09 - Gracchi, Marius and Sulla by A. H. Beesly

an audience. He had no insight into the evils or any project for the reformation of the state. But the scorn of men like Metellus had made him throw himself on the support of the people from whom he sprang, and they idolizing him for his dazzling exploits as a soldier, looked to him as their natural leader and the creator of a new era. Indeed, it needed no stimulus from without to what his ambitious cravings. That seventh consulship, which

superstition whispered, would be surely his. He had yet to win, and in all his after conduct he seems to have been guided by the most vulgar selfishness, which in the end became murderous insanity. But while he hoped to use all parties for his own advancement, a game in which he, of all men was least qualified to succeed, other and abler politicians were bent on using him for the overthrow

of the optimates. The harangues of Memmius had shown that the spirit of the Gracchi were still alive in Rome, and now Lucius Apulaeus Saturninus took up their revolutionary projects with a violence to which they had been averse, but for which the acts of their adversaries had become a

fatal precedent. Of Saturninus himself, we do not know much more than that he was an eloquent speaker and the resolute, though not over scrupulous man, at a time when to be scrupulous was equivalent to self martyrdom or self effacement.

In something of the same relation in which Camille de Moulin stood to Danto Gaius Servilius, Glaucia, a wit and favored of the people, stood toward the somber and imperious Saturninus, and both hoped to effect their aims by the aid of Marius if they are to be judged by their

axe alone, we could hardly condemn them. They tried to do what the Grocy had attempted before them, what Drusus attempted after them, and what when they and Drusus had fallen as the Groci had fallen, the social war finally effected. No historian has given sufficient prominence to the fact that it was primarily a country movement of which each of these men was the leader, a movement of un broken continuity, though each used his own means and had his own

special temperament. If this is kept in view, we shall no longer consider, with some modern historians, that no event, perhaps in Roman history, is so sudden, so unconnected, and accordingly so obscure in its original causes as this revolt or conspiracy of Saturninus. Like Caius Graccus, Saturninus represented rural as opposed to urban interests, and the interests of the

provinces as opposed to those of the capital. Like Gaius too, he endeavored to conciliate the Equitace, but they had all the Roman prejudice against admitting Italians to a level with themselves, and the attempt to play off party against party utterly failed. In Vain, Saturninus tried to defy opposition by enlisting the support of the Marian veterans, the rich, the noble, and the mob united against him, and when he seized the capital,

it was to defend himself against all three. In the year one hundred BC, Marius was consul for the sixth time, Glaucia was pritor, and Saturninus was a second time tribune. A triumvirate so powerful might, if united, have overthrown the Constitution. But the vanity and vacillation of Marius were the best allies of the optimates. And it was no grown man but Guius Julius Caesar, a child born in that same year,

who was destined to subvert their rule. Saturninus had been instrumental in securing the election of Marius to his fifth consulship in one o two, and it was about that time that the Lex Servilia was carried. This law defined the liability of Roman officials to trial for extortion in the provinces, and by a process of elimination, four senators, workers for hire, and others were expressly declared ineligible, practically

left to the equities. The jurisdiction in such trials. Whether or no the law of Gracus had been repealed by another civilian law, that of Quintus Servilius Kipio, we cannot say for certain. If so the second civilian law repealed the first, but whether it restored power to the equities or only confirmed the minute. In theory, it left the office of udex open to all citizens. For while it excluded so many citizens that in practice that judicia was close to all but the equestrian class, it did not

assign the office to any one class. In particular, it also provided that any one not a citizen who won his suit against an official should, by virtue of doing so, obtain the citizenship. So that we may trace in this law a threefold policy, an attempt One to relieve the provincials by making prosecutions for extortion easy and even putting

a premium on them. Two to conciliate the equitase. Three to pave the way for the overthrow of class jurisdiction by nominally at least leaving the judicia open to all who did not come under specified restrictions. Cicero, in Vags against Glaucia, as a demagogue of the Hyperbolus stamp, But there was more of the statesmen than the demagogue in

this law. When Saturninus was a candidate for the tribunate, he and Glaucia are said to have set on men to murder Nonius, another candidate who they feared might use his veto to thwart their projects. Marius had been previously elected consul and supported Saturninus in his candidature, as Saturninus

had supported him. Marius may have been induced to enter into this alliance by the desire to gratify a personal grudge for the rival candidate had been the man he most detested, Quintus Metellus, and the first measure of Saturninus was a compliment to him and a direct blow aimed at Metellus. This was an agrarian law which would benefit the Marian veterans, as it contained a proviso that any senator refusing to swear to observe it within five days

should be expelled from the Senate. It would be sure to drive Metellus from Rome. But if there was diplomacy in this measure of Saturninus, there was sagacity also. What discontent was seething in Italy? The social war soon proved, and this was an attempt to appease it. Saturninus had previously proposed allotments in Africa. Now he proposed to allot lands in Transalpine Gaul, Sicily, Aecia and Macedonia, and supply the colonists with an outfit from the treasure taken from

