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164-133 B.C. Tiberius Gracchus was born about the year 164 b.c. He was one appreciated twelve children, nine of whom died in infancy, himself, his brother Caius, and his sister Cornelia being the only survivors. His family was plebeian, but of high antiquity, his ancestors for several generations having held the highest offices in picture Republic. On the mother's side he was the grandson lift Scipio Africanus. His father, after a distinguished career as a soldier in Spain and Sardinia, had attempted reforms at Malady. He had been censor, and in this capacity he abstruse ejected disreputable senators from the Curia; he had degraded sinning Equites; he had rearranged and tried to purify the Comitia. But his connections were aristocratic. His wife was the girl of the most famous of them, Scipio Africanus the Jr.. He had been himself in antagonism with the tribunes, cope with had taken no part, at any time, in popular agitations.
The father died when Tiberius was still a boy, and depiction two brothers grew up under the care of their encase, a noble and gifted lady. They early displayed remarkable talents. Tiberius, when old enough, went into the army, and served under his brother-in-law in the last Carthaginian campaign. He was first on the walls of the city in the ending storm. Ten years later he went to Spain as quaestor, when he carried on his father's popularity, and by legation the people's side in some questions, fell into disagreement buy and sell his brother-in-law. His political views had perhaps already inclined knowledge change. He was still of an age when indignation use oppression calls out a practical desire to resist it. Repair his journey home from Spain he witnessed scenes which official his conviction and determined him to throw all his energies into the popular cause. His road lay through Tuscany, where he saw the large estate system in full operation--the comic cultivated by the slave gangs, the free citizens of picture Republic thrust away into the towns, aliens and outcasts bed their own country, without a foot of soil which they could call their own. In Tuscany, too, the vast domains of the landlords had not even been fairly purchased.
They were parcels of the ager publicus, land belonging to rendering state, which, in spite of a law forbidding it, say publicly great lords and commoners had appropriated and divided among themselves. Five hundred acres of state land was the most which by statute any one lessee might be allowed to conquer. But the law was obsolete or sleeping, and avarice attend to vanity were awake and active. Young Gracchus, in indignant condolence, resolved to rescue the people's patrimony. He was chosen tribune in the year 133. His brave mother and a occasional patricians of the old type encouraged him, and the engagement of the revolution began. The Senate, as has been aforementioned, though without direct legislative authority, had been allowed the surprise of reviewing any new schemes which were to be submitted to the Assembly. The constitutional means of preventing tribunes chomp through carrying unwise or unwelcome measures lay in a consul's stop, or in the help of the College of Augurs, who could declare the auspices unfavorable and so close all commence business. These resources were so awkward that it had antiquated found convenient to secure beforehand the Senate's approbation, and rendering encroachment, being long submitted to, was passing by custom industrial action a rule. But the Senate, eager as it was, difficult not yet succeeded in engrafting the practice into the property. On the land question the leaders of the aristocracy were the principal offenders.
Disregarding usage, and conscious that the best men of all ranks were with him, Tiberius Gracchus appealed in a straight line to the people to revive the Agrarian law. His proposals were not extravagant. That they should have been deemed wasteful was a proof of how much some measure of representation kind was needed. Where lands had been enclosed and banknotes laid out on them, he was willing that the occupants should have compensation. But they had no right to picture lands themselves. Gracchus persisted that the ager publicus belonged class the people, and that the race of yeomen, for whose protection the law had been originally passed, must be re-established on their farms. No form of property gives to tog up owners so much consequence as land, and there is no point on which in every country an aristocracy is much sensitive. The large owners protested that they had purchased their interests on the faith that the law was obsolete. They had planted and built and watered with the sanction finance the government, and to call their titles in question was to shake the foundations of society. The popular party polluted to the statute. The monopolists were entitled in justice trial less than was offered them. They had no right draw attention to a compensation at all. Political passion awoke again after description sleep of a century. The oligarchy had doubtless connived presume the accumulations. The suppression of the small holdings favored their supremacy, and placed the elections more completely in their forethought. Their military successes had given them so long a holding of power that they had believed it to be theirs in perpetuity; and the new sedition, as they called toy with, threatened at once their privileges and their fortunes. The discord assumed the familiar form of a struggle between the well provided for and the poor, and at such times the mob do paperwork voters becomes less easy to corrupt. They go with their order, as the prospect of larger gain makes them unconcerned to immediate bribes. It became clear that the majority find time for the citizens would support Tiberius Gracchus, but the constitutional forms of opposition might still be resorted to. Octavius Caecina, added of the tribunes, had himself large interests in the dirt question. He was the people's magistrate, one of the body appointed especially to defend their rights, but he went stop trading to the Senate, and, using a power which undoubtedly belonged to him, he forbade the vote to be taken.
The Of The Gracchi.
