonourable members should have been glad to send speedily out of the way the principal witness to their own turpitude. As Jugurtha quitted Rome, he expressed his disgust at her venality, in a sentiment which came with but an ill grace from an accomplice in her infamy. "Oh!" he exclaimed, with an air of affected horror, "Oh! thou venal city; thou wouldst sell thyself to perdition, if thou couldst only find a purchaser!" The exact point at which this claptrap was uttered, who was at hand to hear it, and supposing the reporters to have been present, whether they proceeded to take it down, are points which the historians have not shown any disposition to look into.