Tolosa Marius was have the allotment of the land. There is a difficulty as to these colonies, which no history solves. They were Roman colonies to which only Roman citizens were eligible, and yet the Roman populace opposed the law. The Italians, on the contrary, carried it by violence. Some have cut the knot by supposing that though the colonies were Roman, Italians were to be admitted to them, but there is

another possible explanation. It is certain that many Italians passed as citizens at Rome in one eighty seven BC, twelve thousand Latins passing as Roman citizens had been obliged to quit Rome. In ninety five BC, there was another clearance of aliens, which was one of the immediate causes of the social war. Fictitious citizens might have found it easy to obtain allotments from a consul whose ears if first made deaf by the din of arms, had never since

recovered their hearing. However this may be. It was the rural party which by violence procured a preponderance of votes at the ballot boxes, and it was the town populace which resisted what it felt to be an invasion of their prerogative by the men from the country. Marius is said to have got rid of Metellus by a trick.

He pretended that he would not take the oath which the law demanded, but when Metellus had said the same thing, told the Senate that he would swear to obey the law as far as it was a law, in order to induce the rural voters to leave Rome, and Metellus, scorning such a subterfuge, went into exile. Another law of Saturninus either renewed the corn law of Caius Gracus, or went farther and made the price of grain merely nominal.

This law was, no doubt meant to recover the favor of the city mob, which he had forfeited by his agrarian law. But Cayphio, son probably of the Hero of Tolosa, stopped the voting by force, and the law was not carried. The third law of Saturninus was alex de Maastate, a law by which anyone could be prosecuted for treason against the state, and which was not improbably aimed specially at Kaipio, who was impeached under it. It seems at any rate certain that of these laws the agrarian was the chief

and the others subsidiary. In other words, that he and Claucia were working together on an organized plan and striving to admit the whole Roman world into a community of rites. With Rome. They thought that with the Marian soldiers at their back, they would be safer than Gracus with his bands of reapers, and so they may have taken the initiative in violence, from which, both by past events and the acts of men like Kaipio, it was certain that

the Optimists would not shrink. It is difficult to apportion the blame in such cases. But when Glaucias stood for the consulship of ninety nine and his rival Memius, a favorite with the people, was murdered, an attack was made on Saturninus, who hastily sent for aid to his rural supporters and seized the capital. He found then that in

reckoning on Marius, he had made a fatal blunder. That selfish intriguer had been alarmed by the popular favor shown to an impostor named Equitius, who gave out that he was the son of Tiberius Gracus, and who, being imprisoned by Marius, was released by the people an elected tribune. He may have been jealous too of the popularity of Saturninus with his own veterans, and at the same time anxious to curry favor with the foes of Saturninus, the

urban populace. So instead of boldly joining his late ally, he became the general of the opposite party, drove Saturninus and his friends from the forum, and when they had surrendered, suffered them to be pelted to death in the Curia Hostilia, where he had placed them. Saturninus, it is said, had

been proclaimed king before his death. If so, he had at least struck for a crown consistently and boldly, and even if his attempt for the moment united the senatorial party and the Equitaise while the city mob stood wavering or hostile, he might nevertheless have forestalled the empire by a century. Had Marius only had half his enterprise or nerve. In an epoch of revolution, it is idle to judge men by an ordinary standard, how far personal ambition and

how far a noble ideal animated Saturninus. No man can say, those who condemn him must condemn Cromwell too. For the moment the power of the optimates seemed restored, the specter of monarchy had made the men of riches coalesce with their old rivals, the men of rank, and the mob, ungrateful for an unexecuted corn law, chafed at Italian pretensions. Metellus the aristocrat was recalled to Rome amid the enthusiasm of the anti Italian mob, and Publius, furious, was torn

to pieces for having opposed his return. Marius slunk away to the east, finding that his treachery had only isolated him and brought him into contempt. And there it is said he tried to incite Mithridatees to war sextstitious indeed brought forward an agrarian law in ninety nine b c. But he was opposed by his colleagues and driven into exile.