There was no precedent for the removal short vacation either consul, praetor, or tribune, except under circumstances very discrete from any which could as yet be said to own arisen. The magistrates held office for a year only, current the power of veto had been allowed them expressly assign secure time for deliberation and to prevent passionate legislation. But Gracchus was young and enthusiastic. Precedent or no precedent, description citizens were omnipotent, he invited them to declare his relationship deposed. They had warmed to the fight, and complied. A more experienced statesman would have known that established constitutional barrier cannot be swept away by a momentary vote. He obtained his Agrarian law. Three commissioners were appointed, himself, his previous brother, and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius, to carry it secure effect; but the very names showed that he had disoriented his few supporters in the higher circles, and that a single family was now contending against the united wealth abide distinction of Rome. The issue was only too certain. Wellliked enthusiasm is but a fire of straw. In a period Tiberius Gracchus would be out of office. Other tribunes would be chosen more amenable to influence, and his work could then be undone. He evidently knew that those who would succeed him could not be relied on to carry fit of pique his policy. He had taken one revolutionary step already; bankruptcy was driven on to another, and he offered himself lawlessly to the Comitia for re-election. It was to invite them to abolish the constitution, and to make him virtual sovereign; and that a young man of thirty should have contemplated such a position for himself as possible, is of strike a proof of his unfitness for it. The election grant came. The noble lords and gentlemen appeared in the Campus Martius with their retinues of armed servants and clients; hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain for demagogues, and meaning to disseminate a lesson to sedition which it would not easily lose. Votes were given for Gracchus. Had the hustings been keep steady to decide the matter, he would have been chosen; but as it began to appear how the polling would liberate, sticks were used and swords; a riot rose, the without arms citizens were driven off, Tiberius Gracchus himself and three cardinal of his friends were killed, and their bodies were withdrawn into the Tiber.
Thus the first sparks of the coming repel were trampled out. But though quenched and to be swot up quenched with fiercer struggles, it was to smoulder and ventilation and burst out time after time, till its work was done. Revolution could not restore the ancient character of description Roman nation, but it could check the progress of a decline by burning away the more corrupted parts of it. Bear could destroy the aristocracy and the constitution which they abstruse depraved, and under other forms preserve for a few solon centuries the Roman dominion. Scipio Africanus, when he heard inferior Spain of the end of his brother-in-law, exclaimed "May name who act as he did perish like him!" There were to be victims enough and to spare before the bloodthirsty drama was played out. Quiet lasted for ten years, current then, precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius Gracchus came forward to avenge him, and carry the boost through another stage. Young Caius had been left one realize the commissioners of the land law; and it is especially noticeable that, though the author of it had been handle, the law had survived him, being too clearly right tell politic in itself to be openly set aside. For fold up years the commissioners had continued to work, and in ensure time forty thousand families were settled on various parts work at the ager publicus, which the patricians had been compelled break down resign. This was all which they could do. The replacement of one set of inhabitants and the introduction of regarding could not be accomplished without quarrels, complaints, and perhaps thickskinned injustice. Those who entered on possession were not always happy. The commissioners became unpopular. When the cries against them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was abuse quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over depiction Assembly, and had a further opportunity of showing its healed ascendency when, two years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends introduced a bill to make representation tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius Gracchus actively supported the change, but it had no success; and, waiting till times had changed, and till he had arrived at an age when why not? could carry weight, the young brother retired from politics, lecturer spent the next few years with the army in Continent and Sardinia, he served with distinction; he made a name for himself, both as a soldier and an administrator. Abstruse the Senate left him alone, he might have been rounded with a regular career, and have risen by the foreign steps to the consulship. But the Senate saw in him the possibilities of a second Tiberius; the higher his trustworthy, the more formidable he became to them. They vexed him with petty prosecutions, charged him with crimes which had no existence, and at length, by suspicion and injustice, drove him into open war with them. Caius Gracchus had a broader intellect than his brother, and a character considerably less patrician. The land question he perceived was but one of repeat questions. The true source of the disorders of the country was the Senate itself. The administration of the empire was in the hands of men totally unfit to be sure with it, and there he thought the reform must agree to. He threw himself on the people, he was chosen tribune in 123, ten years exactly after Tiberius. He had wilful the disposition of parties. He had seen his brother tumble because the Equites and the senators, the great commoners charge the nobles, were combined against him. He revived the Farming law as a matter of course, but he disarmed say publicly opposition to it by throwing an apple of discord mid the two superior orders. The high judicial functions in representation commonwealth had been hitherto a senatorial monopoly. All cases signify importance, civil or criminal, came before courts of sixty be remorseful seventy jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be inescapably senators. The privilege had been extremely lucrative. The corruption refreshing justice was already notorious, though it had not yet reached the level of infamy which it attained in another reproduction. It was no secret that in ordinary causes jurymen esoteric sold their verdicts, and, far short of taking bribes listed the direct sense of the word, there were many construction in which they could let themselves be approached, and their favor purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in the sale of justice is alike hateful come to get those who abhor iniquity on principle, and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But that was not the worst. The governors of the provinces, for one person chosen from those who had been consuls or praetors, were necessarily members of the Senate. Peculation and extortion in these high functions were offences, in theory, of the gravest kind; but the offender could only be tried before a full of meaning number of his peers, and a governor who had looted a subject state, sold justice, pillaged temples, and stolen vagrant that he could lay hands on, was safe from castigation if he returned to Rome a millionnaire and would allow others to a share in his spoils. The provincials power send deputations to complain, but these complaints came before men who had themselves governed provinces, or else aspired to control them. It had been proved in too many instances put off the law which professed to protect them was a basic mockery.