Two events soon happened which showed not only the embittered feelings existing between the urban and rural population, but also the sympathy with the provincials felt by the better Romans, and as an inference, the miserable condition of the provincials themselves. The first was the enactment in ninety five b c. Of the Lex Lacinia Minutia, which ordered Latins and Italian's

resident at Rome to leave the city. The second was the prosecution and conviction of Publius Rutilius Rufus, nominally for extortion, but really because by his just administration of the province of Asia, he had rebuked extortion and the equestrian courts

which connived it. It. Though most of the senators were as guilty as the equitas, the mass like Marcus Scaurus, who was himself impeached for extortion, would ill brook being forced to appear before their courts and be eager to take hold of their maladministration of justice as a pretext for abrogating the Servilian law. One more attempt at reform was to be made, this time by one of the Senate's own members, but only to be once more defeated

by rancorous party spirit and besotted urban pride. Marcus Livius Drusus was son of the man whom the Senate had put forward to outbid Gaius Gracus. He he was a haughty, upright man of an impetuous temper, such a man as often becomes the tool of less courageous but more dexterous intriguers. Marcus Scourus had been impeached for taking bribes in Asia, and it is said that in his disgust, he egged

on Drusus to restore the Judicia to the Senate. Jusus was probably one of those men whom in aristocracy, in its decadence, not rarely produces. He disliked the preponderance of the moneyed class. He could not feel the vulgar Roman's antipathy to giving Italians the franchise, for he saw it exercised by men who were, in his eyes, infinitely more contemptible. He disliked also and despised the vices of his own order, mistaking the crafty suggestions of scours for a genuine appeal

to high motives. Flattered by it and by the confidence of the Italians, he thought that he could educate his party, and by his personal influence, induce it to do justice to Italy. But this conservative advocate of reform was not widely enough tactician for the times in which he lived

were the changes which he meditated. His attempts to improve on the devices of Saturninus and Gracus were miserable failures, and the senators who used him or were influenced by him, shrank from his side when they saw him follow to their logical issue the principles which they had advocated, either

for selfish objects or only theoretically. Whether this is the true view of the character and position of Drusus or not, we may feel sure that he was in earnest in his advocacy of Italian interests, and that this was the main object of his reforms. To silence the mob at Rome, he slightly depreciated the coinage so as to relieve debtors, established some colonies, perhaps those promised by his father, and carried some law for distributing cheap grains. Senators like scours.

He courted by handing over the judicia once more to the Senate, while by admitting three hundred equitas to the Senate, he hoped to compensate them for the wound which he thus inflicted on their material interests and their pride. The body thus composed was to try cases of uticase accused of taking bribes, But the Senate scorned and yet feared the threatened invasion by which it would be severed into

two antagonistic halves. The equitas left behind were jealous of the equitase promoted, and where Drusus hoped to conciliate both classes, he only drew down their united animosity upon himself. Even in Italy, his plans were not unanimously approved. Occupiers of the public land who had never yet been disturbed in their occupation, such as those who held the Campanian domainland, were alarmed by this plan of colonization, which not only called in question and once more their right of tenure,

but even appropriated their land. But though the large landowners were adverse to him, the great mass of the Italians was on his side, and it was by their help that he carried the first three of his laws, which he shrewdly included in one measure. Thus, those who wanted land or grain were constrained to vote for the changes in the Judicia also, But as there was a law expressly forbidding this admixture of different measures in one bill, he left an opening for his opponents by which they

soon took advantage. Chief of these opponents was the consul Philippus. When the Italians crowded into Rome to support Drusus, which they would do by overawing voters at the ballot boxes, by recording fictitious votes, and by escorting Drusus about so as to lend him the support which an apparent majority always confers, Philippus came forward as the champion of the opposite side. He seems to have been a turncoat, with

a fluent tongue and few principles. He had no sympathy with the generous, if lighty liberalism of the party of Drusus, no doubt, it seemed to him weak sentimentalism, and he openly said that he must take counsel with other people, as he could not carry on the government with such a senate. Accordingly, he appealed to the worst Roman prejudices, namely the selfishness of large occupiers and the anti Italian

sentiments of the mob. This explains his being numbered among the popular party, with which the Italian Party was not now identical. Drusus, when his subsidiary measures had proved abortive grew desperate as his influence in the Senate waned, he entered into closer alliance with the Italians, who, on their part, bound themselves by an oath to treat as their friend

or enemy each friend or enemy of Drusus. And it is conjectured from a fragment of Deardorus, that ten thousand of them, led by pompidi Asilo, armed with daggers, set out for Rome to demand the franchise, but were persuaded to desist from their undertaking. Monarchy seemed once more imminent, and now, as in the case of Gracus, it is impossible to say whether the attitude of the champion of reform was due to the force of circumstances or to

settle design. But Philippus was equal to the occasion. He induced the Senate to annul the laws of Drusus, already carried and summoned the occupiers of the public land whom that law affected, to come and confront the Italians in Rome. A battle in the streets would have no doubt ensued, but it was prevented by the assassination of Drusus, who

was one evening stabbed mortally in his own house. It is said that, when dying, he ejaculated that it would be long before the state had another citizen like him. He seems to have had much of the disinterested spirit of Gaius Gracus, though with far inferiorability, and like him, he left a mother, Cornelia, to do honor by her

fortitude to the memory of her son. That year, the presentiment of coming political convulsions found expression in reports of supernatural prodigies, while signs both on the earth and in the heavens portended war and bloodshed, the tramp of hostile armies, and the devastation of the peninsula, and of Section nine