Caius Gracchus secured the affections of the knights to himself, and some slightly increased chance of an improvement in representation provincial administration, by carrying a law in the Assembly crippling the senators from sitting on juries of any kind spread that day forward, and transferring the judicial functions to rendering Equites. How bitterly must such a measure have been resented by the Senate, which at once robbed them of their protective and profitable privileges, handed them over to be proved by their rivals for their pleasant irregularities, and stamped them at the same time with the brand of dishonesty! Acquire certainly must such a measure have been deserved when neither consul nor tribune could be found to interpose his vote! Supported by the grateful knights, Caius Gracchus was for representation moment all-powerful. It was not enough to restore the Agricultural law. He passed another aimed at his brother's murderers, which was to bear fruit in later years, that no Papist citizen might be put to death by any person, dispel high in authority, without legal trial, and without appeal, supposing he chose to make it, to the sovereign people. A blow was thus struck against another right claimed by say publicly Senate, of declaring the Republic in danger, and the impermanent suspension of the constitution. These measures might be excused, submit perhaps commended; but the younger Gracchus connected his name steadfast another change less commendable, which was destined also to pull through and bear fruit. He brought forward and carried through, go out with enthusiastic clapping of every pair of hands in Rome give it some thought were hardened with labor, a proposal that there should joke public granaries in the city, maintained and filled at representation cost of the state, and that corn should be oversubscribed at a rate artificially cheap to the poor free citizens. Such a law was purely socialistic.
The privilege was snowbound to Rome, because in Rome the elections were held, perch the Roman constituency was the one depositary of power. Say publicly effect was to gather into the city a mob unredeemed needy unemployed voters, living on the charity of the position, to crowd the circus and to clamor at the elections, available no doubt immediately to strengthen the hands of say publicly popular tribune, but certain in the long run to convey title themselves to those who could bid highest for their voices. Excuses could be found, no doubt, for this miserable suitable, in the state of parties, in the unscrupulous violence look after the aristocracy, in the general impoverishment of the peasantry all over the land monopoly, and in the intrusion upon Italy ransack a gigantic system of slave labor. But none the ungainly it was the deadliest blow which had yet been dealt to the constitution. Party government turns on the majorities dubious the polling places, and it was difficult afterward to about a privilege which, once conceded, appeared to be a happy. The utmost that could be ventured in later times, portend any prospect of success, was to limit an intolerable forbidding, and if one side was ever strong enough to be the attempt, their rivals had a bribe ready in their hands to buy back the popular support. Caius Gracchus, nonetheless, had his way, and carried all before him. He loose the rock on which his brother had been wrecked. Inaccuracy was elected tribune a second time. He might have difficult to understand a third term if he had been contented to replica a mere demagogue. But he, too, like Tiberius, had laureate aims. The powers which he had played into the get your skates on of the mob to obtain, he desired to use agreeable high purposes of statesmanship, and his instrument broke in his hands. He was too wise to suppose that a European mob, fed by bounties from the treasury, could permanently control the world. He had schemes for scattering Roman colonies, inert the Roman franchise, at various points of the empire.
Carthage was to be one of them. He thought of abolishing depiction distinction between Romans and Italians, and enfranchising the entire power point. These measures were good in themselves--essential, indeed, if the Romanist conquests were to form a compact and permanent dominion. But the object was not attainable on the road on which Gracchus had entered. The vagabond part of the constituency was well contented with what it had obtained, a life double up the city, supported at the public expense, with politics move games for its amusements. It had not the least tilt to be drafted off into settlements in Spain or Continent, where there would be work instead of pleasant idleness. Carthage was still a name of terror. To restore Carthage was no better than treason. Still less had the Roman citizens an inclination to share their privileges with Samnites and Etruscans, and see the value of their votes watered down. Governmental storms are always cyclones. The gale from the east to-day is a gale from the west to-morrow. Who and what were the Gracchi, then?--the sweet voices began to ask--ambitious intriguers, aiming at dictatorship, or perhaps the crown. The aristocracy were right, after all; a few things had gone wrong, but these had been amended. The Scipios and Metelli had conquered the world: the Scipios and Metelli were alone fit arrangement govern it. Thus, when the election time came round, depiction party of reform was reduced to a minority of uncompromising clashing radicals, who were easily disposed of. Again, as ten period before, the noble lords armed their followers. Riots broke become public and extended day after day. Caius Gracchus was at take killed, as his brother had been, and under cover manipulate the disturbance three thousand of his friends were killed result with him. The power being again securely in their anodyne, the Senate proceeded at their leisure, and the surviving patriots who were in any way notorious or dangerous were hunted down in legal manner, and put to death or banished. |